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trying to render not just the person (but what he has been through)

Steve still draws; of course he does. He has sketchbooks full of doodles, things he remembers from the 40s. He has sketches of Peggy, before and after. He's able to draw the Bucky he recalls by memory alone. But once he gets out of the hospital after Bucky - no, the Winter Soldier - beat him nearly to death in that helicarrier, Steve buys a new sketchbook. He fills it with a distant, tortured gaze; with a metal fist covered in his blood; with hair too long to be Bucky's.

Steve draws and draws and draws, and he is overridden with guilt. Natasha told him not to blame himself for what happened to his best friend but how can he not? How can he witness what Bucky's become and not hate himself for not going after him all those years ago when he fell from the train into the snowy mountains below? The nightmares are getting worse.

Steve used to draw Buck in pencil, but after two failed attempts now, pencil no longer works. Steve can only draw Bucky's features in stark charcoal anymore; that is the only way it looks right, the only way Steve can capture how purely haunted his eyes had looked that day.

Sam catches him one afternoon, as Steve is putting the final touches on his latest work: a POV shot, the Winter Soldier above him, metal fist raised for the killing blow, and that look in his eyes... that look of recognition as Steve was telling him, "I'm with you till the end of the line." When Steve looks up to see Sam just standing there, staring at the sketchbook in Steve’s lap with an expression caught between horror and pity, Steve is embarrassed and mildly ashamed. He moves to cover the drawing, but Sam stops him, asks if he can flip through. Steve passes the sketchbook over but doesn’t watch. Instead he rises, mechanically, moves toward the kitchen they now share and pours himself a glass of water.

When Steve returns to the couch Sam has finished leafing. Sam asks him, “Have you drawn anything else since…?” and Steve answers with a shake of his head. Sam sighs, clicks his tongue. “Can I ask you somethin’ personal, man?”

“Sure,” is all the answer Steve can give.

The question takes Steve by surprise. No, they weren’t lovers, and quietly he tells Sam this. “Why do you ask?”

“After losing Riley,” Sam begins. “It was hard, at first. I dreamt about it every night and I would wake up shouting and sweating, with my heart tryin’ to make a break for it in my ribs and I couldn’t catch my breath .” He looks again at the sketchbook in his hands. “But it was never like this. It was never this obsessive, and if ever was, it wasn’t for this long. Steve it’s been three months and all you’ve done is draw him. You don’t draw anything else anymore.”

Has it really been three whole months? The very thought has Steve’s heart hammering away in his chest, trying to make a break for it, as Sam said; three months is too long, what if they can never get Bucky back now? What if he’s skipped town, left the country? What if he’s gone back to Russia and - God forbid - found Hydra? What if, by doing nothing these past few months, Steve really has lost him forever? At the thought Steve finds himself lightheaded, dizzy, sick to his stomach and he thinks, This is what it must feel like to lose your lover. When Steve woke up, after nearly seventy years, and realized he’d missed his date with Peggy, it felt like quiet resignation. And he loved her, he did. But it hadn’t hit him as hard, or hurt him as deeply, as watching Bucky Barnes fall to the ice back in the 40s, or seeing the way Bucky looked at him on that bridge with positively no recollection in his face and asked him, “Who the hell is Bucky?” Knowing what Steve knows now, feeling the way he does in the aftermath of the Winter Soldier, he knows; Steve Rogers has been in love with his best friend since they were children. And that… that is what causes him the most heartache: knowing he’d loved him, knowing what with you till the end of the line means to him now.

“We’ll find him, Steve,” Sam assures him, and his voice pulls Steve out of his memories, back into the present. “We’ll look for him and bring him home, okay? Whenever you wanna start lookin’. But you gotta do somthin’, man. I hate seeing you like this.”

“Yeah.” Steve’s voice cracks over the word, so he clears his throat, tries again. “Yeah. Thanks, Sam. I think I’m going to go for a walk, get some air.”

“Alright, man. If you decide you want some company, you got my number.” Sam claps him on the shoulder as Steve stands.

So Steve walks. He walks for what feels like a small eternity, before finally looking up and realizing his feet have brought him to the Smithsonian. He huffs out a self deprecating laugh and ascends the steps. The exhibit is quiet; it is a Wednesday and the families who would normally be here on the weekends are filling their days with school and work. There are a few university students milling about, tapping away at their tablets and phones. No one so much as bats an eye at his presence.

Steve does everything he can to avoid Bucky’s placard, to avoid seeing his face and the short biography SHIELD has given him. Eventually, though, when Steve has been there for long enough to feel his body being drawn toward the voice that talks about the Howling Commandos, he finds himself standing there, watching the clips of him and Bucky laughing and patting one another’s backs with a painful kind of melancholy he doesn’t remember feeling before.

Just as the video clip on the screen changes to show Bucky throwing an arm across Steve's shoulder as they pose together for a picture, another figure comes to stand beside Steve.

"Were we really like that?"

The voice is unmistakable, and it makes Steve's heart leap within his chest. He turns, and lo and behold there he is; he's kept his hair long, tied part of it back to keep it from falling in his face, and Bucky's just staring at him. Steve doesn't know what to say, so he settles with, "Bucky?" and it sounds a little breathless, a little shocked and awestruck and Steve can't find it in him to care.

Bucky offers him a small smile and a shrug, says, "Sometimes, yeah," and it feels like Steve's world has somehow righted itself. Bucky nods again at the screen, where it shows Steve leaning into Bucky's personal space to tell him something in secret while the image of his best friend grins back at him. "Were we really like that?" The real, live, in-the-flesh Bucky asks again.

"Yeah. Yeah, we were."

They stand together in silence for a few moments, watching as their lives flash in images before their eyes. It’s Bucky who breaks the silence.

“I still don’t remember everything,” he admits. “But I remember a lot. Some things are… they’re pretty confusing.”

Steve practically jumps at the opportunity. “I could help you,” he says. “I could fill in the blanks for you, help you make sense of the confusion. If you want.”

Bucky nods. “I think I’d like that.”

--

It’s been a year since Steve found him that day; or rather, since Bucky found Steve. He’s back to his old self for the most part, albeit riddled with remorse at what he’d done during his years as the Winter Soldier. He has had less trouble adjusting to modern society than Steve had, and that in itself is a small miracle. They moved, along with Sam, to New York, and are taking up residence in Stark Tower with all the other Avengers. Bucky gets on famously with just about everyone. Like Steve, he sometimes becomes exasperated with Tony; they’re like brothers in a way. Their constant banter is somehow annoying and endearing all at once. Steve and Bucky spend lazy afternoons on the sofa, catching up on movies recommended to them by the rest of the crew. Bucky’s been a quick study when it came to video games, as well. He remains the undefeated Super Smash Bros. champion, six months running.

And the best part? They are lovers now. When Bucky’d described his memories as confusing, he was talking about the fantasies he’d remembered having; how he’d wanted to kiss Steve senseless at the Stark Expo before he’d shipped out, how seeing Steve for the first time after the serum had sent a thrill through him that he hadn’t known what to do with at the time. Steve, indeed, helped fill in those gaps. He’d taken Bucky’s face in his hands and kissed him, gently but oh-so-thoroughly. They waited, though, until Bucky was feeling more like himself before truly take that final plunge together. Shortly after coming to New York, they made love for the first time on a chaise lounge on the roof of Stark Tower, lit only by the full moon and the city lights, and it was everything Steve had ever hoped for his first time, even if Bucky had called him a sap for it.

Bucky says he sleeps better, more restfully, when Steve is there with him. The nightmares subside a little, and Bucky is able to sleep through the night, even if Steve is awake and simply there, like tonight.

And Steve still draws; of course he does. He draws the lines of his lover’s sleeping form, nude save for the cotton sheet haphazardly draped across his hips. Bucky’s leg hangs off the side of the mattress, and Steve draws that too, spares no small detail of him where he can help it. He draws that metal arm, its design having been improved upon by Tony. The red star that once adorned the bicep has since been replaced with a white star, circled with blue and red and even more white, per Bucky’s personal request. He still insists upon keeping his hair long, and Steve has grown to love it; he relishes the way it feels when he runs his fingers through it, the way it makes Bucky practically purr in contentment.

Steve still uses charcoal when he draws Bucky, as well, but not for the same reasons as before. Where it once only looked right because of its darkness, it suits him now because of the strength of its lines. The road to Bucky’s recovery has been long and dark and sometimes frightening, but the strength he has shown is an inspiration to Steve. As before, Steve has tried and tired and tried to capture his lover’s likeness with pencils and acrylic paints, and even a digital art program gifted to him by Tony, but to no avail.

Bucky only looks right in charcoal.

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