Chapter Text
In the early days, everything comes in flashes. From moment to moment the boundaries of his identity shift, so that sometimes he is James Buchanan Barnes (sergeant 107th 32557038 with you til the end of the line) and sometimes he is the Soldier (two targets confirmed death 10 hours mission compromised wipe and start over) and sometimes he is neither and sometimes, on the worst days, he is both.
He is never alone. Some days it’s Steve who supervises him, calling him ‘Buck’ and hovering in doorways and smiling at every move he makes. Sometimes it’s Sam, who keeps up a slow stream of idle chatter and brings him food but never instructs him to eat it. Sometimes it’s Natasha, who speaks to him in Russian and English and keeps a knife concealed in her boot at all times. All of this is normal - he is used to being handled.
There are other times when they work in pairs, or as a unit. Sometimes Sam stands behind Steve on the couch and kneads his shoulders, leaning close to murmur in his ear. Sometimes Natasha sits in Sam’s lap and kisses her way from his palm to the inside of his wrist. All of this is normal - he knows about sex, in much the same way he knows about bullet trajectories and Hydra’s safehouse network and the typical flight patterns of a hunted target.
On good days, when his head is clear and ‘friendship’ carries the first flickers of meaning in his mind, he stays alert for the thumps and moans and murmurs that echo quietly from their room after he has been sent back to his. Then he slips back down the hall and takes vantage point by the sheltered living room window until they fall quiet again. All of this is normal - humans are vulnerable during sex, stripped of both their guard and their armour, like fish in a barrel to an experienced hunter (he knows this).
If they are eliminated, he will have nowhere to go. So he pays attention. Guards their vulnerable moments. The rest is of no interest to him - everything is normal.
The first time he registers this particular new feeling is on a cold, rainy night under the supervision of the whole unit. Cold nights are bad nights: wordlessly, Steve has turned the heating up to full, and Sam has brought out spare blankets to drape around his shoulders as he huddles at his window vantage point.
Natasha is here tonight, balancing a stack of pizza boxes in one hand and a stack of DVDs in the other. He watches, mute, as they settle down on the three-seater couch, and thinks that the elevated heating explains the pink tinge to Natasha’s cheeks; it doesn’t explain how close the three of them are leaning, or the casual caress of her hands on Steve and Sam’s thighs, or how low Steve’s hand is resting around behind her back.
And nothing explains why this particular cluster of meaningless observational data should provoke such a strange, warm ache inside him. It doesn’t explain the sudden sensation of distance, of absence, the needy feeling that doesn’t quite mean ‘damage sustained’ and doesn’t quite mean ‘sustenance required’ and definitely doesn’t mean ‘target acquired’. Definitely doesn’t, even though the images flashing unbidden through his mind involve all three of them in a state of perfect vulnerability, unarmed and unguarded and utterly exposed.
“You okay there, Barnes?” Natasha’s hands have stopped moving; everyone is looking at him, tense and suddenly cautious. He becomes aware that the edge of the windowsill is starting to splinter in his left hand’s grip, and his body is rigid, poised as if to spring.
He shrinks back, loosens his grip, pulls his blankets back close around him.
Steve’s eyes are the first to soften. “Hey, Buck, it’s okay. Everything’s okay. Nothing to be scared of.”
“How about you come in closer to the heater?” says Sam, hitching an encouraging smile onto his face. “I’ll guard that window there for a while, if you like.”
The warmth of the radiator does help ease the tight coil in his chest, but it doesn’t do much for his confusion. He presses in close until he can smell the blankets start to singe, and concentrates on easing his hands out of their tight fists. He rests one on his own thigh - gently, like he saw Natasha do - but the sensation from before doesn’t repeat itself.
There are dreams, of course.
Snow. Blood. Concrete. There are nights when he can feel the trigger beneath his finger, can taste the fear in the air around him as he marches forward with single-minded purpose. The voiceless sobs of a tiny child, struck dumb with terror as it cowers behind the bodies of its fallen parents. The smell of burning rubber as a car goes plummeting over a cliff. A nameless man, urine seeping through the front of his crisp black suit, whimpering as he offers up fistfuls of banknotes that will make no difference. A woman who makes it fifty yards on a bullet-torn leg before succumbing to pursuit. An elderly man who never makes it up out of his rocking chair.
(“Kill confirmed,” he chokes desperately into his hands, and Natasha sits quietly beside him in the dark and strokes his hair back from his clammy forehead until the tremors subside.)
Sometimes the dreams are quieter, gentler, and he curls himself around the phantom presence of a tiny little body with rattling lungs and a warm, familiar scent. There’s a smiling woman who offers him seconds from the pot on the stove, and a man with a stern face and kind eyes who peers at him over the rim of his newspaper. He follows Steve down dingy Brooklyn alleyways, peels him off the pavement with gentle, uncalloused hands. He follows Steve through crowds of reporters with their flashing cameras, and through crowds of enemy soldiers with their blazing guns. He cocks his rifle, feels the warm satisfaction of a shot well made.
Then there are other nights, nights he doesn’t understand, nights when Steve’s breath comes hot and ragged in his ear and his mind is a blur of sensations that he can’t identify as either memory or fiction. There are nights when he replays the echoes that come from behind closed doors when Steve and Sam and Natasha are all together, until his sleep is so disrupted that he gives up and rises early to pace away the tension knotting low in his gut.
He feels...something, on those nights. Something that isn’t distress or damage but also isn’t comfort, and it leaves his skin feeling too tight and far too hot.
The only conclusion he can reach is that the feeling is some new kind of malfunction. He’s used to malfunctions, because a lot of them have been emerging since he left Hydra. Steve says it’s a natural part of the healing process, and there’s no need to feel worried about the days when he can’t bring himself to talk or the nights when he wakes up screaming or the mornings when there’s a knife in his hand and he doesn’t know how it got there.
Obviously this new experience - this tight, burning feeling that comes and goes on a schedule of its own - is something similar. So he doesn’t worry about it.
Perhaps Steve has noticed his increased restlessness, though, because it’s not long after the episodes start before Steve is ordering a new training regime (suggesting, Buck, suggesting, it’s not an order). They head out before daybreak, when only a handful of dedicated joggers are sharing the streets, and the cold air doesn’t bother Bucky as much as usual when he’s allowed to keep moving through it. It’s actually...advantageous, he thinks. The breeze keeps the sweat from drenching him and the darkness hides his face and the quiet gives him ample warning of other approaching joggers.
“You look happy,” Steve says when they finally pull up back in their own front yard. Soft grey light is starting to bleed across the sky. Bucky’s cheeks are flushed and the lights are on inside, where he can hear Sam rattling about with the coffee machine.
“Happy,” Bucky echoes, because Steve is watching him closely and seems to be expecting an answer. Bucky knows happy - they’ve talked about this before. Satisfaction, contentment, a pervasive sense of wellbeing. The feeling of a mission completed with perfect efficiency, the feeling of getting warm again after being cold. He is still unused to recognising it inside himself.
At the very least, he’s confident some of the tension within him has eased.
Breakfast is on the table when they head indoors. Normally Sam accompanies Steve on his morning jogs, but he took some damage last week on a mission Bucky isn’t allowed to know about and he’s still limping. Steve greets him with a squeeze of his hand a brisk smile. “Went well,” he says.
“I’ll bet.” Sam gives them both an easy grin and places two towering plates of pancakes on the table. “First time you’ve been out in a while, huh, Barnes? How’d you find it?”
Bucky watches the pancakes carefully, waiting in silence for permission. Steve clears his throat. “He liked it, didn’t you, Bucky? Could hardly keep up with him once he got going.”
Sam snorts. “Now that I’d pay to see,” he says, and punches Steve lightly on the shoulder. “C’mon, eat up, both of you. It’s not easy getting together enough food for a pair of goddamn super soldiers.”
Bucky eats quickly, hungry from the run, but he finds his eyes drifting towards Steve and Sam and how close they’re sitting, and the way Steve’s hand keeps coming down between bites to rest almost carelessly on Sam’s thigh.
And the tension he’s only just burnt off is starting to come back.
His new handlers talk about ‘want’ so freely that it never occurs to him to question it. It is, he assumes, their particular trick for issuing orders that don’t sound like orders: Do you want to eat now, Bucky? Want to come down from the roof yet? Want to watch some TV with us? But then there’s the day when Steve casts a glance over his shoulder from the kitchen and says, “What do you want for dinner tonight?” and the question pulls him up so hard that there’s nothing he can do but stare at Steve in silence, racking his brains as he tries to figure out the motive and significance of the question.
“Uh, Bucky?” Steve stops rattling around in the pantry to come over to the couch, a bag of dried pasta still clutched in his hand. “You okay there, pal?”
He takes a moment to consider this; the furrow in Steve’s brow deepens with every second the silence drags on. “Yeah,” he says, and then, “I don’t understand.”
Steve chuckles. It’s an awkward, forced chuckle that means he doesn’t know how else to respond. “Dinner,” Steve repeats. “What do you want to eat? I was thinking I could knock up some spaghetti bolognese, or…”
With this solid, mercifully specific suggestion, they’re back on solid ground. He lets out a soft sigh and releases his grip on the arm of the couch. “Spaghetti bolognese,” he echoes.
He thinks that’s the end of it. But Steve only gets halfway through peeling a clove of garlic before he looks up again, thoughtful frown already re-forming on his face. “What do you mean, you don’t understand?”
Bucky doesn’t know how to answer this, so he doesn’t. Steve persists. “Look, I know some of this stuff is still confusing to you...” Bucky nods, though he’s unsure exactly what he’s agreeing to. “You know you’re allowed to have opinions, right? Even over small stuff, I mean…” Steve gestures hopelessly at the kitchen. “If there’s something you want to eat, something you want to do or not do, you should speak up. You don’t just have to agree with whatever I say - you’re allowed to want stuff on your own.”
There it is again. Bucky blinks at Steve, feeling the rusty gears in his brain crunch and squeal as he tries to figure out how to express his problem. “I don’t...want things,” is the best he can manage, with a small grimace.
For a moment it looks like he’s made a mistake. Steve’s frown is deepening, and his hands twitch as though longing to reach out - or lash out, perhaps. But his face softens when he meets Bucky’s gaze again. “Sure you do,” he says.
“No, I don’t.” He’s never needed to. Wouldn’t know how to.
“I think you do.” The couch sags beneath him as Steve sinks down onto it. “Think about that hoodie you’re wearing. We bought you a few different choices, but you always wear that one whenever it’s not in the wash. Even if it’s out on the line and there’s another one waiting in your drawer, you’ll go outside and get that one. It’s not a strategic choice to make, so why do you do it?”
The gears crunch some more as Bucky considers this. He’s not sure exactly where it’s going or why it matters, but Steve is wide-eyed and earnest at his side. And the truth is that, now he thinks about it, there’s no meaningful difference between the various hoodies he can choose from. They’re all the right size, all in muted colours that don’t draw too much attention. The one he’s wearing now is a soft grey; it zips up at the front, and has two deep pockets which he buries his hands in and a drawstring around the neck which he doesn’t use. And it feels, for no particular reason, like a better choice than the others.
“You do it because you want to wear that one,” says Steve. “You like wearing the same hoodie every day because you like having a routine. You like having things happen the same way as they did yesterday, even if there are other equally good options available. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about when I ask if you want something. I’m asking what makes you feel good, regardless of function or strategic value.”
Bucky nods. “Bolognese,” he says, because this conversation is exhausting and it’s the best he can do verbally right now. There’s a lot to process. He thinks about the spot he always chooses in front of the heater, the enormous pile of blankets he keeps on his bed, the strange animated movies Natasha sometimes brings with her when she stops by the house.
He thinks about the three of them, Steve and Sam and Natasha, nestling together on the couch and stealing food from each other’s plates while he watches the movies play from his spot in front of the heater.
Wanting. Liking. Feeling good, regardless of function or strategic value.
There’s a lot to process.
Steve sighs and hauls himself back up off the couch. “That’s the spirit,” he says, and Bucky doesn’t stop watching him as he goes back to peeling garlic and onions in the kitchen. He watches the way Steve’s brows furrow and the way his mouth twists into an agitated line, and it occurs to him - a stray thought, issuing straight from one of the ever-present blank spaces in his mind - that Steve hasn’t said anything about what he wants.
“Seventy years, Sam.” Steve’s voice is quiet and strained, only barely audible from the hallway outside where Bucky sits hunched against their bedroom door. “Seventy years he’s spent not even knowing he can want stuff, and somehow we’ve gotta help him put that back together?”
The blankets rustle; Bucky can imagine Sam rolling over to wrap an arm around Steve (Steve likes that when he’s upset, though Bucky doesn’t know how he knows). “We’re getting there,” says Sam. “He’s getting there. Remember when we first found him, how messed up he was then? It’s gonna take some time, but the guy’s already making leaps and bounds. All you did today was help him make another one.”
A short lull follows. There’s something reassuring about the sound of their even breathing, about the slow creaking of the bed as they shift their weight around to get comfortable. It’s more comfortable here on the floor than it is back in Bucky’s bed, but it doesn’t take long for the sounds to become less soothing: there’s a louder rustle, another creak and a soft sigh from Steve, then some more rustling and a bitten-off moan that jolts Bucky right back out of his relaxed sleepiness.
He ends up abandoning his station by the door and heading out to the living room, to his usual vantage point just out of view from the window overlooking the street.
At some point, he dozes off.
“Steve and I used to have sex.”
It’s taken him a while to reach the decision. There was nothing about it at the Smithsonian, nothing in any of the books he’s read or the stories Steve has told him. No evidence whatsoever to corroborate the disjointed images that swirl in his head whenever he thinks about it. But he knows, once, he used to be a person; it makes sense to assume that he did all kinds of person things back then, including sex. And he doubts it was Hydra who implanted him with memories of what Steve would look like stretched out naked on an old cot bed beneath him, skin golden in the early morning glow, head tilted back and mouth slack with pleasure.
He tries not to dwell on the memories - they elevate his pulse, leave him with that hot, restless, aching feeling that keeps coming back at unexpected moments. It’s been several days, now, since he slept more than a couple of hours at a time. He’s decided that getting confirmation will make it easier for the memories to settle in his mind, so he doesn’t keep waking up sweating and full of that same unfamiliar tension each time his sleeping brain replays them.
He waits patiently as Sam starts, then swears, then snatches for a dishrag to mop up his spilt cocoa. “Man, you’d think I’d be used to it by now,” he mutters, before turning to face Bucky’s shadowy corner with a good-natured smile fixed firmly in place. “Didn’t realise you were still up, Barnes. Come again?”
“Steve and I,” Bucky repeats slowly. “We used to have sex.”
“This a new memory?” Sam asks, and Bucky nods once. “Yeah, Steve’s told me you guys used to have a pretty steady thing going during the war.”
“I don’t remember much,” says Bucky. “But I know there was sex. And another woman, one time.” He frowns, tries to pick out the details of the blurred emerging memories. “Without me then, I think. But before that…”
Sam’s brows are furrowed. “Has this been bothering you?” he asks. “Because you know, I’m sure Steve would be happy to talk-”
“No.” Bucky shakes his head, purses his lips. It’s not...Steve doesn’t need to talk. These aren’t talking memories, he decides all at once, and turns to make his retreat.
But Sam pulls him up with a gentle hand on his shoulder. For a moment it alarms him, and then it reminds him of the way Sam’s hands sometimes rub Steve’s shoulders, and he feels a sharp spike in the tension still roiling inside him from when he woke up this morning with a heat-haze of images shimmering in his mind. “Hey,” Sam says, “we won’t talk to Steve if you don’t want to. But this is a big thing for you to try and process all alone.” He takes his hand off Bucky’s shoulder - Bucky tries not to grimace at the loss - and gestures at the breakfast bar where his late-night oatmeal is going soggy. “Why don’t we sit down and have a chat?”
There are purplish teeth marks peeking out from the collar of Sam’s running shirt. “You and Steve,” Bucky says, taking his seat. “The two of you have sex now.”
“Yeah,” says Sam, straddling the seat next to him in a way that doesn’t make Bucky feel any more relaxed. “Yeah, we’re having sex.” His expression is neutral but his eyes are raking over Bucky’s face, looking for some kind of tell. “Is that gonna be a problem?”
Bucky blinks. He tries to think of any way that Steve and Sam having sex could pose a problem for him, any strategic disadvantage it could create, but there’s nothing. “No,” he says flatly.
He doesn’t mention the aching feeling when he wakes up from his dreams, or the way his skin heats up when he thinks too long about the memories. Doesn’t mention it, but Sam is still looking at him as though waiting for something else to come out. “Sometimes I can’t sleep through it,” he adds, mostly to break the silence.
Sam’s starting to look embarrassed - uncharacteristic, for him. “Wow, uh...sorry, dude,” he says. “Never realised you could hear us that well.”
“I have enhanced hearing,” Bucky explains, and shrugs. He doesn’t address the apology - doesn’t understand it. “But I…” The words are sticking on the tip of his tongue, gears grinding away in his brain as he tries to articulate the question he’s only just realised he has. “I don’t get why,” he admits.
To his credit, Sam is pulling himself together very quickly; already his expression is relaxing. “You’re not talking about the enhanced hearing, are you.”
Bucky shakes his head. “I know how it works, I know it’s important to people, I just. Can’t remember why I used to do it. Or why it matters when you do it.”
Sam whistles through his teeth. “You know what,” he says, “that’s the first time you’ve come out with something I honestly haven’t heard before.” At Bucky’s frown, he lapses into a thoughtful silence. “Okay, how do I put this...remember that talk you and Steve were having about wanting things?” Bucky nods. “Well, sex is one of those things lots of people do just ‘cause they want to. Do you…” Sam pauses, swallows. He’s starting to squirm a bit again, though he’s making an effort to hide it. “Would you say you have much of a sex drive, these days?”
“How can I tell?”
Sam’s face falls dramatically. “I need backup,” he mutters, and takes a morose mouthful of his oatmeal. “I think I’m doing this the wrong way. How about you tell me how you feel, when you think about these new memories of yours?”
It takes Bucky a long moment to gather his thoughts together on this, but not as long as it might have - it’s been on his mind a lot recently. “Tense,” he says. “Hot. Restless. Like I…”
“Like you really want something you’re not getting?” Sam supplies. Bucky nods.
“Alright then,” says Sam, and the embarrassment is gone now. He’s watching Bucky with a strange, soft-eyed expression. “I think what you’re gonna need is some alone time. Yeah, I know -” he fends off Bucky’s confused stare with a wave of his hand - “you don’t know what that means either. When you’re feeling up to it, all you gotta do is run yourself a nice hot bath and lie back in the water and try touching yourself. Anywhere you like - just focus on where all that tension is concentrated and touch yourself there.” Sam casts him a lopsided grin. “You’ll probably figure it out pretty quick after that.”
Clear instructions are something Bucky is good at. They’re familiar, reassuring. He...likes them, he decides. So he takes Sam’s advice and runs a bath. He strips off and lowers himself into the water, but something inside him feels...tense, in a different and unexpected way. Nervous. He closes his eyes and lies back, focuses on his breathing like Steve has taught him to do in anxious moments. Last night, he dreamed that Steve’s breath came in gasps and sobs. The ground beneath them was hard and bare, and he remembers his hand clamped over Steve’s mouth to help muffle the sounds.
(In his dream, the hand he used was flesh-and-blood. The whirring metal reality of it now would chip Steve’s teeth if he used it like that - would crush his jaw, if Bucky lost focus.)
It takes time. For feelings that have been dominating such a large part of his mind, they’re hard to grasp now that he’s looking for them. Steam-damp hair hangs in front of his eyes and the tension inside him is still there, inches out of reach.
In his dream last night, he was crawling through thick bracken as gunfire tore the air around him. He watched Steve charge across an open clearing as bullets ricocheted off his shield, watched a dozen men fall between his crosshairs, watched the world go up in smoke and shrapnel and arcing spurts of blood. (He squeezes his eyes shut tighter, breathes heavily through his nose. The tiles beneath his fingers are starting to crack.)
They’re the wrong memories. Focus on the tension, Sam told him. The hot water is slow to help him relax, but as it gradually does its job he drags his mind back to where it’s supposed to be. Steve. Hard, bare ground beneath them. A flesh-and-blood hand clamped over Steve’s mouth.
Steve’s hands, hot and urgent, stroking across his chest. (He follows the path with his own hands, erratic but harmless, and his left hand is so much colder and harder than Steve’s in the dream.) His thigh pressing between Steve’s legs, parting them, and the hard length of Steve’s erection grinding up against him. (The tension is starting to come back in earnest now.)
He wants...he wants. Everything feels tight and hot and the memories are starting to darken at the edges, and he wants. His nerve endings are crackling with sensation - pulsing, electric. Bucky knows all about things that feel electric. A deep, shuddering breath. A sharp pang of apprehension.
He keeps going because he has to, now, because this is the task he’s been given and he needs to see it through. Steve’s hand dipping lower, caressing his stomach - Bucky follows the motion and feels the taut muscles clench beneath his fingers. Dimly he’s aware that that he’s breathing too quickly - that he’s starting to sweat, whether from anxiety or the heat of the water or something else entirely. Steve’s hand travelling lower still, tracing the dark line of hair from his navel, wrapping around his dick, and he’s swollen and hard to the touch and sensitive and -
- oh. He remembers. He remembers.
He remembers.
It lasts barely a dozen strokes of his hand. The tension inside him builds so fast and so intensely that remembering becomes irrelevant, and all he can do is curl jerkily in on himself and bite his lip to muffle the sounds that spill from his mouth as everything inside him explodes all at once. His muscles clench and spasm like he’s back in the chair, but the feeling coursing through him is the opposite of the chair and and when it’s over he feels blank, breathless, pressing his forehead against the cool tile wall beside the bathtub and panting like he’s been running for hours.
For a while he doesn’t think, doesn’t move, doesn’t try to process anything. His eyes feel wet so he scrunches them closed, lies back in the water, lets the rapid pounding of his heart anchor him back down to a body that feels...different, now. It’s been decades since he has been in any doubt about the extremes of pain he’s capable of enduring. This is a different kind of extreme, one he didn’t even remember he could feel, and that fact is only the latest in a list of betrayals that he feels he may never reach an end to.
But for a while, he doesn’t have to think. Doesn’t have to move or try to process anything. For now it’s enough just to breathe, and let the warmth of the water suck the chill from his bones, and enjoy the fading satisfaction of a task accomplished and the fading release of tension in his trembling body.
Later, when the water has cooled almost completely and the steam has cleared from the air, Sam comes to check on him. “You decent in there?” he calls out, rapping lightly on the door.
“Yeah,” Bucky calls back automatically. He’s starting to get cold, but somehow he can’t bring himself to get out of the water. He hugs his legs a little closer and waits quietly for Sam to settle down on the rim of the bath before speaking.
“You know,” Sam says cheerfully, “when I asked if you were decent, that was actually shorthand for ‘do you have your clothes on’.”
“Oh.” Bucky grimaces. “I left my stuff in the bedroom,” he says. “I can get it -”
“We’re cool.” Sam casts him a reassuring smile and it’s an expression he’s seen dozens of times before, but this time there’s something else behind it that he can’t quite get a read on. Something that reminds him a little bit of Steve, though he’s not sure why. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” says Sam. “You’ve been in here a long time. Must be getting cold by now.”
“Yeah.” Now that Bucky thinks about it, he doesn’t know how long he’s been in here. Doesn’t know what he’s been thinking about the whole time, either. His head is a lot quieter than it usually is. He’s been...feeling, rather than thinking. Noticing the way the water laps against his bare skin, noticing the quiet whirring sound his left arm makes when it flexes, noticing the crinkling of his right-hand fingers as they soak.
Sam is rising to his feet now, snatching up the clean towel from the hook on the door. “Come on, then,” he says, and holds it out invitingly. “You know you don’t feel too great when you start getting cold, Barnes.”
He knows. And that hollow, jittery feeling still isn’t creeping up on him yet, but he climbs out of the tub anyway and wraps the towel tight around himself.
“So...you figure some stuff out?” Sam asks as Bucky starts towelling his hair dry. He’s clearly not here to supervise - he’s not even looking at Bucky, just gazing around the room like he’s not quite sure where to put his eyes - but he doesn’t show any signs of leaving, either.
“Yeah.” He doesn’t know what exactly the stuff is, yet. But it’s definitely something.
“Good. That’s good, man.” Bucky’s nearly dry, and Sam is now starting to turn towards the door, but he pauses with his hand on the doorknob and finally turns to look at Bucky properly. “That’s all yours, you know,” he says.
“The towel?”
Sam chuckles. “Your body,” he corrects. “I was thinking about that, after you got in the bath. Realised you probably still don’t have your head around that. But all these feelings you got, the ones you don’t know what to do with yet - all of that belongs to you.” He’s looking Bucky straight in the eye, and Bucky can feel something twisting in his stomach. It’s a strange, light, fluttery feeling that probably belongs right at the top of the list Sam is talking about. “I know that wasn’t how it was back with Hydra, but that’s how it’s gonna be now. Nobody else ever gets to own you except yourself. And if you need help figuring out what that means sometimes, I’m always gonna have your back.” He grins then, and the intense, serious expression is gone all at once, and he squeezes Bucky’s shoulder briefly before making his exit and pulling the door shut behind him.
“Even if it means I have to teach you how to jerk it at three o’clock in the goddamn morning,” he hears from outside in the corridor.
Things get easier after that.
He can’t really explain what’s changed. He’s not tense in the same way, any more, and there’s something grounding about being able to identify and address his body’s needs independently instead of wallowing in nameless frustration. He feels present, far more anchored in his own identity than he used to be, and the days when he’s the Soldier are almost gone and the days when he’s nobody in particular are getting less frequent.
It’s just him and Steve and Sam for the next couple of weeks - Natasha, they tell him, is away on another of those missions he’s not allowed to know about. In the mornings he goes out running with them, and he and Steve lap Sam around the National Mall. The first time he tries out Steve’s routine - a brisk “on your left” along with his best attempt at a grin as he passes - Sam and Steve both stop to stare at him in disbelief, and then Sam launches into a litany of curses while Steve laughs so hard he nearly falls in the lake. It’s a good day, and he likes watching Steve smile and he likes the way Sam thumps him on the back when he drops into a slow jog beside him on the last lap.
Other things he likes - and he’s keeping a list in his head, just in case - include the slow, soulful music Sam likes to play when he cooks or cleans around the house, and the satisfied grin Sam gets when he’s got Steve tucked under his arm on the couch, and the fact that Sam touches him so easily and freely, clapping his shoulder and squeezing his arm like he’s not even dangerous. He finds his eyes drawn to Sam when he’s around, finds himself noticing how fluid his movements are when he runs and how animated his face is even when he’s not talking.
Once again, he finds himself in the position of wanting something he can’t find a name for. Because he does want - there’s no other word that adequately describes the warm, fluttery feeling in his stomach whenever Sam turns his friendly grin on him. Without entirely understanding why, he starts looking for ways he can get Sam to smile more often: handing him things when he needs them (and occasionally when he doesn’t), making coffee for him in the mornings (he’s learned to use the machine by watching the others do it) and, on one accidental but memorable occasion, knocking Steve into the pond as they race to be the first to overtake Sam on their morning run (Sam has to stop running for nearly ten minutes while he pulls himself together).
Natasha shows up again late one evening to find the three of them scattered comfortably around the living room. Steve’s sketching something over at the corner desk and Sam’s stretched out on the couch reading a book. Bucky’s on the floor in front of the heater, watching: watching the infomercial that’s playing on the TV, watching Steve’s hand fly across the page, and especially watching Sam as he darts his tongue out and licks his finger to turn each page, a small frown of concentration playing on his face.
“You boys save me any dinner?” she calls from the kitchen, and grins mischievously when Sam and Steve jump startled to their feet; Bucky, who heard her muffled entry through the back door, stays put and quietly assesses the situation from his spot on the floor. She’s still in her work gear, which is dirty and scuffed in places, but Natasha herself looks undamaged. When she glances over at him, he manages a small, stiff smile.
“Thought I’d crash here for a while,” she says, sauntering over to the couch and sliding straight into Sam’s spot. Sam doesn’t miss a beat, just falls back on top of her with a wry twist of his mouth. The scuffle that ensues is short-lived and ends with Natasha sprawled triumphantly in Sam’s lap and Sam’s arms draped around her waist and Bucky, still curled up in front of the heater, frowning at them both as he struggles to understand what the sudden pang of feeling inside him means.
He overhears them later, as he’s burrowing his way into the nest of blankets on his bed. “So, you and Barnes,” Natasha is saying from out in the kitchen. “Something happen while I was away?”
“Not really,” Sam says easily. “He’s been doing well these past couple of weeks. Joking with me and Steve. Hardly any nightmares. We’re getting on great.”
“I can see that - he hasn’t taken his eyes off you all evening,” says Natasha. “I can’t tell whether he’s planning to ask you out or shoot you.”
Sam chuckles, low in his throat. “You jealous?”
“Hey, I’m just saying,” says Natasha. “I leave you alone for a fortnight, and when I come back you’ve got the Winter Soldier making soppy eyes at you. This is the exact same thing that happened with you and Steve. You’re like the pied piper of emotionally compromised 1940s supersoldiers.”
“Shut up, Romanoff,” says Sam. There’s no real bite in his tone. “How ‘bout you save the wedding speech til after that whole ‘planning to shoot me’ bit stops sounding so plausible?”
Natasha snorts. “Didn’t you just say you two were getting on great?”
“I did, and we are. Which is why I don’t want anyone to get carried away. Dude’s still got a lot to work through.”
“Right.” He hears Natasha’s chair scrape as she rises. “Well, who knows - maybe he’s just wondering what kind of flowers you like best. Have you told him you like roses?”
It’s this comment, more than anything else, that keeps Bucky awake once Natasha and Sam have plodded off to join Steve in bed. It reverberates around one of the blank spots in his brain, and out of that blankness comes a faint, shaky idea of what it is he should do with feelings like the ones that are fluttering inside him now.
When morning rolls around, Sam and Steve and Natasha emerge from their bedroom at roughly the same time. All three of them look stiff and rumpled and very cheerful, and Sam falls into his seat at the table with his eyes scrunched shut and his arms suspended in a languid morning stretch.
Then jumps back up again very quickly.
“Jesus,” he yelps, and stares down wide-eyed at the small collection of sidearms his movement has just sent clattering to the floor. “How the hell did those…” He cuts himself off with a deep breath, and something like recognition creeps into his expression. Steve’s brow is furrowed. Behind him, Natasha’s lips are twitching into a slow smile.
“How about that wedding speech now?” she mutters under her breath.
A machine pistol and a couple of semi-automatics: they’re the last of the firearms Bucky has been keeping stashed in the bottom drawer of his bedside table. All he has left now are the pair of derringers under his pillow, and they’re not much use until he gets to point-blank range so he figures they don’t count.
He has to take several deep, steadying breaths as he watches Sam pick up the last of his treasured weapons cache. It’s not as if he can’t get more if he needs them, he reminds himself. And the gesture is important.
There are three freshly made cups of coffee waiting on the table. Next to Sam’s, a small uprooted shrub is shedding dirt and earwigs onto the tablecloth beneath it. It turns out that this is the wrong season and the wrong neighbourhood for the flowers he overheard Natasha mentioning, but this was the nicest plant Bucky could find at short notice. From his station in the corner of the living room he can see Sam’s jaw drop, can see disbelief and confusion and incredulity and -
There it is. A slowly unfurling smile. “Oh my god,” is all Sam says, from which Bucky infers that his operation has been a success.
The shrub ends up taking pride of place in a small terracotta pot on the kitchen counter. Sam waters it every day, and sometimes he comes and sits with Bucky on his night vigils and talks a cheerful stream of nonsense that dims the ache in Bucky’s chest to a dull throb.
Gradually, Bucky starts talking back. It feels strange to say so many words without a clear objective in mind, but Sam is always patient and he seems genuinely interested when Bucky tells him about his memories of summers hauling crates down at the docks or the art classes he and Steve used to take together.
“I didn’t know you could draw.” Sam sounds impressed - and Bucky can’t any more, not the way he thinks Sam means, but he does draw him a detailed blueprint of his Hydra vault and a tactical map of their morning jogging route (possible ambush points marked in red). “That’s real nice, man,” says Sam, and tacks them up on the wall beside his shrub.
(“He’s just sharing what he knows,” he hears Sam say, when he finds Steve scrutinising the drawings the next morning with a hollow look in his eyes. “That’s all any of us can do.”)
Other nights Bucky prefers to stay quiet, and Sam doesn’t mind that either. He picks up his book and sits with Bucky in companionable silence, or else takes the opportunity to fill him in on things he’s missed across the past few decades. Politics is a fraught topic, since Bucky often has no memory of his role in world events and conflicts until Sam’s briefings stir up the memories. Culture is safer. Sam knows a lot about jazz, which Bucky knows he used to like; there are entire artistic movements that are new to him, new technologies that he’s never seen before, popular games and pastimes that he’s never had a chance to learn.
“You don’t talk to Steve much about this stuff, do you?” Sam observes one night, when they’re up on the roof and Bucky has lapsed into silence midway through a hazy recollection of following Steve through some Hydra facility in the south of France. “You’ve got all these memories of the stuff you and he used to do, but you never seem to want to tell him about any of it.”
Bucky shrugs. It’s a clear night, and the weather has been warming rapidly these past couple of weeks - the air is still cold, but it’s crisp now rather than biting. He likes nights like these: his mind is lucid and his memories sharp, but the lingering chill numbs him just a little to their cutting edges. “Steve already knows,” he says, and it’s true - it’s an inefficient use of his time, telling tales about the past to a man who remembers it better than he does.
It’s also a lie, because Steve doesn’t know how much Bucky remembers. Doesn’t know that Bucky sometimes wakes to the taste of him in his mouth, more real and immediate than the air he’s breathing, doesn’t know that Bucky sits at home white-knuckled on the days Steve goes out alone on those missions he’s not allowed to know about because the thing is pal you don’t have to and promise me we’ll always stick together and how can I protect you when you keep putting yourself in harm’s way.
And Bucky’s not ready to tell him. There are too many pieces that still don’t fit together in his head, too many feelings his heart isn’t big enough to hold yet.
For the time being, he’s happy with the knowledge that some things about him are certain. Like the fact that he definitely does have a sex drive, after all - definitely does. He doesn’t understand all the things he feels for Steve, but he does understand the way his body responds when his memories carry him back to that time in the tent after their mission in Greece or that week in a Czech forest where stolen moments were the only chance they ever had. And if he doesn’t have words for the squirming feeling in his stomach when his clumsy efforts at friendliness bring a smile to Sam’s face, then at least he knows why watching Sam’s rippling muscles on their morning jog makes the blood race in his veins. Sometimes his mind conjures up images of what Sam and Steve must look like, alone together in the main bedroom, and he scrunches his eyes shut and bites down on his pillow and thrusts into his hand until all he can see is white. Sometimes his own hand just isn’t enough, and the untouched need inside him is so strong that he feels like crawling out of his skin.
And it’s not just Sam and Steve who occupy this new category of unsatisfied wants. Natasha is staying with them almost every night now that her mission is over, and Bucky watches her laugh and smile and wrap her arms around the other two and feels a familiar prickle of want inside him, and wonders how many more of these feelings - crushes, he’s heard Natasha call them - he can hope to contain inside his traitorous and unpredictable body.
In his darker moments, he knows that the feelings blooming inside him are ridiculous.
He’s come a long way since the day he followed Steve into the Potomac. There are days when he doesn’t think about bloodshed at all, days when he almost feels like a fully-fledged person. But everything has its limitations. You can defuse a bomb, he knows. You can even recycle some of its parts. You can make it harmless, but you can’t make it lovable. You can’t strip away the ugliness that was built into its very core.
In his darker moments, he watches the three of them, Steve and Sam and Natasha, snuggled together on the couch in perfect tessellation like they were made to be there. He watches them from the dark corner of the room where he feels safest, watches how perfectly they fill up the space around them until there’s not a gap left, and he aches.
The fact that he - or the Soldier, at least - has never been kept active for this long without a kill mission only occurs to Bucky on the day the long streak is broken.
He’s grown complacent. All these long months of living like a civilian in a completely unfortified suburban home, letting his guard down, taking the same jogging route every day around one of the city’s most conspicuous public landmarks, and he’d almost forgotten that the outside world was still teeming with people who wanted him and all his handlers dead.
He wakes to the sound of...nothing. Everything’s silent; even the meagre traffic out on the road has fallen quiet. He has nothing to go on but the raised hairs on the back of his neck, and the blaring alarm in that forgotten little part of his brain so conditioned to recognise danger that he no longer wields any conscious control over it.
His feet are silent when they hit the floor. They’re bare; his only armour is a pair of fleecy pyjama pants and a baggy t-shirt. He has a pistol in each hand, though he doesn’t remember retrieving them from under the pillow. When he strains his ears, he can hear movement in the corridor outside his room. Someone’s approaching. He drops into a low crouch behind the door and waits as it creaks open.
It’s not an intruder - it’s Natasha, and she’s less than happy to be greeted with an arm around her throat and a hand clapped over her mouth. The moment he recognises her he releases his grip, and she backs away from him grimacing and rubbing her throat.
“I was coming to tell you we’ve got company. Guess you already got that memo.”
Bucky nods. She’s in a similar state to him, dressed only in one of Steve’s giant t-shirts and a pair of borrowed men’s boxers, but better armed than he is with a loaded pair of Glocks.
“Steve and Sam are going around the back,” she whispers hoarsely. “We need to get you out before this gets ugly. Do you think you can make it back to -”
“No.”
Bucky’s surprised by the rasping sound of his own voice. Something very cold and very quiet is dripping into his brain. Natasha’s eyes are intense and anxious and he can hear five separate sets of footfalls out in the living room, so silent even he almost missed them. Between his two derringers he’s got six shots. There’s something rustling out in the garden: at least one additional hostile, maybe more. Someone has cut the streetlights.
“Barnes.” Her voice is wary - distant, muffled somehow. Adrenaline is scalding his veins, but he feels still and cold as a frozen lake. “Barnes, we don’t have time for this, you’re not combat-ready yet -”
Three sets of footfalls are drawing closer, heading down the hall. Natasha freezes mid-sentence and he knows she’s heard them too.
And Bucky has never - never - not been combat ready. They’re outnumbered by he doesn’t know how many and everything inside him is coiled to spring and something in the very core of his heart is trembling but he can’t leave them at a time like this. He can’t.
He needs to -
The footfalls are drawing closer.
“Window,” Natasha hisses.
“Guarded.” His window faces out onto the road - there’s bound to be a sentry there. And she understands. They move at the exact same time, sliding back behind the door like ghosts. In the near-perfect darkness the large mound of blankets on the bed looks like a body. They won’t know he’s already awake. As long as they check this room before discovering the empty main bedroom, it’s all the advantage he’ll need.
One of the intruders breaks off from the main group to nudge the door open. From there it’s child’s play: the man’s neck snaps under the strength of a metal arm before he can draw in breath to scream, and the Soldier swaps his derringers for the cold, familiar weight of the dead man’s M16.
“Take the two down the hall,” he hisses, and then he puts away the last little shreds of the trembling feeling in his chest and launches.
He knows this routine. Knows it in his bones, knows it like the most basic of survival instincts.
A commotion is breaking out in front of the house as he makes it to the living room. Gunfire. Shouting. The two men in the kitchen are rushing for the door so he takes them down, and the shattering glass and return fire on both sides catches him by surprise. The windows. They’ve got men stationed at every window - two each, he counts. He dives, rolls behind the counter, feels the glass shards digging into his palm. One of the bodies has fallen within reach of his cover. Sidearms - unnecessary. Stun gun - useless. Handcuffs. Knife. Knife. Spare magazine.
Grenade.
He tosses it over the kitchen counter, and the explosion clears the whole right side of the room. More return fire from the other side, panicked and haphazard. They’ve lost sight of him amid the airborne dust and debris. He dispatches them easily, and there’s no more gunfire, no sound of further movement. This time, he counted correctly.
He crouches back behind the counter. Listens carefully. Footsteps, approaching at a run from outside. Heavy breathing. He readies his rifle.
“Bucky!” It’s Steve, knocking the bullet-riddled front door off its hinges as he bursts into the room. Sam is close behind him. They’re panting but uninjured. “Bucky, are you here? Are you okay?”
His shouts ring louder than gunfire in the Soldier’s ears; he’ll do what he must to make it stop. “Seven targets down,” he reports, uncurling his finger from the trigger and rising to his feet. “No major damage sustained.” The trickle of blood from his palm is slowing. He’ll need to extract the glass shards embedded in the cuts, but that can wait.
The living room is in ruins. Natasha pushes through a pile of shattered plaster where the hallway entrance used to be - covered in dust, but also unharmed. “Rest of the house is clear,” she says, surveying the wreckage in one sweeping glance.
The sound of a chopper is audible in the distance. “We gotta get out of here,” says Sam. He’s got a hand wrapped around Steve’s arm, gripping tight. Natasha is already moving for the door. “Barnes. Come on.”
The exterior of the house has fared no better than the interior. Bullet holes. Shells. Cracked bricks and upturned earth. In the distance, there are sirens.
The Soldier drops his weapon at the scene, and follows where he is led.