Rivets - Part 3
Title: Rivets
Author: jaune_chat
Artist(s): disreputabled0g
Fandoms and Spoilers: The Avengers (film),Captain America: TFA, Captain America: TWS
Characters/Relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers, James “Bucky” Barnes/OFC, James “Bucky” Barnes/OMC
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 12,517
Spoilers: Film
Content Advisory: Violence, piercings, explicit sex, uncertain memories
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing.
A/N: Written for a prompt from avengerkink. Written for journeystory. Thanks to brighteyed_jill for betaing!
Summary: The Winter Soldier was starting to remember, and would stitch himself back together any way he could.
Bucky slipped the phone into his pocket and made his way down the block to the Tower, watching through the glass-walled lobby. The cameras here would pick him up eventually, and he wouldn't be able to hide, but that wasn't the point. The point was not hiding. He was no longer up on rooftops, hidden behind a mask, a figure of terror. Instead he counted the seconds before the elevator opened.
All of thirty.
Steve stepped out, incredulous hope stamped across his features, perfect and unmarred by Bucky's beating from almost a year before. Bucky made sure he was visible as he stepped into the lobby, dressed in black leather and denim, patches from concerts decorating his jacket, washes of color over his left arm where it shows through, with metal running through most of the structures of his head. Steve looked the same as last time, but Bucky.... so very much did not.
Steve stared, blinking once, not losing the hope or wonder, but seemingly frozen, uncertain what to do. Bucky couldn't be frozen, not anymore, and moved to the elevator Steve had just vacated. Like a magnet pulled to metal, Steve turned to follow, his eyes still nailed to Bucky's face, his body, as the elevator ascended rapidly.
It took another five seconds before Steve found his voice in a single word, “Bucky?” Steve reached out, arms open, and Bucky met him halfway, settling into the strength of a confining embrace. He wanted to feel the metal warmed by another's body, someone who hadn't been interested in the novelty. The memories exploded as Steve's cheek pressed against the side of his head, into his pierced ear, his chest against the more intimate ones hidden under Bucky's shirt. Despite the confines that kept him from escaping, it was a real embrace, a willing touch by a friend. The metal was warming, and Bucky felt grounded.
The elevator doors opened unnoticed, Bucky's ears too full of Steve's accelerating breathing, until a half-familiar voice floated through the door from the room beyond.
“Hey Steve, who's the punk rocker- holy shit.”
Bucky looked up to see Tony Stark staring at him in shock, half-disheveled clothes showing he'd just gotten up, a glass of something green lolling in his hand. The locator bracelets for Iron Man were slim and deadly around his wrists, and Bucky knew it would only take seconds for Stark to call his suit to him. He decided not to give two shits, because Stark was, at that moment, too surprised to think about hurting him.
It didn't take him long to recover though as Steve moved them both into a living room dominated by a huge TV and an abundance of chairs.
“Steve looked all over Europe for you.”
Bucky felt a little guilty about that.
“He looked all over Russia for you,” Tony said, gesturing emphatically with his glass and somehow not spilling a drop.
Bucky felt a lot guilty about that.
“Where were you?” he demanded.
It wasn't Stark's privilege to ask, but it was Steve's to hear. Bucky let go enough to look at Steve, the sunlight from the enormous wall of windows across the room catching on the metal on his face and sending glints across Steve's skin.
“Montana. Canada. Alaska. Anywhere cold.” Anywhere he could justify keeping covered until he'd figured out his solution. “I couldn't have gotten on a plane, I would have had a meltdown in transit.” Steve started at that, but then nodded slowly, dawning realization with a bit of nausea breaking over him. HYDRA hadn't wanted the asset to be too independent; they'd counted on his fear of returning memories to drive him back to his handlers. They hadn't counted on Steve. No one had counted on Steve until Bucky. He touched the stud in the lobe of his right ear, smiling at the memory, and then tapped his temple in explanation. “I was healing. Zola's formula worked. I started to remember again.”
Steve looked like he wanted to hold onto him and never let go. Bucky thought he might be very all right with that.
There was a soft gasp to his left. She was so quiet he hadn't heard her, and danger thrilled along battle-hardened nerves before Steve's hand clamped down on him like an iron bar, solid and grounding, reminding him of where he was. Yes.
Red hair. She had fought him in D.C. He'd stalked her during some other mission, earlier, years ago. He'd had to eliminate a target, and she'd been in the way. He'd shot her then. He'd tried to kill her a year ago. Bucky touched a stud in his left ear and a name resurfaced. Natalia. Natasha. She'd had more than one.
And this time she wasn't pointing a gun at him, or running from him.
“I shot through you once,” he said in greeting, relieved when she nodded slightly in confirmation.
“Yes.” Spare enough, but she had reason.
“You look good.” The slow smile from his oldest past played across his face in a flirt. Steve looked like he wanted to punch him in the arm like he had when they were kids, but held back. That was the last thing Bucky wanted, not now. Bucky slugged him instead (gentle!) and Steve retaliated automatically before his eyes got a little bright. If Bucky hadn't seen it coming, he probably would have sent Steve through a wall, but he figured that was something they could work on.
Stark could afford the repairs.
Natasha's training kicked in and she smiled off Bucky's flirting. Under that smile was something harder and guarded. Well, of course there was. She couldn't have survived if there hadn't been.
“I thought you said you weren't ready for that,” Natasha said, looking straight at Steve. That was apparently an inside joke, because Steve went incandescent red and tried not to choke.
Stark apparently found the tennis match funny, or funny as he could considering he'd probably seen footage of the asset in action trying to kill the man beside him. Forget that Tony Stark was a one-man army in his suit and a walking disaster out of it. Forget he shared tower space with the Hulk, with Natasha, with Steve, a god of thunder, and Natasha's archer-assassin friend. Bucky, the asset, was the only one here who'd been part of the organization meant to destroy Stark's world.
Stark, Stark... Memory tugged, and Bucky worked the barbell in his tongue for a moment to bring it into focus. Stark's parents were dead. Had Bucky... the asset...? No, he realized. No, he'd heard someone talk about it, but he hadn't done that job himself. There had been a sabotaged break line, a broken street-light, and some extra water on the road after a late party where heavy drinking had been encouraged. Not all of HYDRA's kills of prominent people had been at his hands, just the hard ones, or the ones who needed a specific statement in their deaths. Ghost he might have been, but he was supposed to be seen just enough to create fear. Fear was useful for HYDRA's plan, and the Winter Soldier had been the boogeyman they used to keep people in line.
“I'm ready,” Bucky said, and Steve stopped blushing to look at him intently. “I... I need someplace. I-” He took a breath to articulate what he had wanted for a long time, what he'd spent all this time doing on his own, but was now ready to share. “I want to do something good. I want to remember more.”
He touched one of the bolts going through his right ear, and Steve's eyes fixed on the motion. He had always been quick on the uptake (barring knowing when to quit) and after the procedure he'd just gotten better.
“They help,” he said. “They anchor what I know. I remember a lot, but not always where it goes. These... fix them in place. HYDRA scrambled my brains pretty good.”
“Bucky...” Steve looked like he wanted to punch someone in the face. That was fine; he could get in line when they found the next bunch of HYDRA rats that needed cleaning out.
Bucky knew there was a lot of anger inside him, the original him who'd been so hurt, so changed, needing to let out decades of fury. And right now he wasn't showing it, because by now it was a calculating, cruel thing he didn't want Steve to see out of context. If Steve had seen what he'd done to Craft...
“We'll find them, stop them.”
Steve didn't even hesitate. “Yes, I promise.”
“Not without me,” Bucky insisted, seeing Steve's loss, his lonely need to make up for lost time. God knew he'd seen it in the mirror more than once. Steve hesitated, but Bucky said, “I owe them.” Steve shus his mouth on any arguments, and Bucky changed the topic. “You live here.”
Now Stark looked uncertain for about five seconds before he got what Bucky was getting at. His confidence was soaring with Steve at his side, and Stark's non-violent response, Natasha's smile back at him, gave him a hint of safety.
“Eh, we rattle around in here anyway. You need a space?”
If Bucky was honest with himself, he needed a padded closet and a straightjacket, but he'd take a luxury suite in Stark Tower if that was what was offered. “Yeah, I do.”
“JARVIS, assign the Sergeant to 7010.”
Sergeant. Bucky tugged on his tongue barbell until he tasted blood to keep his shit together. Yes. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. Someone... someone else remembered too.
Steve must have saw him go unfocused, because Bucky distantly heard him thank Stark, say good-bye to Natasha, and get in his line of sight so he could take Bucky's flesh elbow and pull him into the elevator. A quiet ride and they were at a new floor, the door opening to reveal a suite divided in two, one half clearly Steve's. Bucky had gotten enough self-awareness back to follow Steve into the living room, tastefully arranged and blistering with technology.
He'd seen some of it the tech before now, some during his recovery, and some before that. He touched the fourth stud in on his left eyebrow - some of his support team had watched endless amounts of TV or searched the Internet mindlessly while they waited for the asset's target to arrive. They'd used devices like these.
The pictures on the walls were far older. He touched the third stud down on his right ear. He used to work on those docks, play in that alley, go to that theater. His history, here, not memories anchored in metal, but right here. He went to touch them with his flesh hand, like the touch would travel through his arm and re-anchor in the stud, in his mind.
“We went here,” Bucky said, a statement that was also a question.
Steve's voice was quiet, thick. “Yes.”
“I lived in that building there. Mom, dad, younger sister and brother.” He hesitated, chasing the anchored memory. Steve started to speak and Bucky caught up to him. “Marion, Luke,” they said almost together. It goddamn hurt sometimes, forcing his fucked-up brain to reach that far back, and then there was the emotional punch to the gut when he realized they died thinking he and Steve had gotten killed within days of each other and he'll never see their faces or hear their voices again.
Steve was suddenly right there next to him, close as a breath, and Bucky realized he knew. He understood. Neither of them would ever meet a childhood friend, or see the city they once knew in the same way again. Food, movies, smells, all washed away in time, Steve's in frozen ice, Bucky's in frozen death.
He wanted to feel warm again. He wanted to feel.
“You touch them differently,” Steve said, in question and distraction and quiet understanding. He made a vague gesture, and Bucky quickly and gratefully seized on a subject that wasn't his family, at least not directly. He thought he would need some time alone to process that.
Bucky raised his right hand and ran it over the shell of his ear. “Old stuff. Before I fell.” He ghosted over the studs punched through the cartilage and flesh, remembering his living room with its green chairs, Mom's chipped blue china, Sister Miriam rapping his knuckles for sass, Father O'Donnell preaching with his snow-white beard shedding on his vestments, hauling idiots off of Steve, laughing over a stupid joke and a shared comment, serious discussions in darkened rooms about the mysteries of women, jaw clenched shut as Zola pumped him full of God knew what, walking alongside Steve and suddenly feeling small, both of them able to fight now...
He let go and brushed the left ear with his metal hand. “After I fell, until you fell into the Potomac.” The earliest memories were full of pain, all his own as they cut and lied and shaped him into little more than bullet without conscience. The rest were mostly full of other people's pain. There were visions of kill after kill, relentless training and indoctrination, needful skills pumped into him for mission after mission...
He was taking everything from them he could, every training session, every language, every piece of intel as he slowly dug them out of that maelstrom of horror. He'd fucking earned it.
Bucky brushed his hand over his eyes and the studs in his eyebrows before Steve could think too hard on what Bucky had been made to do. “Things I've seen, mostly.” Pure visual memories, places, people, maps, books and manuals he'd read. Whatever Zola had done to him had given him exceptional memory, the better to memorize information about his targets in a single glance. Now, when he touched one of the studs, he could recall whole books. He resolved to find something to remember that way that didn't have to do with someone's death.
He moved on to the nose studs, watching Steve's curious reaction with interest. “What I've smelled.” From Mom's home cooking to gun lube, food from a dozen different countries, cologne, perfume, blood, piss, shit, vomit, and fear. He was far too familiar with the stench of fear.
He moved to his lips, the small curved studs going through them, his mouth open enough to show the barbel in his tongue. “What I've tasted, what I've said.” His first cigarette, first beer, ham at Easter, a woman's skin, speaking Latin at mass, tongue curling around new syllables of German, French, Russian, Mandarin, Arabic, and others as the mission dictated. The taste of the mouth guard and his own blood.
He must have looked haunted, because Steve sounded very gentle when he spoke.
“And they help?” Steve's eyes darted all over him, uncertain where to settle.
Bucky knew how to answer that. “God, yes.”
Steve's expression settled into an uncertain smile, not sure what to think. Bucky felt a lick of cold, remember Simone's slow, smoky smile as she'd discovered the changes he'd made to his body, the sounds she'd made in her throat when they slid or caught on each other. He was not like Steve remembered. He never would be. Never could be. There was a wanting in him, but he didn't know how Steve would react if he went for it. Neither had been ready to even think about it as kids or soldiers, both more focused on more obtainable goals and wishes.
Had there been something there in the elevator, or had Bucky just been fooling himself?
And who knew what Steve might think, not just of a question of being closer than friends, but of what metal he hadn't seen yet? Chad had been enthusiastic, but Chad had been a risk-aware thrill-seeker, same as Simone, very open to the new and the different. Steve wasn't a reactionary, but seventy years' worth of future could send anyone clinging for what he knew. Bucky at least had bits and pieces of change in his memories. He plunged ahead with his own question, needing to know something.
“What did Natasha mean when she asked you about 'not being ready for that?'”
Steve colored scarlet and Bucky closed another step of distance between them.
“Ah, she kept trying to set me up on dates. There was this one lady... she had a nose ring. I... said I wasn't ready for that.” The color on Steve's cheeks didn't look to have been all from embarrassment. Bucky was struck by the sudden urge to press his lips to Steve's and see what he thought now. It would be worth getting punched just to know. Bucky had tested himself enough to be sure of what he wanted and could handle. But Steve... not even his memories, anchored or fragmented, would help him answer that question. This was something new. Bucky had been ready for months, but Steve had just found him again.
“Well, I guess we'll see,” Bucky said, smiling just a little. Steve probably had a million questions, and Bucky didn't know exactly where to start. Steve looked lost, and Bucky cast about for anything, any other memory they could share. His hand brushed the cobalt stud in his left eyebrow, and he remembered Steve had had physical backup on the Helicarrier. Backup Bucky, the Winter Soldier, had disabled, maybe killed.
“The guy with the wings? He all right?”
Steve blinked at the change of subject, but seized on it anyway, grateful just to talk. “Sam Wilson. He's fine, got hurt worse by Rumlow than you.”
Bucky's-- Winter Soldier's sense of professionalism was insulted, but Wilson hadn't been the mission, just an obstacle. His life or death had been irrelevant. “Is Rumlow dead?” he asked instead.
“No one's IDed his body yet, and he was in the Triskellion when it collapsed.”
Bucky didn't hesitate when he said, “Alive, then.”
Steve apparently stopped disbelieving in the impossible when he woke up from the ice, and nodded. “Yeah, I figured. There are people on the lookout.”
Bucky remembered Rumlow as part of his support team, a competent and efficient operator, which probably meant cold-hearted and ruthless, HYRDA to the core, particularly if he had been running support for the asset.
Bucky cared just enough to add him to the list of people who needed to stop wasting communal oxygen. Bucky wondered if Steve would be up for a cleansing mission with him when they found the bastards. Then again, maybe not. Steve fought clean. He'd want Rumlow for questioning. Bucky wanted Rumlow's head in his scope sights.
Steve hesitated, not sure where to go again, and Bucky belatedly realized death discussions were maybe not the best welcoming gift. He brushed his right ear again and dredged up an old, old smile, one that had last seen use on Agatha Morrison before his first deployment, on Simone and Chad a few months ago. Steve stared at him, looking like he'd just experienced a stun grenade going off in close proximity. This time, Bucky took charge, pulling them both to the inviting-looking couch.
“Do you...?” Steve trailed off, trying to phrase something right. “Do you want me to fill in any gaps?”
“Maybe. When I find them, I'll ask. Once I find them, I fix them. Maybe you can help me there.”
Steve blinked for a moment, looking entirely blank, then flushed, shifting his body to hide his rather visceral reaction. Bucky inwardly snarled in triumph. He could use a win. They both could.
“And new ones?” Steve asked, his voice gone tight.
“Those I remember without help,” Bucky said. This time Steve wasn't moving, wasn't looking at him uncertainly, but staring with the intent to memorize, to be able to draw him from memory. Bucky leaned in, closer, too close, waiting for hesitation, and finally closed the gap between their mouths, muscle and metal melding as one in a sweet, hot rush. Steve moaned softly and pressed them closer together with every heartbeat until they had to surface for air.
He pulled back and looked at Bucky with eyes full of hope, uncertainty, a little bit of fear, reaching up to touch his face. Bucky let him take his face with both hands, the memories going off like a fireworks show in his head, wonderful and horrible all at once. Steve gasped very slightly, a bare inhalation, and shifted his fingers off the metal. He reached up to touch his own mouth.
“I wasn't sure if I was remembering right. All thought and no action,” Bucky said, mastering the shaking from the surge of emotion with brutal efficiency. “Didn't know if you were gonna punch me in the face.”
“I wouldn't.” Steve's eyes were full of wonder, and he raised his hand, hovering. “Even when I touch, you remember...?”
“Everything. Each of these are memories, good and bad.”
Steve looked a little abashed at his eagerness causing Bucky any pain, and Bucky wondered if he'd get a chance to explain that he'd deal with that a thousand times over because he'd found himself and he'd found Steve and they were both alive and here and more-or-less in control of their own minds and a little memory surge was nothing compared to the numbness of not knowing.
“It's all right. I'm here.”
Steve still looked like he was in shock, so Bucky tried to fix that with another hard kiss, this time pushing his tongue into Steve's mouth. The hard metal of the barbell made Steve start a little in surprise, and the firm little bars through Bucky's lips pressed against Steve's, but that didn't stop them.
Bucky pulled back again and searched Steve's expression for any uncertainty before saying, “So, are you ready for that?”
“Yes.” The word tumbled out of Steve's mouth without hesitation. “Are any of them... safe?”
Bucky understood instantly that Steve wasn't talking about mundane things like infection or migration or even how they'd work on the battlefield and answered by stripping nude in three quick movements. Steve's eyes went wide when he saw the metal on Bucky's chest and cock, and bent, almost dreamlike, to take one of Bucky's nipples, and the metal shot though it, into his mouth.
Bucky moaned softly and cradled Steve's head to his chest, letting him explore until the rush of blood to his cock had gotten to the stage of torment. He could be patient when he had to, but not now. Not after everything.
“Want you, Steve. I've been pulling myself together, looking to get back to you,” Bucky murmured.
“All that time I was looking for you, you think I wasn't thinking the same?” There was challenge in Steve's voice, and Bucky remembered that while he had been searching more for himself, Steve had been traipsing over two continents looking for him.
“You've got me. Any way you want me.” Beneath Bucky, Steve was perfect, whole, flawless, and looking at Bucky like he was the answer to a prayer he didn't dare confess to uttering. Breathing hard but easily, Steve tugged Bucky up and into a bedroom, bringing them down to its plush cover and pulling some bottles and supplies out of a nightstand that any of their old nun teachers would have swatted them for even thinking about.
Steve trusted him beyond sense and reason of any normal person, head thrown back as he let Bucky open him up, eyes still open, unwilling to let Bucky out of his sight. Blood hot, furnace hot, Steve was heaven against his hand.
“Go on. In me, now,” Steve said, arching his back, pushing against Bucky's touch. Bucky smirked, the metal pulling nicely against his lips, and he urged Steve to roll over.
“Want to see you,” Steve said, shaking his head. Bucky pulled back, ignoring the faint sound of disappointment that quickly changed into appreciation as he slowly, sensuously, putting on a show, opened a package he'd brought with him and rolled a condom down over his length. He grabbed the bottle of slick and poured some into Steve's hand, placing it on his member and closing it around, encouraging Steve to stroke, slowly. He wasn't at all loathe to do so, and slowly Steve's eyes widened when he realized that every little piercing through the underside of the shaft, the small balls of metal through the head, what that would feel like inside him.
Bucky counted down to when Steve's pupils abruptly dilated and his mouth opened in a soundless gasp. When he tugged at Steve's hip, he turned with alacrity, the slick opening of his ass on display.
“Now, Bucky,” Steve said, voice muffled by the comforter and slightly roughened with lust. There was no prior memory of this, not from his oldest memories, not from his newest encounters, just him and Steve. He lined himself up and sank in slowly, so slowly. He and Steve could both feel every catch and drag as every inch and gauge sunk into his tight heat, rubbing against his walls.
“Bucky.... God...” Steve moaned. Blood hot, furnace hot, and clenching against him, Bucky could feel the metal pushing into Steve, rubbing in new and different places, driving them both higher and higher. Bucky pulled Steve upright, flush to his chest so Steve could feel the heat of the nipple piercings against his back, and made a noise like a sob when that was what pushed Steve over the edge. Bucky swiveled his hips a few times and followed him over the edge, tumbling down gratefully into their spiraled and entwined pleasure.
They breathed together for a long time before Steve turned his head. “I thought about you for a long time. I just never figured... That was one thing I didn't dare. If you... You're my best friend. And after... I couldn't.”
Bucky just pressed the right side of his face to Steve's cheek and nodded minutely. “Yeah.” No more than that - tenth stud up on that side had the whole story in shocking clarity. The girls had been great, and Steve had been great, but he hadn't been willing to lose Steve if... Steve hadn't been willing to lose him, to admit to himself any weakness. It was almost a memory Bucky wanted to lose.
Almost.
Except now he had something to counter it: Steve's breathing and moans and entreaties and the look in his eyes.
“We can be something different now,” Bucky said. Steve turned in Bucky's arms, looking like the memories from the sixth stud up on the right, from the eleventh stud up on the left, and also like none of that, because now Steve was naked and covered with the scent of sex and was looking at Bucky like his life had become complete.
HYDRA was still out there and undoubtedly wanted the Winter Soldier back in the fold or dead. Innumerable enemies still faced the Avengers and anyone who stood by them. Most of Bucky's past was held together by piercings, and Steve had just been betrayed by the organization who had been with him since the beginning of Captain America.
Steve just reached out and held them both together with a grip like metal. And Bucky knew that memory would stay.
------
Part 2
Master Post
Author: jaune_chat
Artist(s): disreputabled0g
Fandoms and Spoilers: The Avengers (film),Captain America: TFA, Captain America: TWS
Characters/Relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers, James “Bucky” Barnes/OFC, James “Bucky” Barnes/OMC
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 12,517
Spoilers: Film
Content Advisory: Violence, piercings, explicit sex, uncertain memories
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing.
A/N: Written for a prompt from avengerkink. Written for journeystory. Thanks to brighteyed_jill for betaing!
Summary: The Winter Soldier was starting to remember, and would stitch himself back together any way he could.
Bucky slipped the phone into his pocket and made his way down the block to the Tower, watching through the glass-walled lobby. The cameras here would pick him up eventually, and he wouldn't be able to hide, but that wasn't the point. The point was not hiding. He was no longer up on rooftops, hidden behind a mask, a figure of terror. Instead he counted the seconds before the elevator opened.
All of thirty.
Steve stepped out, incredulous hope stamped across his features, perfect and unmarred by Bucky's beating from almost a year before. Bucky made sure he was visible as he stepped into the lobby, dressed in black leather and denim, patches from concerts decorating his jacket, washes of color over his left arm where it shows through, with metal running through most of the structures of his head. Steve looked the same as last time, but Bucky.... so very much did not.
Steve stared, blinking once, not losing the hope or wonder, but seemingly frozen, uncertain what to do. Bucky couldn't be frozen, not anymore, and moved to the elevator Steve had just vacated. Like a magnet pulled to metal, Steve turned to follow, his eyes still nailed to Bucky's face, his body, as the elevator ascended rapidly.
It took another five seconds before Steve found his voice in a single word, “Bucky?” Steve reached out, arms open, and Bucky met him halfway, settling into the strength of a confining embrace. He wanted to feel the metal warmed by another's body, someone who hadn't been interested in the novelty. The memories exploded as Steve's cheek pressed against the side of his head, into his pierced ear, his chest against the more intimate ones hidden under Bucky's shirt. Despite the confines that kept him from escaping, it was a real embrace, a willing touch by a friend. The metal was warming, and Bucky felt grounded.
The elevator doors opened unnoticed, Bucky's ears too full of Steve's accelerating breathing, until a half-familiar voice floated through the door from the room beyond.
“Hey Steve, who's the punk rocker- holy shit.”
Bucky looked up to see Tony Stark staring at him in shock, half-disheveled clothes showing he'd just gotten up, a glass of something green lolling in his hand. The locator bracelets for Iron Man were slim and deadly around his wrists, and Bucky knew it would only take seconds for Stark to call his suit to him. He decided not to give two shits, because Stark was, at that moment, too surprised to think about hurting him.
It didn't take him long to recover though as Steve moved them both into a living room dominated by a huge TV and an abundance of chairs.
“Steve looked all over Europe for you.”
Bucky felt a little guilty about that.
“He looked all over Russia for you,” Tony said, gesturing emphatically with his glass and somehow not spilling a drop.
Bucky felt a lot guilty about that.
“Where were you?” he demanded.
It wasn't Stark's privilege to ask, but it was Steve's to hear. Bucky let go enough to look at Steve, the sunlight from the enormous wall of windows across the room catching on the metal on his face and sending glints across Steve's skin.
“Montana. Canada. Alaska. Anywhere cold.” Anywhere he could justify keeping covered until he'd figured out his solution. “I couldn't have gotten on a plane, I would have had a meltdown in transit.” Steve started at that, but then nodded slowly, dawning realization with a bit of nausea breaking over him. HYDRA hadn't wanted the asset to be too independent; they'd counted on his fear of returning memories to drive him back to his handlers. They hadn't counted on Steve. No one had counted on Steve until Bucky. He touched the stud in the lobe of his right ear, smiling at the memory, and then tapped his temple in explanation. “I was healing. Zola's formula worked. I started to remember again.”
Steve looked like he wanted to hold onto him and never let go. Bucky thought he might be very all right with that.
There was a soft gasp to his left. She was so quiet he hadn't heard her, and danger thrilled along battle-hardened nerves before Steve's hand clamped down on him like an iron bar, solid and grounding, reminding him of where he was. Yes.
Red hair. She had fought him in D.C. He'd stalked her during some other mission, earlier, years ago. He'd had to eliminate a target, and she'd been in the way. He'd shot her then. He'd tried to kill her a year ago. Bucky touched a stud in his left ear and a name resurfaced. Natalia. Natasha. She'd had more than one.
And this time she wasn't pointing a gun at him, or running from him.
“I shot through you once,” he said in greeting, relieved when she nodded slightly in confirmation.
“Yes.” Spare enough, but she had reason.
“You look good.” The slow smile from his oldest past played across his face in a flirt. Steve looked like he wanted to punch him in the arm like he had when they were kids, but held back. That was the last thing Bucky wanted, not now. Bucky slugged him instead (gentle!) and Steve retaliated automatically before his eyes got a little bright. If Bucky hadn't seen it coming, he probably would have sent Steve through a wall, but he figured that was something they could work on.
Stark could afford the repairs.
Natasha's training kicked in and she smiled off Bucky's flirting. Under that smile was something harder and guarded. Well, of course there was. She couldn't have survived if there hadn't been.
“I thought you said you weren't ready for that,” Natasha said, looking straight at Steve. That was apparently an inside joke, because Steve went incandescent red and tried not to choke.
Stark apparently found the tennis match funny, or funny as he could considering he'd probably seen footage of the asset in action trying to kill the man beside him. Forget that Tony Stark was a one-man army in his suit and a walking disaster out of it. Forget he shared tower space with the Hulk, with Natasha, with Steve, a god of thunder, and Natasha's archer-assassin friend. Bucky, the asset, was the only one here who'd been part of the organization meant to destroy Stark's world.
Stark, Stark... Memory tugged, and Bucky worked the barbell in his tongue for a moment to bring it into focus. Stark's parents were dead. Had Bucky... the asset...? No, he realized. No, he'd heard someone talk about it, but he hadn't done that job himself. There had been a sabotaged break line, a broken street-light, and some extra water on the road after a late party where heavy drinking had been encouraged. Not all of HYDRA's kills of prominent people had been at his hands, just the hard ones, or the ones who needed a specific statement in their deaths. Ghost he might have been, but he was supposed to be seen just enough to create fear. Fear was useful for HYDRA's plan, and the Winter Soldier had been the boogeyman they used to keep people in line.
“I'm ready,” Bucky said, and Steve stopped blushing to look at him intently. “I... I need someplace. I-” He took a breath to articulate what he had wanted for a long time, what he'd spent all this time doing on his own, but was now ready to share. “I want to do something good. I want to remember more.”
He touched one of the bolts going through his right ear, and Steve's eyes fixed on the motion. He had always been quick on the uptake (barring knowing when to quit) and after the procedure he'd just gotten better.
“They help,” he said. “They anchor what I know. I remember a lot, but not always where it goes. These... fix them in place. HYDRA scrambled my brains pretty good.”
“Bucky...” Steve looked like he wanted to punch someone in the face. That was fine; he could get in line when they found the next bunch of HYDRA rats that needed cleaning out.
Bucky knew there was a lot of anger inside him, the original him who'd been so hurt, so changed, needing to let out decades of fury. And right now he wasn't showing it, because by now it was a calculating, cruel thing he didn't want Steve to see out of context. If Steve had seen what he'd done to Craft...
“We'll find them, stop them.”
Steve didn't even hesitate. “Yes, I promise.”
“Not without me,” Bucky insisted, seeing Steve's loss, his lonely need to make up for lost time. God knew he'd seen it in the mirror more than once. Steve hesitated, but Bucky said, “I owe them.” Steve shus his mouth on any arguments, and Bucky changed the topic. “You live here.”
Now Stark looked uncertain for about five seconds before he got what Bucky was getting at. His confidence was soaring with Steve at his side, and Stark's non-violent response, Natasha's smile back at him, gave him a hint of safety.
“Eh, we rattle around in here anyway. You need a space?”
If Bucky was honest with himself, he needed a padded closet and a straightjacket, but he'd take a luxury suite in Stark Tower if that was what was offered. “Yeah, I do.”
“JARVIS, assign the Sergeant to 7010.”
Sergeant. Bucky tugged on his tongue barbell until he tasted blood to keep his shit together. Yes. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. Someone... someone else remembered too.
Steve must have saw him go unfocused, because Bucky distantly heard him thank Stark, say good-bye to Natasha, and get in his line of sight so he could take Bucky's flesh elbow and pull him into the elevator. A quiet ride and they were at a new floor, the door opening to reveal a suite divided in two, one half clearly Steve's. Bucky had gotten enough self-awareness back to follow Steve into the living room, tastefully arranged and blistering with technology.
He'd seen some of it the tech before now, some during his recovery, and some before that. He touched the fourth stud in on his left eyebrow - some of his support team had watched endless amounts of TV or searched the Internet mindlessly while they waited for the asset's target to arrive. They'd used devices like these.
The pictures on the walls were far older. He touched the third stud down on his right ear. He used to work on those docks, play in that alley, go to that theater. His history, here, not memories anchored in metal, but right here. He went to touch them with his flesh hand, like the touch would travel through his arm and re-anchor in the stud, in his mind.
“We went here,” Bucky said, a statement that was also a question.
Steve's voice was quiet, thick. “Yes.”
“I lived in that building there. Mom, dad, younger sister and brother.” He hesitated, chasing the anchored memory. Steve started to speak and Bucky caught up to him. “Marion, Luke,” they said almost together. It goddamn hurt sometimes, forcing his fucked-up brain to reach that far back, and then there was the emotional punch to the gut when he realized they died thinking he and Steve had gotten killed within days of each other and he'll never see their faces or hear their voices again.
Steve was suddenly right there next to him, close as a breath, and Bucky realized he knew. He understood. Neither of them would ever meet a childhood friend, or see the city they once knew in the same way again. Food, movies, smells, all washed away in time, Steve's in frozen ice, Bucky's in frozen death.
He wanted to feel warm again. He wanted to feel.
“You touch them differently,” Steve said, in question and distraction and quiet understanding. He made a vague gesture, and Bucky quickly and gratefully seized on a subject that wasn't his family, at least not directly. He thought he would need some time alone to process that.
Bucky raised his right hand and ran it over the shell of his ear. “Old stuff. Before I fell.” He ghosted over the studs punched through the cartilage and flesh, remembering his living room with its green chairs, Mom's chipped blue china, Sister Miriam rapping his knuckles for sass, Father O'Donnell preaching with his snow-white beard shedding on his vestments, hauling idiots off of Steve, laughing over a stupid joke and a shared comment, serious discussions in darkened rooms about the mysteries of women, jaw clenched shut as Zola pumped him full of God knew what, walking alongside Steve and suddenly feeling small, both of them able to fight now...
He let go and brushed the left ear with his metal hand. “After I fell, until you fell into the Potomac.” The earliest memories were full of pain, all his own as they cut and lied and shaped him into little more than bullet without conscience. The rest were mostly full of other people's pain. There were visions of kill after kill, relentless training and indoctrination, needful skills pumped into him for mission after mission...
He was taking everything from them he could, every training session, every language, every piece of intel as he slowly dug them out of that maelstrom of horror. He'd fucking earned it.
Bucky brushed his hand over his eyes and the studs in his eyebrows before Steve could think too hard on what Bucky had been made to do. “Things I've seen, mostly.” Pure visual memories, places, people, maps, books and manuals he'd read. Whatever Zola had done to him had given him exceptional memory, the better to memorize information about his targets in a single glance. Now, when he touched one of the studs, he could recall whole books. He resolved to find something to remember that way that didn't have to do with someone's death.
He moved on to the nose studs, watching Steve's curious reaction with interest. “What I've smelled.” From Mom's home cooking to gun lube, food from a dozen different countries, cologne, perfume, blood, piss, shit, vomit, and fear. He was far too familiar with the stench of fear.
He moved to his lips, the small curved studs going through them, his mouth open enough to show the barbel in his tongue. “What I've tasted, what I've said.” His first cigarette, first beer, ham at Easter, a woman's skin, speaking Latin at mass, tongue curling around new syllables of German, French, Russian, Mandarin, Arabic, and others as the mission dictated. The taste of the mouth guard and his own blood.
He must have looked haunted, because Steve sounded very gentle when he spoke.
“And they help?” Steve's eyes darted all over him, uncertain where to settle.
Bucky knew how to answer that. “God, yes.”
Steve's expression settled into an uncertain smile, not sure what to think. Bucky felt a lick of cold, remember Simone's slow, smoky smile as she'd discovered the changes he'd made to his body, the sounds she'd made in her throat when they slid or caught on each other. He was not like Steve remembered. He never would be. Never could be. There was a wanting in him, but he didn't know how Steve would react if he went for it. Neither had been ready to even think about it as kids or soldiers, both more focused on more obtainable goals and wishes.
Had there been something there in the elevator, or had Bucky just been fooling himself?
And who knew what Steve might think, not just of a question of being closer than friends, but of what metal he hadn't seen yet? Chad had been enthusiastic, but Chad had been a risk-aware thrill-seeker, same as Simone, very open to the new and the different. Steve wasn't a reactionary, but seventy years' worth of future could send anyone clinging for what he knew. Bucky at least had bits and pieces of change in his memories. He plunged ahead with his own question, needing to know something.
“What did Natasha mean when she asked you about 'not being ready for that?'”
Steve colored scarlet and Bucky closed another step of distance between them.
“Ah, she kept trying to set me up on dates. There was this one lady... she had a nose ring. I... said I wasn't ready for that.” The color on Steve's cheeks didn't look to have been all from embarrassment. Bucky was struck by the sudden urge to press his lips to Steve's and see what he thought now. It would be worth getting punched just to know. Bucky had tested himself enough to be sure of what he wanted and could handle. But Steve... not even his memories, anchored or fragmented, would help him answer that question. This was something new. Bucky had been ready for months, but Steve had just found him again.
“Well, I guess we'll see,” Bucky said, smiling just a little. Steve probably had a million questions, and Bucky didn't know exactly where to start. Steve looked lost, and Bucky cast about for anything, any other memory they could share. His hand brushed the cobalt stud in his left eyebrow, and he remembered Steve had had physical backup on the Helicarrier. Backup Bucky, the Winter Soldier, had disabled, maybe killed.
“The guy with the wings? He all right?”
Steve blinked at the change of subject, but seized on it anyway, grateful just to talk. “Sam Wilson. He's fine, got hurt worse by Rumlow than you.”
Bucky's-- Winter Soldier's sense of professionalism was insulted, but Wilson hadn't been the mission, just an obstacle. His life or death had been irrelevant. “Is Rumlow dead?” he asked instead.
“No one's IDed his body yet, and he was in the Triskellion when it collapsed.”
Bucky didn't hesitate when he said, “Alive, then.”
Steve apparently stopped disbelieving in the impossible when he woke up from the ice, and nodded. “Yeah, I figured. There are people on the lookout.”
Bucky remembered Rumlow as part of his support team, a competent and efficient operator, which probably meant cold-hearted and ruthless, HYRDA to the core, particularly if he had been running support for the asset.
Bucky cared just enough to add him to the list of people who needed to stop wasting communal oxygen. Bucky wondered if Steve would be up for a cleansing mission with him when they found the bastards. Then again, maybe not. Steve fought clean. He'd want Rumlow for questioning. Bucky wanted Rumlow's head in his scope sights.
Steve hesitated, not sure where to go again, and Bucky belatedly realized death discussions were maybe not the best welcoming gift. He brushed his right ear again and dredged up an old, old smile, one that had last seen use on Agatha Morrison before his first deployment, on Simone and Chad a few months ago. Steve stared at him, looking like he'd just experienced a stun grenade going off in close proximity. This time, Bucky took charge, pulling them both to the inviting-looking couch.
“Do you...?” Steve trailed off, trying to phrase something right. “Do you want me to fill in any gaps?”
“Maybe. When I find them, I'll ask. Once I find them, I fix them. Maybe you can help me there.”
Steve blinked for a moment, looking entirely blank, then flushed, shifting his body to hide his rather visceral reaction. Bucky inwardly snarled in triumph. He could use a win. They both could.
“And new ones?” Steve asked, his voice gone tight.
“Those I remember without help,” Bucky said. This time Steve wasn't moving, wasn't looking at him uncertainly, but staring with the intent to memorize, to be able to draw him from memory. Bucky leaned in, closer, too close, waiting for hesitation, and finally closed the gap between their mouths, muscle and metal melding as one in a sweet, hot rush. Steve moaned softly and pressed them closer together with every heartbeat until they had to surface for air.
He pulled back and looked at Bucky with eyes full of hope, uncertainty, a little bit of fear, reaching up to touch his face. Bucky let him take his face with both hands, the memories going off like a fireworks show in his head, wonderful and horrible all at once. Steve gasped very slightly, a bare inhalation, and shifted his fingers off the metal. He reached up to touch his own mouth.
“I wasn't sure if I was remembering right. All thought and no action,” Bucky said, mastering the shaking from the surge of emotion with brutal efficiency. “Didn't know if you were gonna punch me in the face.”
“I wouldn't.” Steve's eyes were full of wonder, and he raised his hand, hovering. “Even when I touch, you remember...?”
“Everything. Each of these are memories, good and bad.”
Steve looked a little abashed at his eagerness causing Bucky any pain, and Bucky wondered if he'd get a chance to explain that he'd deal with that a thousand times over because he'd found himself and he'd found Steve and they were both alive and here and more-or-less in control of their own minds and a little memory surge was nothing compared to the numbness of not knowing.
“It's all right. I'm here.”
Steve still looked like he was in shock, so Bucky tried to fix that with another hard kiss, this time pushing his tongue into Steve's mouth. The hard metal of the barbell made Steve start a little in surprise, and the firm little bars through Bucky's lips pressed against Steve's, but that didn't stop them.
Bucky pulled back again and searched Steve's expression for any uncertainty before saying, “So, are you ready for that?”
“Yes.” The word tumbled out of Steve's mouth without hesitation. “Are any of them... safe?”
Bucky understood instantly that Steve wasn't talking about mundane things like infection or migration or even how they'd work on the battlefield and answered by stripping nude in three quick movements. Steve's eyes went wide when he saw the metal on Bucky's chest and cock, and bent, almost dreamlike, to take one of Bucky's nipples, and the metal shot though it, into his mouth.
Bucky moaned softly and cradled Steve's head to his chest, letting him explore until the rush of blood to his cock had gotten to the stage of torment. He could be patient when he had to, but not now. Not after everything.
“Want you, Steve. I've been pulling myself together, looking to get back to you,” Bucky murmured.
“All that time I was looking for you, you think I wasn't thinking the same?” There was challenge in Steve's voice, and Bucky remembered that while he had been searching more for himself, Steve had been traipsing over two continents looking for him.
“You've got me. Any way you want me.” Beneath Bucky, Steve was perfect, whole, flawless, and looking at Bucky like he was the answer to a prayer he didn't dare confess to uttering. Breathing hard but easily, Steve tugged Bucky up and into a bedroom, bringing them down to its plush cover and pulling some bottles and supplies out of a nightstand that any of their old nun teachers would have swatted them for even thinking about.
Steve trusted him beyond sense and reason of any normal person, head thrown back as he let Bucky open him up, eyes still open, unwilling to let Bucky out of his sight. Blood hot, furnace hot, Steve was heaven against his hand.
“Go on. In me, now,” Steve said, arching his back, pushing against Bucky's touch. Bucky smirked, the metal pulling nicely against his lips, and he urged Steve to roll over.
“Want to see you,” Steve said, shaking his head. Bucky pulled back, ignoring the faint sound of disappointment that quickly changed into appreciation as he slowly, sensuously, putting on a show, opened a package he'd brought with him and rolled a condom down over his length. He grabbed the bottle of slick and poured some into Steve's hand, placing it on his member and closing it around, encouraging Steve to stroke, slowly. He wasn't at all loathe to do so, and slowly Steve's eyes widened when he realized that every little piercing through the underside of the shaft, the small balls of metal through the head, what that would feel like inside him.
Bucky counted down to when Steve's pupils abruptly dilated and his mouth opened in a soundless gasp. When he tugged at Steve's hip, he turned with alacrity, the slick opening of his ass on display.
“Now, Bucky,” Steve said, voice muffled by the comforter and slightly roughened with lust. There was no prior memory of this, not from his oldest memories, not from his newest encounters, just him and Steve. He lined himself up and sank in slowly, so slowly. He and Steve could both feel every catch and drag as every inch and gauge sunk into his tight heat, rubbing against his walls.
“Bucky.... God...” Steve moaned. Blood hot, furnace hot, and clenching against him, Bucky could feel the metal pushing into Steve, rubbing in new and different places, driving them both higher and higher. Bucky pulled Steve upright, flush to his chest so Steve could feel the heat of the nipple piercings against his back, and made a noise like a sob when that was what pushed Steve over the edge. Bucky swiveled his hips a few times and followed him over the edge, tumbling down gratefully into their spiraled and entwined pleasure.
They breathed together for a long time before Steve turned his head. “I thought about you for a long time. I just never figured... That was one thing I didn't dare. If you... You're my best friend. And after... I couldn't.”
Bucky just pressed the right side of his face to Steve's cheek and nodded minutely. “Yeah.” No more than that - tenth stud up on that side had the whole story in shocking clarity. The girls had been great, and Steve had been great, but he hadn't been willing to lose Steve if... Steve hadn't been willing to lose him, to admit to himself any weakness. It was almost a memory Bucky wanted to lose.
Almost.
Except now he had something to counter it: Steve's breathing and moans and entreaties and the look in his eyes.
“We can be something different now,” Bucky said. Steve turned in Bucky's arms, looking like the memories from the sixth stud up on the right, from the eleventh stud up on the left, and also like none of that, because now Steve was naked and covered with the scent of sex and was looking at Bucky like his life had become complete.
HYDRA was still out there and undoubtedly wanted the Winter Soldier back in the fold or dead. Innumerable enemies still faced the Avengers and anyone who stood by them. Most of Bucky's past was held together by piercings, and Steve had just been betrayed by the organization who had been with him since the beginning of Captain America.
Steve just reached out and held them both together with a grip like metal. And Bucky knew that memory would stay.
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Part 2
Master Post