There were never any goodbyes with them. Steve could no more free himself from the skin that held his bones too tightly, that concealed his tangled veins, that ran too smoothly over the rivers of his blood than he could from Bucky.
Apologizes came late at night as kisses pressed lightly to the grey shadows of his eyes. Steve was sleep deprived and it showed. It was the only thing that remained at the end of the day. The bruises he left in his skin faded and his smell washed off.
Bucky peeled back his old bones and harbored himself inside. There were parts of himself that pictures didn't bring back. That his mouth on his didn't resurface. In truth he didn't want to remember. When he remembered too much, things no one should have to remember, he drank. He drank until he couldn't walk or see straight. He drank until he didn't want to break every mirror. His reflection stared back at him. A stranger with steel eyes and a bone white mouth in the chill of winter.
Bucky staggered in. (Home.) The cold apartment with the cracks in the walls and the smell of plastic didn't seem like a home, but home was wherever Steve was.
Steve lifted up the sheets, inviting him in. As if Bucky ever needed an invitation. He lived inside of him like a ghost. He settled in beside him – his back to him, his clothes still on. The mattress sagged a little. The old springs made a sound between a sigh and a groan. It spoke for the both of them.
Steve could smell booze on him like Bucky could smell her on him. A stranger's touch in the warpath he carved on him. Sharon tasted sweet in his mouth. She kissed him tenderly. Steve had forgotten such softness existed.
Steve always expected a reaction. Some kind of blow-up argument that would end with half his apartment in ruins, but Bucky never said anything because he knew loneliness. How it got under the skin and left him restless. He just dealt with differently.
Bucky knew that every girl he was set up with, went on a date with, fucked in his… their bed wasn't him. Everyone, but him, saw Steve as something he wasn't. They only saw his mirror image, not the ashes that lay beneath, but Bucky saw him. He saw him at 3am. With his hair in his eyes and his smile crooked and a fire burning under his skin. He loved the dark and unspeakable thing that lived inside of him.
His smile cut at him like his own knife. Bucky ran his fingers familiarly over the blade of him. Wearily Steve kissed him back. Even war torn soldiers came home to rest their hearts.
Steve pressed kisses to the freckles on his shoulders. His mouth was a caged animal of need against his flesh. His tongue ran over the salt of his skin. He loved the tang of metal on his tongue.
It's yours. And I love you.
But it wasn't his. It was a part of him. As his past had been, as Steve had been.
Bucky reached behind him, clutching at his ruffled hair. His thumb brushed coldly against his cheek. He couldn't quite swallow the lump in his throat as he rolled his hips back against him. His eyes squeezed shut. Half his face pressed into the pillow. A weight pressed against him. He felt hands holding him down. They weren't Steve's. Steve's touch, as fevered as it could be, was kind. They encircled him. Binding his wrists and forcing his head up. He knew what it was like to drown. He had been drowning for years.
His hands were on his hips. He pulled at his jeans. Bucky slowed his hands on his body. His fingers traced the bones of his knuckles.
Am I going too fast? Steve never asked that. He wouldn't ask that of his best friend. Because he knew Bucky would say, "No it's fine." And they would press on. So instead he just rested his forehead against his back and breathed out softly. This was enough. He had him. He had him back again.
Bucky shifted in the bed to face him. He brushed the hair out of his eyes and kissed his forehead.
"Spread your legs."
Steve gave him a look that reminded him of days that didn't blur into one. Days where Steve kept him anchored.
"You can do better than that." His voice was laced with whiskey and his eyes were a slow burning fire. He left ashes in his mouth when he kissed him.
He spread his legs apart wider. His fingers, flesh and bone and metal, ran over his milk white skin.
"You're not shy. Not with me." Bucky was on top of him. His metal hand between his thighs.
His mind may not have remembered Steve, but his body did.
"Remember," Bucky would say. But Steve wasn't the one who had forgotten. No matter how much he wished he could.
"But not like this." His eyes were fixated on his. Steve trusted him. He trusted him more than anyone not to hurt him, but he was only person who could (and had.)
"No not like this." Bucky said gently.
His fingers pushed into him. Steve breathed slowly at first steadying himself against the pain. It was a different kind of pain. The kind he wasn't used to. The pain you weren't supposed to like.
His forehead rested against his. Steve pressed his head back into the pillow and closed his eyes. He couldn't look at him. Not when that look in his eyes was for him and only him. Not when he was inside of him. He pushed his hips up, burying himself around his fingers.
"No," Bucky breathed. He stopped Steve's hand that was trailing down his own chest. Steve looked at him like a little boy. That smug smile with those too innocent to want to be held down and fucked blue eyes. Bucky smiled into his hair. He didn't want him to know how much he loved seeing him like this.
"Come from just this. Me touching you, kissing you," He kissed up his neck. His teeth scraped against his Adam's apple. He traced his jawline with his tongue.
"I could come from you looking at me."
"Then come," He bit at his lower lip.
Steve groaned low in his throat. He clenched hard around his fingers, his stomach muscles clutching.
Bucky breathed in the smell of his shampoo and listened to his heartbeat slow. He had missed falling asleep to that sound.
"Do you know how you look right now?" Bucky asked.
"Like an idiot?" His cheeks were red and his mouth was dry from breathing heavily.
"Beautiful, always beautiful,"
He couldn't help but smile. Because Bucky would have said that when he was 95 pounds and they were crawling through the trenches and covered in mud and blood.
Steve felt safe in his arms. In the arms that had left him empty. In the arms that had pulled him to shore.
His skin had healed around hands that had beaten and bloodied him. He loved the tightness of his grasp, the roughness of his fingers. Hands that squeezed his neck and gripped his thighs until all he could see was the blue of his eyes and his knuckles paled.
Bucky kissed him again. He tasted like soy sauce. It was always either Chinese takeout or pizza with Steve. Bucky had half the mind to buy him a cookbook, but he knew it would end up another paperweight in an apartment full of things covered in dust or plastic. It was a disguise, like his mask. Unlived in, too clean (even when Bucky kicked off his shoes and dumped his jacket on the floor like he owned the place), and cold. There was no home without Bucky.