Bucky knew this was a story he would pass down to every new recruit S.H.I.E.L.D. ever made him speak with. Bucky was halfway to Phil Coulson's office when he caught sight of Peggy Carter –she was always eye-catching and today was no exception. Even though her back was straight and there was a frown on her face as she marched past Bucky. Bucky just happened to be in the right place at the right time, because Clint had just rounded the corner.

"You!" Peggy spat, stomping right up to him.

"Me?" Clint asked, blinking at her.

Bucky could tell that was the wrong move because Peggy decked him in the face and even though Bucky was about five feet away, he could hear the crack followed by Clint's yowl of pain. Phil burst out of his office, hand reaching for his gun on instinct; the handful of other agents present staring at the scene in alarm.

"What the fuck?" Clint demanded, only it came out more like "wha tha fook" considering the state of his face.

"Maybe next time you'll remember to think of other people first and not yourself," Peggy said scathingly. She was still standing toe-to-toe with Clint.

Clint, wisely, staggered to the side and Peggy flounced past him, her hair bouncing behind her. Bucky stared at the scene of chaos around him and had to resist the urge to laugh. He had no idea what that was about. But he was pretty sure Clint deserved it –he usually did, when it came to women.

"Barton, my office, now," Phil said tiredly, holding his door open long enough for Clint to stagger inside.

Peggy didn't even look back.


"What do you mean you punched him in the face?" Steve asked incredulously.

"No one gets to treat my best friend that way," Peggy replied, taking a swig of her beer. "If I knew who your soul-bonded was, I'd give him a punch too."

It wasn't that Peggy had done it that was a surprise -it was that she had apparently done it in a very public place at her workplace with no care for the consequences. Actually, that wasn't all that surprising. Steve really should have known. And although he felt just the tiniest amount of bad for Clint, he was also feeling a great deal of satisfaction.

"You should have been there!" Riley enthused. "It was great. Everyone's been talking about it."

Peggy narrowed her eyes. "He hasn't given you any grief about it, has he?"

"No, not a word."

Somehow, Steve's television marathon had changed into greasy take-out, cold beer and his best friends all gathered to watch Hotel horrors unfold. Although that sounded like a great tagline for Gordon Ramsay's series. Most of Steve's attention was on his friends.

"You're allowed to be mad at him," Sam said. As always, he was the cool and rational friend.

"It was a shitty thing he did," Steve agreed. "How he did it was worse, but I'm not mad at the choice he made. I understand why he did it."

"That's not the point. He knows how you're feeling too, he could have stood to empathize a little more -and you a lot less!" Peggy argued.

Steve rolled his yes. "If Clint's unreciprocated soul-bond had turned out to be either of you, I would have dumped him too."

"So you weren't in love with him?" Riley asked.

"No," Steve answered softly. Clint had been easy and comfortable, he made Steve laugh at his dumb puns and Clint had understood Steve. But Steve hadn't been in love with the other man. Maybe, with a little more time, it would have been easy to happen. Their relationship had been moving in that direction but... Even with all that, Steve had always been aware that Clint was in love with Phil. And if Phil had become suddenly available? Clint would have left Steve without an ounce of hesitation and Steve wouldn't have faulted him for that either.

"It didn't seem like it," Peggy said cautiously.

"He was -" Steve paused. "He was fun and comfortable and I could have fallen in love with him. But we always knew that we belonged to other people." Even if Steve didn't want to admit that he belonged to anybody but himself, it was true. He had willingly tied himself to another person for the rest of his life.

"I wish you could tell us about your bonded," Peggy sighed.

Steve smiled apologetically. "I've put him through a lot -"

"And he hasn't put you through the ringer?" Peggy countered.

Steve frowned. "Unknowingly."

"Maybe it's time to tell him," Sam suggested, setting his beer down.

"What good will that do?" Steve asked. "He already feels bad about how we met and how he treated me."

"And has he offered an explanation for that?" Peggy demanded. "Steve, I'm sick of seeing you throw yourself on a cross for someone -who quite frankly -doesn't seem to care about you."

"Peggy does have a point," Riley said slowly. "I mean, nothing is going to change between you two unless you sit down and have a talk about it. An honest, upfront one. I know you don't talk about it, but we all know it hasn't been easy for you. And it won't get better unless you two make a unified decision on how to handle the side-effects."

"And if I tell him and he decides he wants nothing to do with me?"

"Maybe it'll go back to way the things were Steve -"

"It won't. That's what all the research says, it's what Clint said. You progress the bond, get more intense side-effects everytime you run into your bonded. I chose to keep with the friendship route so that maybe I could feel something other than pain and misery!" Steve set his beer down, taking a deep breath. "I don't want to go back to that. I knew what choice I was making when I made it."

"Steve..." Peggy said quietly, reaching towards him. "We're just worried about you."

"I know," Steve said slowly. "I know you are. And you're looking out for me. But I -I can't go back to feeling just his nightmares and his pain. I don't know how much longer I could have lived with that. And this -it isn't better, but I get to feel when he's happy or excited."

"Are you in love with him?" Riley pressed.

Steve frowned at the question. He'd never thought of it in those terms. He shook his head slowly. "I'm not in love with him. But his -his emotions and well-being are tied to me. I care about him and what happens to him. But I don't love him. I can't love him." Loving him would be asking for more pain, for watching as he moved on with someone else. He didn't want that.

"If you don't tell him..." Sam said slowly, watching Steve carefully. "If you don't tell him what being in an unreciprocated bond means for you, nothing will ever change. He might be mad, he might not want to talk to you but you've already lived through that and you two managed to overcome it. He might be willing to compromise -"

Steve snorted darkly in spite of himself. "Yeah? And when I tell him that when he has sex with his partner I feel every minute of it? I spend every minute crouched over a toilet, throwing my guts up, torn between wanting to die of embarrassment and being too sick to do anything about it? He knows I know his emotions, that I experience his dreams and he hates it because I'm invading his privacy. And he's right! He never asked for this. I threw my bond to him and now I'm a constant weight on his mind because I know everything he doesn't want anyone else to know without his permission. And he should be allowed to have that privacy!"

Peggy gasped. "You -you have to experience that?"

Steve nodded reluctantly.

"You have to tell him," Peggy said vehemently. "Steve, I would want to know if I were in his shoes." Sam and Riley both nodded at this. "It's awkward and uncomfortable, but he needs to know."

"Even if you don't want to burden him with more, keeping this a secret from him isn't any better," Sam pointed out. "If I were in his position, my biggest fear would always be the fact that I didn't know what you got to feel. It's not like you get every single emotion, or dream or nightmare. You're connected to him, but it's halfway there. You only know when those emotions spike. And it would be scary, in his shoes, to not know the full extent."

Steve nodded grudgingly. "I just..."

"You saved his life and he didn't ask for any of this, right?" Riley said knowingly. "But he's alive because of you. He can't resent you the same way you can't regret saving his life. You did a good thing, for good reasons. It sucks there's all this other shit around it, but if you can both get your heads out of your asses? It might still get better."

The problem was, as far as Steve was concerned, was that if he told Bucky that he experienced every time Bucky had sex, it wasn't like Steve was asking Bucky to stop having sex. And if he told Bucky that particular news, he wouldn't be surprised if the other man stopped having sex entirely because any attempt and he would suddenly be acutely aware of the fact that Steve was simultaneously experiencing it with him.

"Look at it this way," Riley said gently. "The longer he doesn't know, the bigger of an invasion of his privacy it is."

Steve winced and nodded. "Okay. Okay. I'll... tell him."

Sam clapped him on the shoulder. "It's the right thing to do."

As sure as Steve was, that it was the right thing to do, he also knew that it was something he didn't want to do for a variety of reasons. But they were right; as much as he wanted to keep things as they were, Bucky needed to know. Steve didn't want to tell him, because he was afraid that the resulting negative emotions would overwhelm him. And he was already going through enough negative emotions on his own. He didn't need to try and separate his feelings from Bucky's.


Getting in touch with Bucky was easy and he was more than willing to meet at the Black Donkey to discuss. It wasn't the busiest place, in Steve's opinion, and the karaoke wasn't half-bad. Steve was sitting in a booth tucked away at the back, where the karaoke wasn't as loud and the lighting was dim. He had a half empty glass of beer in between his hands and across from him, Bucky was draining the last of his glass. There was a basket of bread sticks and pachos between them.

"I'm sorry about Clint," Bucky had said when he first sat down. "He told me."

Steve had managed a smile. "I can't blame him, it's not an easy situation."

"For what it's worth, it hasn't been easy on him. But he should have thought things through."

That was the end of their early conversation, as they slid into talking about Steve's art and Bucky's job. Bucky spoke at length about his prosthetic, even though he was wearing his civillian version, he was excited about the other model.

"Well you probably had something in mind you wanted to talk about that wasn't work," Bucky said, setting his glass down. Steve wasn't sure that he'd ever seen Bucky so relaxed in his company before.

"Yeah," Steve agreed, feeling dread curling in his stomach. He wasn't anticipating this conversation. He'd spent days avoiding it, but Sam's voice had been nagging at him.

"What's going on?" Bucky asked, eyeing Steve in concern instead of distrust. Things had changed so much in the months since they'd run into each other.

"There's something I should have been honest with you about." Steve paused, reluctantly looking up from his glass. He'd spent his days avoiding this meeting, trying to think of a good way to explain it. "The closer we get, the more of your emotions I experience. When we first connected, it was just all the anger, resentment and sorrow from you. Pain from your loss."

Bucky shifted, folding his arms. "I'm aware. The closer soul-bonded's are, the happier their emotional spectrum can be."

"I only feel those connections when you're exuberantly happy, or in a painful nightmare," Steve said quietly. "I know how to divide whether I'm feeling those emotions or if you are. To me, it's just a brief spike of emotion, of joy when I'm doing a thankless task. Or a chore." Steve managed a smile.

"I've been researching the effects," Bucky said, lowering his arms. "Of unreciprocated soul-bonds. Although Clint has been frustratingly mute on the topic, and what academics I can find who've written thesis papers on it, they're mostly unsubstantiated. There's theories, but no proof. Other than the statistics, that those who are unreciprocated who have no connection to their bonded kill themselves."

Steve smiled slightly. "You could have asked me. I spent a year and a bit finding the papers worth reading and Clint gave me his knowledge. I don't know as much as he does though. I'm surprised he wouldn't answer your questions."

"He said it was an invasion of your privacy, that I should talk to you about it," Bucky admitted.

Steve smiled softly. He didn't know why Clint's loyalty was so surprising, but he was appreciative of it. "What questions do you have?" He didn't mean to drag the discussion out, but he was more than willing to delay it.

"Can you -are you able to know what I'm thinking or feeling whenever you want?"

"No!" Steve said adamantly. "And I wouldn't want to, if I could. The emotions come without context -just a flash of fear, or pain in my shoulder. Unless I'm there with you, I don't know what's going on. And it can be days or hours between those shared emotions." Steve paused. "Shared isn't the right word because your emotions don't belong to me. It's like an overflow, when you feel too much, it spills over into me."

Bucky's expression softened. "You don't get to choose what you feel?"

Steve set his glass aside, taking a pacho. "I don't have any control over what parts of you I get to know. My bond to you, because I gave you half my soul, makes it so that I take your suffering away. When you have nightmares, while you're lying in bed tossing and turning, gets divested and turns to me. My soul feels yours in pain and pulls that away, into me, it makes your pain mine. And maybe some nights you fall into a dreamless sleep while I wake up in the middle of a panic attack, with no conscious memories of a dream that never belonged to my imagination. Of things I've never seen, fear and pain I've never felt but somehow recognize."

Bucky reached over slowly, taking a pacho himself. He turned it over in his hand slowly, dipping it into the salsa. "I thought you had more control. Like, soul-bonds share everything."

"We aren't soul-bonded," Steve pointed out. "For me, it's a one-way dead end."

Bucky chewed thoughtfully. "I didn't know it was so different for you."

"I think of you as being surrounded by a glass wall. I tied myself to you to save your life, I get to help you whether you want it or need it but I can't share anything of myself. Whatever pieces of myself there are, they smash into that glass wall and fall away. I can't forcibly take anything from you, do anything to you, unless your own emotions are washing over the glass wall and into me."

Bucky winced. "It's so hard to find anything out online..."

"People don't like talking about us," Steve said softly. "Unreciprocated soul-bonds. It's like we're dirty or less than, because there's something deficient -something lacking, to make the person we sacrificed ourselves for not want us. I know we're a unique situation. But the research projects don't get funding -because they found the solution to the high suicide rates, which is to tie us more tightly to our bonded's so we don't die off. And sometimes, it's because people think we aren't worthy."

Steve knew what people said online; how the media painted unreciprocated soul-bonds. "I can't speak for the others, I haven't meant anyone who has an unreciprocated bond other than Clint. But people think we've done something wrong, that we might have managed to bypass the selfless concept of a bond to force ourselves onto our partner." And everytime Steve read one of those articles, saw the posts, the "discourse" that people called it, his soul ached. There were no loopholes around the selfless, well-meaning of tying yourself to another person forever, whether they reciprocated or not.

"That's garbage," Bucky growled, scowling. "I might not have been grateful, but I know you meant well. And I -I don't reciprocate because I don't want -and I never will want -a soul-bond with anyone. You're a great guy, Steve, anyone would be lucky to have you. If I could, I would free you from being tied to me."

"It's not the -"

"That bad?" Bucky supplied. "Don't worry, you don't have to lie for me. I make your life hell." He smile and it wasn't nearly as self-deprecating as Steve expected; it was almost teasing.

"Look, there's one other thing about our soul-bond I should say," Steve said reluctantly. He took a quick drink of his beer. Bucky actually looked intrigued. But there was no good way to say this so Steve went with the band-aid approach. "I vicariously experience your sex life with you, vomiting my guts up an in severe agony as I feel exactly what you're doing."

Bucky's intrigued expression turned to horror, a red flush stealing over his complexion. "What."

"It's only happened since we managed a tentative friendship. I don't know if it happens every time, but it does happen."

Bucky drew back, shaking his head. "And you're just telling me this now?"

"I didn't exactly know how to bridge the topic," Steve argued, flushing.

Bucky exhaled sharply. "So you -you suffer every time?" He ran a hand through his hair. "That's awful. Why." He appeared genuinely distressed and Steve couldn't blame him.

"Soul-bonds are meant to share everything, including sex. It's just a partial bond. My soul is wounded, knowing it can't be with you as it wants."

"I'm..." Bucky shook his head slowly. "I'm not sorry -I didn't ask to share that with you, but I am sorry you're stuck with it."

Steve relaxed. "I'm sorry about it too."

An awkward silence fell between them that neither of them knew how to broach. It seemed an impossible chasm, stretching wide open between them. Steve didn't know what he was expected to say, what he could say to change the silence. He had been honest, albeit maybe he should have told the truth sooner. He didn't want to. Even now, he wasn't sure whether to regret the confession or not. All he really knew was that the awkward heaviness didn't seem like it was going to go away anytime soon.

"I used to think that... you could read my mind. My thoughts. Whenever you wanted, just with a thought. That you could be inside my own mind," Bucky admitted, taking a sip of his beer. He wasn't watching Steve, his eyes on the pachos between them.

Steve made an offended noise. "Even if I could, I wouldn't."

"I didn't know you then," Bucky pointed out softly. "I was fresh back from being a prisoner of war -I'd broken out of the hospital, thinking that I was still there, thinking that my men had already died and I'd lost when you save me. I wasn't grateful. In between moments of lucidity, when I knew I was back in the States, I just wanted to die. I wasn't grateful.

"I... I thought it would be better if I was dead. No one could take my secrets, I could finally have my mind back, be myself. When I was... over there, I did... terrible things, Steve. Whatever medals and decorations they gave me, I did horrible things. I have nightmares about them, I wake up sometimes, thinking I'm the same person I was when they had me. When they made me someone else. Having someone else in my head -soul-bonds do share everything, after all, I was convinced you were watching everything from inside out.

"I resented you. After the years of therapy to separate the new me from the boy I'd been and the monster they made me... it took me time to come to terms with our predicament. To recognize and accept that you weren't also a monster in my head, waiting to attack." Bucky paused, lifting his gaze to Steve's. His blue eyes were somber. "I kept waiting for you to make me attack, make me kill, do depraved things that I had no control over because that's what they made me do."

Steve flinched. "I had no idea."

Bucky swirled the amber liquid in his glass absently. "I didn't broadcast the fact that I'd been so badly drugged up I did horrible things." He drained the last of his drink. "But hey, I volunteered for it, so they gave me honors and medals and put me on the front page of every tabloid in the country. Bucky Barnes the decorated war hero who threw himself on the pyre to save his men." He snorted bitterly. "When I ran into you at Stark's paty, I knew better but as soon as I saw you, all my old expectations came rushing back.

"You have to understand, Steve, that while you saved my life by invading a part of my privacy, at that time, I had no privacy. There wasn't enough of me left to matter. The boy who went to war had died in that hell and the person who walked out of it had blood on his hands and voices in his head and thought killing was the only solution. What semblance of sanity I had left? Only recognized you as another person who had invaded it."

Steve glanced at the table, feeling guilt wash over him.

"Please don't say you're sorry," Bucky added. "If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have gotten a second chance to realize how better things could get. I wouldn't have been able to get to know myself without you saving me. I just wanted you to understand why this has been... difficult."

"Well, saying 'you're welcome' just seems like a slap in the face too," Steve admitted. "I'm sorry you had to live through that. No one should have to."

"Honestly, I don't know why it's taken me this long to tell you." Bucky stopped then, smiling weakly. "Actually, I do know why. It's taken me a long time to even feel like I could tell you the truth. That when I was a prisoner, they invaded my mind and made me someone else and sometimes, when I look at you, that's all I see."

Steve wouldn't hold that against him. "I don't blame you. I'm... sorry to remind you of that."

"Don't be," Bucky said. "It isn't your fault either."

"Do you have any other questions about the bond?" Steve asked softly.

"What's it like for you?" Bucky asked. "I don't -I don't understand how it feels for you."

Steve spent a moment to find the right words. "Sometimes when I sit down to read, I feel your happiness wash over me like a soothing balm to calm me down when I wasn't even agitated. Sometimes, I'm in the middle of cooking and I get so mad that I end up breaking three eggs and wasting them for no reason. Or I'm out having a beer with a friend and suddenly I'm sad for no reason.

"Or I've just had a nice date with someone and suddenly I'm nauseous, then I'm doubling over to puke my guts up and it feels like every muscle in my body has locked up and I can barely move. But I know exactly what you're doing. I wake up from nightmares barely able to breathe, with no recollection of the dream, just the emotions."

"I wish I could free you from this one-sided situation," Bucky said apologetically. "It really isn't fair for you."

"It isn't fair to you either," Steve pointed out.

Bucky made a face. "What I said earlier, about invading my privacy, that was when I still believed you had control over... this," he gestured between them.

Steve left the pub in a daze. He'd never thought Bucky had believed he'd actively been prying into his life. He thought over Clint's cryptic words, Rebecca's reaction to him and could understand, just a little, why they had been so upset. Steve had save Bucky's life, at the cost of lengthening his therapy, at invading an destroying the sanctuary he had been searching for. He'd saved Bucky's life but, he had no doubts, that Bucky had paid for it too.

There was a nagging feeling in his gut though. What Bucky had told him explained so much, but he still didn't know why Bucky refused to tell anyone, even his own family and friends, about the fact that he was soul-bonded.


A/N:

I also post this fic on archive of our own because I personally prefer to read from there, but I used to be pretty active over here so I maintain this fic on both. I always update here first. Anyways, over on that site I've gotten a fair few negative/disheartening comments last chapter when I last updated this that caused me to take a weekend off. And then it was my birthday, my grandparents who hadn't spoken to me in ten years said they wanted to talk but never showed, my best friend's birthday, grandparents again plus a disheartening comment, and then the week from hell at work happened and I needed to recuperate. So, here is this chapter at long last.

I post about the delays as they occur and why on my tumblr - Kinthinia . tumblr . com

And a super special thanks to all you guys who read it here, because you have been supportive and respectful of everything that's developing in this story. So thank you.