Chapter Text
Wednesday January 24th 1939
My darling,
... I lie awake all night waiting for the postman in the early morning, and then when he does not bring anything from you I just exist, a mass of nerves...
All my love forever,
G.
The view from the train was fleeting. It was white, jagged; snow-encrusted mountains as far as the eye could see. Bucky’s breath came out visible. He used to breathe out hard as a child in the cold, like a dragon or a steam engine. He would watch the cloud swirl in on itself and peter out, vanishing into the air. Now there was no time to focus on it, to marvel. He had a gun in his hand, and there was a gaping hole in the side of the train.
The metal was curled back, the edges melted from the heat of the gun. Bucky had never seen a gun like it, not in all his days at war. It was massive, and the ammunition wasn’t bullets but something glowing, something like a sun.
He picked up the shield. Steve was yelling, so was Bucky, but he couldn’t make out any of the words. He shot at the Hydra agent with the sun-gun until he was out of bullets, and then there was a flash and the shield was out of his hand, he was out of the train, and it was all he could do to hold on.
The wind whipped his face raw. His hands felt frozen against the handrail he desperately held onto. He felt like one of Becca’s ragdolls, like a body full of beans or cotton, useless, docile.
Then Steve appeared in the hole at the side of the train, his hand stretching out.
“Bucky!” Steve looked pained, looked like he was in some kinda anguish. Bucky knew the feeling. He knew what it was like to look at your best friend and think they were gonna die. He squeezed the handrail tighter. Steve stepped out onto the narrowest ledge, holding onto the rail; his entire body was coiled tight, shaking.
Steve’s hand shot out and clamped down over Bucky’s. He heaved. Bucky risked the move; let go of the rail to grab onto Steve.
Inch by inch, he was pulled towards the train. His arms tired and numbed, his face red and stinging from the wind. He felt like jelly, felt boneless. But Steve didn’t let go, not once.
Above a stomach-swoopingly deep ravine between the mountains, Bucky was pulled back into the train. They fell in a heap together on the floor, the Hydra agent dead only a metre away. There were no words, no sounds, nothing but deep, ragged breaths and the cold that had sunk all the way into Bucky’s body.
His skin tingled, his muscles ached, but he was alive.
He could feel it; his heartbeat thumping rapidly against his ribs, like it’d bruise from the inside.
They didn’t get up for a long time. Gabe completed the mission and captured Zola and the train eventually came to a screeching halt at the next station. Bucky breathed. Bucky was alive.
He sat up, slow and painful, and looked out the gaping hole in the side of the carriage. He could see the mountains, the ravine, the snow and ice and jagged rocks. He could not speak, so he thought, Man. What would have happened if I fell?
*
The war ended and it was—strange. Being alive, that is. Bucky didn’t expect to make it this far, didn’t expect to live through the trenches and the missions, the gore and bloodshed. He didn’t expect to see the boat ride home; the deck packed tight with soldiers clinging onto threadbare blankets and nursing their injuries, internal and not.
He was silent for days on the sea, curled up in his bunk. He was travelling with Captain America; a war hero, a Howling Commando, and they were given their own cabins, while the other soldiers slept on the floor, cramped and tight like sardines across the Atlantic. Bucky’s cabin had two beds, thin and uncomfortable. They were bunked, and Steve slept on the top, his legs so long they hung off the end, his hand dangling uselessly over the side.
Bucky stared at his fingers in the dark. They were long, elegant; painter’s hands, artist’s hands – so used to being stained with oil and charcoal that it was a wonder they were even able to curl around the trigger of a gun. Bucky stared at those hands, those killing hands, those beautiful hands. There was a faint light from the porthole window; the moon, the distant yellow glow of a lantern. He stared at those hands and he prayed.
*
Brooklyn was exactly how he remembered and maybe that was the problem. Bucky felt trapped between the walls of his apartment; they were so much bigger than the ones he and Steve had shared before shipping off. There were two bedrooms rather than one; there was counter space in the kitchen and a table with four whole chairs. The clock on the wall worked, its ticking somehow infinitely quieter than Bucky had ever heard a clock to be. The heating ran year round, the water never came out brown before running clear, the walls didn’t hum with faulty pipes and wires.
It was wrong, somehow. It was all wrong.
Bucky yearned for the rushing of water in the pipes; the chipped tile walls of his old apartment bathroom, the creaky fire escape and splintered floorboards. He ached for the single bedroom; the one bed that he and Steve shared, the scratchy blankets and yowling alley cats right outside their window.
Outside the apartment, Brooklyn was the same and it chafed him, too. The only noticeable difference were the people; they still played music too loud and yelled in the streets. They still worked and raised families, still danced on Friday nights and bought out the bars with whiskey and scotch – but there were less of them. Less men. Less faces that resembled Bucky’s own; less cocksure smirks and raucous laughter. More tightly pinched faces, forcing out the grief. More women wandering the streets with vacant gazes. More children, hanging onto their mother’s hands at the park on weekends, no fathers in sight.
It was wrong. It was strange. The people had been changed, whether they left the city or not, but Brooklyn itself was the same. The buildings and the shops; the cars and the children playing in the streets – only now they wielded painted garbage can lids, Captain America shields that they raised as they ran into battle against the other neighbourhood boys.
And Bucky watched it all from the window of his own room, where Steve was not, and realised that Brooklyn was the same. It grieved, it mourned, but it moved on. Brooklyn hadn’t changed, but Bucky Barnes had, and there was no way of changing that truth.
*
They went dancing.
They being Bucky and Steve and Peggy. She turned heads wherever she went, but so did Steve now. Bucky was used to being the only hot shit in the group, but he travelled with Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter, and somehow he was now the loner; leaning against the dancehall wall and watching his best friend stumble through the steps. Dancing had never been his strong suit, even when he had a smaller body. Now he was big and he was still relearning every inch of himself; it had been almost three years and he was still snapping pencils by holding them too hard and cracking glasses when he placed them on the counter.
Peggy was dressed in red; her lipstick, her dress, her shoes. Her hair was curled, her bracelet sparkling in the lights. She was the kind of woman men chased; the kind who would never let themselves be caught. She didn’t play games; she simply told Steve what she wanted, kissed him from the speeding car as he and Bucky leapt onto that plane, said Would you like to be my dance partner? when they trudged back from the ice; cold and bruised and bloodied.
Steve couldn’t have said yes fast enough.
So, Bucky was jealous. He’d admit it. He watched them dance and twirl and laugh; Steve was messing up the steps again, but Peggy was oh-so-perfect, oh-so-in love, and Bucky couldn’t help but feel the envy grow. He wanted that. He wanted to be out there, dancing. But the truth of the matter was that he was not watching Peggy, he was watching Steve, and Bucky knew he couldn’t have that.
“Wanna dance?” someone said beside him. Bucky turned his head to the side, where a girl with short red hair and classy, stylish glasses, was looking at him. In all honesty, if he hadn’t been hopelessly, desperately in love with Steve Rogers, she was exactly the kind of girl he would’ve been eyeing. But he was, so he’d let her pass him by.
For a moment, Bucky hesitated, glancing back out at Steve and Peggy; Steve was dressed in some of the nicest clothes he’d ever owned; a shirt that fit him properly, trousers that weren’t hemmed and held up by a belt with three extra holes. His hair was starting to grow out from his regulation army length, just a little.
Once, not so long ago, Steve would’ve been here in Bucky’s position; watching Bucky dance with a girl and hoping someone would invite him out onto the floor. Bucky would’ve been happy for him; jealous, maybe, that he hadn’t gotten to do it himself, but happy all the same. He would’ve never let it pass his sight if Steve had turned someone down, and he couldn’t imagine Steve ignoring the same thing now.
He blew out a breath and held out a hand. “I’d love to.”
And it was fun. Bucky Barnes was nothing if not a dancer. In another life, maybe he would’ve been dancing his way across the world, rather than trooping through mud and shit with a gun in his hands.
Her name was Elizabeth, but she insisted he call her Betty.
“Betty and Bucky,” she laughed, and he twirled her. She was a very good dancer, too. Betty was light on her feet with a good sense of rhythm, and after all the classic dances had been played through, she was happy enough to improvise and follow Bucky’s lead. He let himself picture, for a moment, falling in love with Betty and dancing every weekend away; raising their children to jazz and teaching them the steps in the living room; slow dancing the night away when they were old and wrinkled, their bodies not what they used to be.
It was a pretty picture, but it wasn’t for him. Bucky knew the only real future he had was with Steve, and Steve—his future laid elsewhere. If Bucky couldn’t have Steve, he couldn’t imagine himself having anyone at all.
At the end of the night, the four of them stepped out into the cold night air. Steve nodded at Bucky.
“I’m gonna walk Pegs home, alright?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky said. “I’ll walk Betty back. See you at home.”
Steve waved and then they were gone, headed down the road in opposite directions.
Betty tucked herself into Bucky’s side, her arm looped around his. When he lit up a cigarette, she shared it, and they talked quietly about having sisters, about overbearing parents and Betty’s job at the factory. It was light, surface-level, and he didn’t ask for much more, but she gave it to him anyway.
“My fiancé was in the one-oh-three,” she mused, looking up at the moon. It was almost full, just a slither missing. “We didn’t get the letter until after the end of the war. Spent two years dreading it would come, and then when I finally breathed a sigh of relief, it showed up at the door.”
“I’m sorry.”
She hummed. “His name was Daniel.”
Bucky didn’t respond.
Outside her door, they stood in the alcove of the door, dimly lit by the porch light, and looked at each other. Betty’s smile was soft, understanding. She said, “Thank you for the dance.”
“Thank you,” Bucky replied. “I haven’t danced like that in a long time.”
“And thank you for walking me home.” She leaned up and pressed a kiss into his cheek before pulling her keys from her purse and turning to the door. Bucky was about to head back down the steps before she stopped suddenly. “Can I give you some advice?”
He blinked in surprise. “Sure?”
“If you really love her, you should let her know.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That girl, dancing with your friend. Peggy, right? She’s beautiful. I know she’s with your friend, but I think you should take the chance and let her know.”
Bucky shuddered out a breath. “Why do you think I’m in love with Peggy?”
Betty laughed, rolling her eyes like it was obvious. “You were staring at her the whole night,” she said. Betty fit her keys in the lock and leaned on the door, pressing it open and letting the yellow hall light spill across them. She became little more than a silhouette. “Goodnight, Bucky.”
“N—night, Betty.”
She vanished inside the building and Bucky stared at the door, at the spot where she’d once been. He was simultaneously relieved and destroyed that it was that obvious, and yet also so hidden. He could stare at Steve all he liked, apparently, and everyone else would think he was staring at Peggy.
*
He’d fallen in love with Steve at age fifteen. He’d not fallen out of love since.
*
Steve was still Captain America even if the war was over. There was still plenty of need for a super soldier, and still, apparently, plenty of need for Bucky.
“Mm, it’s not the Howling Commandos,” Peggy said through a mouthful of pancake at Bucky’s dining room table. Steve was up at the stove, cooking his own breakfast. “But you’d still be in a team.”
“And what would I be doing?” Bucky let his fork clatter against the plate and picked up the rasher of bacon with his fingers. Steve had a tendency to overcook them, but Bucky had started to like the burnt taste a long time ago.
“Intelligence, mostly.”
Steve snorted. “Needs to be intelligent for that.”
Bucky rolled his eyes. “More Nazis, or?”
“America has a lot of enemies,” Peggy replied, as if they weren’t eating breakfast, and were instead in her office, where this meeting probably should’ve been taking place. But Bucky had woken up Sunday morning, some six months after coming back from the war, and there she’d been; walking out of Steve’s room as if she belonged between these walls just as much as he did. “So Nazis, yes, but there are other groups out there we need information on. It’s not—” she pulled a face. “I’m not asking you to fight again. You won’t be storming buildings or fighting wars. It’s more—interrogation.”
Steve looked over his shoulder and Bucky paused. “Interrogation.”
“We know you’re an excellent sniper,” Peggy said, as if she was rushing to explain a question that hadn’t been asked. “You have skills in combat, in leadership, we know. But we think you’d be suited well to this.”
“To interrogating people.”
“To obtaining information.”
Bucky eyed Peggy. She wasn’t usually one to beat around the bush, but she was also sitting in his apartment eating pancakes. This wasn’t an official meeting; they were not co-workers or colleagues; they were, somehow, friends. Even if they were the same type of person; brash, bold, with a tendency to infuriate each other to no end, they were friends. Steve had made them so. And because they were friends, she hadn’t requested him to fight in battles and shoot people in the head; she hadn’t suggested that he set off bombs or capture enemies of the state.
Because they were friends, Steve would’ve told her about Bucky’s nightmares. Because she’d slept there last night, she’d probably heard them herself.
Steve had been assigned to an operational unit and Bucky had assumed that if Peggy asked him to join, he’d be placed in the same group. But, Bucky supposed, Steve didn’t have the screaming-crying-horrifying nightmares that Bucky had.
In the end he said, “I’ll think about it,” and ate the end of his breakfast. The three of them went to the park and sat on the grass in the beating sun. Peggy’s roommate Angie joined them, and the four of them ate ice creams and simmered in the early summer heat, and Bucky thought all about interrogation; about the pay, about the trigger-happy feeling he’d been carrying since 1943, about how he’d be doing something a lot more important than just working on the docks again.
They got lunch out and returned back to the apartment before the heat turned unbearable in the middle of the afternoon. They opened up all the windows and doors, let the cross breeze through, and danced in the living room to whatever they had for the phonograph. Steve was still a useless dancer, and Bucky said as much, heaving himself off the sofa and nudging him aside to take Peggy’s hands in his own.
He danced with her in the way she deserved to be danced with (though she never seemed less than happy dancing with Steve), and then taught Angie a few steps she’d been wanting to learn. They opened up a bottle and got a little tipsy, and for a few hours Bucky managed to forget his all-encompassing love for Steve and enjoy himself.
When it neared dinner, he flopped down on the sofa beside Peggy, and she automatically dropped her head onto his shoulder, all familiar and friendly. They were friends, he realised. Not because of Steve – even if that was how it started – but because they were both the same kind of brash and bold and infuriating. Opposites attracted and so did similarities apparently.
He said, “I suppose I could come work for you,” and she beamed up at him.
“Oh, I think that’s a marvellous idea. I’ll get you the best team,” she promised. He swung his arm across her shoulders and watched as Angie flicked through their measly record stack with Steve, who had a small glass of the special kind of alcohol Stark had whipped up for him, both their cheeks flushed from dancing and drink. “Some people are born for battles, you know.”
“Hm?” He looked down at her.
“We may think we’re made for one thing, but sometimes it’s something entirely other,” she said, as if she was making any sense to Bucky’s ears. “I thought I would be a seamstress when I was a teenager, and then the war happened and I realised that there’s nothing more perfect for me than this.”
“Than war?”
She hummed. “I think war’s just a small part of it. War’s just the catalyst; now comes everything after.”
*
Bucky went to dinner at his parents’ place every weekend.
They, too, had only changed in that second-hand way of the remainder of Brooklyn; the people left behind, the ones who mourned and lost but couldn’t imagine the horrors the soldiers had seen.
They had no idea and Bucky knew it. They wouldn’t be able to fathom the things he’d done, the things he’d felt. He’d break his mother’s heart to describe them; the bloodshed and the agony; the feeling of flying from the side of the train’s ripped-open wall, the look on Private Matthews’ face before Bucky put a bullet through it, the feeling under his fingertips when he gouged out a Nazi’s eyes.
His mother made dinner and they didn’t talk about Europe.
The dinner table had become more cramped since he left, and his three sisters had grown a little taller, a little older. Becca was twenty-three and engaged, and her fiancé Timothy came to the dinners and talked about his nice, safe office job. He’d been too sickly to enlist, with his limp, but he’d stammered over his words when initially meeting Bucky—Sergeant James Barnes, rather. He’d tried to salute, then shook Bucky’s hand, then thanked him for his service. Charlotte was now twenty, with a whole host of boys courting her from every direction, though she’d apparently refused to give any of them the time of day. And the youngest, Catherine, was sixteen and dropping out of school – she’d swung an acceptance into typing school, and within the year would be one of the best qualified secretaries in the borough.
Meanwhile, Bucky was interrogating America’s enemies and wearing a uniform like he was still at war. It wasn’t something he was proud of, but drawing out information was a talent he’d refined in Europe; he knew what was too much pressure, too much pain, and what was not enough. These were rarely civilised conversations; these were battles for dominance with blood splatter and bones shattering.
Timothy was an accountant. Bucky had the feeling Timothy would vomit to hear even a little about Bucky’s line of work.
They ate their meal weekly and sometimes Steve came along, too. Once or twice, if Peggy was free, she’d settle into the cramped table with them – everyone was so very interested in her, in England, in her role in the army and now her job with the government. They were all so amazed by Steve’s transformation – Catherine especially, with her long-standing crush (and her inevitable jealousy of Peggy – something Bucky could relate to), and everyone told stories about the good old days of small Steve tearing up the streets and regular-sized Bucky following in his wake.
Occasionally, Angie came along too. It wasn’t dependant on Peggy, but simply on if she wanted company and a homecooked meal, and all the girls fell instantly in love; their chatter loud and buoyant and flooding the whole street.
After dinner, Bucky tended to smoke out in the garden and picture himself small, running through the soggy patch of grass, his twin-sized bed squeaking with every toss and turn, his room more like a cupboard so he could have it to himself, rather than share the bigger room with his sisters. He’d imagine himself older, too, hanging out with Steve in his room, reading pulp fiction and pretending to study. He’d brought girls back once or twice, when he knew the house would be empty and he could get away with bringing them into his box-sized room, necking with them in the quiet and slipping his hand up their skirts.
He blew out the smoke, letting the image of Marjorie Bernstein beneath him on the mattress waft away with it. The back door opened and his father stepped out, careful to keep his feet out of the mud and to the small patch of patio. He took a cigarette from Bucky’s pack and held it out for his son to light.
“How’s work?” his father asked. George Barnes was not much of a talker and had grown quieter and quieter as his daughters grew louder and louder.
“Work’s fine,” Bucky replied.
“Better than the docks?”
“Anything’s better than the docks.” This was not strictly true, but Bucky ignored that. So did his father.
“And the apartment? You like it there, yeah?”
“Yeah, yeah. The apartment’s great.” Also not particularly truthful – but Bucky was slowly, painfully settling into the place. He was grateful for the quieter ticking of the clock, for the pipes not rattling in the walls and the lack of creaky floorboards. He might’ve missed the single bed still and Steve’s body pressed up against his, be it on a mattress or out on a fire escape, but he knew to appreciate the small victories even in the face of large losses.
“Steve’s doing good too, eh?”
“Yeah. He is.”
“That Peggy sure is a catch.”
Bucky nodded, sucked in a lungful of smoke.
“You like her, right?”
“What? Yeah. Peggy’s great. She was the best person we could’ve had with us out there, and she’s still as scary and efficient now.”
His father nodded and coughed hard. When he was done, he said, “Then why do you look so sad?”
“I’m not—Pops, what are you talking about?”
“I don’t think your Ma can see it yet, but I can. There’s this dark cloud around you. It’s been there ever since you got back.”
Bucky sniffed and stared out at the fence and the house that backed onto theirs. Their windows were open wide, curtains billowing in the breeze. “Pops. I’m fine, really. It’s—it’s war, you know? You remember it.”
His father shrugged, humming lightly. “I barely saw a thing. But, you—you, son, you were a Howling Commando. We watched all your pictures, but I’d bet there was a lot worse that we’d never see on screen.” He’d be right, too. He’d make a killing if he put money on it. “You know, shellshock’s pretty common—”
“I don’t have shellshock,” Bucky interrupted, his tone a little too hard. He sighed. “I’m fine. I’m just—not over it all. A lot of bad things happened out there. But I’ll be fine, I promise.”
His father nodded and settled a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “I know, James. You just let me know if things are bad. And if you ever wanna come home—well we made your room into a storage closet, so you can’t.” The two of them laughed. “No, no. You can take one of the girl’s beds, or the couch whenever you’d like. I’m sure Becca will be out of here soon anyway; Tim’s found a place by the bay. You’ll have to help us help them move.”
“Yeah, Pops. Sure thing.”
His father kept talking. “And your mother—she thinks you should visit more, if you can of course. I know your job’s busy. She’s been wondering where you’re doing your laundry; she’s always happy to help out, you know. And Charlotte’s been talking for two years about going to a dance hall with you.” His quiet father who rarely spoke filled the air with thoughts and suggestions and wonderings, and the two of them smoked their cigarettes down to their fingertips, talking until they were finally called back indoors.
*
His name was Antonio and he was Hydra. Steve’s unit had found him in a run-down mill somewhere in Eastern Europe, with crates of ammunition and plans to blow up a local village. The war was over, but there were still stragglers, still snake heads that needed to be cut off and burnt at the neck, so nothing could grow back.
He was young, with a passable understanding of English, and dried blood around his mouth from where Steve had used a knife to pry out the cyanide capsule from his teeth before he could bite into it. He was also very good at not answering Bucky’s questions.
He’d been in and out of the cell all day and Antonio was not talking. Bucky actively tried to keep the violence to a minimum – there was something about the feeling of it that warmed him, that made him feel both excited and shameful. It was like a coil in his gut of adrenaline; the possibility of a fight, the sound of gunfire—but these people were not going to fight back. They weren’t going to give as good as they got; they were shackled, hand-cuffed, tied to chairs and just bleeding for the sake of it. For information. For Bucky.
“You’ve had six hours,” Colonel Johnson said, looking through the one-way glass at the Hydra agent. “If you don’t have the stomach for this job, Sergeant—”
“I do, sir,” Bucky said.
“Then get the damn answers out of him, already. We’re on a clock. Rogers’ unit has a new lead and we want what this guy has before we send them out blind.”
Bucky nodded. Get the answers, get the information, give Steve a chance. He could do that.
He slipped back into the cell and sighed, full body. “You’ve got one more chance,” he said. “Tell us what you know.”
The agent spat at Bucky’s feet. “Hail Hydra,” he hissed.
“Fine.” Bucky flicked out his knife and approached the chair. “Time’s up.” He lowered the knife, gently resting it over the agent’s knuckles. “Every time you don’t answer, you lose a finger. We believe there are operational Hydra bases still in Europe, and there have been communications coming from areas in and around Austria. Where are the Austrian bases?”
The agent, Antonio, pressed his lips into a thin line, and lifted his chin. He stared straight ahead, jaw tense.
“Your call, buddy,” Bucky said, and began sawing off Antonio’s middle finger.
*
Becca was married on a Saturday in a small church. Ma cried and Charlotte flirted with Timothy’s best friend. Peggy had gone away for work, and so at the reception, Bucky danced with Steve, laughing and grinning all the while. Steve still hadn’t learned how to dance.
*
They’d been back for over a year when Steve showed Bucky the ring.
He mock-gasped, placing a hand against his chest. “Steven, I will marry you.”
Steve rolled his eyes, setting the ring box down on the kitchen table. Bucky hesitated before picking it up to study closer.
“You think she’ll like it?”
Bucky hummed. It was small and dainty, with three stones, the central one larger than the others. Bucky swallowed and tried to sink the jealousy to somewhere he couldn’t reach it.
It’d only been a year and a handful of months. He’d known there was—something, a spark, between them long before that; but they’d only become something on the day they’d kissed in that car, and Bucky and Steve had landed a plane with a bomb in the ice, barely surviving when they jumped out.
Eighteen months at most and they were getting engaged. Bucky had known Steve for at least twenty-two years and he was still nursing an unreciprocated crush.
He looked up at Steve’s hopeful face. “I think she’ll love it,” he said. “Congrats, pal.”
“She hasn’t said yes, yet,” Steve replied, taking back the ring. “I was thinking of doing it at that restaurant she likes, but I’m not sure. What do you think?”
Bucky tipped his head to the side, pondering. “What about the harbour?”
“What about the harbour?”
“She goes there all the time, doesn’t she? It’s where she likes to think and watch the city from. Not the scummy part, I’m talkin’ about the bit further down. It’s her favourite place in the city.”
Steve considered it for a moment. “That’s a pretty good idea,” he said. “How do you know all that?”
Bucky shrugged. “We’re friends. Friends talk.”
Steve snapped the box shut and tucked it away with a smile on his face. “Thanks, Buck. I’m meeting Peg in an hour, I better go wash up.”
Bucky watched Steve walk away and he had the faintest feeling that he was gonna spend his whole life doing the same.
*
Peggy said yes, because of course she did.
*
They went out dancing and drinking and tearing up the city, painting all the walls red. Bucky refused to sit on the side-line this time and danced with every girl he damn near saw. He swung them, twirled them, twisted them; they came and went, an extension of his limbs, an extension of the song. Around and around and around they all went, and Bucky let the faces blur, the names fall from their lips and straight into the air.
He let himself feel happy for Steve and Peggy, let himself feel proud that his best friend who’d once struggled to get a dame to even tell him the time of day was now marrying the best woman in America. His jealousy simmered, idle, in the pit of his stomach, and he knew that was where it would stay.
Bucky wouldn’t ruin this for Peggy and he absolutely wouldn’t ruin it for Steve. His feelings came second; his were the taboo, the criminal, the unwanted and dangerous ones, and so they’d stay hidden for the rest of their lives if they had to. Bucky knew they had to. Bucky knew he couldn’t destroy everything Steve had, everything he loved.
So Bucky danced with everyone, and Steve danced only with Peggy, and at the end of the night, he chain smoked on the steps of their apartment building and swore to himself, once and for all, that he would get over Steve Rogers.