Steve was fairly positive that he had broken all of his ribs. A collapsed lung, maybe. He could feel his body knitting itself back together, the serum doing its job at keeping him super, but it wasn't nearly fast enough to keep him from stopping Thanos. He knew they couldn't win this. His hope had bottomed out the second he saw the army begin to pour out, but he wasn't about to die on his knees. 80 years had passed since the Vita-Rays, but he was still that scrappy kid in the back alleys of Brooklyn that didn't know how to back down from a fight. Only this time, Bucky wasn't here to rescue him from the bullies. His knees almost buckled, hopelessness overwhelming him as the magnitude of his imminent failure washed over him. He had tried. He had brought Bucky back from hell again and again only to fail him one last time. Even if Bruce really had managed to bring everyone back, they would all turn to dust as soon as Thanos got the gauntlet back.

His last prayer was that there really was some kind of afterlife, somewhere where he could explain to Bucky, to all of them what had happened, that he had tried, that he was—

"On your left." A voice he hadn't heard in five years buzzes in his ear over the comms, causing Steve's heart to skip a beat or six. He spun around, wondering if Thanos had thrown him so hard against the rubble that he had started to hallucinate. And then the portals appear, Sam's familiar wings soaring over him with a familiarity so potent Steve thinks he might collapse from relief alone. Bruce had done it. Portals keep appearing on either side of him, the entirety of the Wakandan military, Wanda, the Guardians, and everyone else he hadn't seen in five years dropping in all behind him. He searches wildly for the familiar head of brown hair, the glint of a metal arm, but the fighting has already started and there isn't time. He knows he's here, he can feel it in his bones and through whatever connection was forged between them a century ago. He calls Mjölnir to him, feeling the lightning crackle through him and give him renewed strength.

It's automatic to him now, the language of battle in a team, the comforting familiarity of people he hadn't seen in half a decade relaying positions to each other over the comms. He feels alive, his reflexes and body working on autopilot with a new kind of frenzy borne from the knowledge that they did it. They brought everyone back and they were going to win. Sam is covering him, Peter is soaring above the fray with the gauntlet in his arms, and Bucky is out there somewhere, no doubt picking off the Chitauri one by one with his impeccable aim. He feels almost giddy, finding a rhythm between his shield and Mjölnir and relishing in battle for the first time in years.

He feels a familiar twinge in his chest as they make their way through Thanos's army and his eyes know exactly where to go, his whole body orienting towards Bucky like a compass. He's hissing, pressing a hand over his right forearm where a blast had grazed him. Rocket is covering him, and Steve can only imagine the obscenities they are lobbing at each other as Bucky reloads.

Steve's awed concentration is broken as a Chitauri comes for his throat, grappling with him before Steve kicks it back, slicing it in two with his shield. By the time he looks back, Bucky is already gone, lost in the thick of the battle. But Steve feels clear-headed, a focus he hasn't felt since he stepped out of Erskine's machine, like a missing limb had been reattached. Steve felt the inevitability of war, knowing somewhere deep down that they would win. They had all lost too much, some permanently, for this to go south.

He watches, shortly thereafter, as Thanos's army dissolves into dust one by one, just as he had watched half of his team and Wakanda do years ago. He's too far away to see who had the gauntlet, who had saved them all. All he can see was the rubble, the dust settling, and then, there—weak light glinting off of a metal arm. He barely registers the fact that he was moving—running—towards Bucky. Bucky's eyes are still trained on the powdered remains of a Chitauri, no doubt thinking about when he died the same way. His eyes shoot up as he heard the rapidly-approaching footsteps, reflexively aiming at Steve's chest with his rifle.

But it was Steve.

Steve, the last thing he saw before he dissolved. Steve, his anguished face rushing towards him as he melted into nothingness. Steve, who had pulled him back from Zola and Austria, from Hydra, from his own mind, from the rest of the world as they fought to kill him. Steve, who acted like it was his life mission to pay Bucky back for all of the times he saved him from back-alley bullies by putting his life and reputation on the line for him again and again without hesitation. Steve, who somehow did the impossible and brought him back—brought them all back. Steve, who was holding Thor's hammer, which Bucky thought was impossible. But then again, he had just come back from the dead. Again.

Steve stops to a halt as Bucky lowered his gun, dropping Mjölnir and his shield with a clatter against the rubble. He steps over mangled steel, his face as broken open as it was the first time he saw Bucky on that bridge in DC. Like he has seen a ghost, one that kept coming back to life, stubbornly, for him. He pulls Bucky by his shoulders into a crushing hug, not feeling his broken ribs and innumerable cuts and bruises across his body. He doesn't hear Bucky's surprised huff as the breath is squeezed out of him, the clang of his gun dropping to the ground. All he knows is Bucky, alive and warm, smelling like gunpowder, the bite of metal against the rips in his suit as Bucky folds his arms around him in response. He doesn't care that they are being too rough with each other, holding each other too tightly for what they had just gone through and the bruises they were surely giving each other. They had spent almost a century as each other's suns, keeping each other alive and grounded when no one else would. Steve was not going to let him disappear again, wasn't going to let Bucky go where he couldn't follow.

Steve pulls back, a firm hand gripping the back of Bucky's neck as he pressed their foreheads together. Both of them are crying, something they haven't done around each other since Sarah's funeral. Living this long, doing what they had done, it was all too much for anyone. Steve knows with certainty that he would spend the rest of his life searching and fighting for him, no matter how many times or how long it took, but God he just wanted them to stay together, like this, forever. They breathe heavily from the aftershocks of fighting, from the terrifying knowledge that they almost lost each other again, from the closeness that they hadn't been able to get in five years and so rarely even before that.

"You brought me back." Bucky's voice is hoarse from disuse, thick with emotion.

"Bucky, I-" Steve stopped himself, not knowing what he wanted to say. That he was sorry that he had let this happen in the first place, that it had taken him so long to find a way to bring him back. That he hadn't been with him, hadn't been there for him. That he went back and saw him in Austria and didn't change the past. That he had chosen a certain future with him in it rather than an uncertain past where Bucky lived a normal life, aged and died naturally. That he was horribly selfish when it came to Bucky, how his own stupid decisions tore at him day and night and how he thinks Bucky would never be able to forgive him. He wants to say that he had finally figured it out, why Bucky turned him inside out every time and left him raw and vulnerable. Why he feels like every time, he reverts back to who he was before the serum, gasping from an asthma attack after his mother died, groping blindly for Bucky in the dark of his living room. Panicked, fumbling, single-minded in staying alive. Bucky kept him alive. He knows, deep down, that he wouldn't have been able to survive it all if he hadn't been frozen for 70 years. The decades without Bucky, the nightmares, the constant guilt and searching for his remains among the snow would have eaten him alive. He would've had a full life in a world he understood with a woman he loved, but he would have been torn apart by it in the end. He barely held it together for the two years before he knew Bucky was still alive, largely lost his mind after the snap. He had lost his parents, countless friends, Peggy, had traveled in time both ways, but the one thing that made Steve completely collapse was losing Bucky. Whatever happened, whatever would happen, it would always be him.

"Buck." It comes out as a half-strangled whisper, and ice meets azure. That's all it takes, the broken blue that Steve's known his whole life. He frames Bucky's face with his hands and pulls him in, pressing their mouths together. Bucky tastes like salt and iron and home and Steve wonders how the hell they managed to stay away from each other like this for so long. He can feel something knitting itself back together inside of him, not his ribs, but something far deeper than he had been worrying to shreds since Bucky first peeled him off the ground in a back alley.

He feels Bucky stiffen underneath him and immediately lets go, putting distance between them. Steve can feel his heart plummeting to his feet, shame creeping up his neck. Stupid, stupid, stupid for thinking that this was the time, that Bucky even felt anything for him. They had barely any time to talk between Bucky's stay in Wakanda and the snap; hell, there hadn't been time to really talk since 1945. Bucky had been disentangling his trauma piece by piece since Steve had first said his name on that bridge, but that wasn't nearly enough time. Bucky had been focused on getting himself back before the snap and was God knows where after it, not spending the past five years spending virtually every free hour thinking about what they meant to each other. He had kissed without asking, another violation of Bucky's autonomy in a long history of not belonging to himself. In the span of seconds, Steve felt himself spiraling, cursing himself again and again for his selfishness, for putting what he needed above giving Bucky space after he literally came back from the dead. Why wasn't it enough for him just to know that Bucky was alive, real and solid and here.

"I'm s-" Steve doesn't even get his apology past his lips before Bucky stops him, metal fingers gripping Steve's upper arm and keeping him in place.

"Stupid. I know." And Steve has only a second to register how Bucky sounds more like himself than he has since 1945 before Bucky's mouth is on his, hard and desperate. Steve stumbles back a step at the suddenness and force of it only to be pulled back and set steady by a firm hand at his lower back. It's bordering on too much, Bucky's hand digging into fresh wounds, his insistent mouth on Steve's own, the way their teeth knock against each other and scrape their lower lips. Bucky kisses like a dead man risen, desperate to feel life and to prove that he's real. Steve lets him lead, lets him take what he needs, carding his fingers through Bucky's hair and pulling him closer when he gets a low groan of approval. He's wanted this for so goddamn long, can't believe he repressed everything for half a century when this felt more right than anything he had ever done. He would give up being worthy enough for Mjölnir, would give up his shield and suit, would give up anything in this fucking world just to stay just like this, with his fingers knotted in Bucky's hair and lips bruised from his too-hard love.

Bucky finally pulls back, just enough to search Steve's eyes.

Yes, I'm here. I'm real. You are alive. This is it. We are real, we are okay, he wants to say.

What comes out instead is a half-panted, "I love you."

Bucky pauses, his grip on Steve tightening almost imperceptibly.

"You still don't know when to give up." Bucky leans in to shut him up, but Steve can hear the I love you too in his words just as clear.