Having Bucky shove at him was maybe the last thing Steve expected. It wasn't that hard of a push, not even enough force to send him stumbling back, but Steve rocked back on his heels anyway, a physical reaction to the emotional shock of it. He and Bucky didn't fight like this. They'd roughhoused, sure, wrestled each other around when they were kids, but their punches had always been reserved for other people. Anything with anger behind it - that was for bullies and jerks, not each other. And Bucky was angry, there was no denying that. His eyes were flashing, expression furious, and the words falling out of his mouth were borderline hysterical.
He'd regret it later, but in that moment, Steve let his own anger get the better of him, and he gave Bucky a shove of his own.
"You know why I put myself in?" Steve demanded, his own voice rising to match Bucky's. "Because you weren't here. Because what the fuck did I have - you didn't want anything to do with me, Ma was dead - " His voice cracked, but he barreled on anyway. "I was alone, so I figured, might as well do something goddamn good for someone else, right?" He reached out and grabbed Bucky by the sweater, fists clutching in the sodden fabric, but he didn't shove him again, didn't do anything but yank him closer.
"You think I want to go back?" Steve asked, and his eyes were wild with it, voice strained to the point of breaking. "I got you now, I got Peggy, and Clint - Scott - I've finally got people listening to me about rising up, you really think I want to leave all that?" It was terrible to think about, how very close he'd come to changing things. To actually making a difference.
Steve sagged forward then, hands still fisted in Bucky's shirt, but his shoulders were hunched, his head bowed. "I'm tellin' you," he said thickly, "they're not gonna give us a choice. It's going to be me, all right? So we gotta - we gotta deal with that."
The fact that Steve would die before sending Bucky back in was a moot point, really. That argument wasn't going to win the day, so there was no use pursuing it, even if it was also a truth.