Fic: Lab Rats and Tin Soldiers (Xmen First Class/Captain America, NC-17, 2/2)
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Tomorrow, they're supposed to hit a transport train with HYDRA equipment on board. The plan is good, and if Steve's record with his team so far is any indication, they'll knock this one out of the park just like all the others. Tonight, Steve and his men are camped two to a canvas tent on one of the hopefully sturdier ledges on this mountain in the Italian Alps.
Snow piles up on either slope of their pitiful Army-issue shelter. Steve has been cold before. He's from New York. There's no cold like the kind that comes from the wind tunnels formed by skyscrapers. This cold is different though. It doesn't touch him the way he's fairly sure it should, if Bucky's shuddering is any indication.
"How are you not freezing your family jewels off, Cap?" Bucky demands through chattering teeth. It makes him sound like one of the cartoons from the movies, the way he doesn't stop even as he breathes hot air on his gloved fingers.
Steve just shrugs underneath one of the heavy wool blankets that they'd been given because, for this one, their bedrolls alone just weren't going to cut it. "I dunno. I'm just not."
"It's because your fancy new cells have built in heaters, isn't it? Lucky bastard."
It's possible. The metabolism thing did give him a higher base temperature. Steve doesn't mention any of that. Instead, he grins and holds out his arms from under his blanket. "You could share if you want?" He says, teasing.
He really does mean it as a joke. He expects Bucky to laugh and tell him to go jump off a cliff, like the one they have right outside their tent and launch right back into his cheerful complaining. Only Bucky's not laughing as he scoots across the small area and onto Steve's bedroll.
They did this all the time when they were kids. Steve had no meat on his bones, as Bucky's mother was fond of saying. When he spent the night at Bucky’s during winters in Brooklyn growing up, they always curled together, Bucky's bigger frame around his, keeping him warm.
"Can't have you turning into a popsicle on me, can I?" Bucky'd said once, before pulling Steve's back tight against his chest. It was right after New Years, Steve remembers. They were fourteen, the same age, only a little younger than Erik now, and the radiator in Steve's room had been stuck on low.
That night, Steve had hesitated because he thought, maybe, they were too old to cling to each other anymore. Bucky works an arm around Steve's back now, their sides pressed together. It's…different. Still, Steve's starting to think that maybe there's no such thing as too old for this.
"You're like a human oven," Bucky says with a sigh. He drops his head onto Steve's shoulder, pressing an exposed ear against Steve's coat. "Should come standard on every cold weather mission."
"Gee, thanks."
"I'm serious. What's your temperature? Two, three hundred degrees?" The hand not wrapped around Steve's back is inside his coat around his waist. Steve wonders where he's going until the fabric of Bucky's gloves meet the skin of his lower back. "Four hundred maybe?"
Then he sits back. Steve watches as Bucky takes the finger of his glove between his teeth and pulls it off. "I'm freezing," Bucky says as he repeats the motion.
And jeez, he's not kidding because when his hands return to Steve's skin, both of them this time, they're like ice."Buck-"
"Can it, Rogers." Bucky orders, scooting even closer.
Steve does because, well, he tends to go with whatever Bucky tells him to do when he says it like that. He snaps his mouth shut as Bucky presses his palms against the skin of his waist and lower back.
They sit like that for a long quiet moment and then Bucky's fingers start moving. Slow movements that form some kind of pattern Steven can't quite make out. It… it's different.
"Bucky?"
"Hm?"
"Bucky, what are you doing?"
"I'm getting warm."
Yes, all right, it is getting warm in there. But the heat is coming from under Steve's skin, radiating from where Bucky is touching him. He swallows against the sensation and grabs Bucky's wrist. "You're not. Buck, come on." He gives him a tug, and Bucky lifts his head, meeting Steve's eyes. "Don't lie to me; it's me."
"Yeah." Bucky smiles, but it's sad, like his smile was that last night before he shipped off. "Yeah, I know it's you."
"So then, just, tell me what's going on here."
Bucky's smile tightens a little as he lifts his now warm hand to touch Steve's cheek. It feels good, soft, and only a little cool. The impulse to lean into it hits him like waves crashing into the pier at Coney Island.
"It should be nothing. Smart thing to do would be to just leave it the same nothing it's always been. Thing is, I don't think I can."
"You can't?"
"No. We're in a war, Steve. You haven't seen it yet, what that really means. Even out here, I'd say the closest you've gotten has been trying to put the pieces of the Lehnsherr kid back together, and that's good. It's a damn good thing, but you're too good for this mess, always were."
His thumb strokes over Steve's cheekbone at that. It sends a panic response flooding through Steve's system so intensely that he thinks he's going to faint or something. He steadies himself by looking into Bucky's serious face.
"I'm not." He protests. "I belong here more than anyone now."
"You are, and so I'm telling you; we've been lucky so far, but between the HYDRA factory where you found me and the kid, and all the hits the team's been landing, it can't keep going like this. The odds are going to win out, and the luck's not going to hold. It could happen six months from now, or it could happen on tomorrow's mission. So I can't leave this as nothing."
"Buck-"
He doesn't get to finish because Bucky's kissing him. Kissing him like he kisses the girls he takes out, kissing him like something off the silver screen, hand holding the back of his head, so that he can't back away. All he can do his open his mouth under Bucky's and try to resist the urge to flap his arms at his side. He makes a desperate grab for Bucky's coat instead, and that seems to be a bit more dignified.
Bucky breaks the kiss before Steve can collect anything resembling a thought, let alone a reaction. Steve blinks a few times as Bucky moves as far away as he can with Steve's fists gripping the lapels of his coat.
"Damnit," Bucky mutters. He thrusts a hand into his hair, pushing it back with disgust, as if the offending strands had called his mother trash.
"What?" Steve manages. His lips are getting cold quickly, wet as they are now.
"I'm sorry. Damnit, damnit, damnit." He puts a hand over Steve's, then tugs. It accomplishes exactly nothing because Steve's fingers - along with the rest of him including his brain - are frozen. "Let me go."
"What?"
"Look, Steve, just let go. I'm going to get in my bedroll, and we'll call it a night; forget any of this ever happened."
"What?"
"Let go. Please." Bucky's hands cover Steve's, trying to pry his cramped fingers loose. Steve reads the panic in Bucky's and knows that if he lets him, he may not get him back.
"Please what? You have to tell me what just happened, Bucky. I just don't understand why."
"I know you don't." Bucky sounds defeated for the first time in the twenty plus years that they've known each other.
"You kissed me. Buck, you can't just do that and then..." He squeezes his fists around the wool of Bucky's coat. "Stop."
"What?"
"Don't turn into me now. One of us has to be able to think."
Bucky meets his eyes; dark in the low light, they seem to glitter. "You're still holding onto me."
"Well, yeah."
"Why?"
So many answers to that question. Because, after all these years, he is still the most important person in Steve's life. Because he liked it, as brief as the kiss was. Because… "Like you said, I can't not."
"Damnit." The word is a breath, and Steve understands a little. He's not one of Bucky's dames, not a girl at all. That's complicated and confusing, but then his hand is on the back of Steve's neck, pulling them back together, and neither of those things matter. What matters is the way Bucky tastes like too-bitter Army coffee, tobacco and just Bucky.
When Bucky pulls back this time it's only an inch to whisper, "Let go of the coat."
The heat of Bucky's breath fans across Steve's face. He wants more of this. "No."
"Yes. It's awkward. You can put your hands somewhere else."
"Oh."
Bucky leans in, brushing the side of Steve's nose with his own "Don't worry, Rogers. I'll show you."
That makes sense, of course. Only he's never done this with a girl, let alone with a man. He doesn't know where anything goes or how anything works. Bucky seems to though. After all the women he's been with, of course he knows how to…fondue. So the mechanics are different, but Bucky's good with mechanics, and Steve's always been a quick learner.
"Where should I put them instead?"
"I don’t know. Anywhere you want."
"Okay," Steve says, nodding as he processes the information. It leads to other questions, and he hesitates in asking, but this is Bucky. He can say anything to him."What if I want to touch you everywhere?"
The smile that earns him is worth any risk. Bucky's beaming brightly enough to light up the inside of the tent. He jerks back, and this time Steve does let go. "Get in your bed roll." He does and Bucky climbs in after him, sprawling across his chest; their legs, hips, and shoulders press together with their lips brushing, eye to eye. "Better?"
"God." Bucky is everywhere, so hot that Steve can forget the piles of snow on the other side of the canvas walls. He gropes for the blanket, pulling it over Bucky, cocooning them together in drowsy warmth. "I'm… Bucky, yeah."
Bucky smirks down at him. "Figured out where you want your hands yet?"
Everywhere still seems like a good idea. Mostly, he wants to feel Bucky's mouth with his fingertips. He wants to trace his eyebrows, so that the next time he draws Bucky's familiar face, he can get them perfect.
He pulls off his gloves because Bucky had the right idea there and starts a little farther out, tracing the shell of Bucky's ear with the pads of his index and middle fingers. Steve can feel Bucky shiver all over and hear a low noise coming from the back of his throat. He lifts his eyes from studying Bucky's skin against his to make sure that's a good thing. The hint of a smile and the dreamy look in his eyes make him want to do it again and again, so that Bucky will look like that forever.
So he does. He does, and he kisses Bucky, the first kiss he's ever instigated in his life, and this time, he can taste Bucky's moan, feel it vibrating over his tongue. He touches the place where their lips meet, and it earns him another shiver with a hip roll that makes the warmth they're building turn into a fire.
Steve doesn't really know what to do with that. If he were alone, he'd take himself in hand and be done as soon as he can. Suddenly he can't imagine prying his fingers from Bucky's skin now that he's allowed to touch freely.
He knows he needs something though because the crashing waves that are their rolling hips are driving him out of his mind. He cups the sides of Bucky's face, pulling their foreheads tight together so that he can speak without losing any more contact than he has to. "I'm- Bucky. I don’t know what… "
"I've got it," Bucky murmurs. He moves, reaching between them deftly. He props himself up on one elbow and gets the buttons on both their pants with the other hand.
"Bucky!" Steve's arches so hard that he thinks he might snap. He clings to the fabric of Bucky's coat at the shoulders, afraid that he'll break Bucky's shoulders if the pleasure breaks what little control he's hanging on to.
Bucky's fist is wrapped around both of them at once, tight and hot. Dear God, it's so good, too good. Steve's not going to be able to live through this. He's sure of that, only Bucky's murmuring to him as he strokes them together. "That’s it. I've got you. I've always got you, Steve. Always."
Coupled with the feel of Bucky's fist around his, the alien feeling of another man's hardness rubbing against his and the promise in Bucky's words send him over the edge into orgasm seconds later. He bites back a scream that probably would've been Bucky's name because the guys are five feet away, and the enemy could be in the caves around them. His lower lip is bleeding when the spasms finally stop.
Bucky's grinning down at him, still rocking into his fist, almost too much friction against Steve now that he's over-sensitized like this. He doesn't ask Bucky to stop though. He wants to see the same pleasure twist his full mouth, send his eyes rolling back or squeezing shut.
When he climaxes, he's quiet, his head dropping into the curve of Steve's shoulder. His hot breath speeds up before it stops for almost a minute. He makes a little noise when he exhales that could be a whimper, then the arm holding him up gives out, and he crashes down on top of Steve, sprawled and loose, everything Steve never even thought to want.
The most cursory clean up ends up with them back where they started, curled up together beneath the same blanket. It's just like when they were children, only this time, Bucky's back is pressed to Steve's chest. It's different, but still good to fall asleep that way. It's even better to wake up that way, his chin on Bucky's shoulder. He could stay there forever, but they've got a mission to execute, so up they get.
He tries not to look too long as they gather outside to join the rest of the team for breakfast. He doesn’t watch Bucky's long fingers or full mouth as he eats the hard tack they packed for breakfast. Instead he wraps his hands around the coffee Jim Morrita hands him and takes a seat between Dum Dum and Falswoth around the small fire.
He takes a long sip of coffee, then asks. "So tell me again how we're going to get onto the HYDRA train."
Bucky grins at him across the fire, so huge and smug. "You ever heard of a zip wire?"
He knows it usually involves fairly impressive heights. "I'm going to hate asking, aren’t I?" Bucky doesn't have to say a word. Steve knows he isn't going to like what he hears. He doesn't mind too much. Not when he gets to see Bucky's smile get even bigger in the white winter sunlight.
~*~*~
Steve comes back to England haunted. That's the word Peggy uses, and Erik thinks it's the exactly right way to describe the hollow look in his eyes. He meets no one's gaze when the commandos arrive back without Bucky, not his teammates, not Peggy's or Howard's or his own. He's debriefed by Phillips, and then disappears out of the base.
Erik finds him a few hours after they sent out an APB on him. The special metal in his shield is practically a flashing beacon in the gutted city. Erik has been gaining skill on a rapid curve since that first day of physical training. Now he can bend, twist, and mold metal to his will and call it to him if it's not too large or bound to the ground.
It makes finding Steve so simple. He's in the basement of a building a few blocks away. It's one Erik knows from his training runs with Peggy. It's next to one of the buildings she had specifically pointed out as being government owned and having a bomb shelter because "if another air raid happens while you're out, and you don't get safe, I'll never forgive you, Erik." The building Steve is in is barely a building anymore. It got hit hard in the most recent wave of bombs, and when Erik arrives, he can see where Steve tore his way in, probably with his bare hands, to get inside. Erik follows his path through the wreckage and down into the basement to find his friend sitting on the floor, back against cold brick walls, next to shelves of cleaning materials including a mop and a metal bucket.
The bucket is small and dented. That makes it easy enough to turn it upside down with a thought. It will give him a seat, so that he can be eye-to-eye with his friend because, even seated, Steve is so much bigger than he is.
The movement of the bucket on the wooden floor is enough to get his attention. He looks up just in time to watch the upside down bucket settle itself on the ground. He smiles, thin and tremulous. It's hard to look at him looking like that. "Erik, hey. You're getting the hang of it."
"Yes," Erik agrees, sitting down carefully on the bucket. It puts him a few inches above Steve, which is a position he's never been in before. "Howard and Peggy helped."
"That's good. I knew you could do it. I'm-" His grin widens, and then cracks, and he's sobbing. His huge palms open to cover his face as he shakes. His whole body is wracked with the grief of losing Bucky to the point that it shakes him like a physical thing. This, Erik imagines, is what watching a mountain in an earthquake must be like.
It's horrible. Erik wishes he had anything to say. He doesn't. He knows all too well that there is not a single thing anyone could say that will make any impact. So he does what he wishes someone, anyone, could have done for him when his mother dropped to the floor of Herr Doktor's office, dead. He places a gentle hand on Steve's shoulder and squeezes. He hopes it's enough to help this man who saved him because a kind touch is all Erik had wanted, and he'd been denied it.
It seems to be good enough because Steve pulls him off the bucket and into a crushing embrace. Erik hears Steve's choked off cries up close now, feels his tears through his shirt and the trembling through every part of his body. The whole thing is invasive, almost claustrophobic, but Steve is so strong that Erik is powerless to do anything but let go and allow himself to be hugged.
It's strange. He's hasn't been held in more than two years. This isn't how he wanted to be held again for the first time, but slowly, Steve's shaking is easing, so that must be worth it. He even relaxes after a moment and hugs Steve back, wrapping his arms around Steve's thick neck like he did his father when he was very young. The gesture makes him ache, missing his father, his mother, his little sister, the butcher and his teachers and friends, and Bucky Barnes, whom he barely knew, but who helped pull him out of a literal hell with the man holding him like a lifeline.
"I am sorry," Erik whispers. He feels too young, too small. He shouldn't know what that word means, how blinding this kind of hurt can be.
"Me too." Steve nods against his shoulder. Then he untangles himself from Erik. "I didn't mean-" He lifts his face, sniffs, and then wipes his face with his fists like a child with a cold. "Erik, you shouldn't be here."
"Neither should you. The building is unstable. Agent Carter will be cross."
Steve laughs, but it's edged with tears. "She probably already is. She doesn't have a lot of patience for irrational behavior."
"No, she definitely doesn't. So are you ready to come with me back to base?"
"I can't."
"You can. You don't want to."
"No. No, I don't. Erik, I let him die. He just slipped." He holds up is hands. "Right through my fingers."
"I know."
"I let him die, Erik. If I could've moved just a little faster, he'd still be here." His voice breaks, and Erik is afraid that Steve is going to cry again. "You have no idea-"
"Don't."
"Erik."
"Do not. I have every idea, Steve."
Steve studies him. His gaze clears from the faraway look to wherever Bucky was lost and focuses on Erik. "Who was it?"
This is the first time he's ever spoken of it. No one has ever asked. Herr Doktor and his men knew, had cared as little about killing her as every other Jew they shuffled into the ovens. Peggy was too careful, and Howard was too distracted by the everyday goings on of his laboratory. He doesn't want to answer, but finds himself speaking anyway. "My mother."
"Oh." Steve's eyes go distant again, back with Bucky. Erik thinks that he'll never really leave that place again in the same way that Erik has never left that office in Auschwitz.
Erik nods because, once again, there's nothing to say. Steve reaches out this time, taking Erik's hand in his. They're huge and clammy, but gentle. It comforts him, which is not the point of this. He isn't the one who should need comforting.
He pulls his hand out of Steve's carefully. "Come back with me."
Steve shakes his head and lets his shoulders drop. "I'll be along."
"That's unacceptable. Everyone is worried."
"I'm a big boy. Tell Carter you found me and told me. I'll be along."
The only reason Erik doesn't argue is because he owes Steve his life, literally. He can't pay that back, so he will give Steve the courtesy of respecting his wishes. He's a grown man, after all, and a better one than Erik could ever hope to be.
"All right." Erik rises and moves to pick his way out when Steve calls out to him.
"Erik?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
On the floor, in his battered uniform with huge black smudges under his eyes, Steve looks like a broken toy tossed under a bed. Erik can't bear gratitude from this man at this low. So he shrugs and says, "It's nothing."
"It's not nothing. You're a good friend, kid. A real good friend."
Erik doesn’t respond to that. He leaves Steve to grieve in private and makes his way carefully back to base. It's nearly dark, and the raids are unpredictable.
Peggy is waiting for him, arms crossed, red lips in a thin line. "Did you find him?"
"He said he'd be along."
"Did he now?"
"Yes, ma'am."
She makes a soft hmm sound, then says, "Spend at least an hour with the heavy bag, but otherwise, your time is your own. I'm sure Mr. Stark would like to see you."
Erik has been with Agent Carter long enough to know a dismissal when he hears one. He's glad of it. He isn't wired for this anymore. It broke under Herr Doktor's hands.
If Steve weren't shattered, that broken, awkward mechanism in him wouldn’t matter. He is, and it does, so Erik hesitates, even though he doesn’t want to.
"Ma'am, are you certain?"
"I'm certain. Go on, Erik. Thank you."
He runs like he tried to run a hundred times from Herr Doktor and the camp guards. He feels like a ghost is following him, painful and thick in his chest. He beats the heavy bag for two hours before he surrenders and makes his way down to the hum of the metalwork in Howard's lab that will work far better than anything else. At least anything he can imagine.
~*~*~
Steve hates the Alps where HYDRA keeps hiding. He could live a thousand more years and never come back to these godforsaken mountains. The snow and the forest and all of it tear at his grief like sharp claws. Every flake of snow reminds him of Bucky, of how they curled together against the cold, how he died not too far away from where they stand right now.
The thought makes Steve want to take occupied Europe apart one piece at a time until he gets to Schmidt. It wouldn't be nearly satisfying enough to make up for the gaping hole in him but it would be better than the nothing he has now.
The cavity where Bucky used to be is why he had fought Phillips so hard allow Erik along on this mission. The longer he has to sit with Bucky's death, the more he's realizing that hollow is practically Erik's middle name. He still wants to fight, and if that will help fill the void Steve is becoming so familiar with, then damnit, Steve will get it for the kid.
Steve can't seem to do anything else until they actually get to HYDRA's front door. Before leaving England, fighting with Colonel Phillips for Erik's spot in the upcoming battle had been a good distraction, and the best weapon in his arsenal was "Stark says he could be an invaluable asset to us with what he's learned."
It was true. Stark had joined him at that wrecked out bar and told him tales of Erik's rapid progress. "Boy's a damn miracle, Rogers. A miracle. The kind of delicate work he'll be able to do with practice will move science ahead by fifty years in the next five - if that’s what he chooses to use it on. If he goes for blunt force, he's a walking, talking teenage weapon with all the guns and blades he can feel at his disposal."
"You say that like it’s a good thing." Steve said, side-eying Howard over a bottle of Glenlivet after the last big meeting in the war room. The scotch was older than his father would've been had he survived the war. Steve couldn't help but think of how that damn bottle was probably worth more than his whole life before the super solider serum had changed him.
"It's not good or bad, Cap. It just is. Erik's a hurt, exhausted kid, who grew up way too fast in a place that’s so fuck-ugly I can't even imagine it - pardon my French."
"I'm in the Army, Stark. I've heard worse."
Steve thought Stark muttered 'fondue' under his breath, then Howard said, over the rim of his glass, "Point is, you can't assign a good or a bad to what Erik can do. It's like anything - it’s all in how you use it. We use bombs to fight to save the world; HYDRA's going to use them to try and take it over. Bomb's still a bomb."
"Erik isn't a bomb."
The expression on Howard Stark's face had been openly upset. "Of course he's not. Listen to me, Cap. Assigning a broad value to these things, it'll get you in trouble, especially with him. That kid idolizes you."
They sat in silence while they each drank another glass of Howard's scotch. Steve had sipped at it and wished he could share the vintage with Bucky. He is- was...he'd been a big scotch guy. They couldn’t have ever afforded this one on their own.
That got him lost in his head until Stark said, "I don’t want him to go. I think it's a bad idea and that he could get killed, and I feel like we're just starting to get through to him. Still, it's not my place to do anything but tell you that Erik could make all the difference in a fight like the one you're about to face down."
They'd finished off the bottle. Howard got drunker and began waxing poetic about HYDRA tech and Erik's "talent." Steve savors each sip for flavor even though he'd never been a big drinker before the war - because Bucky would've wanted him to.
When he was face-to-face with Phillips this time, he was less eloquent than Stark. In return, Phillips looked at him like he was still the stick-thin, panting, pathetic mess he'd first met stateside. Lower than a bug in the dirt and not worth the effort to squish. "Oh, well, if Stark says so, then it must be true."
"We both know that if he wants, he can just fly himself and Erik in, and damn what we want."
"Yes, he's running the US Army now. I must have missed the memo."
Steve said nothing at that. Letting the man vent seemed wiser. Phillips had glared at him before grudgingly declaring, "If the boy gets killed, that's on your head. Yours and Stark's."
"Yes, sir."
Phillips looked him over, then jerked his chin at the door. "We're done here," he said.
Now they're in HYDRA's front yard and just beginning what he hoped would be the last stand against Schmidt and his megalomaniacal puppets. He's been ready to hit facility full on since the moment they landed, but Peggy's keeping the leash short.
"You're not going in half-cocked, Steve," she says, again in that same brooks-no-argument tone that she's been using on him since the first day.
"I am fully cocked."
"Be that as it may, your back up is not."
"Have you got an estimate on when it will be?"
She purses her full lips and stares him down. "When it's ready."
"That's not helpful."
"Terribly sorry," she says, not sounding sorry in the least. However, when the sun rises, he's got the go-ahead he wants and the bike to get him there.
Everything happens fast once they're started. Steve's running on instinct and training and long months on his bike as he approaches the HYDRA base. Physicality wins out over higher thought. He has a goal, a destination. There's Schmidt, there's everything else, and only one of those matters. Even getting caught is just one step closer to where he needs to be.
Standing before the man, his misshapen red face gives Steve something to focus his loss on for the first time since Bucky slipped through his fingers. It's therapeutic almost, having a focal point for that hurt again.
It refines his clarity of purpose, and he suddenly understands Erik so much better. He just wishes Erik's Herr Doktor were here too. He'd take out two predatory birds with one thrown shield.
Or at least he will once his back up gets here. Steve's got a countdown in his head until Dum Dum and company come crashing through that keeps getting thrown off by the way Schidmt goes on and on. Lord, the man can talk, waxing on about arrogance and Erskine and demanding to know what makes Steve special like a spoiled child who saw his favorite toy handed down to a sibling.
It gives Steve a perverse pleasure that he thinks must be him getting jaded the way Bucky said he never would to hit the red bastard with the truth. "I'm just a kid from Brooklyn."
The crash of his backup smashing through the base's windows sounds like music to Steve. Battle is a dance he actually knows the steps to without thinking. The Howling Commandos move around him in their own rhythms and movements against HYDRA soldiers as Steve hauls after Schmidt.
Nearly colliding with Peggy and Erik in a hallway as she shoots a man off his back is the only time he slows. "Maybe you should-" she says, jerking her head at the door where his shield is lodged.
On cue, the door opens under Erik's outstretched palm. Before Steve can move to catch its inevitable fall, his shield flies into his hand. Erik nods at him and smiles, sharkish and overly wide. He's enjoying the melee, taking genuine pleasure in the fight, so much so that he doesn’t seem to notice the blood on his shirt, neck and chin. Steve doesn’t know why or how it got there, but it's terrifying in a way that Schmidt's insanity can't compare to.
"Steve," Peggy hisses. It shocks him back to reality.
He gives her a look that he hopes says 'look after Erik.' She glances at the boy, then nods once, which he hopes means she understands. Steve returns the gesture and takes off deeper into the bunker Schmidt's tail.
~*~*~
The command center of the HYDRA station is glittering, sterile and covered in metal, humming to Erik. It would be so easy to destroy it. A thought, maybe a waved arm to guide his mind, and he could wrench the copper wires and aluminum finishing out of the walls. It makes him feel giddy, makes him want to laugh, like he laughed as he sent HYDRA agents flying on their own belt buckles mere minutes ago. This is what he survived Auschwitz and Herr Doktor to do, to be - the essence of his power.
"Did you see?" he asks Peggy, feeling like he did when he was little, showing his mama when he'd first learned to ride a bicycle on his own - triumphant. Maybe edging on something that could be the type of pure happiness rooted in the purely physical and instinctual.
He's surprised when Colonel Phillips is the first to respond. "I did. Nicely done, son. I look forward to seeing you live up to your potential."
Erik freezes, trying to think of a proper response to the man who had stood in the way of his desire to fight his own battles so many times in this war. He doesn't get the chance. Before he can articulate any of his thoughts and translate them from the German he still thinks in to English, the radio crackles through the room.
"Come in. This is Captain Rogers. Do you read me?"
Morrita flicks the radio on as the whole room draws a breath."Captain Rogers, what is your-"
"Steve, is that you?" Peggy demands, pushing Morrita out of the way and taking control of the radio. "Are you all right?"
"Peggy," Steve calls back, sounding relieved at her voice. "Schmidt's dead."
"What about the plane?" she asks, always practical.
"That’s a little harder to explain."
"Give me your coordinates. I'll find you a safe landing site.”
"There's not going to be a safe landing, but I can try and force it down."
"I'll get Howard on the line. He'll know what to do."
Phillips jerks his head and waves his hand at the door. Morrita backs away, but Erik doesn't move. Peggy's right. Between Howard, Peggy and Steve, anything can be salvaged. They'd saved him, hadn't they? What was that next to a simple plane?
"There's not enough time," Steve says, his voice far away. "This thing's moving too fast and it's headed for New York. I gotta put her in the water."
"Son," Phillips murmurs, but Erik shakes his head. He's not leaving - not Steve, who is alone on the other end of the radio, or Peggy, who is approaching tears, something Erik had imagined she would never do. Phillips just shrugs, and he and Morrita leave the two of them alone for what Erik refuses to believe will be a last goodbye.
"Please don’t do this. We- we have time. We can work it out."
"Right now, I'm in the middle of nowhere. If I wait any longer, a lot of people are going to die."
Erik pushes around her and hits the outgoing button on the radio. "Don't be stupid, Steve."
"Erik?"
"There's another way. There's always another way. Let us think of something."
"Not this time, kid. Stick with Howard and Peggy for me. Let them take care of you, help you grow into the man I know you can be."
He doesn’t say that he's a man and not an infant, that he doesn’t need anyone taking care of him. Instead he says, "Come back, and do it yourself."
"You don't have to do this," Peggy adds. Her voice is trembling, and Erik reaches out to her, threading his fingers with hers. She clings to him with a warm dry grip that is so tight it hurts.
"This my choice," Steve says in the same calm tone he used when he first told Erik that he was safe, that he was getting out of the Nazi-financed HYDRA torture factory. It's not comforting this time. There's a long pause over the line, and then, "Peggy?"
"I'm here." It comes out in a whisper, and her grip on Erik's hand tightens even more. It hurts, but that’s all right. It's not nearly as painful as the tears in her eyes or the sound of Steve preparing himself to die over the radio. He squeezes back because it helps him keep himself from shaking.
"You and Howard will look after him?" Steve asks, sounding so desperate that Erik feels sick. "I know you think you can handle anything, Erik, but you're just a kid. You deserve… everything."
"All right," Peggy promises. "But just until you get back. And you still owe me a dance."
"Raincheck?"
"A week, next Saturday," she says, "at the Stork Club."
"You got it."
"Eight o'clock on the dot, and don’t you dare be late."
They go on like that - like either of them think he'll really make it. It makes Erik want to scream at them both. Delusional - that’s what this is, delusional and horrific, right up until the radio cuts out. Peggy gasps his name, and only when she lets go of his hand to cover her face does Erik realize his own is wet with tears, the first he's shed for anything since his mother's death.
Phillips returns to the command center fifteen minutes later and guides them out for debriefing. The shock and numbness is contagious, spreading from himself and Peggy to the rest of the Commandos and out into the rest of the platoon. Captain America is dead, and there isn't an army field guide for that.
It's Howard who shocks them out of it. He gives Peggy a gentle squeeze on the shoulder and a murmured apology, then turns to Erik. He doesn’t ask, doesn't say anything, just pulls Erik into a hug that startles him so violently, he almost jerks away.
Almost, but the studs in his belt and the cufflinks in his shirt whisper comfortingly to Erik. They lower his guard enough to allow the contact. He stands frozen in it for a long moment, and then crumples - long years of loss that he took and took, but this is too much. He sobs, choking gutted sounds pulled from the heart of him where he hid his father's smile and his mother's voice, the hunger in the ghetto and the coin Herr Doktor gave him that first horrible night in the concentration camp that he still carries, and all the days and nights afterwards with the electrodes and needles and scalpels, wishing that he were one of the ghost-eyed crowd out in the yard, just so that he wouldn’t have to be alone with his pain. He cried for the hope that Steve and Bucky had given him by unstrapping him from that table and taking him with them and giving him a chance to take back a few moments of his youth. He soaked Howard's shirt with all the things he'd pushed down deep in his mind - where no one could touch him, that were still out of reach.
When he finally grows quiet, Howard ruffles his hair. "Don't you worry, kiddo. He's out there somewhere. I'm going to look for him," he promises.
Erik doesn’t protest as he's lead back to barracks while Howard speaks - about a rescue expedition, about what they’ve learned about the HYDRA tech, about getting Erik emigration papers to the US and how he'll have to go back to school at the end of the war. He talks and talks, promising Erik a life outside of the next inhale and exhale on Axis soil, and the strange thing, the world-tilting truth, is that that when Howard makes all of his promises, Erik believes him.
~*~*~
Epilogue: 2011
Steve comes awake slowly in a sunny room. The light is warm on his skin, so different from the cold air cutting through the cockpit of the HYDRA plane, which is definitely the last thing he remembers. The radio is playing a ball game. He stares at the ceiling fan, slowly spinning as the announcer speaks, and swallows down anger, panic. He knows this game. He was at this game, back in '41.
He sits up and rubs his head. He hurts - everywhere, which is to be expected given the crash but… that's just the thing. He shouldn't be anything after that. He should be dead at the bottom of the north Atlantic. It doesn't make any sense.
"You're awake," a voice says from the foot of the bed. Steve tenses and turns, spotting an elderly man seated in a chair at the foot of the bed. He is sharply dressed in a black suit with a black hat in his lap, grey hair pushed back off his forehead. "That's good."
"Where am I?"
"A recovery room in New York. Manhattan, I'm afraid. Your hosts don’t have a facility in Brooklyn. How're you feeling, Steve?"
"Where am I, really?"
The man laughs. It's a good laugh, rich and full. He shakes his head and adjusts his hat in his hands. "I told them not to waste their time setting this scene, that you were too smart for that."
"You seem to know a lot about me."
"More than anyone alive, I'd say," the old man says with a sad smile.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Erik Lehnsherr, and you've been asleep for a very long time, old friend."
"Erik?" Steve snorted. "Yeah. Right."
The man lifts a hand, and Steve's dog tags rise with them, the metal delicately moving from beneath the cotton of his t-shirt into the air, then up over his head. They hover in the air for a moment before the man claiming to be Erik folds the plates together and into themselves until they are a small envelope of flattened metal, all without moving much more than the tips of his fingers. "It's more complex than hefting a girder over a chasm of fire, but I've had a long time to practice."
Steve stares, first at the dog tags still floating between them, then at the man claiming to be the boy he wrenched from Nazi custody, then back again. No one could do what Erik could with metal -that was just fact-, but this man is so old, at least in his seventies, maybe older.
With deep creases lining his face, he is a stranger to Steve, but the longer he looks, the more things he recognizes in the aged face. The shape of the nose, the curve of the eyebrows, the sharp, defiant jut of his chin, the sadness in his eyes that never went away even when he smiled. Steve draws in a sharp breath, believing for the first time, "Erik?"
"Yes. I'm sorry, Steve. I would've had them do better by you. However, you're still technically Army. My pull with that particular branch is only so strong since Phillips retired, and Charles has strict limits of what is and what isn't an appropriate use of his talents." Erik says this last like it's an old, but fond annoyance, argued over a hundred times.
There's so much information in that statement that Steve doesn’t know where to begin. He tries to ask everything at once. "How? Why? What? Who is Charles?"
"One at a time, easiest first. Charles is a… friend with some abilities at persuasion, shall we say. Unfortunately, he's only relevant in this situation as he's decided SHIELD affairs aren't within what he considers his purview."
"Oh." Steve says through the fog of shock and confusion. "How long was I…" He stops because “asleep” doesn’t seem right. Nothing seems right when Erik Lehnsherr is an old man before his eyes.
"Almost seventy years. It's 2011," Erik replies. It's little comfort that he's just as direct as ever because the number knocks the air from his lungs.
It means that everyone is gone. Every man he served with, every person from his neighborhood he grew up with, Peggy, Howard, Phillips, Dum Dum, Gabe Jones, Jim Morrita, all of them. Dead, and probably for ten or twenty years now. At his age, Erik was probably the only person left alive who had ever met Steve. The thought makes his head spin.
"Breathe," Erik murmurs, and there is the clinking sound of metal hitting the ground. Then Erik is beside him, his warm presence grounding even as Steve flounders.
"I'm breathing. I just- Peggy? Howard?"
"Gone. Howard in a car wreck nearly twenty years ago. Peggy five years ago in her sleep. It's just you and I left, Steve."
"At least your English got better," Steve mumbles, and Erik laughs again.
"That it did."
They sit in silence for what feels like an eternity to Steve. He drops his head into his hand and presses his palms into his eyes. "I don’t think I can do this."
"Of course you can," Erik says matter-of-factly. "You are still Captain America, the only man in whom I've ever had absolute faith. I'm fairly certain you can do anything."
There's a rustle of fabric, and when Steve opens his eyes, Erik has taken off his coat and rolled up his sleeve. The prisoner tattoo is smudged from age and gravity, but it is the same as it ever was, proving beyond any lingering doubt that this man is whom the boy he saved has grown into. The muscles beneath the skin move as Erik stretches out his hand to Steve, thin and wrinkled. They are the hands of an old man, paper skin with purple veins visible beneath them. "You asked me once to let you help me. I ask you to return that trust now. There's a whole new world outside this room, waiting for you to see it."
Steve looks at the time-worn hand for a long beat, then asks "You'll tell me where you've been, what your life was like?"
"If you like," Erik replies with another thin smile.
It occurs to Steve that he has seen this Erik smile more in the few moments he's been awake than he saw the child Erik do in the entire tenure of their friendship. That bodes well, he thinks. If Erik's life has been good, better than he no doubt thought Erik believed he deserved when he was a scared young man who had lost everything, then maybe Steve can make the same attempt in this new time.
"I would," Steve says, taking his friend's hand. "I would a lot."
"Come on then. I want to show you the world you gave me." Erik says, leading him out of the room and into a large complex that is clearly military from the stark design and precise lines. Men in black suits salute Erik, calling him "Mr. Lehnsherr, sir" as they pass. Erik ignores it all, just guides Steve out of the glass and metal building and into the sunshine of a summer afternoon in Manhattan.
(THE END)
Tomorrow, they're supposed to hit a transport train with HYDRA equipment on board. The plan is good, and if Steve's record with his team so far is any indication, they'll knock this one out of the park just like all the others. Tonight, Steve and his men are camped two to a canvas tent on one of the hopefully sturdier ledges on this mountain in the Italian Alps.
Snow piles up on either slope of their pitiful Army-issue shelter. Steve has been cold before. He's from New York. There's no cold like the kind that comes from the wind tunnels formed by skyscrapers. This cold is different though. It doesn't touch him the way he's fairly sure it should, if Bucky's shuddering is any indication.
"How are you not freezing your family jewels off, Cap?" Bucky demands through chattering teeth. It makes him sound like one of the cartoons from the movies, the way he doesn't stop even as he breathes hot air on his gloved fingers.
Steve just shrugs underneath one of the heavy wool blankets that they'd been given because, for this one, their bedrolls alone just weren't going to cut it. "I dunno. I'm just not."
"It's because your fancy new cells have built in heaters, isn't it? Lucky bastard."
It's possible. The metabolism thing did give him a higher base temperature. Steve doesn't mention any of that. Instead, he grins and holds out his arms from under his blanket. "You could share if you want?" He says, teasing.
He really does mean it as a joke. He expects Bucky to laugh and tell him to go jump off a cliff, like the one they have right outside their tent and launch right back into his cheerful complaining. Only Bucky's not laughing as he scoots across the small area and onto Steve's bedroll.
They did this all the time when they were kids. Steve had no meat on his bones, as Bucky's mother was fond of saying. When he spent the night at Bucky’s during winters in Brooklyn growing up, they always curled together, Bucky's bigger frame around his, keeping him warm.
"Can't have you turning into a popsicle on me, can I?" Bucky'd said once, before pulling Steve's back tight against his chest. It was right after New Years, Steve remembers. They were fourteen, the same age, only a little younger than Erik now, and the radiator in Steve's room had been stuck on low.
That night, Steve had hesitated because he thought, maybe, they were too old to cling to each other anymore. Bucky works an arm around Steve's back now, their sides pressed together. It's…different. Still, Steve's starting to think that maybe there's no such thing as too old for this.
"You're like a human oven," Bucky says with a sigh. He drops his head onto Steve's shoulder, pressing an exposed ear against Steve's coat. "Should come standard on every cold weather mission."
"Gee, thanks."
"I'm serious. What's your temperature? Two, three hundred degrees?" The hand not wrapped around Steve's back is inside his coat around his waist. Steve wonders where he's going until the fabric of Bucky's gloves meet the skin of his lower back. "Four hundred maybe?"
Then he sits back. Steve watches as Bucky takes the finger of his glove between his teeth and pulls it off. "I'm freezing," Bucky says as he repeats the motion.
And jeez, he's not kidding because when his hands return to Steve's skin, both of them this time, they're like ice."Buck-"
"Can it, Rogers." Bucky orders, scooting even closer.
Steve does because, well, he tends to go with whatever Bucky tells him to do when he says it like that. He snaps his mouth shut as Bucky presses his palms against the skin of his waist and lower back.
They sit like that for a long quiet moment and then Bucky's fingers start moving. Slow movements that form some kind of pattern Steven can't quite make out. It… it's different.
"Bucky?"
"Hm?"
"Bucky, what are you doing?"
"I'm getting warm."
Yes, all right, it is getting warm in there. But the heat is coming from under Steve's skin, radiating from where Bucky is touching him. He swallows against the sensation and grabs Bucky's wrist. "You're not. Buck, come on." He gives him a tug, and Bucky lifts his head, meeting Steve's eyes. "Don't lie to me; it's me."
"Yeah." Bucky smiles, but it's sad, like his smile was that last night before he shipped off. "Yeah, I know it's you."
"So then, just, tell me what's going on here."
Bucky's smile tightens a little as he lifts his now warm hand to touch Steve's cheek. It feels good, soft, and only a little cool. The impulse to lean into it hits him like waves crashing into the pier at Coney Island.
"It should be nothing. Smart thing to do would be to just leave it the same nothing it's always been. Thing is, I don't think I can."
"You can't?"
"No. We're in a war, Steve. You haven't seen it yet, what that really means. Even out here, I'd say the closest you've gotten has been trying to put the pieces of the Lehnsherr kid back together, and that's good. It's a damn good thing, but you're too good for this mess, always were."
His thumb strokes over Steve's cheekbone at that. It sends a panic response flooding through Steve's system so intensely that he thinks he's going to faint or something. He steadies himself by looking into Bucky's serious face.
"I'm not." He protests. "I belong here more than anyone now."
"You are, and so I'm telling you; we've been lucky so far, but between the HYDRA factory where you found me and the kid, and all the hits the team's been landing, it can't keep going like this. The odds are going to win out, and the luck's not going to hold. It could happen six months from now, or it could happen on tomorrow's mission. So I can't leave this as nothing."
"Buck-"
He doesn't get to finish because Bucky's kissing him. Kissing him like he kisses the girls he takes out, kissing him like something off the silver screen, hand holding the back of his head, so that he can't back away. All he can do his open his mouth under Bucky's and try to resist the urge to flap his arms at his side. He makes a desperate grab for Bucky's coat instead, and that seems to be a bit more dignified.
Bucky breaks the kiss before Steve can collect anything resembling a thought, let alone a reaction. Steve blinks a few times as Bucky moves as far away as he can with Steve's fists gripping the lapels of his coat.
"Damnit," Bucky mutters. He thrusts a hand into his hair, pushing it back with disgust, as if the offending strands had called his mother trash.
"What?" Steve manages. His lips are getting cold quickly, wet as they are now.
"I'm sorry. Damnit, damnit, damnit." He puts a hand over Steve's, then tugs. It accomplishes exactly nothing because Steve's fingers - along with the rest of him including his brain - are frozen. "Let me go."
"What?"
"Look, Steve, just let go. I'm going to get in my bedroll, and we'll call it a night; forget any of this ever happened."
"What?"
"Let go. Please." Bucky's hands cover Steve's, trying to pry his cramped fingers loose. Steve reads the panic in Bucky's and knows that if he lets him, he may not get him back.
"Please what? You have to tell me what just happened, Bucky. I just don't understand why."
"I know you don't." Bucky sounds defeated for the first time in the twenty plus years that they've known each other.
"You kissed me. Buck, you can't just do that and then..." He squeezes his fists around the wool of Bucky's coat. "Stop."
"What?"
"Don't turn into me now. One of us has to be able to think."
Bucky meets his eyes; dark in the low light, they seem to glitter. "You're still holding onto me."
"Well, yeah."
"Why?"
So many answers to that question. Because, after all these years, he is still the most important person in Steve's life. Because he liked it, as brief as the kiss was. Because… "Like you said, I can't not."
"Damnit." The word is a breath, and Steve understands a little. He's not one of Bucky's dames, not a girl at all. That's complicated and confusing, but then his hand is on the back of Steve's neck, pulling them back together, and neither of those things matter. What matters is the way Bucky tastes like too-bitter Army coffee, tobacco and just Bucky.
When Bucky pulls back this time it's only an inch to whisper, "Let go of the coat."
The heat of Bucky's breath fans across Steve's face. He wants more of this. "No."
"Yes. It's awkward. You can put your hands somewhere else."
"Oh."
Bucky leans in, brushing the side of Steve's nose with his own "Don't worry, Rogers. I'll show you."
That makes sense, of course. Only he's never done this with a girl, let alone with a man. He doesn't know where anything goes or how anything works. Bucky seems to though. After all the women he's been with, of course he knows how to…fondue. So the mechanics are different, but Bucky's good with mechanics, and Steve's always been a quick learner.
"Where should I put them instead?"
"I don’t know. Anywhere you want."
"Okay," Steve says, nodding as he processes the information. It leads to other questions, and he hesitates in asking, but this is Bucky. He can say anything to him."What if I want to touch you everywhere?"
The smile that earns him is worth any risk. Bucky's beaming brightly enough to light up the inside of the tent. He jerks back, and this time Steve does let go. "Get in your bed roll." He does and Bucky climbs in after him, sprawling across his chest; their legs, hips, and shoulders press together with their lips brushing, eye to eye. "Better?"
"God." Bucky is everywhere, so hot that Steve can forget the piles of snow on the other side of the canvas walls. He gropes for the blanket, pulling it over Bucky, cocooning them together in drowsy warmth. "I'm… Bucky, yeah."
Bucky smirks down at him. "Figured out where you want your hands yet?"
Everywhere still seems like a good idea. Mostly, he wants to feel Bucky's mouth with his fingertips. He wants to trace his eyebrows, so that the next time he draws Bucky's familiar face, he can get them perfect.
He pulls off his gloves because Bucky had the right idea there and starts a little farther out, tracing the shell of Bucky's ear with the pads of his index and middle fingers. Steve can feel Bucky shiver all over and hear a low noise coming from the back of his throat. He lifts his eyes from studying Bucky's skin against his to make sure that's a good thing. The hint of a smile and the dreamy look in his eyes make him want to do it again and again, so that Bucky will look like that forever.
So he does. He does, and he kisses Bucky, the first kiss he's ever instigated in his life, and this time, he can taste Bucky's moan, feel it vibrating over his tongue. He touches the place where their lips meet, and it earns him another shiver with a hip roll that makes the warmth they're building turn into a fire.
Steve doesn't really know what to do with that. If he were alone, he'd take himself in hand and be done as soon as he can. Suddenly he can't imagine prying his fingers from Bucky's skin now that he's allowed to touch freely.
He knows he needs something though because the crashing waves that are their rolling hips are driving him out of his mind. He cups the sides of Bucky's face, pulling their foreheads tight together so that he can speak without losing any more contact than he has to. "I'm- Bucky. I don’t know what… "
"I've got it," Bucky murmurs. He moves, reaching between them deftly. He props himself up on one elbow and gets the buttons on both their pants with the other hand.
"Bucky!" Steve's arches so hard that he thinks he might snap. He clings to the fabric of Bucky's coat at the shoulders, afraid that he'll break Bucky's shoulders if the pleasure breaks what little control he's hanging on to.
Bucky's fist is wrapped around both of them at once, tight and hot. Dear God, it's so good, too good. Steve's not going to be able to live through this. He's sure of that, only Bucky's murmuring to him as he strokes them together. "That’s it. I've got you. I've always got you, Steve. Always."
Coupled with the feel of Bucky's fist around his, the alien feeling of another man's hardness rubbing against his and the promise in Bucky's words send him over the edge into orgasm seconds later. He bites back a scream that probably would've been Bucky's name because the guys are five feet away, and the enemy could be in the caves around them. His lower lip is bleeding when the spasms finally stop.
Bucky's grinning down at him, still rocking into his fist, almost too much friction against Steve now that he's over-sensitized like this. He doesn't ask Bucky to stop though. He wants to see the same pleasure twist his full mouth, send his eyes rolling back or squeezing shut.
When he climaxes, he's quiet, his head dropping into the curve of Steve's shoulder. His hot breath speeds up before it stops for almost a minute. He makes a little noise when he exhales that could be a whimper, then the arm holding him up gives out, and he crashes down on top of Steve, sprawled and loose, everything Steve never even thought to want.
The most cursory clean up ends up with them back where they started, curled up together beneath the same blanket. It's just like when they were children, only this time, Bucky's back is pressed to Steve's chest. It's different, but still good to fall asleep that way. It's even better to wake up that way, his chin on Bucky's shoulder. He could stay there forever, but they've got a mission to execute, so up they get.
He tries not to look too long as they gather outside to join the rest of the team for breakfast. He doesn’t watch Bucky's long fingers or full mouth as he eats the hard tack they packed for breakfast. Instead he wraps his hands around the coffee Jim Morrita hands him and takes a seat between Dum Dum and Falswoth around the small fire.
He takes a long sip of coffee, then asks. "So tell me again how we're going to get onto the HYDRA train."
Bucky grins at him across the fire, so huge and smug. "You ever heard of a zip wire?"
He knows it usually involves fairly impressive heights. "I'm going to hate asking, aren’t I?" Bucky doesn't have to say a word. Steve knows he isn't going to like what he hears. He doesn't mind too much. Not when he gets to see Bucky's smile get even bigger in the white winter sunlight.
~*~*~
Steve comes back to England haunted. That's the word Peggy uses, and Erik thinks it's the exactly right way to describe the hollow look in his eyes. He meets no one's gaze when the commandos arrive back without Bucky, not his teammates, not Peggy's or Howard's or his own. He's debriefed by Phillips, and then disappears out of the base.
Erik finds him a few hours after they sent out an APB on him. The special metal in his shield is practically a flashing beacon in the gutted city. Erik has been gaining skill on a rapid curve since that first day of physical training. Now he can bend, twist, and mold metal to his will and call it to him if it's not too large or bound to the ground.
It makes finding Steve so simple. He's in the basement of a building a few blocks away. It's one Erik knows from his training runs with Peggy. It's next to one of the buildings she had specifically pointed out as being government owned and having a bomb shelter because "if another air raid happens while you're out, and you don't get safe, I'll never forgive you, Erik." The building Steve is in is barely a building anymore. It got hit hard in the most recent wave of bombs, and when Erik arrives, he can see where Steve tore his way in, probably with his bare hands, to get inside. Erik follows his path through the wreckage and down into the basement to find his friend sitting on the floor, back against cold brick walls, next to shelves of cleaning materials including a mop and a metal bucket.
The bucket is small and dented. That makes it easy enough to turn it upside down with a thought. It will give him a seat, so that he can be eye-to-eye with his friend because, even seated, Steve is so much bigger than he is.
The movement of the bucket on the wooden floor is enough to get his attention. He looks up just in time to watch the upside down bucket settle itself on the ground. He smiles, thin and tremulous. It's hard to look at him looking like that. "Erik, hey. You're getting the hang of it."
"Yes," Erik agrees, sitting down carefully on the bucket. It puts him a few inches above Steve, which is a position he's never been in before. "Howard and Peggy helped."
"That's good. I knew you could do it. I'm-" His grin widens, and then cracks, and he's sobbing. His huge palms open to cover his face as he shakes. His whole body is wracked with the grief of losing Bucky to the point that it shakes him like a physical thing. This, Erik imagines, is what watching a mountain in an earthquake must be like.
It's horrible. Erik wishes he had anything to say. He doesn't. He knows all too well that there is not a single thing anyone could say that will make any impact. So he does what he wishes someone, anyone, could have done for him when his mother dropped to the floor of Herr Doktor's office, dead. He places a gentle hand on Steve's shoulder and squeezes. He hopes it's enough to help this man who saved him because a kind touch is all Erik had wanted, and he'd been denied it.
It seems to be good enough because Steve pulls him off the bucket and into a crushing embrace. Erik hears Steve's choked off cries up close now, feels his tears through his shirt and the trembling through every part of his body. The whole thing is invasive, almost claustrophobic, but Steve is so strong that Erik is powerless to do anything but let go and allow himself to be hugged.
It's strange. He's hasn't been held in more than two years. This isn't how he wanted to be held again for the first time, but slowly, Steve's shaking is easing, so that must be worth it. He even relaxes after a moment and hugs Steve back, wrapping his arms around Steve's thick neck like he did his father when he was very young. The gesture makes him ache, missing his father, his mother, his little sister, the butcher and his teachers and friends, and Bucky Barnes, whom he barely knew, but who helped pull him out of a literal hell with the man holding him like a lifeline.
"I am sorry," Erik whispers. He feels too young, too small. He shouldn't know what that word means, how blinding this kind of hurt can be.
"Me too." Steve nods against his shoulder. Then he untangles himself from Erik. "I didn't mean-" He lifts his face, sniffs, and then wipes his face with his fists like a child with a cold. "Erik, you shouldn't be here."
"Neither should you. The building is unstable. Agent Carter will be cross."
Steve laughs, but it's edged with tears. "She probably already is. She doesn't have a lot of patience for irrational behavior."
"No, she definitely doesn't. So are you ready to come with me back to base?"
"I can't."
"You can. You don't want to."
"No. No, I don't. Erik, I let him die. He just slipped." He holds up is hands. "Right through my fingers."
"I know."
"I let him die, Erik. If I could've moved just a little faster, he'd still be here." His voice breaks, and Erik is afraid that Steve is going to cry again. "You have no idea-"
"Don't."
"Erik."
"Do not. I have every idea, Steve."
Steve studies him. His gaze clears from the faraway look to wherever Bucky was lost and focuses on Erik. "Who was it?"
This is the first time he's ever spoken of it. No one has ever asked. Herr Doktor and his men knew, had cared as little about killing her as every other Jew they shuffled into the ovens. Peggy was too careful, and Howard was too distracted by the everyday goings on of his laboratory. He doesn't want to answer, but finds himself speaking anyway. "My mother."
"Oh." Steve's eyes go distant again, back with Bucky. Erik thinks that he'll never really leave that place again in the same way that Erik has never left that office in Auschwitz.
Erik nods because, once again, there's nothing to say. Steve reaches out this time, taking Erik's hand in his. They're huge and clammy, but gentle. It comforts him, which is not the point of this. He isn't the one who should need comforting.
He pulls his hand out of Steve's carefully. "Come back with me."
Steve shakes his head and lets his shoulders drop. "I'll be along."
"That's unacceptable. Everyone is worried."
"I'm a big boy. Tell Carter you found me and told me. I'll be along."
The only reason Erik doesn't argue is because he owes Steve his life, literally. He can't pay that back, so he will give Steve the courtesy of respecting his wishes. He's a grown man, after all, and a better one than Erik could ever hope to be.
"All right." Erik rises and moves to pick his way out when Steve calls out to him.
"Erik?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
On the floor, in his battered uniform with huge black smudges under his eyes, Steve looks like a broken toy tossed under a bed. Erik can't bear gratitude from this man at this low. So he shrugs and says, "It's nothing."
"It's not nothing. You're a good friend, kid. A real good friend."
Erik doesn’t respond to that. He leaves Steve to grieve in private and makes his way carefully back to base. It's nearly dark, and the raids are unpredictable.
Peggy is waiting for him, arms crossed, red lips in a thin line. "Did you find him?"
"He said he'd be along."
"Did he now?"
"Yes, ma'am."
She makes a soft hmm sound, then says, "Spend at least an hour with the heavy bag, but otherwise, your time is your own. I'm sure Mr. Stark would like to see you."
Erik has been with Agent Carter long enough to know a dismissal when he hears one. He's glad of it. He isn't wired for this anymore. It broke under Herr Doktor's hands.
If Steve weren't shattered, that broken, awkward mechanism in him wouldn’t matter. He is, and it does, so Erik hesitates, even though he doesn’t want to.
"Ma'am, are you certain?"
"I'm certain. Go on, Erik. Thank you."
He runs like he tried to run a hundred times from Herr Doktor and the camp guards. He feels like a ghost is following him, painful and thick in his chest. He beats the heavy bag for two hours before he surrenders and makes his way down to the hum of the metalwork in Howard's lab that will work far better than anything else. At least anything he can imagine.
~*~*~
Steve hates the Alps where HYDRA keeps hiding. He could live a thousand more years and never come back to these godforsaken mountains. The snow and the forest and all of it tear at his grief like sharp claws. Every flake of snow reminds him of Bucky, of how they curled together against the cold, how he died not too far away from where they stand right now.
The thought makes Steve want to take occupied Europe apart one piece at a time until he gets to Schmidt. It wouldn't be nearly satisfying enough to make up for the gaping hole in him but it would be better than the nothing he has now.
The cavity where Bucky used to be is why he had fought Phillips so hard allow Erik along on this mission. The longer he has to sit with Bucky's death, the more he's realizing that hollow is practically Erik's middle name. He still wants to fight, and if that will help fill the void Steve is becoming so familiar with, then damnit, Steve will get it for the kid.
Steve can't seem to do anything else until they actually get to HYDRA's front door. Before leaving England, fighting with Colonel Phillips for Erik's spot in the upcoming battle had been a good distraction, and the best weapon in his arsenal was "Stark says he could be an invaluable asset to us with what he's learned."
It was true. Stark had joined him at that wrecked out bar and told him tales of Erik's rapid progress. "Boy's a damn miracle, Rogers. A miracle. The kind of delicate work he'll be able to do with practice will move science ahead by fifty years in the next five - if that’s what he chooses to use it on. If he goes for blunt force, he's a walking, talking teenage weapon with all the guns and blades he can feel at his disposal."
"You say that like it’s a good thing." Steve said, side-eying Howard over a bottle of Glenlivet after the last big meeting in the war room. The scotch was older than his father would've been had he survived the war. Steve couldn't help but think of how that damn bottle was probably worth more than his whole life before the super solider serum had changed him.
"It's not good or bad, Cap. It just is. Erik's a hurt, exhausted kid, who grew up way too fast in a place that’s so fuck-ugly I can't even imagine it - pardon my French."
"I'm in the Army, Stark. I've heard worse."
Steve thought Stark muttered 'fondue' under his breath, then Howard said, over the rim of his glass, "Point is, you can't assign a good or a bad to what Erik can do. It's like anything - it’s all in how you use it. We use bombs to fight to save the world; HYDRA's going to use them to try and take it over. Bomb's still a bomb."
"Erik isn't a bomb."
The expression on Howard Stark's face had been openly upset. "Of course he's not. Listen to me, Cap. Assigning a broad value to these things, it'll get you in trouble, especially with him. That kid idolizes you."
They sat in silence while they each drank another glass of Howard's scotch. Steve had sipped at it and wished he could share the vintage with Bucky. He is- was...he'd been a big scotch guy. They couldn’t have ever afforded this one on their own.
That got him lost in his head until Stark said, "I don’t want him to go. I think it's a bad idea and that he could get killed, and I feel like we're just starting to get through to him. Still, it's not my place to do anything but tell you that Erik could make all the difference in a fight like the one you're about to face down."
They'd finished off the bottle. Howard got drunker and began waxing poetic about HYDRA tech and Erik's "talent." Steve savors each sip for flavor even though he'd never been a big drinker before the war - because Bucky would've wanted him to.
When he was face-to-face with Phillips this time, he was less eloquent than Stark. In return, Phillips looked at him like he was still the stick-thin, panting, pathetic mess he'd first met stateside. Lower than a bug in the dirt and not worth the effort to squish. "Oh, well, if Stark says so, then it must be true."
"We both know that if he wants, he can just fly himself and Erik in, and damn what we want."
"Yes, he's running the US Army now. I must have missed the memo."
Steve said nothing at that. Letting the man vent seemed wiser. Phillips had glared at him before grudgingly declaring, "If the boy gets killed, that's on your head. Yours and Stark's."
"Yes, sir."
Phillips looked him over, then jerked his chin at the door. "We're done here," he said.
Now they're in HYDRA's front yard and just beginning what he hoped would be the last stand against Schmidt and his megalomaniacal puppets. He's been ready to hit facility full on since the moment they landed, but Peggy's keeping the leash short.
"You're not going in half-cocked, Steve," she says, again in that same brooks-no-argument tone that she's been using on him since the first day.
"I am fully cocked."
"Be that as it may, your back up is not."
"Have you got an estimate on when it will be?"
She purses her full lips and stares him down. "When it's ready."
"That's not helpful."
"Terribly sorry," she says, not sounding sorry in the least. However, when the sun rises, he's got the go-ahead he wants and the bike to get him there.
Everything happens fast once they're started. Steve's running on instinct and training and long months on his bike as he approaches the HYDRA base. Physicality wins out over higher thought. He has a goal, a destination. There's Schmidt, there's everything else, and only one of those matters. Even getting caught is just one step closer to where he needs to be.
Standing before the man, his misshapen red face gives Steve something to focus his loss on for the first time since Bucky slipped through his fingers. It's therapeutic almost, having a focal point for that hurt again.
It refines his clarity of purpose, and he suddenly understands Erik so much better. He just wishes Erik's Herr Doktor were here too. He'd take out two predatory birds with one thrown shield.
Or at least he will once his back up gets here. Steve's got a countdown in his head until Dum Dum and company come crashing through that keeps getting thrown off by the way Schidmt goes on and on. Lord, the man can talk, waxing on about arrogance and Erskine and demanding to know what makes Steve special like a spoiled child who saw his favorite toy handed down to a sibling.
It gives Steve a perverse pleasure that he thinks must be him getting jaded the way Bucky said he never would to hit the red bastard with the truth. "I'm just a kid from Brooklyn."
The crash of his backup smashing through the base's windows sounds like music to Steve. Battle is a dance he actually knows the steps to without thinking. The Howling Commandos move around him in their own rhythms and movements against HYDRA soldiers as Steve hauls after Schmidt.
Nearly colliding with Peggy and Erik in a hallway as she shoots a man off his back is the only time he slows. "Maybe you should-" she says, jerking her head at the door where his shield is lodged.
On cue, the door opens under Erik's outstretched palm. Before Steve can move to catch its inevitable fall, his shield flies into his hand. Erik nods at him and smiles, sharkish and overly wide. He's enjoying the melee, taking genuine pleasure in the fight, so much so that he doesn’t seem to notice the blood on his shirt, neck and chin. Steve doesn’t know why or how it got there, but it's terrifying in a way that Schmidt's insanity can't compare to.
"Steve," Peggy hisses. It shocks him back to reality.
He gives her a look that he hopes says 'look after Erik.' She glances at the boy, then nods once, which he hopes means she understands. Steve returns the gesture and takes off deeper into the bunker Schmidt's tail.
~*~*~
The command center of the HYDRA station is glittering, sterile and covered in metal, humming to Erik. It would be so easy to destroy it. A thought, maybe a waved arm to guide his mind, and he could wrench the copper wires and aluminum finishing out of the walls. It makes him feel giddy, makes him want to laugh, like he laughed as he sent HYDRA agents flying on their own belt buckles mere minutes ago. This is what he survived Auschwitz and Herr Doktor to do, to be - the essence of his power.
"Did you see?" he asks Peggy, feeling like he did when he was little, showing his mama when he'd first learned to ride a bicycle on his own - triumphant. Maybe edging on something that could be the type of pure happiness rooted in the purely physical and instinctual.
He's surprised when Colonel Phillips is the first to respond. "I did. Nicely done, son. I look forward to seeing you live up to your potential."
Erik freezes, trying to think of a proper response to the man who had stood in the way of his desire to fight his own battles so many times in this war. He doesn't get the chance. Before he can articulate any of his thoughts and translate them from the German he still thinks in to English, the radio crackles through the room.
"Come in. This is Captain Rogers. Do you read me?"
Morrita flicks the radio on as the whole room draws a breath."Captain Rogers, what is your-"
"Steve, is that you?" Peggy demands, pushing Morrita out of the way and taking control of the radio. "Are you all right?"
"Peggy," Steve calls back, sounding relieved at her voice. "Schmidt's dead."
"What about the plane?" she asks, always practical.
"That’s a little harder to explain."
"Give me your coordinates. I'll find you a safe landing site.”
"There's not going to be a safe landing, but I can try and force it down."
"I'll get Howard on the line. He'll know what to do."
Phillips jerks his head and waves his hand at the door. Morrita backs away, but Erik doesn't move. Peggy's right. Between Howard, Peggy and Steve, anything can be salvaged. They'd saved him, hadn't they? What was that next to a simple plane?
"There's not enough time," Steve says, his voice far away. "This thing's moving too fast and it's headed for New York. I gotta put her in the water."
"Son," Phillips murmurs, but Erik shakes his head. He's not leaving - not Steve, who is alone on the other end of the radio, or Peggy, who is approaching tears, something Erik had imagined she would never do. Phillips just shrugs, and he and Morrita leave the two of them alone for what Erik refuses to believe will be a last goodbye.
"Please don’t do this. We- we have time. We can work it out."
"Right now, I'm in the middle of nowhere. If I wait any longer, a lot of people are going to die."
Erik pushes around her and hits the outgoing button on the radio. "Don't be stupid, Steve."
"Erik?"
"There's another way. There's always another way. Let us think of something."
"Not this time, kid. Stick with Howard and Peggy for me. Let them take care of you, help you grow into the man I know you can be."
He doesn’t say that he's a man and not an infant, that he doesn’t need anyone taking care of him. Instead he says, "Come back, and do it yourself."
"You don't have to do this," Peggy adds. Her voice is trembling, and Erik reaches out to her, threading his fingers with hers. She clings to him with a warm dry grip that is so tight it hurts.
"This my choice," Steve says in the same calm tone he used when he first told Erik that he was safe, that he was getting out of the Nazi-financed HYDRA torture factory. It's not comforting this time. There's a long pause over the line, and then, "Peggy?"
"I'm here." It comes out in a whisper, and her grip on Erik's hand tightens even more. It hurts, but that’s all right. It's not nearly as painful as the tears in her eyes or the sound of Steve preparing himself to die over the radio. He squeezes back because it helps him keep himself from shaking.
"You and Howard will look after him?" Steve asks, sounding so desperate that Erik feels sick. "I know you think you can handle anything, Erik, but you're just a kid. You deserve… everything."
"All right," Peggy promises. "But just until you get back. And you still owe me a dance."
"Raincheck?"
"A week, next Saturday," she says, "at the Stork Club."
"You got it."
"Eight o'clock on the dot, and don’t you dare be late."
They go on like that - like either of them think he'll really make it. It makes Erik want to scream at them both. Delusional - that’s what this is, delusional and horrific, right up until the radio cuts out. Peggy gasps his name, and only when she lets go of his hand to cover her face does Erik realize his own is wet with tears, the first he's shed for anything since his mother's death.
Phillips returns to the command center fifteen minutes later and guides them out for debriefing. The shock and numbness is contagious, spreading from himself and Peggy to the rest of the Commandos and out into the rest of the platoon. Captain America is dead, and there isn't an army field guide for that.
It's Howard who shocks them out of it. He gives Peggy a gentle squeeze on the shoulder and a murmured apology, then turns to Erik. He doesn’t ask, doesn't say anything, just pulls Erik into a hug that startles him so violently, he almost jerks away.
Almost, but the studs in his belt and the cufflinks in his shirt whisper comfortingly to Erik. They lower his guard enough to allow the contact. He stands frozen in it for a long moment, and then crumples - long years of loss that he took and took, but this is too much. He sobs, choking gutted sounds pulled from the heart of him where he hid his father's smile and his mother's voice, the hunger in the ghetto and the coin Herr Doktor gave him that first horrible night in the concentration camp that he still carries, and all the days and nights afterwards with the electrodes and needles and scalpels, wishing that he were one of the ghost-eyed crowd out in the yard, just so that he wouldn’t have to be alone with his pain. He cried for the hope that Steve and Bucky had given him by unstrapping him from that table and taking him with them and giving him a chance to take back a few moments of his youth. He soaked Howard's shirt with all the things he'd pushed down deep in his mind - where no one could touch him, that were still out of reach.
When he finally grows quiet, Howard ruffles his hair. "Don't you worry, kiddo. He's out there somewhere. I'm going to look for him," he promises.
Erik doesn’t protest as he's lead back to barracks while Howard speaks - about a rescue expedition, about what they’ve learned about the HYDRA tech, about getting Erik emigration papers to the US and how he'll have to go back to school at the end of the war. He talks and talks, promising Erik a life outside of the next inhale and exhale on Axis soil, and the strange thing, the world-tilting truth, is that that when Howard makes all of his promises, Erik believes him.
~*~*~
Epilogue: 2011
Steve comes awake slowly in a sunny room. The light is warm on his skin, so different from the cold air cutting through the cockpit of the HYDRA plane, which is definitely the last thing he remembers. The radio is playing a ball game. He stares at the ceiling fan, slowly spinning as the announcer speaks, and swallows down anger, panic. He knows this game. He was at this game, back in '41.
He sits up and rubs his head. He hurts - everywhere, which is to be expected given the crash but… that's just the thing. He shouldn't be anything after that. He should be dead at the bottom of the north Atlantic. It doesn't make any sense.
"You're awake," a voice says from the foot of the bed. Steve tenses and turns, spotting an elderly man seated in a chair at the foot of the bed. He is sharply dressed in a black suit with a black hat in his lap, grey hair pushed back off his forehead. "That's good."
"Where am I?"
"A recovery room in New York. Manhattan, I'm afraid. Your hosts don’t have a facility in Brooklyn. How're you feeling, Steve?"
"Where am I, really?"
The man laughs. It's a good laugh, rich and full. He shakes his head and adjusts his hat in his hands. "I told them not to waste their time setting this scene, that you were too smart for that."
"You seem to know a lot about me."
"More than anyone alive, I'd say," the old man says with a sad smile.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Erik Lehnsherr, and you've been asleep for a very long time, old friend."
"Erik?" Steve snorted. "Yeah. Right."
The man lifts a hand, and Steve's dog tags rise with them, the metal delicately moving from beneath the cotton of his t-shirt into the air, then up over his head. They hover in the air for a moment before the man claiming to be Erik folds the plates together and into themselves until they are a small envelope of flattened metal, all without moving much more than the tips of his fingers. "It's more complex than hefting a girder over a chasm of fire, but I've had a long time to practice."
Steve stares, first at the dog tags still floating between them, then at the man claiming to be the boy he wrenched from Nazi custody, then back again. No one could do what Erik could with metal -that was just fact-, but this man is so old, at least in his seventies, maybe older.
With deep creases lining his face, he is a stranger to Steve, but the longer he looks, the more things he recognizes in the aged face. The shape of the nose, the curve of the eyebrows, the sharp, defiant jut of his chin, the sadness in his eyes that never went away even when he smiled. Steve draws in a sharp breath, believing for the first time, "Erik?"
"Yes. I'm sorry, Steve. I would've had them do better by you. However, you're still technically Army. My pull with that particular branch is only so strong since Phillips retired, and Charles has strict limits of what is and what isn't an appropriate use of his talents." Erik says this last like it's an old, but fond annoyance, argued over a hundred times.
There's so much information in that statement that Steve doesn’t know where to begin. He tries to ask everything at once. "How? Why? What? Who is Charles?"
"One at a time, easiest first. Charles is a… friend with some abilities at persuasion, shall we say. Unfortunately, he's only relevant in this situation as he's decided SHIELD affairs aren't within what he considers his purview."
"Oh." Steve says through the fog of shock and confusion. "How long was I…" He stops because “asleep” doesn’t seem right. Nothing seems right when Erik Lehnsherr is an old man before his eyes.
"Almost seventy years. It's 2011," Erik replies. It's little comfort that he's just as direct as ever because the number knocks the air from his lungs.
It means that everyone is gone. Every man he served with, every person from his neighborhood he grew up with, Peggy, Howard, Phillips, Dum Dum, Gabe Jones, Jim Morrita, all of them. Dead, and probably for ten or twenty years now. At his age, Erik was probably the only person left alive who had ever met Steve. The thought makes his head spin.
"Breathe," Erik murmurs, and there is the clinking sound of metal hitting the ground. Then Erik is beside him, his warm presence grounding even as Steve flounders.
"I'm breathing. I just- Peggy? Howard?"
"Gone. Howard in a car wreck nearly twenty years ago. Peggy five years ago in her sleep. It's just you and I left, Steve."
"At least your English got better," Steve mumbles, and Erik laughs again.
"That it did."
They sit in silence for what feels like an eternity to Steve. He drops his head into his hand and presses his palms into his eyes. "I don’t think I can do this."
"Of course you can," Erik says matter-of-factly. "You are still Captain America, the only man in whom I've ever had absolute faith. I'm fairly certain you can do anything."
There's a rustle of fabric, and when Steve opens his eyes, Erik has taken off his coat and rolled up his sleeve. The prisoner tattoo is smudged from age and gravity, but it is the same as it ever was, proving beyond any lingering doubt that this man is whom the boy he saved has grown into. The muscles beneath the skin move as Erik stretches out his hand to Steve, thin and wrinkled. They are the hands of an old man, paper skin with purple veins visible beneath them. "You asked me once to let you help me. I ask you to return that trust now. There's a whole new world outside this room, waiting for you to see it."
Steve looks at the time-worn hand for a long beat, then asks "You'll tell me where you've been, what your life was like?"
"If you like," Erik replies with another thin smile.
It occurs to Steve that he has seen this Erik smile more in the few moments he's been awake than he saw the child Erik do in the entire tenure of their friendship. That bodes well, he thinks. If Erik's life has been good, better than he no doubt thought Erik believed he deserved when he was a scared young man who had lost everything, then maybe Steve can make the same attempt in this new time.
"I would," Steve says, taking his friend's hand. "I would a lot."
"Come on then. I want to show you the world you gave me." Erik says, leading him out of the room and into a large complex that is clearly military from the stark design and precise lines. Men in black suits salute Erik, calling him "Mr. Lehnsherr, sir" as they pass. Erik ignores it all, just guides Steve out of the glass and metal building and into the sunshine of a summer afternoon in Manhattan.
(THE END)