Love Will Keep Us Tooooogether

by donutsweeper

Academics believed that Steve and Bucky were lovers; they were wrong. Until they were right.

Singing along to the radio, Clint pulled out his kit and began polishing his arrows.

"A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that person used to make him smile
And I knew if he had more time
That he could make more eyebrows climb
And maybe they'd have been happy for a while

"But December made him shiver
With every headline he'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step

"I can't remember if I sighed
When I read about how he cried
But something touched me deep inside
The day the Captain died

"So bye-bye to the Patriotic Pie
Drove my Harley to the party and tried not to cry
And them good old boys were eatin' burgers and fries
Singin' "This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die"

*click*

"Did you-" Clint broke off when the song stopped suddenly, spinning around, arrow raised and ready to attack only to freeze and relax his stance once he saw what had happened. "Cap! What the hell? I was listening to that, why'd you turn it off?"

Steve was pale, his eyes a bit wider than usual, and obviously suffering from one of his "future shellshock" moments. "This song," he began pointing at the radio with a trembling hand. "This song."

"'The Day the Captain Died'," Clint supplied helpfully.

"This song. It's. Why."

And then Clint's brain caught up with what he'd said and what Steve was obviously stumbling over being able to say. "Uh, yeah. It's about you."

"Me." It wasn't quite a question, rather more of an incredulous statement.

"You and Bucky."

"Me and Bucky," Steve repeated, flatly. "But, but, why?"

"You and the Buckster had a love of the ages, Cap," Tony announced, entering and slapping Steve on the back as he walked past. "You gotta expect popular culture to pay tribute to it. Embrace it! Or, hey, sue copyright violations or control of your likeness or image or whatever. I'm sure you can do something, I have lawyers for those kind of things, you can borrow them if you want. I love the smell of lawsuits in the morning, especially when they have nothing to do with me."

"But," Steve began, but Tony kept talking,

"Although leave 'Candle in the Wind' alone. It's Pepper's favorite song, so no messing with that one. Clint, I have to say, it's creepy the way you fawn over those arrows. It's like you're obsessed."

"No more than how you are with the suit." Clint refused to rise to the bait.

"Lawyers?" Steve repeated, sitting heavily down at the table across from Clint.

"Yeah, I say go for it." Clint gave an arrow a final polish and then began packing up his kit. "Some of those movies were real hack jobs. It's not like you or Bucky could have had any say in how your story got told before, but you're here now so you may as well set the record right and get 'em to stop speculating about when the two of you two got together and-"

"Clint," Steve interrupted. "I have no idea what you or Tony are talking about. Bucky and I were friends."

"Right. Friends." Tony made air quotes over the word. "It's okay, Cap, you don't have to sugar coat it. Homosexuality's all legal now and everything. You can say lovers."

"No. I can't. Bucky and I were best friends and we loved each other, but. Not. Like. That. We were never lovers, I don't know where you're getting your information, but you've got it all wrong."

Tony looked at Clint and Clint looked at Tony. "Oh, boy."

Over the next few days Tony took it upon himself, a little more gleefully than necessary perhaps, to school Steve in the different aspects of the modern interpretation of Cap'n'Bucky, as Captain America and his best friend and their relationship had come to be known. Steve took the news like he did most things that had been thrown at him the past few years, stoically with his face frozen in a slightly overwhelmed half grimace, half smile as he digested the news.

"What I don't understand," he said, interrupting the 'lecture' Tony was giving him as he worked one of the new, super soldier enforced, heavy bags, "is how this all got started in the first place. None of the Commandos would have said anything." Right. Left. Right. Left. Elbow. "I mean, the Commandos knew how were." Elbow. Elbow. Right. Step. Step. Right. "They didn't. They wouldn't." Right. Left. Elbow. Elbow. Elbow. Left. Right. "Surely Peggy didn't think-"

"Oh, no, no, no!" Tony waved away Steve's concerns. "None of it came from anyone who actually knew you. As far as I know every one of the Commandos categorically refused to comment on the subject, even when the historians first debated why a guy would sneak behind enemy lines, willingly jump out of a place - sans parachute, I might add - and then storm an enemy POW camp-slash-weapons facility on the off chance he'd be able to rescue one particular soldier and most of them added two plus two together to come up with the 'obvious' solution of four being equal to love."

"Love." Elbow. Elbow. Elbow. Kick. Kick. Kick. "Of course I loved Buck, he'd been my best friend for-"

"I don't think they were talking about that kind of love, Cap." Tony took a step back as the heavy bag's chain began creaking ominously under Steve's continued assault. "Of course, not everyone bought what they were trying to sell, but that might have been a sign of the times. When they first came out with those theories it was still probably five, maybe even ten years before the decade of Free Love and hippie historians."

"So most people don't believe Bucky and I were lovers? Or..."

"Well, back then they didn't anyway. But it wasn't long before it was the 60's, and then there was Stonewall, and then Falsworth's estate donated those letters and-"

Steve let his hands drop to his side as he turned to look at Tony. "What did Bucky and I have to do with the Stonewall riots?"

"Oh, hey, you know about the riots, good on you."

"I've heard of them, but haven't had a chance to read up on them yet."

"Well, if you had you'd have found out that one of the drag queens there had been a soldier in the War and had been saved by you or knew your reputation or something, I forget, but the point is she's the one that shouted the famous phrase that set the riots off. There was this whole crowd, standing there watching as she got hit with a billy club and arrested. As she was getting thrown in the paddy wagon she shouted, 'Cap wouldn't have just stood there! Why don't you guys do something?' and low and behold a riot was born."

Steve grabbed a towel to wipe some of his sweat off. "They rioted in my name?" he asked.

"Yep. What do you think of that?"

"They stood up against the police, against men who were basically nothing more than bullies, for me. That's... Amazing, that's what that is. I couldn't be prouder."

"Well, I guess that's good, considering there's nothing you can do about it now."

"True enough." As Steve bent down to grab up his things he stopped and paused. "You mentioned something about letters? What were you saying about those?"

"Right. The letters." Tony scrubbed a hand over his face. "Oh, boy."

The letters, it turned out, were ones Steve had seen before. Monty, for whatever reason, had wound up with some of the correspondence between Steve and Bucky from his pre-Captain America days. According to what Steve could find online about them, Monty compiled some of them (seven of his supposed favorites) and had put them together with a few of the poems Gabe had written during their downtime and various stories and recollections of their time during the war and published the whole thing under the title "Accomplishments and Absurdities: The Life and Times of the Howling Commandos at War" sometime in the fifties. The book was been sold only in England for some reason with a limited run and had gotten good reviews, but other than being highly sought out item for Captain American memorabilia collectors it had been nearly ignored by the general populous until close to twenty years later.

In the early seventies, amidst a growing resurgence of interest in Captain America by both factions of the Vietnam War supporters and protestors, the book was rediscovered and the correspondences looked at with a more intensive, and perhaps interpretative, light by readers far and wide. The letters referenced childhood memories of summers spent in each other's company and lazy days of sneaking into movie theaters and nights spent on the fire escape together, lying next to one another and looking up at the stars. There were also admonishments for keeping safe (humorously, more often from Bucky to Steve rather than what would assumedly be more the logical- with cautions from the person at home to the one at war), reminders to eat on both accounts, and a few sketches that Steve had included in his missives.

There was never the use of the words "love" or "lover", never any declaration to that regard of any kind, but two concurrent papers were published that interpreted the missives not as simple letters between friends, but coded messages between two lovers during a time that such love could result in persecution and arrest.

"But, why?" Steve asked Tony, after having tracked him down in one of his labs the next day.

"Why what?" Tony didn't look up from the calculations he was doing. "You're going to have to give me something to go on here."

"I read that stuff about the letters you found for me on the internet. All those papers and articles and the way scholars take one word and interpret it and read into it so much- they're seeing all kinds of things that weren't there!" Steve threw his hands up in what could have been either frustration or disgust.

Tony began to laugh. "Welcome to academia, my friend, where nuance is an art form."

Steve sighed. "Well, I guess it's a good thing that so called 'academia' never got a hold of my old art school works then. They'd probably have a lot to say about how many were of Bucky."

Grinning, Tony said, "Hate to break it to you Steve, but..."

Steve sighed again, longer and louder. "Oh boy."

The majority of Steve's effects had been donated to the Smithsonian and other museums after he crashed Schmidt's plane into the arctic with only a few things kept by each of the Commandos, Peggy, Howard and the General. Steve wouldn't have thought any of them were the sentimental sort that would put aside random sketches or personal items as mementos, but apparently he was wrong.

Dernier had not only kept a drawing that Steve had done of himself and all the Commandos, but when the French government proposed the idea of commissioning a memorial to fallen heroes of other countries who helped free France he offered it as a model for a statue of Captain America and Bucky, who, after all, were the epitome of such soldiers that had, sadly, lost their lives during the war. Once he learned of its existence Steve was able to find pictures of the statue and after downloading one to his Starkpad he went searching for someone to ask about it.

If he'd thought things through a little more, Tony would not have been his first choice of people to question, but, unfortunately, Steve hadn't, so Tony it was. "Tony, look at this!" Steve demanded, shoving the tablet in between Tony and the coffee maker he'd been staring at.

Tony didn't even give it a glance before brushing the tablet out of the way and leaning closer until he was mere inches from the coffee carafe. "Not now. Coffee."

"Tony, no, look," he said, slipping the tablet in the way again.

"But. Coffee," Tony repeated, gesturing vaguely to the coffee maker that had just begun burbling.

Undaunted, Steve pointed to the photo being displayed. "Look, it's me and Buck, right? But that's not all. See all these marks? That's where people have been kissing the statues. Because, apparently, we've somehow become the symbol of same sex romance in Paris; Paris no less! And couples come from far and wide to kiss the two of us because it's supposed to be lucky!"

Steve's tirade actually got Tony's attention and he tilted his head as he looked at the photo. "They kiss you... there?"

"Well, not me me, the statue of me!"

"Now I'm not one for hitting a guy below the belt, but considering how that's your-"

"I know what it is, what I want to know is what can I do about it?"

"Do? I don't think there's anything you can do about it except try to get the statue removed and I don't even know if that'd be possible. I can lend you lawyers if you like but, Steve, really, it's not that big a deal."

"So you think I'm overreacting."

Deeming the coffee maker finished enough, Tony turned it off and grabbed the carafe, taking a sip straight from the top. "WOOAAAHHHHHH!" He began blowing and fanning his mouth. "That's hot." He looked down and considered the coffee for a moment. "Good, but hot."

"You okay?"

"I'm fine. And you should be too. If you make a big deal about it all you're going to do is bring more attention to it, which, I get the sense is the last thing you want to do. I recommend you just leave it alone. I mean, in the long run, what does it matter?" Tony poured some milk into the carafe and then headed out of the kitchen, pausing in the doorway to add, "It's not like people are coming out of the woodwork to hit on you or anything because of the statue or what people think of you and Bucky's relationship, right?"

"Right."

"Well, yet, anyway. I gotta go, see you later, Cap." And then Tony meandered out of the room, leaving Steve standing there, staring after him.

"Yet? Oh, right... if everyone thinks me and Bucky... Oh boy."

Steve knocked on the doorframe. "Bruce, you have a second to talk?"

Bruce looked up from his newspaper and gestured with the pencil he had been using to fill out the Sudoku. "I would welcome a break, come on in."

"Crosswords giving you trouble?" Steve asked as he walked in and sat down on the couch across from Bruce.

"Sudoku. This is the Times, I couldn't finish one of its crosswords if my life depended on it. There are too many questions about who won what award for me to hope to complete them."

Steve grinned. "I hear you on that."

"So, what can I do you for, Cap?" Bruce looked up as he tucked the pencil behind his ear and tossed the paper on the coffee table.

"A little while after I woke up I realized that while I had been in the ice not only did the world move on without me, but the story, the legend, of Captain America had continued on without me as well. Do you know what I mean?" Bruce nodded. "I knew about the trading cards and comic books and the movies, some of that had started even before I went under, but I never really put much thought into what people might be saying or thinking of me beyond the fact I stopped some bad guys and died doing it. It never occurred to me there might be a message have attached to me, or that my image might inspire anything more than someone standing up to a bully or two."

Bruce barked out a laugh. "Really, Cap? You 'stopped some bad guys'? That's it? I think you're selling yourself a little bit short there. Just a little," he said only to have Steve give him a half hearted one shoulder shrug in reply. "You gotta give me something to work with here, Steve. Is there a particular aspect of your legend that's bothering you? I heard about the statue and kissing thing, does that embarrass you? Do you want it stopped?"

"Yes and no. Actually, no and yes. I mean-" Steve broke off shaking his head and stopped to take a deep breath. "I'm not homophobic," he said once he started speaking again. "I have no problems with the fact Bucky and I have somehow become the poster children for gay rights and our story was used to prevent the passage of 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' or to help same-sex marriage rights gain the foothold it has in the Country today. But it's all based on a lie- Bucky and I weren't an item. We were best friends and that's... all. And now, I feel like I'm lying to the world about who I am and what I was."

"Are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Are you lying to the world? Maybe you weren't with Bucky in the way people think you were, but would you have been? If the world had been a different place? If you could have been a couple and gotten married and still served, would you have?"

"I. Well. I." Steve scrubbed his hand across his face. "I don't know. I honestly don't know. I mean, I like girls. I loved Peggy, I'm not a homosexual."

"What about a bisexual then?"

"Bisexual?"

"A person who loves people of the same gender as well as the opposite gender, a person who is sexually attracted to both men and women. You've said you loved Bucky as a friend, but under different circumstances , knowing what you know now, in a world like today, would it be the same kind of love or ..." Bruce let the sentence hang, giving Steve time to think it over.

"I guess, I," Steve said eventually. "Oh, boy."

With everything that happened with the Triskelion and Hydra and the Winter Solider and Bucky Steve put all thoughts of Cap'n'Bucky in a historical context of out his mind to deal with the actual man himself, the mess that was S.H.I.E.L.D. at the moment, and the general chaos that his life had become. It took months for things to settle down and the better part of a year before Bucky came to him and was more the man he remembered and less the ruthless assassin he had been forced to become.

Dealing with Bucky was both the easiest and toughest things he'd ever had to do. The camaraderie between the two of them was still there, somewhat, but hidden under layer after layer of stress and guilt. Sometimes Steve would look at the man and see nothing more than a stranger wearing a familiar face but other times the other man was so like the Bucky he remembered that it hurt. Bruce and the other doctors they consulted said to give it time and that all he could do was try to present familiar surroundings and a comfortable place for Bucky to live while he worked through some of his trauma so Steve did just that.

And, eventually, it started to work. Bucky was starting to relax, no longer seemingly always on alert, and if he felt safer when he was heavily armed, well, Steve wasn't going to argue that point. Not since he did manage to divest Bucky of idea of carrying around his AK-47 and storing it in the closet anyway, letting him rely on a copious number of handguns, knives and who knew what else to consider himself safe instead.

Bucky's memories could be considered Swiss-cheesed at best at the beginning. He remembered neither of his parents and only one of his sisters. He had only vague recollections of Steve's pre-serum days but he did remember some of their adventures with the Commandos and, perhaps unfortunately, several of his Winter Soldier missions. They learned that being prompted helped so they would spend hours talking, Steve beginning a story, telling it in dribs and drabs with Bucky occasionally filling in a detail here and there as he began to remember it.

The others tended to really enjoy this time because Steve had never been one for revelling in the past and few of the history books had managed to collect details and data from his pre-Army life so this was the first time anyone had heard of the incident with the meatloaf or Steve using his small stature to sneak into movie theaters. Steve would have been embarrassed by sharing some of their adventures if it weren't for the soft, half smile Bucky would get on his face when a memory had been teased to the surface and he could continue the story without any of Steve's help.

They also put effort into bringing Bucky up to date with all the societal and technological changes of the past seventy years, a few of which were still new to Steve, so he couldn't say he minded. It was nice for them to sit on either end of the couch, tablets or books in hand, reading whatever history article was interesting at the moment and occasionally swapping back and forth tidbits and quotes and random factoids.

"Hey, Steve," Bucky called out one afternoon, gesturing with the large book he was skimming through. "You ever read this? 'Fighting Them Over Here: Queer Voices During The War'? It's got a whole section on us."

Steve had, in fact, read that book, it was one of the many to insinuate a long term relationship between Steve Rogers and James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes, and had been particularly virulent in its assertion that them being lovers was the best explanation of Steve's one manned assault that freed the men of the 107th all those years ago. "Yeah, yeah I have, but Buck, listen-"

"It has some interesting things to say about how things were between us back in the day."

"Yeah, I know, but Buck, you gotta-"

Bucky leaned over. "I can't believe I didn't remember that. You should have told me, Steve, you really should have told me."

And then they were kissing and all Steve could think was oh, boy.

In the ensuing days Bucky was more relaxed than Steve remembered seeing him since before getting his orders to ship out all those decades ago. He seemed to revel in all the little touches that he thought being 'Steve's fella' allowed of him. Arms brushed against one another. Hands rested on the small of backs. Fingernails ran through hair. Thighs pressed up against each other on the couch. Ankles crossed under the table.

It was a nightmare of muddled and confused feelings for Steve, but it was great for Bucky. He was more open, no longer insisting everything was always fine and keeping every feeling and frustration bottled up inside anymore. He talked instead of mumbled and even smiled and laughed. Really, it would be near perfect.

If it wasn't all based on a lie.

Steve thought one of the others would say something, after all he had admitted on several occasions that his and Bucky's relationship was a platonic one without an iota of romance between them, but no one brought it up. Which meant either they thought he hadn't been telling the truth about his past or... Or, what? They were willing to perpetuate this lie because it was helping Bucky? Possibly. That was probably Bruce's reasoning anyway. Steve was pretty sure that Tony enjoyed Steve's discomfort at the whole situation and that was why he was keeping the lie going.

In the end the reason why didn't matter, Steve supposed, what mattered was what he was going to do about it. Bucky was enjoying himself, somewhat. Really, other than being a little more tactile then they had been not much had changed other than the first kiss. And that one in the kitchen. And the time in the elevator. And the- okay, if Steve was going to be honest with himself there was a lot of kissing, but nothing else. They shared a place and lived out of one another's pockets, but that wasn't anything new; they'd lived together before the war after all. And the apartment they had back then was miniscule compared to their space now; it had been a two room apartment typical for the time: a small drafty bedroom and kitchen/dining room with the bathroom down the hall and shared with the rest of the floor. Hell, the bathroom in their place now was probably bigger than their entire apartment back then, especially with its large hot tub and ridiculously oversized shower.

Steve knew he should say something to correct Bucky's misunderstanding about their past. But as the days passed it got harder and harder to find a way to bring it up. Somehow, 'Sorry, Buck, I've been lying to you and leading you on - our past relationship wasn't anything like what I've let you think' wasn't something that was easy to work into the conversation. It didn't help that that Bucky was remembering snippets of the past here and there but none of the things he recalled countered the idea that they had been an item.

Then came the night Bucky knocked on his bedroom door at three in the morning.

"Buck?" Bucky didn't come in when Steve gestured to after opening the door, he just stood in the doorway, adorably rumpled and looking more than half-asleep.

"Why haven't you said anything about us sharing a bed, Steve?"

"What?" was all Steve could counter with, still somewhat half-asleep himself and not really following Bucky's train of thought. Their old apartment had only had room for one bed, of course they shared it.

"You're such a good guy, wanting to wait until I was ready, and I have to thank you for that, but I think I am now. I'm more than ready."

And then Bucky sat down next to him and pulled Steve close and before he could process that, Bucky's hands were under his shirt, pulling it over his head and their bodies were pressed together and they were both hard and all Steve could say was, "Oh, boy."

Steve broke off the kiss by pulling away. "Bucky-" he began.

"Oh." Bucky bit his lip and looked away, hunching into himself and practically bleeding embarrassment and disappointment from every pore. "We were but it ended before I fell? Oh, God, Steve, I am so sorry. You should have said something, if I'd realized you weren't interested I would never have-"

"No, Buck, that's not it-"

"Did we break up and I forgot? You know my memory from then's Swiss cheese, there's no reason you had to pretend for me just because-"

"Bucky, stop." Steve grabbed Bucky's flailing arms and held them tightly together. "Just stop and let me get a word in edgewise, okay?" He waited until Bucky acknowledged him with a nod. "I know I should have explained earlier, but it's too late for that now so just let me explain. Yes we shared a bed, but it was to sleep together. Just sleep, not anything else. I was always cold and there wasn't a lot of space and sharing a bed didn't mean anything other than sleeping in the same place. We slept together in the next to one another sense, not the 'together' together sense. Do you understand?" From the blank look on Bucky's face Steve could tell he didn't.

"But I remember," Bucky protested.

"We never had sex, Buck. Or held hands or kissed."

"But-"

"I'm sorry if I misled you somehow, but-"

"Steven Rogers, shut up." Steve snapped his mouth shut at the order. Bucky pulled his hands away and used them to emphasize each word as he spoke. "I remember loving you. Big you, little you, Cap you. You you. Every version of you. Because of the things I remembered and what I read I thought I acted on it. I guess I didn't, but now's as good a time as any. I love you, Steve Grant Rogers, and now I'm going to kiss you so if you don't feel the same way you stop me, but if you do, and I hope you do, then you better kiss me back and make all these years of waiting worth it. You got me, Rogers?" Steve nodded, slightly dumbstruck. "Good. Now, come here you." And then they were kissing and for the first time in a long time, everything was right in the world and all Steve could think was oh boy, life couldn't get any better than this.