MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE
POST— CAPTAIN AMERICA:
WINTER SOLDIER
STEVE ROGERS x BUCKY BARNES

WARNINGS: none
NOTES: i wrote this for my friend and it's pretty good so i wanted to catalogue it here! <3

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Slowly the gate to the overnight cell slid open with a creak and a bang. Stood in the open space was Steve, his arms crossed as he simply stared at the man he'd regrettably come to call his best friend. Jaw set and eyes stony, he said nothing to Bucky, who approached him with a growing smile.

"Thanks, Stevie," Bucky patted one of his large biceps with his metal hand. "You're always looking out for me," He said.

Steve let out a disappointed sigh, eyes looking over his friend with feigned malice. He tried desperately to never let Bucky break this façade, because then he'd never stop misbehaving like he did. This was the second time in the space of three weeks that he'd had to bail Bucky out of jail. He was lucky that he had connections with SHIELD, or his friend would have ended up in some high security prison long ago.

After everything he'd done, Bucky lay low for a long time, never going out in public, and especially never breaking laws. But eventually, as he got better, all of the stupid pieces of his personality fit right back into place - the kind of stuff that made Steve fall in love back in the '40s. The way he'd do stuff so impulsive, that Steve had to save his hide almost nightly. How he'd flirt off his head with almost anyone he'd met. And how he'd join whatever cause or group he could find, grappling to find his footing in the social climate of the 21st century. This time, he'd been arrested for getting too wild at a Pride march on the Senate.

Steve remembered when he'd done something similar back when they were kids. He'd taken to the streets to protest for gay rights, and was arrested for it. He got out of the police van before he could be locked up, and Steve was endlessly grateful. Bucky would have been killed if anyone found out that he liked men back then. He wouldn't be able to get a job, never mind join the forces to become a Sargent like he had. Steve was angry with him for putting his life on the line like that, and stone-walled him. He did everything he could to ignore Bucky's begs for attention, and the ways he'd try for the affection he'd lost. Eventually Bucky caved, and he was the better for it. He got his man back, that unbeknownst to Steve, he was in love with.

To that day, even after they'd been separated by the war, reunited, and ripped away from each other, Bucky had never told him. He simply smiled, and spent every waking moment doing something or anything to get Steve to notice him.

It's not that Steve didn't appreciate the protests, or the fight that Bucky put up, it's just that it wasn't the same situation as before. In the years that had passed, Bucky had become one of the greatest assassins of all time, and Steve wasn't sure how long he could pull strings to keep him out of jail. The government barely tolerated him because of his alliance with the Avengers, and would surely snap soon.

"I hate you," Steve replied, and although he displayed no signs of joking, Bucky knew he could never take something like that seriously.

"If you hated me, you wouldn't be here," Bucky whispered back, watching as his counterpart looked away from him.

Steve paused, and then turned from Bucky, beginning to walk for the door as he expected his friend to follow.

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"Are you fucking kidding me?" Steve asked, walking out from the kitchen to see Bucky finally coming home to their apartment, with no regard that it was past midnight, and that he was tracking mud onto the carpet with his big, leather boots.

Stumbling slightly, Bucky pressed himself up against the hallway with his arms, grumbling when he noticed his friend's unamused expression. Steve immediately made it to his side, slinging the inebriated man's arm over his shoulder, his arm slipping around his waist as he began to lead him to his room, murmuring about how much of an idiot his friend was.

Bucky was practically dead weight, tripping over nothing, with his hair tangled in his face. Steve huffed, shoving his door open and resting him on his bed. He sat slouched, making no sound as Steve bent down to begin untying his shoe laces.

"Where have you been?" Steve asked sternly, quietly, seeing no point in raising his voice, when he knew Bucky would only groan and gripe at the sound.

"Out," Bucky mumbled obviously in his drunken stupor.

Steve hummed in reply, expecting as much as he pulled both of the other man's boots off. He looked up to inspect his face, still shrouded by hair. Taking an elastic from his arm that he kept for sadly ordinary occasions such as that one, he pulled Bucky's hair back, tying it loosely, before sighing at the state he was in. With a bloodied nose and scratches across his face, Steve should've known that his friend would get into a fight. It's almost like he wanted to get hurt with the way he let others get free punches in.

"Oh, Bucky," Steve flinched as he ran a thumb over a cut bellow the man's eye. He looked up to meet his vision, and Bucky's eyes were gloomy and unreadable. Like he wasn't even there. "Who'd you piss off this time?" He groaned.

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Steve was beginning to realize that his tactics weren't working for him. Putting a wall between Bucky and himself had worked when they were younger, but now it only seemed to be encouraging him. Bucky still tried for his attention, but never in the same way as before. Now, after all the years that had been so unforgiving, he seemed more child-like than ever before, like a teenager that rebelled because his parents didn't show him love. He could tell that behind his act, Bucky was tired, that he just wanted something he couldn't seem to get anymore.

"Buck?" Steve asked gently, himself startled by his tone of voice. He knew he hadn't used that nickname with him in what felt like ages, not since Bucky had recovered somewhat from his bout with Hydra.

Said man looked up from what he was reading across the room, blue eyes meeting blue out of curiosity. His heart wrenched inside his chest at the endearment he'd heard so much over 70 years beforehand. "Yeah, Steve?"

Steve had caught him at a time that was few and far between, late at night when he didn't have anyone to impress, and he was too tired to act. The blonde man opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn't find the words. After a moment, he said, "I . . . Are you okay?"

"Of course," Came the simple and rehearsed reply.

Steve decided that he would hold back, not with the way Bucky's gaze seemed to falter, and his raven hair fell in his eyes to obscure his anxiousness. "You act like you're someone you're not," He admitted, eyebrows furrowing in a look of deep concern, "You know it's okay to not be exactly how you were before, right? I don't expect anything from you. No one does."

He couldn't look away from his friend, simply stuck on the fact that Steve was showing him something he hadn't seen since his supposed recovery. Empathy. He saw his eyes swam with a quiet concern that Bucky couldn't seem to face. " . . . I know," He whispered, and he knew he was heard.

"It's like you're not even you anymore. It's like. . . you're playing a character. We all grow, we all change. I just . . . hate . . . you're trying too hard to be something you're not. You're slipping up," His voice wavered, causing Bucky's gaze to meet his again. "And I'd hate to be a reason that you're doing it. It's okay to be hurt. You don't have to be alright."

"You're still the Steve I remember," Bucky told him, "I just want to be your Bucky. You seemed to like me better back then."

"That's bullshit. I'll never love you any less than when we were kids. When you were there for me when no one else was. You'll always be my Bucky, no matter how much you change. That's why I tracked you down and stayed with you, and that's why I'd go to the ends of the Earth for you," Steve spoke with such soft, meaningful conviction, that Bucky felt his whole body turn to jelly, eyes filling with tears that he couldn't help.

"Love?" Bucky asked, voice gentle as he looked down, hands going up to wipe his eyes. He knew Steve loved him, but it was always unspoken. Like friends, like family - but to hear it out loud, he didn't know how to handle it. He hadn't heard someone say that they loved him since his mom passed, and then Steve's shortly afterwards.

When he felt a hand placed on his shoulder, he couldn't bring himself to flinch back as he let out an almost inaudible sob.

"Of course. I knew it when you stayed by my beside during my pneumonia, or when momma died, and I know it now," Steve muttered, bringing his friend against his chest so that he could cry into his shoulder unabashedly. He stroked his hair comfortingly, "I love you, Buck."