Healing Together (WinterIron)

Chapter 1

2023

Bucky doesn't know where Clint is taking Steve off to, and he doesn't want to know. Saying goodbye to your best friend is impossible. Bucky feels a permanent goodbye is in order, but he can't conjure words through the bitterness in his chest and stiffness in his shoulders even if he tries.

Bucky always knew it would be her. Steve would do anything for Peggy, do anything to be with Peggy. Even if it meant leaving him with no one. Fucking pessimist.

The boards of the bench supporting Bucky seem to drift away. Bucky is unaware of which way is up or down because he can't see. Can no longer feel the weight of the earth's gravitational pull. Rather than panic (he's too tired for that, god damn it), his mind drifts to something he can focus on, like 1943.

When Steve rescued him in Germany, everything changed for Bucky. His love wasn't one-sided because, against all odds, here he was. His Stevie.

Steve was cured of illness and mellowed in years since they'd last seen each other. He didn't need him anymore but wanted to be with him.

Unfortunately, Bucky soon realized the days of "You and me against the world" were long gone. Now, Steve had the whole world behind him. A country, anyway. Captain Fucking America.

The bittersweetness of the whole thing was far outweighed by Steven Grant Rogers being recognized as the strong-willed, pure-hearted idiot who is too damn good for this world.

Steve had always been a hero to Bucky. He'd also acted as a role model in school, never taking any shit. He didn't let someone intimidate him just because they were tougher, louder, more popular, or didn't blow away in a strong breeze. Sure, he got his ass kicked, and when Bucky wasn't there, he'd have to sit by the trash cans, but his resilience and smart mouth sent a message. Most of the time, Bucky thought the message he was sending was, "I'm a massive idiot!" But he was an inspiration to the misfits of the neighborhood.

At least, that's what Bucky's mom said.

It seemed as though Steve had finally come into his place in the world. This was right. This made sense.

What Bucky couldn't make sense of was Peggy. Peggy was a knockout dame in any context. Ruby-red lips, hair carved into dips and valleys from some soft, shiny substrate. But, still. Steve had never given girls back home a second look. Boy, had Bucky tried. Because maybe—just maybe—if Steve could find a girl to make him happy, Bucky could finally commit to playing the part. He could stop with the wistful glances and be the brother Steve saw him as. He could commit to the lie he'd been dancing at his entire life.

Steven Grant Rogers looked at Peggy Carter like a man stranded in a desert looked at a pitcher of fucking ice water.

Just the night before, his country-fried noggin had been convinced once it could process what the fuck was going on; it was real. This is real. I fought my perversions all this time, but it had been love. A love that might even have hope of being returned one day.

Obviously, he has some sort of knight-in-shining-armor fantasy he hadn't known about. Doctor Psychopath probably zapped away a couple of brain cells, too.

Does she even know him? This Peggy Carter? Bucky often considered Steve's art the key to his soul. How could she possibly know Stevie when she hadn't seen the expression that could flow from his imaginative, too-innocent mind, to his knobby, steady, precise fingers, onto stationery? Did he even have a sketch pad at base camp? Bucky didn't think so.

Would she have glanced twice at the sometimes infuriating, skinny punk from Brooklyn? The boy who'd deny illness until bedridden as if to give Bucky heart palpitations? The man who stopped by every dog he passed, features lighting up, "What's this little guy's name!?" The man who'd probably forget his own head if it wasn't screwed on?