Steve was well out of breath as he jogged down the hall to the apartment number that matched the address on his white-knuckled phone. He’d made the trip sooner than ten minutes, but not much even though there was a bus that carried him half the way.
It had just been long enough for him to catch his breath and groan softly to himself, more memories threading themselves together as he read and reread the earlier list of words. The mention of dust was still making him nauseous, and as he’d scrambled over he’d eventually fixated on the notion that it still couldn’t all be true. He was remembering Bucky and Sam, dead. Gone.
Finding the door Steve nearly tripped, throwing out his fist and hitting against the door urgently, hissing in pain but not letting up as his hand felt like it exploded.
“Barnes!” he yelled, then swore under his breath as he remembered the last part, and grabbed the knob, simply shoving it open and entering quickly, just as disheveled and panicked as he’d looked when he’d been running away from the other, earlier that week. “It’s Steve!”
There was a rich aroma in the air, a heavy scent from the stew warming on the stove. Comfort food, certainly, but also a practicality for someone who needed to consume more calories than normal. It had also been an excellent recipe for a sickly young boy who had needed as much nutrition as possible in something easy to eat. Bucky had perfected the recipe by the time he was ten years old.
He had been stirring the pot, anxiously awaiting his friend’s arrival. At the thumps against the door, he had set down the spoon and headed to the door to open it. Instead, Steve finally remembered how to open doors and exploded into the apartment, out of breath and either running himself into a heart attack or an asthma attack.
That just figured.
Bucky’s arms encircled the smaller man, and deep within, it felt like a puzzle piece sliding into place, a connection that felt right and true and let his mind have a bit of firmer ground to steady itself on.
“No dying,” he said, voice rough. “I’m here.”
===
The smell was stunning, and immediately Steve was awash in more memories. These ones, though, were older. Better. He was still the right size, it still matched….
As he ran into/was caught by the larger figure his arms shot out, latching desperately and automatically, the phone slipping through his fingers thoughtless and clattering to the floor.
“Bucky,” he wheezed, grasping as tightly as he could. He could feel the metal arm under Bucky’s sleeve, felt nauseous, and gripped tighter. But even standing on his toes the return grasp held him steady.
“Jesus… what the hell,” he whispered instead, then bowed his head. “I’m… sorry. I don’t… you weren’t here. You just didn’t- are you okay?”
===
Bucky could feel the trembling under Steve’s jacket and shirt. The panic radiating from him nearly made the room tilt, Bucky suddenly remembering himself on the damaged helicarrier, looking down at a figure wearing the red, white, and blue suit, and looking far, far too still.
It was a memory burned into his mind, the first real memory he’d gained and kept in seventy years. The sheer panic of suddenly remembering someone and thinking he’d killed this man in the same instant.
“Hey,” he said, voice breaking. He cleared his throat and his voice grew stronger. “Hey. I’m here. I’m okay. I’m okay.” His grip tightened around Steve, but carefully, since this was the body that wasn’t supported by a serum. “What’s the last thing you remember from… well, before being here?”
===
The reassuring pulled Steve somewhat from his daze, but after he tried to think of it the first thing his mind snapped to was the field, the man reaching and calling for him, for help, and then just gone. Then it snapped to the same memory, just on a train. Steve’s fingers doubled down on their grip as the failure slammed into him again, just like it had on the bridge.
It took him a moment, but then he realized it had all continued on, too. He had still been there.
“...it was… a while. After we lost,” he said, voice barely a whisper. He felt light headed, and realized he’d been gripping hard enough to cut off his own airflow. Jerkily and automatically, he pulled back, taking a deep breath and switching his grip to Bucky’s sleeves and arms, still frantically rechecking that he was solid. “I was… I was gonna go check on Nat. It’d been… it’d been years, Buck.”
He squeezed his eyes closed as they burned redhot, trying desperately to take deep, controlled breaths. “No, I don’t care,” he finally muttered, shaking his head sharply. “I don’t care how you’re back. You’re here, Sam’s here. I’m remembering.”
===
Bucky felt his chest tighten for a moment at the words after we lost. He didn’t have any recollection of being gone, just a fuzzy memory of calling to Steve, and then being back on the veld of Wakanda.
He shut his eyes for a moment. “Five years. Felt like a moment to us. Five long years for the rest of you.” Bucky let out a breath, his own grip shifting to match Steve’s. “We came back. Took… took fucking time travel, if you can believe it, but… after work and sacrifice and a huge ass battle, we all came back.”
That was when the real cleanup had begun, but Steve hadn’t been a part of that. Bucky’s throat worked for a moment, but he didn’t have the words. Not now. Not here.
His flesh hand cupped Steve’s jaw for a moment, then patted. “You really are the most stubborn asshole in the universe, you know that?” A smile crept onto his lips. “Punk.”
===
Steve was rigid, and holding on as much to stay upright as to channel his willpower into keeping Bucky in front of him. The hand under his chin was grounding, though, and his shimmering eyes managed to open and catch Bucky’s gaze as a soft, broken chuckle escaped through the hitching breaths.
“‘Really not, pal. Gave up again. Just didn’t crash a plane this time,” he muttered. Nat must have worked it out, she’d kept working. Just like Peggy and the Avengers and Guardians and everybody else.
He bowed his head again and shook his before letting out a low, snarling curse at himself, then sighed.
“No wonder I fucking lost my memories. I spent five years trying to get over it,” he grunted, then finally found his own footing and straightened slightly, still not coming up much in height as he took responsibility for his own weight and balance. He grunted. “I didn’t mean to. Didn’t try to. Sure must’ve looked that way to everybody else, though.”
===
Bucky rolled his eyes. “If you’d given up, really given up, none of us would be back. Something happened to get you back in the saddle, and you all came through. Seriously, Steve, shut up and stop kicking yourself, or you won’t get any stew.”
He didn’t let go, but pulled back enough to be able to look Steve up and down. “And you look like you need some stew.” He lifted a hand to swipe the moisture from his eyes. “I’ll tell you about Derleth. Where I’ve been for the past year or so.” A smile curled back into the corner of his mouth. “And… Sam. And me.”
===
Steve’s shoulders slumped, but obviously Bucky knew something he didn’t, so he wasn’t going to win this argument, anyway. He slowly nodded, taking a deeper, calmer breath and refocusing on the warm scent filling the room.
“That’s cold. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had your stew?” he grumbled, forcing a smile as he wiped his own face. The way Bucky left off made a brow raise, but his smile warmed a bit before he leaned up and ruffled Bucky’s short hair a bit obnoxiously. “Fine. Tell me about this life you found. But remember if you go for my chin again, I’m remembering how to hit. Even if I’m…” he glanced over and saw a glimpse of his form in a reflection, a jolt suddenly running through him.
“Oh great. They’re gonna see me like this,” he sighed heavily, then leaned down to pick his phone up from where it had fallen, automatically turning towards the kitchen.
===
Bucky broke into laughter. “Hate to be the one to tell you, Steve, but everyone has seen you like this. There was a museum exhibit about it. I remember. I viewed it six times.” There were also half a dozen books, two of them case studies. Bucky had been doing a lot of research after the incident at the Triskelion.
Not one book had ever referenced that Steve used to wear newspapers in his shoes to keep them from falling off his feet.
He snuck a quick peek at Steve’s shoes before heading back into the kitchen. “I’ve got oyster crackers and a loaf of fresh bread. Which one do you want with your stew?”
===
Steve made a face, wincing as he remembered a few tall halls. He’d been through it… once? He remembered the exhibits, but most of them were blurry, only moving vaguely. The War had been a long time ago.
“No. I mean… like this,” he said, then snorted and shook his head in frustration. “Small me. Weak, a little blind, prone to getting winded or…” he stomach groaned slightly and he slunk into the nearest chair available to him, suddenly wondering why he hadn’t had a heart attack between the overexcitement and all of the caffeine he’d been slamming the past few days.
He sighed. “There’s a difference, Buck. Even the exhibit only used pictures of me during training.” He grunted, then, and leaned back as he wistfully looked towards the food. “Bread. And, you mind grabbing me a glass of water? I was choking on my third coffee before I decided to sprint over here.”
===
“Except for the two my mom donated,” Bucky added. He grabbed a glass, vibranium fingers clinking lightly against the glass as he filled it from the faucet, and brought it over to Steve. As he moved away from the table again, he picked up the bread knife, deftly spinning it in his fingers before he applied it to the fresh loaf of bread. A moment later, a bowl of hot stew and two thick slices of bread were set down in front of Steve.
“You need to cut back on the caffeine,” he added, putting his own plate together. “You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack if you have that much.”
===
Steve choked slightly on his water at the mention, but then continued drinking more carefully as he slipped into silence, staring into the distance as the images slowly returned to him. Still fuzzy, but as the glass lowered and he swallowed, he blinked up. “The one of us from grade school, on the front steps. And the other from… a faire?” he murmured, then was jostled back to the present pleasantly by the food.
He glanced over, then snorted as he buttered his bread, waiting for Bucky to join him before he started to eat. “Why am I hearing a French-accented clucking noise in my head when you say that?”
===
Bucky was nodding at the remembrance of the pictures. “Coney Island,” he amended, and took a bite of stew-soaked bread.
Which meant his mouth was full when Steve mentioned Frenchie’s way of teasing his mother-henning. Bucky nearly spluttered stew across the table - would have, if it wouldn’t have been a waste of some damn good stew. Instead, he covered his mouth, coughing hard.
Once he had his breathing under control, Bucky took a sip of water. “Holy shit,” he muttered, starting to chuckle again. “Jacques Dernier. He was the demolitions specialist for the Howling Commandos - your squad.” Bucky shook his head, smiling. “Dernier, James Montgomery Falsworth, Gabriel Jones, James Morita, Timothy Dugan. Better known as Frenchie, Monty, Gabe, Jim, and Dum-Dum. A great big bunch of idiots.”
Bucky’s smile wavered slightly. “We didn’t… come together under the best of circumstances, but we could trust every one of them with our lives. And did. Often.”
===
Steve started to chuckle along as he watched Bucky struggling, feeling a surge of wicked pride and glowing warmth again at causing such an earnest reaction. It was only stronger than the math joke in the alley because he understood it. At least until Bucky started to explain.
Holding his tongue about Bucky not eating so fast for his own health, Steve listened, eyes going distant as the names rolled around. At first, he was just able to remember the uniforms on the museum mannequins more clearly, each coming into focus and detail. By the time Bucky was listing their nicknames, the stiff display was replaced by moving, breathing figures with faces still just out of focus.
As Bucky fell silent, Steve felt a pang. “We haven’t seen them in a long time,” he murmured, it wasn’t a question. Then he sighed. “I don’t… it’s there. I know it is. It’s just… easier. The more recent stuff. You, talking to you. I don’t know, but it’s coming back. It’s just… a lot.” He sighed and finally took a bite of his own stew-soaked bread he’d been preparing absent mindedly.
Instantly his eyes bulged, but instead of choking he just went completely still, memories rushing in as the flavors hit and blended on his tongue. A hundred moments all at once, a hundred different stews, all at different times. Always the same, somehow.
Still overwhelmed he’d started to chew absently, finally losing the battle as thick streams of tears poured down his cheeks silently, his head bowing as he continued to eat.