Bucky hummed, swallowed thickly, then shifted his weight between his feet.
After attending Stark's funeral, he felt less sure of himself. His future. Steve's future.
He could see it in his eyes. Steve had something to tell him; he just didn't know how to tell him. It was the hesitation in his baby blues, the constant glancing.
Knowing Steve Rogers, Bucky knew that the love of his life was trying his best to plan out his words the same way the planned out his missions. But because Bucky was the love of his life, Steve lacked the conviction he always had when he jumped out of planes.
"Buck,"
Steve had stood before him with a gentle smile as Bucky returned it knowingly.
"I'll miss you," Bucky had said.
"Try not to do anything stupid while I'm gone,"
Maybe Bucky had found serenity in his heart, or maybe it was a way of reconciling his pain. A futile balm for a lifetime's suffering.
"How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you,"
They had hugged, and no one suspected a thing.
And Steve left.
It was supposed to take a few seconds, but Bucky had known better.
When the others began to panic, Bucky shut his eyes for a moment and thought back to the days where they were inseparable. When Bucky found him cornered in a dark alley after confronting yet again another bully twice, thrice his size. When they would lie in the pitch black of the night talking about the future.
And this was it.
Among the many years and events that came and went in his life, Bucky would forever remember the year Steve left him.
He wondered if Steve had spent a fulfilling life with her, where they had decided to live, what Steve did all those years.
Did he let go of all of the pain?
Bucky had looked over towards the water and saw him there, and yet, no one suspected a thing amongst all of the panic.
The most difficult moment of his life wasn't when he fell off of the train, or the countless hours spent in the Memory Suppressing Machine. It wasn't the the day Steve said his name for the first time in seventy years, or the day he dusted.
"I'm going back, Buck,"
That was the hardest day of his life.
Steve had been the first one to say "I love you," during one of those nights they were talking about the future.
They'd painted a beautiful picture of a life void of poverty, sun shining on days spent in Central Park - the sun so bright it didn't even matter that Stevie got another sunburn. They would spend the day in Manhattan, just because, and make fun of the Manhattanites.
And when Buck suggested that they would make fun of the Manhattanites and their idiosyncrasies, Steve had laughed so hard that he had let it slip:
"Buck, I love you,"
More than seventy years later, Buck can hear Stevie's laughter mixed in with those precious words.
Stevie made up his mind - damn his conviction - so Buck has to leave that place too. Their place.
Maybe what they had was common. People talk about it all the time. Everyone falls in love with everyone, all the time. No one knows how, or why, but it happens.
Buck tries to reconcile himself with the idea that what they had was common, but fuck, if that were true. How could it be that their love of nearly a hundred years is common? Maybe their falling in love was common, but nothing else.
Stevie, you love me, baby?
For Buck, it was consuming.
Stevie, what is this? In your heart?
Of course, Buck did try to stop him. He told him not to go three thousand times, pleaded him with tears streaming down his face and body shaking.
But he never said it out loud, for fear that Steve would hate him. Buck would have rathered he hate himself than Stevie hate him.
So he never said it out loud. Stevie probably started to erase him from his heart from that day forth.
And damn if Bucky didn't miss him already.
It's common, it's normal, it's nothing.
Bucky would go through another seventy years of sitting in that chair waiting for his memory to be wiped if it meant he could breathe again.
"I'm going back, Buck,"
He couldn't breathe anymore. After Stevie told him that, he couldn't walk anymore. When Steve left the room they were sitting in, Buck stayed behind for hours, frozen in that place.
It wouldn't have been the first time he was frozen.
Buck could hear Stevie's laugh as he told him he loved him, then the gasp that followed. He could hear the blubbering of excuses Stevie made up, but all he could really remember was their first kiss. No amount of verbal consolation could have shut him up that day, but that kiss sure as hell did.
It shut the both of them up, for the first time since they became friends.
Buck could remember how he would complain at Stevie for how predictable he was. It was always the same dark alley, the same reason why, the same thing over and over again.
And Stevie would laugh at him as Buck told him they were too comfortable with each other, how if they continued they would become the same person.
Then Stevie would stop laughing for a moment to kiss him, and tell him that they were, in fact, that same person. They had the same heart, two sides of the same coin, one nothing without the other.
Bucky thought back to those times and hated himself for even saying bullshit like that. Now Stevie was leaving him and he couldn't even tell him the one thing he wanted to say the most.
Maybe Stevie knew.
There had never been a day where Buck hasn't loved him.
Perhaps this day was a long time coming. Perhaps because Buck never told him that - never told him enough.
Perhaps this was… inevitable.
But his Stevie was sitting on a bench now, overlooking the water, probably contemplating the life he'd lived without Buck.
Had she given him everything he wanted? Everything he needed?
Buck hoped so.
As Sam approached Steve, Bucky gave him a nod.
This was the end of the line.
There had never been a single day where Buck didn't love Stevie.
And there will never be a day where he doesn't love him.