Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Aw, dammit,” Clint said one day over shitty cold-cut sandwiches and potato chips in aggressively bright yellow bags. Steve and Natasha both looked up, but they were too used to Clint's occasional non-sequiturs to do anything more than wait inquisitively for elaboration. 

Clint did not disappoint. “John Barrowman's off the market,” he said, twisting his face into an exaggerated moue. 

“You always say that like you had a chance,” Natasha said mildly. 

“There's never not a chance,” Clint argued. “Remember Monaco?” 

“I remember I told you to forget about Monaco,” Natasha said, and Steve hunched over, taking a slightly-too-big bite of his sandwich to hide his face so neither of them could see the way his heart lurched to hear them tossing quips and references back-and-forth, tangling their history and intimacy into a conversation only they could unknot. He'd hate for them to see the tension in his eyes and misinterpret that as a desire to be included, though he’d slowly realized that no one in the future could read the feelings on his face so well, or maybe no one was ever interested in indicating that they could.

“Oh, dammit, his husband's handsome too,” and all of the sudden his melancholy shattered and the shards of it stabbed into the spaces between his rib-bones. He curled in on himself, curving his shoulders protectively around his soft underbelly, breathing through the physical pain hearing that caused him.

“Steve?”

He opened his eyes, straightening up; not a feeble, sad, lonely creature, but Captain Steve Rogers. “Yeah?”

Natasha was looking at him; Clint sat back, shifting as if to make himself comfortable, but Steve was friends ( fucking hilarious) with a sniper and he recognized that shift. Standing back to get a better view of his target. “That’s not a surprise, right? Gay marriage is legal in twelve states and DC, it was a part of your welcome package.”

“Actually, it wasn’t.” It was one of those things that they left out, so they could ease him into the societal changes ; their primary focus in those earliest days was making sure he didn’t turn out to be a racist, sexist PR disaster. He had to be the one to look it up, when the SHIELD information packet clinically told him that queer and fag were not acceptable terms any longer (they were prerogative back in his day too, thanks very much, thanks very much) and he was curious just how unacceptable hatred towards homosexuals was (high, but not as high as he would’ve wanted). When he discovered that it was legal for everyone to marry, at least in New York and a handful of other states, he had—done nothing, actually, which in many ways made him feel worse than if he'd been able to cry. In those early days he spent a lot of time numb, drifting, in mourning. His grief only subsided once he suited up to fight aliens and he figured out he could feel something, anything, by staying active.

“Well. Gay people are cool, now, so,” Clint shrugged, but his shrewd eyes drew a sharp contrast to the languid line of his shoulders. Steve tried not to feel hurt at the implication that he wouldn't think so, or would've disagreed. He lived a thirty-minute train ride from Greenwich. He went to art school.

“You're not a bigot.” 

Natasha's voice was soft, but there was an edge of a command in there, and Steve choked out a laugh. 

“You know, I try not to be,” he said, and if he wasn't in the SHIELD cafeteria he might have put his head down on the table and wept. 

But he was, so he didn't; instead, he said, vapidly clueless, “So who's John Barrowman? Is he a friend of yours?” and Clint chuckled, leaning forward to put his elbows on the table, and Natasha smiled but didn't take her eyes off of him, and Clint began a slightly rambling explanation of John Barrowman and Doctor Who complete with visual aids while Steve nodded along, asked a few leading questions, and pretended that he didn't get a whole primer on Doctor Who from Dr. Banner last year.

The first time he had sex with Bucky Barnes, Bucky proposed to him.

It was ninety-thirty-nine and he'd been pining for what seemed like almost ten years but was, realistically speaking, probably more like seven. They'd fought about some useless, shitty thing, because Bucky was in a snit and Steve was a little steamed because he just kissed Mary McBride after their double-date and Bucky didn't even seem happy to hear about it, and bickering about each others’ sore moods led to a blow-up and they were soon shouting at each other at the top of their lungs. He never bothered to remember the fight after, because the contours of it was the same as any other, eventually dovetailing into the well-worn poetic form of stop being such an idiot / well you stop being such an asshole and he never did much like holding grudges against Bucky, who was the best pal a guy could want; but this fight was different from all the others because it ended with Bucky seizing him by his suspenders and kissing the life out of him.

Almost literally, actually: the fight didn't matter, but how his body reacted did. The way the blood pounded in his skull as he screamed, the way his heart skipped in his chest when Bucky grabbed him, the way his lips had throbbed at every firm press and soft slide of Bucky's mouth on his, and the way the breaths started heaving out when Bucky finally released him and he had to gulp down air. That was probably the only thing that stopped Bucky from doing a runner and turning their budding romance into a hundred-minute screwball, because of course Bucky had to stop and rub Steve's throat and hug him against his chest and whisper soothing words in his ear before his gasping turned into a full attack, which gave Steve just enough time to catch his breath and wheeze out, “It's always been you, you jerk.”

And once he was no longer in danger of suffering the ignominy of being the first guy to ever get kissed to death, they kissed again, and again, and then they were necking on the Davenport, and next thing Steve knew he was on his back, his legs hooked over one of Bucky's shoulders, Crisco smeared on his skin, watching the blood-red head of Bucky's cock blooming out from between his thighs. Bucky was fisting his dick but the pleasure of it was secondary when compared to the sight of Bucky's face gazing down at him through screwed-up eyes, the sound of the filth Bucky was spewing, the feeling of something hard and hot rubbing through the tight passage of his thighs clenched tightly together.

He meant to last longer, because this was their first time together and he longed to see what Bucky looked like when he finished, but then Bucky bent his head down and murmured, “Wanna see you come, sweetheart,” and he was helpless to it, and he spilled all over Bucky's fist and his own belly to a litany of yes Buck yes and God Almighty, Steve and then Bucky let go of his spent cock and gripped his hip and fucked his thighs until he came, too, onto Steve. 

Then Bucky lay down next to him and put his arm over him, uncaring of the mess they made, just holding him close, and nuzzled his temple. Once his face was buried safely in Steve's wheatstalk hair he whispered, low enough that Steve had to strain to hear him, “I'd marry you.”

“If I were a dame?” If wishes were horses, his Ma used to say, and for a moment Steve thought wistfully of a life where he was a girl so Bucky could court him proper. Then he put it out of his mind; it was enough, he decided, that Bucky wanted to.

Bucky shrugged. “If you were, sure. But even if you weren't. If I could I would.”

Something snapped in Steve then; snapped apart or snapped into place, and he seized Bucky's hand and said, “Let's get married then.” The baffled look on Bucky's face was well worth saying so.

“We're both men, pal.”

“Well of course I know that, considering I'm covered in your spunk.” Bucky made a face at the reminder and crawled off of the Davenport. He cast about and found his own underwear under the dresser and knelt by Steve’s side and wiped him down like a gentleman, while Steve lay there like a lump, staring at the ceiling, his thoughts swirling around themselves like water down a bathtub drain. “We don't have to go to church, or—have a priest. It's just words, anyways,” and he prayed for forgiveness for saying so, but he decided long ago he’d rather keep Bucky than his immortal soul. 

Bucky, who quit going to church the minute he turned eighteen, stared at him. “You're goddamn serious.”

“As tuberculosis,” Steve said. It was okay for him to say that because his Ma died of it. 

“You’ll marry me?” Suddenly, Bucky seized him about the waist, half-crawling onto the Davenport, tugging him closer. “You’ll really do it?”

A queer, lightheaded feeling was filling Steve's brain, pressuring it from the inside, and he nodded. “I would. I—I know a guy who’s—well, if I ask him to say the words I bet he’d do it.” Arnie Roth was a top fella, the sort who was down for anything, and he knew how to keep a secret. 

There wouldn’t be any Banns or Mass, no hope chest or white dress—hell, they couldn't even afford a ring— but suddenly there was nothing more that he wanted than to marry Bucky, even if it wasn’t going to be—real.

Their room was silent for a long time as they stared at each other. At last, Bucky said thickly, “If we really do this, pal, it won’t be for fun. I really mean it. You’d be mine forever, Steve, if you agree.”

“‘Course it won’t be for fun, Buck, we’re talking about something that could get us arrested.” He reached down and twined his fingers around Bucky’s left hand, squeezing it tight. “And I really mean it, if you do. We can think about it a little more, but…if you asked, I’d say yes.” 

Bucky dropped his chin onto his chest, gazing at him with his beautiful blue eyes; Steve looked into them and saw the swirling storm of their uncertain future together, but also, a safe harbor. “Marry me, Steve.”

There was only one answer he could give. 

“Yes.”

Two weeks later, they were climbing the steps to Arnie Roth’s living room dressed in their Sunday best, flowers hidden inside Bucky’s zipper-bag.

The curtains were all drawn and clipped shut. Candle-flame danced to the soft hum of the lights flickering overhead. Arnie and his roommates had shoved aside the Davenport and the table, and on Steve’s request his roommate Louise had taken a big standing mirror from her room and put it against one wall.

Peering through Ma’s veil gave everything a hazy, dream-like quality; it softened the flames and the electric lights into glowing fireflies. He hesitated about wearing it for a long time, kneeling in front of their closet, until Bucky dropped his hands on his shoulders and murmured, “Bring it. If you don’t wear it that’s no foul.” But when he got here and saw the gravitas Arnie and Louise and Perry had put into their little apartment and the bouquet Louise pressed into his hands, he ended up sitting down and letting her pin it to his hair the best she could.

He was glad to have it now, because Bucky looked so handsome in his navy sack suit, the candlelight turning his eyes into fireworks, and if Steve had to look at him directly it would be like looking directly at the sun.

In the small, dim room Arnie’s voice was low and intimate as he read out from a small book of rites; he had laughed and cursed Steve out in Yiddish when Steve asked if he could speak Latin, but Steve thought it was worth his shit-eating grin, if only for the shiver it sent down his spine. If he closed his eyes—and he did, then, just briefly—it was like he was really at church, and instead of his queer Jewish friend from art school it was Father Thomas.

And then—

Bucky was smiling at him, and he said, his voice low, “I do.” 

And Arnie turned to look at him, and there was a brightness in his eyes—or maybe that was the lighting—and he was murmuring Steve’s name, and Steve could hardly hear the words over the rush of blood in his ears, but he could hear the way his voice raised at the end in question, and there was only one answer he could give—

“I do.”

Louise reached into her pocket, then, and pulled out a ring. It sparkled like it was brand new. There was no holy water, but Arnie prayed over the ring anyways, before offering it to Bucky, who took it. He looked down at it for a long moment, and Steve would’ve made a joke about getting cold feet, but then Bucky looked up at him, and his eyes shimmered, sunset over the Atlantic. His hand was warm, his fingers were gentle when he took Steve’s left hand, and even though Arnie held out his little book of rites for him to read, Bucky didn’t look, and the words were soft and well-practiced.

Ego conjungo vos in matrimonium. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

Arnie was continuing the rite, murmuring the words, with Louise chiming in softly from time to time, but Steve was looking at the ring on his finger. It was so new he could still feel the edge on it. He looked up at Bucky, but bit back his protestations for once, because tears were glimmering down his husband’s cheeks like diamonds.

And then Louise and Perry both said, “Amen,” and Arnie smiled, closing his book. “Now,” he said, his voice higher, lighter, “You may kiss the bride.”

“I’m no blushing bride,” Steve muttered, and Louise and Perry laughed, while Arnie rolled his eyes.

“You should’ve said that before you agreed to become Bucky’s wife,” and before Steve could protest, Bucky said,

“All of you shut it, I’m trying to kiss Steve,” 

and then he was lifting the veil, but instead of draping it back he ducked underneath it; Steve could feel Louise’s pins fighting to keep their grip on his feather-fine hair and losing, but then Bucky held his face in both hands and tilted him up for a kiss.

There was nothing else to do after that, so they convened three feet to the left to the table and put on a record, and they ate macaroni casserole and gelatin salad and a cocoanut cake. Bucky kept feeding him bites of cake, and Perry kept ringing his glass with his fork even though Louise and Arnie kept shushing him, but every time he did Bucky would lean over and kiss Steve, tasting like lemon Jell-O and toasted cocoanut.

After their little luncheon, they all danced. Steve danced with Bucky, standing on his feet and laughing as Bucky twirled him around the room, but they all danced with each other at least once. Louise, flush with rouge and brandy, kissed his cheek when he thanked her for cooking. Perry, who smelled strongly of the muggles he liked to smoke, stopped mid-dance to congratulate him seriously, complete with a firm hand-shake, and Steve had to bite his lip so he wouldn’t laugh. Arnie whispered warm congratulations in his ear, murmuring sincere words of happiness and joy, but before Steve could ask about the damp in his eyes he laughed and tried to kiss his cheek too. Steve stopped him with a hand to his mouth and a cheeky I'm a married man now , and Arnie rebutted by loudly reminding Bucky that he was the one who got to Steve first. Bucky’s jealousy—partly put-on, but also the better part real—was a good excuse to wind the party down and they left in a flurry of well-wishes and good-natured teasing.

When they finally stepped out onto the street, it was like stepping into a different world. It was Sunday afternoon, which meant everyone was outside: going to visit family, coming back from lunch, going on outings.

There were no well-wishes or warm smiles for a bride and groom on their way home from the chapel. To anyone else, they were just two young men heading home after Sunday Mass.

He and Bucky were married. And no one would ever know. 

A heavy arm dropped onto his shoulders. “C'mon. Let's go home,” Bucky said lowly, and Steve nodded, feeling his lips curling into a smile. 

He and Bucky knew. The rest of them could go hang.

They walked home in silence, and Bucky didn't release him the whole way there. 

Steve unlocked the door to their apartment and opened it, but before he could step inside, Bucky stopped him with a hand on his elbow. He had just enough time to turn around and catch a glimpse of the mischief on his husband's face before he was lifted in the air, Bucky's arms wrapped around his knees. 

“Goddamn, put me down!” he hissed, but Bucky kicked the door open and swept inside, laughing freely as he kicked it shut behind him.

“C'mon, sweetheart, it's tradition,” he said, eyes twinkling with merriment. No matter how much Steve squirmed and kicked, Bucky didn't put him down, and eventually Steve gave up his struggles, enjoying the novelty of looking down at Bucky for once.

“Pretty sure our wedding was anything but traditional,” he said dryly, but then Bucky leaned up, pursing his lips, and he rolled his eyes and bent his neck down to give him a kiss. 

“We gotta preserve what we can, pal,” Bucky said. Any sense of gravitas was immediately lost when he winked. “Dunno about you, but I'm pretty interested in what comes after the wedding.”

“‘Course you would be,” and Bucky carried him over to the bed.

And if Steve had it his way, he’d end their story there. 

They went on double dates and out to the movies and Bucky went dancing, while Steve sat on the sidelines and watched his husband twirl his girl-of-the-week around the dance floor. It still stung to see him whisper sweet nothings into her ear and watch her throw her head back and laugh, but the hurt was soothed knowing that Bucky would walk her home, kiss her on the cheek, and then walk home with Steve and drill him into their mattress. They listened to the radio and read books and kissed on the Davenport, Bucky’s big hand on his hip and Steve’s buried in his hair, ruining his slicked-down coif; they laughed as much as they fought, grinning at each other across their apartment, across the street, across dance-halls and park lawns. Steve filled up his sketchbook with pictures of Bucky that he tore out and folded up and hid in an empty coffee can in the space between their bed and the wall. 

The problem with having an eidetic memory meant that he couldn’t fool himself into thinking things were perfect. He could remember, with picture-perfect accuracy, all of their struggles: the constant scramble for jobs and money, his poor constitution hanging like Damocles' sword over their heads, their fights because Steve was still too fierce and Bucky was still too overbearing and they were both still too damn stubborn to back down. War, war loomed on the close horizon, first in Asia and then in Europe; they argued about that, too, whether America could—or should—wade into the fray, and when Bucky threw the newspaper in the can in frustration Steve could see the fear in his eyes. 

But even with the brewing unease it was the happiest time of Steve’s life.

A year to the day after that fantastical Sunday morning, Steve came home from school and found Bucky waiting him, with macaroni casserole and gelatin salad and a cocoanut cake. They ate nothing but the leftovers for a week but it was worth it, because Steve couldn’t stop laughing and Bucky couldn’t stop kissing him as they fed each other bites of macaroni and lemon Jell-O and Lazy Daisy cake.

The next year, they remembered to halve the recipes.

And the year after that, war arrived.

Around them, men were kissing their sweethearts, hugging their families, comforting their children. Steve stood a short distance away from the assembled Barneses as Bucky said good-bye to his family, looking away politely. Some fifteen feet over, a man and a woman were exchanging soft kisses; he watched the way he bent over her to murmur in her ear, the way her hair swayed in the sea breeze. Finally, the man stepped away, and the woman's hand slid along his arm to cling at his. She wore no ring.

“Steve!” 

He looked back at Bucky’s call. Bucky was smiling, and he wondered if any of the Barneses could sense how paper-thin it was, or if it was just Steve who spent his whole life cataloging every one of Bucky’s smiles.

Bucky was looking at him, but not at him; his eyes were roving over every inch of Steve’s face, as if he, too, was trying to memorize every inch of him, savoring a last glance, committing it all to memory. His smile warmed, and his eyes seemed to glow, before he clapped a broad hand on Steve’s shoulder. “See you at Christmas, all right?” he said. “Might make it home by Thanksgiving, if we’re lucky.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, and he tried to summon a grin, a cunning word, even though Bucky’s hand was burning a hole through his suit, and he couldn’t stop looking at Bucky’s slate-blue eyes, a color that he never could seem to get right in his memory. 

He still ached from their good-byes last night, but right now, he thought that there wasn’t much he wouldn’t give to be able to kiss his husband one last time.

They stood there, a chasm between them that was too dangerous to cross. 

Finally, Bucky stepped forward and hugged him, his arms squeezing Steve tightly—not around his waist, like in their apartment alone at night, but around his shoulders, like two friends saying good-bye. Steve closed his eyes and squeezed him back, trying to convey everything that he wanted to say in one inadequate motion.

Bucky would understand. He would know.

The soldiers were leaving, running for the ship, and Bucky stepped away, out of Steve's arms. He kissed his Ma one last time, and then he was off, too, walking away, and Steve stared at his wool-clad back and willed the blurring in his eyes away.

“Aw, chin up, Steve.” Jack, seventeen years old and eagerly counting down the days to his eighteenth birthday, clapped him on the shoulder. “There’s plenty for a guy like you to do here. Work in the factory. Make parcels for Hitler.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, watching his husband go to war to protect his family. He’d give anything—he’d give his life—to go there with him.

“Do you understand the dangers?” Dr. Erksine said gently. “You could die.”

Only one answer.

“Yes,” Steve said.

The 107th. Bucky’s company. Gone.

Bucky—

If Steve thought too hard about what that meant for them, he would fall apart.

Instead, he walked into the changing room and grabbed a tin helmet and a garish shield. Steve Rogers needed to save his goddamn husband. 

(Or bring back his body, make them a bed of earth and clay, and tuck himself in with a bullet to the head.)

“Steve, do you understand that this is a suicide mission?” Peggy asked.

Steve carefully did not say that that was sort of the point. Instead, he said, “I'll get him back or die trying.”

“I understand,” Peggy said, and got him a plane.

It was a whirlwind of action—bashing people with his shield, feeling their skulls, their bones, crushed underneath his inhuman strength. Searching through the cells and the narrow hallways for a glimpse of his husband, and then hearing he had been taken away. Running, running for Bucky, heart in his throat. Each step the doubts pounded at the back of his skull, like a debt collector at his door demanding money. He ignored it, kept that door shut, did not listen to the little animal part of him that cried your husband is dead your husband is dead the man you love is dead.

And then he ran into a room and there was Bucky. Alive. Saying his name and number over and over again, until Steve freed him and carried him out. 

Oh, the Devil was there, too, the face of evil itself, only—in a man, the Red Skull, but for all of his ravening and brimstone, he was just a man. Steve was just a man, too, looking at an impossible leap across a sea of fire, but at the other shore there was the bruised face of his husband, his eyes darkly aglow—

Well, was his last hysterical thought before he backed up, eyes glued to Bucky's, wide and endlessly blue with his pupil rendered a single dot in fear; Bucky, who was gazing at him, not looking away, and Steve knew that he wouldn't look away even if it meant watching Steve fall, ‘til death do us part.

It was long fucking walk from Austria to Italy. 

They were deep in enemy territory. Some two hundred-odd prisoners of war, who had been beaten, starved, sometimes tortured; a Nazi with a machine gun could conceivably wipe them all out in one fell swoop, though Steve would die before letting that happen. They scrounged up as many supplies and weapons as they could carry from that weird base, including some of those freaky blue weapons no one seemed too keen on touching more than necessary, but in their weakened state, stealth—if such a thing was possible with a couple hundred man—was the mark of the hour, which meant despite impassioned arguments Steve turned down any suggestion to steal tanks or trucks from the base.

Steve turned them down, but it was Bucky the men listened to; it was plain as day that no one really knew what to make of Steve, in his cobbled-together uniform with the loud shield and the tin toy helmet. They asked him what his rank was, and he had to sheepishly explain he wasn't really in the army, just a dancing monkey. 

That's an insult to monkeys, he imagined Bucky saying, but when he looked over his shoulder Bucky was turned away, talking to a different soldier. 

The pang in his chest was as familiar as pneumonia rattles and cold-weather wheezes. If there was any sign he was still the same Steve Rogers, it was that, on the other side of a grand experiment to turn him into Superman, he was still watching Bucky, the social butterfly, flitting from person to person. Like their schoolmates, like the men who worked on the docks, like the guys at the mechanic shops; Bucky always belonged, and Steve never did, and he was maybe figuring that it wasn't because of his appearance at all.

But by all rights, if he was the same Steve Rogers, Bucky would’ve come over anyways, because for some goddamn reason Bucky saw that skinny, sickly guy who couldn’t play stickball with the other kids without keeling over and dying and decided he wanted to be his friend, wanted to be his best friend, wanted to—love him, marry him, make him his wife. By all rights if he was the same Steve Rogers, Bucky would’ve come over and nudged him with his elbow like he always did, and they would’ve smiled at each other, a smile with a secret meant for two, and everything would be okay even if the world was coming apart around their ears in blood and fire, even if Steve kept bumping into trees and Bucky kept staring into the distance, because as long as they were together they would muddle their way through somehow.

So that meant that he wasn’t the same Steve Rogers. He was six-foot-two now with sixty-inch shoulders and the ability to make a fifty-foot horizontal leap across a sea of fire; he could march alone into a base filled with men with inhuman weapons and save hundreds of guys and his husband, but he somehow had lost the right to have Bucky near him, to have Bucky look at him, to have the comfort of his arm slung over his shoulder and his weight pressed to his side, and he could never regret saving Bucky’s life, could never regret anything that led to him being able to pull him from that slab and drag him out of Hell, but he was starting to suspect that in exchange for Bucky’s life he had to give up Bucky’s love, and he didn’t have the time to properly mourn the loss, alone in a crowd of two hundred people who looked at him with awed, wary eyes.

Bucky kept looking at him out of the corner of his eye. Steve would look back, every time, and open his mouth to say something mean that’ll make Bucky roll his eyes and say something mean back, but every time he did Bucky would avert his eyes, quick like he didn’t want to be caught. He could only ever hold Bucky’s gaze for a second, which wasn’t long enough for him to see if it was awe, or wariness, or disgust, or—anything else there.

The one saving grace in this awkward, strained situation was that Bucky at least was close enough to look at. It would be easy for him to disappear into the crowd, among men who welcomed him warmly as one of their own. But Bucky remained close, if not quite in arm’s reach, so when Steve's heart started pounding in his chest and his throat started tightening he could look to the left, or the right, and find brown hair, a narrowed body, lax shoulders, and it would go away at the reminder that his husband was alive, not dead, not strapped to a table repeating his name and number over and over again.

But that also meant that Bucky was just close enough for Steve to start ruminating over the changes he could see. There was—himself, of course. Broad. Tall. Strong. Dressed in a leather coat thrown over his colorful cotton uniform. Present. Nothing like the slight little fellow standing on the dock watching Bucky walk away. Of course, he wasn’t fucking blind, so he could see how Bucky had metamorphosized too, while he was away, not as quickly as being shoved into a metal cocoon for a few minutes but no less painful for it. Bucky was still handsome, but his smiles were quicker to fade, his laugh quicker to peter out. He had a gauntness to his face, under his eyes and hanging from his jowls. He sat hunched over and stared out into the distance too often, and it made Steve’s heart scrunch with worry. If they were still at home, he’d press against Bucky’s side. Maybe not ask what was wrong, but imply it, with careful solicitude and kid-gloves until Bucky got annoyed and either figured himself out or gave in and told him what was making him look like a man walking to his own execution instead of one walking back to safety.

But Bucky didn’t allow him near him. Kept Steve at a carefully-measured distance, no closer than five feet but no further than ten.

Stumbling over uneven terrain not quite side-by-side, out of step for the first time in the decade Steve’s known Bucky, Steve watched his own feet, which didn’t change that much in size; he always had sorta duck’s feet, only now they were better proportioned to the rest of him, and maybe could be considered almost dainty when one considered his broad shoulders, if one was a blind fucking idiot. It was his stride that was the problem; it used to be he took three to every two of Bucky’s, so he was always scurrying along like a little mouse while Bucky prowled, languid and loose like a lion. Now, Bucky was the one walking fast to keep up, and he had to keep shortening his stride to match him.

It was a long ways to walk like that back to Italy. A long ways for him to ponder whether his differences were too irreconcilable with the beloved wife Bucky left behind in New York for Bucky to love any longer.

“My hands are fucking freezing,” James “Jim” Morita, from Fresno, California, USA, complained. He kept alternating between rubbing his hands together and puffing on them, trying to warm them up.

“My feet are freezing,” Bucky grouched back, and Steve, leaning up against a tree keeping watch behind him, said nothing to remind him of the way Bucky’d tuck his ice-cold feet in between Steve’s calves and cup his chest with chilly fingers, making his nipples peak at the touch.

“Put your hands down your pants,” Timothy “Dum Dum” Dugan from Boston, Massachusetts, USA, suggested.

“Nah, put ‘em in your pits,” Bucky said, demonstrating. “Keeps ‘em warm. Stops you from shaking hands with a fella after touching your balls.”

Captain America didn’t laugh at that, but Steve Rogers wanted to. He pressed his lips together in a thin line, looking out through the dark forest, at the hundreds of men sprawled out on the forest floor, to hide his smile.

“Are armpit hands any better than balls hands?” Gabriel “Gabe” Jones, from Macon, Georgia, USA, asked, tilting an eyebrow. Jacques “Frenchie” Dernier, from Marseille, France, elbowed him, and Jones leaned into him, his voice pitching into a low murmur of French as he translated the conversation. From the way Dernier raised an eyebrow, Steve gathered that he was very unimpressed.

“Yes,” James Montgomery “Monty” Falsworth, from Birmingham, England, and Bucky said immediately in unison. Steve privately agreed.

“No hands might be better than either, at this point. And I reckon that’s what I’m gonna get left if we stay out here any longer,” Morita mumbled.

“Dernier says we can chop off your hands,” Jones announced cheerfully. “The blood will warm ya then.”

“But you won’t have any hands left to warm,” Bucky said. 

You could cut off one and keep the other, Steve thought to himself. 

“You could cut off one and keep the other,” Jones argued. “Probably keep your right hand.”

“I need my left to shoot a gun, so I’ll pass,” Bucky said dryly.

Morita had been developing a strange look on his face. “Instead of using blood, what if you pissed on your hands to warm ‘em up?”

“Don’t piss on your hands,” Bucky and Steve said in unison. Bucky looked up at Steve. In fact, so did all the other soldiers, but Steve only cared because for once he was looking at Bucky and Bucky was looking back.

Then Bucky looked away, at Morita, and Steve felt cold again. “Why the hell would you piss on your hands?”

“In an emergency situation, maybe. You crash into the Arctic or something.”

“Why the hell would you crash into the Arctic?” Bucky shook his head. “Don’t piss on your hands in an emergency. It’ll cool and then you’ll have cold wet hands, which’ll be even worse.”

“But if it freezes, that can help insulate ‘em. My grandpa did that to fruit trees. Protects ‘em from frost, spraying them with water and letting them freeze,” argued Morita. 

“Well,” Steve said, “Maybe you’d survive freezing in the Arctic by pissing on your hands. But then you’d be known as Jimmy Piss-Hands for the rest of your life, and is life really worth living like that?”

The soldiers were now staring at him like he had grown three heads. But Steve didn’t care, because Bucky was snorting like a pig. “Jimmy Piss-Hands!”

“If you start calling me that, ace, I’m gonna start calling you that too, James Barnes,” Morita said threateningly. 

“Monty’s a James too, ain’t he?” Dugan said, and Falsworth scowled.

“Leave me outta this, mate.”

“No one needs to be Jimmy Piss-Hands so long’s no one idiot enough to piss on their hands,” Steve said. The wide-eyed looks weren’t disappearing, and he looked away, worried that he had come off as too strong, too commanding; he had been given his title without valor, and these men knew it—

“I dunno about the rest of these bozos, but I know better,” Bucky said.

“I dunno, do you?” Steve sniped automatically, out of sheer muscle memory, because this was how he and Bucky were, wasn’t it, surely the war, the serum, the rescue didn’t—couldn’t—

“You punk,” Bucky said, with relish, and he was looking at Steve. And when Steve looked back he didn’t look away. Didn’t hide that wide-eyed look filled with—

Love, and recognition, and hope, and Steve swallowed, knowing that Bucky could read his own face like an open book, too, hoping that Bucky could see what he was trying to say, see that I’m still your punk, I promise, I’m sorry that I look different but deep down I’m just a little guy from Brooklyn—

“Jerk,” Steve said, like the last turn of his mother’s rosary in his hands. It was so worn-smooth and familiar, to say uselessly pricking things to each other for no fucking reason except that they’d known each other for so fucking long they didn’t have anything else to talk about except for useless things and pointless arguments.

“Jesus,” Bucky said, “All that science juice in your body and they couldn’t cure your bad attitude.”

“I’m a Goddamn delight and you know it, Barnes,” Steve said, and he felt like he was transcending into heaven; turning into Captain America had been painful and awful, but turning into Bucky’s Steve felt warm and good. “It’s your jerkass attitude that’s contagious.”

Bucky looked away. “The serum means you can’t get sick no more, right? Maybe means my disposition will stop infecting you,” and just like that, Steve was brought crashing down to earth: unworthy, rejected by St. Peter.

He tried to think of a reply that wasn’t absolutely telling, but he couldn’t, and the conversation moved on, then, leaving him behind as always.

The distance between them didn’t close, even as their march brought them three days, two days, one day away from the Allied camp. The nerves were twisting up Steve’s insides something awful as his heart was pulling apart into two separate halves. One half anticipated their return, so he could get Bucky treated and fed, so he could get Bucky alone and they could talk and he could fall on his knees and say It’s me, I promise it’s me, I promise, please I’m still your wife if you’ll have me—

And the other half dreaded it. Because Bucky’s response could very well be You’re not the man I married and I won’t have you no more.

When he finally rolled up to base camp, Peggy gazed at him, quietly proud, and he smiled back, trying to feel the rush of relief at having arrived back to safety with Bucky. 

Then Bucky yelled about Captain America and Steve's smile froze on his face, froze as soldiers yelled and hollered and clapped and whooped, and he never felt less like Steve Rogers.

He didn't have any time to dwell, because instantly he was swept up in debriefs and lectures and reports as everyone scrambled to figure out what the hell to do with a USO dancer who chartered an experimental plane into enemy territory, rescued two hundred POWs, and marched back without losing a single one. At this point he was glad to be judged by the army if it meant he could put off receive Bucky's judgement for a while longer, but also he buzzed with nervous energy, just wanting to get to get it all over with, needing to just have a moment to talk to Bucky. Find out where they stood with each other. 

He’d follow Virgil down to the circles of Hell, do a hundred year’s penance in each, get chewed up by Satan in ice rather than exist in this Limbo any longer.

Finally, finally, they decided that he wouldn’t be going to military prison, which was good, and that in fact they were going to slap as many medals on him as they could, which was unnecessary but fine, and that maybe if he wanted it he could have a team and focus on the HYDRA threat, those weird weapons and the man with the freaky red skull, which was good. Best of all, they slapped him on the back and told him to get some rest.

Best of all, he walked into his tent and Bucky was there, waiting for him.

They stared at each other from across the vast distance of the seven-foot-deep one-person tent. Bucky had gotten medical attention, but he still looked gaunt and drawn. And he looked even more awful, now that they weren’t marching for their lives through enemy territory, now that they weren’t surrounded by a hundred distractions, now that Steve could finally take his time and absorb Bucky back into his soul and see every way the war had changed Bucky. 

Changed them both.

“So…” Bucky trailed off, clearing his throat. Struggling for words. “Experimental serum.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “You—I think I’m stupid for taking it?”

The look Bucky gave him—

Steve knew he'd be angry. He knew he'd yell and they'd fight. 

But Bucky just looked sad. 

“Sure do,” he said shortly. And the words were rough but they came out in a soft sigh, and it hurt, it hurt so fucking much.

“I—” Steve could yell, he could give as good as he got, but he wanted to comfort Bucky, and he was much worse at that then he was at being angry. “I just—I wanted to be here. Not for glory or anything but because you were here. Bucky—”

“And now you're here. They made you healthy.” Bucky was staring at his chest, but looking through him.

“Yeah,” Steve said feebly. “Don't got asthma. Bum ear gone. Can't get sick no more.”

Bucky laughed, in a torn and wretched and achingly unfamiliar way.

“They fixed you up real good, didn’t they?” he asked. “No more, uh, heart problems?”

“No more heart problems,” Steve confirmed, nodding; his heart murmur was gone, he could run miles without breaking a sweat where before hurrying too fast down the street would bring him to his knees.

Bucky looked away.

“That’s—that’s real good to hear,” he mumbled, quietly enough that if Steve didn’t have super- everything he would’ve been straining to hear. “I’m real glad for you, pal, I really am. That—that Carter is a real firecracker, ain’t she? She likes you a lot. I can tell.”

Steve stared at Bucky. At the miserable hunch of his shoulders, at his downcast eyes.

“You idiot,”  he said. 

Bucky whipped his head up to glare at him. “What, Steve—” and, now that they were making eye contact, Steve could see the heartbreak in them, and any urge to tease shriveled and died before it could take root. Shoving a hand down his shirt, Steve yanked out the chain hanging there, letting it dangle between them.

Steve said, softly, “There was nothing to fix.” 

He vowed to himself, right then and there, that he'd never tell Bucky that he was afraid that the serum would fix that part of him, the part of him that looked at Bucky and wanted, body and heart and soul. He would never tell Bucky that the night before he took the serum he got on his knees next to his bunk, rosary wrapped around his hand, and prayed, but instead of praying for his life he prayed for his love. He said God, he would gladly go to Hell but please please please let him keep Bucky, he didn’t want his love for his husband to go away, and if the serum would fix him so he didn’t love Bucky no more he’d rather die and let some other sucker be the super-soldier instead. He would never tell Bucky that when they put him in the metal and glass coffin he closed his eyes and thought of Bucky, everything he loved about him, from his warm smile and kind eyes and deep laugh, because maybe if he fixed it in his mind hard enough the serum wouldn’t make him forget how to love him.

He’d been so scared. But he stumbled out of the machine, ten inches taller, and he still loved his husband.

His husband, who was having trouble looking him in the eye. Who kept looking down at his barrel chest and his thick arms and his broad shoulders, and—

“You keep looking down. You're wishing I was small again.” He didn't mean to sound so put-out about it, but he couldn't help it.

“It's cause your body is distracting. Jesus, Steve, you're—” Bucky huffed a laugh. “It's a helluvathing to get used to, your pal lookin’ different, but.” He glanced at Steve, shyly. “I could get used to it.”

“Yeah?” Steve asked. He felt breathless with hope. 

“Yeah,” Bucky said, stepping forward. “Wait, does this mean I should wear the ring?”

“Over my dead body,” Steve said, huffing. “Listen, I may be six-two now but I'm still your wife, okay?”

“Six-two, huh?” Bucky's eyes were far away and dreamy. “Damn. And with a body like this.”

“Healthy, too,” Steve added. “And—” he felt his neck heating up a little. “It, uh. When I get revved up it takes a while to—run out of gas.”

“Yeah?” Bucky said, with a hint of breathlessness; his eyes were growing that heavy cant, that downward curve that Steve was used to seeing directed at him under dim lights, wearing nothing but one of Bucky's old undershirts. “My pretty wife can’t get enough of me anymore?”

“Never could, Buck,” and Steve was six-two and broader than a barn, but Bucky took him by the waist and pulled him down for a kiss anyways.

“Cap,” Dum Dum said once, early on in the life of the Howling Commandos, when they were still more Bucky's boys than his; he may have marched in there and saved them with a miracle, but Bucky suffered for them, gave himself up for his men, marched chin held high into the depths of Hell so they wouldn't have to, even if it meant leaving Steve a widow, and Steve couldn't begrudge them their wariness, the way they sniffed out this interloper in their close-knit unit. “Childhood friends, huh?”

“Sure are,” Bucky said, even though the question was directed at Steve. He slung an arm around Steve's shoulders. Steve wondered if the Howlies knew Bucky well enough to see the possessive curl of the fingers of his left hand as it dangled over Steve's chest, as if he could reach in and grasp Steve's heart, like a ball in a game of keep-away. 

Dum Dum ignored Bucky's interjection, leaning in to poke at the fire. “That means you know his wife.”

Bucky's arm froze around his neck.

And Steve could see, in an instant, the map of Bucky’s thoughts, with the contours of Bucky's fantasy: coming to a place where no one knew of Bucky, the bachelor boy of Brooklyn, surrounded by strange men in a strange land, listening to rumbles of sweethearts and girlfriends and wives, thinking of his own sweetheart at home. Having a chance to talk, openly, brag about being married to the most stubborn little brat in the whole wide world. 

He saw them and he felt his heart squeeze, like Bucky really was holding it in his left hand. He found himself grinning, openly; he didn't look to his right, because if he did he wouldn't be able to keep the love from being drawn on his face as clear as daylight. 

“Yeah, I know her,” he said, calmly. “Known her longer than I've known Bucky, actually.”

That earned him a low whistle from Jim. “Can you corroborate the intel we get from him, then?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Hair like gold, eyes like sapphires, little slip of a thing that fits perfectly under his arm?” 

Steve laughed, and he did shoot Bucky a look, because seriously, Bucky had one hell of an imagination if that's how he described Steve. “I wouldn't wax poetic about my best pal's gal like that,” he said, honestly; his hair was more straw-like and his eyes a plain-old bottle-blue. “But what I can say for certain is that she loves Bucky very much.”

The Howlies cooed, and Bucky buried his face in his hand, but only his eyes so it was clear he was grinning, mouth stretched foolishly wide. Then, he looked up, and his grin was impish as he side-eyed Steve. “Though Steve tells me she filled out her figure a bit while I was gone. Somethin’ ‘bout the war work is good for her constitution, I guess.” He leaned forward, sketching out a shape in midair with his right hand: broad chest, down to a slim waist. “Fell in love with her when she was a tiny little thing, of course, but I can't help but be a bit excited about getting my hands on her now, yanno?”

The Howlies hooted and cackled, and Steve was grateful they were having this talk at night; the matching blushes on his and Bucky's cheeks could be excused as firelight. 

“Your wife, huh?” Steve asked later. Maybe it wasn’t the appropriate time to talk about these sorts of things, picking through a bombed-out HYDRA base in teams of two, sifting through broken glass and ashes, but even the most dire of circumstances could be routine if you did it long enough, and Steve was already bored. 

Bucky flushed bright red, from the little sliver of his throat not covered up by his jacket up his cheeks and to his temples. “Well, couldn’t tell them that my wife is a fella, could I?”

“Guess not,” Steve agreed. 

The two of them fell into companionable silence once again. Then, Bucky broke it. 

“You—still wanna be, right? You’re still mine, no matter what, Steve. But if you wanna be my wife or my husband or just mine, after—”

“Long as you're okay with a wife that looks like this,” Steve interrupted, gesturing down at his body.

Bucky scoffed. “Like what? Stacked?” Steve laughed, and Bucky did too, the sounds of their voices echoing through a ruined enemy hideout and coming back as one. Once it faded, Steve said, 

“I'm still your wife, Buck. Yours forever, sworn it in front of God and Arnie Roth.”

“God bless Arnie Roth,” Bucky said solemnly, and Steve laughed again, the airless, floaty feeling inside his chest obvious in it.

They were somewhere in Germany. Steve was on watch that night. He took watch a lot, because he could go for a long while catching a few hours here and there before he really started feeling worn-down; he could go forty-eight hours comfortably and press himself to three or four days running off of one good night's rest if he needed to.

He sat up, watching and listening carefully to the unfamiliar sounds of Germany, keeping himself awake by pondering the painful twist of his gut. Deep behind enemy lines, supply drops were few and far between; they carried a lot of food, but Steve was painfully aware of how much he ate in this new body, hunger licking at the base of his ribcage even after a meal. The little lightweight mobile rations they carried, with their canned meats and hard biscuits, were enough to make the other Howlies gripe at their stinginess; in this new burning-bright body Steve stood no chance. He never went hungry when his Ma was alive. His meals could be boring, but she always managed to get at least milk and potatoes. After she passed, trying to make it on his own, he became more aggressive about skipping meals and scrimping, despite his ma's voice harping about nutrients and health in the back of his head. And when Bucky moved in—

One of the six little lumps on the ground moved. In the dull light of the growing moon, Steve watched it sit up, and quietly extract itself from its bedroll, and make its way over to him—it being the most lovable lump of them all. 

“Go back to sleep,” he whispered. 

Bucky blinked blearily at him; Steve only knew he did so because his eyelashes caught the moonlight, like a gossamer web. “Wanted to do something first,” he said, keeping his voice a low murmur. He grabbed his pack and dug around in one of the exterior pockets. A small foil square was extracted, unwrapped, and offered. 

Steve took it, turning it over in his fingers. He didn't have to unwrap it to know what it was. Even by touching it he knew what the little piece of bar chocolate from their rations would taste like. 

“Happy anniversary,” Bucky said. He smiled. “Thanks for making an honest man out of me, sweetheart.”

Hearing the familiar pet name warmed Steve from the core, and he scooted closer, pressing against Bucky's side, hoping to share that warmth in the cool, dewy spring night. “Is it today?” he asked. 

“Sure is. Carter told Morita it was the tenth, last he radioed in,” and Steve could imagine it: Bucky, notching the days on his gun, waiting patiently for the five-year anniversary of their marriage, squirreling away a chocolate bar to celebrate. 

Steve kissed him, then. Kissed him gently, and he felt a warm hand on his waist, holding him. Their Howlies slept, oblivious, feet and inches away, but they kissed without fear or hesitation; the shroud of night would hide this, the barest hint of indiscretion. When he pulled away he looked down at the chocolate in his hand. 

He wiped his hand off on his pants the best he could. Then he worked his thumb underneath the flattened seam of the wrapper, working it up and peeling it back, revealing the dark heart under the silvery skin. With both thumbs set in the center of the bar, he snapped it in twain, offering the larger half to Bucky. 

The scrape of Bucky's fingers across his palm as he accepted his due was familiar. Instead of five-cent Snickers candy bars that Bucky would buy from the store on the corner and split to share, it was a two-ounce square of chocolate, but it melted on Steve's tongue the same, sweeter with the taste of Bucky's love, bitter with the taste of Bucky's sacrifice. Steve squished the softened chocolate against his hard palate, painted the inside of his teeth with it, and he could hear Bucky's jaw working, his teeth scraping as he shaved off little scrapings from the bar, a curious mix of impatience and patience. 

When the chocolate was all gone, Steve finally spoke. “Happy anniversary,” he said. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” said Bucky, slinging his arm across his shoulders, pulling him closer. 

On their fifth anniversary, Bucky tasted like chocolate.

The Alps take Bucky 

(Steve closes his eyes and watches his husband fall over and over and over and over and over and over and over, unto madness, and each time he prays that his frozen fingers uncurl, that he grabs Bucky's hand, no, that he falls after him, because he isn't ready to be a widow so soon)

and Steve points a plane into the Arctic and he’s talking to Peggy, trying to keep her calm, and if he dies he’ll die with a smile on his face. Because his husband followed him into war and to his death and it was only fair if Steve did the same, and white took up the whole of his vision, a white snow-field a veil a petticoat a wedding-gown—

They miss their sixth anniversary.