Steve doesn't know when he started sketching Bucky's eyes.
Maybe that time they were sitting in his bedroom and Steve was leaned back against the wall, his sketch pad on his bony knees, and Bucky was at the end of the bed. Arm on the windowsill, looking out into a hazy morning, smog covering the early sunshine.
It still brightened his eyes, the blue clear and striking. Steve noticed it as particles of dust floated by in the sunlight, and sketched them.
Bucky's eyebrows had been relaxed, no little wrinkle of a frown between them because he'd been talking about joining the military. Steve listened and sketched and tried not to tell himself he wanted to follow. He wanted to do his part, but he also knew how dangerous it was, and Bucky going it alone hadn't seemed right.
Of course, both of their lives were changed and shaped by that war, but they didn't know it for some time.
Steve kept sketching Bucky's eyes when he'd woken up, long after Bucky was gone. It was part of his grief, the way he mourned his best friend, and each page of expressive eyes kept him alive in some way. Kept him close to Steve.
They'd been inseparable since they were kids, their mothers close, and they never drifted apart. Steve watched Bucky grow up and Bucky watched Steve grow up. He watched those eyes, crinkled when Bucky laughed, intense when he frowned or was angry about some injustice done to Steve until he accepted Steve was not only prepared to defend himself but often went looking for trouble.
He sketched the exasperation, the warmth, and fondness. He sketched drooping eyelids, the way Bucky looked when he sat on the end of Steve's bed and stared out at the midnight sky, complaining about not being able to see any stars.
Giving Steve that look when he started ranting about the irresponsibility of the government for not doing anything about pollutants in the air. He knew firsthand how they affected the lungs, after all, which was probably why Bucky only gave him that look instead of telling him to shuddup.
Steve eventually stopped attaching certain memories to the sketches. Drawing Bucky's eyes came so easily to him that he didn't have to think about it anymore. It was a comfort to simply draw, especially at the beginning of it all, after Steve woke up in a new world and realized his old one was as far gone as Bucky was.
Sometimes his teammates, his friends, see. Sometimes Tony leans against the back of the couch behind Steve and asks, boyfriend?
Sometimes Nat tells him they look angry today with an interested squint.
Thor said you knew him well with a friendly smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, that said he understood, and hadn't stuck around long enough for Steve to feel the need to explain anything.
No one asked who.
They're all familiar with loss and Steve can't and won't deny that the eyes he sketches are the same two every time.
Steve's world is turned upside down when the Winter Soldier looks at him for the first time without his mask. When Steve sees those blue eyes filled with an unfamiliar sharp coldness, under a brow turned down in a frown that smooths out when he fires a gun because he's comfortable doing so.
Comfortable aiming it at someone and landing the shot most of the time. Comfortable with doing all that he does, purpose in every movement. A weapon, strong and unbreakable, his arm metal and just as much of a weapon as he is.
Steve knows what weapons look like.
He knows what it means to be molded into one.
When it's all over, when Steve can't stop thinking about the wild look in Bucky's eyes as he yelled you're my mission and Steve surrendered to that because he always surrendered to Bucky, he sketches.
His face aching and his eye swollen shut, the other damp with angry tears, Steve sketches the wild look in familiar eyes and thinks you're alive you're alive you're alive.
"I saw those eyes today," Nat says as she sits on the other end of the couch and peers at him, lips twisted in a troubled frown, eyes puffy and red.
Steve only nods because what the hell can he say about it?
Things change. The world becomes worse off and Steve continues fighting. He fights bad guys and he fights Tony and he fights the government.
He fights Bucky too, a few times, until Bucky finally tells him his mother's name, and Steve knows he'll never be who he was before, but he's Bucky all the same.
Steve chooses him, will always choose him, no matter the rift it creates. He can't ask anyone to understand why. He can't expect Tony to in such an impossible situation, but Steve chooses Bucky and he doesn't regret it. He'll never regret it because he's spent enough time regretting shit in his life. Regretting the way he had to watch Bucky fall and regretting what he knew happened to him after.
Bucky is slow to trust. He remembers most things distantly at first, but clearer memories eventually return. Bucky doesn't smile, not for a long time, and Steve watches him and wants to tell him I don't know if it's selfish or cruel to say it, but I'm happy you're here, to know you're within reach, because I watched you fall and could never dream of seeing you again, because I can sketch your eyes as you sit huddled in the corner and staring out of the window with that same frown, because you're real and I can listen to you again, even if you say things I don't want to hear, because I love you.
Steve doesn't know how to say any of these things. It's good to see you, Buck is wildly inadequate, but it's what he says and Bucky only peers at him, as if he's wondering if Steve means it.
He'll always mean it and Bucky will trust that in time.
Tony believed Steve when he told him about the Winter Soldier and the vague sense of sympathy he'd had was gone when Tony came face to face with Bucky and what he'd done when he didn't remember the name Bucky Barnes.
During a fight Tony had asked, you can't see the man behind all those eyes you draw is gone?
Those days are past now.
More recently Tony pointed at Bucky and asked boyfriend? and kept walking while Bucky frowned irritably after him and muttered something that made Steve laugh. Even while his heart had been racing and he was afraid Bucky would ask him what Tony meant, but Bucky seems to be getting used to the people here and didn't question it at all.
Bucky smiles more now. He laughs and it's the same laugh Steve has known all his life. He's always been dry and sarcastic, but sometimes it's caustic now, self-loathing hidden just under the surface of a joke. But Bucky can still be warm, warmer with Steve, and he doesn't let himself be vulnerable around anyone, never really has, not unless that someone is Steve.
It's odd, Steve thinks, when they're sitting alone in Bucky's room and he watches him wipe tears off his cheeks, that Bucky shows more vulnerability today than he did over seventy years ago.
Or, Steve thinks, maybe it's not odd at all.
Once Bucky's tears have dried and they start reminiscing the way old people do, Steve opens his sketch pad and draws.
His hair is longer than it's ever been and Steve's used to drawing it now, strands falling against sharp cheekbones or half-hanging over Bucky's eyes when he's looking out of the window.
They're the same eyes but Steve has watched them change over time, from warm and human to cold and machine, and now something in between.
"You're a sucker for them, you know," Bucky says.
Steve pauses and his heart skips a beat. He stares down at his drawing before he continues it and smiles because he knows this. He knows this Bucky.
"For what?" Steve asks like he always has.
"My eyes," Bucky says like he always has, still gazing out of the window. "Old blue eyes, that's what they used to call me."
"That's Sinatra."
"We don't know that. We both ran New York town at the same time."
"If you start crooning, Buck, you're going to run everyone out of New York town."
Bucky smiles, the wide and genuine one that Steve loves most, even while his eyes are red-rimmed and still a little bright. Maybe he likes this one more, while Bucky's wearing his heart on his sleeve and allowing Steve in, more so than he ever did before.
Steve thinks he might put some color on this sketch, but he'll never let Bucky see it.
"You like it when I croon."
"Pretty sure sticking my fingers in my ears is the universal gesture of do not like," Steve says as he refines his sketch with darker lines. "Please don't start singing."
Bucky huffs in amusement. "We used to sing all the time," he says and smirks when Steve looks over his sketch pad at him. "I didn't say it was good singing. There's a reason Mister Lotti banged the shit out of the wall every Saturday night."
"Mister Lotti," Steve says with a laugh. "I still wonder what he was calling us."
"Some not so pretty things," Bucky says with a lazy shrug and smile. "I'm sure he was glad when we both died in the war."
Steve chuckles and turns back to his sketch. "Yeah, he was probably lucky enough to die old and peaceful in his sleep."
"I wonder what that's like," Bucky says. "I go to bed old every night and never get to die peacefully in my sleep."
"Let's hope you don't anytime soon," Steve says. "I kind of like having you around."
"You like my eyes better than me."
"That's not true. I like your eyes and voice better than you, as long as it ain't singin'."
Bucky laughs and looks at Steve. "You could fill a museum with those."
Steve shrugs and leans back in the armchair pushed into the corner of Bucky's room, looking at him. "All the old ones are long gone so I've got to fill a few more sketch pads with them before I can do that," he says. "Sneak in and tape them up all around your memorial in the Smithsonian."
"Fuck," Bucky laughs. "Someone might think the artist has an obsession with the deceased."
"Not an obsession. A great fondness."
"Definitely an obsession with my eyes."
Steve frowns for a while. "You're right," he says, "I should do the whole face before it starts coming off weird."
Bucky smiles and looks out of the window. "Stark thinks we're boyfriends 'cause of those."
"Ah," Steve sighs and supposes Bucky likely knew that the first time Tony asked if he was the boyfriend. Steve might like it if he was, sure, and he's freer to think that way these days, though seeing two men holding hands on the street still makes him do a double-take sometimes.
Gay content creators he follows on TikTok don't faze him, but the internet is a very different place than New York's streets.
Well, mostly.
"Tony thinks a lot of weird things," is what Steve says because he can't go around asking Bucky to be his boyfriend. Not only does it sound juvenile, but because Steve's still human and prone to hurt feelings. Bucky's just getting around to having feelings at all.
"You don't do the dating thing anymore," Bucky says mildly. He laughs when Steve gives him a long look. "Maybe you didn't ever do the dating thing. Not unless I made you, anyway. But you could now."
"I really couldn't," Steve says dryly. "You try dating when you're famous and half of America despises you," he adds when Bucky raises an eyebrow. "I don't want to either way."
"Why?"
Steve sighs. "The world goes to shit every other week. It's not a good motivator for romance," he says. "Maybe when you're ready to hit the bar, I will be too."
"Hey, that's not nice," Bucky says. "Sam tells me I need decades' worth of therapy before I can do that."
"He's not wrong," Steve mutters as he sketches. "But that goes for both of us. You aren't alone in being totally fucked, Buck."
"It's always good to not be alone," Bucky laughs. "What if I wanted to sooner than a few decades from now?"
Steve looks at him and raises his eyebrows. "Hit the bar?"
"Date."
Steve eyes Bucky because he looks serious. He's good at looking serious these days, but Steve can usually see past it still when he's joking and Bucky doesn't look like he's joking.
It makes him feel about a hundred different ways and he could say not a good idea, Buck, but that'd probably be selfish. Or true. Probably both. Steve knows it's not a good idea all around and so does Bucky, but he still looks serious, and Steve doesn't know what to say.
No, because you're definitely not ready, no, because no one else is ready for you, no, because you're a danger to yourself on the best of days, no, because then I'd have to watch you with someone else all over again, and I don't think I could handle it even if it's decades from now.
"Steve."
Steve blinks at Bucky, who is peering at him with a frown. "What? Just thinking," he says. "Are you… well, I mean, it's only been a few years. That's a lot to jump into after just a few years, isn't it?"
Bucky looks faintly amused. "You can say you're worried I'm going to go primeval and hurt someone," he says and waves his hand dismissively when Steve opens his mouth to argue. "There's only one person I've got my eyes on and they're probably the only person who could handle me if I were to go primeval."
"Oh," Steve says and frowns. He looks at the sketch, nearly finished, and back at Bucky. "Who?"
"You always were more brawn than brains," Bucky sighs. "Even when you weren't much brawn either."
"Thank you," Steve says sweetly. "But what does…" he trails off and blinks once, then twice at Bucky, who looks like he feels immensely sorry for how stupid he is. "Oh," he says and can't properly be offended by it because, well. It's difficult enough forming any proper thoughts already. "Well that's… I don't know what to say."
"Clearly," Bucky says with a grin. "You know, it was so strange back then," he says, which only gives Steve more whiplash because back then means before the war, "I would've kicked anyone's ass that referred to me in a certain way. You too, if you'd let me, but you never did."
Steve knows perfectly well how Bucky used to react to what people would say about them sometimes. If anyone called him a fag or sissie, he would've broken their nose, especially if someone meant both of them. If anyone said it about Steve, he never let Bucky do any harm and never felt the need to stand up for himself either.
It was true and he accepted that about himself, so why would he?
He's always liked men and women. There was no talking about it before the war, especially not with Bucky who took so much offense to it, and Steve didn't really become completely comfortable with himself until he woke up in the modern world and realized it was perfectly okay to be comfortable with himself.
It's not that Steve never sought out a man's company, but it was done quietly and with extreme caution before the war. Since he woke up, the last thing Steve has cared about is romance. It's difficult enough being who he is but with the way the world has gone in the last decade or so, it doesn't make him feel particularly romantic.
Stress and responsibility will do that to you, Steve supposes, but ever since Bucky came back into his life, the real Bucky, well, it's not like Steve's been immune to those thoughts. Just like he wasn't before.
But Bucky always took offense to the insinuation even if he never uttered the words himself or talked down about guys they suspected.
"I didn't think it was something to be disgusted by," Steve says quietly.
"I know," Bucky says as he gazes at Steve. "I know you didn't. It was the only time you didn't get into a scrap when someone was trying to find an excuse to kick your ass. You never got upset about it like I did. I saw it burning in your eyes each time but you didn't think it was worth fighting someone over something that was true."
Steve stares at Bucky and frowns. "Why didn't it bother you then, if you knew it was true?" he asks.
He couldn't deny it if he tried and he's fairly certain Bucky has been implying more between them, but he doesn't know why. Not after all this time and not when Bucky is changed from who he used to be.
Well... maybe that's exactly why.
"That's part of what's strange about it," Bucky says. "I broke noses because it was the principle of the matter. Not because I didn't like the names or the implications, but because it wasn't something to be disgusted by. Someone was a shitbag and willing to go to blows with me and you about it so I went to blows because I didn't think it was wrong and because I knew it was true about you. I didn't know how to say that back then. We didn't say it." He shrugs. "But I'd known that about you for as long as I can remember. A guy doesn't fight anyone and everyone at the slightest sign of bullying but take the high road on one thing without a reason. Typically doesn't sketch another guy's eyes all the fucking time either."
"Well," Steve says and comes up short because he can't deny that either. He's feeling a little breathless, his heart hammering away like he's just run thirty laps, and his fingertips are tingling, something he hasn't felt in an age. "But you…?"
Bucky smiles, just a little, leaned back against the headboard of his bed, his arm on the windowsill. He's always pushed his bed up against the wall to be able to look out of the window and at the sky, but it's taken him a long time to be comfortable with it again.
Even as high up as they are.
"That's the other strange part. I could look at you and see nothing wrong with it just fine," Bucky says. "I couldn't look at myself and see the same thing. I knew it probably hurt you, but I pushed it away and broke noses and kept it locked up because that's not what a Barnes was supposed to be. Especially when I was getting ready to join. I didn't want to think about it fighting a war. I didn't know if I'd be coming back at all, but I thought if I could survive that war, maybe I could survive the war of looking at myself in a different way. When I was programmed, I couldn't think about it. Got deprogrammed a couple generations later and learned about pride parades."
Steve smiles, unable to help it. "Being queer isn't such a bad thing anymore," he says. "I'm sorry, Buck. I'm sorry I couldn't help you back then with it."
"I'm sorry if I hurt you when I got pissed at other guys and the shit they'd say, Steve. I never meant it the way I knew it looked. But we didn't talk about it," Bucky says. "Besides, I think it would've changed things for us, and you would've been worse off thinking I was dead for so long. Kind of glad we didn't talk about it. But here you are, still sketching my eyes, and turning red whenever Stark asks about boyfriends."
"I don't turn red," Steve says hastily. "I stopped turning red from things that guy said halfway through our first conversation."
"You're a good liar, but you also have a pale complexion," Bucky says and grins. "I never minded that you drew me, Steve. I never minded the way you'd look at me. I still don't. I was just too chickenshit to do anything about it before."
Steve clears his throat and sets his pencil down because his hand is shaking. "Do you, uhh… do you mean to do something about it now?"
Bucky shrugs. "That depends."
"...on?"
"If you think you can handle someone who might go primeval on you and probably needs a few decades of therapy."
Steve huffs and smiles, looking at his hands. "Only if you think you can handle someone who needs a few decades of therapy himself."
"Been handling you all my life," Bucky says. "I'm pretty confident in it."
"Dating Captain America comes with a lot more baggage than Steve Rogers."
"I hear this Winter Soldier guy has some baggage of his own."
"I can handle it."
"Then maybe I can too."
"So… how do you want to start?"
"I have a few ideas," Bucky says and tosses the pillow he's been holding on his lap aside. He stands and walks to Steve, taking the sketch pad and looking at it. "At least I can say the tears are just artistic imagination."
Steve chuckles, though he's having a hard time not simply gaping up at Bucky. "I don't know," he says, "I think I'll be looking at this sketch a little differently than all the others now. Might end up one of my favorites."
Bucky smiles and sets the sketch pad aside. "Maybe keep it between you and me then," he says and moves between Steve's knees.
Steve hardly has any time to process Bucky being so close in this way and looking the way he does now. Determination and softness both in his eyes and when he moves onto the chair and plants a knee on either side of Steve, Steve sees the affection and love Bucky's always had for him.
It means something else now, but Steve doesn't have much time to think about it because most coherent thought leaves him when Bucky cups his cheeks and kisses him.
He doesn't kiss easy, doesn't kiss gently, certainly doesn't fumble with it, and it's not really how Steve might have expected a first kiss to go with Bucky. In a different life, it would've been softer, sweeter, but this is their reality. They've been shaped by their worlds, worlds they never could have imagined they'd be in, and they aren't easy and gentle but rocky terrain at best.
But that's not right either.
This isn't Bucky changed. Bucky's kissing him in a way that says it's been a long time coming and I'm tired of waiting.
We've got a lot of time to make up for.
Steve knows this to be true because, after the rawness, the openness and hurt, Bucky's touch gentles and his lips soften. Steve's arms are loose around him, not wanting to make him feel caged in, but he tightens them now because he wants Bucky to know it's not a cage; as long as he's with Steve, just like this, Bucky is safe and doesn't have to hide any fears he might have.
He holds onto Bucky and Bucky holds onto him and this kiss is sweeter, is softer.
It says hello to the here and now and a new beginning, and is a tender promise for more.
Bucky pulls back, just a little, and gazes at Steve. Not with fear or shame or anger, things he carries with him, things he can't let go of. He gazes at Steve like he always has and maybe if Steve had been paying more attention, he might've realized it meant more than he's always thought it did.
That the affection and love and warmth have been saying what Bucky was too afraid of saying all this time.
Steve brushes Bucky's hair back and he's not sure what the right thing to say would be. He could tell Bucky he's beautiful, always has been, he could thank him for trusting him, or tell him he loves him, but maybe Bucky knows what Steve's thinking because he smiles.
And what a damn fine smile it is.
Steve pulls Bucky down for another kiss and they might be experiencing a storm for a while, but they know how to work through storms rather than against them. They've always been good at that.
Still, it's always good to not be alone.
The armchair creaks in an ominous sort of way and they look at each other, breathing deeply.
"If it collapses, I'm blaming you," Steve says.
Bucky grins. "We can probably afford a new one and some bumps and bruises," he says and shrugs, his hand resting over Steve's heart. "There's also a perfectly good bed to put to use."
Steve raises his eyebrows. "That's a hell of a thought," he says and laughs when Bucky does.
It's easy to get swept up in another kiss until the chair creaks again, but it's just as easy to fall into bed after.
Not everything will be as easy as this, they know that well, but in the comfort and safety of their home, as strange a home as it is, they can relax and forget about the world outside for a while.
They're only Steve and Bucky, attached at the hip, just like they used to be to everyone that knew them back then.
Steve will keep sketching Bucky's eyes and every page will tell a part of their story, as they always have, even when Steve didn't quite know it yet.
They're a long way from the beginning of their story and an even longer way from the end, and Steve looks forward to every minute of it.