Title: The Shape I'm In
Pairing: Steve/Bucky
Rating: M
Warnings: none
Spoilers: canon divergence from the first movie.
Wordcount: 2661
Summary: [AU where Bucky never fell.] They win the war. Steve and Bucky come home and deal with their feelings.

A/N: Love to Sara, my partner in crime.

They called it V-E — victory in Europe — but all Bucky knew was that they were alive.

"You hear that, Steve?" Bucky said, even though Steve was right next to him grinning like the sun. "We're going home."

Steve stopped clapping just long enough to throw his arms around Bucky — and was he ever going to get used to that, Steve's body tall and solid instead of being all skin and bones — and said, "Yeah, Buck, we did it," in a low, wet voice, and it was all worth it, sleeping half-frozen and drinking more dirt than coffee, even the days of being strapped down on a lab bench muttering name-rank-serial number.

—

Their train pulled into the station as the sun was setting orange over the river. Bucky had his case in one hand and Steve on his other side as they stepped off the platform, and he honestly thought that'd be the end of the war.

—

They got an apartment with two bedrooms, and it was okay because it was Uncle Sam footing the bill. They had proper mattresses and pillows that weren't rocks, and the first day back Bucky scarfed down a slice of bread with a scrape of real butter, and that was possibly the best thing he'd tasted all his life.

—

In Europe, Steve had still kept his notebook in his jacket pocket, a pencil worn down to a nub, and in the evenings when they'd finished rations and banked the fire low, he'd take it out and draw: Dum Dum with his mustache even wilder than usual, Gabe with a wide grin as he listened to Dernier tell some outrageous story. His mouth was soft when he drew, and Bucky would kick back in his sleeping bag with only half an ear on the murmur of conversation around him and look at the way the light shone on Steve's face.

When they came back, Bucky was the one who bought notebooks and pencils. When he pressed them into Steve's hands, Steve looked at him with a mouth that seemed more sad than happy and said, "Thank you, Buck," very quietly.

—

In Europe, when it got colder they'd started pairing up in their sleeping bags, pressed tight to each other to catch their body heat while the cold seeped into their bones from beneath — and when it got too cold for even that, somehow Bucky'd ended up curled around Steve in a doubled-up bag without ever talking about it.

And sometimes during the night when it was pitch dark, and Steve was breathing quietly into the crook of Bucky's neck, Bucky would tug Steve closer and Steve would slip a careful hand into Bucky's pants, wrap his hand around Bucky's cock easy and slow. It took Bucky all his willpower not to make a sound, instead biting the inside of his cheek bloody, but Steve always pressed his quiet sounds into Bucky's throat while Bucky stroked him, and it made something in Bucky's chest burn hot and fierce to know that it was him drawing those noises out of Steve.

The first night back Bucky woke up three times during the night reaching for his rifle, and then gave up and rolled onto the floor because the mattress was too soft too warm and it dropped him into dreams of falling, falling, falling. In the morning Steve made breakfast with dark dark eyes and didn't look at him as he passed over the eggs.

—

The thing was.

The thing was, Bucky had thought they'd come back, find a dame for him and one for Steve, and they'd go on as if the war had never happened.

—

Bucky started sleeping with his rifle under his hand, curling around the barrel like he would a bed-mate. It wasn't the answer — he still woke up with his heart in his mouth, hand wrapped so hard around the rifle it left marks on his palm — but it meant that he didn't have to scream, could sit with his back to the wall, the rifle propped on his knee, and wait it out until he stopped shaking.

(Never his hands, though — Bucky had learned that early on, how to keep the target in the cross-hairs even when the rest of him was trembling like he was about to fall apart.)

He didn't dream, not properly. It just came to him in fragments — darkness, and pain, and terror so deep it hurt his teeth. He spit out his name-rank-serial number and that didn't stop it, it didn't ever stop—

In those flashes, sometimes Steve came for him, like he'd done once before, and he unstrapped him with hands big and steady and surprisingly careful. "It's Steve," he said, "Bucky, it's me," and Bucky looked up and smiled and thought Steve had never been so beautiful.

Other times, he waited for Steve, he waited for him and Steve never came. He waited and hurt and hated Steve, a little, before he woke up retching and scrambling for his rifle.

When the morning came on those days, he couldn't make himself look at Steve, even when Steve asked, "what's going on, Buck?" in that quiet voice of his. Steve would touch his shoulder and Bucky would shake him off, because he knew Steve had come for him, had risked everything to break into Zola's lab and bring him out, and he wasn't sure he'd deserved that.

—

In Europe, Bucky had watched Steve's face, memorized his gait and the way his weight settled along his body, because Steve was the only thing of home he still had with him. When he was staring into an unfamiliar sunrise over an unfamiliar land, about to swallow blood and spit lead at people with an unfamiliar tongue, Steve's touch on his shoulder and his quiet, "Ready, Buck?" grounded him, let him remember that he still had a life to get back to, after.

Well, it was after, now, but Bucky couldn't stop watching Steve. It was a different sort of watching — he looked at the soft sweep of his lashes and the curve of his cheek, and he felt something deep in his gut that made him want to touch the lines of Steve's face, to press his own lips to the corner of a red mouth. And — that wasn't right, was it? Because he still remembered how it felt to have Steve panting against his skin, but that was then and this was now and Steve deserved someone who would smile and make him happy.

—

Steve — Steve was still a good boy, even after the war, and when the government told him to come in like a lab rat he went. He left the apartment empty half the day and it was much too quiet for Bucky to stay pacing between the walls like a goddamn animal.

Bucky got a job down at the docks, familiar work; he didn't have to think much about Steve, about anything except the stretch of his muscles, the midday heat pouring onto his back.

"You don't have to do that," Steve said, chewing dinner into tiny pieces and shifting in his chair in a wince; Bucky wondered what they were doing to him down there — if it hurt. "We've got the money."

Of course they did, because Steve was an American hero. "I know," Bucky said, looking down at his plate. "but I don't want to stay here doing nothing, like—like I'm some kind of—"

And it was funny, because Bucky had always thought it'd be the other way around, if anything — that he'd work, and send Steve to his art classes and kept him fed up, because that was what they did, wasn't it? That's what he did, at least: he took care of Steve, because there wasn't anything else he knew how to do.

"Yeah," Steve said, and he wasn't looking at Bucky, either. "You're right."

—

Some days Steve came home early, and Bucky wouldn't know it until he looked up to wipe the sweat off his face and saw a figure leaning against the fence, face bent into the shadow. It always made him feel funny, to think of Steve watching him, because he didn't know what it meant.

Before the war, Steve had drawn him constantly. Bucky learned how to sit still under Steve's demanding hands, letting himself be moved and shaped to Steve's artistic satisfaction. It gave him a thrill in the pit of his stomach to have the whole of Steve's focus on parts of him: his hands, his forearm, the crook of an elbow. He watched himself get built up whole from slow layers of pencil on paper, and when Steve looked up with his hair falling into his eyes and a pleased smile, it'd always make Bucky feel that he was worth something, at least.

But Bucky hadn't seen Steve drawing since they stepped onto a homebound plane in Europe, and he missed it, the clarity of Steve's stare as he drew. This new staring, Steve's head turning away when Bucky looked at him — it made him feel wrong, and there were already too many things wrong with him.

—

Some rare nights when Bucky didn't wake up wanting to scream, he'd wake with his cock pressing into his thigh. Those nights he let the breath slide slowly out of his lungs and pressed his fingers into his boxers, trying to imagine it was some girl's small hands stroking him — but by the time he spilled into his hand he was imagining that it was Steve, all the way back in a freezing Belgian forest when the only warm thing was Steve pressing against him and his wet breaths at Bucky's jaw.

He'd wipe himself off and fall back on to his mattress, letting his own breaths rush out between his teeth; think of Steve sleeping beyond the thin wall and feel shame rise up thick and dark in his chest.

—

The thing was.

The thing was, Bucky knew better, but he didn't know how to fix himself.

—

There was a shout and Bucky came awake in an instant, rolled onto the floor with his hands on the rifle. But this was home, and there were no Nazis sneaking up on him, and the shout had been Steve's, high and clipped.

When Bucky got to Steve's bedroom Steve had his eyes closed but his breaths were coming shallow and in between he was spitting out, "No, no, no." Bucky bit his tongue and wiped his hand on his thigh and reached out to touch Steve's shoulder.

"C'mon, Steve, wake up," he said. Steve's skin was warm under his palm.

There were gasps shuddering out of his mouth. "Bucky?" he said in a rasp. "Bucky."

"Yeah, it's me. You're okay, Steve, you're okay."

But Steve's eyes were still closed, and he turned into Bucky's touch, clutching his hand tightly. "Stay," he said, very low, almost like he didn't want to say it at all.

And maybe a better man wouldn't have, but Bucky was so tired of wanting and he was looking down at the Steve's sleep-soft face. He let himself slide onto the bed, on top of Steve's blanket, the warm lines of Steve's body pressing into him all down his side; and Steve was still holding him like he didn't plan on letting go.

—

In the morning, Bucky woke up in an empty bed that wasn't his own. He reached for his gun and his hands hit paper instead.

He'd thought Steve had stopped drawing, but it was a sketchbook, one of the ones that Bucky had gotten him. He opened the cover, curious, and found himself staring into his own face.

He didn't know how Steve had managed to draw him, because he'd been spending more time than not staring at Steve — his face, his hands, the sprawl of his legs when he was ready to turn in. But there it was, and his face was tilted down but his mouth was lifted up, the way he knew he got when Steve was around.

He flipped the pages, and found himself over and over again — the slant of his jaw when he was looking sideways, his hands curled tight around his rifle in his sleep, his bare torso when he was down at the docks with the heat rising around him and unloading the last of the cargo with sweat running into his eyes. He looked at that for a long time, imagined the ghost of Steve's gaze between his shoulderblades as he sketched the lines quick and furtive.

"Bucky," he heard a strangled voice. When he looked up Steve was staring at the floor, his hands clenching and unclenching, looking almost as small as the Steve in Bucky's earliest memories. "I—"

And that was wrong, because Steve wasn't supposed to look like that, face white and sick with guilt, when he was the best and truest being Bucky had ever known.

"Don't," he croaked, "Steve, don't look like that, please, look at me—" and he got up to press the sketchbook into Steve's hand and touch the curve of Steve's mouth like he'd been wanting to for a very, very long time. "You're not—it's not—"

Steve looked at him, and his face was determined when he dropped the notebook, put a warm hand on Bucky's neck and kissed him, hard, on the mouth.

It was different, kissing Steve — there was stubble on Steve's cheeks and he didn't have to bend his head down to meet Steve's mouth. And Steve was kissing him like a drowning man, like this was his last chance.

Something in Bucky's chest cracked, and before he was aware what he was doing he was sliding down, pressing Steve backwards into the doorframe and his hands following the lines of Steve's body.

"Buck," Steve ground out. Bucky was on his knees and his fingers were digging into the jut of Steve's hips. He listened to the hitch of Steve's breath when he pressed his forehead to the top of Steve's thigh, didn't let himself think about it as he undid Steve's pants.

Steve's hips jerked when Bucky put his mouth to his cock. "Oh my god," he was muttering, and Bucky grinned a little and breathed through his nose and started to suck, the way he knew he liked, until Steve gave a broken sigh and came into his mouth. It was bitter on Bucky's tongue but he swallowed it down, licked him clean.

"Jesus, Bucky," Steve said. Bucky made a move to get up but Steve pushed down on his shoulders, pressed him down to the floor and covered him with his own body. Steve's hands were in his boxers, stroking him to the rhythm of Steve's breaths coming fast and wet against Bucky's neck.

When Bucky came he bit his tongue but the "Steve" slipped out anyway, small and desperate.

—

It took Bucky some time to stir from underneath Steve's body, and when he did Steve pressed, "Don't go," into his collarbone.

"Steve?"

"I can't—I had you over there, and I thought I'd be coming home to you, but you won't even look at me."

"Steve," Bucky said, tucking a lock of hair behind Steve's ears, "it's different here, isn't it?" And it hurt, a little, but it was true, because this wasn't a war-zone, it was their Brooklyn, and he'd known what life here was supposed to be, easy and uncomplicated. "You need someone better than me. Someone not so—messed up, someone who makes you happy."

"You make me happy, Buck," Steve said, burying his face into Bucky's chest so all his words came out muffled. "And I'm just as messed up as you."

Maybe there was something wrong with the both of them, then, that they could want each other like this. But Bucky reached for Steve and kissed him again, soft and long, and it felt a little like coming home.