Summary: Steve and Bucky share dances and kisses and perfect moments.
Eventually, attempts at extravagant steps and fancy footwork turned into slow dances. And slow swaying movements while they held each other turned into soft kisses.
Word count: 2,529
This fic has a mood playlist which you can listen to here. It is 8 songs and 30 mins. There are many references to the songs in the playlist throughout.
AO3 link
Bucky laughed as he pulled Steve into him.
Steve stumbled, but Bucky caught him.
He knew trying to teach Steve to dance wasn’t going to be easy, but he was going to enjoy every minute of it.
Steve tried. He really did. But he tripped over his own feet and Bucky’s and had to stop to catch his breath with every exertion.
Eventually, attempts at extravagant steps and fancy footwork turned into slow dances. And slow swaying movements while they held each other turned into soft kisses.
Bucky didn’t know when it shifted. One minute he had Steve at arm’s length, hands careful as they were with dames in dance halls, and the next they were pressed close with Steve’s head on his chest and Bucky’s cheek resting on the top of Steve’s head.
He didn’t know who moved first. But the next moment they were looking at each other. And maybe Steve reached out to bring his hands to Bucky’s face, but Bucky had lifted him up by the waist to bring him closer, so who knows who initiated the kiss.
Steve kissed like Bucky was the air he needed to breathe. Steve kissed so hungrily and passionately that Bucky wondered where he’d learned it from. Steve kissed like everything Bucky had ever wanted.
They shared nights like these regularly—nights full of slow dances and soft kisses.
Some nights when Steve’s health wasn’t being kind to him and he had little energy Bucky lifted him up on his toes and steadied him with his arms. He held him up and swayed in slow circles around the living room, playing their favorite records.
Some days Bucky got tired of hiding from the world—treasuring how he could be himself with Steve but hating how it could only be behind closed doors. And Steve would thread his arms under Bucky’s and hold him close, nuzzling into his chest as silent tears hit the top of his head.
Some evenings were the ends of good days that bled into perfect nights where they danced and laughed and kissed and loved each other.
No matter how life got them down, they held on to the nights like these.
———
The record player was already on when Bucky walked in the door the night before he shipped out for England.
Steve threw himself into Bucky’s arms harder than he should have if his lungs had anything to say about it. His arms burned holding up his body weight against Bucky, but Bucky was quick to take most of his by wrapping his arms tight around Steve’s little waist.
When Bucky began to move them around the room to the music Steve coughed again, though this time it was from choking back tears. He was afraid to let them fall, afraid to acknowledge that they were real.
He tucked himself against Bucky, trying to memorize the feeling of every point of contact. They stayed wrapped up together all night until just before the break of dawn. Bucky pried himself from Steve’s arms and placed a kiss on the top of his head.
Bucky didn’t say goodbye, he just pressed his forehead to Steve’s.
For a moment, it was just four blue eyes pleading with each other.
“Just… come back to me…” Steve said.
After Bucky shut the door behind him, Steve let the tears he had been too afraid to shed the night before finally fall.
Love is ruthless, he thought to himself alone.
———
They didn’t dare share a true moment in public, in a bar full of soldiers. They learned better long ago.
Bucky raised his glass of whiskey to Steve. “To the good fight.”
But back in Steve’s quarters with a small radio, Bucky wrapped his arms around Steve. He chuckled at the awkward feeling in his muscles. His body remembered Steve how he was and didn’t know this shiny new one. But once they figured out how they fit together again, Bucky breathed in and found the familiarity.
The blonde hair brushing up against his cheek and the long artist's fingers on his hand were this same. The intensity with which Steve clung to Bucky was familiar even if the new strength was not.
They turned in slow circles as their new rhythm with each other intertwined with their practiced one. While the serum gave Steve more strength and energy, it didn’t seem to cure him of his two left feet and they shared soft laughs between softer kisses.
Some nights it was in darkness and silence that Bucky held Steve between his arms. Some nights he kissed Steve slowly, pretending that they had all the time in the world to keep each other close. The time together was never quite enough.
———
Bucky had been found, but he wasn’t really there.
He remembered nothing. Though decades of brainwashing meant he didn't startle easily, it didn't do much for softer interactions. He could face a loaded gun without flinching, but shrunk away when anyone got too close and flinched at sudden contact. He spent most days with blank stares and mumbled apologies.
Steve longed for their old contact, but didn’t want to force it. Being near Bucky was torture. Sam told him he should probably take a step back for his own good, but Bucky had always been Steve’s Achilles heel.
“Come back to me,” Steve whispered to the air.
He could tell that Bucky knew he was supposed to be someone else, but he didn’t remember.
Steve turned on some music, keeping it to the big band and jazz music of their youth. He reached a hand out. Bucky took it tentatively. The look on his face was slightly more than the cold blank stare he usually had, but not by much. He seemed inquisitive.
Steve knew that Bucky’s true recall wasn’t in his memory, but in his muscles. He saw it in the way that Bucky miscalculated the distance between them as he reached for Steve’s shoulder, correcting himself halfway through the movement. He saw how if Steve did so much as clear his throat Bucky’s hand was low on his back—the same place Bucky would have patted Steve to encourage the phlegm in his lungs to loosen.
So he hoped that if he got Bucky to dance with him, some part of him would remember.
Steve took the lead, but kept his palms down, left on Bucky’s shoulder and right clasped in cool metal.
Bucky settled into him as the stereo started to play a new song. He swayed steadily. He wasn’t relaxed per se, but some of the tension leaked out of his body and he moved easily with Steve.
For one perfect moment, everything felt right—felt like it used to. Steve actually felt his body’s age of 29 and not 95. He felt like a kid again.
It’s been a long, long time, indeed, he thought.
A different Steve fell in love with a different Bucky when they were kids who didn’t know what love was and didn’t know what kind of danger it would put them in. Now, having to relearn everything about the world, he got a similar feel of childhood naivety.
But none of it mattered, because he had Bucky. And no matter who either of them used to be, Steve knew that the man he was now would still be completely in love with whatever Bucky came out of this.
He kissed the top of Bucky’s head and Bucky didn’t flinch.
I love you, he wanted to say. I’ve got you. I won’t give up on you.
The words echoed through his head like they were being shouted across the Grand Canyon, but they felt out of reach when he opened his mouth to speak.
And so they kept up this dance; holding each other and moving to music or sometimes complete silence. Steve, dreaming of moments with a man long gone and hoping he could rebuild them with the one in front of him.
Steve didn’t pressure Bucky to remember. He didn’t even tell him, though he suspected Bucky had figured it out a long time ago. He wanted to let Bucky find his feelings naturally, not because he felt like he should.
“What will it take for me to remember?” Bucky asked him one night.
”Only time,” Steve answered him, hoping it was true.
“I’ll never be the same.”
“Neither will I.”
Some days, Bucky was wracked with guilt. Guilt over the things he’d done as the Winter Soldier just as much as guilt over not being able to remember who he was before.
When Bucky slumped forward into Steve in silent sobs, Steve held him up. He wrapped his arms around Bucky the way Bucky used to do for him as he swayed them around.
“I’m sorry for the nights I can’t remember,” Bucky whispered against Steve’s shoulder.
“It’s going to be hard. But you’re not ever on your own. I’m right beside you.”
Steve thought he heard Bucky mumble something about being a mess.
“Darling, you’re perfect,” Steve whispered. He could tell Bucky heard him by the way his hands squeezed a little tighter.
———
Bucky found his way back to himself eventually. He thought that if he remembered, that the feelings would come back, but it happened in reverse.
Bucky fell in love with Steve all over again. He fell in love with the way he could tell that Steve desperately wanted him back, yet would never push. He fell in love with the way Steve looked up at him from under his lashes, giving him the air of someone much smaller. He fell in love with the way that Steve held out his right hand, palm up, and flipped it as soon as Bucky took it. He fell in love with how he could tell Steve buzzed with the desire for more when he held Bucky close, yet let Bucky take the lead. He fell in love with how Steve knew everything Bucky had become, believed he could be somebody else, and dropped everything in his world to make sure Bucky had that chance.
And as he fell in love with Steve Rogers he felt the familiarity in it.
In the dark of their room he wrapped Steve in his arms and remembered holding him close in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, in a tent in the war, in a river as he desperately swam them to shore. When he tentatively pulled Steve in to kiss him and he felt Steve’s hands cup his face, he remembered him doing exactly that when they were 16, 20, and 25. And when they danced his body remembered making the movements countless times before, on good days, and bad days, and every day in between.
When he remembered, he realized no one else besides Steve ever would have gotten through to what was left of Bucky Barnes under the Winter Soldier.
Bucky found his way back to himself by finding his way back to Steve.
The tower gave them lots of space. When they wanted to be alone, they found their way to the guest suite of their living space. It was large for a guest room, including its own en-suite bathroom and small kitchen, but it was small enough to feel like their old Brooklyn apartment.
In those moments, as they held each other close and Steve tucked his head against Bucky until Bucky’s chin rested on top of his head, it almost felt like nothing had changed.
———
The wedding was small. As small as an Avenger’s wedding could be.
Steve looked at Bucky over a comically large cake and Bucky raised his glass high in the air, “To the good life.”
Bucky’s lips met Steve’s and he was overjoyed. He let happy tears fall as he realized he didn’t have to put on the face of Captain America or hide the man he loved. He didn’t have to be anything more than Bucky’s husband.
Bucky stepped away toward the dance floor and held a metal hand out to Steve. “Come on Mr. Barnes-Rogers,” he said through a smile.
Steve let Bucky pull him along.
They smiled goofily at each other as the music started, but Bucky didn’t miss a beat in leading him along. Steve leaned forward to rest his forehead against Bucky’s.
Never thought that you would be
Standing here so close to me
There’s so much I feel that I should say
“I love you so much, Bucky,” Steve said. It wasn’t enough, but like Kitty Kallen said, words could wait until some other day.
———
One evening, Bucky stood at the entrance to the pier and closed his eyes, breathing in the salty air.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw Steve walking along the Coney Island shore. For a moment, in the low light, even though everything was different, it kind of felt the same.
Bucky laughed as he pulled Steve into him.
Steve, still surprisingly clumsy, stumbled.
But Bucky caught him. He picked up his super-soldier and threw him in the air like he used to do with girls in dance halls once upon a time.
Steve smiled at him.
No music played, but they swayed in time with each other anyway, intimately knowing how the other moved.
Bucky twirled Steve before pulling him back against his chest. They rocked together with Bucky’s chin on Steve’s shoulder. He felt Steve turn to kiss his cheek and smiled.
Bucky unraveled Steve from himself and immediately picked him up in the air. Steve came back down laughing with his legs on either side of Bucky’s hips.
“Steve,” Bucky said when he stayed wrapped around Bucky’s waist.
”I love you, Buck,” Steve said.
Bucky didn’t have time to answer because Steve had cupped his face in both hands and kissed him. He felt Steve’s arms wrap tight around his neck, fingers gripping the hair on the back of his head.
What Bucky couldn’t say verbally, he answered in his movements. He told Steve, “I love you, too” in how he wrapped his arms just as tightly around Steve’s back and hummed into his kisses and smiled against his lips.
It started slow and unhurried. There was nothing to hide from and nowhere to rush to.
But Steve still kissed just like he used to—hungry and passionate—although now it felt like Bucky was the one who couldn’t breathe.
He reached his hand up to touch the jawline that used to be smaller and the nose that had stayed the same. He ran his thumb over lips that were much fuller and gazed into eyes that he fell in love with over and over since 1934. And he kissed Steve, who was no longer the Steve he first fell in love with, but was the Steve he fell in love with every day.
Bucky realized somewhere along the line that “home” had nothing to do with Brooklyn and everything to do with the moments he and Steve were alone. It didn’t matter if he remembered everything or nothing, because he found his love and safety with Steve either way.
He treasured the nights like these.
~~~~~~~~
Day 18 of @monthlywritingchallenges Firefly July: the perfect moment (or moments)
Special thanks to @mazeltoxin for the last-minute quick turnaround beta read.
