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strawbaber-rec-y · 1 year

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Solace

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Summary: You’ve recently switched to the night shift and the adjustment hasn’t been great. Your neighbor would agree.

Notes: This is a part of @buckygrantbarnes writing challenge! I chose concept #5: Character and Reader are neighbors, and Reader keeps waking Character up by setting a really loud alarm in the middle of the night.

I know this is a smidge late, but life has been crazy! Thanks for hosting, I had a lot of fun writing this!!

Steve Rogers considers himself a reasonable man, he really does. He remains patient with the trainees while he shows them new techniques again and again until his mind melts, taking each clipped jaw in stride. He even always smiles at the children trying to climb his body in their excitement when all he wants is a coffee.

During those precious moments he isn’t in the suit, he’s a very quiet, laid back man.

Which is why he’s gone two months without breaking down your door in the middle of the night when he hears that shrill, incessant alarm you seem to be immune to seeping through the shared wall.

He’s been tortured before. This is worse.

Each time he comes home from a mission, peels the Kevlar from his body, and sinks to his bed, your alarm steals away the hope of a quick slumber and he loathes you for it.

Sam tells him to try writing a letter, Natasha offers to break in and steal it.

He considers both options, the latter more seriously, until one afternoon he runs into you after his morning jog. The elevator doors are almost closed when he shoves his hand in the small opening. He mutters an apology, but hears no response.

You’re leaned on the wall, arms crossed before your chest, head resting against the metal and for a moment he thinks you may actually be asleep.

He doesn’t say anything, he’s been there.

“6B right?” You mumble. He’s not sure he’s heard you correctly. “I’m 6A. I think I’ve seen you around.”

When you look over at him, his stomach flops, does somersaults in his belly. You look positively wrecked. The light blue scrubs you’re wearing are splattered and stained with various colors, and the bags under your eyes are deep enough he’s almost concerned for your health.

Yet he thinks you may be the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Uh- yeah, Steve.” He manages.

You nod and go back to resting your head. “Y/N.”

He imagines he may be more tolerant going forward.

He tries to catch you again in the following weeks, but your schedule seems to be more unpredictable than his. That stupid, stupid alarm still wakes him most nights, but he finds it easier to suffer through now.

One night he comes home after a long mission. Exhaustion weighs his body enough he almost considers passing out by the door, but after days of sleeping on dirt floors, his back is pleading for the comfort of his bed.

Looking at his watch he knows he has about 45 minutes before you have to be up for work. Maybe it’s the hope that for one night he could have a restful sleep, or perhaps the humidity of the jungle had just escaped had dissolved his patience, but his feet have padded their way to the hallway before he truly knows what he’s going to do.

Barefoot before your door, he knocks. Once. Twice. Then a third time.

He waits patiently until he hears you mumble something less than kind from behind the door and finds himself smiling at the irony.

Having someone pound on your door at midnight, ripping you from a dead sleep, is only about the third worst thing to happen to you this week.

You fling the door open. “Do you have any…“

Of all the people it could’ve been, Martha from 5A coming to complain about nonexistent noise, the new mom from 6F asking you to check out her baby for the third time this week, or the teen from 2 trying to convince you he definitely needs a medical marijuana card, a very tired Captain America leaning on your door frame is the last thing you expected.

He raises a brow at your unfinished threat. “Ah yes, 12:09. 21 minutes before your alarm.”

You furrow your brows. “How do- “

“Look,” He interrupts, pushing off from your door frame, you don’t miss his wince- the way he favors his right side. “I know you probably have a very important job, and getting up in the middle of the night for shifts like those must be brutal, but I’ve just gotten off quite a draining ‘shift’ myself and was hoping that for at least one night you could just not.”

You’re catching on. “’Just not?’ Are you talking about my alarm?” He nods. You’re stunned, having thought that with as much as you pay a month, the walls would’ve been much thicker. Or is it really that loud? Adjusting to the night shift had been rough. “Oh, wow, I am so sorry.”

He shakes his head and points to his ear. “Super good hearing, don’t worry about it. Thank you.” He turns to walk away and that’s when you notice his limp, and the blood.

“Woah, wait. Did you have anyone look at that?” You point at his leg and he shrugs, giving you a less than assuring ‘it’s fine’ and goes to open his apartment door. “Uh- no. That’s a 6-inch lac that’s still actively bleeding? Are you insane? Please, let me take a look.”

“That’s very kind, but-“

“Your ribs could also be broken and I’ll just spend all day worrying about if you died in your sleep from a punctured lung or something. I can’t have Captain America’s death on my conscious.”

He takes a moment to look you up and down and weighs his chances of being able to talk his way out of whatever this is. He’ll heal on his own, eventually, but the look in your eyes tells him he’d have more luck trying to convince Martha he doesn’t actually stomp around just to annoy her.

“Alright.”

Managing to get Steve to strip down to some shorts and a tank top, he’s sat at your kitchen table. It took you a solid five minutes to convince him that he needed stitches, and lucky for him, you steal suture kits.

“You know, when you told me your name it would’ve been the perfect moment to mention you’re Steve as in Steve Rogers.” You lightly chastise, holding pressure to his thigh.

He doesn’t even flinch. “Not like I was hiding it. You did look right at me.”

You laugh. “Well I had just gotten off a 36-hour shift, you cannot hold that against me.”

He watches quietly as you work, forehead creased with worry and constantly mumbling about how he’s lucky there’s no signs of infection, with an occasional ‘you really weren’t going to do anything about this’. He finds your commentary amusing.

Your fingers glide across his skin and your touch is faint enough it almost tickles. You’re worried about nerve damage, but he thinks you’re just that good.

With a pile of red stained gauze by your side and the area around his wound as clean as you could get it, you grab a lamp from your desk and pick up the needle with your hemostat. Well, not yours, really. Also stolen, but sterile!

When you hold the needle up and adjust your grip on the clamp, he gives you a wary look.

“What?”

“I don’t know how I feel about a thief stitching me back together.” He says with a raised brow. There’s a glint in his eyes, the smallest twitch at the edge of his lips.

You roll your eyes. “With as hard as they work me, this is the least they owe me.”

“What do you even use them for?”

Your quite for a moment. “Sewing.” You say quietly and he barks a laugh. “I just- hush, don’t distract me.”

He complies and sits back to watch you fondly. Your teeth sink into the pillow of your lip each time you push the needle into the flesh of his thigh. You had apologized for not having any kind of numbing agent, but he had assured you that he’d be just fine.

Still, you glace up with each pull to make sure it’s not some macho show. Then again, he was Captain American and by the look of him at this moment, the pinch of a needle is probably more an annoying after thought than anything else.

Cutting the last stitch, you place the bandaging and offer him a smile. He thanks you sincerely, but you tsk when he tries to get past you to the door.

“Shirt off.” You order. He takes a half step back, cocks his head to the side and smirks. How he could be even slightly amorous at this moment is beyond you. “I want to check your ribs, make sure nothing’s displaced.” Something in his eyes shifts, he’s hesitant- guarded- and you’re unsure why. “I haven’t seen you take a single normal breath in the time you’ve been here. A simple, quick exam can tell me if there’s anything to worry about.”

He looks away and you’re about to suggest that he just check in with the medical team at wherever it is that super people work. They have to have medical staff, right? You tuck that question away for later.

Steve looks back to you and nods before pulling the white cotton over his head.

You would be completely stunned at the site of his quite perfect physique if it weren’t for the bruises blossoming bright red and dark purple across his torso.

You catch yourself moving closer, reaching forward to graze a finger around the outline of the prominent colors. “Jesus, Steve.” You whisper.

“Heard that phrase before, never in a situation like this, though.” He mumbles, but you ignore him and begin to prod as carefully as you can.

When you apply pressure to a certain spot that looks the most concerning, his breath exhales quickly in a hiss. “Sorry.” You mumble and find yourself asking how this happened before you can stop yourself.

He grabs your hand in his to stop your exploring fingers. The memory from these injuries hadn’t quite made their way through him yet. They sat too fresh on the forefront of his mind and being this vulnerable before someone he barely knows is quickly becoming too much.

“I’m fine, darlin’, really.” He says softly. You of course don’t buy it for a minute, but the proximity of him steals your fight, you lose your argument in the blue of his eyes.

“Ice it.” You order weakly. “Maybe just bruised, probably fractured.”

He nods, twitching the edges of his lips into a smile. Your hand is still in his and he brings it up to ghost your knuckles against his lips before thanking you again.

He leaves you there, stunned. You’re 15 minutes late for work.

“Wait. You had the Steve Rogers in your apartment half naked?” Your friend prods during your lunch break. You nod and lower your forehead to rest against your coffee cup. “And you didn’t even take advantage, kudos to you. Wait, is this a HIPAA violation?”

You sigh and look up to meet her narrowed eyes. “Honestly, I don’t know. Wouldn’t be surprised if SHIELD took me out, though.”

“Is that even a thing anymore? I can’t keep up with that craziness.” She shakes her head.

“Guess I could ask my neighbor, but I doubt he’d tell me the truth.”

“You have to see him again. You’re going to see him again right?” You try to ignore the excitement in her voice.

“He is my neighbor and those sutures have to come out eventually. Although he’ll probably just rip them out himself.” The thought makes you cringe.

“You know that’s not-“

Thankfully your pager goes off right then, cutting her interrogation short. “Sorry! Incoming trauma, gotta bounce.”

Steve comes home that evening to ice packs with the nearby hospital logo on them by his door. “Stop stealing from work.” He calls out and is rewarded with your laughter floating out from under your door.

He starts to make a habit of it, showing up at your doorstep sometimes bruised, usually bloody. You start to keep a bigger stock of supplies around, and worry on the nights he doesn’t show before you leave when you know he’s on mission.

He tries to message you when service and circumstance allows, just to ease you mind.

Every once in a while, you’ll find him sitting in the hallway beside your door, waiting with food and some injury that needs your attention.

Eventually you get around to asking him if there just isn’t any medical staff where he is, he tells you this is just more convenient. You don’t prod, but think it may have more to do with the way you treat him. Like a patient, a person, not an Avenger.

One night a knock awakes you in the middle of the night. You jump out of bed, knowing it’s most likely him. When you open the door and lay eyes on him, your heart stops.

He’s leaned against the doorway, barely able to hold himself up. There’s blood on the wall, his hands, his face, everywhere. He’s ghostly pale and you can tell he can hardly focus his eyes.

Before he can pass out, you wedge yourself under his arm and try to guide him inside.

“Probably shoulda just went to medical, shouldn’t’ve driven.” He tells you before collapsing onto your couch and you work quickly to get his suit off, apologizing each time he groans in pain.

“Oh god, Steve.” You whisper eyeing the deep gash on his side and quickly apply pressure.

He grunts. “I hope to hear you say something like that under different circumstances one day. You know, not in horror at the state of my health.”

“Well, don’t only show up when you’re hurt.” You shoot back and tape the gauze in place so you can get a line started. You had hoped he’d never show up this hurt, but a part of you can be relieved that you were prepared for it.

“Hey, I brought you food at work last week.”

You ignore that. “Steve, this is bad. Really bad. What the hell were you thinking?”

Ignoring his half assed excuse, you get to work, quickly and tensely, mumbling your thoughts and a few vague threats about him not being allowed to die on you.

“Don’t worry, darlin, wouldn’t dream of goin’ anywhere.”

Once you get the bleeding under control unlike your emotions, you start to lay into him. Loudly. Your reaction is to be blamed on fear, the absolute nightmare that the man before you, who you’ve reluctantly become very attached to, could have actually died in your arms.

“I mean, seriously, Steve! How could you be so reckless?”

He drapes his arm over his eyes. “I like you more than the docs we have.”

You huff and begin cleaning the rest of him up. “I’m sure they’re just as good at their jobs.”

He shakes his head and willingly gives you the arm resting above him when you reach for it. “You’re better.” He states simply and you snort your disbelief. “Your hands are softer. I think your touch reminds me I’m still human.” He says quietly, eyes trained on the ceiling.

Your movements stall, his admission leaving you a little dazed. When he tilts his head to look over at you, you swear you stop breathing.

“I think I’ll always prefer you.”

The rational part of you is telling you to just chalk this up to blood loss, not to get your hopes up because this could get so complicated. But the other part, oh the hopeful part, was singing.

“I think I prefer you too.”

He laughs. “As a patient? Neighbor? Avenger?”

“Oh, come on now.” You start seriously. “The Black Widow went to Capitol Hill and basically told congress they wouldn’t arrest her because they didn’t have the balls. She will always be my favorite. You might be a close second.”

“Might be?”

“You’re first for everything else. Take the win, Steve.”

It only takes five minutes and two bribes to convince him to stay the night and that you should call out of work to keep an eye on him. He had protested, given you every excuse he could come up with, but you are well versed in the language of Steve Rogers.

You set a takeout menu from his favorite place before him during the middle of his ‘you have already done so much for me’ speech and he grumbles out an ‘alright’.

He awakes just after dawn to your head on his thigh, your body tucked tightly between his leg and the couch, and the intro music to some infomercial droning in the background. The last thing he wants to do is move, he could watch you like this all day. Maybe one day he’ll get to.

When you finally wake up, he’s gone. There’s a blanket from the laundry room draped over you and the smell of him still on your pillow.

A part of you is hurt, but you’re not quite sure why.

You don’t hear from him for two weeks.

Some coworkers suggest going downtown to blow of some steam and, since you knew Steve was home all week out of harm’s way, you agree. It’s not often you get to go out stress free.

However, mixing alcohol with a list of fairly serious questions that only one extremely handsome and infuriating super soldier could answer isn’t the greatest idea. Especially when said blue-eyed day dream lives right next door.

It isn’t long before you’re stumbling up to his door, despite the warnings of everyone that night that you absolutely should not. 2am wasn’t that late and when you get an idea in your head it’s hard to shake it.

He answers faster than you thought he would and his amused expression only distracts you for a few moments.

“You’re drunk.” He points out, trying to withhold a grin.

You scrunch your nose. “A smidge.”

“Lose your key?”

“No. Well… maybe. But that’s not why I’m here.” You take a step forward, place a hand on the door frame to steady yourself, and point a single finger at him. “I have questions that need answers, Cap. Let me in.” He raises his brows. “Please.” You add and he obliges.

You make your way to his kitchen and take a seat at the island, he trails in behind you. “Would you like some water? I think you should have some water.”

He sets a glass before you when you don’t reply, but with his eyes watching you, concern in the crease of his brow, you suddenly feel vulnerable- exposed. Where had that burning rage at him for leaving you without a word gone? Why had you been so angry to begin with?

It’s difficult to sift through the thoughts in your head, and the alcohol wasn’t exactly making that easier. What was the word for what you felt? Used? Forgotten? The last thing you wanted to do was sound like a needy child.

He leans forward onto the counter before you. “What’s on your mind, darlin’?”

Instead of meeting his eyes, you run the tip of your finger through the condensation on the glass, watch it pool on the marble.

“Talk to me. What is it?” He asks again

Suddenly you wish you had just gone home.

You chug the water. “It’s nothing, never mind. I’m just gonna go to bed.”

He steps in front of you before you can make it to the door, pleads with you again to just talk to him. You try to get past him, but his hand on your hip makes you freeze. He trails it up your side, grazes his knuckles up your arm. His fingers stop below your chin to gently tilt your eyes up to his.

His lips have barely parted to form his next plea when you cut him off. “What am I to you.” You barely whisper.

That catches him off guard.

“If this is just a convenience thing for you, I need to know.” He looks confused but you power through before he can respond. “Maybe your admission was just the blood loss talking and you disappeared to keep me from getting attached, although it’s a little late for that. Or, maybe there’s someone else. Which is fine-“

“Do you think I’m using you?” He appears hurt at the insinuation and suddenly it’s difficult to meet his eyes. “Look at me. Is that what you really think?”

“I don’t know what to think, Steve.”

He crashes his lips to yours. A sudden almost desperate act that leaves you useless. Your brain stalls and suddenly he is all there is.

It’s needy and messy, but it is everything you needed. You thread your fingers through his hair and press yourself to him. The soft feel of him steals your hurt, dissipates that pit in your stomach, and you could almost hate him for it.

He pulls away, breathless. “What part of ‘I will always prefer you’ wasn’t clear?”

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strawbaber-rec-y · 1 year

Text

literally sobbing

Looped (again)

Summary: Bucky is inadvertently trapped in a time loop without any memory of the last five years, including his relationship with you. But you would do anything, if it meant getting to stay by his side. (alternate to Looped where the reader loses their memory)

Pairing: Bucky X Reader

Word Count: ~16k

Warnings: memory loss, angst, anxiety, Bucky in love

A/N: Companion piece to Looped! You can read this without reading Looped. This was a labor to write but so so fun. Please let me know what you think!

The first time you see Bucky, you think he is a person you would like to crack open. He is a story. He is the truth of the universe. He is the marrow of your bones.

Here is the person your soul has been calling to all your life.

He’s quiet and kind and believes that he is broken.

The first day you saw him, he had lifted his eyes from the floor to meet yours, only for a moment, and you had smiled.

You ask for nothing from him, watching and waiting for weeks until you happen to catch him wandering along alone one day and convince him to come outside with you, to walk with you.

To breathe in the new spring air and talk.

Something kinders inside you, tugs you by your heartstrings in his direction.

A silly little crush, because he’s beautiful and quiet and strange, like the first footprint on newly fallen snow.

This is a crush, you tell yourself, you crush on almost everyone.

But this crush, it's one that doesn’t go away and you always think back to that feeling, like you each held two ends of the same sting, like you both had been unconsciously tugging at it all your life.

You’re happy, burst through with pride and self-satisfaction, to find Bucky is drawn to you too, that he lets you draw him away from the stifling and sometimes sterile interior of the compound to take a walk and chat.

Or, rather, listen to you talk.

Bucky, those first few weeks, is silent as a tomb, only making passing comments that you suspect he only voices because they make you laugh. You have never seen a person look so warmed to garner a laugh from an offhand comment.

Like your laugh could sustain him.

But that is how you find out that Bucky is like a plant, that he absorbs until he’s full to bursting, until it's dangerous and rot might set in. Over time, you find ways to draw him out, to prod gently against bruised flesh until the words burst free from him. Gradually, he begins to talk with you, rather than letting you talk at him.

You do most of the talking that first day, but you don’t mind.

Because he smiles at you, when you haven’t seen him smile at anyone.

Because he offers you a hand so you can balance along the few stones that line the shore of the lake.

You’d gushed to Natasha that evening, who hadn’t said much at all, but instead smiled at you like she already knew a secret that you could not begin to guess at.

But you had gotten him that day, plucked him up like a forgotten stone in your path, considered him yours however he turned out to be yours. You knew that maybe he would only ever be your friend, that maybe he would only ever be a co-worker. But that was okay with you, because you got to know him, just a little bit.

Bucky was an added soul to your collection, a fragment of star dust that you would never let harm befall. Whether friend, or something more, or walking partner on quiet spring evenings.

He is yours, that you know.

But none of that matters.

What matters is that he smiles at you, always. What matters is that he seeks you out the next day and asks you what you’re reading.

You remember the desperation in his eyes when he realized he was late to therapy, that you had made him late. You’d thought he would be nervous, but all he had said was will you still be here in an hour?

What matters is that he not only asks you what you’re reading that day, but goes out of his way to find his own copy of your books.

Just so he can read them too, just so he can talk to you about something that is not himself.

He brings you colorful pens and sticky tabs and post-its that were probably stolen from someone’s office, when he notices your annotations in the margins of your book. You notice that he starts to do the same, careful chicken scrawl blacking out the sides of each page.

But you don’t care.

Because what matters is that he has chosen you too, exactly how you are.

What matters is that he suggests you start reading together, to save some paper, of course, when you’re reading the same thing. Why not read it together? From the very same pages?

What matters is that his thigh touches yours when he moves closer over a period of months that draws you together like there really was a string tied between you, that both of you were constantly tugging on.

Bucky even reads out loud for you, voice rumbling to a stop whenever anyone else enters the room, brows pulling together in irritation, like you were a bubble he lived inside and hated to see popped.

Bucky is like the silence of a forest in spring, quiet and watchful.

He’s gentle and kind like a burst of sunshine.

But his reading voice is strong as an oak, gruff and deep. Sometimes you worry he’ll just lull you to sleep.

He laughs softly, speaks slowly. He lets Sam rib him and Steve worry like the mother hen he is.

He is life and strength flitting between the branches of trees after a long winter, dappled sunlight on the edge of a sea.

The way he leaned close to you, carefully drifting closer over weeks until his thigh pressed against yours, made you want to know everything about him.

Maybe you’ve been in love with that quiet strength from the first time you met him, hesitant and unsure, newly healed mind sticky with memories like pine needles stuck together with sap.

The cracked pieces of his mind were healing slowly, and you refused to do anything that might hinder him in any way. You watched him struggle and suffer to get better, to sew himself back together.

You were happy to be there for it.

You love him all the same for it, maybe more.

It was never your goal to coax him into more than he was willing to give. You’d have been his friend for the rest of time if he let you, though you’d glowed with warmth that day at Coney Island when he kissed you.

Unexpected and terrifying.

And yet so welcome.

The fear had bled into something more potent, a determination to give all of yourself over to him while you could. When he realized that you were nothing and only loved you for your nearness and nothing else, you’d be happy to have gotten to push him out into the open world, so he could find the trueness of love that he most definitely deserved.

But fuck, are you glad to have him, to call him yours.

It's only after years of friendship that you find out that his arms are like the solidity of an ancient forest, that he tastes like honeydew in spring, that his skin is firm and soft under careful lips, that the give of his skin is like salt on your tongue.

Bucky finds safety with you, finds you tart and sweet in a way that you can’t understand, in a way that makes the tension drain from his face, his eyes go soft.

It almost embarrasses you, how much love he wears on his face.

Because you know he thinks he hides it well, that he wears a mask that conceals all he has ever felt, but you see it and you know.

Maybe you always knew you did not deserve all those moments, and so when Bucky loses his memories again, it feels like the universe laughing at you.

A grand practical joke years in the making, to rip the stitches out of your side and make you bleed, because despite telling yourself that when Bucky moved on from you, you would let it happen with grace -

You find out that that is not true.

You want to keep him.

You do not want to lose him. You want to sit in the rays of his sunshine for the rest of your life, you want to listen to the breathing of the quiet forest that lived inside him.

If the universe dared rip him from you, if it dared to rip and tear and take.

Well.

It would not do so without you ripping and tearing and taking back.

Normally, usually, when the team goes on a mission, you stay back at the compound, where you are in no danger of anything, securely tucked away in safety. You are not an Avenger, you’re only an intel analyst that, by a stroke of good fortune, ended up working for Stark.

But Natasha was gone, on a mission of her own, and you had volunteered yourself.

Bucky’s protest had been swift and immediate. A growled no that resonated deep inside you, that spoke of a fear that he would never dare voice. Steve hadn’t even looked up from his tablet, Bucky moving in front of you like if he could hide you, Steve would forget your offer.

“I’m trained,” had been your only refrain, a gentle reminder to him that you were not as breakable and fragile as Bucky sometimes liked to believe. You reached out, touched the inside of his wrist and watched his shoulders loosen, the tension in his neck soften into nothing.

The mission goes fine, as you had predicted.

Of course, until the very last moment where you decided to rifle through one last filing cabinet.

Bucky had turned, motioned you away from it, “I’ll do it, sweetheart. C’mere and download whatever is on here.” He had gestured to a computer screen that had just flared to life.

You switched places, your hand drawing away from the brass handle of the drawer you almost opened.

And so you had watched from across the room in horror as a nasty blue vapor blew into his face when he opened the drawer meant for you. He spluttered and wiped a hand across his nose and eyes, shaking his head to clear it away, stumbling away from the drawer.

But now, Bucky is staring at you on the jet back to the compound, his head at a ninety degree angle to keep you in his field of vision, watchful and serious, that little crease between his brows pinched tight just like it had been before the mission.

You reach up again now and smooth your fingers over it, begging silently for the stress to drain from his shoulders, but he remains painfully tense.

Before boarding the jet he’d been staring at you silently, brooding and moody and a little mad. You had only smoothed your thumb against the worried crease between his brows then too. “It’s going to be fine, Bucky.” He had nodded, eyes softening when you smiled at him.

It was a testament to his trust in you that he had not argued with you, that you knew what you could handle and that you knew he would have your back.

“Are you sure you didn’t breathe any of it in?” He asks now, reaching up to take your hand away from his face, to fold your fingers between his and squeeze tightly.

Your belly swoops with the dip of the jet, an uneasiness sitting at the back of your throat. “Bucky, I was on the other side of the room. We should be worried about you for now.”

The line on his forehead still doesn’t go away. “I know,” he says, finally glancing down and away from you, his eyes landing on your intertwined fingers. “I’m worried about you though, doll. I can’t help it.” His voice is quiet and solid, the last protector of some ancient forest, your self dedicated guard.

“We’re going to worry about you first,” you say firmly. “You are the one who breathed in that stuff. You’re going to the medbay as soon as we land.”

Bucky huffs out an irritated breath. “You need to be checked out first,” he says stubbornly. “You were in that room too-,”

“Bucky, honey, it went directly in your face,” you remind him gently, trying not to think about that terrifying blue neon vapor in his eyes, the panic that had immediately spiraled up from your gut. How he had waved you back, told you not to come near him, eyes pinching shut as he shook his head.

And then sneezed.

You aren’t sure you’d ever heard him sneeze before.

It wasn’t like Bucky got sick or had allergies.

The sneeze more than anything had brought worry to the forefront of your mind.

You know that Bucky is still a little bit mad at you for not listening to him when he warned you away from him. You’d leapt across the room despite his protests, cupped his jaw, turned his face so you could look into his eyes, read the dread written in his gaze.

“You are going to the medbay and you will get checked out,” you say again, firm in this.

“I feel fine,” he grumbles, eyes on your hands again. “It's you I’m worried about. Whatever it was probably won’t affect me because of the serum. Nothing does anymore. But you, sweetheart, even being in the room could be enough-,” He stops, glances away from you, a nerve jumping in his jaw as he clenches it.

You squeeze his fingers until he looks back at you, your spring storm, your quiet forest. “Bucky,” you start, leaning in until you can press your nose against his temple, inhale the scent of him, like worry and fear, but underneath that the scent of peach, the scent of you on his skin, the homey smell of him, of pine needles in rain. “What if it had been me?” You ask gently. “Put yourself in my shoes here. What if it had been blown in my face? What would you make me do?”

“Go to medical,” he answers. “I get it, sweetheart. I’ll go. You’re gettin’ checked out too though.”

“Fine. I can live with that. But you are going first.”

You lean your chin against his shoulder then, sighing when he leans against you, the tilt of his head a welcome weight against yours. “Me first,” he agrees, sounding reluctant.

The scent of him overwhelms you, like fresh spring air, rain scented and green.

You tell yourself everything will be okay.

When the jet lands, you herd Bucky to the medical wing of the compound, you hold his hand while his blood is drawn and taken away in vials that make you sick to look at.

He clutches your hand, tight but not too tight, thanking you in that strange way of his for staying with him and holding his hand. There’s still an unspoken fear in him that you understand without it being said, a mistrust of needles and prying fingers.

The worry drains away when he meets your gaze, his shoulders dropping, back softening against your hand when you tap your fingers along his spine.

“I know I could never dream up something like you, sweetheart,” he tells you, not looking at Helen as she sticks a bandaid against the inside of Bucky’s elbow. “You remind me that I’m okay. I always know that I’m real when I’m with you.”

You don’t know what to say when he tells you things like that, always random and always said softly, like he’s not sure it's the kind of thing he should say, the kind of thing he should get to feel.

Surprise makes you speechless and you can only pat his cheek, glad that it's only you and him and Helen, who politely ignores you for the moment.

Bucky takes your hand and stands, pushes you down in his seat, “Your turn,” he says firmly, dutifully and carefully rolling up your sleeve in gentle turns until it is above your elbow, before he cups his fingers against your wrist, that comforting gesture between you.

Your blood tests come back normal. Bucky’s come back as normal as they ever are for a hundred year old super soldier. You joke with the medical staff and laugh like you always do, though worry is burning a hole through your belly, through your bones. Bucky seems totally and completely fine.

Steve and Sam, Tony and Bruce, make an appearance to question you about what happened, take the collection tube with a sample of the vapor from you, the hard drive.

Testing the blue vapor will take a little more time to analyze. And the only thing you can do, it seems, is wait.

You are told to rest and watch over Bucky. You are told that there shouldn’t be any danger for the time being.

You want to keep the data, itching to begin sorting through it, to look for any danger lurking in the vapor.

But Bucky tugs on your hand, eager to be away from the sterile medical wing, and you follow easily, because you would follow him anywhere but especially to the safe, cozy nest that is your apartment, that is the circle of his arms.

He so frets over you that you have to remind him time and again that he is the one that has been compromised, that he is the one that needs nurtured and cared for.

Something in him always rebels against it, likes to be the cradler rather than the cradled, likes to be the protector rather than the protected. His agency isn’t compromised if he is those things, he is still in control, still Bucky.

But once you get your arms around him and get him to settle it's almost impossible to move again, he's so entranced by the act and art of being held, of being protected, that being held and protected did not mean that he was lost but found, that he belonged.

This night, he demands you stay together, every moment must be in the other’s presence. He’s watching you, watchful of every move you make, hovering like a new parent, like he’s waiting for you to collapse.

He grouses under his breath, as you have a quick dinner, that they should have done more for you. They should have made you stay in the med wing, they should have swabbed the inside of your nose, they should have run more tests on your blood.

“Bucky,” you chide. “What about you?”

“I don’t matter. I’ll be fine.”

And you know he really believes that, that the serum in his veins stubbornly protected him even when he had wished that it wouldn’t, even when he had begged for it to stop. And so he believes this time will be the same, that he is okay while everything he’s built crumbles around him.

You have no qualms about him keeping you close, have nothing to say about him tugging you into the shower with him and holding you close, hands soft against your skin, breathing in the scent of you. Being together means you can watch him too. You aren’t foolish enough to believe that the tear in the earth did not want to consume your happiness as much as anyone else's. You aren’t naive enough to believe that the universe did not like to see you ripped apart at the seams.

Bucky uses your peach body wash, like dousing himself in the scent of you could protect him from the claws of the future always scratching at his door. But you delight in the pine and rain scent of him, like a forest floor after a spring storm, strong and steady and silent. Like a tree that could never be felled. The scent of him is like home, like safety, and so you’re only a little annoyed at the peach smell that sometimes sticks to his skin.

You never feel safer than when Bucky takes you in his arms, than when he looks at you with such love and affection it feels like a river that will never run dry, will never stop providing to you.

When you’re both clean and soothed that the other is still whole and well, not drifting away like flotsam in the air, you towel off and make a cup of tea.

Bucky wears only a pair of briefs and you slip on your favorite t-shirt of his.

You let Bucky select a movie, patiently asking him if he’d let you rub moisturizer into his skin. He acquiesces, sighing falsely like it’s a great pain to be loved.

You sit behind him on your bed and touch the smooth skin of his back, pay special attention to the puckered skin that runs around his left shoulder, the scars that litter the rest of him like morbid confetti. You press your mouth to the base of his neck and squeeze his fingers when he reaches back to circle your wrist with his fingers.

And you wonder.

What would he be doing now if it had been you?

You have a sinking feeling that it was supposed to have been you.

You should have inhaled that noxious blue vapor.

It should have been you.

Bucky leans back into you, lets you circle your arms around his shoulders and neck, knocks his forehead softly against your jaw when you take a shaky breath, caught up in your own thoughts.

What would Bucky be doing now? If it were you and not him?

Probably exactly the same things you’ve done. Dinner and a shower. Comfort and a favorite movie. Bucky probably would have also made a bowl of popcorn and tucked you in safely next to him, curled around you like he could become the shell of your armor, like he would sacrifice himself to shield you from everything. He would have held you until you fell asleep and stayed up all night watching over you.

You flip the cap closed on the bottle of coconut scented moisturizer and set it on the bedside table, tucking your arms around his head, holding Bucky close instead when he turns in your arms, his head against your chest, solid arms folding around your back. “Lie down, Buck,” you say gently. “Please rest.”

And he would do anything for you, this you know, because that is the kind of person Bucky is, so he relaxes against you so that you can draw the comforter up over both of you, create a warm little nest, blocking out the light of the still flashing television screen, movie already forgotten, mugs of chamomile tea going cold.

“Have I ever told you that I love you?” You whisper, lips brushing his forehead, fitting your arms around the shape of him.

Bucky doesn’t answer.

Instead he hooks his fingers against the curve of your knee and hitches your leg over him, entwining you fully together. You melt under him, slip closer than you deserve to be.

The scent of pine and rain draws over you, bringing you home, reminding you that all is okay and that you are safe, that Bucky is safe.

It reminds you that something like vapor…

was harmless.

The first time the loop resets, you find out what it is to have your heart broken.

You understand those stories suddenly, of people dying from a broken heart.

Bucky falls asleep that night and you do not. He falls asleep pressed against your chest, arms tight around you like he could fuse you together, like the pressure of your arms and weight of you beneath him reassured him that he was okay, that you were alive and well after the mission he had been so terrified of.

Somewhere near three in the morning, you brush the short locks of his hair back, kiss his forehead and gently wriggle out of the vise of his arms. It’s a testament to his trust in you that he does not wake up with the movement. You click the TV off and climb out of bed, not able to dispel the feeling that something was about to go horribly awry.

For a moment, you stand and stare at him, at his cheek squished against the pillow, the ever present line in his forehead gone, years taken away from him in sleep, like nothing bad had ever befallen him.

You lean down to whisper your love one more time, to kiss his cheek, the stubble beneath your lips like the rasp of a whisper against your skin.

The world is weighted in your hands and you are suddenly so sure that it's fragile, that it's so breakable and you are the one who’s about to crush it.

You pull away from him hard, stumbling backward, fear sloshing in your belly, a panic that you aren’t sure how to shove down creeping up the back of your throat.

Anxiety bites at your skin, every fear you harbored swimming up to rest in your mouth, make you dizzy with nausea.

What if it was poisonous? What if it was killing him?

You tug on a pair of sweatpants, tucking the sliver of Bucky’s dog tags inside your shirt before you sneak down to the analysts’ offices to grab your computer, hijack the drive with the data you and Bucky had collected and go back to the apartment to set up at your kitchen island.

So you can keep watching over Bucky, so you can stay close to him where you belong, while you begin sorting through the data for the answers to the questions burning at the back of your mind.

What the fuck did Bucky breathe in? What was the blue vapor?

Night turns to morning, the apartment slowly lightening as the sun rises in the east. The windows show well maintained lawns and the fluttering of emerald leaves. The sky is a bright azure blue, the color of Bucky’s eyes.

Your thoughts turn back to him, back to the way he did not care about himself, did not think to preserve himself, like your being okay would not be canceled out if he was not also okay.

The data yields nothing of interest, at least not yet, and you’re just thinking of getting up to stretch and make some breakfast when the bedroom door opens.

The first time the loop resets, you find out what it is to lose everything, to be lost at sea.

Bucky stands in the doorway, bleary eyed with a deep sleep. He looks so soft and warm, you immediately stand up. You want to tug him into you, press your nose to his neck and inhale the scent of pine and rain, peach and honey. You want to let him cradle you, comfort you that everything will be alright.

That he will be okay, that you will be okay.

The voice that meets you is quiet and gentle, hesitant. He says your name, but it's odd on his tongue, like he isn’t sure he should say it, like confusion is making a home inside his bones.

“Morning, Buck,” you coo, stepping around the table, waiting for him to hold out his hand to you so you can take it and let him tug you into his chest, “I was just about to make breakfast. How do you feel about pancakes?”

He stares at you, as though you’re a stranger, as though you are speaking a language he does not understand.

Bucky’s eyes flick down your form as you move closer, before darting away from you, pink tinging his neck and the edge of his jaw. “What are you doing here? Steve ask you to check on me?”

Confusion loops through you, makes you stop in your tracks. Steve? Why would you be here because Steve asked you to be?

“What do you mean, honey?”

At your words, Bucky goes a deeper shade of pink before his cheeks blanch white. “Why are you here?” He asks again, a curl of suspicion at the edge of his voice.

“I-,” you’re not entirely sure how to answer. An awkward silence descends between you.

A breath sticks in your lungs that you can’t seem to dispel when he says, “I think you should go.”

“Buck? Are you okay?,” you ask, shaking your head and moving closer to him. Only to stop when he backs away from you, like you were a predator about to strike.

You stop moving, watching him carefully, watching the rapid rise and fall of his chest. He’s terrified, you realize. He’s terrified of you.

“No,” he echoes back to you. “You have to leave. I don’t understand what’s happening and that’s never good,” he says, self-deprecating as he’s always been. “I thought Shuri fixed me. But my memories…I went to sleep in that bed last night, in that room, but the sheets definitely weren’t purple.” They’re your lilac sheets of course, your fluffy duvet covers his bed, your cotton scented sheets, because Bucky is so irritatingly utilitarian about things sometimes, either a product of his generation or a subconscious by-product of what he thinks he deserves.

“There wasn’t a TV in that room. There are books and clothes that I don’t recognize and -,” he stops and swallows and takes a step back from you. You bought the TV together a few years ago, the books and clothes are yours and his jumbled together. “You need to leave. I don’t want to hurt you. Things go to shit when I don’t remember. People get hurt.”

Hurt you?

How could Bucky ever hurt you?

You can’t make the words make sense, none of what he’s saying makes any sense. He is not making any sense.

Your fingers feel brittle, your bones like they might crumble. The room is so cold but you don’t remember it being that way minutes before.

He trembles and leans against the wall, on the verge of a full blown panic attack. “I can’t remember getting any of that stuff.” Bucky reaches up and touches his hair, “I don’t remember getting my hair cut.”

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut, “I can’t do this again,” he whispers. “I can’t forget again.”

You move slowly closer, edge around the table, trying not to spook him, stopping when you’re an arms length away. “What do you mean, Bucky? What do you mean you don’t remember?”

He swallows, eyes hooking on you suddenly, fastening onto his dog tags poking out of your shirt. “What the fuck is going on?” His voice is hoarse. “How did you get those?”

“Bucky-,” your voice is desperate and beseeching, even to your own ears. You reach up to fist your hand around the name plates.

Bucky doesn’t let you finish, shaking his head, sheepish. “I know we-,” he swallows and looks disappointed in himself. “Sorry, I thought I was better than this.”

Something is wrong. You choke on that knowledge, feeling like the threads of your life are being ripped from your fingers.

The floor is cold against your toes, like you’re slipping across broken ice.

Bucky doesn’t remember you.

Bucky doesn’t fucking remember you.

“What - what do you think happened?”

You try not to think of the vapor, try to chalk his behavior up to a dream he may have just woken up from, memories of another time at the forefront of his mind.

But you know.

The vapor that you’ve been trying to find information on for hours is showing itself to you in real time.

Gone, you think.

Erased.

The vapor took him from you, but not in the way you feared.

This is how you find out there are things much worse than death.

And it was your fault.

Bucky doesn’t remember you.

When you reach out to touch him, he jerks away violently, looking at your fingers like you would burn him. Your mind can’t make sense of him pulling away from you, and without meaning to, you reach out again, some part of your brain distantly thinking don’t! But you do and when your fingertips brush his arm softly, he flinches, his body wrenching away from your touch.

You recoil and back away, swallowing down the horror and pain.

And try to remind yourself that this is a man who has lost his memory more than once.

He doesn't seem to know you at all, and so he won’t trust you.

He’s afraid of you.

And that knowledge almost drowns you.

“Bucky-,”

“No,” he says, cutting you off. “I don’t…I don’t want you here.” He won’t look at you, hurt and embarrassment burns a hole into your stomach, acid dripping through your veins. Your heart gives a painful thump. “Please. I don’t want to hurt you….I’m sorry. For whatever brought you to me.”

He doesn’t realize it, but he’s mourning you. He is mourning your relationship. He is apologizing for being yours.

Crushing despair threats to pull you under the surface of your grief and confusion.

You swallow back the tears burning your throat and force yourself to nod. Like he did not just say something entirely earth-shattering. “I’m so sorry, Bucky,” and you are. For the rest of your life you will regret touching him in that moment, to have him fear your hand is worse than any tourture that could ever be dreamed up. “I shouldn’t-,” you stop and force yourself to snap out of it. This is not about you. “I can’t leave you like this though. Please let me call Steve. He’ll be able to explain to you and help you.”

He nods, looking relieved, something familiar to him, something he knows. A bit of tension drains out of his shoulders. “Yes. Steve.”

Steve, his touchstone to reality.

You back away slowly, move toward the table to grab your phone. Your hands are shaking and it takes you more than a few tries to find his contact and press call.

You remember those first days with Bucky as a friend, serene with slow building trust. You had chatted his ear off on walks around the grounds, held silence with him reverently over books.

He’d learned quickly, brought you a new pen to begin your joint venture through your first book together. The first time you had read from the same pages, instead of the same story from different books. It had required you share space and patience. And you had and it had been so easy.

Sometimes, you had read out loud, sometimes the book was held between the two of you, silence in reading, a code of taps that indicated when you were finished with the page and when you needed more time.

You’ve always understood each other, even in the very beginning.

Especially in the beginning.

For the first time, it feels like you aren’t even speaking the same language.

Now, you wait in the hall outside your own apartment, Bucky’s you suppose, it's always been his and not yours, pacing back and forth, up and down the hall. After hours or minutes or days, Steve emerges from the apartment and you stop.

“It’s the vapor, isn’t it?” You ask, fingers twisting together when Steve closes the door behind him.

Bucky is the kind of person you want to live inside of, warm and caring of those he loved and trusted. You cannot imagine your world without the warmth he offered you.

But hadn’t you always known that the love between you was meant to have an expiration date? Sure, you had not imagined it this way, but you had imagined it.

Imagined the day he thanked you for being his first love after finding himself again and said goodbye.

The day at Coney Island had been hot, the sun setting in the west, the darkening eastern horizon reflecting deep cerulean blue and cotton candy pink on the waves of the ocean. Bucky had been standing close to you, his head bent over yours. He’d been doing that a lot recently, standing so close you felt like you couldn’t breathe, almost afraid for what might happen if you let too much hope drip into your veins.

And then he had kissed you, so suddenly and without any fanfare.

And your soul had mourned, a warning echoing through you that you would break your heart on the shore of this moment.

The only thing you could do when he pulled back and looked into your eyes with a soft smile, was punch him.

A light knock, meant to chastise him more than anything. You were preparing to play the whole thing off as a joke, despite his lingering closeness, despite his flesh hand against your cheek and his left against the bear in your arms, the stupid toy he had won for you at one of the skill booths.

Of course, punching Bucky Barnes on the left arm no matter how light would end in disaster.

He’d been horrified and apologetic, embarrassed beyond belief, his cheeks pink while you searched for someone to give you ice, apologizing and explaining until you pressed a hand over his. “Bucky, was this supposed to be a date?”

“Supposed to be, yeah,” he had murmured. “Guess now I ruined everything.”

He hadn’t but you had been terrified, worried of the future when Bucky realized that you weren’t all that special, that you were only the first kind person to him after he’d found himself again, attached to you as he was while he healed.

He would realize eventually, surely he would.

But that day, you decided you didn’t care, you would take the time he would give you greedily and without restraint because you had loved him for so long, it didn’t matter if his love was fleeting.

Now, Steve looks at you with worry, despair.

“It looks that way.”

“No, Steve, maybe he’s having an episode, maybe-,”

“When’s the last time he regressed in his memory? Not since Shuri got to him and he came here from Wakanda.” Steve looks wrecked, “Not since the trigger words were removed. And not since he’s met you. This shouldn’t be possible anymore.”

“Steve-,”

“He doesn't remember anything from the last five years, Y/N. He thinks he just got here from Wakanda. Remembers everything before that. According to him he’s only been living here for a couple weeks. He says yesterday was the first time he talked to you, that you guys went on a walk together.”

You stare, and your knees wobble, and Steve puts a steadying hand on your shoulder. You can’t make yourself understand what any of it means.

“Maybe, until we figure out how much is what he breathed in and how much is just…Bucky, maybe it's best if you-,”

“Yeah, of course,” you squeak out, trying to cover the crack in your voice. “Best to keep him around things he always knows.”

And Bucky very clearly does not know you.

Not anymore.

Steve says your name, reaches out to you, but you step away, claw marks ripping up the inside of your lungs. “Hey, no, I didn’t mean-,”

But you can’t breathe and so you step away, again and again, until you’re moving away from him down the hall. Fleeing from Steve, but the look too in Bucky’s eyes, empty of the understanding that had always lived there.

Maybe you’d always known that you would lose Bucky, but you never thought it would be like this.

Eventually you stop running and close your eyes and feel the earth tilt, laugh, and spit you out into the cold alone. You lean against the cold wall and try not to feel so alone.

The second time the loop resets, it's better for Bucky.

It's worse for you, because you find out its a fucking loop.

You had avoided everyone at the compound for the rest of that first horrible day, throwing yourself into combing through the intel you had gathered, desperate for answers to your questions, ignoring Steve’s phone calls, sending him to voicemail time after time.

If you couldn’t be by Bucky’s side, then you would help him in other ways.

You would review data and intel until you passed out, until you went blind.

You go back to your old rooms where none of your things are, where you haven’t slept in years and everything is sterile. Where the mugs in the cabinets are plain white ceramic, where there are no books and sheets that do not hold the scent of you and Bucky.

You don’t see Bucky for the rest of that day and it breaks your heart. It makes you feel empty, like the center of your chest is a cavity that can’t be filled. You realize that you’ve been stupid all these years to believe you would ever be able to move on from a love like the one you feel for Bucky.

The next morning things become infinitely worse. You’re working on your laptop at your bare kitchen table when Steve knocks and enters without waiting for you to let him in, a haunted look in his eyes, “It's a loop.”

You close your eyes, exhausted. You haven’t slept in more than twenty-four hours. “What does that mean, Steve?” You snap.

“Have you slept?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve been going over the intel. Tell me what that means.”

Steve swallows and folds his hands together as he sits next to you at the table. “It means he’s not having some regressive episode. He…reset overnight. He thinks it's yesterday again. Asked him what he did yesterday, what day it was, and the only thing he would say is that he went on a walk with you around the compound.”

And that’s how you discover that Bucky isn’t just reset five years into the past, he’s on some kind of self setting loop.

You try not to think about Bucky five years ago, that you had made such an impression on him that he used it as a marker for what he had done that day.

“Why is this happening, Steve? Is it going to reset everyday?”

Steve shakes his head and holds out a hand for you to take and squeeze. “Don’t know. I guess we have to wait until tomorrow and find out.” You briefly grasp his hand but let it go just as quickly, because it is not the hand you want comforting you.

“It should have been me,” you whisper, leaning over your keyboard, fingers cold where you grip the sleeves of your sweatshirt. “I was the one that was going to go through that cabinet and-,” you stop, your throat tight. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll fix it. I’ll let you know when I find something.”

Steve puts a hand on your shoulder, “You need to sleep.”

“Steve-,”

He stands, shoves his hands in his pockets and doesn’t look at you. “It wouldn’t have been any better if it were you. Don’t blame this on yourself. Like you said, we’ll figure this out.”

“You can’t honestly think that,” you say. “This is so much worse. This might retraumatize him and it's my fault because I-,”

“It isn’t,” he interrupts. “Bucky would torture himself out of his mind if it were you. Come say hello to him when you have a minute. I tried explaining to him about you but he seems to think I’m fucking with him. Doesn’t believe you guys could have gotten together.”

The knife in your heart sinks a little deeper.

You scoff instead of crying. “Can’t imagine why.” You look back at your computer screen. It’s not like you were ever any good for him anyways, not like you were meant to last forever. “I think it’s best not to confuse him. Just leave me out of it. He doesn’t know me anymore.”

“You’re an important part of his life-,”

“Now I am. I wasn’t then. Bucky five years ago is going to be confused by me. Stick to what he knows is solid, Steve. That’s not me.”

Steve puts a hand on your shoulder, his grip firm, “You have never been confusing to Bucky. Trust me on that.” He lets go and moves toward the door, not looking back at you as he says, “Get some sleep. Bucky will kill me when he gets his memory back if I let you run yourself ragged.”

You feel empty, like there’s a shiver inside of you that’s threatening to crack open every insecurity you’ve ever had.

You want to cry but you’re so exhausted you can’t manage it.

Avoiding the rest of the inhabitants of the compound is easy. You spend several days combing through intel until you find the notes and research about the vapor and present it to the team, only staying in the conference room briefly enough to present it before hiding back in your room again.

Not being with Bucky is like losing a limb, everything is the same and yet nothing feels the same. You feel strange, unmoored and adrift and you don’t know how to reign in your emotions anymore, so you simply ignore them, going empty and blank instead.

You can’t be upset if you don’t feel anything.

You can’t be upset that the love of your life doesn’t know you anymore if you feel nothing.

But guilt eats at you, because you have abandoned him, and you know Bucky would never do that to you.

Steve is right, Bucky would torture himself just to stay by your side.

If it were you, he would never leave your side.

But you still can’t help but feel that your presence would only confuse him, would only make him hate you later. If, when, he got his memories back, he would hate you, for making the torture of not remembering so much worse.

So, you aren’t expecting to be sought out. Because the love of your life does not remember you, does not know you at all.

You expect the rest of the team to keep him away from you, so that you don’t accidentally do inadvertent damage to his psyche, to the hard won security of self he normally possesses.

You’re worried, worried about harming him, about the flinch away from your hand, about asking for too much and retraumatizing him. About asking for nothing and still hurting him.

Memory is not an easy subject with Bucky.

Memory and the Bucky from five years ago, is a landmine, an unnavigable sea of the unknown.

Likely explaining to him that he’s lost years of memories, relationships, would make him spiral.

And he had to do it every morning.

And it was your fault.

Better to keep the explanations to a minimum. If he did not know about you, he could not think he lost more than he had.

So you’re surprised when, a week after the looping begins, a week where you don’t sleep and hardly eat and spend all your time trying to find out if an antidote already existed, Bucky appears at your door with a stack of books.

“Bucky,” you whisper when you answer the door. “Hi-,”

“Can I come in?” He asks, tilting his head to the side. “Steve said I could find you here.”

You blink in surprise before opening the door wider. Annoyance at Steve for meddling scratching at your skin. “Sure, Buck.”

Bucky carefully sets the stack of books in his hands down on the kitchen table. Your throat tightens when you catch sight of a few of the titles. The books are all well-worn, beaten up, tabbed and scratched in over and over again.

They’re your favorites, books you and Bucky had returned to the worlds of over and over through the last few years.

“Have you been sleeping?” Bucky asks abruptly, his eyes fastened on you.

You don’t answer, straightening and making an effort to smile, to act normal. “I’ve been busy…the others explained to you?” You ask, tapping one nail against the top of your closed laptop.

“Yeah, they said you’re the one that figured out that the vapor is a redo on the Winter Soldier program.” He shoots you a rueful smile and sits at the table without waiting for an invitation. “A bad one apparently since it didn’t throw me far enough back into the past.”

You swallow and don’t answer, crossing your arms over your chest, realizing that you’re still wearing his shirt from that first night after the mission.

It hasn’t been washed and the scent of Bucky has almost entirely faded from it, but you can’t bring yourself not to wear it. You don’t want Bucky to notice, worried it might make him feel awkward.

You long to fist your hand around his dog tags, but you can’t, not without drawing more attention to them.

“Steve told me you’ve been avoiding me. I…he said it's been a week.” He looks at you with eyes you know so well but without memories to fill in the gaps of who you are. Before you can begin to answer, Bucky reaches out and catches at the edge of your sleeve. “I’m sorry for whatever happened to make you do that. For what it's worth,” his eyes flick over you, “God, I wish I could remember you. You seem so familiar, like I used to know you.”

Of course Bucky would blame you not being around on himself.

Your heart softens just a little.

You let him tug your arms out of their crossed position, shock pinching your lungs when he cups his fingers around your wrist.

The Bucky you had been tentative friends with five years ago would have never touched you like that.

“Sorry,” he says, letting go of you almost immediately and you have to wonder what expression has crossed your face. “Like I said, you feel like-,”

He ducks his head. “We are together aren’t we? Steve and Sam aren’t messing with me?” You still just stand there and stare and Bucky says softly, “Please say something.”

You sit down next to him, reaching out to run your finger down the stack of books. His scent washes over you, pine and rain, like the strength of a forest home.

But it only serves to make you mourn, because he is not imbued with the scent of peach and plum too, like he’s already lost all of you.

Your heart is in your throat, the edges of your vision a little blurred. “Yes. We are.”

“I figured I should come talk to you today because it seems like maybe you’re beating yourself up about all this. Steve said it's been a week, said you were the one who found the notes about what the vapor does,” he prods again.

You nod, “Turn back the clock, make you the winter soldier again. Guess they didn’t calculate right or it was old and they meant to administer it earlier or-,” Your chest is tight and so you stop talking, fingers worrying at the edge of your shirt instead. “Was there something you needed?”

“To talk to you,” he peers at you with a shrug. “You know me best now, according to everyone.” Bucky’s cheeks slowly turn pink, the blush of strawberry peeking in at the edge of his jaw. “Seems impossible.”

Did he think so? You suppose he would.

To you, Bucky has always been inevitable, the home at the end of your path, the safety of a forest.

You forgot that he had not felt the same way, that he’d come to you slowly.

You try not to let the hurt show on your face, smile at him despite the echoing chambers of your heart. “Yeah,” you say softly. “Maybe a little.”

Bucky is being shy with you, something he hasn’t been in years, not since that first day, and you realize with a jolt that he never gets to tomorrow. He never seeks you out in the common area and asks you what you’re reading. Never overwhelms you with the spring scent of rain.

But he’s brought you a stack of books now and it seems like it's happening again.

Like it's happening all over again.

“Did something happen between us?”

“What do you mean?”

“It's just,” he shifts in his chair. “You haven’t come to see me. And I don’t know what happened that first day. Were we fighting? Did I…Was there-,”

“Oh, honey, no,” you cut him off, a little bit disturbed that he would think you would ignore him over something stupid when he’d lost his memory. “You just don’t know me right now. I’m a stranger right now. I didn’t want you to -,” you swallow. “I always want to be where you are. Just thought it was better that I wasn’t. For now.”

“But I do know you. Now. I know you now,” he says urgently. “Right? I’m supposed to know you.”

“Yes, you do. You’re supposed to.”

“I don’t want to abandon you,” he says and your heart does crack. It splits right up the middle, cleaved in two. “I’ve been feeling like I’m missing something all day. And now…I know it sounds crazy but…I know it's you I’ve been missing. I knew as soon as you opened the door.”

He swallows and before you can reply continues on, “All your stuff is in my apartment. Everywhere there are traces of you. Of a life we have together.” His eyes drift down, hooking on the dog tags that you promptly reach up and first your hand around.

You nod, unable to speak.

“I read all your notes, in these books. My notes. I found-,” he stops himself from continuing, licking his lips and looking at you with beseeching eyes. “Would you tell me about us?” He looks nervous as he flips open one of the books and presents it to you. “Today, god maybe every day who knows, I looked through some of the books and I don't know we seem to be…we seem to really-,” He stops and looks at you, afraid to speak the words.

“Love. I love you. You love me. You’ll see that that’s true when you remember.”

You hoped he would at least, if he did not end up hating you for that first day, for how you had hurt him, terrified him.

His shoulders loosen, he reaches out again to press his fingers to the inside of your wrist, unconsciously confirming his own words to you. Part of him remembers and knows exactly who you are. You remember Bucky when you first met him, those first few weeks together where he listened more than he ever talked.

Some part of him is comfortable enough now to speak openly and frequently with you, to touch you so easily. “Have you been sleeping?”

You remember his hand in yours that day, how he offered his hand to you in a very old world way so that you could hop from rock to rock on the shore of the lake that very first walk together.

Steve’s words come back to you.

You have never been confusing to Bucky.

Bucky says your name nervously when you don’t immediately answer him.

“Not much.” You point to your laptop, “Busy trying to help.

“C’mon, then,” he says, standing and tugging you up. “This can wait.”

“It can’t,” you say, fiercely holding onto the book he handed you. “It can’t wait. I want to tell you about us if you want to know.” And suddenly it's the only thing that’s important to you, making sure Bucky knows how loved he is, what your relationship is like, how you met and got together and found solace together. Because what if he never remembered? What if this was forever?

Your voice cracks with the possibility that everything you’d come to set the foundation of your reality on might be gone. “Tomorrow you’ll forget again and-,”

“Not until tomorrow morning. It��s only afternoon. C’mon. You can tell me while you try to sleep,” he smiles at you and holds out a hand, asking you to trust him in that ever subtle way of his.

And because you really, really would follow him anywhere, you take his hand. You trust the hand that has never led you astray.

“You don’t have to,” you whisper as you point to the bedroom door and Bucky leads you that way.

Bucky, more nervous than he otherwise would be, says “I can stay in the room at least. ‘Til ya fall asleep.”

“‘S okay,” you murmur, patting the space in the bed next to you when you lie down. “I don’t bite. I’ll keep my distance if it makes you uncomfortable-,”

Your throat closes up, but Bucky just lies down. For a moment, neither of you say anything. The pain in your throat eases when he doesn’t seem to feel uneasy, the line of his body loose, muscles soft.

“When we were friends, you stayed over with me a lot. You would stay on my couch. I had a dedicated basket with blankets and pillows and sheets for you. You refused to stay in my room, I think because you thought you might have nightmares and -,”

You stop and swallow.

Silence descends between you, both staring at the ceiling.

A few minutes pass before you turn your head, just so you can smell him better, rain on pine needles, the strength of a forest hidden in the bones of a man.

You jump when he folds his fingers between yours, and he almost pulls away, but you hold on tight.

“Tell me more,” he requests quietly.

You remember that feeling you had when you first saw Bucky, like there was a story living inside the shell of him, a shell to be carefully carved open. You thought you had, that you had split him open and learned the inside of his soul.

Now, you think maybe you haven’t.

At least not all the way.

Should you be afraid to tell him these things? These feelings spiraling out of you? You’ve been afraid before, of saying too much, revealing too much, and making him uncomfortable. But you can tell him now, because he won’t remember in the morning, because every sin you commit might be erased.

And it's not fair to him but you want to share anyway. You want to tell him every tiny feeling and thought you’ve ever had about him.

You want to tell him how steady he is, and how comforting that is to you. How serious and protective he is, and how it annoys you but also makes you feel so safe, cradled in giant hands that would never let you fall.

How he reminds you of sunshine even when he’s being a gloomy little cloud.

How you had wanted to kiss him for years, and when he finally kissed you, you thought there wasn’t enough time to make up for the lost moments.

How he tastes like sunshine and honeydew, how his skin was like salt on your tongue.

You want to tell him about the beach at Coney Island, the dark sand, the moon behind his head, how warm it had been and the pure happiness that had sung right through your bones, burst the seams of your heart.

You want to tell him of all those moments with him where joy he inspired had stolen your breath, made you laugh until you were sick.

Like the irritated pout on his lips the day he’d taken you on a picnic and the bottle of wine had cracked and soaked the sandwiches he carefully made with his own hands. How he’d been so stupidly upset because he’d planned the whole thing and it had gone to shit, how he’d wanted to ask you to be his with a basterized version of a promise ring - dog tags slipped around your neck.

For now, you settle for telling him about the first time he slept in your bed.

You press your forehead into his shoulder, Bucky dipping his own head so his nose is pressed against your temple.

“You only stayed with me here once we were together. You insisted that the couch was fine but you have a problem saying no to me. You were afraid but nothing happened. We laid like this,” you squeeze his hand and then let go, cupping your fingers around his wrist instead, feeling his heartbeat in his veins. “And talked for hours. Just talked. You fell asleep before me and you told me the next morning that you didn’t dream. You said it like it was something impossible.”

You can’t believe he’s lying there with you now, touching you. Bucky five years ago would have never been convinced to lie next to you like this, not after knowing you for mere hours. It soothes you, to know that some part of him knows you, that the soul did not as easily forget as the mind.

“How did we get together?” Bucky asks after a beat of silence.

You tell the story.

Of Coney Island and the unknowable date, the punch and the kiss. And Bucky is laughing, a quiet huff of breath against your cheek.

“You smell really nice,” he murmurs, shifting closer. “Like summer.”

A smile tugs at your mouth despite yourself, “It's nice to know you haven’t been lying about that all these years.”

“Yeah?”

“You not so subtly lean in anytime I use this body wash. Best random purchase I ever made.”

He huffs out a little laugh, his face is so close to yours, his breath warm on your cheek. “Tell me something else.”

“In my version of your tomorrow,” you whisper. “You come to me and ask me about what I’m reading. That’s how we get to know each other.”

Bucky is quiet for a moment, his thumb stroking slowly over the back of your hand, “I know it's probably strange for you to hear, doll, but I really do feel like I know you.” He swallows and looks away from you, his throat working with an emotion you can’t fathom. “Don’t think I’d be able to lie here like this with you otherwise.”

“Maybe memories can be stolen but souls can’t,” you tip your head up to meet his gaze. “If anyone is proof of that it's you. No one ever got to the soul of you.”

His eyes are wide as he stares at you, his breathing hitching as his eyes flick down to your lips. “God ‘m fuckin’ confused.”

You squeeze his hand, “I know. We’ll fix it.”

“Promise me somethin’?”

“What?”

“Don’t stay away anymore. This is the best I’ve felt all day. Like I can calm down. Like I’m…like I’m finally home.”

But he doesn’t know about how terrified he’d been of you that first day, doesn’t know how he’d flinched away from you.

But you nod anyway.

You could apologize for that for the rest of your life. Abandoning the love of your life when he was vulnerable was unforgivable.

“Okay,” you whisper.

“Promise me.”

“I promise, Bucky.”

You feel his lips against your forehead.

Maybe everything will turn out fine.

You spend the day with Bucky, you tell him things he should never know.

Like how the first day he’d kissed you, you had walked the long length of the beach in the dark, moonlight on waves, water soaking your toes and feet and calves.

How you had gone home, thrown a sheet over the couch and laid there with him for hours. He’d tried to get you to go shower and sleep in your bed but you couldn’t because everything felt like a mirage, like it would disappear if you didn’t hold onto it tight enough.

“You smelled so good. Like sand and salt and sea. I didn’t want to let go of the moment and you let me hold on.”

Bucky presses a hand to your back, leans down and whispers, “I’m real.”

And he is.

And so are you.

But that forested strength might forget you.

He certainly would in the morning.

And so as you’re leaving his apartment that night after a midnight dinner and a longer than necessary cleanup effort - you slip his dog tags off and leave them on the kitchen counter.

You stare at your shared bedroom door, at the all pink cookware Bucky had not minded you purchasing in the least still drying on the counter, and think about how if you deserved them, he could give them back to you.

When he remembered.

If he remembered.

Maybe the universe was finally giving him the redo he’d always wanted.

You had never thought that you were the thing that wasn’t right, that didn’t belong.

You don’t leave Bucky again.

Every morning you find him, usually with Steve, just to be safe, and explain to him, again and again.

You smile at him, and make breakfast.

Something different and elaborate everyday, even though he doesn’t remember the previous day’s meal.

Everyday, you watch his shoulders loosen and drop when he sees you, tension fading. Like his soul really did recognize yours and know it was safe with you.

Still, you avoid touching him, going near him at all, even though you yearn for it, and let him come to you.

And he does, every day, he finds his way to you. He touches the small of your back, the skin of your wrist. He presses his forehead to yours, dares to hug you outright some days, sits with you on the couch with his thigh pressed to yours.

This morning, Bucky is flipping through one of your many books when Steve finally departs and you pour two cups of freshly made coffee.

Bruce had finished an analysis of the vapor early that morning, and your hand shakes as you pour. You and Steve had come straight from the debriefing to Bucky. You were already tired, not able to sleep past 3 am.

The good news had been that the vapor would dispel on its own, the bad news was that it could take months.

Months, Bucky might lose months of time.

He had already lost so much in his life, it didn’t seem fair.

And again, you feel an overwhelming sense of despair cast over you.

“Are you okay?” He asks you now, tentative, drifting closer to you, book held in his hands.

You take a careful breath and smile at him. “Yeah,” you say, wiping sweaty hands on your jeans. “C’mere and eat before this stuff gets cold.” You made chocolate chip pancakes, a favorite you had introduced him to.

“How many days have you been doing this?” Bucky asks, ignoring the plate of pancakes you set on the counter, ignoring the demanding way you point at the barstool, indicating he should sit. “You look exhausted.”

“Gee thanks.”

“How many?”

“Doesn’t matter,” you say, taking a sip of coffee. “Eat.”

Bucky’s brow is furrowed as he stares at you. “How many?”

“Don’t be stubborn about this.”

And for a moment you forget, you forget what you’re arguing about because it's so normal. One of you being inexplicably hardheaded about something stupid.

The divot between his brows, the serious line of his shoulders, the laser focus of his eyes never wavering from you.

It’s all so familiar and normal.

So, you reach across the counter and press a thumb over his brow.

He doesn’t flinch from your touch but you still jerk back, horrified at your mistake.

Bucky frowns but doesn’t comment on your actions.

“I’m not the one being stubborn,” he says, finally taking a seat at the counter, spinning the mug around so he can see the front, the Georgia peach mug you picked up for him in Savannah. His eyes turn toward you and you explain before he can even ask.

“A storm trapped me in Georgia and I had to stay in the airport overnight. You were so upset because it was hurricane season and you threatened to drive down and get me.” You reach out and touch his wrist, his nonreaction to your touch giving you a burst of confidence.

He doesn’t jump and you sigh, stepping around the island, closer to where he sits, taking strength in the shade of his forest. “I got you this as a funny consolation prize. You're obsessed with peach.”

“Noticed that in the shower this morning.”

“Used it too,” you note, leaning in.

But you miss the gentle scent of him in the mornings. Peach and honey, but rain and pine too, the lingering scent of sleepy cotton from the sheets.

Bucky takes a sip from the mug, and then says, “Tell me how many days.”

You let go of his wrist and take a seat next to him, watching as he frowns down at his own skin, the place you had been touching.

“I think we’re heading into week six,” you try to say casually, like you did not count each second. “Thirty-six days.”

Bucky’s mug clicks down hard against the counter and you cringe, trying not to meet his eyes you focus on spearing a bite of pancake. He says your name gently and you glance up. “I’m sorry,” he says, completely and utterly incomprehensible to you.

You pause, that ever present tightness forming at the back of your throat again. “Why are you sorry?”

“Can’t imagine doing this every day,” he says.

You laugh and don’t meet his eyes, focusing instead on his dog tags which now hang around his own neck. “Bucky, you are doing this everyday. And thanks to me, you can’t remember any of it.”

“But maybe it's worse to be the one that remembers.” He reaches out, touches the inside of your wrist gently. “Maybe it's so much worse. In this case.”

You let yourself be pulled toward him, and even Bucky seems surprised, engulfing you in a hug you didn’t know you needed. “Every day for thirty-six days? When I get my memory back, I’ll spend the rest of my life apologizing for this.”

“It wasn’t every day and it isn’t your fault,” you murmur, tentatively lying your head against his shoulder, amazement coursing through the veins in your heart when Bucky sags into you, holds you tighter. “It's my fault and I left you at the beginning when you would have never done that to me.”

For a moment he doesn’t reply, but then he strokes a hand down your back and with infinite patience says, “I’m sure you had a reason.”

His belief in you chokes you, threatens to overwhelm you, because he has no reason to think that you were anything but selfish, that you had fled at the first sign of trouble. You circle your arms around him anyways, “I failed you Bucky. It should have been me. And the first day, I was confused and you were afraid of me and I reacted badly and I touched you when I shouldn’t have. And I’ll never forgive myself for that. You had to come find me after a week and you didn’t know that that had happened obviously and-,”

“And you were the one to find information about the vapor so quickly,” he says. “You’re running yourself ragged being here now. Don’t think I don’t know. I know tired when I see it. Are you sleeping?”

You want to cry, but the tears don’t come. “It’s hard to sleep without you now. I’m not used to it.”

You wonder if, when, Bucky remembers you would regret speaking these truths.

Of admitting constantly how much you loved him, how codependent you were, how much you relied on him.

He doesn’t say anything, just holds you tight.

You don’t sleep without Bucky lying next to you.

And you wonder at all the sleepless nights he’d endured alone.

You wonder at the ocean of silent sheets he had lain in, all the terrible sleeps he must have had throughout the years.

In the mud during the war, on hard packed earth and concrete and stone, the desolate sleepless sleep in ice.

And then, when he finally got the chance, beds and sheets and blankets might have been harder for him to adjust to.

He hated the feeling of the cotton against his skin, hated the softness of the mattress, hated the detergent used, the smell of it reminding him of something long forgotten.

But it had changed that night with you.

That was the first night you felt safe, and you think it was the first time Bucky had felt that way too, at least in a long time.

You wonder how he sleeps without you now.

Bucky presses one hand to your cheek, turning your head so he can see your eyes. “I don’t sleep well without you either.”

You blink, not sure how he would know something like that.

Bucky doesn’t seem surprised, and you suppose that comes with years and years of living with uncertainty. “Do you remember-,”

“I don’t know. I just know I have a few strange memories.”

“Like what?” You whisper. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Bucky slots his fingers between yours. “Just trust me when I say I know I sleep better with you.”

Something inside you breaks, shatters just a little bit, so you lean your head against his shoulder, feel him kiss the crown of your forehead. “How are you being so calm about this?”

“I’ve lost memories before. This is the easiest version of that. Steve is here. I know I can trust him to explain. And then I look at you and know I’m home. I’m safe, I never was before when I couldn’t remember.”

And it's your fault he has to do it again.

Bucky strokes your back gently and you hate yourself. Somehow you are the one being comforted despite being the one who remembers, the one who failed.

You pull away and touch his cheek, “Can I tell you something?”

“Anything.”

“Sometimes we dance in the kitchen when we cook, and you always pick Bryan Adams songs. It's not often I can convince you too so it's usually a one person show.” You say, remembering when he found the On a Day Like Today record at a flea market. You remember him listening to the whole thing lying on the couch, arms crossed over his chest, eyes closed. You’re pretty sure he’d fallen asleep that first listen. “And one of your favorites became When You’re Gone.”

Bucky looks at you with wide eyes. “Is this about to become morbid?”

You laugh and slide off your stool, stepping between his legs, Bucky just pulls you closer. “No. I was thinking about how there’s a part that makes a lot of sense to me lately. It goes like-,” And you start to open your mouth to sing but quickly snap your mouth shut. “You should just listen to it.”

“Sing it,” he requests, fingers looping around your wrist. “Please. I don’t know the song.”

You shake your head, “Just know I miss you a lot. I can’t do anything without thinking about you.” You try not to feel embarrassed about your words, about admitting something that should be obvious. “You should look at the records. They’re all yours.”

He frowns at you, like you’ve suggested something bizarre, “The records don’t tell me anything, sweetheart.” He gestures at the book he had been holding earlier, “Those do.”

“They’ll tell you something about yourself,” you say. “I watched you collect those for years. I watched you form a collection. I watched your music taste change.”

Bucky owned records of everything, from pop to old country classics and blues, rock to hip hop and alternative.

“You’re more interesting,” he says. “Yesterday, we went on a walk together. You talked so much, and my heart almost beat out of my chest when you came down the hallway and stopped in front of me.”

You stay quiet, still, waiting for more.

He’d never told you this before.

“Everyone else was avoiding me. Giving me space. But you didn’t, at least not forever.”

“I waited, you know,” you say. “As soon as you got here I wanted to know you. But I wasn’t sure if you wanted to know any of us.” If Bucky was sharing then so could you. You could tell him things that you wouldn’t have otherwise, because you have a feeling that the Bucky that did not have at least most of his memories shuttered away in a loop every morning would not be telling you this.

He was afraid of being too much, just like you always were.

“You did?” He tilts your chin up, so he can rest his forehead against yours. “Why the hell would you want that? To want to know me?”

“I just knew. You were meant to be mine somehow.”

“Somehow?”

“Anyway you would let me.”

His lips are so close to yours, and you wonder what memories he’s gathered and retained. “I thought the same thing yesterday,” he says. “That I would stay with you no matter what.” Bucky licks his lips, eyes flicking down to your mouth. “But I didn’t feel this pull yesterday. This connection. And now I do.”

“It's five years in the making, sweetheart,” you say. “I had a crush on you the moment I met you.”

“Crush huh? I think I know something about that.”

Something in you shines to know that he had a crush too.

“We don’t know if it’ll work and there’s not really a way to test it,” Banner says. “ Barnes’ system seems to be burning through the vapor quicker than it would a normal person, which is a plus. But since your memories seem to be coming back, you could just wait it out. Probably would only take a few more weeks.”

“But I could remember everything tomorrow if I take it?”

“That’s the hope.”

You don’t say anything, the hole is your chest crumbling into a crater. “How many days has it been?” Bucky asks.

No one answers, because he’s staring at you.

It takes you a moment to find your voice. “Forty-nine today.” You cringe at the way your voice creaks.

You swallow, and try not to cry, exhaustion weighing you down, guilt and hatred and grief.

Bucky doesn’t say anything, just stares at you from across the table. You watch half formed memories flicker through his eyes, a steely determination settling in. “I want to take it.”

Of course he did.

“Bucky-,”

“No. It's my decision. I won’t make you keep doing this.”

You huff out an annoyed breath. “I’ve been doing it and I’m fine. You should think about this a little.”

He stares at you, piercing and irritated. “You aren’t fine,” he snaps.

But Bucky has never really denied you anything, and apparently this version of him can’t either.

At least not immediately.

“I’ll think about it,” he concedes after a few tense moments, but he doesn’t look away from you as the team shuffles out of the room.

Eventually you glance away, not able to hold his gaze any longer.

You try to take a deep breath but your lungs just shudder and hitch painfully around the air. “Why don’t you want me to remember?” He asks eventually, sounding so hurt and soft it makes you want to cry.

“I do,” you say to the table. “I do want you to remember. That’s all I want.”

“Then what’s wrong, honey?”

“I’m worried about what you’ll think of me when you do remember everything. And maybe I’m selfish for that but I want to keep you for a little while longer.” You still can’t look at him but he becomes hard to ignore when he reaches across the table and takes your wrist between his fingers.

He never forgot that, never forgot that gesture between you so comforting and warm. Bucky’s thumb tracks back and forth over the thin skin of your wrist.

“It's my fault you lost your memory,” you continue, finally meeting his eyes, your story, your truth of the universe, the soul yours had been waiting for. “It should have been me. I wish it would have been me. And you will too when you remember. You’ll know exactly what was taken from you again. You’ll remember the first day you forgot-,”

That first day haunts you.

How he looked at you with mistrust and fear, uncertainty.

“I want you to remember, obviously I do. I’m just afraid. I don’t want to lose you. They don’t know what the antidote is going to do. What if you don’t remember anything?”

Your other questions go unspoken.

What if you had to start over? Should you? Would you have to tell him about how afraid of you he had been, how he’d told you to leave?

Would you have to tell him how you abandoned him for a week, telling yourself it was for his own good?

“I’m not-,”

“Don’t,” you whisper. “Please, Buck, you can’t know. Neither of us can. I want you to remember. But I want you to do it safely. At least this way we know you’re remembering everything.”

“This is safe,” he says. “You trust them, right? Steve does?”

You shake your head, “I trust them but it's not like this is a precise science, honey. It’s not like this has ever happened before and you’ve lost so much already-,”

“But look what I end up gaining, sweetheart. I get you. I get all this.” His fingers tighten on your skin and fear creeps into his voice. “Would you explain again? If I don’t?”

“Of course I would. No matter what, I would,” you whisper. “God, I’d do it forever. You’re it for me Bucky.”

You want to say, I worry that I’m not it for you. You deserve better.

He nods, staring at you in that very Bucky way, intense at all times. “And I won’t abandon you.”

“Okay,” you say, begging the universe to let it be true, that he would still love you after this failure, gripping his wrist in return. “Whatever you decide - I’m here.”

That night, you try desperately not to worry.

You try to be strong and not to show the fear that buzzes inside your chest.

Bucky had swallowed the antidote without the slightest reaction to it in the medical wing a few hours earlier.

“Wasn’t that gross?”

“I’ve had worse.”

You hadn’t wanted to know in that moment what was worse than the foul smelling concoction he had downed, and so you hadn’t asked.

You’re resigned to spending the night with him, and so you stand in your own living room feeling very much like a guest.

It’s your blankets folded over the end of the couch, mostly your mugs in the kitchen cabinets, a whole bookshelf filled with your collection from before you had met Bucky.

You stand in the center of the room and hug your arms around yourself, waiting for Bucky to finish up in the bathroom. Though you had cooked and Bucky had eaten, you had not been able to.

The nervous butterflies beating against the inside of your ribs would not let you.

You haven’t been back inside your bedroom since that first night and you’re terrified at the prospect, you can’t really even bring yourself to look at the door, the imprinted image of the way Bucky stared at you haunting you, the way he had backed into the wall beside the door.

The nerves swallow you so completely that you don’t realize Bucky has been trying to catch your attention, that the sweet smell of rain and pine and honey is drifting toward you on a cloud. “Sorry,” you say, trying to smile at him.

“‘S okay. You comin’?” He jerks his head toward the bedroom. “Think we both could use some proper sleep.”

Bucky drifts closer to you, approaching you slowly like you’re a wounded animal about to bolt. “I don’t know if that’s -,” you stop and swallow. “I think I should stay here. On the couch-,”

“Now c’mon doll. If it were me, would you let me stay on the couch?”

“No.”

“Right,” he holds out his hand, and you press your fingers around his wrist. “So come on.”

You allow yourself to be tugged into the bedroom. It's much neater than you left it, though all your things are still there. But you aren’t sure where you belong in that moment and so you just stay nervously by the door as Bucky turns down the sheets and duvet, lowers the lights.

He turns back to you and gestures you closer, “If you really don’t want to, you can stay on the-,”

“I want to, Bucky,” you murmur. “I just…you don’t remember but-,”

“Honey,” he says, “Whatever bad reaction we both had that first day, it's okay. We were both confused.”

Shock renders you silent for a moment. Did he remember? For a moment your mood lifts, your soul lightens. “How do you know what happened?”

“I don’t. But you’re like an open book, sweetheart. It isn’t hard to guess.”

“I hate you.”

He laughs and climbs into bed, looking at you patiently.

“Can I borrow a shirt from you?”

You’re already in your pajamas but you want to feel at home, and home is in bed in one of Bucky’s shirts.

“‘S all yours anyways.”

You pause, hearing the echo of something in his words, but quickly move on, grabbing a favorite of yours, one well worn and well loved, before turning your back and tugging your sweatshirt over your head to exchange it for something much better.

You’re wondering if maybe you should have gone into the bathroom to change so when you turn back you only giggle a little.

Bucky is staring pointedly at the ceiling, a pink tinge in his cheeks. Something about it warms the marrow of you, makes you want to curl inside the sunshine of him.

You cross to your side of the bed and slip in beside him.

You’re trying desperately not to look at Bucky where he reclines against the headboard, arms crossed behind his head, and so you notice almost immediately that something isn’t right.

Bucky has your pillows and you have his.

You start to ask and then think better of it.

You don’t want to embarrass him by pointing it out. You can feel the spill of nerves inside yourself as you consider why he might have switched them.

Like he might have preferred the scent of you. Been comforted by it.

You turn to your nightstand instead. It’s been cleared, your things stored in the drawer which you reach over and tug open, seeking the book you started months ago that’s hidden there.

“Doll,” Bucky says sharply, sitting up abruptly, but you’ve already opened it.

A stack of polaroids lie there atop the usual fare, along with a folded bunch of paper.

You lift the stack of photos, what looks like a pile of snapshots Bucky had taken of you with a vintage polaroid camera you’d gotten him one year for his birthday, photos you had never seen. But photos some version of this memory-less Bucky had apparently found somewhere and sorted through.

When you reach for the paper though, Bucky says, “Leave that. Please.”

“Why?”

“You’re only meant to read it if I don’t remember tomorrow.”

Your fingers hover over the innocently folded paper and you consider grabbing it anyways. But you pull back and turn to him.

Bucky is watching you carefully, eyes nervously darting down to the photos in your hands. “And I found those pictures…at some point and left myself a note to look at them first thing. I’ve…I didn’t tell you and Steve but I left myself a note each night, to explain, to tell myself to look at these pictures as proof and-,”

He continues talking and you want to be mad but you can’t. You want to be mad that he had let you worry every single morning that he would reject you, your belly in knots over it.

“It made it easier to stomach, going to sleep knowing I would lose everything, if I knew I had some control and that I was helping myself in the future, that I wouldn’t be as freaked out.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I don’t know. I thought you would think I didn’t trust you.”

“Did you not?”

“No, I think I just wanted something that I knew was mine.” His brow is furrowed tight and you know he’s nervous. “I wrote you a letter but the other part is all the letters I wrote to myself everyday. So you can see for yourself that I-,” he stops and glances away from you. “Doesn’t matter. You’ll see if you need to.”

You nod and decide not to push him about it, flipping through the photos, watching years flick past, pictures Bucky had never shown you. He takes them gently from your hands and carefully picks to one. “This one has been my favorite for every reset. I know, I told myself so.”

It would be funny, if it weren’t so fucking tragic.

The picture is of you before that horrific picnic date. You don’t remember a picture being taken, you aren’t sure who even took the photo considering Bucky is in the picture next to you. You’re walking to the car you had borrowed for that day, looking back over your shoulder with a smile, Bucky is watching you with a lovesick expression, one of hopeless, unending endearment.

“I have never seen myself look like that,” he says. “I can’t remember ever feeling the way I look in that picture. But god, I woke up this morning and read my own fucking letters to myself and looked at that picture and thought bullshit, no way. Not you. There’s no fucking way I got you. And then you walked in here with Steve and-,” he strokes his thumb over your face in the picture. “-and it was like the world stopped turning.”

He faces you, drops the photo and tucks your face between his hands, “I have never felt a love like this. It’s like I’ve always known you. I didn’t have to think about anything today because I knew that you knew me and I knew you. And whatever I said or did, you would understand.”

You don’t answer for a moment, pushing your cheek into the cool metal of his left hand. “I love you.” Your head spins with the admission, something you’ve told him a million times before. “You thought you couldn’t get me?”

The armor that Bucky wears always falls away when he’s with you and this moment is no different, you’ve always been the one to poke the bruised skin, to see the fleshy raw feelings he kept hidden. “No way in hell did I think I actually got that lucky. So you know when I tell you not to worry about whatever happens. Know that’s true. I fall in love with you every day. I know I’ve fallen in love with you every day.”

When you can’t find the words to reply, Bucky sighs, gathers the polaroids and sets them to the side before pulling you close, pulling you down against his chest. And when you turn your nose against his shirt, all you can smell is him, rain on pine.

“You don’t smell like peach,” you whisper.

“You get irritated when I smell too much like you,” he says.

It's something he shouldn’t remember and it makes you smile. “I like when you smell like me too.”

He rubs one hand down your back, seems soothed by your reaction to his admission. “Bucky,” you murmur against his chest, the first time you’ve been in your own bed in weeks.

“Yeah?”

“I hope I never have to read your letter. And I hope you know that you’re mine. I got you so long ago, I won’t give you up.”

He kisses the side of your head, and you feel like everything might be alright. “Never give me up, sweetheart. I know I belong to you.”

Just like last time, you wake before Bucky.

You wake with your nose nestled between his arm and his ribs. His chest is rising and falling slowly, sleep still drawn over his face. For a moment you consider getting up, slipping out to the living room.

But you don’t.

You’re so terrified of the last time.

So afraid that he won’t know you, that he will be fearful of you again.

You think of the note, and wonder when he started writing to himself. Was it after that first night? Did it traumatize him just as much? Did he write of your abandonment?

You clutch him tighter, feel the rise of his breath in your fingers and press your face back to his ribs, the scent of the forest growing inside his bones invading your senses.

He’s warm, warmer than a normal person.

Cozy, like being inside on a wet autumn afternoon.

The pine and sunshine scent of him almost lulls you back to sleep, and you’ve been so tired you almost let it.

But then the arm lying against your spine flexes, the fingers against your hip curl into the fabric of your sweatpants.

You go painfully still, peeking up to watch his lashes flutter.

The world is silent and still, the only movement that of the flutter of new morning sunshine across the floorboards.

You swallow tightly as he blinks away sleep, head turning lazily to gaze down at you.

Fear chokes you as you wait for the dawning confusion, the horror, the hatred.

Something other than the love in his eyes.

But none of it comes, you’re boneless as he shifts and pushes you back into the pillows, not looking away from your eyes. He cups his fingers around your wrist, thumb soft against your forearm.

“I remember,” he murmurs. “Everything. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I missed you so bad. I’m sorry you had to do that all on your own-,”

Grief and relief overwhelm you in equal measure and you let out a strangled noise, gripping his shirt with your free hand.

“No,” you say, desperate and pleading. “Don’t you dare, Barnes. I’m the one who's sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Baby,” he says softly, nuzzling your cheek, ignoring your plea. “Thank you for taking care of me. You were so good. That first day? I know exactly what you’re thinking. I wasn’t afraid of you, I was afraid for you. To me I’d only just met you and I couldn’t stomach the thought of hurting you, not when you were so kind and gentle and understanding. I usually hurt people when I can’t remember and-,”

You kiss him, just to get him to shut up, sliding your hand to press against the back of his neck until he lets his weight sag against you. It’s the first time you’ve kissed him in fifty days, the taste of honeydew and summer on his lips, like home and firsts.

“But it's my fault,” you whisper when he pulls away, forcing you to breathe and meet his eyes when he pushes his forehead against yours.

“No. It’s just something that happened.”

You feel tears threaten to drip down your cheek, eyes blurry with salt. “I’m still sorry.”

“Okay, but you don’t have to be. You’re mine, sweetheart. How could you ever think I wouldn’t come back to you?”

You want to devour him in that moment, just so he would know how firmly embedded in your DNA he is, that you would never let him slip away.

But you settle for pulling him closer, kissing him harder, biting into the bittersweet sun that is Bucky Barnes.

You breathe him in for a moment and your heart stutters when he pulls away, and tugs off his dog tags. “You gave these back?”

“You didn’t know what it meant. You didn’t know what it meant and I wasn’t sure you’d want me to have them anymore and-,”

He tucks them inside your fist, “I know what it means to see them on you. I knew that day I came and found you when you were hiding away. You made a promise, remember?”

“To never take them off.”

“Right,” he murmurs. “They’re yours. Not mine. Even if I hadn’t remembered anything I would have found my way back to you. I promise.”

“You really think so?” You whisper, eyes wide, watching him watch you with a softness that was too good for the world.

“I have the letters to prove it.”

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