At the end, something quiet came over the battlefield. Everyone felt it, Bucky would find out later. Everyone who was there. Everyone who was anywhere. For just that one moment, there was calm, an inheld breath. It was waiting. Considering each of them. Waiting for it to make up its mind was like waiting to be chosen on the playground, except the way it wasn't like that at all. You didn't want this thing to notice you. You didn't want it to choose you, first or at all.
In the next moment, the calm took half. Half of everyone, everywhere.
In that moment, Bucky was sure it would take him. The calm, quiet shadow, this thing that didn't have to so much as flex a muscle because it was part of everyone. But another breath in, another breath out, and the shadow seemed to pass over him, onto whoever was next. It was a relief until it wasn't, until he thought 'What if it chooses Steve?'
For a moment, he was sure it would, that there was no way this would leave them both behind when nothing else ever had.
"Steve," he said, pleading.
Everywhere, dust rose.
Somehow, Steve stayed.
Three days after, everything was still in shambles.
"I need a break, Steve," Bucky said, mostly because it was the only thing that would get Steve to take one.
Even in his hut, they stayed close. A brush of hands, to make sure. Soon, that wasn't enough. When their bodies pressed together, Steve kissed him. It didn't have to lead to anything, but Bucky kissed him back. Soon their clothes were gone, Bucky on top, moving inside Steve, asking for something he'd never thought to before, but that seemed right.
Steve was there. Bucky was, too. They were there together.
"You sure this is a good idea?" Bucky asked on the ride back to New York.
Steve didn't try to argue. He didn't need to. Bucky was tucked up next to him, close as they were going to get and still be respectable; he'd have come no matter what Steve'd had to say about it. Besides, they both knew which of them was more high-profile, or had been before all this. Steve had shown him up, the way Steve always had to show everyone else up.
"You are such an asshole," Bucky said, knowing Steve would know what he meant.
It kept happening, the thing that had started between them, after. It happened in Steve's room, mostly, on his bed and over his dresser and against the door and the wall. What it meant, Bucky didn't know. They didn't talk about it. It just a new way of being together. Of being sure.
It went on for five years, and then everything changed.
In 2012, Steve said, "We could get our own apartment when we get back."
In the 1970s, Bucky said, "How about a goat farm?"
City boy Steve made a face, but he was obviously thinking about it.
"What if we didn't get an apartment," Steve said in 2023, when it was all over with.
"Yeah, because we're getting a goat farm."
"Hear me out, Buck. Please."
Bucky did. It was a crazy-ass idea. They'd spent years trying to fix things that couldn't be fixed. Now Steve wanted to go fix everything, everywhere.
"I won't go without you."
He probably even thought he was telling the truth. The thing was that Steve never met an injustice he could let slide for long, never mind indefinitely.
"Such an asshole," Bucky said, and knew Steve would know that meant yes.