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They returned to the Colonel’s basecamp just a few hours ago, and the feeling that fills Bucky’s chest is indescribable as he lays next to Steve, simply staring at him in awe – staring at him while he can because being held captive gave him a harsh wake-up call every soldier gets at some point during his service, even if it isn’t an enjoyable one to receive; every day that you spend in active duty is another day you risk going home in a body bag, or worse, not going home at all.
Bucky pulls away the hand he has resting on the side of Steve’s face and tugs his tags over his head, the metal jingling lightly as he whispers, “come on, gimme yours,” and holds his hand between their chests expectantly.
A soft frown of confusion is etched onto Steve’s face but he pulls the chain holding his own dog tags off anyways, always giving in to what Bucky wants without much fight.
Bucky takes Steve’s tags and pulls them over his head, then slides his own over Steve’s. Steve looks down at the metal dangling around his neck, then back at Bucky, waiting for an explanation.
“Can’t die wearing someone else’s tags. They’d contact the wrong family and send your body to the wrong place and everything, it’d be a whole mess, wouldn’t it? So now we’re not allowed to die on each other. Not ‘till we trade ‘em back when we get home. That sound like something you can do, Rogers?”
Steve chuckles and says, “I’ll try my damndest, Barnes.” He takes hold of his tags hanging on Bucky’s neck and pulls him in closer, kisses him until he can barely breathe. When they pull away Bucky is smiling up at him, eyes still shining with a hint of hope despite the horrors he’s seen, and Steve is so goddamn in love he just wants to die about it – but he made a promise not to, and it’s one he intends to keep.
When Bucky fell from their train in the Alps, Steve continued wearing his tags, of course he did; no dying until they trade them back, right? It gave him some semblance of hope, something physical to hold onto and remind him that there was always a chance they might find him again, that he may not be dead after all. He told Bucky he’d try his damndest to stay alive; so he did.
Peggy knows why Steve was so willing to sacrifice himself to crash the Valkyrie. Of course she does. Even if she didn’t fully know the true nature of his and Bucky’s relationship, it’s clear to anyone with eyes that they’re closer than the rest of the soldiers in their platoon; everyone knows they have history, that they knew each other before the war, that Steve fought tooth and nail to enlist with Bucky.
And so Peggy understands that it isn’t just Steve’s desire to save people, it isn’t just his self-sacrificial tendencies or the way he feels the need to carry the weight of the world and everyone in it on his shoulders. It’s also the way he’s more guilt-ridden and grief-stricken than anyone she’s seen before; this line of work isn’t pretty, she’s lost more people than she can count on both her hands, and so has everyone around her. But she’s never seen a death affect someone the way Bucky’s affected Steve – his manner of being after Bucky fell to his death made it plenty clear that somehow, some way, they were closer than they let on.
It all came together and became clear as she and him exchanged nervous conversation over the Valkyrie’s radio that some part of Steve wasn’t just relieved to be doing this because it would save thousands of lives; he was relieved because just as Bucky fell to his demise, Steve would fall to his. He was relieved because a part of him disappeared that day in the Alps, and it wasn’t just his dog tags that stayed dangling around Bucky’s neck when he died. But now – now he would get to reunite with the piece of him that’s left a gaping hole in his chest for the last few weeks.
As Steve crashed the Valkyrie into the Arctic barely a month after watching his Bucky die, he smiled grimly to himself and couldn’t help but think, so much for keeping that promise.
Then: at least we’re breaking it together.
It’s been… Steve doesn’t know anymore. Too long. It's been far too long. It's been far too long since he’s seen Bucky as himself; not as the Winter Soldier or some terrified amnesiac fragment of the man he used to be, but as Bucky, his pain-in-the-ass best friend. His pain in the ass–
There’s not a fitting word for it. Every word he thinks of doesn’t feel right; lover, boyfriend, partner, companion . They don’t even begin to scratch the surface. There's no word in any language Steve knows to describe what bucky is to him. He's just– he’s just Bucky .
Most people don’t get it. Most people don’t understand what they are to each other. They don’t understand that when Steve smiles uncomfortably at their condolences, at the way they tell him they know what it’s like to lose your brother , it isn’t because he’s being reminded of losing the person he loves most; it’s because they’ve got it all wrong.
They’re not brothers — not in the way these people think, at least. They’re without a doubt brothers in arms; when they called Bucky's number for the draft, Steve enlisted to fight beside him despite his scrawny frame and asthma, bypassed the law and science and all the odds being stacked against him until he was able to follow his best friend into war.
But these people, they don’t realise what happens behind closed doors, they don’t realise what happens in the dark corners of bars after briefings; they’ve never seen the way Steve would grab the front of Bucky’s uniform and smile into their kisses, all stupid and smitten in a way he never was for the girls back home. They've never heard Steve laugh when Bucky quips “aye, aye, captain,” as he pulls Steve's face back towards his in response to the suggestion that they feign exhaustion and “go to bed early.”
These people don’t know that they wear (wore?) each other’s dog tags; about the promise it holds.
Reuniting with Bucky at Wakanda is a revelation. The feeling was indescribable, to walk off the Quinjet and see him for the first time in nearly a century as one-hundred-percent pure James Buchanan Barnes, all dopey smiles and steel-grip hugs despite them being amidst, in Bucky’s words, the end of the world .
Steve’s tags hang from Bucky’s neck, and the joy it fills him with almost makes him forget the circumstances of their reunification.
Bucky sees him staring at the chain and looks down at Steve’s in return, prompting him to ask, “It’s about time we switched back, isn’t it?”
The smile on Bucky’s face lingers as he shakes his head and says, “Not yet. I need you to keep that promise one more time, Rogers.”
Steve laughs and says, “I’ll try my damndest, Barnes.”
The moment Bucky registered that something was wrong, he looked around for Steve; it’s instinct, always has been – he may have been the one saving Steve from guys who didn’t know how to pick on someone their own size, but even before the serum, he found himself leaning on Steve more often than not. It’s sort of like the way scientists say that when you laugh, the first person in the room that you look at is supposed to be the person you love most.
Bucky looks at Steve first when he laughs – and when he doesn’t.
So when something suddenly shifted, when Bucky suddenly felt a strange mix of off and weird and weak, he began walking in the direction he last saw Steve. He looked down at his rapidly disintegrating body then back up at Steve with fear in his eyes as he tried to make it back to him before a so far indistinguishable something could happen.
“Steve?” The single word was a small, fearful thing; not the words of the merciless soldier Steve had seen on the battlefield both today and decades ago, but rather the words of a man seeking comfort and reassurance from his– from the person he loves most because something is wrong.
But Steve couldn’t give it to him, couldn’t get out a single word in response to Bucky’s before Bucky was nothing but dust on the ground and a distraught, sick feeling in Steve’s gut.
No one told Steve how miserable sitting Shiva can feel when there’s no body to bury.
It’s supposed to be miserable – that’s the point, he knows that. But this? Trying to mourn someone for whom the only proof of their existence you have is a few pieces of metal engraved with their name? It’s worse than any war he’s ever fought in. Bucky spent the last moments of his life walking toward Steve and saying his name, but in the end it still added up to nothing.
They never got to trade back their dog tags with a silent smile that says I love you in the way their lips never could. Not back in the forties, and not now, either.
They – fuck .
They never got to say goodbye.
Steve Rogers has watched the love of his life die twice.
Or rather, the love of his lives – it’s funny to him sometimes, how he got a second chance at living in a whole new century, and even then, he and Bucky found their way back to each other.
And yet–
The image of Bucky withering away before his eyes, turning to dust and blending with the soil covering Wakanda; it haunts him. He dreams of ways it could’ve gone differently, of scenarios where Bucky makes it to him in time and Steve holds his face, warm and sure beneath his fingers – but it doesn’t matter, it never does; they all end the same way, with Bucky crumbling to nothing in Steve’s hands.
He had nightmares the first time Bucky died – or appeared to, anyway. He dreamt of Bucky falling from the train screaming Steve’s name, of him being the one to fall instead.
Fresh out of the ice, he was fine for a solid week; then reality started setting in. The reality that Bucky is gone, that the war is over, that everything and everyone he ever knew is as good as gone. He was constantly on edge, constantly felt unsafe even behind locked doors and in highly secure facilities. He became some weird mix of being more combative and yet more passive, always on the defense for the feelings of unsafety from hypervigilance, but also overly apologetic and trying to avoid conflict. Sometimes things got a little better, especially when he was able to constantly keep himself busy; but it never fully went away. Not really.
Especially not after Bucky was snapped away by Thanos – any hope for finally finding peace that he had held onto as motivation to make it through one of the Avengers’ biggest fights to save the world yet was shattered when it ended with losing almost everyone he cared about.
Steve tells everyone to move on, to grow from the loss and use it to power a new life.
If only he knew how to take his own advice.
Everything that happened between Bruce snapping everyone back and Tony snapping Thanos away is a blur; Steve’s mind was so filled with thoughts of Bucky, of getting him back again, that everything else became secondary.
Or, more accurately, everything else was for Bucky.
In the end, it all was, wasn’t it?
Enlisting and fighting and living and dying and loving .
It was all for him.
So is this.
This is the first time they’re really seeing each other since Bucky was brought back – everything had happened so fast, everything had gone wrong so quickly, there wasn’t much time for pleasantries.
No one was supposed to die doing this. Their end goal was the opposite – to bring everyone back; and they did, but at what cost? Tony had a wife, a child, a nice house with a nice yard and enough distance from other people that Pepper felt safe. He was living the American dream none of the Avengers thought they’d ever be able to, but now the family he left behind – both his wife and daughter and the Avengers – are seemingly trapped in a nightmare.
Nightmare though it may be, there is some solace to be found in the fact that they are together. It’s a cliche, no doubt about it; but the fact that Tony’s sacrifice – and Natasha’s – wasn’t for nothing is still true.
Steve tells Sam that this one’s on me , which Bucky finds arguable; they’re all responsible for seeing this through to the end. It’s just like him to say that, though. Just like him to feel obligated to do all the risk-taking, to want to shoulder the weight of the world’s problems even if it means breaking his own back.
He’ll be fine. He’s careful – at least most of the time – Bucky knows that. But the feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach at sending Steve away to put the stones back is hard to ignore.
They’ve just gotten each other back, and this time it appears to be for good. Not that they’ve acknowledged it in the slightest; this fact is thus far unspoken. A silent agreement not to jinx it, to not risk everything they’ve found disappearing once more after they’ve already lost so much.
So when Steve makes his way over to Bucky, there’s something almost hesitant about it, like he knows what’s running through his head.
To be fair, he usually does.
“Don’t do anything stupid until I get back,” Steve says with a note of whisper-softness in his voice.
Bucky swallows the tears forming behind his eyes, and despite his age-old habit of repressing any and all emotions that might leave a visible chink in his armor, he still aches with the effort. “How can I?” he retorts easily. “You’re taking all the stupid with you.”
Steve smiles and pulls him into a hug. They don’t linger, a product of the charged air around them filling their very beings with a kind of anxiety that boils down to don’t leave me; please, don’t leave me again.
Bucky knows Steve will be right back, that even if years pass in the timelines he enters to return the stones, only a few seconds will pass for him. But despite himself, he still lets slip, “Gonna miss you, buddy.”
Steve tries for a reassuring smile, or at the very least an expression that denotes his understanding of what Bucky said. “It’s gonna be okay, Buck.”
A nod is all Bucky can manage before Steve is suiting up and stepping over to the quantum portal. As they go over the details one last time, Bucky silently hopes to himself that Steve is right, that it will be okay, that he won’t have to take on the responsibility of delivering a hesped or refresh his rough memorization of the Kaddish.
Bruce presses a few buttons, and Steve is gone.
After everything he’s seen, Bucky isn’t affected by much anymore; blood, death, destruction – at this point he doesn’t so much as blink. But it takes all his strength to not keel over and be sick in the grass during the five seconds it takes for Bruce to bring Steve back.
Bruce counts down from five and messes with the equipment again, and for a horrifying moment Bucky thinks something will go wrong, just as things always seem to in places where his feet tread. But before this particular spiral of thoughts can swallow him whole, Steve reappears on the landing pad.
It knocks the breath out of Bucky to see him again. He wouldn’t look much different to most people, maybe not even to Bruce or Sam or Clint or Wanda. But Bucky isn’t just any passing stranger; he’s studied Steve’s face for years upon years, in day and night and life and death and war and peace and everything in between. He can see the subtle differences – the inch or two of extra length to his hair, the messy layer of stubble covering his face and neck, the way his eyes are sunken in from lack of sleep and how they spark to life upon seeing Bucky for the first time in days, weeks, months.
The weariness covering Steve’s face makes him look a little more his age; but the warmth that fills his chest and the soft, tired smile he manages as he removes the suit, all the while looking at Bucky, has him feeling like a scrawny smitten kid in Brooklyn for the first time in decades.
He practically body slams Bucky when he crosses the distance between them in only a few quick strides and wraps him in a hug, melting into his warmth just as Bucky does his and closing his eyes.
For the first time in a long time, Steve is at peace.
They pull apart reluctantly and Bucky vaguely registers that they’re alone; everyone else has seemingly taken the hint and gone inside.
Steve’s hands rest on the sides of Bucky’s face and he looks at him with near amazement. “I missed you,” he says. His voice is soft, just barely above a whisper, keeping the words a secret between the two of them.
Bucky reaches a hand up to brush a piece of Steve’s too-long hair out of his face. “You going soft on me, Steven?” he teases with a small smile.
He lets loose a little laugh and hums his assent. “Product of old age. You should know a thing or two about that, James.”
Bucky clutches his chest with his free hand. “Oh, you wound me, Rogers.”
“You love it,” Steve says, smiling wider.
“Mmm. That I do,” Bucky says, and his smile mirrors Steve’s.
They stand in comfortable silence for a few moments before a thought occurs to him. “You know…”
“Hm?” Steve runs a hand through Bucky’s hair, never letting his eyes leave his face. He has quite a bit of lost time to make up for – and not just from the time he spent putting the stones back.
Bucky hooks a finger on the chain around his neck and pulls his – or rather, Steve’s – dog tags out from under his jacket. He holds them out in front of him and says, “I believe these are yours.”
Steve chuckles and removes Bucky’s tags from around his own neck and holds them out in return. “And I believe these are yours.”
Bucky slides the chain in his hand over Steve’s head and Steve does the same for him. They both smile in satisfaction at finally being able to make good on a century-old promise.
Their foreheads lean together to touch almost as if by magnetic force and their eyes close; they bask in the warm silence until they can’t anymore and suddenly they’re kissing for the first time in… one, two, three, four– too many years.
If asked who initiated it, neither of them would be able to answer – it didn’t much feel like a conscious decision anyways, just something that was meant to happen, like the touching of their mouths and exchanging of breaths is a long-awaited fulfillment of prophecy.
They separate, panting and flushed, looking at each other like they’re the only people in the world.
Bucky remembers someone in his childhood – a rabbi, maybe – saying that above all else, love is a mitzvah . He gets the nomenclature now.
Through everything he’s seen, everything he’s done, Steve has shone through clearer than anything else; he burns brighter than a thousand candles and every time he says his name it feels like a prayer on his tongue.
As for Steve, despite having never been able to say the words before, or simply not knowing how, he’s always loved Bucky – he’s not usually one to believe in love at first sight, but for him he makes an exception. From the first time Bucky saved his ass after nearly being pummeled to the point of needing stitches, he’s looked at him like Buck hung the moon and stars in the sky just for him. And still, all these years later, Steve thinks he could give this boy the sun and it still wouldn't be enough.
“I love you,” Steve says, still breathless. It almost sounds like an epiphany – the way the words leave his mouth make it sound like something he’s been waiting to say for days, weeks, months, years; like it’s something that’s been on the tip of his tongue for his entire life and kissing Bucky finally made him realise the words he wanted to say.
(Which, he supposes, it is.)
Bucky smiles and shakes his head in amazement, and he kisses Steve again just because he can. “I love you too.” The words feel so easy to say because of course they do, because it’s Steve, and Bucky wonders how he went this long without ever saying them to him.
“Hey Steve?” Bucky pipes up after a few moments of silence.
“Yeah, Buck?”
“I know it was only a few seconds for us, but how long were you gone?”
Steve’s face softens and he responds simply, “Long enough.”