When Steve finally wake up it's like he got hit in the head with a steamroller. He groans and turns, pushing up from the ground, confused at where he's found himself. Usually when he's drunk he just has someone call Hux who brings him home. Looks like someone else found him, this time. And brought him to...his studio?
Huh.
Steve blinks a little, adjusting to the light as he takes in the space. As he takes in the person next to him who... Can't be real. Can't...actually be real.
Steve sits up faster, ignoring his head screaming and stares at Bucky like he's come back from the dead all over again. Which, honestly, it looks like he has. He's nothing like the Bucky he knows is here. The haunted look is gone from his eyes and his hair is short like Steve always remembered it being. It's like someone stepped out of his past and into this room.
It has to be some sort of illusion. Some hoax or...post Calibration prank. The cruelest possible one the Atroma could come up with, all for the ratings. And yet...
Bucky raises one eyebrow as Steve starts coming around - yeah, that groan is probably right, because anything that could knock Steve on his ass that hard... is probably not gonna be fun to recover from.
But that suddenly seems to be the least of their worries, because Steve goes from horizontal to upright definitely faster than Bucky thinks he should, and he's staring at Bucky pretty much the same way Bucky would have been staring at him, if he didn't have such a good goddamn lid on his own emotions. A lid that is threatening to crumble, no matter how tightly he's trying to hold it in place.
"Hey," he says, and if his voice is quiet, maybe he can tell himself it's because he's trying not to exacerbate whatever hangover Steve likely has, and not because he feels like his throat is closing up. It's harder to just... deal with this now, with Steve looking at him like that, with the full weight of Steve's (mostly) sober attention on him. It makes him feel like he has to explain himself... and also like there's no possible explanation that could ever be good enough. There isn't. There really, really isn't.
"Been a while," he finally manages to say - and then he manages to pull himself together enough to add, "How's that hangover treating you?"
Steve's face doesn't change. He's not even sure he's blinking or breathing right now as he listens without hearing to this ghost from his past. He talks the same. Looks almost the same. Steve reaches out a hand and rests it against Bucky's bicep to see that, yeah. He feels the same, too.
"Bucky...?"
Steve isn't stupid. He knows that this isn't the one that has been here, before. The one from earlier in his own timeline that won't even send him a text, let alone talk to him like this. His Bucky doesn't know him. And, even if he did, there is no way the conversation would have the ease this one is having.
There is no way he would look at him the way this man is.
"Bucky," he says more firmly, his hand clawing into the fabric like holding onto a lifeline. "God...Oh my God..." And that's about all he can manage before he pulls forward, intending to hug his friend tight.
If only his stomach wouldn't have chosen that moment to protest, of course. It roils hard and Steve has just enough time to turn away and push at Bucky before he's throwing up against the floor.
Honestly... Bucky is neither surprised when Steve grabs onto him, nor disappointed. No, he's clinging back just as tightly, because maybe he's already touched the guy to get him here, but it's not the same - it's not the same at all, and "Yeah, pretty much," is all he can really reply, because oh my God is really all that covers it just now.
So maybe he holds on just as tightly, inhales sharply the scent that's so very Steve despite the rest of this place and even the unfamiliar clothes Steve is wearing and the new haircut, and just keeps holding on until -
Well. Yeah. That's not surprising, either.
Bucky's nose wrinkles just a little, but it's not the first pile of puke he has seen Steve leave in his wake. "Yeah, that about answers my question," he says quietly, reaching over to touch Steve's back, just letting him retch with as much dignity as the action can really garner. "Lemme see if I can find something to clean that up."
And he's also gonna take that empty glass back and fill it up again for the guy.
He doesn't have all that much food in his stomach so there's not a lot that he needs to get out. Still he heaves a little more and, after that, feels unsurprisingly better. And, also, unsurprisingly younger again. He takes the water when it comes to rinse out his mouth and take a few more gulps. Steadier now, he stands to get some cloths from a cabinet. They are usually there for aprons but they will work for this, too.
"I think the last time I threw up was with you, too. Back in '42." He smiles at Bucky, more hopeful than anything else since it wasn't all that long ago that speaking about a memory would be left off with a blank response. Steve hasn't taken a single memory Bucky reclaimed for granted. The idea he can just reference one now and have it understood is too good to be believed. Steve will need to see it first.
"Where...Where did you come from?" Which is entirely the wrong question. "How did you find me?"
Bucky hums thoughtfully - he's got no idea how Steve might or might not feel about him remembering something - and eventually has to admit, "Yeah, that was probably it. Before the - " He motions to Steve, meaning the serum. "Whatever they serve here must be stronger than what they had in England."
One corner of his mouth lifts in a wry half-grin, then he's already moving to help Steve clean up the mess. At least, until Steve asks the obvious questions, and... well, Bucky's only got simple, insufficient answers.
"D.C.," he says, with regard to the first one. "I was in D.C. After - the war." There. That's simple, right? And true. "And then I was here, and I needed a drink, only I never got one, 'cause your drunk ass was already in the bar."
And - "How did you get here?" Because - Bucky doesn't want to say it, but he's got to: "You're dead, Steve."
Steve's face conveys just how absurd he thinks this is. But then he remembers Vision's Calibration room and the alternate Bucky's the other had known. How one of them had been Cap, in that universe. Steve hadn't thought about it, but perhaps that meant that he...
He was the one that fell off the train.
Steve swallows, feeling nauseous but with nothing left in his stomach to get rid of. Could that really be what was going on here? Why else would Bucky be acting like this, thinking he was dead? Christ. How messy was this world going to get?
"I'm not dead." Clearly. "I...never died. They thought I had, when I crashed into the arctic, but I just...sort of froze, I guess. They thawed me out and been fighting. Up until I got dragged to this Hell, at least."
Steve replays the part about Bucky being in DC. After the war. That means he lived and got home? Is that what it meant? Steve can't help but reach out again and hold Bucky's arm. "What year was it? When you left?"
Bucky's face does this... really weird twist, because, "I crashed in the arctic. I got fucking thawed out because you - "
He feels like the breath's been punched out of him for a minute. He's never really just... sat down and spelled this all out for anybody. Least of all a dead guy.
He pulls in another breath, tries again. "It's 2014. Which I know sounds stupid, but - maybe not as stupid as you'd think," he says, given what Steve just told him. "You died in 1945. In the Alps. We looked for your body, Steve." Hell yes he'd made sure they had, and not just because losing access to the one working sample of Erskine's formula, even frozen, had been unacceptable to the Army. That had just been a convenient way to muster more resources. Even if it had all been in vain. "We never found fucking anything." Everyone had concluded he'd crashed into the icy river, been carried away. Bucky hadn't liked it, but he'd believed it.
Steve goes sheet-white hearing this. Because he can say it all himself, except for who fell. And, sadly, for the resources that hadn't been expended looking for Bucky. He was just a soldier, after all. Steve had begged and pleaded that they needed to at least find his body, but there was no way they were going to risk soldiers freezing for a corpse. And that was what they had been sure Bucky was, at that point. A corpse.
They'd both been wrong.
Steve feels like he has asthma all over again. He can't breathe and he's choking on his own tongue trying to talk as he stares at Bucky who...who is him. It's him in another life where HYDRA never got him. Never tortured him. He's whole and he doesn't care that this means he was probably the one in Bucky's place because his best friend had been spared.
This is what it looks like. Bucky alive and whole and spared.
His eyes are shining as he grips his friend's shoulders, still not quite able to breathe or get color back into his face.
"You fell off the train, Buck. Where...where I came from, you fell off the train. I tried to get to you and...the railing broke. I couldn't... There was nothing anyone could do. They were sure you were dead and they didn't even look for you..."
His head is spinning. He's not sure if it's lack of oxygen, hangover, or everything crashing in on him at once.
It's like looking in the mirror, only... a weird, wrong funhouse mirror, one that shows you exactly what you want to see and don't want to see at the same time. The number of times Bucky had wished it had been him, because he was just a soldier - well. Because they'd thought he'd been just a soldier at the time, because he'd ignored and buried all the signs that maybe he wasn't, and because Steve was just - Steve was everything. Steve was the good guy, Steve was Captain America for a reason. Bucky knows he's not the right guy for the job. He's just the one they'd conveniently picked, and now he's stuck with it. Which is okay, really, because what else does he have? What else could he have, but a slew of dead or dying friends and the memories of a guy he can never quite live up to?
He grabs at Steve to haul him in for a hug, partly because that's just what he needs to do, because Steve needs it, and maybe even because Bucky needs it. And partly so Steve won't see all that in his face, because it's hard to stay so stoic when... this is so messed up.
"I'm as real as I ever was. If you are," he says, quietly. Only a little strangled.
He's holding onto Bucky tighter than he held onto anything in his life. It's almost like the smallest inch could let the other man fade away and Steve isn't about to let that happen. He'd forgotten how easy this could be. How right falling into the normal dynamic could be. It's Bucky. It's his Bucky that he lost on the train. Just like he's the Steve that he'd lost...
Jesus, this was a mess.
"I'm real," he assures him, face buried into his shoulder. "I'm real. I wish to God sometimes I wasn't, especially with this hangover. But not if...not if you're real, too." His hands are fisting up against this suit Bucky is wearing, not letting him go until Steve's 100% sure he's not going to cry. His face already feels alarmingly damp but he'll say that was just water he spilled, earlier.
When he finally retreats, he drags his sleeve across to clean it up, fast.
"God. Look at you. Captain James Buchanan Barnes. Captain America..." He can't help his watery laugh. "Did they make the suit pinch any less for you?"
Yeah, Steve may have tried to play that one off as a joke, but something in Bucky tenses when Steve says he wishes he wasn't. Both because... well, yeah, of course that's the last thing you want to hear your (dead?) best friend say, and because he maybe kind of knows what it's like, to feel that way. There were some not-so-great days - well, all of them were not so great, after Steve fell. A lot of them have been not so great, since he got thawed.
Maybe they're about to get better, because fuck being kidnapped, but if it means Steve's here... Alive -
Bucky takes in a slow breath of his own, proud of the way it doesn't really shudder. He doesn't pull away until Steve does, and if he notices anything on his face... well. He doesn't have to say anything about it, does he.
Of course, he does snort a moment later. "It sounds even worse when you say it," he mutters, because he still doesn't feel like the name fits him right. And the suit - well.
He actually laughs a little, even though it's not funny. "The first one was a little big." That first one being Steve's original combat gear, because there hadn't been time or resources to adjust them. The fit had been close enough - they're roughly the same size, but Bucky's a little slimmer, and while no one else had noticed... he'd noticed every single way that uniform had been meant for Steve, not him. "This one? I guess not." He rotates one shoulder a bit. "Although somehow, it's nice to know it's not just me they've got it in for."
He lets out another breath, takes a closer, longer look at Steve. It's... Steve, that's all there is to it, as simple and as complicated as that may be. "So you're still Cap? Where - when - you're from?"
Steve laughs too. It is cathartic to let out some of his emotions into it. He feels like he's a guitar string pulled so tight that a wrong move will have him splitting off in different directions. The laughter loosens everything up a little even if it has the edge of hysteria to it, in the end.
"Yeah," he finally says, knowing that he hardly looks the part right now with this uniform on and his hair the sort of messy, unkempt style that people liked in the future. It really doesn't matter at the moment, though. Bucky won't care about that. "Yeah, I am still Cap. There's a lot of people here from my time. Nat, Vision, Wanda, Thor, Loki..."
Bucky. Shit.
"I...uh..." Gracelessly, he avoids mentioning that last one. This Bucky will need to know. Just...not now. "I don't know if you know all of them..."
Bucky frowns a little. "Natasha and Thor. Loki." He doesn't sound all that thrilled about that last one. He's kinda not - guy tried to invade Earth, starting with his city.
But he has to shake his head. "The other two, though - no." Still - it doesn't matter how much his home is or isn't like Steve's, really. What matters is, "I'm amazed you made friends with some real live people." He ends up elbowing Steve a little, smiling. If it's a little thin and shaky around the edges... well. Whatever.
And then he glances around this place, because - "Nice art studio, by the way. Although maybe you should get a cot."
He laughs a little more, the ribbing so familiar to him. "I don't normally go out getting drunk like that." Except for the past few days, he doesn't amend. "But I'll think about it. Never know when some other moron is going to need to camp out for a night."
He nudges Bucky back. And it's so much like before. Like no time has passed and, despite all the odds, he got his best friend back, untouched by time. It's not true, of course. Bucky has changed. He's different and older with the same battles under his belt that Steve has. It's like they're the same. In all the new ways, they are the same. And in all the old ways, they're the people they'd always been.
The laughter fades as that nudge instead turns into Steve grabbing and holding Bucky's arm once more. His mouth opens and closes around words that don't want to come out. Things that don't make sense or sound wrong. Or maybe he just doesn't have the voice for all of them, considering how tight his throat has become.
But in the end, what's important makes its way out:
"Don't you." Bucky sounds unconvinced, although of course, he hopes it's true. Sure, getting drunk is fine, and he's got nothing against it. But you definitely can't do that every night. Steve definitely never did, even if he's been his fair share of roaring drunk and Bucky's been the same. So, "Don't look at me. I have a room - somewhere." Because learning his way around is still definitely a thing he's doing - but he's good with layouts, and he's not entirely new to being - well, new. It's happened before. He'll adapt.
But anything else he might have been about to say is immediately overshadowed by the way Steve grabs him, the look on his face - and the way he realizes, looking at Steve's face...
"Hey. I might not be your Bucky," he says, softly - because he's not, how can he be? Steve's Bucky is dead - and Bucky's Steve is dead. This is a different Steve, but still so much the same, and - "but I don't think there's rules." He smiles; it's a little sad, a little tight, but that's just him trying to hold himself together. For Steve. Because that's how it works. Bucky doesn't fall apart, because Steve needs him not to. It's always been that way. He thinks it must have been for this Steve's Bucky, too.
"I missed you, too," he breathes out, letting himself say it, because Steve deserves to hear it, quiet though the words are. They're sincere. "The whole world missed you," he adds, but leaves and all they got was me, instead out of it.
And still, even while that's true, "I like to think I'm still in first place, though."
He fucking missed Steve more than anyone else. Even Peggy.
And that's about all he can take. The familiarity of it all is hitting him right under his ribs where there is no defense. He lost Bucky, got him back, and then lost him all over again. It's been loss after loss after loss and one day he'll tell this Bucky all of it, but for right now Steve just has to get used to the unfamiliar feeling of gaining. Of getting someone back in a way you never thought possible.
It's all he can do to pull Bucky in for another hug, burying his face into his shoulder as his eyes finally overflow. The same, silent sobs he learned in the twenties when boys weren't allowed to cry but he'd been kicked too many times to do anything else. Not that Bucky judged him. He was always safe.
Christ, it is so incredible to feel safe again.
"You're my Bucky," he argues, his voice cracking around the words. It feels a little like betrayal to his real Bucky, here, but God, this is his friend back again. And Bucky was right. There were no real rules, here.
He could be guilty later. Right now he just holds on tighter and tries to stop the tears he hasn't let fall since he was a smaller man.
"And shut up. The world was in good hands, with you. Christ, Buck." He just shuts his eyes, at a complete loss.
"Christ. Just...shut up and let me embarrass myself."
The reaction is automatic - Bucky's hands come up, one wrapping around
Steve's broad shoulders, the other burying careful fingertips in his hair.
He is intimately familiar with this - the way Steve cries - and just as
familiar with the fact that it doesn't happen often. It's making his own
vision go hazy, but his voice is still steady, rock solid like the rest of
him, because Steve might be built like a tank but that doesn't mean Bucky
is just gonna let the world take its potshots at him. He never did, and he
never will. Not when it feels like he's being handed a second chance at
something he failed so utterly, so completely, the first time around.
That's a mistake, a failing, he can never undo. But just because you can't
undo something doesn't mean you give up. It doesn't mean you stop letting
things matter, or stop making a difference.
It doesn't mean you don't cling just as tightly to the guy you lost, as
he's clinging to you.
Bucky laughs a little, though it's a quiet, raw sound. "I mean, I guess
it's good to know I pretty much did exactly what you would do. That's a
sign-off from the boss if ever I got one."
His fingers keep scritching gently at Steve's scalp, letting him stay close
even if he's absolutely not embarrassing himself.
Eventually, into the quiet, Bucky asks, "How long've you been here?"
It's okay if Steve's not ready to answer yet, or if he doesn't want to pull
away to do it. Bucky's not exactly going anywhere.
Steve stays pressed in close, accepting the affectionate touches he'd been without for so long. He laughs a little at that question because it feels as though he's been here forever but in reality, he' one of the newest kids on the block. Aside from Bucky, he guessed.
"Not long. Just a month or two, I think. We had...this thing. Where we were stuck and having to watch people's memories. It messed with my sense of time, honestly. For all I know it's been a week or a year. But I think...I think it's been a month or two."
He finally pulls back and lets his face stay wet with tears. It's not like Bucky wouldn't know otherwise. His eyes are glued to his friend, still not quite believing that this isn't all a dream. But Bucky's hand is warm against the back of his neck so, if it is a dream, it's a vivid one. He'll stay, if it's all the same. He'll stay for a good long while.
"I'm on the Bishop. It's a weird ship," he says with a laugh. "The captain there is a four-armed alien from a warring race. The first officer is from another galaxy and was a general of a huge galactic army. And beside them there is a psychic terrorist, a small kid who used to battle with a key, and...well. There's someone else but I haven't met them." It's not really funny but that doesn't mean he's not going to keep laughing anyways.
Bucky frowns a little, more in confusion than anything, at the explanation.
It does sound like a trip, which is not exactly a good thing.
Especially not if it's airing potential dirty laundry, which he kind of
assumes when he hears "having to watch people's memories." He's definitely
not thinking that means seeing people enjoy happy, carefree childhoods.
Then again, maybe it's just because his and Steve's weren't exactly that,
much of the time. Maybe it's different for most people - and then
Steve starts explaining his ship's crew, and... well, that idea goes right
back out the window. (Airlock?)
Still, his smile a wry. "Well, when you wake up in the future and get told
to stop an army of aliens pouring out of the sky... I guess at least it
puts some of this shit in perspective?"
At least Steve might actually get what that feels like, for better or
worse. But if he does, maybe he'll at least laugh.
Steve's face breaks into a smile. "Holy cow. That happened to you, too. The aliens and...Jesus. It's like you and I just swapped lives." His mother would hit him over the ears for throwing the Lord's name around the way he was, but he couldn't help but feel like it is warranted in this moment. What else does one say when confronted with their long-dead best friend who's been living out his exact life?
He's not letting go of Bucky. Even as he seems to calm down and his tears cease, he's not letting go of Bucky. His hands stay glued to his arms. His shoulders. Anything he can get a hold of and grip. Which reminds him...
His eyes drift to Bucky's left arm. It's flesh and solid, the same as it had been before. Steve's hand trails down to his friend's and traces his fingertips over the roughened skin of Bucky's. No metal. No wounds. No broken joint that Hydra manipulated into his body.
Idly, he wonders if he has that arm, now, where Bucky was from. It's a disturbing thought.
"You and I are experts at kidnapping, if you think about it. Falling asleep and waking up someplace else entirely. But at least SHIELD had better reasons than a show."
Bucky's grin gets a little more bemused. "Yeah, that happened to me, too. I
feel like it happening to one of us is weird enough. Both of us is just...
" He shakes his head, but still - part of him, deep down, feels warmth
kindle at the thought of shared life experiences. Especially experiences
that are so weird that they aren't something you can just explain to
someone who hasn't had them. It makes him feel less alone, in a different
way than finding Steve again, even. Maybe he hopes it makes Steve feel the
same way.
In the meantime, Bucky doesn't mind if Steve stays close. He does cock an
eyebrow as Steve seems to take a particular interest in his left arm,
though - not in the least because he wasn't drunk earlier, so he
remembers Steve specifically mentioning that arm, even if it hadn't made
any sense at the time. It still doesn't, really, only now he stands a
chance of actually getting an answer: "Did your guy lose it? The arm, I
mean."
It seems logical to him, really. Plenty of guys lost limbs in the war.
Maybe the other Bucky did, too. He can't really see it slowing him down,
somehow, which really, is more amusing than anything. At least, he
concentrates on that feeling, rather than the twist in his gut at the
thought of losing an arm - or anything.
Steve just nods, not relinquishing his hold until he's aware it's spanning too long. "Yeah," he confirms. And it's about then that he looks up and realizes that it's luck and luck alone that has kept this Bucky from knowing about the other one here. Any broadcast might have some sort of clue. For all Steve knew he could walk by. And Bucky deserved to know before he saw all of what he could have become.
"Yeah. He...fell off the train and lost his arm. I'm sure you realize now that you had a version of the serum in you, then. So...My Bucky. He fell off the train and lived." Steve inhales and holds it to straighten his spine just a little more. "He's actually here, too. Arrived before me. And his left arm is all machinery."
He doesn't say anything about HYDRA. He can't load all of that onto Bucky and expect him to not crumble underneath the knowledge. This alone is enough for him to come to terms with. Because, Steve is sure that it will open up a new possibility in Bucky's head that he hasn't thought of before:
That, if Steve's Bucky lived, so too might have his Steve.
Bucky first goes a little cold when Steve mentions the serum. Because - yeah. Yeah, he knows. If he's being honest, he'd known since the first night Steve had rescued him from that factory - since before, really, when he'd been drifting in and out of consciousness and wished he were hallucinating what was happening to him, the tests, the results, and yet knowing all of it had been real. He knew the entire rest of the goddamned war, even if he'd been able to keep it to himself all the way up until they'd dug him out of a chunk of ice to find his heart still beating and wondered why. Wondered how. And gone digging.
So yeah. He knows. And so does SHIELD, and he knows it's going to get out eventually. He's been Captain America again. People are going to figure it out. There's already been enough speculation, on websites and news shows because people can watch the footage over and over again and see that he can do more than he should. It wasn't a freak accident that he never died. It was shoddy, secondhand version of the serum that gave Steve everything, and then took it all away.
And now - now Steve is absolutely right. Bucky's brain skips right over the fact that there's another him here - that this Steve still has his best friend, and he's here, and suddenly Bucky feels lie a sham, like an impostor, like a kid desperate to replace the best friend that just moved away with someone else - and it takes the rest of what Steve said and he feels suddenly sick. So sick that his face goes pale, his hand rising to cover his mouth like he might make like Steve and throw up whatever the hell he last ate, because -
Because if this Steve's Bucky could have survived with that shoddy, secondhand serum (and Bucky survived the crash with it, and now he knows Steve could have, too). If that had happened, then how the hell would a fall like that have killed his Steve Rogers.
Fuck. Fuck. He really feels like he's gonna be sick.
"Hey. Bucky. Hey, pal. C'mon...breathe." Steve is moving closer to him, one large hand on the back of his neck and the other pressed against his chest. Steve takes slow, deep breaths on his own to coax Bucky into duplicating him. Monkey see, monkey do, after all. And maybe later he can say that to his friend and get the punch that comparison richly deserves. But not yet. Not until this has passed because, Christ, it's not even the worst the news gets. If anything, this is the good part of the story: your friend lives!
Lives to be tortured for seventy years by HYDRA and made into an assassin. That was going to go over great.
"Breathe," he repeats, eyes focusing on Bucky and trying to see if he's going to need to hurl on the floor as well. "Look. That was my timeline. Even though it seems real similar, there's no guarantee that the same things happened both times. Like. We never looked for you, when you fell. I begged, but they never did. You searching means...maybe I did fall in the river. Maybe I hit a stone wrong. I could have died." Which normally wouldn't be said so hopefully. Life is weird sometimes.
He reaches up with the hand not on Bucky's neck and cups Bucky's cheek.
"You did everything you could. Everything. Hear it from me, alright? I wouldn't blame you. You went above and beyond for me. If I lived, it was by luck. None of this was your fault."
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2019-01-31 07:06 pm (UTC)Huh.
Steve blinks a little, adjusting to the light as he takes in the space. As he takes in the person next to him who... Can't be real. Can't...actually be real.
Steve sits up faster, ignoring his head screaming and stares at Bucky like he's come back from the dead all over again. Which, honestly, it looks like he has. He's nothing like the Bucky he knows is here. The haunted look is gone from his eyes and his hair is short like Steve always remembered it being. It's like someone stepped out of his past and into this room.
It has to be some sort of illusion. Some hoax or...post Calibration prank. The cruelest possible one the Atroma could come up with, all for the ratings. And yet...
"Bucky?"
no subject
Date: 2019-01-31 07:24 pm (UTC)But that suddenly seems to be the least of their worries, because Steve goes from horizontal to upright definitely faster than Bucky thinks he should, and he's staring at Bucky pretty much the same way Bucky would have been staring at him, if he didn't have such a good goddamn lid on his own emotions. A lid that is threatening to crumble, no matter how tightly he's trying to hold it in place.
"Hey," he says, and if his voice is quiet, maybe he can tell himself it's because he's trying not to exacerbate whatever hangover Steve likely has, and not because he feels like his throat is closing up. It's harder to just... deal with this now, with Steve looking at him like that, with the full weight of Steve's (mostly) sober attention on him. It makes him feel like he has to explain himself... and also like there's no possible explanation that could ever be good enough. There isn't. There really, really isn't.
"Been a while," he finally manages to say - and then he manages to pull himself together enough to add, "How's that hangover treating you?"
no subject
Date: 2019-01-31 07:36 pm (UTC)"Bucky...?"
Steve isn't stupid. He knows that this isn't the one that has been here, before. The one from earlier in his own timeline that won't even send him a text, let alone talk to him like this. His Bucky doesn't know him. And, even if he did, there is no way the conversation would have the ease this one is having.
There is no way he would look at him the way this man is.
"Bucky," he says more firmly, his hand clawing into the fabric like holding onto a lifeline. "God...Oh my God..." And that's about all he can manage before he pulls forward, intending to hug his friend tight.
If only his stomach wouldn't have chosen that moment to protest, of course. It roils hard and Steve has just enough time to turn away and push at Bucky before he's throwing up against the floor.
Perfect first meeting.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-31 07:59 pm (UTC)So maybe he holds on just as tightly, inhales sharply the scent that's so very Steve despite the rest of this place and even the unfamiliar clothes Steve is wearing and the new haircut, and just keeps holding on until -
Well. Yeah. That's not surprising, either.
Bucky's nose wrinkles just a little, but it's not the first pile of puke he has seen Steve leave in his wake. "Yeah, that about answers my question," he says quietly, reaching over to touch Steve's back, just letting him retch with as much dignity as the action can really garner. "Lemme see if I can find something to clean that up."
And he's also gonna take that empty glass back and fill it up again for the guy.
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Date: 2019-01-31 08:26 pm (UTC)"I think the last time I threw up was with you, too. Back in '42." He smiles at Bucky, more hopeful than anything else since it wasn't all that long ago that speaking about a memory would be left off with a blank response. Steve hasn't taken a single memory Bucky reclaimed for granted. The idea he can just reference one now and have it understood is too good to be believed. Steve will need to see it first.
"Where...Where did you come from?" Which is entirely the wrong question. "How did you find me?"
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Date: 2019-01-31 09:10 pm (UTC)One corner of his mouth lifts in a wry half-grin, then he's already moving to help Steve clean up the mess. At least, until Steve asks the obvious questions, and... well, Bucky's only got simple, insufficient answers.
"D.C.," he says, with regard to the first one. "I was in D.C. After - the war." There. That's simple, right? And true. "And then I was here, and I needed a drink, only I never got one, 'cause your drunk ass was already in the bar."
And - "How did you get here?" Because - Bucky doesn't want to say it, but he's got to: "You're dead, Steve."
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Date: 2019-01-31 09:21 pm (UTC)Steve's face conveys just how absurd he thinks this is. But then he remembers Vision's Calibration room and the alternate Bucky's the other had known. How one of them had been Cap, in that universe. Steve hadn't thought about it, but perhaps that meant that he...
He was the one that fell off the train.
Steve swallows, feeling nauseous but with nothing left in his stomach to get rid of. Could that really be what was going on here? Why else would Bucky be acting like this, thinking he was dead? Christ. How messy was this world going to get?
"I'm not dead." Clearly. "I...never died. They thought I had, when I crashed into the arctic, but I just...sort of froze, I guess. They thawed me out and been fighting. Up until I got dragged to this Hell, at least."
Steve replays the part about Bucky being in DC. After the war. That means he lived and got home? Is that what it meant? Steve can't help but reach out again and hold Bucky's arm. "What year was it? When you left?"
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Date: 2019-01-31 09:32 pm (UTC)He feels like the breath's been punched out of him for a minute. He's never really just... sat down and spelled this all out for anybody. Least of all a dead guy.
He pulls in another breath, tries again. "It's 2014. Which I know sounds stupid, but - maybe not as stupid as you'd think," he says, given what Steve just told him. "You died in 1945. In the Alps. We looked for your body, Steve." Hell yes he'd made sure they had, and not just because losing access to the one working sample of Erskine's formula, even frozen, had been unacceptable to the Army. That had just been a convenient way to muster more resources. Even if it had all been in vain. "We never found fucking anything." Everyone had concluded he'd crashed into the icy river, been carried away. Bucky hadn't liked it, but he'd believed it.
"So... I got promoted to Captain."
With the capital C. As in, Captain America.
Hence the shield. The suit.
This doesn't make any sense at all.
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Date: 2019-01-31 09:47 pm (UTC)They'd both been wrong.
Steve feels like he has asthma all over again. He can't breathe and he's choking on his own tongue trying to talk as he stares at Bucky who...who is him. It's him in another life where HYDRA never got him. Never tortured him. He's whole and he doesn't care that this means he was probably the one in Bucky's place because his best friend had been spared.
This is what it looks like. Bucky alive and whole and spared.
His eyes are shining as he grips his friend's shoulders, still not quite able to breathe or get color back into his face.
"You fell off the train, Buck. Where...where I came from, you fell off the train. I tried to get to you and...the railing broke. I couldn't... There was nothing anyone could do. They were sure you were dead and they didn't even look for you..."
His head is spinning. He's not sure if it's lack of oxygen, hangover, or everything crashing in on him at once.
"God...Bucky. It's really you?"
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Date: 2019-01-31 09:56 pm (UTC)It's like looking in the mirror, only... a weird, wrong funhouse mirror, one that shows you exactly what you want to see and don't want to see at the same time. The number of times Bucky had wished it had been him, because he was just a soldier - well. Because they'd thought he'd been just a soldier at the time, because he'd ignored and buried all the signs that maybe he wasn't, and because Steve was just - Steve was everything. Steve was the good guy, Steve was Captain America for a reason. Bucky knows he's not the right guy for the job. He's just the one they'd conveniently picked, and now he's stuck with it. Which is okay, really, because what else does he have? What else could he have, but a slew of dead or dying friends and the memories of a guy he can never quite live up to?
He grabs at Steve to haul him in for a hug, partly because that's just what he needs to do, because Steve needs it, and maybe even because Bucky needs it. And partly so Steve won't see all that in his face, because it's hard to stay so stoic when... this is so messed up.
"I'm as real as I ever was. If you are," he says, quietly. Only a little strangled.
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Date: 2019-01-31 10:04 pm (UTC)Jesus, this was a mess.
"I'm real," he assures him, face buried into his shoulder. "I'm real. I wish to God sometimes I wasn't, especially with this hangover. But not if...not if you're real, too." His hands are fisting up against this suit Bucky is wearing, not letting him go until Steve's 100% sure he's not going to cry. His face already feels alarmingly damp but he'll say that was just water he spilled, earlier.
When he finally retreats, he drags his sleeve across to clean it up, fast.
"God. Look at you. Captain James Buchanan Barnes. Captain America..." He can't help his watery laugh. "Did they make the suit pinch any less for you?"
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Date: 2019-02-01 04:01 am (UTC)Maybe they're about to get better, because fuck being kidnapped, but if it means Steve's here... Alive -
Bucky takes in a slow breath of his own, proud of the way it doesn't really shudder. He doesn't pull away until Steve does, and if he notices anything on his face... well. He doesn't have to say anything about it, does he.
Of course, he does snort a moment later. "It sounds even worse when you say it," he mutters, because he still doesn't feel like the name fits him right. And the suit - well.
He actually laughs a little, even though it's not funny. "The first one was a little big." That first one being Steve's original combat gear, because there hadn't been time or resources to adjust them. The fit had been close enough - they're roughly the same size, but Bucky's a little slimmer, and while no one else had noticed... he'd noticed every single way that uniform had been meant for Steve, not him. "This one? I guess not." He rotates one shoulder a bit. "Although somehow, it's nice to know it's not just me they've got it in for."
He lets out another breath, takes a closer, longer look at Steve. It's... Steve, that's all there is to it, as simple and as complicated as that may be. "So you're still Cap? Where - when - you're from?"
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Date: 2019-02-01 04:14 am (UTC)"Yeah," he finally says, knowing that he hardly looks the part right now with this uniform on and his hair the sort of messy, unkempt style that people liked in the future. It really doesn't matter at the moment, though. Bucky won't care about that. "Yeah, I am still Cap. There's a lot of people here from my time. Nat, Vision, Wanda, Thor, Loki..."
Bucky. Shit.
"I...uh..." Gracelessly, he avoids mentioning that last one. This Bucky will need to know. Just...not now. "I don't know if you know all of them..."
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Date: 2019-02-01 04:24 am (UTC)But he has to shake his head. "The other two, though - no." Still - it doesn't matter how much his home is or isn't like Steve's, really. What matters is, "I'm amazed you made friends with some real live people." He ends up elbowing Steve a little, smiling. If it's a little thin and shaky around the edges... well. Whatever.
And then he glances around this place, because - "Nice art studio, by the way. Although maybe you should get a cot."
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Date: 2019-02-01 04:34 am (UTC)He nudges Bucky back. And it's so much like before. Like no time has passed and, despite all the odds, he got his best friend back, untouched by time. It's not true, of course. Bucky has changed. He's different and older with the same battles under his belt that Steve has. It's like they're the same. In all the new ways, they are the same. And in all the old ways, they're the people they'd always been.
The laughter fades as that nudge instead turns into Steve grabbing and holding Bucky's arm once more. His mouth opens and closes around words that don't want to come out. Things that don't make sense or sound wrong. Or maybe he just doesn't have the voice for all of them, considering how tight his throat has become.
But in the end, what's important makes its way out:
"I missed you, Buck. God, I missed you so bad..."
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Date: 2019-02-01 05:12 am (UTC)But anything else he might have been about to say is immediately overshadowed by the way Steve grabs him, the look on his face - and the way he realizes, looking at Steve's face...
"Hey. I might not be your Bucky," he says, softly - because he's not, how can he be? Steve's Bucky is dead - and Bucky's Steve is dead. This is a different Steve, but still so much the same, and - "but I don't think there's rules." He smiles; it's a little sad, a little tight, but that's just him trying to hold himself together. For Steve. Because that's how it works. Bucky doesn't fall apart, because Steve needs him not to. It's always been that way. He thinks it must have been for this Steve's Bucky, too.
"I missed you, too," he breathes out, letting himself say it, because Steve deserves to hear it, quiet though the words are. They're sincere. "The whole world missed you," he adds, but leaves and all they got was me, instead out of it.
And still, even while that's true, "I like to think I'm still in first place, though."
He fucking missed Steve more than anyone else. Even Peggy.
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Date: 2019-02-01 05:31 am (UTC)It's all he can do to pull Bucky in for another hug, burying his face into his shoulder as his eyes finally overflow. The same, silent sobs he learned in the twenties when boys weren't allowed to cry but he'd been kicked too many times to do anything else. Not that Bucky judged him. He was always safe.
Christ, it is so incredible to feel safe again.
"You're my Bucky," he argues, his voice cracking around the words. It feels a little like betrayal to his real Bucky, here, but God, this is his friend back again. And Bucky was right. There were no real rules, here.
He could be guilty later. Right now he just holds on tighter and tries to stop the tears he hasn't let fall since he was a smaller man.
"And shut up. The world was in good hands, with you. Christ, Buck." He just shuts his eyes, at a complete loss.
"Christ. Just...shut up and let me embarrass myself."
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Date: 2019-02-01 06:49 pm (UTC)"Steve - "
The reaction is automatic - Bucky's hands come up, one wrapping around Steve's broad shoulders, the other burying careful fingertips in his hair. He is intimately familiar with this - the way Steve cries - and just as familiar with the fact that it doesn't happen often. It's making his own vision go hazy, but his voice is still steady, rock solid like the rest of him, because Steve might be built like a tank but that doesn't mean Bucky is just gonna let the world take its potshots at him. He never did, and he never will. Not when it feels like he's being handed a second chance at something he failed so utterly, so completely, the first time around. That's a mistake, a failing, he can never undo. But just because you can't undo something doesn't mean you give up. It doesn't mean you stop letting things matter, or stop making a difference.
It doesn't mean you don't cling just as tightly to the guy you lost, as he's clinging to you.
Bucky laughs a little, though it's a quiet, raw sound. "I mean, I guess it's good to know I pretty much did exactly what you would do. That's a sign-off from the boss if ever I got one."
His fingers keep scritching gently at Steve's scalp, letting him stay close even if he's absolutely not embarrassing himself.
Eventually, into the quiet, Bucky asks, "How long've you been here?"
It's okay if Steve's not ready to answer yet, or if he doesn't want to pull away to do it. Bucky's not exactly going anywhere.
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Date: 2019-02-01 07:33 pm (UTC)"Not long. Just a month or two, I think. We had...this thing. Where we were stuck and having to watch people's memories. It messed with my sense of time, honestly. For all I know it's been a week or a year. But I think...I think it's been a month or two."
He finally pulls back and lets his face stay wet with tears. It's not like Bucky wouldn't know otherwise. His eyes are glued to his friend, still not quite believing that this isn't all a dream. But Bucky's hand is warm against the back of his neck so, if it is a dream, it's a vivid one. He'll stay, if it's all the same. He'll stay for a good long while.
"I'm on the Bishop. It's a weird ship," he says with a laugh. "The captain there is a four-armed alien from a warring race. The first officer is from another galaxy and was a general of a huge galactic army. And beside them there is a psychic terrorist, a small kid who used to battle with a key, and...well. There's someone else but I haven't met them." It's not really funny but that doesn't mean he's not going to keep laughing anyways.
"This place...it's a trip."
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Date: 2019-02-01 08:16 pm (UTC)Bucky frowns a little, more in confusion than anything, at the explanation. It does sound like a trip, which is not exactly a good thing. Especially not if it's airing potential dirty laundry, which he kind of assumes when he hears "having to watch people's memories." He's definitely not thinking that means seeing people enjoy happy, carefree childhoods.
Then again, maybe it's just because his and Steve's weren't exactly that, much of the time. Maybe it's different for most people - and then Steve starts explaining his ship's crew, and... well, that idea goes right back out the window. (Airlock?)
Still, his smile a wry. "Well, when you wake up in the future and get told to stop an army of aliens pouring out of the sky... I guess at least it puts some of this shit in perspective?"
At least Steve might actually get what that feels like, for better or worse. But if he does, maybe he'll at least laugh.
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Date: 2019-02-01 08:25 pm (UTC)He's not letting go of Bucky. Even as he seems to calm down and his tears cease, he's not letting go of Bucky. His hands stay glued to his arms. His shoulders. Anything he can get a hold of and grip. Which reminds him...
His eyes drift to Bucky's left arm. It's flesh and solid, the same as it had been before. Steve's hand trails down to his friend's and traces his fingertips over the roughened skin of Bucky's. No metal. No wounds. No broken joint that Hydra manipulated into his body.
Idly, he wonders if he has that arm, now, where Bucky was from. It's a disturbing thought.
"You and I are experts at kidnapping, if you think about it. Falling asleep and waking up someplace else entirely. But at least SHIELD had better reasons than a show."
At the time, at least...
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Date: 2019-02-01 08:58 pm (UTC)Bucky's grin gets a little more bemused. "Yeah, that happened to me, too. I feel like it happening to one of us is weird enough. Both of us is just... " He shakes his head, but still - part of him, deep down, feels warmth kindle at the thought of shared life experiences. Especially experiences that are so weird that they aren't something you can just explain to someone who hasn't had them. It makes him feel less alone, in a different way than finding Steve again, even. Maybe he hopes it makes Steve feel the same way.
In the meantime, Bucky doesn't mind if Steve stays close. He does cock an eyebrow as Steve seems to take a particular interest in his left arm, though - not in the least because he wasn't drunk earlier, so he remembers Steve specifically mentioning that arm, even if it hadn't made any sense at the time. It still doesn't, really, only now he stands a chance of actually getting an answer: "Did your guy lose it? The arm, I mean."
It seems logical to him, really. Plenty of guys lost limbs in the war. Maybe the other Bucky did, too. He can't really see it slowing him down, somehow, which really, is more amusing than anything. At least, he concentrates on that feeling, rather than the twist in his gut at the thought of losing an arm - or anything.
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Date: 2019-02-01 09:20 pm (UTC)"Yeah. He...fell off the train and lost his arm. I'm sure you realize now that you had a version of the serum in you, then. So...My Bucky. He fell off the train and lived." Steve inhales and holds it to straighten his spine just a little more. "He's actually here, too. Arrived before me. And his left arm is all machinery."
He doesn't say anything about HYDRA. He can't load all of that onto Bucky and expect him to not crumble underneath the knowledge. This alone is enough for him to come to terms with. Because, Steve is sure that it will open up a new possibility in Bucky's head that he hasn't thought of before:
That, if Steve's Bucky lived, so too might have his Steve.
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Date: 2019-02-04 12:24 am (UTC)So yeah. He knows. And so does SHIELD, and he knows it's going to get out eventually. He's been Captain America again. People are going to figure it out. There's already been enough speculation, on websites and news shows because people can watch the footage over and over again and see that he can do more than he should. It wasn't a freak accident that he never died. It was shoddy, secondhand version of the serum that gave Steve everything, and then took it all away.
And now - now Steve is absolutely right. Bucky's brain skips right over the fact that there's another him here - that this Steve still has his best friend, and he's here, and suddenly Bucky feels lie a sham, like an impostor, like a kid desperate to replace the best friend that just moved away with someone else - and it takes the rest of what Steve said and he feels suddenly sick. So sick that his face goes pale, his hand rising to cover his mouth like he might make like Steve and throw up whatever the hell he last ate, because -
Because if this Steve's Bucky could have survived with that shoddy, secondhand serum (and Bucky survived the crash with it, and now he knows Steve could have, too). If that had happened, then how the hell would a fall like that have killed his Steve Rogers.
Fuck. Fuck. He really feels like he's gonna be sick.
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Date: 2019-02-04 03:37 pm (UTC)Lives to be tortured for seventy years by HYDRA and made into an assassin. That was going to go over great.
"Breathe," he repeats, eyes focusing on Bucky and trying to see if he's going to need to hurl on the floor as well. "Look. That was my timeline. Even though it seems real similar, there's no guarantee that the same things happened both times. Like. We never looked for you, when you fell. I begged, but they never did. You searching means...maybe I did fall in the river. Maybe I hit a stone wrong. I could have died." Which normally wouldn't be said so hopefully. Life is weird sometimes.
He reaches up with the hand not on Bucky's neck and cups Bucky's cheek.
"You did everything you could. Everything. Hear it from me, alright? I wouldn't blame you. You went above and beyond for me. If I lived, it was by luck. None of this was your fault."
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