entrancelogs | i was the match and you were the rock

Entry tags:

i was the match and you were the rock

Who: Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes
Where: Room 726.
When: Backdated to 7/6.
Rating: R for possible violence and language.
Summary: Bucky's been acting strange. When Steve investigates, he finds something much worse than anything he might have expected.
The Story:
Steve's birthday had been nice at first. For the most part, it'd been quiet, just him and Bucky like the old days. Sitting around in his room eating cake and making dumb jokes and reminiscing about all of Steve's past birthdays.

But Bucky had started hearing music that wasn't there, and then the fireworks had started outside. Steve's first birthday after the war had been rough, so he should have known that the loud noises and flashing lights would set Bucky off too.

The rest of the night hadn't been so nice, but they'd made it through.

Or so Steve thought, but Bucky hasn't been around much the past couple of days. He's spent them sleeping, which would be fine if he wasn't losing half the day as a result. No matter how Steve looks at it, that can't be a good sign.

At first he tells himself he should just give Bucky some room. PTSD is no joking matter, Steve knows that better than most, but Bucky also shouldn't have to suffer alone. Eventually Steve's patience runs out, and when the day shifts into afternoon and there's still no sign of Bucky, he decides to check on him.

The door between their rooms is locked, but Steve's broken it before. He isn't quite so violent about it this time. Just a few kicks to the lock gets the job done, and Steve enters the room to find Bucky curled up under the covers in a lump.

"Hey, Buck, come on..." Steve approaches the bed and lifts up the covers, but what he sees there makes his heart stop dead in his chest.

The mask sits fitted over the lower half of Bucky's face. It would be innocent enough if Steve didn't know what horrible meaning it had, and without thinking Steve yanks Bucky from the bed and onto the floor. A punch comes flying at him and catches him on the jaw, but that only spurs Steve into further action. He straddles Bucky and presses both hands onto his shoulders to pin him down and prevent any more punches. (Does Bucky have a knife on him, Steve's got to be careful for any blows from his left arm, he's got to keep damage to a minimum—)

Steve's breath comes out hard and fast, but he frowns as he realizes Bucky's hair isn't as long as it should be, given that mask that he's wearing. Steve's eyes widen and he leans back onto his haunches. "What the hell?"

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Bucky doesn't usually sleep deeply anymore, but the past couple of days have left him exhausted in more ways than one, and when he'd come in that morning and collapsed into bed, he'd fallen almost immediately into a dead and dreamless sleep. It says a lot about how badly he's out of it, that he doesn't even stir at the lock being broken or the sound of Steve's voice.

It's not until the covers are pulled away that he's yanked abruptly awake.

His back hits the floor hard, but he swings a fist out at the same time that he registers the pain. There are hands on him, the weight of a body on his hips, and he can barely breathe for the surge of adrenaline that floods his system. He doesn't have to reach far, he remembers. There's a knife strapped under his bed, and a wound to the thigh will bleed a man out in a matter of seconds, he just has to --

"Steve?" The recognition hits him like ice water, and Bucky stills, but his heart is still beating wildly in his chest. Where his fingers had been inching toward the bed, he flattens his palm against the floor. "What the hell are you doing? I could have -- are you out of your goddamn mind?"

All it takes is hearing his name said in that tone for Steve to be convinced that Bucky is in fact himself. The unthinkable and inevitable hasn't happened. Bucky didn't go home and get years worth of horrific memories forced into his head, and he hasn't come back broken.

Bucky's still here, but he has that mask and none of it makes any sense. Steve's heart feels like it might just burst out of his chest, and he reaches down to yank the mask from Bucky's face.

He stares at it for a good few seconds before he brandishes down at Bucky. He hasn't gotten off of him yet, either. He needs to clear this up first.

"Where did you get this? Did someone give it to you? Did you get it from the closets?" If it's the latter, what the hell could Bucky have asked for, to spur it to give him something like this? Steve wants to burn the damn thing here and now.

The image of it falling from Bucky's face races through his head. It's something he's dreamed about, something that's caused him to wake up gasping more than a few times. He didn't need a physical reminder.

The last thing he expects is to be further manhandled by Steve - to have the mask ripped off him while Steve gets in his face about it. He's still trying to breathe through the adrenaline, trying to calm down enough to understand what the hell is going on. It's not easy with Steve pinning him to the floor and demanding answers.

"What? No, why would I -- Steve, get the hell off me." Bucky pushes against Steve's chest, and he's not gentle about it, but it's not like he can actually push Steve off. He expects him to take the hint. "Is this some kinda event? Christ..."

He glances from the mask to Steve's face. He has that particular look he gets when they talk around his Big Secret, and something uneasy settles in the pit of Bucky's stomach. "What is this about?"

The only thing about this that feels like an event is the fact that the mask is here at all. Bucky's acting like himself and Steve feels like himself as far as he can tell, but the mask sits between them like a giant stone wall.

That shove serves as a large enough hint. Steve gets off of Bucky and sits next to him instead, though he reaches for the mask again, even though he feels like it might burn right through his skin. Not in actuality, but the less he has to interact with it, the better. It signifies everything he's been scared of with having Bucky here.

He has to explain. Or rather, he has to say something because Bucky's not just going to let this one go, not like the other times. If Steve's honest, they've been building up to this for a while.

"I just..." He lets out a long, heavy breath. "I need you to tell me where you got this, before I say anything else." His grip tightens around the edge of the mask and he stares over at Bucky, his expression stony and sober.

He sits up as soon as Steve lets him, drawing his knees up to his chest so he can rest his elbows against them. He laces his fingers behind his neck and breathes for a few seconds with his head bowed. It's a little easier, without being held down, but he can still feel the impressions of Steve's hands on him. It says a lot about how bad this is. He doesn't think they would have really hurt each other, but it doesn't matter. They could have. This has gone on too long, and something has got to give.

When Steve speaks, he drops his arms, his right hand closing tight around his left wrist. Steve has that mask in his hands again. Bucky has never seen the damn thing in his life, before last night, and even then he'd spent more time wearing it than looking at it. Now that he sees it in full light, he wonders why the hell he'd put that on in the first place. It looks like the kind of thing you put on a violent animal, so that it can't bite.

He finally lifts his gaze to meet Steve's again. "You're kidding me. No, I'm done with this, pal. You're gonna tell me what's been going on with you."

Steve doesn't expand the distance between them, but remains sitting just a few inches away from Bucky. It sinks in that he's taken this too far, that he's left Bucky hanging for too long. Steve's done it with the best intentions in mind, but it's caught up to him and now he can't wriggle his way out anymore.

He holds Bucky's gaze for a good few seconds before he lets out a sigh and looks away. How much should he even say? Steve could come out with it all right here and now, but he's pretty sure the words would just get stuck in his throat. He doesn't know that Bucky will accept anything too vague, though.

The mask is set aside, but Steve keeps his gaze on it. "It's yours," he says after a very long pause, and the words feel too heavy after he speaks them. "It's from your future. Bucky, when..." Steve breaks off and looks at his friend again. After he says this, there won't be any going back. Bucky will never be the same. That blissful ignorance that he'd worked so hard to maintain for him will be gone. Steve just takes a moment to mourn that before he finishes his sentence.

"When you fell from the train, you didn't die."

Bucky is half-braced for another fight, if not the physical kind. He's not going to be the one who looks away first or closes the distance between them this time -- whatever Steve has been trying to deal with on his own these past few months, he's going to come clean about it one way or another.

He doesn't relax when Steve looks away, but at least Steve seems like he's preparing to give a little ground. Bucky would be lying if he said he hadn't entertained some outlandish ideas on nights he hadn't slept enough or spent too much time around Tony Stark, but nothing he imagined could have prepared him for it's yours.

He's been coming to grips with the fact that he doesn't have a future back home. Dying isn't something he can change. It's over, and that's just how it is, so it's okay. There are worse things, things he regrets more than that.

He can't look at Steve's face when he keeps on. His grip is white-knuckle tight as he stares at one of the walls of his room. A part of Bucky wants to tell him to stop. His chest is tight, all of a sudden, like he's breathing in air that's too thin and too cold for his lungs.

"That's impossible. I'm human." He says it like he's trying to convince himself.

Edited 2014-07-20 01:54 (UTC)

Steve had all kind of reasons to avoid telling Bucky about this, the main one being that all it would do in the end is upset his friend and he hadn't seen the point in being cruel to him. Bucky's got enough to deal with already. Hearing about a terrible future that he has no way to prevent? He doesn't need that on his plate too.

So yes, Steve's had to bear it alone. But he's got Natasha to turn to if he ever needs someone to talk to about it. He would have had Sam too, if this place hadn't taken him away just as soon as it brought him here.

What good will it do, for Bucky to know? He'll just be more miserable and more guilty and Steve still wants to shield him from that, but it's too late.

Steve heaves out a sigh and nods. "Yes, but... Zola's experiments on you, whatever he did, it meant you were able to survive the fall." He doesn't want to say any more, but he knows he'll have to. Steve waits for Bucky's response before he continues, though he realizes that now that he's started, he's going to have to come out with all of it.

He remembers the lab like a bad fever dream. It isn't something he particularly wants to think about - he'd been drugged to the gills, barely aware enough to mumble his name. He hadn't talked, but Zola had, at length. He'd failed before, he'd said, creating the perfect soldier took diligence. When the pain stopped, Bucky had expected to end up like the rest of Zola's toys. He wasn't a perfect soldier, after all. He hadn't changed. Not in any way he hadn't been able to dismiss later.

This terrible thing that Steve has been hiding from him can't be that he lived through the fall. Bucky's jaw tightens, but when Steve doesn't go on, he turns to look at him.

"What else?" The words come out level. He figures it hasn't really sunk in yet.

Even back after Steve saved Bucky from Zola's lab, they hadn't talked about it too much. Steve had sat Bucky down and made him say at least a little, but he hadn't wanted to push too hard and there had been so many other things that had required their attention. Now Steve wishes he'd learned more -- maybe then he would have pushed for a more thorough search for Bucky's body after the fall.

Steve can always tell when Bucky's clamping down on his feelings and putting up a strong front. Both of them had been required to do it during the war, and any time Steve had seen it, he'd made sure to pull Bucky aside at some later point to check on him.

So he'll support Bucky now, as best as he can anyway. Though he suspects that before anything else, he'll have to contend with Bucky's anger. "We didn't know, at the time. We all thought you were dead." Steve balls his hand into a fist. "But someone else found you... Zola found you."

Bucky probably has some idea of what that means. "I only found out that you were still alive recently. Before I came here, I mean." Steve closes his eyes and looks away again, as he relives every metal-handed punch that had come his way. That Bucky is just as real as the Bucky who's here with him now, and that's the whole problem, isn't it?

Everyone assuming he'd died after the fall, that's not something he can fault. He thought the same thing. He wouldn't have expected them to use up valuable resources to find a corpse to send back home to no one. There's nothing else Steve could have or should have done.

"It's not your fault," He says, without even thinking about it. He looks away again and scrubs a hand over his face. It's not anyone's fault but HYDRA, whatever happens, and they're about a lifetime away from here.

He tries not to think about Zola leaning over him, telling him he'll come around.

He survives into the new millennium and he gets to see Steve again, so that's got to be worth something, right? Only, there's still plenty that doesn't add up. He thinks about the kind of shape Steve was in when he first arrived, the way he reacted, and he knows they still haven't gotten to the worst of it yet.

He's silent for a moment after Steve pauses, and he takes a slow breath before turning to face Steve again. He doesn't press for more this time, he just waits, expecting Steve to finish.

It's not your fault. Everyone has said that to him by this point. Natasha and Sam, specifically, but Steve feels like he'll be hearing it for a long while now. It never quite sinks in, though. He wishes he could cast off his guilt like it was nothing, like it was just a coat he could shrug from his shoulders, but it seems to be here to stay.

He hadn't been there for Bucky, even though Bucky had always been there for him, and Steve thinks he deserves to suffer under the weight of that. While HYDRA had taken his friend, broken him apart, and then rebuilt him to their standards, Steve had slept. And slept. And slept.

"I was asleep the whole time," he says suddenly, his voice hard -- but mainly with anger at himself. "They took you and they used you however they wanted, for whatever they wanted, and I was just... asleep."

He reaches out for the mask again and shifts it around so that Bucky can look at it once again. Steve runs his fingers over the material thoughtfully.

"When I saw you again for the first time, you were wearing this. I didn't even realize it was you, not until it fell off in the middle of a fight." A fight between them, but Steve's hoping that Bucky can infer that. There are certain things Steve doesn't want to have to say out loud, because he's not sure he'll be able to speak the words without his voice breaking.

There's no way Bucky is going to react any way other than badly, and Steve does what he can to brace himself for that. He refuses to look away, though, no matter what might happen next.

"You were as good as dead. You were frozen under a few tons of ice after saving the world, so I think you need to cut yourself some slack here, Steve." Bucky's voice is both louder and sharper than he expects it to be. If there's anything he's going to yell at Steve about, it's this. It's better than giving in to anything else, in front of Steve. He makes himself breathe evenly again, thinks of his rifle in his hands, the absolute stillness before a shot.

What flashes in his mind is Steve's torso wrapped in stitches and bandages and ugly black and blue. He has to swallow against a wave of nausea. He doesn't look at the mask again.

"It was me, wasn't it? The bullet wounds, all those bruises you showed up with..." He's watched Steve through his crosshairs a hundred times, and he can't imagine pulling the trigger. They've argued and sparred and fought, but not with the kind of single-minded intention that was written all over Steve's body.

He was the one who had tried to kill Steve, just before he showed up here. He's not that strong or that skilled right now, he knows that, but he's a survivor. That was what Zola had said he needed. Survive. Resist.

"Your co-operation is not necessary." Bucky murmurs, under his breath. He'd almost forgotten the sharp details of what was said and done at the HYDRA base, but now he's grabbing for every scrap of memory, to make sense of what Steve is telling him, and what he can't say, even now. He exhales sharply, not quite managing a humorless laugh. "It was me, this whole time."

Edited 2014-07-23 02:13 (UTC)

After saving the world, Bucky says, but Steve can't even claim he did that anymore. He realizes that he's being unreasonable. He still stopped thousands of people from dying by crashing that plane, but HYDRA carried on and destroyed Bucky's life while Steve had his long, frozen sleep. Bucky doesn't even know the extent of that yet, how the organization they both gave their lives to stop got the rug out from under them in the end.

Steve's still angry about it. He could still punch a wall if he thought too hard about it, and yet Bucky has even more reason to rage than he does.

Before Steve's really ready for it, Bucky's managed to put all the pieces together. Not that it would be that hard, given how Steve had behaved when Bucky had first found him here. The gunshot wounds have long since healed, but Steve still remembers the exact placement of each one. He suspects he will until the day he dies.

While Steve doesn't recognize the words that Bucky quotes, he can definitely hear them in Zola's voice even so, and his stomach twists up with another surge of anger. He can't do anything about it here, except for go beat on some punching bags for a few hours, but Bucky needs him here and he needs him calm.

So Steve breathes -- in and out -- a few times, and then shakes his head. "It was you, but it wasn't you," he says, because he has to make that distinction. "You didn't know yourself, you didn't know me. You only knew the orders they put in your head."

Steve's response isn't comforting, but he doesn't think Steve meant for it to be. In time, maybe he'll think it was better that he didn't know Steve or himself anymore. They cut out everything he is to make him do that to Steve, and God knows who else. It wasn't even him, just a body and a will. At the moment, he thinks bitterly of the cold. It would have been better if it had killed him.

Steve is right. He's angry.

"What did I do?" He glances at the mask, then at Steve. "Tell me everything. I deserve to know."

Steve would rather tell him the good part. That after their fight, Steve had finally managed to get through to him somehow. He suspects that Bucky even dragged him out of the Potomoc.

But he has to go over everything that came before that first, because Bucky does deserve to know. "I don't have all the details, but..."

He knows enough. "You were kept in cryo for most of those seventy years. They only thawed you when they had a target they wanted you to take out." How many unexplained deaths and accidents had actually been carried out by Bucky's hand? No, not Bucky's. The Winter Soldier's.

"Then they decided that Natasha, Sam, and I were your targets. Your mission." Steve hasn't explained the most important part: who he means by "they." It's the thing that Bucky might take the hardest, to hear that he'd been used by the very organization they'd both worked so hard to stop.

"You didn't kill any of us, though," Steve clarifies with a firm shake of his head. The one kernel of good news. "I... I think I got through to you."

Bucky nods at the first part, absorbing the information. They just took him out and put him back, like any other weapon. How many people will he kill for HYDRA in seventy years, even so?

He raises his head sharply at the names. Not just Steve - Natasha, and Sam. He'd thought Natasha was a little tense around him because she didn't know him, and then because he'd surprised her at the party. Steve had flat-out kept him away from Sam when he first arrived, and suddenly it all made perfect sense. He'd tried to kill them. He doesn't expect them to feel charitable because he didn't manage.

If Steve wasn't who he was, he'd have been dead from the wounds he arrived with. He looks at Steve a little dubiously, and wonders if he's lying. He doesn't want him to be. "How do you know?"

So much of it would make sense now, and Steve makes a mental note to let both Sam and Natasha know that he's filled Bucky in on all of this. While there's a part of him that wishes he could have kept it secret for even longer, there is a certain weight that's been lifted off of him now that it's out in the open. This is something that had hung tensely between them ever since they both arrived here.

It's still going to, just in a different way. Bucky will now be aware of the inevitability of what happens to him, and as much as Steve wishes there was a way to go back and have it all turn out differently, he isn't as naïve as to hope for something like that.

When Bucky asks that question, there's something so appropriate, because it's the exact thing that he'd used here in Wonderland to convince Steve that he was really himself. It seems like those four words will always manage to get the job done.

"It was do or die, and I... I told you I'd be with you until the end of the line. You immediately froze up, you stopped trying to hurt me, you just let me go." Steve debates just leaving it there, but there is one more thing, even if it's unconfirmed. He peers over at Bucky with a small smile on his face. It's weary, but also hopeful. "I fell into the water, and I was too hurt to have made it out of there on my own. Apparently someone dragged me out."

No, he can't say for certain that it had been Bucky, but it feels right. Steve can't be optimistic about much these days, but he'll let himself with this.

It was insane, from start to finish. Steve had bet his life on Bucky remembering him even after he'd done all of that damage, and Bucky is equal parts angry at him for putting himself on the line like that, and bone-deep selfishly grateful that it worked, that it's something to hold on to. No matter how bleak things got, even when he had nothing, he had Steve. And he always will.

The tension seems to bleed out of Bucky's body all at once, and he sags against Steve's side. "Of all the crazy, stupid things you could do you dumb punk."

Despite Bucky's words, there's definitely a real exhaustion in his body language and Steve laughs as he wraps an arm around him to hold him up, to keep him in place.

"Are you really that surprised?" Crazy, stupid things are kind of Steve's MO, and that's only gotten worse over time. Probably because he didn't have Bucky around to keep a watch over him, but he won't say as much. His intention isn't to make Bucky guilty. He's probably got plenty of that to deal with already.

After a pause, Steve glances over at Bucky's face (which is almost too close) and worries at his lip. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to have to drive yourself crazy over it. I... guess it was selfish. I wanted to enjoy whatever time we had here. But you're right, you deserved to know."

He lets Steve drag an arm around his shoulders and sinks against his body. Steve is still as warm as he was when they shared couch cushions in his old apartment or bed rolls in the thick of a European winter. He doesn't know what they do, to make you forget something like that. He wraps an arm around Steve's waist and holds onto him like an anchor.

No, he's not surprised Steve did something crazy. Not even a little bit. He's silent for a while, letting all of this stir and sink in.

"One," He says, his voice a little muffled by Steve's collar. "I'm always right, so you should just get that through your head. Two: Dealing with it alone wasn't a solution. Three: You ever try to keep something like this from me again, and I'll actually beat the crap out of you, no brainwashing necessary. And four..." He pulls back a little and tilts his head up, so he can meet Steve's eyes. "You've gotta promise me something."

Edited 2014-08-13 18:23 (UTC)

It would be nice if they could pause in this moment, if Bucky could just hold onto him and never have to continue down that icy path toward his future. Steve would give up just about anything for that to be possible, but even if Wonderland does sometimes feel like a pit stop on the way somewhere, it can't last forever.

Someday they'll both go home. Or Bucky will go home and then come back with everything put back in the wrong place, and Steve hasn't even really been able to plan for that possibility. He should, that would be the smart thing to do, but it feels wrong when Bucky's still right here, whole and exactly how he should be.

Steve could protest the list that Bucky sets out. He could tell Bucky about all the times he's been wrong; he could insist he hadn't dealt with it alone because he had Sam and Natasha; and he could call BS on Bucky ever trying to beat the crap out of him, regardless of the circumstances.

But it isn't the time for any of that, especially when Bucky stares him in the face and starts in on something about a promise. Steve's mouth goes dry, because he already has a guess of what Bucky will say.

"... What is it?"

He knows what Steve is thinking. He's thinking it too. He doesn't know how this whole thing will play out, but there's enough blood on the Winter Soldier's hands already. He doesn't want to hurt anyone else. He doesn't want to kill anyone else. Least of all for HYDRA, for worse than nothing. If there really is anything left of him in whatever they've carved out, then he would take a bullet first. He would want to be stopped.

The funny thing is, when he looks back at Steve, he realizes that's not something he has to ask.

There isn't anyone in the world he cares about more than Steve. He would kill for him, and he would die for him, for real this time, he supposes. He knows Steve will always do right by him. It's not hurting just anyone else he has to worry about.

Bucky drops his gaze for a moment, thoughtful. He exhales slowly. "You promise me... Whatever happens to me, you don't blame yourself anymore. Not for the train, not for any of it. Do what you think is right, Steve. I trust you."

Steve had expected something to the effect of if I come back like that, you need to put me down, and he just isn't willing to do that. Everyone around him had warned him he might need to, but he'd known from the moment that mask slipped off the Winter Soldier's face that he didn't have it in him to stop him.

If that's a weakness, then Steve's not nearly as strong as everyone seems to think.

Bucky doesn't ask for that, though. He instead tells Steve not to blame himself and hold onto that guilt, but he doesn't know if he's any more capable of that. He's gotten so used to the feeling that it would be difficult, maybe even impossible, to let go of it now.

"My plan's to find you and save you. Not stop you. That's what's right." Steve hasn't been more certain of anything in his life. If someone's tortured and brainwashed to do horrible things, you don't just put them out of their misery. Bucky deserves a second chance. "But all right, I'll try not to blame myself... but you've gotta do the same." Steve stares Bucky in the face, his expression hard and his voice firm, like it's an order. "None of this is your fault either."

Bucky wants to protest. He's seen what the Winter Soldier does to Steve, and even under the circumstances, he's not sure that's someone who's worth saving -- who can be saved. But he did say he would trust Steve with that particular judgement. It's not like he has much of a choice, even now.

He settles for not arguing. "What happens, if you've gotta stop me to save me?"

Not blaming yourself isn't as simple or logical as an order, but he nods anyway, numbness setting in, making it easier to lie. "Of course it's not my fault." He snorts softly. "I haven't even done any of it yet."

It's one thing to have someone like Sam or Natasha present him with the hard questions. It's another thing entirely to have to hear it from Bucky himself.

Steve glances to the side and draws both hands through his hair. Bucky should understand that he's going to be just as stubborn about this as he is with everything else, and even more so. "I don't think it works that way. You really started to listen to me when I stopped fighting."

Maybe that's because Steve never backs down from a fight, usually. Maybe somewhere deep down, Bucky had realized how wrong that was.

As much as Bucky tries to pass it off like none of this bothers him, like he isn't already kicking himself, Steve can pretty easily guess that's not the case. "Exactly," he says anyway, as he reaches out to grasp Bucky's shoulder and gives it a few firm shakes. "Why do you think I didn't want to dump all of this on you?"

Bucky tries not to think past the unpleasant lurch in the pit of his stomach when Steve says that. It could have gone so wrong. It could still go so wrong. But they're lucky it didn't, and beyond that, he has no idea what he's supposed to do. Is Steve seeing what he wants to see, or is this really the truth? And does it even matter, when whatever twisted version of Bucky he connected with might still be a danger to him?

He could tell Steve to stay away, but he knew he wouldn't. "Maybe I was just mad 'cuz you were too stubborn to stop fighting for me, even when we stopped hitting each other. I can appreciate that while I'm not a brainwashed murder machine, but I'm still pissed at you."

He pulls away from Steve's side. He doesn't shrug Steve's hand off his shoulder, but his jaw is tight. "I get trying to protect the people you care about -- maybe sometimes too much. But you should have told me. This is my future, Steve, no matter how bad it gets. This is what you're dealing with right now. What was gonna happen if I never found that mask? It's not like things between us have been normal this whole time."

It looks like Steve won't get off the hook that easily, not that he expected to. He and Bucky have never really been much for arguments. There have been a handful, of course, some worse than others. He remembers a few that took place after he saved Bucky from Zola, with both of them trying to deal with the aftereffects of the torture and experimentation. This may as well be that times ten, and it's kind of a miracle Bucky hasn't shoved him away entirely.

Even so, Steve can feel how tense Bucky is, and so he reluctantly removes his hand and places it in his lap instead. He probably would have kept the secret a whole lot longer if it hadn't been for the mask. He doesn't know if he feels guilty about that or not.

"I just figured you had enough to deal with already, showing up in a place like this. What was telling you gonna do, other than make you upset?" What has it done? Yes, Bucky's in the know now, but it's not like they can do anything to prevent what happens to him, so instead he'll just feel miserable about it and dwell on it. Steve lets out a sigh and rubs at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

"I get that it was selfish," he admits, "and I'm sorry." But it had been nice to pretend it all never happened, for a little while.

"You keeping secrets from me made me plenty upset." There's definitely an edge to his voice now. He doesn't miss the way Steve evades the question. There's no doubt in his mind that if it wasn't for the mask, he would never have found out, at least not from Steve. And he is angry. What, he got the relief of thinking he was dead? Of being blindsided when all of this came down on him, or some event dragged it into the light? He got the relief of watching Steve suffer these past few months?

Even despite that, Steve isn't wrong, is the thing.

When Steve's hand drops away he gets up to pace, but he makes it about two steps before Steve speaks again. He rounds on him, making a sharp, frustrated gesture. "You don't get it, do you? This isn't about you being selfish, it's about you trying to carry everything on your own every damn time. What do I have to do to get it through your head that I--" Bucky drops his hand, exhales slowly, then lifts it again to comb his fingers back through his hair. "Look, things aren't gonna get better because we were good at playing house for a while. We're partners. We'll just... We'll figure this thing out together."

He sighs and holds a hand out to Steve.

Bucky may do a good job of keeping his anger under lock and key, but the moment that he gets up and starts to pace around restlessly, Steve realizes that he's pushed him pretty far. This isn't going to be forgiven immediately.

It's hard not to want to go curl up in a hole in light of all this, but Steve's always been willing to face his mistakes head-on. Bucky has always wanted to be there for him, to support him, and Steve hadn't allowed him that this time around. That's why he's hurt, because it's as if Steve didn't trust him. Because the fact is that wanting to carry it all on his own is still a kind of selfishness, self-destructive though it might be.

Bucky makes a good point, too. Keeping it a secret hadn't really cut down on the tension, and Steve will admit that there's some relief now that it's out in the open and he doesn't have to struggle with the guilt of keeping something from Bucky, who he's always told everything.

He stares up at Bucky, unsure what to do, but as soon as that hand's extended, he reaches out for it and pulls himself up. They're partners, and they're always stronger when they work together. Steve smiles, though it's muted, and claps Bucky on the shoulder. "We will," he agrees. "I'm sorry I kept it from you all this time, and I'm sorry you had to find out like this."

Bucky puts his hand against the joint between Steve's shoulder and neck and gives it a quick squeeze. He's a little too hot right now to let it all go right away, but that doesn't mean he's going to let this break anything between them, that they're not friends until the end of the line.

"It wasn't that bad. I'm sure lots of people would like to roll around in their underwear with you first thing in the morning." He gives Steve a slight smile, as best he can, and pulls away. "I'm gonna go for a run."

The joke Bucky gives is halfhearted, understandably. Steve realizes that no amount of apologizing will make up for this. The damage has been done -- it had been started way back at the beginning when he chose not to tell Bucky of his eventual fate.

At this point, all he can do is let Bucky go and have some time to let this sink in. He's got Natasha and Sam as possible resources now, and Steve shouldn't have to tell Bucky that he's always there if he needs to talk through any of it.

So Steve nods and takes that cue to make his exit. "All right." He retreats to the door that connects their rooms and slips back through, doing everything in his power not to quake under the immense guilt that's settled on his shoulders.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i was the match and you were the rock

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