For a moment, there's fear.
It's hot on his tongue, heavy in his lungs; it flickers like a candle in his ribcage. He's been here before, he swears it. He's felt this feeling before.
For a moment, Bucky Barnes forgets where he is.
He closes his eyes and suddenly they're surrounding him, the black-masked faces with tight brows and thin lips. He can feel the agony in his left arm, the rip and pull of flesh, but his screams sound distant. Maybe they don't exist at all.
He can see the man with the clean, crisp suit walk towards him (mission report now, mission report now). He can hear his own voice asking for answers. He can smell his sweat pooling in puddles, can feel the needle sticks on his legs and the prodding fingers at his ribs and he can feel the adrenaline in his blood that is only calmed by the ...
Chemicals.
He can see the syringe resting only inches away from his hands. He could reach out and touch it, if his wrists weren't wrapped in metal, tying him to his seat. It has what he needs. Or, at least, what the black-masked faces say he needs.
Just a push and the chemicals are in his veins. Wiping him of everything he knows. He'll lose it all again and again, over and over. Like clockwork.
But that's the only solution. It's the only cure. It means Bucky stops smelling death. It means faces stop swarming in his brain like poltergeists. He forgets the man on the bridge with the horrible, horrible confusion on his face.
Who was he?
(I knew him.)
Something is shaking him, pulling his shoulders back and forth, but Bucky's lost in his delusion. He tastes the plastic mouth guard slip against his teeth, he hears the cryochamber creak open like a coffin, he smells winter in the air, he's everywhere and nowhere at all.
Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.
(You're my friend.)
There's a sudden, red hot pain against his cheek. Someone's punched him. His jaw is sore. His lip is bleeding. The chemicals have stopped working.
Bucky finally opens his eyes.
The colors form together first in blurs, then in shapes like a kaleidoscope. It takes a moment, maybe a lifetime, but he finds a familiar face in the chaos. Blonde hair parted to the side. Blue eyes with thick lashes. Grey t-shirt, denim jeans. A man. Sitting in front of him. On a couch in a living room. Breathing heavily. Looking like he just lost a bet in poker.
Steve.
"Bucky? You hear me?"
There are still ghostly whispers in Bucky's ears, telling him to go after the Widow, to strangle her like an animal, but he nods. Yes. He knows where he is. He is at home. He is with Steve.
"Sorry," Captain America sighs, hiding his bloody knuckles underneath a pillow.
"'S fine," Bucky replies, the words tumbling out of him before he can think. He works to sort things through – he was delusional, Steve punched him across the jaw to snap him out of it, but … that doesn't explain why the two of them are sitting so close, facing one another on the leather couch.
"You … you okay?" Steve asks. He's gripping the pillow like a lifeline now, searching Bucky's face for recognition.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay."
"Are you lying?"
"No. Yeah. I don't know."
Steve looks him over again, then turns away. He stares at the wall for a while, not saying anything, just running his thumb along the seam of the pillow in his lap.
It takes a solid minute for Bucky to realize what's happened.
It starts with a simple observation. Steve's lips are wet - which is unusual, because they're usually dry and chapped. A lot of exposure to the Brooklyn cold will do that. But perhaps more importantly, they're swollen. There's sweat dotting his forehead and creeping from his collarbone to his chest. There's a small bruise on his neck.
Then it hits Bucky like a steel pipe.
Oh.
"You kissed me," he says. It isn't a question.
Steve smiles, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. "No, you kissed me. I just returned the favor."
"We've done it before, haven't we?"
Steve nods.
"How many times?"
He takes a deep breath, looks back at the wall, fixates his eyes on the Mickey Mouse clock in the kitchen. "Quite a few," he replies. "But apparently not enough."
Bucky's metal arm whirrs and clicks as his fists clench. "Steve, I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault."
"It may as well be."
"But it's not."
They're silent.
"It happens every time, doesn't it?" Bucky asks. "You ... kiss me, and I break down. Something about you, and the way I think about you, and ..." He curses softly, leaning back into the couch cushion. This is all backwards. This is all wrong. But it has been for quite a while, hasn't it?
The Mickey Mouse clock strikes two in the morning. For a wavering second, Bucky swears he hears marching in the distance. His army, ready for his orders. Ready for his blood sacrifices. His hits. Cold machine gun metal. Masks. Snow in his hair. Hazy vision but perfect aim. The pictures are short-lived but vivid. Bucky just wishes they'd disappear.
"We'll just have to keep trying."
Bucky turns to see Steve looking at him with that dangerous edge in his eyes, the one Bucky knows all too well. It's a shrewd determination, the same stone-cold focus that got Steve through years of asthma attacks and yellow fever and bruised ribs and scratched knees. It means he will not budge. He will not leave his post. He will go down with his ship.
"You should leave," Bucky says, but maybe he doesn't say it at all.
Steve leans forward, and James Buchanan Barnes feels his blood pump again. There are lips against his cheek, lips on his neck, warm breath and smooth skin.
There are fires in the alley, fires slicing through concrete, a troop of Black Widow recruits jumping from the windows.
There are hands holding his, bringing him closer, squeezing his fingers.
There are knives on the table, cleaned and sharpened, ready for him to wield.
There are words in his ear and gentle smiles and deep breaths.
There are commands in his head and blood on the floor and complete, utter clarity.
This is how it begins.
This is how it ends.
"Why are you still here?" Bucky asks, and he's shocked to find his words sound choked.
Steve stops kissing him, just long enough to look him in the eye, to be sure it's Bucky he's talking to and not the Winter Soldier. "You never left me. I won't leave you, Buck."
Bucky wants to throw him back and yell at him, argue that yes, yes he did leave Steve, he left him on the train, he left him in the middle of Nazi Germany, he left him in his head and in his heart. He left him when the black-masked faces first gave him the chemicals.
But instead he just slumps against his lover's body and whispers, "You stubborn punk."
And he is grateful.