#ahsgdfahsdgsjdhg

[rillils]

bucky on the run

steve is looking for him

they meet

they talk

bucky: i can get by on my own

steve: you dont have to

NONNIE!! I'm so sorry it took me a few days to reply to this, but NONNIE, NONNIE YOU'RE A GENIUS 💕💕💕 Please forgive me, I just couldn't resist 🥺 A little post-catws fic, 2404 words, just because.

*

It’s not until Paris that Bucky takes pity on him.

Maybe he only does it because it’s the ass-freezing end of January; and he still remembers, sometimes, how the cold used to make him softer before. How his body would know with the first chill – that it was time to hold, now, to open his arms; make his chest into a welcoming haven for the slim shape curled up on the other side of the bed.

Maybe he does it because Steve’s sitting on his doorstep, ass glued to the frosty stone and long legs gathered up to his chest, not like the (mostly) inconspicuous spy Natalia taught him to be, but rather like a sad puppy left out in the rain. Knowing, of course, that Bucky would see him long before he even realized that Bucky was near; accepting that Bucky could turn on his heel and disappear without a word, and still giving him the choice. Sentimental fuck.

Steve stands up the moment he sees him, white sprays of snow still settled over his hunched shoulders, like he’s the saddest gargoyle on the roofs of Notre Dame. Bucky wants to dust it off for him, cover Steve’s wind-burned cheeks with his hands and warm the red tip of his nose with a kiss.

He stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets instead, watches Steve’s breaths puff soft clouds of steam from his lips.

“Rogers,” he says. Walking around in this cold with your ears all bare like that? Your Ma would kill us both.

“I just want to talk.” Steve swallows. “Please.”

Bucky makes him wait. One second. I’m getting you a fucking beanie, just you wait and see. Two seconds. Earmuffs too. Pink. And fluffy. Pink and fluffy.

“Come on, then,” he nudges, snow crunching under his boots as he steps back. “I’ll let you buy me coffee.”

-

The café’s toasty warmth is tempting, really. But Bucky’s not ready to sit at one of those cozy little tables with Steve, in the direct line of fire of Steve’s hopeful golden retriever eyes, bumping knees with him like two kids on a date. Which is why they end up with coffee to go and a side view of the Seine.

The promenade is quiet when they stop to lean against the railing, only the occasional passersby disturbing the fresh snow with the muffled crush, crush, crush of their footsteps.

Steve is quiet, too. His gaze is fixed vaguely on the murky waters as he takes a small sip of coffee, rosy tongue wetting the seam of his lips, and maybe Bucky wasn’t ready for this, either. For Steve’s presence beside him. For the way he still curves his shoulders and hangs his head somewhat, tries to make himself small, irrelevant, as if the very fact of him didn’t brighten up every inch of space he occupies in this world. As if he didn’t carry the whole of this universe in his heart and a handful of stars in his eyes.

No, Bucky was not ready for this.

“You know, you almost got me. In Calgary,” he says, his voice only the tiniest bit raspy. “Just barely missed me in Lisbon, too, if I’m being honest. Bristol, maybe.”

Steve turns his head to him, Sirius and the North Star twinkling in the pure blue of his eyes, and seriously, how fair is that.

“Cyprus, too?” He tries softly, a smile already curling up the corner of his mouth.

“Sure,” Bucky finds himself saying, then purposefully burns his tongue with his first mouthful of latte. “Sure, Cyprus too.”

Steve nods, grinning down at the paper cup cradled in both of his gloveless hands. His pale knuckles are purpling quickly in the cold, and Bucky only just keeps himself from scoffing. Always such a martyr, sweetheart.

“Yeah, yeah, stop looking so smug.” Steve does not stop looking so smug. If anything, he smiles brighter, a nice little flash of teeth, and the apples of his cheeks grow pinker against his fine eyelashes.

Bucky’s fingers itch to touch, right there, oh, right there. He could run the pad his thumb over the delicate halfmoon under Steve’s eye, feel the heat of his skin – the faint brush of Steve’s eyelashes against his fingertip, ticklish, like the flutter of butterfly wings.

God. Not ready for this. Never fucking ready for this. “Thought I told you to stop coming after me, anyways.”

Steve snorts. “Oh, yeah.” He unzips his jacket and slips one hand inside, producing a little scrap of paper from an inner pocket. He unfolds it carefully, revealing the yellow tint of a post-it note, the quick scrawl inside spelling out Quit it, Rogers. “Yeah, I got your message.”

It’s the way he says it, soft and endeared, that makes Bucky’s skin feel flayed raw. The way Steve smooths his thumb over the smudged black ink, and holds the folded note in his fist for a long, long moment before tucking it away again, that makes this pang of longing poke like a knife into the most tender parts of Bucky’s heart.

Of course Steve kept it. A sticky square of paper Bucky left behind in Nice – or was it Marseille? – some four months ago, all of three words scribbled in one of those strong-smelling markers, just because Bucky didn’t have anything better at hand. Of course Steve would keep it, carry it in his breast pocket and sigh over it, perhaps seek comfort in it, as if it was a damn love letter. The mere thought of it makes Bucky’s chest burn with guilt.

(Maybe he should have left him a love letter. Should have torn a page off his notebook, one of the dozens filled with Steve, Steve, and words for Steve, words about Steve, words he’ll never say to Steve, words he should whisper against Steve’s lips someday, like I remember the warmth of your breath on my skin, and God but I love youand Did your kisses always taste like peaches and butter or was it just the one time, ‘cause I can still taste you in my dreams at night.) (Steve deserved more. Steve always deserved more than life gave him.)

“You never could take a hint, could you.”

“Not for anything,” Steve says. “Not when it comes to you.”

Bucky honest-to-god sighs, and watches the warm ghost of his breath fade into the cold morning air.

He hasn’t smoked since nineteen-forty-five, but God does he wish he could feel the familiar weight of a cigarette between his fingers right now; taste the grounding bitterness of smoke on his tongue when he turns to Steve, says, “What’s it gonna take for you to go home, Steve?”, because now he’s gone and put that look in Steve’s eyes, and he can’t face this alone, God help him, he ain’t got the strength for it.

“There’s no home without you, Buck.”

And it would– Jesus, it would hurt less if Steve didn’t mean it. But he does, he means it, heart in his hand and soulful eyes and all, and it’s so unbearable, Bucky wants to throw his fucking arms around Steve’s fucking neck and stay tucked there for fucking ever, that’s how bad it, how bad it makes him ache.

His foot takes an instinctive step back, flesh hand clenching dangerously around his latte.

“Don’t say that, don’t– Don’t make it difficult, Steve, fuck.”

“Then don’t ask me,” Steve says, gentle and steady, like Bucky can’t see the sheen of unshed tears in his eyes already. “If you don’t wanna hear me say it, don’t ask me. But it’s the truth. You gotta know that, Buck. ’S the only truth I never doubted in my life. You and home, that’s one and the same to me. Always has been.”

So earnest, his boy. His sweet, sweet boy.

All these years and Bucky still hasn’t figured out how Steve does it – how he manages to lay himself bare like this, and still have Bucky feel like he’s the one being cut open and bleeding love all over the place. Fuck you, you’re the only home I want to come back to, he wants to say. You’re too good, honey, wish I could keep you, he wants to say. I shouldn’t be allowed to keep you.

“If I asked you to leave,” he starts, swallowing past the thickness in his throat. “If I said that I don’t want you around.”

Steve’s whole body turns to face him; the whole mountain slope of his shoulders, the spun gold of his hair, the crease between his eyebrows that Sarah always said was made to be kissed goodnight.

“You’d have to mean it, Buck,” Steve says, love fierce in his eyes, his coffee forgotten at his side, “You’d have to mean it. ‘Cause the only way I’m turning my back on you, is if you look me in the eye and tell me that you never want to see me again, and mean it with everything you’ve got.”

And really, with all his talk of justice and fair fights, you’d think he’d at least give Bucky a chance. But the second Bucky meets Steve’s gaze, all he can do is sit back and watch his best intentions crumble in his hands like a fucking granola bar, one pathetic little piece at a time.

“And if I said–” Don’t cry, motherfucker don’t cry. “–said that I don’t need you.”

“I know you don’t.” Christ, but that one hurts. Hurts to hear Steve say is so simply, so matter-of-factly, like it’s a basic notion he’s been holding onto forever, and Please, please tell me that you don’t actually believe that, God. “But I need you. I need–” Steve’s free hand twitches, almost, almost reaches out, Bucky can see it – see the faltering of Steve’s breath, the long line of his body swaying just so into Bucky’s space before he reins himself in again. “I need to know that you’re safe,” Steve finishes eventually. “That you will be safe, even when I’m not around.”

Bucky’s jaw clenches minutely. “I can take care of myself.”

“I know,” Steve agrees, easy as anything, his voice soft like a coating of fresh snow. Bucky hates him so much. So much.

“I can get by on my own,” he rasps, and he could have tried to make it ugly, make it cruel, but it wouldn’t have made a single speck of a difference. Not with Steve so close he can smell the minty undertone of his aftershave. Not with Steve’s eyes so gentle they make his throat feel tight, and full, and raw.

Somewhere in a corner of his mind, he hears the words before Steve even utters them.

“But you don’t have to, Buck. You don’t have to.”

The latte slips from Bucky’s fingers and splashes between their feet with a muffled thump, and he wonders, briefly, if the Parisians will come for his head for defiling their precious streets – he would even feel sorry, really, if it wasn’t for the heartbeat pounding in his ears, or the sting of salt burning just behind his eyes.

“Goddammit, Steve,” he snarls, with his hands fisted in the lapels of Steve’s jacket and this ache, this ache thrumming behind his ribs, “I don’t need you– here, making a target of yourself because of me, risking your neck for me, again–”

Steve. Steve just smiles at him. Drops his own coffee on the French, slushy ground and fits his big bear paws around Bucky’s face, cupping his cheeks with a tenderness so vast, it makes Bucky’s heart hurt just to witness it.

“’S my own neck, Buck. I can do whatever I damn well please with it.”

His hands are so cold, and Bucky has missed them so, so much, so much, God.

Damn him. Damn him and the snowflakes caught in his eyelashes and the golden halo of his hair, and the grooves of his palms where Bucky’s jaw slots in so perfectly, as if they were but pieces carved out of each other.

“Go back to your life,” Bucky tries miserably.

Steve’s thumbs smooth over his cheekbones, wiping away tears Bucky hasn’t even shed yet.

“It’s barely even life without you.”

Bucky sniffles pitifully. “Go back to your friends, then.”

Steve leans in close, pressing a kiss to Bucky’s brow. His lips are warm, but the tip of his nose is a tender pinprick of cold against Bucky’s hairline.

“They’re not the same as you. No one will ever be the same as you.” He covers Bucky’s hand with his own, holding it to his chest where it’s still clutching at his jacket. “There’s a place for you right here, see,” Steve says, and his voice, his voice trembles, “center of my heart, Buck, shaped like you, wantin’ you, and nobody else can quite fit.”

And. And it’s the look in his eyes, you know.

The one that turned British lady heads, and made tired soldiers throw themselves back onto the battlefield right along with him; the one that put the soul back into a hollowed machine, and nearly landed Steve at the bottom of the Potomac for it.

Bucky was powerless against it then, and he is now, too; so he does the one thing he’s been wanting to do all along. He surrenders. Steps into the coffee puddle at Steve’s feet and lets Steve meld them together, forehead to forehead, nose to nose, his own gloved hands grasping at the back of Steve’s coat while Steve curls icy fingers over the nape of his neck.

“You really are just a stubborn fuck, aren’t you,” Bucky all but whimpers.

Steve chuckles; the wetness of his breath feels like a kiss against Bucky’s skin. “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.”

It’s quiet; so quiet, Bucky swears he can hear his heart beat within, feel each individual du-dum, du-dum, du-dum, safe and steady in his chest. Alive. He feels– alive.

“I don’t want you to go,” he murmurs.

“So I won’t go,” Steve murmurs back.

“I want you to stay.” Stay. Stay. Stay, his heart keeps beating.

Steve kisses his cheek. His nose. The arch of his eyebrow. “So I’ll stay.”

“I need you. I do. Stevie–”

Steve’s mouth doesn’t taste like peaches and butter today, but coffee will do just fine.

Yeah, coffee will do just fine.