an ache in advance
stevex james
He wakes to the sound of pencil scratching against paper.
It is sunset. Shadows have begun to fill the corners of their small room. Steve sits beside him an arm's length away, his brow furrowed in concentration. His profile is limned golden by the dying light. Bucky breathes deeply, skin thick with dried sweat, a sudden strange heaviness in his chest.
It feels like something is happening, something beyond him, something he does not understand (not yet). There is a word for this, there has to be. They are in the same room, in the same moment and yet. And yet.
Time trickles.
Something in him hurts.
He does not know that in two years he will be drafted to fight in the war. Does not know that he will be serving in the 107th—that he will fall to his unmaking following Steve. He will fight quaking with fear, the scalding metal of his rifle held to his chest. He will go through the decades like a ghost, his bones not knowing anything but the winter. He will unlearn his name, forget this moment among many other memories, but his body will remember. The yearning, the slow nights and bright mornings. This unspoken sensation of his heart being cleaved into two. He is not the Winter Soldier, he is not even Sergeant Barnes. Not yet. Right now he is still just Bucky, newly awakened, his back burned from working at the docks, unaware of how tomorrow will be written. But.
It hurts.
It feels a lot like fear, this thing. So he watches Steve, afraid that he will disappear at any moment. He memorizes this boy he has known his whole life, the curve of his shoulders, the familiar movement of his wrist, the way his drawings catch the last of the light. Bucky overlays what he sees over what he knows.
This unnamable ache does not make sense and Bucky does not dare justify it. All he knows is that he misses Steve, already, terribly, even if he's just a hand's reach away. Misses him like he's already gone. Like Time has already shifted this moment into an empty shelf, left to gather dust. Like they are dead already.
(He has a feeling that he will miss Steve forever.)
Steve looks up at him now, his brow smoothening as he sees Bucky. Very slowly, gives him a smirk.
"Time to go home, Buck."