Someone to live for, unafraid to say I love you.
If Steve had felt like there were no more new stories to hear from Bucky, well maybe he was a fool after all. Because whatever he'd been expecting? It hadn't been that. He was quiet as he let Bucky speak, to get the words out as Steve looked at the ground in front of them. As he spoke it was like something closed around his chest, a vice that squeezed tighter bit by bit. It was similar to the PTSD, where Steve's vision got a little hazy around the edges and everything slowed down. He could almost see it playing out, a young Natasha, a young Bucky. In love.
In one hundred years he'd never heard Bucky say that, not about anyone and the weight of that wasn't lost on him. He'd loved her, maybe not past tense, then he'd kept it from him. Bucky had seen what keeping the truth from Tony had done to them and still, kept a big important thing like that to himself.
The jealous prickle he'd felt had turned into something that surged through him and Steve swallowed it down only to find it tasted like bile and a lifetime of regret. The silence stretched and he thought about walking away, just pretending none of this had ever happened and was some strange dream where his Bucky and his partner had fallen for each other and then hidden it later. Maybe he didn't have the right to know everyone's secrets, but this was Bucky and-
Steve realised then both his hands were balled into tight fists, back straight and the embodiment of fight or flight.
It wasn't rational, but what part of this was? What part of he and Bucky's twisted history of togetherness, loss and coming back from the dead to find one another was built on rational?
"You could have bought it up, Bucky. Oh hey Steve, just so you know I'm in love with your partner there, want a cup of coffee? That would have done it." Steve's voice sounded far away in his own ears, but felt like razors in his throat. "I came to see you in Wakanda, we sat together for days and there was no time to fucking tell me?"