Read All About It, 5/5

[mangacat201]

Chapter Four

~*~

Stark might have been brought on board with the plan kicking and screaming, but once he starts throwing his weight around for real, things start moving pretty much immediately. Still, even with all that it takes the better part of the week to finalize all the arrangements, until everyone is mostly satisfied with the itinerary and the personnel situation. Natalia emphatically throws her lot in with keeping it a down low operation, arguing that to avoid drawing attention by forgoing a big entourage is their best defense. Besides, it’s not like any of them don’t know how to handle themselves in a fight. It is agreed that Tony will decide on a spontaneous outing that morning, making a great exit to regale the press with his planned pursuits for the day, so that their single car can slip out unobtrusively amongst the distraction.

Despite all the preparation and careful planning, it still takes you kind of by surprise one evening, that tomorrow is going to be the day, and you’ll be leaving for D.C. in the morning. You find yourself tossing and turning, then cramped into the far corner of your room, jittery with nerves and unable to sleep. It’s not something completely unheard of, of course. You’ve spent plenty of sleepless nights since you stopped being frozen for the better part of your time, but the anxiety you feel right now has an unusual quality. It’s almost as if there’s excitement mixed in with all the anticipation, and the terror of your own body and mind conspiring in some way to make all your efforts be for naught in the end. The notion of actually looking forward to the monumental task you set yourself is, frankly, mind-boggling and kind of positive, but you’re going to need all your wits about you come morning, and that means getting as much rest as you can possibly manage.

So, at three in the morning, you finally give up and slip down the hall on silent feet, entering Steve’s bedroom without a sound and walking over slowly to where he is lying on his side. You slide to your knees, resting your forearms on the edge of the mattress and prop your chin on the back of your hand so your eyes are almost level with his bare chest slowly rising and falling under the thin sheet. It’s not an entirely uncommon occurrence, watching him sleep, the regular, uninterrupted rhythm of his breath sometimes the only way you can achieve any measure of calm. You did it a lot, at first, driven by the need to figure out that man that was so adamant about dragging a real person out from underneath the wrecked remnants of the Winter Soldier, completely baffled by the reckless trust, since he rarely seems to wake up when you were there, as if he was so used to your eyes on him in his sleep (and that one became kind of blindingly obvious over time). Later again when he came home shredded to bits and the need turned into making sure that he didn’t stop somewhere between one breath and the next, the feeling echoing through time like a twisted déjà vu.

Tonight is different though, probably because he’s dealing with his tension concerning the coming day, no matter how cheerful a front he put up during the preparations. So it’s only a few minutes that pass by before his eyes start moving left and right under his lids and then slip open to half-mast to meet yours.

“Hmm… Buck… you alright?”

It’s sleepy and soft, unhurried, and the husky, low quality of his voice makes something coil tight and hot in your belly that is entirely unrelated to what brought you here in the first place, but still part of the conundrum. For the lack of a more precise answer, you shrug lightly with one shoulder.

“Nervous?”

There’s so much that’s missing from the meaning of that word to describe what you’re feeling especially since he’s not privy to half of the things that might make you apprehensive, so you settle for another noncommittal shrug.

“It’s okay, you can be. But really, it’s going to be fine.”

He reaches out to take your hand and interlace your fingers so that they’re lying halfway between you and him on the bed, and you have to rest your chin on your metal fist now.

“How do you know?”

A small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

“Because I know you. How strong and brave you are. Besides, it was your idea, no backing out now.”

The tone is teasing and you are sure that Steve isn’t going to hold it against you if you need to do just that, leaving your options open is the whole point of the scheme after all. But it’s the words before that throw you.

“Have I told you how proud of you I am?”

You remember when he came to you to apologize after the epic blown up over your shooting expedition.

“You have,” you rasp out, well aware that your voice betrays how you still can’t quite believe him on that.

“Well, I am. You’ve taken back so much for yourself”, of yourself,”so much more than I thought… and that makes you strong and brave and extraordinary, and if you need to hear me say it every day for the rest of our lives for you to believe it, I will do that. Do you understand?”

You choke, wide-eyed, unable to answer in any way other than tightening your fingers around his. He nods and lets his eyes slip closed, turning on his back. Neither of you moves for quite some time.

The rhythm of his breathing, however, doesn’t return to the deep, regular cadence of sleep and you bite your lip, berating yourself for disturbing his rest with your staring, but you can’t bring yourself to move.

“Buck?”

You look up to where his eyes are fluttering open again.

“Hmm?”

“You planning on staying there the rest of the night?”

You feel the unusual hot flash of embarrassment spread on your cheeks and try to untangle your hand from his, message clear that you have outstayed your welcome. Instead of letting go though, he tightens his grip and tugs you closer.

“Alright, you’re giving me a crick in the neck just thinking about it. Come ‘ere, up. Up.”

Since he refuses to let go of your hand, you have no choice but to follow and crawl up onto the mattress. He drags a spare pillow from behind with his free hand and thumps it into shape a couple of times so you can lie down right next to him. It takes a bit of finagling to get you under the sheets, but immediately after, he settles down again with a couple of satisfied huffs and burrows his face into the pillow.

“There, that’s better. Now sleep.”

You rest your head on your own pillow and marvel at this man, who so fearlessly shares his space and his life with you and every once in a while will do something so unexpected and yet natural that you have no idea what to do, but go along with it. You close your eyes and concentrate on the calm, even breaths and the strong, uninterrupted sound of his heartbeat, prepared to let it sooth you through the rest of night.

~*~

You wake up to sunlight and JARVIS’ gentle coaxing with your nose and cheek squished into his chest, your left arm flung over his abdomen and no recollection of how exactly you fell asleep and how long you’ve been out. Strangely enough, the expected panicked reaction and lethal reflexes fail to show up for once, even though you’re still trying to shake the cobwebs of deep and dreamless sleep from your mind. You turn your head slightly to glance up to where he is slowly coming to as well, eyes fluttering open and blinking at the light in the room and it’s not until his thumb slowly starts stroking the nape of your neck that you notice his fingers are buried in your hair, hand cradling your head lightly.

Which… yeah.

He exhales slowly, coming fully awake and aware of your respective positions, eyes widening a little, but he doesn’t move away.

“Okay?”

His tone is low, sleep-rough and tentative, and you take stock carefully, very surprised that you come away with feeling as calm and rested as you can’t remember feeling since… well, for a very long time. You don’t know what else to do but prop yourself up with your right hand; look down at him with a nod and reply:

“Okay.”

Some of the wonder you feel must show on your face, because his smile looks like it wants to rival the morning sun. For some reason, you can’t take it for more than a few seconds before you have to turn away and sit at the edge of the bed, scrubbing your hand across your face and over your head. It’s when your eyes fall to the bedside table with the alarm clock, and you realize how close your leaving time is, that the tension immediately settles back into your body. You feel him sit up behind, and his hand slips onto your shoulder, hot, and heavy and grounding through the fabric of your t-shirt.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright. Let’s go take a shower, get ready, hmm?”

You turn your head slightly to meet his eyes and nod, before he withdraws his hand and lets you up to shuffle out towards your own bathroom. You hear the water running from his en-suite before you get there, and once you lose yourself under the warm spray of your own shower, you steel your resolve to get through this day according to plan.

~*~

Your car is already waiting in the garage, an ordinary limousine that is nothing like the flashy set of wheels Stark is going to get into out front in just a few minutes. Your exit goes smoothly, as planned, and you watch the bustling Manhattan street life fly by through the tinted windows. Curiously, it’s Steve who fidgets, shifting this way and that until you put a hand on his thigh and press down just enough to keep his leg still. You don’t turn away from the window, but hear him exhale and feel his hand settling over yours in silent acceptance. You are surprisingly calm yourself. The more you think about the impending visit at the memorial, the more you realize it’s actually something you want to do not only as a convenient excuse, but for the sake of it.

It’s going to be an emotional rollercoaster, no doubt, reconnection with your past in such a tangible way, but it feels a little like closing the door on one part of your life before opening a new one to another. At least you’ll be on your own with Steve, without having to worry about any strangers nearby you’d have to keep it together for. You let yourself drift for the remainder of the drive, lost in your own head, but not really in a bad way for once. Steve thankfully doesn’t feel the need to fill the silence with what would have been a very one-sided conversation, even if you are both used to that by now. Instead, he’s subdued and contemplative himself.

The rows upon rows of somber white grave markers embody their own serene beauty, little flags fluttering in the light breeze. The people make way for the slow rolling sedan easily enough, even though it’s not common for cars to be on the pathways. Some are throwing curious glances its way, but most of the people here today come to visit family of one kind or another and they have their own agendas on their minds. The memorial is tucked into a secluded spot just off York Drive by the Columbarium, and there’s a small cluster of onlookers gathered around the cordoned-off area, but it’s relatively easy to slip in without drawing anyone’s immediate attention.

The memorial itself is a relatively small building that would comfortably hold no more than a dozen people at any one time. It’s a bit like a half pavilion, open to the front and there’s a single round high window set just under the dome, opposite of the opening. You step over the threshold towards the spot where the light of the midday sun is filtering through the glass to illuminate the centerpiece. It’s Captain America’s shield – carved into white marble which is only kept from being completely ethereal by the slight imperfection of spidery black veins in the stone – that’s made to look like it’s leaning to the wall, ready and waiting for its owner to pick it up and carry it into the fray. You hear Steve draw an audible breath behind you and sense him stopping just inside the building. You understand why… the smooth, bright stone all around you makes you feel like you’ve stepped into a palace of ice, setting a perceived chill in the air despite the sunny and cloudless day.

You don’t let your steps falter though, walking all the way across the room. The surface around the shield is filled with candles, some burning, some gone out, and cards, bunches of mostly dried flowers. They should look incongruous, all these small specks of color and flame in the pristine serenity, but they don’t. Directly under the ledge of the base and above the row of name plaques the words ‘super pietatem’ are carved into the stone.

Beyond the call

You let your eyes travel left and right, over the names of the men you went through purgatory with, fought side by side with and try to recall their faces. You’re surprised that it actually works, mostly, features faded with time passed, distorted through the burnt out patches of your brain. But you remember something distinct and unique about each of them: Dum Dum’s raucous laugh, always accompanied by a shot of whiskey; Falseworth’s crisp and fluid accent; the movement of Morita’s hand when he adjusted that ever present cap on his head; the bright gleam of Gabe’s broad smile; Dernier’s quick and sharp eyes.

You reach out to the plaque right in the middle, brush your fingers lightly over the raised black letters.

CPT. Steven Grant Rogers

There were voices in the aftermath of thawing Steve that called to take it down, since it turned out he wasn’t actually dead, but the debate settled that the memorial was as dignified a way to honor his service as any new one would, so it stayed. Your fingers trail on to the one right next to it, the name you dreaded, but that strangely doesn’t elicit any of the reactions you anticipated.

Sgt. James Buchanan Barnes

It feels oddly formal, removed, no sign of Bucky, the man that you can only half-remember being. The man Steve wanted back so badly, he was willing to die trying.

You reach back with your hand in a silent gesture, unable to turn your eyes away, but there’s no need, because in seconds, he is right there, the comforting heat of his body at your back, and his hand slipping against your cool, gloved fingers without hesitation. His breath fans against your cheek, so immediate and alive, and nothing like the cold hard slab of history right in front of you.

“We’re not them.”

The words only register once they’ve passed your lips. You feel his inquiring eyes on your face, but the hushed, awed tone of your voice must have told him enough.

“No, we aren’t.”

There are parts of Steve Rogers and James Barnes buried here, after all, but you realize with surprise that you feel like they’re resting well, settled safe in the past. You are both different people now that you got dragged in from the cold, literally, but the world has changed a lot as well, and it might be time to stop trying to get back what is unreachable, decades away, and turn a new page to really start building something in the now.

“Are you alright with that?”

You finally lift your fingers away from the smooth marble and let your hand fall to your side. Then you turn around to meet his eyes with slow contemplation.

“Yes.”

He nods in response, and the unspoken ‘Me too’ lifts a weight off your chest you hadn’t even realized was there. It gives your resolve the final boost you needed to decide to enact the last, crucial step of this outing. You stay silent, casting one last look around to give him a moment, while he is clearly still taking in the site. Then you squeeze his hand lightly, very lightly and drop the bombshell.

“Let’s go, take a walk in the city.”

You drag him outside towards the idling car before he has time to think and answer with more than a spluttered ‘What?!” Ignoring him, you rap your knuckles sharply against the driver’s side window.

You thought a lot about how to deal with the driver as one of the few variables that you can reliably anticipate but not control. In the end, you decided to wing it, because spontaneity is likely to work the same way on the staff as it is on Steve. Still, you don’t know why you are surprised that the window slides down to reveal Barton, decked out complete with a silly chauffeur’s cap and a shit-eating grin. It does make things easier though, since Barton won’t require an explanation from you for going off script.

“We’re going to get some air, meet us at Jefferson and 4th in a couple of hours.”

Barton gives you a half-assed salute in response.

“You’re the boss.”

Thankfully, he lets the windows roll up before Steve can get a good look inside and make him. You needn’t really have worried though, because Steve is clearly so thrown by the unexpected turn of events that it doesn’t even occur to him to do anything but gape open-mouthed at the leaving car with and incredulous expression. The sight almost makes you chuckle, but you hold off, not wanting to risk the sound throwing his brain into gear, combat ready and seething. The imperative is to keep him off balance just a little while longer. So you tug at his hand to get him to move with you, and the two of you slip out back through a copse of trees and mix with the regular visitors unnoticed.

You draw the hood of your sweatshirt up over your head and slide on the pair of sunglasses you’d had tucked into your collar. The form-fitting ‘hipster jeans’ – as Natalia calls them – and the elegant, but solid, leather boots complete the look of a millennial twenty-something you want to present to the public. There was some debate on whether you should wear the matching black leather glove to the one covering your left hand or not, but you don’t like gloves on your right and it was ultimately decided that there would be enough veterans around that day similarly concealing injuries that it shouldn’t raise eyebrows even on the off chance that someone spotted you and got a good enough look to wonder.

Steve went with the tried and true combination of khakis, t-shirt, dark blue windbreaker and ball cap. It’s perfectly adequate for the sunny day with the crisp chill of spring still lingering in the air. It’s so simple in fact, it can hardly be labeled a disguise, but that’s really why it’s so effective in the first place. People tend to be able to recall symbols much better than faces, so when he’s not wearing the shield on his back, the star-spangled suit, they hardly ever recognize him, and you suspect he likes it that way. By the time you are halfway across the river on Arlington Memorial Bridge, Steve finally seems to get his wits about him again. You count yourself lucky you’ve managed to string him along for twenty minutes already.

It’s probably the fact that there are not many people in the immediate vicinity that makes him tug you to a stop and hiss:

“Bucky, what are you doing?!”

It’s the first time you don’t feel the need to flinch at the name, whether it’s due to the closure you got at the memorial just minutes ago, or the fact that you are about to take it back anyway with what comes next. Either way, the feeling gives you the confidence to carefully maneuver around the real reason.

“I’ve been cooped up in the tower for months, Steve. And the accommodations are spectacular, and a lot of that time was necessary, I get that… but I haven’t taken a single walk out in the open for at least seventy years. And for all we know, I’ve been to places all over the world, but I haven’t even stepped a foot outside of New York without being out of my mind, or fighting and running for my life or both. Is it so strange that now we’re here, I want to take a stroll down the National Mall?”

Again, it’s meant as a distraction, but it’s also the truth and Steve looks as if it hits him like a punch in the gut. He’s by no means insensitive about your ordeal, on the contrary, but sometimes even he doesn’t fathom the scope of the situation until it hits him on the nose.

“Bucky…I…”

You shake your head firmly.

“Don’t… just… walk with me?”

He looks at your outstretched hand and after a moment’s hesitation takes it and you continue on towards where the Lincoln Memorial is sitting squat atop the river bend. You feel a little strange out in the open, holding hands like Steve is a girl you’d want to take dancing, but for all of your bravado, there is still a lot of open space and unfamiliar people around, and you need the touch to ground you and keep you from falling into a cold, disconnected state. Besides, nobody even gives the pair of you a second glance.

You keep your pace slow and random, trying not to let on that you have a specific destination in mind, and it helps to distract you by providing some context on the history of the sites that you still haven’t caught up on. You note with a certain wistfulness just how many different war memorials lie on the way towards the Capitol, many families, couples and sometimes lone veterans flocking around them, looking for names, leaving flowers. You both avoid getting up close to any of them by unspoken agreement. Steve switches to personal anecdotes rather than history once you pass by the WWII Memorial, with the gathering of frail, decorated veterans walking with canes or sitting in wheelchairs just too strange to contemplate. He’s regaling you with the story of how he met Sam more or less running a very skewed race of the rabbit and the turtle around the reflecting pool when you round the Washington Monument even though you’ve certainly heard the unembellished version before. You can feel the tension settling in your muscles more and more though, the closer you get to where you’re actually going, and while Steve must pick up on it, he thankfully doesn’t comment, probably assuming it’s about the unfamiliar exposure to the city bustling with people.

Finally though, when you are about to amble past the Air and Space Museum complete with large banners plastered with his face out front, you draw to a halt and take off the sunglasses, tucking them back into the collar of your hoodie, before looking at the entrance, where people are steadily streaming in and out. Steve trails off mid-sentence to follow your eyes and then snaps his head back to you with an inquisitive expression. This moment is actually the part of the plan where you need to tread the most lightly, because, more than anything else, it is contingent on Steve going along with it without question even though he obviously knows now that something more than just a simple outing is going on. You’ve spent hours and hours thinking about how to approach this turning point, but there is really only one way.

“Do you trust me?”

You let the sentence hang in the air between the two of you, forcing yourself to let the moment stretch out into silence, to wait for him to come to a conclusion in his own time. Deep down you know the answer of course, wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t a fact, but you need to hear it, need both of you to hear it to be able to take that last crucial step forward. Steve looks like he wants to ask a million questions, but he must be able to read your face well enough to drop it. In the end, he settles for a nod and a single: “Yes.”

You feel part of the built-up tension leave your body and take a deep breath.

“Follow my lead.”

You don’t wait for him to respond before turning around abruptly and making for the entrance of the museum. Once inside, you keep tracking him from the edge of your vision, but otherwise make no move to drift any closer or even particularly make the impression that you’re here together. Your hood isn’t drawn all the way down into your face because that would be more suspicious than not, but you keep your head carefully angled to avoid the cameras, half out of instinctual habit, half out of caution. You don’t want to be interrupted by unexpected company before you’re ready to put the last bit of the plan into action and there’s no way to know who or what is tapped into the digital minders of humanity at any given moment. You are sure that Barton has probably run some interference with Stark or there would probably have been a helicopter circling over your heads forty minutes ago, but the overbearing billionaire is hardly the only person keeping an eye out for the Winter Soldier and Captain America. Steve thankfully picks up on your tactic and subtly uses the shield of his cap and the bulk of his back to prevent any of the cameras and most of the museum's other patrons from getting a good look at his face.

When you pass the dramatic mural right at the entrance of the Captain America exhibition, you tune out the obnoxious voice-over immediately. Steve doesn’t know you’ve been here before, but you actually spent hours upon hours, immediately after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., suddenly adrift in a world without ice, and pain and order. When you were looking for a reason, any justification for the fact that you failed to eliminate a target, and instead chose to drop into the river and drag his unconscious body to the bank, staying those long moments until he drew breath after sluggish breath before your secondary directives kicked in full force and you had to leave. You went first, because it seemed like the most easily accessible collection of information, of history, confirmation of your identity.

You’ve come a long way since then, but you still know the layout of the whole exhibition down to the last detail, all the routes, exits, entrances, which exhibits people flock to, where they pass by with barely a glance. That makes it the perfect place to execute your maneuver. But when you move silently among the crowd that is copious, but thankfully not too packed, it feels like one last test. Now that you are so close to completing the final step, declaring yourself to the world, you wonder whether you chose this elaborate scheme not because the thought of facing the public outright was so inconceivable, but because of all things that could have gone wrong today and derailed the whole plan. Things that were more likely to happen than you arriving here, now, yet you still could have told yourself that you’d tried.

You could walk past, even now, just leave and let none of these people here be the wiser, and for a moment, when the crowd surges and jostles you, the dark of the room, and the heat of unfamiliar people so close almost too much, you are sorely tempted. You think back on the journey that’s brought you here though, not only today, but all those months, the hard-fought struggle to reclaim your life and yourself as a person with wants and desires, a purpose…

Steve. Keeping Steve safe.

…so, now you want to see it through.

So you go with the flow, Steve sticking closer now, so you don’t get separated by the throng of people, until you draw up short across from the display that shows some of the old propaganda newsreels. Battle footage of course, but also those few, very precious moments, captured on a whim without being staged, of them in their downtime, enjoying each other’s company without having to think about the whole continent going up in flames around you for a minute. It’s the thing that sparked the first memory you’ve ever consciously recovered, something completely ordinary and inconsequential, but the final confirmation that there was something beneath that cold hard indifference to the human condition and the paper-thin image of a man seventy years dead, wearing your face. It’s probably fitting that it should be instrumental to you finally tying the two together and shedding both.

You turn to Steve to press him against the wall with a firm hand on his stomach.

“Stay here. Don’t come in until I give you the signal.”

He opens his mouth like he wants to argue for a moment, but you pin him with a look, willing him to understand how important it is for him to keep his distance until you’re ready. When he nods, you lift your hand slowly and pray in your head that your brain will stay with you on this for the next ten minutes, before you turn and walk over to the display where the recording is flickering brightly in the subdued, indirect light of the exhibition rooms. You linger a little until the family in front of you moves on and leaves an opening for you to plant yourself squarely right in front of the monitor, pretending to be lost in the images playing on the screen even though you can predict which frame will come on when down to the second by just glancing at it once in passing.

Now you’re in position, so close to the monitor that any of the other patrons will have difficulty viewing what’s on around your now considerable bulk, and from here on out, it’s just a waiting game. And really, it doesn’t take long for some discontent grumbling to start up behind your back, which you ignore, until a young guy comes up on your right, tapping you on the shoulder to get your attention.

“Hey, you mind stepping aside, so other people can have a look too? You must have seen it all a couple of times now.”

It’s as polite and reasonable as a teenaged high school student on a holiday trip can manage, but you are well aware that your lack of reaction or moving aside is likely to the guy worked up in very little time.

“Hello, can you hear me? I’m talking to you.”

His voice gets slightly louder, and you notice that people are starting to drift closer, stopped in their tracks by the innate human curiosity, trying to figure out what the fuss is about. You stay still and unresponsive though, ignoring the subtle crawling feeling of more and more eyes swiveling in your direction, especially the burning sensation between your shoulder blades that is undoubtedly Steve’s stormy gaze.

“Come on, buddy, I get that you’re a fan, but you’re not alone in here, ok?”

The tone is definitely exasperated now, and finally the guy gets bold enough to put his hand on your shoulder, to try and get you to step away. You squash the reflex to plant your feet like concrete and break the young man’s wrist, turning with the movement instead, while you twist your head slightly, so the hood falls down on your shoulders.

You keep your hands at your sides and your expression carefully neutral and wait for the penny to drop. And you are sure it will. It’s one thing to be passed over outside when people see two young men they do not expect to be Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes strolling past the Smithsonian. It’s another thing when the sepia toned flickers of yourself laughing and smacking Captain America in the chest with the back of your hand light up your features. You can discern the exact moments when the guy’s face goes from a puzzled frown, to eyes rapidly flickering back and forth between your face and the screen, to wide-eyed shock.

“Holy shit.”

He stumbles back a couple steps, banging into a friend standing beside him, who lets out a startled ‘hey, watch it.’ until he looks up too and his jaw drops.

“What the actual f…”

You don’t pay any more attention to them, instead fixing your gaze on Steve, noting that there are already the bright lights of recording cellphone cameras turned your way. When your eyes meet over the many faces in the crowd, it only takes a minute movement of your head to get Steve to shoot away from his perch against the opposite wall and move towards you through the ever growing cluster of people. At first there is irritated chatter, but then people begin to realize who might be pushing past them and the crowd spits him out to come to halt in the small space next to you while you don’t take your eyes off of him. With a subtle shift of your eyebrows you get him to whip off the cap and scrub over his head self-consciously, leveling you with an incredulous glare, but clearly giving you the reins to bring this show to a close with a grand finale, while the whispers are starting to buzz and spread, and you see more and more fingers pointed out of the corner of your eye.

You take his biceps in a firm, steadying grip, holding his gaze to keep this moment between the two of you for just a couple of heartbeats, before you face the world with the words you chose and discarded in your head so many times until you realized that there was no right or wrong way to say this, just the simplest, most bare-boned truth of what you need people to know. You turn towards the chattering crowd and feel his hand settle at the small of your back, hot, and heavy, and safe. Then you take a deep breath, and your throat closes up for one single, terrifying second before the words just flow out, clear, and bold and loud.

“My name is James Buchanan Barnes. And I will always be at his side. Til’ the end of the line.”

You hear his breath hitch next to you and feel his arm tremble under your fingers, but make a point to cast a slow look around. Not for the people right here, mostly, but those with the long reach, and the short leashes, who are going see this and know what they’ll to be facing when they decide to go after him.

Utter silence settles over everything for just a moment. Once you are satisfied that you got the message out, you take that as your cue to leave, before everyone recovers from their shock and starts clamoring for more answers. The crowd parts easily for you, and you lead Steve, who seems to be quite dazed himself, out towards one of the lesser frequented side exits. You leave quickly and efficiently, and well ahead of the spreading excitement. True to the agreement, your car is idling at the curb just a few spaces down, and it’s easy to slip in the back and vanish behind the privacy of the tinted windows without anyone spotting you.

You’ve barely settled into the cushy leather seats, adrenaline and exhilaration over what you just did rushing through you. Steve doesn’t even get the chance to open his mouth for what will undoubtedly be shaping up to a major tongue-lashing, before the partition to the driver’s cabin slides down and Barton is turning around, tucking his elbows against the front seats with an unholy glee in his eyes.

“Bucky, my man, that was brilliant! Completely underhanded, a little bit over the top and utterly brilliant. Worth every fucking second in this monkey suit, I tell you!” he waves a tablet enthusiastically through the air. “You should really see how it’s blowing up on Twitter right now. I predict that #BuckyLives is going to break the internet by the end of today. My only regret is that I won’t be able to see Stark’s face when he watches all those tweets and vines and YouTube videos in a second. But don’t worry, I made Nat promise to take pictures.”

Despite the fact that you only understood about half of what he just said – even though you did count on social media to spread the word and fast without any actual news outlets present – you can’t help the broad grin that stretches your lips into a shape that feels unfamiliar but good, and which he returns with great enthusiasm.

“Shut up and drive.”

Barton tips his hat and turns back to the wheel with a ‘You got it.’ thrown over his shoulder as the partition slides back up. This is apparently Steve’s cue to jump in, arriving completely at the wrong conclusion at first, as it happens.

“Did Clint put you up to this?”

You shake your head and avert your eyes, biting your lip slightly, not really as bashful as you like to pretend right now.

“No, I… he just told me that if I couldn’t make it work like Stark wanted me to, I had to come up with my own way.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

You let your eyes flit up again, but fix them on the moving scenery over his right shoulder.

“I didn’t want you… I wanted…” to nurse a hope that might be futile. An out. To see if it was something I could make work, just for myself.

There are so many different answers that are right and true, but you can’t bring yourself to voice any of them. Finally meeting his eyes, however, shows you that he knows all of them, and he understands. Gone is the is the shock and the irritation, instead, his expression is alight with speechless wonder, as if he can’t quite believe what you’ve accomplished, even though he was an integral part of it himself. And in this moment, something slips into place that hasn’t seemed to fit right for quite some time, like the piece of a puzzle you’ve been trying to press into place the wrong way around. The incessant warmth settling in your belly even now, the restful, dreamless sleep in his bed, with his heart beating steadily under your ear, the weird feeling on the bridge, like he was a girl you’d have taken dancing.

It’s because… Steve is the one you’d want to be dancing with. Life and fate have whittled away all your morals, and social conventions, and trust and fear – and even though you’ve worked to get some of it back, the good and the bad, piece by piece, there are still only the bare bones of a person and one deep, abiding connection that managed to break through every single wall against all odds.

Apparently, Steve is the center of your world in more ways than one. In every way that counts.

The moment stretches on, and Steve starts to look slightly unsettled, as if he’s trying to follow your thoughts, but isn’t quite sure where they’re leading. You feel strangely light right now, as if the past and the present have lost their hold over you considering the victory you just won over yourself in front of the world today. It’s most likely that feeling, and the left over adrenaline that keeps you from finding arguments as to why acting on this epiphany might be a very bad idea.

So you slide your hand up his arm and put it at the nape of his neck, drawing him closer, slowly and delicately, giving him ample time to twist out of your grasp. He doesn’t.

When your lips touch, soft and barely moving against each other, you feel your body trembling with the sensation. A kind of human connection you can barely remember, and what you have pales to grainy black and white compared to the electric frisson that runs between the both of you now. You break apart after a few moments, noses still almost touching, and you meet his eyes, the abject fear rising that, with this one selfish notion, you’ve shattered everything that took so long to build in seconds. That fear doesn’t get the chance to spread though, because with a stuttering breath, he dives back in, fingers splaying on your cheek, seemingly determined to show you that he learned a thing or two about kissing in all those years.

It’s single-handedly the best thing you can remember feeling in your life.

~*~ Epilogue ~*~

It takes a while to register with your current preoccupation, but there’s a panel that’s slid down in one of the doors, to reveal a Starkphone that apparently refuses to quit ringing until somebody takes the call, no matter how viciously you glare at it. And since it’s your side of the car, that dubious honor falls to you. You finally drag yourself away from the exploration of Steve’s lips for long enough to fumble around until you have the phone in hand. The casing creaks in the careless grip of your metal fingers, but it doesn’t crack, much to your dismay. You even manage to press the right button to connect the call and answer with an impatient “What?”, the fingers of your right hand buried in Steve’s hair while he unashamedly continues to slide his lips down your jaw now that your mouth is otherwise occupied. It's doing exactly nothing to calm your breath or slow your racing heart. Stark sounds absolutely unruffled by the terse reception and instead barges right in.

“What did I say about no funny business?”

You fumble with the phone, almost dropping it in the urgency to check whether there’s a video option somewhere you missed or hit by accident, before you remember what Stark is talking about and hiss at Steve when he chuckles into your throat.

“I’m not letting you ground me.”

“Yes, I realize that with your super assassin skills of stealth, that one’s probably a moot point. Doesn’t change the fact that I have the Mongolian Hordes of the National Press trying to break down my doors right now after you pulled your… what is commonly referred to as a publicity stunt. I have to admit I did not see that one coming. Didn’t think you had it in you, quite frankly.”

For the first time, you hear the grudging respect underneath his natural state of constant annoyance and you can’t help the giddy feeling settling in your chest. Stark doesn’t dole it out for being outspent or outgunned, but he does it for being outsmarted.

“Doesn’t change the fact that you just about covered the tiniest increments of the big questions, and I have no idea what to tell them now.”

Steve draws back at that, undoubtedly having listened in to the conversation. He hovers in front of you with kind eyes and a serious expression, obviously waiting for you to decide. You play with the short hair at the nape of his neck, while you ponder the question and revel in the newfound intimacy. A radical idea enters your head as you mull it over. You are tired of running and hiding yourself, and now that you are part of the Avengers for the better or worse, you have everyone whose approval matters to you in any way right around you. They all have history, questionable spots in their past, tough calls, amends to make. This is your rightful place, and you’ll be damned if you let anyone that doesn’t have any significance in your life judge what happened to you. So…

“Tell them everything.”

“What?!”

“Take the file, dump it on the Internet, unredact the reports, I don’t care, they can read all about it.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Steve looks at you with wide eyes and mouths ‘Are you sure?’. You nod slowly, not breaking contact even for a second before you answer Stark.

“I know who I am now, with everything past and present taken into account. And if they can’t deal with that? Well, tough.”

The complete confidence in your voice obviously reaches Steve, but it also seems to carry over through the line to Stark, who sighs dramatically and then continues muttering:

“One of these days, I swear… Alright, have it your way. I’ll go face the vultures and let you get back to… wait a second, were you sucking face when you took the call? You totally were, weren’t you, oh God, that’s something I’ll never be able to unhear, I can’t even… I need a drink, no, give me that bottle…”

It’s Steve who takes the phone right then and with a firm ‘Goodbye, Tony’ disconnects the call and drops it carelessly into the footwell. You immediately tug him closer again, intend on going back to where you left off after being so rudely interrupted, but he stops short a couple of inches away from your face.

“You… are amazing.”

And for the first time since you can remember, nothing feels fake about the delighted smirk that draws to your lips.

“I know.”

He shakes his head lightly at your sass and then closes the remaining distance between the two of you. You let the flood emotion wash away all the lingering tension and insecurity you’d started the day with, leaving behind excitement for the future, gratitude and a little spark of happiness.

The End.