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Post-mission, since exiting the quinjet and breaking off from the rest of the team, Bucky has been eerily quiet. And Steve — who is only an unforgivable dummy when it comes to things he views as menial, like his general health and well-being — knows exactly why his friend is acting this way. By the stubborn set of his patriotic jawline of justice, Steve also clearly knows that his goose is as well as cooked.
Good. The pain in the ass pugilist more than deserves Bucky’s cold shoulder for choosing to brazenly forge into, uninvited and without backup, a HYDRA stronghold; Martha’s freakin’ Vineyard of all places to throw down. Feckless. Reckless. Without self-regard. Bucky’s best friend’s still a goddamn punk who can’t, now or ever, keep that obnoxiously symmetrical nose of his clean.
And Bucky? He hates that shit. Hates it. Has always hated it, if his suddenly landsliding memories of dragging Steve from one self-immolation or another are any indication.
Fists clench and unclench in that barely subdued brutality that he hates in himself. Further, he abhors bringing these demons into their home, the only agreed-upon space where violence will not be tolerated. Bucky steamrolls through the door first, Steve’s annoyed huff follows in his wake but tough-titty cuz Bucky is not, is not going to give in. Not bothering to drop any of his tac gear or even remove his shitkickers, Bucky is mere steps from the bathroom — his shower, salvations from both their powder-keg tempers — when he is thwarted.
“C'mon, Buck, you don’t gotta be like that.” Steve, exhausted, runs a slightly trembling hand through his helmet-flattened coif; a tick, a tell. “S'not like I’m hurt. Barely a scratch, just a coupla pricks from those robowasp things.”
Smacking his incredulousness onto the bathroom doorframe with a hearty thwack-thwack, Bucky gears up for the fight he has been aching to avoid.
“Barton was perched, Nat was seconds from securing back, Sam was airborn,” Bucky ticks off each name and status on a flesh finger; then points at himself, as Steve, resolute, glares his defiance.
“And me? I was half a fucking block from your six. Which I explained in your comm. Then, because you’re a punk who needs telling, I told you to wait. Which you chose to ignore. Before running in hot, wielding that glorified trashcan lid of yours.”
“Look, it’s not like—”
Bucky holds up his palm in cease-and-desist, too seething for this conversation to lead anywhere but a place he remains stalwartly unwilling to go. No, Bucky will be the bigger man.
Exit stage anywhere else. Shower, cool off and down, and try to wash this shitty day down their drain. Then, maybe steal away to the gym to deliver a brutal de-sanding to six or sixteen of Tony’s enhanced punching bags rather than to Steve’s awful pretty face. Practical, but not a saint in his own right; no, Bucky only sides with the angels.
Making the very adult, thank you, decision to cut this argument to the quick, Bucky turns his back to his friend when Steve, predictable pilferer of the last word, delivers the final KO.
“Whazzit even matter to you what I do?”
Steve might as well have cold-cocked Bucky for all the rage he throws behind that sentence.
What does it even—? Oh hell no.
With a force that loosens the hinges and rattles the mirror cockeyed, Bucky slams the door behind him. Seeing the entirety of the red spectrum, he takes his lightning rage out on the shower; the one that he is sharing with his knife.
“Steve” had been the name, was the person, Bucky had known even before he’d known himself, when the Asset had first recalibrated to end-of-the-line. And every day since, Bucky has tried to prove to Steve, if not in words then by deeds, that he is everything, on top of being Bucky’s lone tether to this world.
Seems he has failed quite spectacularly in that goal, if today’s argument is any indication.
What does it matter? Okay.
Regardless of consequence for the first time maybe ever, Bucky carves his heart into their shared wall, their shared life. Even for a super-soldier with countless reboots, the status quo of circling each other is not enough, will never again be enough. Bucky makes it clear that in no uncertain terms to Steve’s earnest query exactly why it matters.
Knife solidifying his truth into wall, Bucky, tired of the endless dance, finally leaves that stark, explicit confession for his best friend, the one he has always put before all else. The only damn thing Bucky has ever — will ever — love.
YOU’RE IN MY VEINS YOU FUCK.