Chapter Text
The Asset stood still. Still like a glacier, moving so little as to be imperceptible to the human eye. The only sign that it was awake and aware, not frozen still, was the puff of condensation from the nose and the measured, steady blinks. It stood at the back wall of the arctic base, as scientists and soldiers buzzed around like flies, drawn in to the tank containing sharp-smelling fluid and the body of a man.
A technician bent over a console, flicking switches and pressing buttons frantically, his wire-rimmed glasses fogged over until he was nearly blind. There was a buzzing sound, and he leaned over to the microphone. “ARC-1 to Main, urgent message for, uh—Dr. Zola, or the Director, o-or—”
“Deliver your message, ARC-1.” A cool, crisp voice, annoyance untempered by static.
“We found him. We found Captain America.”
Silence. Then, another voice came online. A voice that made the Asset’s shoulders tense, but only for a moment before it forced the muscles to relax, one by one. “Marvelous. And the Tesseract?”
“We’re still searching, Doctor,” the technician replied. “We’re, uh, defrosting Captain America right now. We’ll know soon—”
“We’re getting brain activity. He’s alive,” a scientist barked out, voice carrying above the murmur of the room.
“Alive?” A crackling chuckle. “I suppose Director Lukin will have his second Asset after all.”
Once again, tension crawled across the shoulders. Once again, the Asset didn’t question why. The Asset didn’t question the wrongness of it all, or why it couldn’t tear the eyes away from the blonde man in the tank as the scientists began to lift him out of the thawing solution and onto a nearby gurney. One of the scientists leaned in, setting an IV into the man’s arm. He inhaled sharply.
“Holy sh*t,” he muttered. “Captain America is an omega.”
Among the rumbling bass of the scent of thirty people crammed into a small base and the cacophonous tenor of the too-familiar chemical smell was a different scent. It didn’t grate, it soothed; it didn’t growl, it sighed. Though it was faint, it cut through the noise like a single high, melodic note.
The Asset—
The Asset knew that smell.
That smell was home.
The Asset knew what home was.
That smell was love.
The Asset knew what love was.
That smell was mine.
The Asset knew what mine was.
There were voices, whispers. The crackling voice over the connection. And a low, rumbling growl that shook him to the very bones.
A soldier was leaning over the man. One meaty hand on man’s arm as he leaned in close to scent him.
As the Asset took a single step forward, all sound in the room quieted. Save for the growl.
The soldier looked up at the Asset, his eyes wide. A metal hand was now locked around his throat. The hand squeezed, and the soldier let out one last, rattling breath and expired.
The Asset let the body drop from the hand as it turned a gaze upon the sleeping man. It did not know where it had met him. It did not know why he had come here. It didn’t even know his name. But it knew the exact shade of blue that would be revealed once those long, delicate eyelashes fluttered open. It knew that its hand would fit perfectly on the curve of his neck. It knew that he was was his. And suddenly, he knew that they had burned what was his out of him, again and again, with electricity and ice and pain. He knew they had tried to take away what belonged to him.
And he knew they would try to do it again.
He turned on his heel, pulling out the gun that was slung over his shoulder.
He had a mission.
Protect what was his.
–
Steve drew back to awareness in bits and pieces.
The first thing to return was his hearing, though he didn’t realize it had returned immediately. It was quiet in the room. No shuffling of rubber clogs on tile, or the shifting of armor against canvas. As soon as he was aware that he was awake, and that the silence was in the room and not in his head, he kept his breathing steady and his eyes loosely closed.
The situation he was currently in would drastically change how he needed to approach it. It was best to let his captors believe that he was asleep for a few moments longer.
The next thing he noticed was the familiar ache in his elbow. An IV, though his head didn’t feel heavy enough for it to be a sedative. Or maybe it was a very mild one, and his metabolism had burned through it quicker and more thoroughly than his captors had realized.
There was soft fabric pressing down on him: a thick, warm layer draped over his body, and something soft pressed against his back. That made him cautiously optimistic. It wasn’t a cold vinyl-covered table or a metal gurney, it was a real mattress.
He inhaled. The air smelled vaguely medical, in the way all hospitals—from the hospitals his mom worked at to the field hospitals he sat in—seemed to smell. It wasn’t a smell that Steve was particularly fond of, especially since he could only detect the faintest hint of Bucky. Wherever they were, Bucky wasn’t and hadn’t been in here.
The people who had him would learn the hard way what happens when somebody got between him and Bucky, unless Steve could figure out how to find him before he woke up alone. He was relatively certain at this point that it wasn’t HYDRA. HYDRA wasn’t one for treating their assets to luxuries like clean sheets and blankets, and his body didn’t feel like complete crap.
He let his eyelids flutter weakly, as if he was feeling worse than he was, and moved his head to the side so slowly he could almost feel his neck creak as he did a scan of the room. It was clearly a hospital room, done up with cool mint walls and white ceilings. It wasn’t as cluttered as he would’ve thought. There was hardly any equipment in the room, only three plastic chairs along the wall and at least three cameras in the ceiling—two hidden, one not. Standing by the door was a woman. Her dark hair was pulled up in a tight bun, and she was wearing a blue canvas jacket and jeans. He could see the shape of a holster under her jacket, and she radiated an air of businesslike efficiency.
Steve licked his lips. “Where…am I?”
The woman looked at him. “Captain Rogers. You’re in a safe place.”
He eyed her warily. “A safe place?”
“Yes. You were recovered after the building you were in was bombed,” the woman said calmly. “My name is Maria Hill. I’m here to answer any questions you may have.”
Maria Hill’s eyes were sharp. Steve didn’t like lying down with her looming over him. He pushed himself up with his arms, going slowly to as to seem like it was more effort than it was. He glanced at the IV stuck in his elbow.
“It’s just saline and nutrients,” she said nonchalantly. Steve nodded, examining her carefully, and decided she was telling the truth.
He glanced around the room one more time. There was only one question he needed answering. “Where’s Bucky?”
That made Hill pause. “Sergeant Barnes has been dead since 1944.”
Oh.
“Then where’s the Winter Soldier?” Steve asked.
Hill was very good. She was clearly well-trained by somebody, and must have some level of competence if they left her alone in a room with an unconscious Captain America. Her face was perfectly smoothed over in that set mask he’d seen Peggy take on during countless meetings. But Steve was better. He saw the moment the rise and fall of Hill’s chest went from a calm, measured breathing to a deliberately calm, measured breathing.
“He’s in custody,” Hill said. There was a hard edge in her voice.
“Am I in custody?” Steve asked.
“No, Captain. You’re in recovery.”
Steve’s hackles rose. “Let him out,” he said.
“Captain Rogers?” Hill didn’t bother hiding the doubt in her voice.
Steve leaned forward, no longer holding himself up. He stared into Hill’s eyes, trying to impress upon her the importance of what he was saying. “The Winter Soldier has been a prisoner of war since 1944. He’s undergone torture, brainwashing, electroshock therapy, all sorts of experimental procedures so HYDRA could turn him into a mindless weapon they could point and shoot. He shouldn’t be in custody.”
Hill did not look surprised. “Captain, that does correlate to some of the theories we developed about his existence. However, please understand that we must prevent him from hurting others. He’s dangerous.”
“So am I.” Steve fought to keep the corner of his mouth from rising into a smirk—or a snarl. “I know that that door is reinforced to hell and back and you have guards six deep outside of that door. Of course you’d want to contain me, too, you have no idea what happened to me in the seventy years I’ve been missing. Bring him here and keep us contained together.”
There was a flash in Hill’s eyes. The first real emotion Steve saw slip through her mask. “We can’t allow that to happen, Captain Rogers. He—”
“Then take me to him. Where is he?” Steve was losing his patience, he was losing time. He grasped the IV and ripped it out, tossed the blankets aside and swung his legs over the side of the hospital bed.
“Stop, Captain. He’s in custody—” Hill cut herself off. Even muffled by thick walls, they could both hear the sirens.
Steve felt an unknown emotion bubbling up in his throat. It popped out as a laugh. “Not anymore.” He shook off the amusem*nt and dropped his voice low, the way Peggy did whenever she really wanted someone to listen to her. “Listen. You can’t trust me, I can’t trust you. But if—whoever you work for is good, actually cares about you, then radio your people and tell them to stand down. He’s scared and angry and alone, and he’ll kill anyone who gets between him and me. If you want to save your agents’ lives, tell them to stand down and get out of the way. Tell him where to find me.”
“Your safety is—” Hill was clearly in agony. She had her orders and they were in direct conflict with what Steve was telling her.
Steve laughed again. “I’m safer with him than I am with you.”
Maria Hill stared at him.
She was good at her job.
It only took her 150 milliseconds to come to a decision.
Her hand flew up to her earpiece. “All units, stand down,” she barked, her voice firm and authoritative in a way that made Steve think of Colonel Philips. “Clear the hallways between B203 and room 146. I repeat. Stand down. Clear the passages between B203 and 146.” She dropped her hand and sighed. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Captain Rogers.”
“Don’t you know?” Steve gave her a wry smile. “I’m the Star-Spangled Man With A Plan.”
The look on Hill’s face was the perfect blend of awe, confusion, astonishment, and suspicion.
Steve closed his eyes. If he concentrated, over the blaring of klaxons, he thought he could hear something scraping and a few thumps. Little noises that were gradually getting louder, but to anyone else without super-hearing would be easily drowned out by the sirens.
There was a crunch and the grate in the ceiling fell to the floor with a clang.
Bucky dropped through into a crouch. His eyes flickered over the room and he rose to his feet, turning to face Hill, who drew a gun and pointed it at him, her hands steady.
“Wait, not her,” Steve said hastily. “She was the one who told you where I am.”
Bucky stopped. Hill, to her credit, stood her ground. She didn’t move a muscle, gave no indication that she was afraid of this angry, murderous alpha who had broken out of containment and into this secure room except for the sheen of sweat on her brow.
After a long, tense moment, Bucky turned his back to her. It took him two strides to next to Steve’s hospital bed. Then, he dropped to his knees, leaning forward and pressing his forehead against Steve’s calves. Steve reached down and stroked his fingers through his messy hair, combing out a few dusty cobwebs.
“Doll,” Bucky rasped.
“Hi,” Steve said, plastering a warm, soothing smile on his face, even though he was hyper-aware of the gun pointed at the back of Bucky’s head. “That’s me.”
“Pet. Sweetheart.” He could see the gears in Bucky’s head turning as he struggled to pull himself out of the swirling, mindless violence that ruled the Winter Soldier. He knew he succeeded when he looked up, his blue eyes bright like a summer sky peeking through the fog hanging over the Atlantic ocean. “Steve.”
“That’s me,” Steve agreed, not bothering to hide the smile, the true smile, that was overtaking his face. “I’m here.”
And things were going to be okay. He and Bucky were together, and they were free. Nothing these people could throw at them would be any worse than what HYDRA did.
“Steve,” Bucky sighed, leaning forward and pressing his forehead against Steve’s calves again. His flesh hand was wrapped around Steve’s ankle, his thumb gently stroking the bare skin there. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know,” Steve said, shooting a cautious glance up at Hill, who looked pale, her eyes darting around the room. “But we’re safe.”
“You’re safe,” Bucky muttered, mixed relief and despair, and Steve could hear the implicit, But I’m not. Steve gently cupped his cheek, encouraging him to tilt his head back so he could say, firmly,
“We’re safe.”
Then the door banged against the wall and four heavily armored people entered the room, training their weapons—two guns, a bow, a bulky red—glove? with a glowing patch in the middle—at Bucky.
In a split second, Bucky was on his feet, his right arm securing Steve behind him, his left arm out in front of him.
And Steve refused to have it. These people were afraid of Bucky. They had their guns on Bucky. They wouldn’t shoot Steve, they knew that he was Captain America and apparently that name still held water even here and now, and Bucky was an idiot if he thought that Steve needed protecting more than he did. He wrenched himself out of Bucky’s grip and attempted to step around him, but Bucky stopped him with his metal arm and tried to shove him back, so Steve wrapped his arms around his waist and twisted, lifting Bucky off his feet, then Bucky kicked his knee and suddenly they were tussling, both trying to get in front of the other, get between the danger and their lover.
The five people in the room watched this dance wordlessly.
“Is this a mating dance?” the man with the weird red gloves asked uncertainly. His voice dropped into a very bad British accent. “Here we see the courtship displays of the American and Russian Super-Soldier.”
“Stark,” the redheaded woman said. “Not the time.”
“Hey,” the man with the short black hair said, his voice pitched low and soothing, like he was talking to a pair of on-edge supersoldiers, one of whom was supposed to be frozen in the Arctic and the other was supposed to be a brainwashed assassin, “We’re just here to chat. We have some questions.”
“You tried to keep Steve away,” Bucky growled, in the hard and flat way the Winter Soldier spoke.
Three pairs of eyes glared at Bucky. The red-gloved man said, “Hey, buddy? For future reference, forcing a bond onto someone isn’t a great way to get conjugal visitation rights. Just sayin’.”
“You.” Bucky’s arm whirred, and Steve put his hand on his chest, holding him back, his mind running as fast as the servos in Bucky’s arm.
“Bucky,” he said, his voice low. Then, he addressed the people in the room. “Our bond wasn’t forced on us. We’ve been a pair since 1939.”
Five people stared at him.
“Bucky?” the bow guy asked. “As in, Bucky Barnes, Captain America’s right-hand man?”
“Yes,” Steve said, with the certainty that he knew Bucky couldn’t muster for himself.
“Man, I don’t even know where to start,” the black-haired man said.
–
It started like this:
Two boys from Brooklyn. Twelve and thirteen, and already they knew they were best friends for life.
Or maybe it started like this:
Two boys from Brooklyn. Fourteen and fifteen. One of them presented as an alpha early. He kept stealing glances at his friend, quietly, when he thought no one was looking. Except his friend was always looking back.
Or maybe it started like this:
Two boys from Brooklyn. Twenty and twenty-one. One of them unexpectedly presented as an omega. He was late to presenting by a whole two years, and male omegas were so rare as to be a rumor. By all rights, he should have been a beta like most of the population. By all rights, he should’ve moved out of the little apartment they shared the second he presented. It wasn’t right for an unbonded omega to be living with an alpha that wasn’t family. But they were as good as brothers, anyways, so he stayed.
Of course, brothers didn’t spend that first heat together. And brothers didn’t emerge from their shared bed three days later with matching marks on their necks, carefully hidden with collars and ties.
It was a shame. Two men bonding with each other wasn’t done. It happened on accident, of course, and of course an accident like that would happen when you were living together in sin. The best thing to do would be to find two lovely beta wives and settle down in houses next to each other, only spending heats in each other’s beds.
But that wasn’t the best thing for them.
–
“Thank you for your cooperation,” the woman who claimed to be Natasha Romanoff (Bucky shot her) said, shutting the file folder she didn’t need.
She was standing in the center of the room. Steve and Bucky sat side-by-side at the foot of Steve’s bed, their sides pressed together. The three men—Clint Barton (Bucky punched him and broke his nose and cheekbone), Sam Wilson (Bucky threw him off a bridge and also a Helicarrier), and Tony Stark (Bucky killed his parents, Steve had curled up in his arms and cried and cried and the arms that caved his friend’s face had wrapped around him and Bucky didn’t know why Steve was so upset) were sitting in the plastic chairs. Maria Hill was standing by the door. Even keeping things to vague brushstrokes and glossing over the truth entirely, it had taken nearly four hours to answer all of their questions and go through the timeline of how Bucky and Steve had ended up here in Manhattan seventy years after their supposed deaths.
Steve nodded. “So…what’s going to happen to us?”
“The HYDRA files Natasha dumped online contain proof that they did do experiments on Sergeant Barnes,” Maria Hill said. “For now, we’re treating you two as recovered POWs. You’ll be treated for the injuries you sustained, and you can stay here, in Avengers Tower, until we can reintegrate you two back into society.”
“Hey,” Tony Stark said, “Don’t I get a say in whether or not I have to play landlord to a pair of absurdly youthful-looking grandpas?”
“Tony.” Hill frowned.
“Lemme tell you. I not putting these two up on my own dime for free.” Tony Stark leaned forward in his chair. “All you have to do is let me look at that pretty little arm of yours sometime.”
Bucky lifted his arm. “Okay,” he said, and flexed his metal fingers to make the arm whirr.
“Great! That’s all sorted. Now that we have HYDRA bad, Captain America and the Winter Soldier, not so bad, figured out, can I just say—” Tony Stark turned to the rest of the room, clearly dismissing Bucky and Steve. “Did anyone know that Captain America was a bonded omega? Who was holding out on me?”
“Peggy. Philips. Everyone who was involved with the creation of Captain America,” Steve said, shrugging. “I was Captain America. Science’s perfect man. I couldn’t be an omega.”
Bucky made a small noise, and Steve turned to look at him. “They gave me suppressants,” he reminded him. “They didn’t work too good, not on me, but I could shake my way through a few meet-and-greets well enough. Anyone who noticed just assumed I was near a rut.”
“Did the Howlies know?” Bucky screwed up his face, trying to remember.
“Probably, but none of ‘em ever breathed a word,” Steve said.
“Not then, and not even until their deaths,” Hill said quietly. Steve felt a stone drop into the pit of his stomach.
They’d missed so much.
Births. Deaths. Their friends, mourning for them, and moving on. The world had continued on without them, while they were—
Bucky bumped his shoulder against his. Steve looked over at him. There was a shade of sorrow there, but not the bone-deep heartache that Steve was feeling; Bucky was sad, but he was sad because Steve was sad. Still, he was trying to comfort Steve, the best he knew how.
Steve could kiss him right now.
“Well, that’s some bullsh*t,” Tony Stark huffed. “Y’know, Cap, omegas can be anything now. There was a whole omega liberation movement in the sixties—”
“I know,” Steve interrupted him. “I learned about omega liberation when some of the scientists started being omegas instead.”
Next to him, Bucky let out a low growl, the anger coming back without the memory attached to it. At the same time, he glanced over at Steve, automatically looking to him, waiting for Steve to provide the context for what he was feeling. Steve just squeezed his knee, hesitant to remind Bucky of the cruelty of the omega doctors who treated him in the eighties. Different scientists f*cked with him in different ways. The betas were casually uncaring, digging around in him as if he were a medical mannequin to experiment on. The alphas were disgusting, groping him and drooling over him, loudly contemplating what they would do to him, how they would tame Captain America and turn him into the perfect little omega. And the omegas—
The first omega scientist had hated him. He could feel it in the way she sneered at him, in the deliberately rough way she inserted the IV and stuck his arms full of needles to take blood or give him another shot of some unknown substance. By the eighties he had given up on talking to the scientists or doctors who dealt with him, so he never got the chance to ask her why she resented him so much. Perhaps she was disgusted by the fact that he was a man. Perhaps she hated him for having a perfect, healthy body and millions of eggs despite being almost seventy years old. Maybe she, like a lot of the other HYDRA soldiers, thought that it was a waste that an omega like him became Captain America and dove headfirst into war instead of staying home like a good omega should. He had no way of knowing.
He wondered, as he often did, where she ended up. If she had been executed for failing to succeed. If she had quit HYRA—do people quit HYDRA? Surely not. When Bucky and Steve tried to quit HYDRA, HYDRA had bombed a building—
“Steve,” Bucky grunted.
Steve blinked, drawn out of his wandering mind by his voice.
All the people in the room were looking at him. He glanced over at Bucky.
Who was glaring around the room. “Leave.”
Maria Hill paused. “We’ll have a second bed wheeled in—”
“No,” Bucky said shortly. “Go.”
“We have a talker on our hands,” Tony Stark said, dripping with sarcasm. Sam Wilson frowned and tugged on his arm.
“C’mon, Tony. Let’s give them a chance to rest.”
The lights dimmed and the door clicked shut softly as their audience left them alone.
Bucky was already easing Steve down to lie on the bed, lying down with him to curl around him. The hospital bed was only a little wider than the cot they had shared for seventy—ten—however long they were both awake and together in their years of captivity, and wider than the bed they shared in the difficult days of the before, but they’d never been concerned for size. Bucky pressed as close to Steve as he could, their legs tangling together. His left arm draped across his waist, as if with its weight he could prevent anyone from taking Steve away from him, his right under Steve’s back, and his cheek on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. It was a pose both familiar and precious, but different than the way they used to share a bed. Now, Bucky needed to be the protector and the supplicant all at once, needing to feel comfortable and safe in Steve’s embrace while protecting Steve.
Steve wrapped one arm around Bucky’s shoulders, holding him. The other he rested lightly on Bucky’s metal arm, running his fingers along the plates. He closed his eyes. Now that they were alone and together, it only took a minute for them to both drop off.
–
Bucky ran his hand through his hair and then brought his fingers up to his nose and sniffed. His hair smelled good. The shampoo they bought at the corner store was ambiguously floral in a way that brought to mind flashes of long hair. He’d ask Steve about the memory later, if he managed to remember to ask.
He could ask now. Steve was sitting on the bench in front of the washing machine as the meager contents of their combined wardrobe—two hoodies, two T-shirts, four pairs of socks, and two pairs of underwear—spun around and around and around. It was the middle of the night. The chances of someone stumbling in on two tired soldiers washing their laundry in the basem*nt of this apartment building was minimal. But before he said anything, he needed to check for bugs.
He began to prowl around the exterior of the room. Steve glanced up at him, then came over, following Bucky’s lead and doing a second sweep. He was much less aware of modern war games than Bucky was, but Bucky was grateful for a second pair of eyes anyways.
As they drew closer to the laundry machine their clothes were in, Bucky frowned. His ears picked up a strange sound that made the hairs on the back of his head stand on end. It was almost drowned out by the sound of the laundry machine, but he was a supersoldier.
Steve had heard it, too. He was already moving, hands on top of a laundry machine, ready to haul himself up. Bucky grabbed him by his jean pocket and dragged him back down to the ground, getting a dirty look for his protectiveness. He wiggled the metal fingers of his left hand at him as a reminder, and climbed on top of the laundry machine instead. The sound was louder up here. He co*cked his head, listening, then inched forward until he was within arm’s reach of the air vent.
He yanked it open.
He instantly recognized the mysterious package shoved behind the air vent as an explosive device. He reached in and pulled it out, and behind it was another explosive device. Someone had stuffed the air vent with enough homemade explosives to bring the building down on top of them.
He whirled around, meeting Steve’s eyes.
He needed to protect. Steve’s safety was paramount.
Of course, the stubborn bastard thought otherwise.
“The tenants,” Steve breathed. “Buck, we gotta get them out.”
“Steve—” He didn’t have to figure out how to end his sentence, because Steve was tearing out of the laundry room.
And Bucky had no choice but to follow.
On the first floor, Steve ran to the single apartment on the first floor, pounding on the door and hollering loud enough to wake the devil. Bucky paused to observe him before bolting for the stairs. He followed Steve’s lead with the apartment on the second floor, pounding on it with his metal fist. “Wake up!” he yelled. “Wake up!”
He heard movement behind the door, and he darted over to the second door. He heard footsteps on the stairs, and Steve appeared, his face a grim mask of determination as he headed for the doors on the right. The first apartment door opened and a sleepy-looking woman poked her head out. “What the—”
“There’s a bomb in the building,” Steve said, his voice firm and clear and commanding—the perfect Captain America voice. “Get your loved ones and get out. Leave everything.”
The woman stared, her face suddenly pale, almost glowing in the dim light of the half-moon through the hall window. She disappeared back into her apartment. By the time the second door opened, she had reappeared, a grey cat in her arms, and she ran towards the stairs.
Bucky left Steve behind to explain things to the other tenants as they started rousing, and he went up to the third floor. His mind was running calculations with the intel he and Steve had gathered while choosing a building to break into: Four floors, four apartments per floor except for the single unit on the first floor, thirteen units total. Bombs not particularly sophisticated but placed to take advantage of building's vulnerability. Present at least ten minutes. Time remaining—not enough data.
The first door on the third floor opened. His explanation was much more succinct than Steve’s. “Bomb. Get out.”
“What?” the man said.
“Get out!” Bucky barked, already on the third door.
“Bucky!”
He looked up. Steve’s face was peeking up through the bars of the railing. He had a large yellow dog in his arms.
“Break the door of floor two, apartment B, and any doors on this floor no one answered,” he said, then disappeared down the stairs. Bucky ran into the stairwell. Instead of taking the stairs like Steve, he leapt down to the second floor.
He smashed door B with his metal fist, wrenching out the doorknob, and kicked the door open. He did a quick sweep of the apartment building and found a turtle in a tank, placidly swimming around. He growled, picking up the turtle and running to the window. Looking down, he could see tenants milling about. He smashed the glass.
“Catch!” he yelled. Several of the tenants looked up, and Bucky lobbed the turtle through the air. One of the people below caught it, cradling it to their chest. When he ran back through the apartment, he caught a glimpse of Steve darting up the stairs, three at a time, up to the fourth floor, so he returned to the third floor.
A resident was kicking the fourth door. Her form was sloppy, there was no power to her kicks, and she was in slippers. “Clint, he’s deaf—” she tried to explain, but Bucky waved her off.
“Go!”
The lady nodded and she booked it. Bucky once again punched out the door, but when he yanked it open, he was greeted with a gun in his face.
Bucky prayed the guy wouldn’t shoot him as his hands flew into motion. Bomb. Leave.
The man gaped at him. “What the hell—?”
Leave now! Bucky signed emphatically.
“Wait, my dog—” the man straightened up.
Dog where?
“He was downstairs—”
S-T-E-V-E took yellow dog.
“Who the f*ck is Steve—”
Bucky’s body responded to the rumbling before his brain did.
He hurtled forward, grabbing the man’s wrist in his flesh hand, and dragged him across the apartment. Like the turtle, he smashed open the window and shoved the man out.
As his scream faded, Bucky turned around to run back, to find Steve, but the ground was shaking beneath his feet, he couldn’t catch his balance, but he needed to find Steve, he would find Steve if he had to crawl for him, Steve Steve Steve—
–
“This whole place is ours?” Steve asked.
“Whole floor, Captain Beefcake,” Tony Stark (“Oh for f*ck’s sake call me Tony or at the very least Stark, if you call me Mr. Stark I will suit up and punch you and then Robocop will kill me”) said. He splayed his arms out wide. “And, of course, you’re welcome to use the common spaces, the gym, you have a cleaning and laundry service, and JARVIS is at your beck and call.”
Steve nodded warily. The voice that spoke to them in the elevator made both him and Bucky jump. He still wasn’t entirely certain what JARVIS was, but he understood that he could help them if they spoke to him.
Bucky was standing behind him and to the right, sniper’s stillness seeded through his body, unconsciously holding himself ready for orders. The apartment was certainly large, modern, and beautiful, with a giant kitchen and a sweeping view of the city, but both Steve and Bucky were far too tense to appreciate it.
Last night, curled up together for their last night in the medical bay, Bucky and Steve went over all the memories that were associated with the people who were in the room with them the day before. Bucky remembered the Helicarrier fight fairly well, but Steve had to recount the fight on the bridge the best he could, deliberately rambling to prevent it from sounding like the clipped, clinical mission report Bucky had given him when he returned, covered in soot and blood. He also told him about the time Bucky shot the Black Widow in Egypt, and—
“JARVIS has an eye on every room in this tower,” Tony was saying. “However, some people seem to think that a pair of ex-HYDRA prisoners from the 40’s might get offended by having someone looking and listening out for their care at all times and they begged me to get rid of JARVIS’ eyes and ears before we put you up. Of course, we need to worry about security, so we have cameras pointed at every square inch of the exterior, but no cameras, no mics, not even a speaker in here. If you want to talk to JARVIS, press on that big green button over there on that call box-looking thing. Oh, wait, did you have call boxes in the forties? It’s like a telephone, but the call is going into the house.”
Tony finally paused in his rambling, looking somewhat expectant.
Steve had no idea what Tony was talking about, so he settled for saying, “Thank you, Tony. We really appreciate everything you’ve done.”
“Now that’s what I like to hear. See you later, Stars and Soviets. I’m off to see if I can cook up a sense of humor for you two in the lab.” He turned away.
“I’m sorry,” Bucky blurted out.
“Don’t be. Not everyone can be as quick-witted as me,” Tony said, waving his hands in the air dismissively.
“I killed your parents.”
All color drained from Tony’s face. He stared at Bucky for a long time.
Then, he cracked a small smile. “Haha, very funny, guess you do have a sense of humor after all. Well, I’m off.”
“We—” Steve began, but Tony held up a hand, and he fell silent.
“Nope. Nope. Gonna go blow sh*t up in my lab and try not to empty a bottle of very expensive Scotch and not think about the fact that I learned the truth about my parents’ death from their murderer. Gotta go.”
He left the apartment, the door slamming shut behind him.
Steve turned, opening his arms, and Bucky came over, burying his face in his shoulder.
They stood like that for a long time, not talking.
There was nothing to say.
–
Then Bucky started getting twitchy.
–
He pulled away from Steve and began to sweep the apartment. He tapped his metal fingers against the floor-to-ceiling glass windows and checked under all the furniture. Steve followed him, copying his movements, trying to look for whatever Bucky was looking for—bugs, perhaps. Hidden cameras. Stark had said that he had removed all the cameras in the apartment, but how far could they trust these people, anyways? They fought against HYDRA, but no doubt they had their own agendas. Maybe they would ask Bucky to be a weapon for them, instead, enticing him with safety, convincing him that he owed them—
“Steve.”
Steve blinked. Bucky was standing in front of him.
“All clear?” Steve tried to smile, tried to ignore the pounding in his heart, the rushing in his ears.
Bucky didn’t respond to the question. Instead, he cupped Steve’s face in his hands. Steve swallowed, feeling Bucky run his thumbs over his cheekbones, down his cheeks, rubbing small circles along his jaw. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He closed his eyes, swallowed, and then opened his eyes again.
“All good, doll?”
“Yeah,” Steve said automatically. Bucky gave him a look, and he sighed, closing his eyes. “sh*t. Just. Are we—are you okay here? We could leave.”
They lasted all of a week before HYDRA caught up to them and bombed a building. All those people in that apartment could have died, been crushed in their sleep, because they just wanted a goddamn bath.
If they left, how long could they last before someone, something, caught up to them again? It wouldn’t just be HYDRA looking. The Winter Soldier couldn’t disappear into HYDRA’s underground boltholes again. Someone would want to catch Bucky and kill him for crimes he wasn’t responsible for. Or maybe, once they realized what the Winter Soldier was, they’d want to turn Bucky onto their own side. And HYDRA would spill any amount of innocent blood to bring them in again. They wouldn’t let go of their science experiments so easily. And the punishment for escaping would be brutal.
They could do it. Keep running, keep fighting. They’d find a way to survive. They made it to the twenty-first century, clinging onto each other like rats on a boat. They’d survive.
If they stayed, he’d have to find a way to trust these people. These people who fought the Winter Soldier, who knew what he could do. They’d want them to fight for them, for their cause, whatever it may be, and they had no way to repay them for their help except with their bodies. And Tony—Tony Stark, Howard’s son, Bucky had killed Howard and his wife—was he really honestly okay with letting them stay? Would he honestly leave his parents’ killer alone, did he really have the integrity to not decide to punish Bucky?
They needed allies and resources. They wouldn’t have to be alone in this strange new world. They would have people watching their backs. He’d have help protecting Bucky from getting taken by HYDRA again.
He could already see that staying was strategically the much better decision. But, f*ck, he could admit he was worried.
He could feel Bucky running his fingers over his face. Touching his eyelids, brushing across his brows, over his nose, cheekbones, lips, chin. As if he was trying to memorize his face with his touch. After a while, he spoke. “If you are safe. Then yes. I will stay.”
Steve reached up and gripped Bucky’s wrists, squeezing tight, as he opened his eyes. “I’m not happy unless you’re safe, too. You goddamn know this, Buck.”
“Yes,” Bucky said, and Steve felt his hackles rise, suspicious of his easy acquiescence, opening his mouth to shout at him, you better not be f*cking mollycoddling me, Barnes, but Bucky smirked, a small, soft thing, an inside joke between the two of them that no one else would understand. “If they try to hurt me you’re going to make it their problem. I know that. And so will they.”
“You’re goddamn right I will,” Steve said viciously. He tugged on Bucky’s wrists, and Bucky stepped closer, leaning forward to press their foreheads together, his eyes falling half-lidded. It's been a few days since their improvised shower, so Bucky's scent was heady and intense, layered but not dulled by the vaguely antiseptic hospital smell that he woke up to. He added, softer, “If they pull anything that we don’t like—we’ll leave, Bucky. We’re out of here and we’ll take our chances on our own. They can’t hold us forever.”
Bucky nodded as he took a deep breath, or rather, an inhale. “Yeah. Deal.”
–
A few hours later, Steve was pulled out of his daydream by a knock on the door.
Steve lifted his head. He was lying on the sinfully comfortable couch—he'd never felt anything more comfortable in his goddamn life—with Bucky lying on top of him, head on his chest, arms wrapped around his waist. There were books to read and magazines and newspapers and board games and a deck of cards and a television, but after the stress and excitement of the last—week, really (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph have they really only been out from under the thumb of HYDRA for a week) the thought of being a real human being again was too damn much for him to think about.
So, instead, they retreated to their most familiar source of entertainment: lying next to each other in silence.
“There’s someone at the door, Buck,” Steve muttered. He felt the tickle of Bucky’s eyelashes against his chest as Bucky opened his eyes, but he otherwise didn’t stir.
Steve sat up and pushed Bucky off of him, leaving him on the couch as he opened the door.
Clint Barton—Hawkeye—was waiting in the hallway. His nose was still bandaged up from where Bucky punched him, and he limped into the room.
“Hey. How are you doing?” he asked, looking about as awkward as Steve felt.
“As well as can be expected,” Steve said, which was basically all he could say.
“So…not great?” Clint Barton chuckled weakly.
Steve heard a warm exhale of breath, but he knew that Clint Barton wouldn’t’ve been able to hear Bucky’s amusem*nt. He offered Barton a little half-smile, though.
“Your words, not mine,” he said. “Please, take a seat.”
“Thanks, man. The ankle’s a little f*cked up from when your man threw me out a third-story window,” Barton said, but he was grinning.
“Sorry,” Bucky muttered.
Barton’s eyebrows shot up to his brow. He was, Steve noted, relatively willing to put his emotions on display. He was absolutely modulating them in his own way—he was a goddamn sniper, and he wasn’t stupid; Steve and Bucky were unknown quantities who had been under the thumb of HYDRA for seventy years, and Bucky was the Winter Soldier—but he was letting his emotions be read as clearly as an open book. And if Steve was reading him right, he was doing it out of kindness, not manipulation.
Bucky had spoken, which meant that he agreed.
Clint perched himself gingerly on the edge of an armchair. Steve sat down next to Bucky, who shifted until he was in a crouch next to Steve, radiating protective vigilance. Steve resisted the urge to roll his eyes and licked his lips. “I’m real sorry about your building, by the way.” He really did feel sorry. All those peoples whose homes and possessions were lost, all because Bucky and Steve were desperate for a place to get clean.
“Wasn’t your fault, man,” Clint said kindly. Steve grimaced, but Clint waved his hand in the air. “Really. It wasn’t HYDRA. It was the Tracksuit Vampires.”
“The…what?”
“Russian mafia,” Clint waved his hand in the air again. “I’ve had run-ins with them before. The building used to be theirs. Didn’t think they’d be stupid enough or vengeful enough to bomb the place in the middle of the night with everyone inside. Doubted they intended to have the place collapse, but they were stupid and happened to place a bunch of bombs somewhere load-bearing.”
“Is everyone all right?” Steve asked.
“The dog?” Bucky added under his breath.
“Yeah, everyone’s fine,” Clint said. “Thanks to you two.” He leaned forward a little. “So, yeah. Just wanted to say thanks for saving my life, my dog’s life, and all of my tenants’ lives. And all of their pets, too. If you two hadn’t been there, it would’ve been a lot worse.”
Bucky was very still. Steve rocked back, just enough to feel Bucky's fingers brushing against his back. He wanted to say this is what you do. He wanted to say this is who you are. He wanted to say you are a protector.
But most of all, he wanted Bucky to believe it.
Clint was watching Bucky’s stillness, even though he kept his voice carefully casual as he said, “So, uh, what were you two doing in my apartment building? The leading hypothesis was that you were hoping to get close to an Avenger, but that doesn’t sound likely to me.”
“We needed a place to wash up,” Steve said. His lip quirked. “Even super-soldiers need a bath now and then.”
Clint nodded, as if that were the most natural thing in the world. “Did you stay in Mrs. Dee’s apartment? She’s in Florida for the winter.”
Steve gave Bucky a dirty look while Bucky pretended not to notice. That had been an endless source of debate in the week spent deciding on the best place to break into. Steve had wanted to borrow someone’s apartment so Bucky could have a real shower, with hot running water and maybe even a bathtub if they were lucky, to divorce the experience from being hosed down with a jet of freezing cold water. But Bucky had insisted that breaking into someone’s home was too much of a risk.
“No, we just used the sink in the laundry room,” Steve said.
Clint visibly paused. Then, he said, “Man, you two are gonna love the showers here.”
–
“Barton was right,” Steve said.
Bucky let out a grunt. It could either be I’m listening but I’m too tired to talk or I’m grumpy at you for mentioning another man’s name while we’re naked.
“Are you tired or jealous?” Steve asked.
Bucky let out a noncommittal noise that melted into a low moan as Steve dug his fingers into his scalp, massaging at the tension. He dropped his head back and Steve obligingly moved his fingers up, so his ring and pinky finger were just at the edge of Bucky’s hairline, scraping his fingernails gently against his skin.
When was the last time he and Bucky had a warm bath together? It was sometime in 1945, or maybe late 1944. The Howlies were camping in a farmhouse for the night, and someone found a big metal washtub in the barn, and even though they were up to the elbows in enemy territory they decided to take a chance and boiled gallons on gallons of water to wash everything—bodies, clothes, socks; wandering around that farmhouse buck-ass nude or with tiny strips of fabric covering pertinent bits while all of their clothes dried by the fire. He and Bucky had bathed together to quote-unquote ‘conserve hot water’. The Howlies agreed gravely that it was absolutely paramount, sir yes sir, this is why you’re the tactical genius Captain, and had obligingly made themselves scarce while he and Bucky sat in the bath until it was cold. They didn’t even screw, just bathed each other, just like this, the intimacy of hands and soap and warm water and naked bodies pressed together in a tin tub too good to pass up for something as gauche as mere sex. They rubbed each other’s co*cks and balls and Bucky had slipped a finger inside of him and even though they were both turned on they were far too tired and happy and warm to do anything about it, and when the water became cold they wrapped themselves in blankets and parked themselves in front of the fire and called the Howlies in, who came in and teased them for conspiring to get the best spots right in front of the fireplace and made no mention of how two grown men had crammed themselves into the tiny tub without any undue closeness.
Steve loved their Howlies. He honestly had no clue whether they knew Steve was an omega, or if they thought they were a rare alpha-alpha couple, but they turned a blind eye to Steve and Bucky’s queerness and gave them every chance they could to be together. God, Steve loved them.
He wondered if any of them were still around. He wanted so desperately to believe that they were, that they had all made it to the twenty-first century alive and well. That they got married, had kids, had grandkids; that they were all still buddies and met up every year for drinks and to reminisce about their time as the Howling Commandos. If he didn’t ask, didn't think of the impossibilities, they could all still be alive, their whole team. But if he didn’t ask, maybe the one or two of them who were still around would slip away and he’d lose the chance to ask them questions, thank them, tell them how much he loved them.
“Quit woolgathering,” Bucky mumbled.
“Sorry,” Steve said, snapping out of his daydream. Bucky grunted and pulled himself away from Steve, laying back to dunk his head under the water. He ran his fingers through his hair several times then sat up, turning around to face Steve. Steve frowned. “Let me do your back first,” he said, but Bucky was already grabbing the ‘Gingerbread Swirl Latte’ shampoo from him and pouring a dollop onto his hand, and then his fingers were in Steve’s hair, and Bucky really had his number because he ran his fingers through Steve’s hair just so and he melted. He couldn’t help but let out a pleased moan as Bucky gently tugged at the strands. Since Bucky was facing him, he could see the small smirk playing at the corner of his lips.
“Wipe that smirk off your face, Barnes,” Steve grumbled.
Bucky just quirked an eyebrow. You gonna come and make me, Rogers?
Steve would much rather sit here and get petted, but he couldn’t back down from the challenge, not even if he wanted to. He surged forward, aiming for Bucky’s lips, but Bucky pulled his hair and he drew up short, gasping, clay in Bucky’s hands.
The smirk was gone from Bucky’s face, replaced by the intense examination that made him feel a little bit like a bug under a magnifying glass—or like an assassination target. Bucky’s eyes flickered over him, cataloging the color on his cheek, the light in his eyes, the jut of his lips. Bucky was always on alert, he once told Steve, even when he was safe in Steve’s arms in their tiny cell. Always gathering information. Always prepared to kill.
Even me?
Never. You’re mine.
(He wished he would. It would make him safer.)
The direction Steve had wandered off to must have shown on his face, because Bucky’s hand in his hair gentled. He ran his fingers along his scalp, gently scratching it again, and then worked the shampoo through one more time before his fingers withdrew. Steve sagged a little, recovering, before he followed Bucky’s lead and dunked his head under the water to rinse off.
When he rose out of the water, flicking his head back to get the hair out of his eyes, Bucky was waiting with a soapy washcloth. His metal hand was gentle as he took Steve’s hand in his own, gently scrubbing along his arm.
They sat in silence until Bucky was nearly finished, running the washcloth down Steve’s calves, absently massaging with his metal hand. “You washed me a lot.”
Steve opened his eyes. He wasn’t even aware that he closed them. “Yeah,” he said. After every successful mission, when they had time, doled out in hours, to be together as themselves. He couldn’t do anything about the freezing cold water, the force of the spray, the blood and bits of flesh that trapped themselves in the plates of Bucky’s arm, but he did his damnedest to make the experience comfortable and loving—blocking the full force of the hose with his hand so the water dripped onto Bucky, gently massaging his skin with the harsh soap, careful with the wounds even though they would heal in a matter of days.
“Did I…” Bucky sounded uncertain, or maybe afraid. Fragile, either way. “Did I ever do this for you?”
Steve smiled. “All the time,” he assured him.
Bucky’s whole body relaxed, all at once. He smiled, the corner of his lip peeling up and away until there was a small flash of teeth.
“Good.”
–
Steve was warm and relaxed. His hair was damp and his skin was flushed and his eyes were bright and he smelled faintly like Gingerbread Swirl Latte (whatever the hell that meant). The Asset (not the Asset, Steve hates it when you call yourself that, remember you’re James Buchanan Barnes, remember remember remember please God don’t let him forget) James Buchanan Barnes had done several sweeps of the apartment. There weren’t any cameras or bugs, no one watching, no one observing and making notes and ogling this precious sight of Steve, relaxed and happy and alive and in his arms, no one to take what was his away from him. Part of him thought that there was no way this could last, that someone would come and take Steve again and put them back on ice and make him forget again, but he firmly told that part of him to shut the hell up. They were alive. They had escaped. They were free.
He lay with his head pillowed in Steve’s lap, trying to make himself believe it. This, at least, felt familiar. If he closed his eyes and concentrated, he could see the vague outline of a memory: lying like this on a hard mattress in a room that smelled like iron and mildew. Steve’s fingers through his hair was the closest thing to happiness he felt in the last seventy years.
No one would hurt Steve again. No one would take away what was his.
Someone knocked on the door again. Steve shifted, but Bucky wrapped his arms around his waist, growling softly, and he stopped. Bucky let himself savor the boneless feeling of being wrapped up in Steve for a second longer, and then he pushed himself up. Steve once again tried to stand, but Bucky put a hand on his chest, shoving him back down to the couch.
Unlike Steve, he paid attention during Stark’s rambling tour. Instead of just opening the door right away, he pressed a button on the panel next to the door. An image of Romanoff appeared on the screen. She was standing with her hands loosely at her side, like she hadn’t been waiting for the past two minutes. Something about her made his hackles rise. He wasn’t sure what it was about her—not even the memories Steve told him about could enlighten him—but he looked at her and something in his brain pinged danger and pain, made him want to flinch away, look away, put a bullet in her skull so the pain would stop.
Bucky let out another growl and turned away from the door.
“Aw, Buck, let her in,” Steve said. He got to his feet again, and the only thing that made Bucky willing to let Romanoff near him was the threat of Steve coming over and being near her.
He reluctantly opened the door with his right hand, keeping his left free and one eye on her. Romanoff smiled politely when she saw him. “Hello, Sergeant.”
Bucky grunted. Her eyes crinkled briefly before smoothing out. He got the feeling she was laughing at him.
He backed away from her, putting some space between them, at the same time Steve stepped closer. “Miss Romanoff. Please, come in.” Before he could move again, Bucky snagged him by the wrist and drew him close to his side. Steve shot him an exasperated look.
“Will Sergeant Barnes let me?” Romanoff co*cked an eyebrow, but she didn’t seem offended, just amused. She looked at Bucky and said in their (her) native Russian, “I won’t hurt him. I don’t do that anymore.”
“You would,” Barnes replied in kind.
“Yes,” she said. “But only if you give me a reason to.”
Bucky glared at her, but she only tilted her chin up, soundlessly daring him. Steve was watching him closely, and he wanted to snarl at him to keep his eyes on the goddamn threat, did he remember anything from their boxing lessons at all?
“Are all of you folks going to keep coming through one by one to check up on us?” Steve asked. He said it with a smile, as if he were amused, but his affect was flat. Bucky knew that Natalia—Romanova—Romanoff could probably tell.
“Have the others come by as well?” Romanoff asked, as if she didn’t know, as if vital information about the Asset and Captain America weren’t disseminated through internal channels as soon as one of them so much as sneezed—
“Only Mr. Barton,” Steve said, “but please tell the others that if they’re going to swing by come all at once, okay?”
Romanoff laughed softly. “I’ll pass on the message,” she said, smiling at Steve. Bucky decided that she wasn’t pretending to be relaxed. She was relaxed. After all, she had all the power here. They were in custody, and she was a high-ranking handler. She was likely more familiar with the layout of the building. No doubt she was armed, while Bucky only had his arm, and he had to protect Steve—
There is no time to panic.
Bucky breathed deep. Standing this close to Steve, he could smell his skin, a scent so familiar he could pick it out in a ballroom full of people. He focused.
He fired.
“I’m sorry for shooting you.”
He watched real emotion cross Natalia’s face. Confusion, revelation, and then—shock. She twitched, as if wanting to fall into a defensive posture, and her eyes flickered across Bucky’s face.
“And for, uh, anything else I did,” Bucky added, just to twist the knife deeper.
Romanoff smiled, lips tight. “Apology accepted,” she said. She paused, visibly warring with herself. “You are far closer to human than I was,” she said, and Bucky felt an ember of pride growing in his chest. f*ck yeah. He was human. HYDRA tried to turn him into a thing, into a weapon, but they couldn’t. He was always human.
“It’s because of him,” Bucky said.
“Love is for children,” and her eyes were very soft.
Bucky snorted. “Love kept me alive.”
—
The Asset arrived at the HYDRA bunker. The hair was still wet with the water of the Potomac. The metal arm flexed and relaxed. A jolt of pain shivered down the spine, but it was within acceptable parameters. The Asset was functional.
It tapped the password into the keypad to enter. The fingerprint scan got it to the secret elevator. The retinal scan got it to the bottom floor. Everything was routine.
When it stepped out of the elevator, the base was in chaos.
The Asset stopped. It watched HYDRA agents run around. Some of them ran past holding boxes and papers. Some of them ran holding nothing. The Asset stepped out of the way of an agent fleeing and walked down the hall, searching for a Handler.
The Asset found the Handler in the room. In the center of the room was the Chair. The Asset did not look at the chair. Along one side of the room were two tall, silver tubes. The Asset looked at the tube. The Asset felt the heart seize and begin to beat faster. The Asset looked at the Handler.
“Mission report: mission successful,” it said.
“What the hell, Soldier?” the Handler barked. “Director Pierce is f*cking dead! We’ve been f*cking made, SHIELD is gonna blazing in at any moment, and you walk in here expecting to be handed your pet to play with?”
Pet. The Asset felt a shiver along the spine. The eyes darted over to the tube. “Mission: Ensure the Helicarriers take off,” it said. “Mission successful.”
“No! Mission not successful! We’re going underground again.” The Handler slammed the lid of a laptop closed. He pointed at the Asset. “Destroy all these computers, except for the one hooked up to the cyrotube, okay? Then get out of here and meet at the drop point in—f*ck, Siberia. We’ll rebuild from there. Somehow.”
The Asset looked at the tube again. “Mission success.” It was impatient now. The mission was complete. It was owed—
Not owed. The Asset did not deserve anything. Owning things was for Handlers and agents. It was permitted to be with—
A flash of blue eyes.
Mine.
The Asset did not own anything.
Mine.
An Asset did not—
Mine.
But what was in the tube was his.
There was a loud crack as the Handler slapped him. “Soldier! Destroy the computers! Then proceed to the drop point in Siberia!” he barked. He turned away. “f*ck, no f*cking time, we just have to hope—”
The Asset looked at the Handler.
He proceeded over to the computers and punched one of them with the metal arm. His spine protested, but he ignored it.
“Good,” the Handler said, sounding relieved. “Keep that up and you can f*ck your pet again when we get to Siberia.” He took the laptop and left the room.
The Asset stopped.
He approached the metal tube and touched it with his metal arm.
What was in the tube was his.
The Handler promised. If this mission was successful, he could have forty-eight hours.
What was in the tube was his.
He earned the right to his reward.
The Handler had no right—
The Handler—
The—
The Asset hit a button on the tube.
He did not question how he knew which button to press.
As the tube began to hiss, white smoke spilling out along the bottom and dissipating as it writhed on the floor, the Asset stepped out of the room. Amongst the chaos, no one took note of him as he approached a bank of lockers. He tore one open and found black cargo pants, shirt, body armor. He tore another open until he found a helmet.
The Asset had a plan.
The Asset would claim what was his.
—
“I'll be sending two more people your way,” Romanoff said, in English, which Steve was grateful for. He didn’t have to pretend to not understand English. “So don't get too comfortable yet.”
“I appreciate the heads-up,” Steve said, and she left. He was having a hard time figuring out what she wanted from them. Barton had been easy. So had Stark, to a degree. But Romanoff just showed up, said some vaguely cryptic things in Russian, and left. She just stressed Bucky out.
However, she was good to her word. He and Bucky remained standing, and it was just a few minutes before there was another knock on the door. Bucky strode over to open it, with his shoulders raised, making himself look bigger, more threatening.
There were two men on the other side. He recognized one of them as Sam Wilson—the Falcon, Captain America—but not the other man, a man with curly hair and glasses who blinked at Bucky and took a cautious step back.
“Hey, man,” Sam Wilson said, smiling genially. Steve liked his smile. It was loose and open and friendly. f*ck, when was the last time someone other than Bucky truly smiled at him? “It’s good to see you two again. This is Doctor Bruce Banner.”
“Hi,” Banner said, his voice soft and reedy. “It’s nice to meet you two.”
“Nice to meet you, too. Would you like to come in?” Steve said, automatically. He didn’t know who he was playacting as, but it felt like shades of Captain America with a sprinkle of circa-1930s Bucky Barnes thrown in. Someone polite, someone nice, someone who said please and thank you and pass the salt, please. Someone who wasn’t a threat.
It seemed to work on Banner and Wilson, because they both smiled, the doctor a little uncertainly, and Wilson with that wide grin, even though Bucky was still staring daggers at them. At the sound of Steve’s voice, Bucky retreated from the doorway, allowing the two men entry. He drew closer to Steve, so close their arms were nearly touching. Steve didn’t let himself lean against him.
Banner glanced at Wilson, who smiled. “I’m not gonna beat around the bush. How much do you two know about the Avengers?”
“Not much,” Steve admitted. “I mean, to us, you guys are just some people who are trying to stop HYDRA. We know you have codenames and this fancy tower, but that’s about it.
“We can go over the Avengers Initiative and what we actually do later,” Wilson said. “Right now, Bruce and I are here because of our non-Avengers experience. I work as a counselor with the Department of Veterans Affairs, and while Bruce here isn’t an accredited medical doctor, he has significant practical experience with medicine. Between the two of us, we’d like to volunteer to help you two recover from your time as POWs, both physically and mentally.”
“Wow, we really appreciate it,” Steve said, even though Bucky was practically vibrating out of his skin next to him. “But you both seem to be working two full-time jobs, I can’t see why you’d want to take on a third just for us.”
Wilson glanced at Banner, who was too busy wringing his hands to catch the look. “I understand why you’d be suspicious of us,” Wilson said quietly. “You’ve been out of the medbay for less than a day, and there’s gonna be a lot of adjustments in your future. To be frank with you, we—the Avengers—learned a pretty nasty truth about some people we thought we could trust about a week ago. So when an assassin’s nightmare and the first Avenger drop onto our lap, we decided that we really can’t trust anyone but ourselves when it comes to you guys.”
“I can understand that,” Steve said, and he could, and it settled him to know the reason, even though a sense of bitterness rose up again inside of him at the thought of being another Asset to be kept again. At least these Avengers felt more inclined to feed them carrots than use a stick to keep them happy. “You don’t want to discard the ace in your hand.”
Banner frowned, and Wilson shifted, looking more intense. “We don’t want to use you,” he said, his voice firm. “We want to stop you from getting used by other people who see you as the Winter Soldier and Captain America, and not two traumatized men who had been held prisoner for the past seventy years.”
“Traumatized.” It slipped out, all sharp edges. Bucky suddenly closed the hair’s-width gap between them, skin on skin, and Steve glanced at him, his eyes on the metal arm, Trauma to the shoulder—scar tissue—electroshock therapy—things they said while Bucky was strapped into a chair or strapped to a gurney or enclosed into a metal coffin filled with ice, talking as if Steve wasn’t there, didn’t have ears, and he would watch and listen, he had to remember what they did to him, and if he focused on Bucky he wouldn’t have to see or hear what the scientists swarming around him like carrion flies were saying. It was hell to have to watch Bucky go through—everything, but Steve was selfish and a coward and he liked having Bucky there instead of being in the cold room alone, naked and shivering and strapped down, as men in pristine white lab coats talked over his head about—cervical damage, increase hCG dosage, uterine trauma—
“Steve.”
He blinked. It was warm, but he was shivering. Bucky's arms around him, his chest to his front, were so hot it felt like a brand. He pitched forward, pressing against him, sinking into him, like he was all of five-foot-four again.
