Bucky was so exhausted from the ordeal that he fell asleep – but not before whispering, "Will you sleep in the bed with me?" He hadn't been able to stay awake long enough to know whether or not Steve had heard him. He woke up with a warmth along one side of his body and sighed happily.

"Steve?" Bucky asked, in case Steve was also asleep.

"Yeah?"

"How long was I out?"

"Uh... just now, or...?"

"I mean, how long was I in cryo?"

"Oh." Steve absently started playing with Bucky's hair. Was this really his Steve? They had never done this with each other. And yet it felt like the most natural thing in the world. "Only a few days."

"Why did you unthaw me?"

Steve didn't answer right away. "Um..." He shifted, which meant Bucky had to move, and now they were looking at each other. "Okay, so I have something to tell you."

"Is the world ending? Am I going to prison?" Bucky asked.

"No, nothing like that."

"Oh. I mean, I kind of remember Vision saying it was an emergency that I get back," Bucky said.

"Oh, that was just because the other you destroyed the lab." Steve shook his head. "Uh, the reason I asked that you get brought out of cryo... um... Sorry, this is hard. I should have said this a long time ago."

"What?" Bucky couldn't get up on one elbow like Steve was, so he just looked up at him.

"I..." Steve looked at Bucky. His mouth opened and closed.

"For a guy with enough guts to fight Tony Stark and the United Nations..." Bucky trailed off as Steve gave a little smile and looked down at his hand, which was picking at the threads of the bedsheet. But Steve didn't say anything else. "You know, we're together in at least three other universes," he said.

Steve looked at him.

"And I know you slept with me in one of those universes," Bucky continued.

Now Steve was blushing. "It was a weird situation. You don't-" He stopped, as if he had just realized that Bucky did understand.

"The other you was very upset that you slept with the other me."

Steve's face was bright red now, so naturally Bucky continued, unable to hide his own smile any longer. "Well, guess what. I slept with another you, so I guess we're even."

"Buck-" Steve choked out.

"I mean, that's what you were going to tell me, right?" Bucky reached up with his one arm and touched Steve's face. It seemed to startle him, but Bucky kept his hand there. "Steve." He laughed a little. "Goddamn it, Steve. You know me better than anyone. We fought in the war together. We were both human experiments. And now we both went to other worlds together... You know, I think... maybe before the war, we didn't really know how much we meant to each other. How deep it was."

Steve was looking at him now. His eyes shone.

Bucky took a deep breath. "In every other world, we aren't this stupid and stubborn."

"I love you, Buck," Steve said, all the words coming out in a rush. "That's why I got you out of cryo, because I should have said it the moment I saw you."

Bucky laughed, feeling tears at the ready behind his eyes. "Well, there was a lot going on. Kinda hard to talk about feelings when SWAT teams are ready to break down your door."

"I know. And I almost said it on the elevator-"

"I knew it!"

"God, I'm an idiot."

"We're both idiots." They were both crying, but smiling and laughing a little at the same time. Steve had his hand back in Bucky's hair and was holding on so tightly it hurt. Bucky wasn't about to complain. "You might be a little more of an idiot than me. Why did you kiss Sharon? That was weird."

"Yeah, I'm the bigger idiot."

"Don't feel bad. Apparently I'm your sidekick. I'm the sidekick to Captain Idiot."

They laughed and wiped each other's faces and then, once they'd settled down, Steve said, "So."

"So?"

"Should we... make out now or something?"

"It's amazing, after all these years, you still suck at romance."

"Are you kidding me? How is calling me an idiot romantic?"

They laughed again, shorter this time. Bucky was too preoccupied with thinking about Steve's mouth. Would kissing this Steve really be that different from kissing all those other Steves? Suddenly it all felt too much. He wanted to go back to where he and Steve only hugged.

"I mean, we don't have to make out..." Steve said, at the same time Bucky said, "Maybe we could just hug first?"

They laughed at that, and then Steve said, "Okay," and then his arms were wrapping around Bucky and squeezing tight. "Sorry, am I hugging too hard?"

But this body was strong enough to withstand a Captain America squeezing Steve back. "This is good," he said.

He thought about why he'd gone into cryo, how afraid he'd been of someone triggering the Winter Soldier again. His time in the hospital fresh in his mind, he knew this was still a problem. But he wanted some time with Steve first.

The rooms T'Challa had them staying in were nice. Like, penthouse hotel room nice – well, T'Challa was royalty. Bucky would have preferred a shitty apartment in Brooklyn, but he was a wanted man. And even though Stark had outfitted him with a new arm ("Least I could do, since I still kind of want to kill you") Bucky hadn't wanted to try to wear a disguise and try to sneak back into New York just for that purpose. The doors here closed and had locks.

The other Avengers had given them some very interesting looks when they had emerged from the hospital room where Bucky had woken up.

"This is the correct Mr. Barnes, yes?" Vision had asked, and Steve had given the startled android a hug instead of just nodding.

"I see how it is," Sam had said, giving them each steady look.

Wanda had smiled, but she looked tired. When they had broken their team out of the Raft, Wanda had been in a straitjacket, and Bucky felt a sudden kinship to her. Maybe someday she would be like the happy college student he had met in the coffeeshop. He hoped so, anyway.

Tony just kept looking between the two of them with a smirk. Steve told Bucky later that Tony knew everything, somehow.

For a while, Steve and Bucky spent a lot of time alone together. They watched a lot of TV, always managing to be touching even if they were on opposite ends of the couch. Sometimes they spooned, sometimes it was shoulder to shoulder, sometimes just their feet touching in the middle while they each had an armrest for their heads. Steve, flipping through the channels, asked if there was a show called "America's Got Talent."

"I don't know," Bucky said. "Is there a show called 12 Monkeys?"

Both shows existed in this universe, and they watched an episode of each before deciding it was too weird. Then Steve found a movie he had watched while he'd been stuck in the other universe. "Let's watch this."

It was a romantic movie that took place during the forties, lovers who were separated by years and war. In the present, the lovers were older, and every day, the man told the woman their love story, hoping to reach through her memory loss.

The ending had them both wiping their eyes. "We're like them, you know," Steve said. They were now sitting with their arms around each other. It had been days and they still hadn't kissed, even though they had shared a bed and done a lot of hugging. They also seemed to touch each other a lot, as if neither of them wanted to be more than an arm's length away from the other.

"But I have my memories back. Most of them."

"You do." Their faces were only a few inches apart.

The silence between them had Bucky thinking about kissing Steve again. He'd done it in the other worlds; why was it so hard here?

Because here it's permanent. Here it means something.

If Steve kissed him, that would be the easiest thing. Somehow Bucky knew he wouldn't. He wanted to make sure Bucky was okay. Still protecting me...

He remembered how coffeehouse Steve had pressed his lips into Bucky's neck, like a kiss, but not. So that's what Bucky did. He pulled Steve into a hug, and pressed his lips into Steve's neck.

Steve sighed.

That made Bucky smile, because it had been his own reaction, too. Then Steve was pulling away. "Are we ready for kissing now?" he asked.

Instead of answering, Bucky pulled Steve back to him until their mouths met.

Kissing this Steve wasn't much different from kissing the other Steves. In the midst of exploring each other's mouths with their tongues, Bucky wasn't really aware he was looking for differences until Steve pulled away again and said, "I like kissing you better than the other Bucky."

Bucky laughed. "Well, that's good, I guess."

"How do I rate? You've kissed more than one of me."

"I like kissing you best, too." All the other Steves were just practice for this one.

"Natasha said I kissed like I hadn't kissed anyone in seventy years."

Now Bucky was really laughing. "You don't! Hold on, does that mean you kissed Natasha? When was this?"

"We were undercover."

"Well, I think you're a good kisser. Unless I'm just as terrible as you are."

Steve smiled and planted a good kiss (in Bucky's opinion) on Bucky's lips.

They made out for a long, long time. Sometimes they pulled together as tightly as they could, with all their superstrength, fitting against each other like puzzle pieces. Other times one of them would decide to change position, and they would wrestle around like when they were kids. It was more fun, knowing they couldn't really hurt each other.

Around hour two, Bucky started to realize that Steve was moving his hips against Bucky, and he could feel how turned on Steve was. The heat and that knowledge that Steve was turned on by him turned Bucky on. Of course Bucky was wearing thin hospital pants that were more comfortable for lounging around, while Steve had on jeans, so Steve felt Bucky's erection almost immediately. Their kisses built in intensity. "Do you wanna..." Steve gasped between kisses, "do anything else?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know."

Bucky had an idea, a memory, of when Steve first offered to give him a blow job. He closed his eyes, and remembered how that had felt, and knew that if he let Steve do that now, he'd still be thinking of the other Steve, somehow comparing. He didn't want to do that. He needed to wait until those memories faded a bit more. "I like just doing this."

"Me, too."

"Have you thought more about going back into cryo?" Steve asked one night, a few weeks later. They were lying face to face on the silk sheets, almost naked. They still wore their underwear to bed – plain white briefs for both of them, since they had barely left their rooms. It was too nice having meals served to them and watching TV and making out. But Steve insisted that the exiled Avengers keep up their fighting skills, so at least once a day they joined the others in a training room to spar and work out. "I know T'Challa said he would work on some kind of reverse brainwashing, and he's got a team of people on it, and I think Tony's working on it too. I mean..." Steve kissed the divot in Bucky's chin. "Maybe you don't ever have to go back."

"I should probably go back." The idea of cryo felt so far from this warm, safe place. He shivered. "I just... there's stuff I want to do first."

"Stuff? Like what?"

He couldn't see Steve in the darkness, but somehow knew Steve had that little smile on his face. He said, very quietly, "Like have sex with you."

"I'm ready whenever you are," Steve whispered.

"Maybe we should wait."

"Bucky." Steve stroked his hair. "You don't have to go back into cryo the second we have sex."

"I know." Bucky enjoyed Steve's fingers combing through his hair for a while. Then he said, "So, now?"

Steve laughed. "I thought you'd never ask."

"Oh, God, oh God, Bucky, fuck!" Steve collapsed beneath him.

Bucky only came for a few seconds longer, then he was falling on top of Steve. "Fuck is right."

"Shit."

"Goddamn."

"You think the serum made that better? I mean..."

"It's gotta be. I don't remember it being that good any other time."

Steve rolled over onto one side and propped his head up on a wobbly elbow. "How many times?"

"How many?"

"Yeah. How many times did you have sex in that other universe?"

Bucky slapped at Steve's sweaty chest. "Only once. And I was on the receiving end."

"Really? Maybe we can try that next time."

"I wouldn't mind," said Bucky, remembering. "There was this vibrating blue ring-" He mimed putting it on his cock. "But it still wasn't as good as this. Jesus."

"A blue ring. I'll have to see about that," Steve mused. "But... you weren't a virgin before that."

"Steve, this was way better than any time I ever slept some girl. Come on."

"Okay."

Bucky rolled over a little and nudged Steve's hip with his own. "What about you? How many times did you have sex in the other universe?"

"Oh." Steve smiled. "Well, a lot."

"A lot?" Bucky pushed at him, hard. "Slut!"

"Well, more than once! Prude!"

"I wouldn't mind being a little slutty with you," Bucky said.

"So you're not going back into cryo tomorrow?"

"Not until we try a few things."

"I have some ideas..."

Resting with Steve's head on his chest and his chin in Steve's hair, Bucky thought about how strange this world was, to be able to find love after nearly a century. And if he and Steve could do that, then anything was possible. They would find a cure for Hydra's brainwashing. Wanda could be happy again. Maybe Tony could forgive him.

"Hey," Bucky said, shaking Steve awake. "I love you."

Steve smiled up at him. "I love you, too," Steve said sleepily.

Maybe he could even forgive himself.