“Oh! Hello, mister!” Antonio greeted the dwarf kindly, tilting his head in curiosity. “What are you supposed to be, mister?”
What a polite little boy... Wait, supposed to be?!
“Well lad, I’m a dwarf. A person of the mountains an’ hills. Erm... We’re pretty rare these days. You don’t mee us such- erm, see us! Uh... Lad, you lookin’ for your parents? Seem a bit lil’ to be out on your lonesome- do I hear growlin’?”
❛ YOUR SUFFERING IS IN PART, MINE TO BE BLAMED . and so i will do my part doing what needs be done. ❜ the man speaks , soft baritone. he is the image of torment and the darkness of man. HE HAS NOT DRAWN HIS GUN. ❛ killing you or letting you live... hmph... i wonder which is a worse sin? ❜ / @morgunstern
quinjet: scene unseen | by ark | captain america: civil war | steve/bucky | 1k | rated: pals in love
In the quiet of the quinjet, they’re alone. At last.
They sit in the silence a long while. Until their adrenaline winds down, their pulses match, and they breathe as one being, the air synchronized between them.
Steve charts their course, fingers quick on the controls. Bucky watches from behind, then:
“Am I remembering right?”
“Dunno, Buck,” says Steve, piloting by pure instinct now. He’s beyond exhilarated by the escape from Leipzig, the brilliance and sacrifice of their team. Equally exhilarating is the chance to call Bucky by the beloved name, and not see Bucky cast it off. Doesn’t matter where they’re headed, so long as Steve has this:
Bucky’s accepted this name, this designation, without a fight. Claimed it proudly when he was in captivity, announced it -- his childhood nickname, the name Steve knew him by, more readily than James.
James Buchanan Barnes may be lost, buried; Bucky is not.
“How about you tell me what you remember,” says Steve. “And we go from there.”
Bucky nods, swift, sharp. “I--” He falters. “We -- “ That’s stronger, and he follows through. “We did for each other.”
Steve’s smile grows from a pain deep in his chest. Bucky would’ve phrased it the same way, once, used those exact words. Bucky does so now.
“We did,” Steve says, hand tight on the jet’s forward thrust. His jaw tightens, too. “You remember all that?”
“I remember,” says Bucky, “but it’s a mess in my brain. They tried to take it from me so many times.” He undoes his seat’s restraints and moves forward into Steve’s row on commanding legs, and all of him is extraordinary as he looms into Steve’s space.
Steve puts the jet on autopilot, location locked.
Bucky kneels beside Steve’s chair. His graceful exhausted limbs fold. He bows his head. Long hair veils his eyes.
“I knelt for you, like this,” Bucky says.
Steve reaches out, just dares to touch the crown of Bucky’s hair, his bent head, the curve of his neck. It’s a ghost of a touch, soft as his earliest memories of Bucky.
“Sometimes,” Steve allows.
“And you, for me.”
“Sure did,” says Steve.
“We kept it up,” murmurs Bucky. “From Brooklyn all through the war. Even after they made you into...what you are now.”
Steve bites down, tongue between his teeth, wanting to protest: I chose to become this. I decided. Because that’s the difference between them: Steve made a decision, and Bucky had the Winter Soldier forced upon him. It’s a cavernous distance.
So Steve doesn’t address it. Doesn’t want to fight. Is done fighting. There are far more pressing matters. Steve’s heart is beating hard in his chest, hopeful.
“Never occurred to us to stop,” Steve answers. “It’s who we were. We loved each other. Sex --” He doesn’t flush, not quite, because he’s not ashamed, never that; but the tips of his ears are red as dozens of scenes flash through his mind. “Sex was an extension of what we were.”
Bucky nods again. He’s staring straight ahead, at Steve’s face in profile. Steve triple-checks the controls, then turns to meet Bucky’s gaze unflinching.
Bucky says, “You still feel the same way?”
“Never occurred to me to stop,” says Steve. Bucky’s eyes are electric, contain live currents.
Steve swallows. Then he says: “When I thought I’d lost you, I used to think about whether I could move on from what we had. Could never consider that for long. Then I didn’t have to -- went into the ice and thought that was that. Then they thawed me out and I figured I was alone in the world. Found Peggy, and she gave me what comfort she could. But when you--”
“I know,” says Bucky. “I know what it’s like. To think you’ve been left behind. Then I saw you on the bridge. You took me back seventy years. Freed me like you did in Europe.”
“Buck.” Steve’s throat is tight around unshed tears.
“Went off the grid to try and sort out what they did to my head,” says Bucky. “That day in D.C., after the river, I still didn’t know what I’d do, if I would kiss you or kill you first chance I got. Couldn’t risk it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I kept hidden for so long. Knew you were looking. But I -- I figured I was keeping you safe. Protecting you. Steve.”
“Tell me what you need,” says Steve. Tries to pretend like the sound of his name on Bucky’s lips doesn’t light up every sense he has and work as a punch in the gut, too. Wonders when the last time Bucky was asked a question like that. That’s another punch, higher up, behind his left rib. “Tell me what I can give you.”
“I,” says Bucky, tongue darting out to wet those lips, eyes darting side to side, “If you really still--”
Steve leans down and kisses him, the way he’s been dreaming about the last two years and for seventy in the ice.
Bucky startles against his mouth but stays still. His eyes are open and Steve watches them widen. It’s a gaze of shocked, wild pleasure, not the shock of fear or entrapment, and in another life Steve would spend many hours sketching the way Bucky stares back at him.
Then Bucky pushes up, on his knees, into the kiss. Then Bucky’s hands make fists on Steve’s collar and he’s hauling Steve towards him. He keeps it up while Steve undoes his safety belt and goes with the momentum, and Bucky catches him and they’re pressed from neck to knee. Bucky keeps tugging like there’s a lurking danger Steve might reverse directions and have it be done with.
“I really still,” says Steve, his eyes on Bucky’s eyes.
And Steve decides that they’re in the right life after all. They’re both here, against every conceivable odd; their other worlds are finished. He decides that they’ll live -- somehow they’ll make it through.
He’ll draw Bucky when they get out of Siberia: Bucky with messy hair and eyes like lightning and a mouth increasingly kiss-stung.
Steve plots his masterpiece as Bucky pulls him down, down, down, submerged in a new way, in the oldest way. They go under together.
