A/N: Features chain smoking Bucky, and flashbacks. Random reference/paraphrased quotation from Band of Brothers mixed in there, too. As always, I don't own any tiny little bit of the MCU and I'm not making any money off of this work.

2167 South Liberty Street, Apartment 3C. There was something ironic, almost funny about how Rogers lived on a street with that name. The Soldier didn't know how or why he knew that was Rogers' residence. Was it information planted from his Mission? He didn't know, and he couldn't remember.

That last wipe had, well…it hadn't been followed up with as heavy a dose of the injections as previous wipes. He wasn't sure exactly what the injections were, but they were supposed to increase healing time, increase tolerance for pain, and in a more general sense "increase compliance with the directive". He had half a dose of his normal injections after his last wipe, and had gone right back out into action without rest. The Perfect Soldier. The Soldier had moments where he felt there was another entire person inside of him screaming out for deliverance. He still wasn't sure who that person was, if it was this Bucky person that Rogers kept insisting on calling him. That fractured personality crying out from inside could have been implanted by Hydra for all he knew. He had become incapable of separating fact from fiction, his mind had not been his own for a very long time now.

A part of the Soldier knew he probably shouldn't be sitting out in the open like this. He wasn't visible from the street, and he was almost certain he wasn't being watched at the moment. Even so, sitting on the front stoop of Rogers' apartment waiting for him to come home was not the smartest thing he had done since he abandoned his Mission. He pulled his jacket tighter around his bruised chest.

The Soldier felt a strange sensation pass through his midsection.

Hunger. That feeling was hunger. He hadn't known what that was, after all, he had been given injections to inhibit those feelings. The Soldier had rarely even eaten actual food, he had been fed through a tube for as long as he could remember.

The fact that he even felt hunger and realized he needed to eat was a warning sign to the Soldier. Last time this happened, he had started to ask questions. Questions his handlers didn't like. Questions that led to a wipe.

Except now there were no handlers.

The Soldier reached into the pocket of his dirty jacket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He remembered liking these, a long time ago. He had walked past someone smoking on the street the other day, and the acrid secondhand smoke opened another locked door in his mind. He loved the heady rush of the first few drags and the comforting and soothing sensation of the exhaling of smoke from his lungs. These tasted and felt smoother than he remembered. He had picked open a cigarette, and the small foam-like filter piece on the end was unfamiliar to him. He had pulled the piece off before lighting up the first time, but after testing it out, decided that these cigarettes were better with the filter on the end.

They were excellent for passing the time. He sat back against the door and lit up like an old pro, the nicotine satiating something in him. He exhaled and waited.


Steve saw the slumped figure in tattered clothing before he even started up his walkway. He was seated, leaning against the front door, hat pulled down over his forehead. He was smoking a cigarette. The crumpled pile of butts next to him betrayed how long he had been waiting. The lit cigarette dangled from the full bottom lip, smoke trailing out of his nostrils. He looked up, and the expression was so Bucky, even underneath the uncharacteristic beard and overgrown hair, that Steve found it hard to breathe for a second.

"So you found me, huh, Buck?" Steve finally managed to catch his breath and scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.

"I found the exhibit at the museum. James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky. He's in the exhibit." Bucky didn't get up. He didn't even look up at Steve. "They called him a hero, at the museum. James. Bucky. You kept calling me that name."

Steve sat down in front of Bucky. A sad smile twitched at his lips. "It's your name, Buck."

"I think his name, that name, might be all that's left of Bucky, though." Bucky inhaled the cigarette all the way down to the filter and stubbed it out next to his pile of butts. The nonchalance with which he delivered that last phrase made Steve's chest ache. Out of all the ways he imagined seeing Bucky again, and he imagined it a million and one different ways, this was not anything close to what Steve had envisioned. He had imagined an emotional, cathartic reunion. This reunion was almost wordless. Anticlimactic would be an understatement. The two of them were basically just staring at each other on Steve's front stoop.

Steve crossed his arms across his chest, willing his hands to not start shaking. He was nervous as hell. "You...uh, you hungry at all?"

"No." The sharp lines of cheekbones and loose fitting clothing told a different story. Steve looked at the ground nervously. "If you, ah, change your mind, I can fix you something to eat. Or we can go out somewhere and get some food. Whatever you want."

Bucky shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "Ice cream. Strawberry. I….had a dream about it. I think."

Steve's face lit up. "That's my favorite, Buck. I have some in my freezer, if you want."

Bucky tentatively met Steve's gaze. "Okay, that would be okay." The corner of his mouth pulled upwards into a crooked grin that almost knocked Steve over with the memories it triggered. Bucky looked down guiltily at the pile of cigarette butts and the empty pack next to him. Steve waved the mess away nonchalantly. "It's okay. I'll get it later. Let's just go inside for now, okay?"

Bucky, James, the Winter Soldier, whoever he was, stepped into Steve's apartment with visible trepidation. Steve watched him do a complete 360, taking in his surroundings, cataloging everything in his mind. "It's okay, Buck. You're safe here. Come on, the kitchen's this way."


Steve placed a bowl of strawberry ice cream in front of Bucky, a hopeful glint in his eyes. Bucky tentatively placed a spoonful into his mouth. There was a brief register of pleasure in his eyes before white hot pain exploded into his jaw. Bucky howled, actually howled, and dropped the spoon back into the bowl with a clatter. He clapped his hand over his mouth, pressing down on his lower jaw. The brief feeling of contentment Steve had felt disappeared, quickly replaced by a feeling of guilt and horror that somehow, and he didn't know how, he had hurt Bucky.

"Buck, what is it?"

"Mouth. Teeth hurt…"

"How bad, Buck?" Bucky gasped out, not removing his hand. "I don't know. Just hurts."

Steve could imagine the kind of dental upkeep Hydra performed on their weapons.

Bucky bared his teeth at Steve in response, pulling his lips back on one side. "Here."

Steve didn't know where "here" meant. No wonder Bucky had howled at the spoonful of ice cream. He was missing several teeth further back on the top, and some of the remaining teeth appeared to be broken. The first thing that came to Steve's mind was Hydra testing. Or torture. Or what if it was a side effect of the inferior serum that Bucky had been given by Zola and his team?

He unconsciously ran his tongue over his own teeth. The serum, just as it affected every other aspect of his body, had affected his teeth as well. At first, he thought it was ridiculous and impossible, but how ridiculous and impossible were all the other effects of the serum? Steve had read just about all he could take of the medical report Howard had given to him after the experiment. "In the interest of transparency," Howard had said. What had the report he read on all possible effects of the serum say in the section on oral and dental effects of the serum? Strong resistance to both dental caries and discoloration of tooth enamel. Remineralization of tooth enamel. He stopped reading the report after that; after the first couple of paragraphs it got more and more tedious and harder to understand, unless you were a doctor. Gawking at himself in the mirror after the serum, though, he noticed that his teeth did look different. They were straighter, more even, and felt like they fit behind his lips better. In the bright light from above the bathroom mirror, they looked more than just a little bit whiter. All the better for Captain America's smiling face on war bond posters.

Buck had noticed too, even ribbed him a little for it, at the bar, after Captain America's Big Damn Rescue. Before everything else went straight to hell.

"Another round. Cap'n 'Merica's buyin'." Steve tried his best to ignore how Bucky's speech had started to slur more and more in the past hour. He was three sheets to the wind, not that Steve could really judge him for wanting to let off a little steam. It's just that he wasn't sure that letting off steam was what Bucky was doing. It wasn't that he was judging Buck. It wasn't that at all. He wasn't the one who had been no better than a lab rat in a Hydra camp.

After all, Buck was here, he was alive. Steve had joined the army, was practically living his goddamn dream right now. He couldn't figure out why it just didn't feel like what he thought it would. Pushing those thoughts aside as best he could, he grinned widely at Bucky's drunken chatter as the barkeep slid another mug of lager across the bar to him and topped off Bucky's whiskey.

Bucky had gone quiet, though. He passed his tumbler of whiskey from hand to hand, all the while staring goofily at Steve's face. "Jesus, Steve. Those teeth, Hydra'll see you comin' from a mile away, shoot ya dead." Steve pressed his lips together quickly and flushed deep red, all the while a small smile fighting to escape his closed mouth. Everything the serum changed in him, and he still blushed at the drop of a hat. He still wasn't used to people drawing attention to all the changes in his body. He had been doing a lot of blushing since the serum. Still, apart from the initial soreness, clumsiness, and the fact that he could finally breathe without wheezing or rattling, he didn't feel much different. He wanted to scream to everyone paying attention to him now that he was still the same person he had always been. The fact that it was Bucky calling attention to something as banal as his teeth, his teeth for God's sake, made him feel more self-conscious than he had in months, even after parading around on a stage in tights and pancake makeup. He felt the edges of his teeth with his tongue, then forced a close-mouthed smile. Bucky laughed and nudged Steve's shoulder with his own. "You don't have to hide 'em from me, Stevie. They're nice lookin'. Shiny, just like a movie star."

Steve had to laugh at that. "You mean you didn't see Captain America's film reels, Buck? I am a movie star," he joked, but Bucky was suddenly a million miles away.

"Back at that Hydra base. When you found me, your smile was the first thing I saw, ya' know, Stevie? You still looked scared as hell. In your eyes. I could see it. But you just had that stupid grin on your face. Like you couldn't figure out whether to be scared or happy. It took me a while to figure out you were real." Bucky stopped suddenly, deflating. "When I was strapped to that table, for I don't know how long, I kept hearing your voice, in and out of my dreams. When you found me, I didn't believe it was really you. I thought I'd finally cracked. Or those bastards had killed me." Bucky tossed back the rest of his whiskey. "Oh, god, Stevie, the things they did to me. I wish I could forget…" Steve watched in horror as Bucky's face crumpled. He was so drunk. "Come on, Buck. Let's get you out of here, huh?" Steve placed his hands on Bucky's shoulders, shaking him gently, getting him to his feet. "You need to rest."

You need rest.


Steve didn't know how he had managed to get Bucky all the way from D.C. to New York to Avengers Tower without it becoming a news event.

He did it, though. When Bucky asked him if he could see a dentist, "So he could eat actual fucking food again," Tony had Pepper go through their list of "safe" consults. Meaning they had passed multiple Stark Industry background checks and were conclusively not Hydra.

Which is why Bucky is now being monitored by JARVIS while having a private dental exam in the medical bay of Avengers Tower.

Steve could still remember getting several of his milk teeth knocked out as a kid, could still remember the coppery tang of blood as it gushed out from the empty space in his gums. He remembered how painful a toothache could be, before the only solution was to go and have it pulled. He could almost feel how much pain Bucky was in now. He could definitely sense the anxiety radiating off of him, still reclined in the chair. Stark's dentist friend turned to look at Bucky at the same time Steve did.

"His biggest problem is the long term effects of bruxism." Steve stared blankly, the look on his face prompting a greater explanation from Stark's dentist. "Basically, he ground his teeth so hard for so long they eventually cracked and broke. Three of his molars. There's also two of his incisors that are chipped, not too bad though. He needs to have two fillings, and a good cleaning." He didn't mention the missing teeth. There isn't really any way to know if they had been pulled because they needed to be pulled, or if they were pulled in a Hydra torture session. Or if the bruxism was caused by the mind wipes or cryo. Without dental records, no one would know for sure. Hydra wouldn't keep dental records on secret cryogenically frozen assassins.

Steve imagined Bucky grinding his teeth in anguish in that horrible bank vault that Natasha discovered, or in the throes of a cold sleep dream. Was there any part of Bucky, no matter how small, that Hydra hadn't fucked with?

Either way, Bucky was one hundred percent done with today's exam. He had begun to hyperventilate, his hands had tightly clenched the arms of the chair. Bucky crushed the left arm of the chair within his metal fist. Steve became dimly aware of JARVIS telling them in no uncertain terms that Sergeant Barnes' heart rate and blood pressure was in a dangerous place. Steve knew there wasn't any reason to feel responsible; Bucky had not only agreed to the x-rays and dental exam, he had asked for them. Steve thought that was a good sign. It showed he was trying to reclaim some bodily agency.

Still, Steve should have known that sitting, reclined, in a fucking dentist's chair would be triggering for Bucky. At the same time, the last thing he wanted to do was treat Bucky like a fragile thing. Not after he had been treated as an object, a weapon, for so long. He felt so torn. He didn't know what the right thing to do was in this situation. Steve knew he'd do whatever it took. Bucky. It was just Bucky.

"Come on, Buck. You're safe. You're in Avengers Tower, with me, Steve. You're with friends, people who want to help you. You can get up if you want. There's nothing holding you down to the chair. Lift your hands. See?" Talk him through, just understand, and be there, Steve.

Bucky's eyes burst open after holding them shut tightly for what had seemed like hours. Steve stood in front of him, looking straight into his eyes. He could almost pinpoint the exact second that Bucky began to realize where he was; that what was actually happening was not Hydra's doing. A fog of terror cleared from Bucky's eyes, replaced just as swiftly by glistening tears. "Steve. Steve. Steve," Bucky whispered, trancelike.

Steve grasped both of Bucky's shaking hands in his own. It was the first time Bucky had called him by name, since...god, since the war. Hearing his name come from Bucky's lips again felt like getting shot in the gut, which is something he knew a little about. Steve drew a shaky breath and choked out, "I'm right here, Buck. Right here."