Happy 19th December. This advent fic is a Steve/Bucky number, cos I love them, so I hope you like it and thanks for reading. As always, I don't own anything to do with Marvel.
S: Sonnentanz - Klangkarussell
Sonnentanz
Before Bucky came back, it was like he was walking around in a daze.
He had thrown himself into working with Shield and the Avengers after New York, enduring the teasing of his colleagues and friends as he struggled to catch up with the modern world. His days were spent drowning out his memories of a few short years ago, while his nights were spent frantically scouring books and the internet to try and catch up on sixty years of history.
Sometimes he felt like it was all in vain though.
He was always out of step with everyone around him.
He spoke differently, he dressed differently, he thought differently, he held different morals from people nowadays. And everyone around him looked and stared and pointed, like he couldn't see them directly in front of them. Everything nowadays was so loud, everyone was so busy all the time and it seemed like he was constantly stood still while everyone else blurred around him.
More and more he found himself checking out of his surroundings, only coming back to himself when someone jarred him or called his name.
It was painful.
He much preferred when he was out on missions. There was no second-guessing his circumstances or the strangeness of modern life there. There were only the orders, the objectives and the decisions made mid-operation to gain a favourable outcome. There was no time to think then.
His evenings were painfully quiet by comparison.
Sometimes he had gone to visit Peggy, the last link to his past, but she was slowly sinking into the haze of her mind, lost in her memories, and then chances of her remembering him was always hit and miss.
The only people he really felt comfortable around were Thor – who was stumbling along and finding his own way in the modern world, but was often off-world in Asgard – and Natasha – who had never had a true identity of her own in the world, and who he wasn't sure even wanted one. Still, it wasn't the same. How could it be?
It wasn't that he wanted to be stuck in the past either, like he was accused of so many times. It was more that there was nothing in the future for him.
Everyone he loved was dead or buried or lost to him. The war was over. He just didn't have a place in the world anymore.
Until Washington.
Until the Triskelion and Shield and Hydra fell all in one large swoop.
Until a man who was his enemy but wore his dead best friend's face attacked him, but paused at hearing his own name.
Natasha gave him the file to begin his hunt for Bucky, but that was only the start as he pushed himself to find his friend.
If he could get Bucky back – find him, bring him in – then maybe it would all have been worth it.
He knew the others didn't understand, not really. They were all friends who would pretty much do anything for each other, but they couldn't understand the bond that he and Bucky shared.
It was growing up in each other's pockets, tearing through the streets and their houses. It was living together in a tiny apartment, where they window didn't close properly and they used up all their money in winter for coal just to stay warm. It was years of conversation and laughter and watching each other's backs and curling up in bed together on the odd days where neither of them had to go in to work. It was watching each other's back again, this time on the battlefield, where they could have gone home, but staying and being with each other was worth the hell of the missions they undertook against Hydra.
It was just knowing someone, a soul-deep, intimate kind of knowing that time and circumstance had formed around them.
Then he came back to him.
Steve could have wept at the sight of his friend. In fact, Natasha would claim that he did.
It wasn't the same. It couldn't be, and he honestly didn't expect it to be.
But it was better. Finally Steve felt like there was something holding him to the Earth stronger than his desire to serve and protect people.
Bucky's memories were patchy at best, but they were coming back rapidly and sometimes it was nice to have someone else remember about the time that Rebecca came home with the greengrocer's son and they had both threatened him later that evening, despite the fact that he was about five inches taller and weighed a hundred pounds more that even Bucky or that if they stopped by Mrs Harper's on a Tuesday after school, she would always treat them to thick slices of fruit cake.
It was also nice to have someone to muddle through life with. Although Bucky had been out of the ice more regularly than Steve, he was just as behind on the times, and they could spend hours working out what they really needed to know about life and what was just the madness of the internet.
When she was trying to set him up with various Shield agents, Steve and Natasha had joked about finding someone with shared life experience…but now here was Bucky.
They talked and they laughed and they sat side by side to watch endless movies that Tony insisted would help them with their cultural history and when one of them had a nightmare, the other would slip into their bed and cradle them until the darkness and the lingering chill of the past vanished.
It was almost perfect.
Then one night, Bucky slid into bed behind Steve and wrapped his arm around his chest, pulling him back against him. Steve turned around to see if his friend had had another nightmare, when all of a sudden, soft, slightly-chapped lips met his.
The kiss was slow and gentle and hesitant, like Bucky was afraid that he was pushing his luck. They broke apart, both panting heavily and Steve blinked his eyes slowly open to stare at his best friend in wonder.
"Bucky?"
"I thought if I didn't do that now, it'd never happen," his friend replied.
Steve stared at him just long enough for Bucky to start to get nervous, but then reached out and grabbed his friend by the back of the neck, hauling him in for another, more passionate kiss. When they finally broke apart, Steve rested his forehead against Bucky's, one hand wrapped around his waist, the other gently stroking his jawline.
"God, I love you. I'm so glad you're here with me," he blurted out.
A wide, beaming smile crossed Bucky's face. "I love you too, punk."
The haze finally lifted and Steve could see clearly for the first time in years.