Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A thin sheen of frost glitters on the cobblestones. It’s disturbed by boot and paw prints, by the scuttle of small shoes and the tracks of a rubber ball. The sun is shining, high in the sky at noon, but it brings no real warmth through the haze of the city. It’s an unusually cold October, that fall in ‘36, and the people coming in and out of the stores and walking to the subway are bundled up with their faces half-hidden in scarves. 

A few children play outside anyway, their laughter bouncing off of the shop windows and ringing through the alleys and up into the cold air. They’re kicking a ball back and forth on the street, playing soccer, shouting at each other in German. They have no reason to conceal their heritage yet. 

The sound of a car motor disturbes the scene, and the boys scramble to grab their ball and clear the street. They watch with wide eyes as the automobile passes, making guesses as to who could be in the car. The president, one of them presumes.

To the kids in Cobble Hill, a car is a sign of utmost wealth and importance. Across the East River, there are colorful lights to regulate the ever-growing traffic, but here on Warren Street, automobiles are few and far apart. It’s not the kind of neighborhood those with cars come to often.

Cobble Hill is a neighborhood of factory workers and shop owners that are barely scraping by. It’s a neighborhood of thick fumes and foreign language shouting in the middle of the night, of women in short skirts on street corners and back alley scuffles. In winter, there’s not enough coal to go around and the shops run out of wool. The pipes freeze and burst each year, and there’s not enough tax money to replace more than one section at a time. It’s a neighborhood of poverty, of ripped coats and stray cats. It’s one of children with pants that are halfway up their shins.

And yet, it’s a home. One quite beloved by those that live there. 

Even those that no longer do.

The wind picks up and Steve Rogers realizes that he’s expecting the smell from the laundry room across the street before it even reaches him. It’s one of the many things he’s realizing he never forgot, even if he wasn’t aware that any of that knowledge was still there.

But it is, he finds, as he automatically steps a little to the left to avoid the drip of the oil from the pipe above. He nearly bumps into Mrs. O’Reilly, and has to stop himself from greeting her.

She passes him with barely a second glance and disappears behind a group of strangers a moment later. Steve thinks that he has no idea how her story turned out, if she was ever able to open that bakery she so dreamed of having.

He’ll look it up when he gets back.

Now, though, he checks his coat again, and, feeling the paper crinkle in his left inside pocket, bows his head and walks on. His breath comes out in a wispy cloud before him.

He attracts a few looks, because of his size, he figures -- people in these parts don’t usually eat well enough to be as big as Steve is -- but nobody stares too long or approaches him, which he counts as a win. 

He’s a soldier, not a spy. He’s nothing close to as good at being invisible as Nat or Bucky, but he seems to be doing okay so far.

Steve is not here to be seen.

He’s wearing the clothes designed to be inconspicuous on a military base in the 50s, but they work well enough that he doesn’t attract too many stares here. He bought a hat off of a gentleman a few blocks back -- for a price enough to feed a family of four for a month (thanks, inflation) -- and he pulls it further down his eyes now, keeping his head low and his shoulders hunched. 

It’s strange, how different he is, when the world around him is just as he’d known it. Everything seems so much smaller now; the doors, the windows, the people, like miniature replicas of the life Steve once lived. The streets are as familiar as anything, but not from this angle. He’s not used to the speed of his strides or the way he sees the tops of people’s heads. The hot dog wagon on the corner of Henry Street is no longer half his height.

Steve feels like his body is too big for him most days, but now he feels more like Alice in Wonderland than ever.

He watches Freddy Kline yell something lewd at a woman as she walks by and nearly gives up on blending in. His fists clench and he feels the familiar urge to throw a punch, but just when he thinks he’s about to stalk across the street, Bucky’s voice rings through his mind -- “Calm down, you damn meathead,” it says -- and so he unclenches his jaw and goes on. He knows he’ll be throwing a punch at Kline soon anyway, even if it won’t land the same way it would in this body.

He continues down the street, turning left in the alley behind the tailor. Then right through a back courtyard that’s always hung full of drying laundry, and right again through another alley. He ends up across from the red brick building he grew up in.

It looks just the same as he remembers it.

The second window from the left on the third floor is cracked. The one above it has Mrs. Preston’s frilly curtains. Susie Ann’s cat is sitting on a sill on the first floor. Ruth Etting’s crooning voice is ringing out tinnily from a gramophone out of an open window.

Steve can’t help but stare for a long moment. 

After all, he spent the first eighteen years of his life in that house, cooking with his Ma and drawing on the fire escape and lying on the floor playing cards with Bucky. These moments come back to him in a wave now, clear and biting and beautiful. He almost wants to cry.

Instead, he takes a deep breath and crosses the street. He turns into another alley to the left of the house and finds himself in the courtyard. It’s empty, luckily. 

Steve approaches the back stairs to the old apartment, tracing the steps leading away from it. 

In the frost, there are tracks from two pairs of shoes, one bigger than the other. They’re close together, shuffling, and Steve already knows that he must have been under Bucky’s arm when they left, as he often was those days. 

Because his mother had less than a month left to live, and it was clear to them all.

And even though Steve knew, at his core, that his Ma didn’t have long left, he didn’t want to acknowledge it. He never told her all the things he should have, about how much he loved her and how lucky he was to have her as his mother. About how she taught him all he needed to know about being Good, and getting back up when he was knocked down. She made him the man he would become, and he knows that now.

So, he’ll slip his letter under the door.

It’s just for her eyes, as the envelope explicitly states, so that he can tell her all of the things he didn’t before. All the things he realized after 18.

(It’s vague, of course. It’s meant to look like 1936 Steve wrote it, not 2024 Steve. His handwriting hasn’t changed much.)

When he steps up to the door though, to that battered piece of wood with the stubborn lock, he finds himself frozen. He doesn’t want to just slip the letter under it and disappear again. 

He wants to walk into the hall and toe off his shoes, leave them in the middle of the corridor so that his mother will snap at him about it later. He wants to see the dried flowers on the kitchen table and the chipping paint on the walls. He just wants to see it all one more time, so that he can really memorize it. 

Steve is a soldier, not a spy, so he takes the key out from under the brick at his foot, and unlocks the door as quietly as he can.

Immediately, he’s hit with the smell of dust and potato soup and the detergent his mother uses. It smells like home.

He breathes it in, closing his eyes for a long moment, holding back the tears that suddenly build behind his eyelids. Slowly, he steps inside and shuts the door behind him with a soft click.

He doesn’t dare turn on the light, so the hall is dim, but he sees his Ma’s coat hanging on the wall and the faded curl of the carpet before him. There’s light streaming in from the doorframe on the right, and the dust dances in the cool rays of sun. The paint on the wall is yellowed and chipped.

As lightly as he can, Steve creeps around the corner, and stands looking out at the living area.

There’s papers strewn all over the floor in front of the window, and one of the sofa’s legs has been replaced with a pile of books. The dried flowers on the kitchen table are just as he remembers them, and there’s half a glass of water beside them. Probably Bucky’s, from that morning. The shelf on the wall is crooked, and the contents of the jars on it are all leaning to the right.

It looks so small to him now. He’s never been over 5’2 here. 

He takes another deep breath and resolves to lay the letter on the kitchen table. 

The floorboards creak beneath him as he steps toward it, and he cringes, suddenly afraid that his mother will hear him. She should be asleep now, but unlike Steve, she’s always had pretty good hearing.

He’s just letting a breath of relief when a voice does ring out from her room.

“Hello?” she calls. 

Steve holds his breath again, even as he feels pressure build up behind his eyes. Because that’s his mother’s voice, and he hasn’t heard in twenty one (conscious) years. He doesn’t dare move.

“I know someone’s there,” the voice calls again, because Sarah Rogers is nothing if not perceptive. “I’m not opposed to gettin’ up and beatin’ the bag outta you.”

Steve can’t help but let out a quiet watery laugh as his eyes begin to fill with tears. Because of course his ill Ma is threatening to fight an intruder with that scrappy Irish lilt of hers. 

He clears his throat. “No need, Ma’am,” he says, setting a voice a little deeper than it would be usually. “Just here to deliver a letter."

“Well, then bring it here.”

Christ, this was a bad idea. He can hear both Bucky and Nat cursing him for being so spectacularly impulsive and obvious.

“I’m, uh-” he swallows. “I’m actually on a tight schedule.”

“Steve?” 

Christ, this was a bad idea.

He panics for a long moment. He should probably just leave the letter and bolt, but his feet feel glued to the floor. He doesn’t know what to say.

“Steve,” she calls again. “What are you doing? Let me see you.”

Steve closes his eyes and is powerless when a tear falls down his cheek. “I can’t, Ma. I have to get back to Gino’s.”

“Get in here.”

Her voice is that familiar tone of stern. That familiar tone of the unsaid ‘stop being an idiot and do as I say’. Steve’s chest aches.

He should bolt, but his mother is calling out to him, asking to see him. And he’s never really been able to deny her anything as it is, but to deny her after what feels like three lifetimes without her? It seems impossible.

So, taking a long shaky breath, he tries, futually, one more time.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Ma.”

He can’t see her, but he knows the expression her face takes on at that. Confused, frustrated, exasperated.

“Steven Grant Rogers,” she calls, “Did you get in a fight again? Get in here right now or, so help me God, I will get out of this bed and come to you myself.”

What little was left of Steve’s resolve crumbles, and so he turns to her room, letter still clutched in his hand -- a little too tightly, he finds, so he loosens his grip and attempts to smooth the crumpled paper.

The hall suddenly seems miles long, when it’s really just a few feet of creaky wooden flooring. Steve knows that at the end, lies the catalyst of the spark that brought him this far, his past and his heritage rolled into one person, one beautiful memory. It’s right there, and he’s walking toward it.

When he reaches her door frame, he pauses again, trying to collect his bearings. The best way to do it is probably just to walk in, rip off the band-aid, because what is he to say to prepare her? 

‘Hey, ma. Just so you know, I’m actually Steve from the future. I’m thirty-nine now, but also I’m from 2024, and there’s time travel now. And somewhere along the way I was pumped full of chemicals so that now I’m 6’2 and 240 pounds and also could easily punch right through your bedroom wall. But hey, you’re going to die at the end of the month, so here’s a letter for you!’

Fuck, this was such a bad idea. 

He swallows again, squares his jaw, and steps around the corner. He can’t bring himself to look up, but he hears his mother let out a startled breath.

Steve hears how she opens her mouth a few times, begins to say something, and then cuts herself off immediately. He can feel her stare.

Feeling like the ground is about to drop out from under his feet, Steve, still staring down at the coffee stain on the worn rug in his Ma’s bedroom, opens his mouth. 

“I’m really just here to drop off a letter,” he whispers. “For you.”

His mother lets out a long breath. “It’s you. What- Steve.”

He nods, but he still won’t look up. He can’t, or he thinks he might break down.

“Look at me.”

And so he does.

Indeed, he feels himself crumble. His shoulders sag, and suddenly his face is wet, because she’s right there. She’s alive and she’s breathing and she’s looking at him with her big beautiful eyes and he can feel her love, her worried and confused affection, even from where he is six feet away. He takes a few timid steps toward her, but doesn't come close to her bedside just yet, because he doesn’t want to scare her. 

He doesn’t know what to say.

She stares, and then swallows. “I-” she cuts herself off, looking for words again. “What is this? Am I dead?”

“No,” he says quickly. “No, Ma. You’re fine, you’re alive.” 

She considers him for another long moment. She was always an open book to Steve, and he watches the emotions pass through her eyes now. Confusion, disbelief, a tiny bit of fear, and then, suddenly, a sheen of acceptance over the rest of her muddle.

She swallows, and her expression is graced with a smile. “I’d think I was dreaming, but my chest doesn’t hurt this much when I’m dreaming.”

Steve lets out a startled, wet huff of laugh, and wishes he could take the pain from her. He sniffs.

“Steven,” his mother smiles, and then she holds her hand out to where he’s standing, beckoning him to her.

At that, Steve lets out a wounded little sound and rushes to her side. His large hands envelop hers -- calloused and scarred from decades of work, from raising him and saving lives at the hospital. He pours all of his love into that point of contact.

“Mo stór.” 

She lifts her other hand to his face, he leans into the touch and closes his eyes. Another tear falls from his lashes, and she catches it with her thumb.

“You’re not the Steve I said goodbye to this morning, are you?”

Steve can’t help but smile, because she’s smart as a whip. He shakes his head slowly.

Her hand strokes cheek, back and forth in a tender and calming gesture. It feels so familiar, as though Steve had only felt it against his skin yesterday.

They sit in silence for a long moment. The loud hum of the oven in the corner and the never-ending bustle of the street outside fades into the background, and all they know is the pointed sense of years stretching out between them like the perspective of a dream. Waxing, waning, pulling and straining until it settles.

Steve’s life is a tangled mess of time and grief and repeated mistakes, but for just a second, it softens into a smooth pool of clear blue.

“You’ve gone through quite some shit, haven’t you?”

And then Steve laughs again, sparkling, that short watery laugh that crying people have, and opens his eyes just to look at her kind, reassuring face.

“Some,” Steve confesses. “It’s a long story.”

His Ma just smiles. “Must be, if you look like that.”

Steve smiles again, and pulls away from her hand just enough to give its palm a kiss. It falls from his face and joins the entwined fingers on the edge of her bed.

The difference of their hands on that worn duvet is startling and new, but somehow it doesn’t feel all that out of place.

“How old are you?” she asks.

It’s ridiculous, that it’s a complicated question. Technically, he’s been alive for 106 years.

“Thirty-nine,” he says instead. She doesn’t need to know the complexities.

“And goodness,” she marvels, “look at you.”

One of her hands extracts itself from his and finds his shoulder.

Steve swallows, not sure what to say. ‘Yeah, I underwent an experimental scientific procedure that easily could have killed me in order to fight in the Second World War and save Bucky, ’ doesn’t seem like a good option.

His Ma seems to realize that he isn’t going to disclose the reasons for his drastic growth spurt. She squeezes his shoulder.

“You’re healthy?” she asks instead.  

“As a horse,” Steve smiles.

His Ma grins so wide and bright that it almost makes him cry all over again. He settles for reclaiming her hand in his and scooching just a little bit closer.

She smiles up at him. “And you’re happy?”

If he thought the age question was complicated, it has nothing on this. Because how the hell is he to answer that.

He’s not unhappy , per say, but he can’t lie to her face and say he’s happy . He’s okay, he thinks, most days. His main concern is keeping everyone else safe, Bucky, Sam, Nat, Wanda, the millions of civilians threatened by the messes they keep finding themselves in. As long as they’re all safe, and Bucky is with Steve, and Steve is alive and breathing, he’s okay. He’s tired, exhausted, but he’s fine. Happy isn’t a concept he lets himself consider. 

Steve lets out a breath, and tries for a reassuring smile. “I’m okay, Ma.”

He can feel the question in his mother’s eyes before he even looks up to face it. He’s never been able to conceal much from her.

Giving in, he squeezes her hand. “It’s been messy.”

She squeezes back.

“Well, that’s usually the way,” she tells him. “But you followed your heart?”

Steve lets out another huff of a laugh, quiet and tired. “For worse, probably.”

“Steven,” she says quickly. “No. Listen to me.”

His Ma sits up in her bed a little further, ignoring the way he reaches out to steady her. There’s a sudden urgency to her movements, a determined passion pumping energy through her tired bones. Her big blue eyes are alight with the fire Steve knows he himself inherited.

“Mo stór,” she starts. “You have the biggest, bravest, and most beautiful heart anyone could ever dream up. It’s not perfect, none is, but if there’s one thing I know it’s that it’s good. That it loves in its entirety and always stands up for what it believes in. If you followed your heart, Steve, you made all the right calls.”

Steve thinks of all the times he didn’t. Of the nineteen year old soldier with the bright eyes and dark curls that wrote his Pa letters from the front every day, before Steve thought they could go another day without moving base and he was blown to pieces by a German grenade. He thinks of the ambush on the HYDRA base he didn’t anticipate and the way it shattered Gabe’s fingers to where he could never play piano the same again. He thinks about Pietro with red holes on his chest, and the way Wanda didn’t smile for months. 

He thinks of the hundreds of civilians he couldn’t save through the years; in New York, in Novi Grad, in DC, in Lagos, in Wakanda, all those times he could have made a different call, tried just a little bit harder. He thinks of Sam, Wanda, T’Challa, the Snapped. Of how he’s failed Bucky about ten too many times.

“I could name a lot of people that disagree with that.”

“Fuck ‘em.”

Her response is so quick, so determined, and Steve can’t decide if he wants to laugh or cry. He settles for that tangled mess in between.

“I missed you so much,” he sniffs.

And then his mother is pulling him close, dragging him down to her chest and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Suddenly, Steve is eighteen and 100 pounds soaking wet, and his Ma is the safest place in the world. 

He tries his hardest to memorize her smell, and the way her protruding collarbone feels under his cheek. He tucks the impression of her nimble fingers carding through his hair in the back of his mind.

Part of him wishes he could stay suspended in this moment, that he could just stop time and tell the rest of the world to fuck off. He wants the clock on the nightstand to stop ticking, the cars outside to come to a stop. For just a moment, he wants it to be October 12th, 1936 forever.

But he still has one more stone to deliver. The Power Stone needs to get back to Morag, to Quill, soon. His entire reality depends on it.

Besides, he needs, wants, to get back to his new family, to Sam and Wanda and Nat and Bucky. He wants to step off the platform and kiss Bucky’s stupid pretty mouth and finally tell him how he feels, after being a coward for way too long. He wants to get him that cat he’s always wanted and buy a brownstone in DUMBO, where they first shared their apartment together. He wants to fight a little less.

And he will.

But for now, he squeezes his Ma just a bit tighter --  never strong enough to hurt her -- and breathes her in. 

She starts humming under her breath, some traditional Irish lullaby that Steve remembers from when he was barely up to her knees. It’s slow and melodic, and his mother isn’t the best singer, but it doesn’t matter at all. He still feels the song from the inside out.

When the melody fades out, Steve, with a shuddering breath, pulls back. His mother’s eyes are wet, but she’s not crying. She’s always been stronger than he is.

“I can’t stay.” he tells her.

His mother lays her hand back on his. “I know.”

A loud shout rings in from outside, and Steve already knows its Mr. Henry, the grocer. He always has something to yell about.

His Ma smiles at him. “Give Bucky my love.” 

Steve can’t help but shoot her a curious and mildly amused glance. “How’d you know I could?”

“You’re tired, Steve, not devastated,” she explains. “Besides, I don’t think God himself could keep you two apart.”

Steve huffs out a little laugh. “He sure has tried.”

“And yet you persevered,” she says conclusively. Her eyes are twinkling like she’s in on the Ineffable Plan of SteveandBucky.

And Steve wasn’t planning on telling her at all, but suddenly he’s so overwhelmed with this feeling, this wave crashing in on itself, that he opens his mouth.

“I love him, Ma,” he confesses, looking down at their hands on the duvet again. His statement is ambiguous, could be read as platonic, but his tone is not. 

He knows she’s not cruel, that she’ll love him no matter what, but Steve’s chest feels tight all the same. 

She squeezes his hand, and the sensation dissipates.

“Does he know?” she asks him.

“I-” Steve thinks for a moment. He’s been careful not to show his realization, but Bucky has always been able to read him like a book. “I don’t know.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here?” his Ma demands. “Go and get your fella. Aim for better than ‘okay’.” 

Steve can’t help but huff another laugh. His vision is blurry again.

“I love you,” he tells her. Because he never told her enough.

“And I love you.”

The depth of their love goes unspoken, but it’s understood. Around the world and back again, over the same seas that carried them from her home and into his.

He hand finds his cheek again, and then the device in Steve’s coat pocket beeps. They both look down to the source of the sound.

Steve opens his mouth, but it’s really not necessary.

“Go,” his Ma assures. “I’ll be okay.”

She won’t be, physically, but she knows that. Knowing Steve will be healthy, will live and love without her, will bring her peace all the same. 

Steve sees it in her eyes.

He gives her one last kiss on her forehead. He lingers, and then pulls away. He leans down and picks the letter off the floor to put it in her hand instead.

With one last smile, he gets up from the bed and walks back over the coffee stain and to the door, out into the hall.

When he closes that battered piece of wood with the stubborn lock behind him, he breathes out. He feels lighter than he has in a long while.

His eyes are wet, but he’s smiling as he puts the key back under the brick, and then heads back down the stairs, and into the yard, and to Morag.

A thin sheen of frost glitters on the cobblestones. There are boot and paw prints scattered across the neighborhood, outlining the movements of all the Brooklyners on that cold October day. 

In the courtyard of 210 Verandah Place, there are heavy boot tracks leading away from the door of 3b, winding around the gutters and stopping to stand behind the Tree of Heaven. And then they lead nowhere. They just stop.

Susie Ann thinks it was aliens, but her brother Tommy says those don’t exist, so it must have been a clever magic trick.

Really, it was a bad spy with homesickness, but Sarah Rogers’ lips are sealed.

Chapter Text

Steve inhales one last deep breath of Brooklyn. He tries his best to memorize the smell of the cold October, muddled by the stink of the tannery a block over and the drying sheets in the courtyard. He catches a whiff of Mrs. Preston’s pea soup. The branches of the tree of heaven sway above him, leaves fluttering against the blue sky as if to wave goodbye.

He smiles, and then presses the button, leaving behind a lonely pair of bootprints in the dirt.

For a long moment, his world is an infinite whirr of color and time.

Then, just as suddenly as it started, it stops.

When Steve opens his eyes, it's to the upstate forest-scape he left behind six hours or eighty years ago. It’s to his new family.

They all light up at seeing him, smiling and glad to have him back in one piece. Bruce cheers from his position behind the regulator. Sam and Natasha grin at him. Only Bucky is turned away for some reason, and Steve feels a short pang of worry intrude his comforting sense of joy. Is Bucky alright?

When his best friend does turn to him, it's with a storm of emotions on his face that moves so fast Steve can barely keep up -- confusion, hurt, relief, awe, disbelief, joy. Steve is so happy to see his face that he nearly breaks down crying right then.

Instead, he dismisses Sam’s enthusiastic greeting by unceremoniously thrusting the shield in his arms -- he’ll talk to him about it for real later -- and ignoring the inquisitive gazes of the others to walk straight toward Bucky.

The brunet watches him with wide, gorgeous, Aivazovsky eyes that turn questioning at Steve’s approach. Steve watches as he scans him once, twice, checking for any injuries, and he loves him so much he wonders why he never did this earlier.

He stops just short of running Bucky right over, and, before Bucky can utter a single word out of his opening mouth, cuts him off by capturing his lips in his.

Whatever Bucky was going to say is swallowed by Steve’s lips, and Steve can feel his startled inhale. For just a short second, Steve begins to panic, wondering if he had just robbed Bucky of yet another choice and fucked it all up with his stupid, stubborn impulsivity, but then Bucky’s hands are on his waist and he’s kissing back and Steve stops thinking altogether.

It doesn't matter that Steve carries traces of three different planets and four different decades on him, or that there’s a crow loudly squawking somewhere on a branch above them, or the fact that they're surrounded by staring friends. It barely even matters that it took them a hundred years to get here.

All that matters is that they did get here, and that Bucky’s hair is soft and silky and that he’s smiling against Steve’s lips and suddenly everything makes sense. All of their years, together or apart, laughing or crying, have led them here. Maybe there is an ineffable plan of SteveAndBucky, and his Ma was in on it. Maybe Steve is beginning to understand it, too.

When they pull apart a few seconds or millenia later, Steve is so happy he thinks he might burst. It bubbles out of him, first slowly, then all at once until he’s laughing at Bucky’s happy, dazed expression.

“Okay, simmer down, pal.” Bucky narrows his eyes, but he’s chuckling too. “I know it’s been a while but I wasn’t that bad.”

Steve laughs harder, then grabs Bucky’s face again just to plant another one on him. “Not at all,” he confirms. “I just- Fuck, I’m so happy to see you.”

Bucky grins, and his face is like the sun. “Right back at ya.”

Suddenly, Bucky’s grin falters into something darker, something more like the initial hurt Steve saw painted on his features when he first appeared on the platform.

“You were late,” Bucky says. “I-” Bucky doesn't continue.

Steve searches his face. “You what?”

Bucky laughs again, but this time it’s wry. “This is stupid, I guess, but for a moment I thought you weren’t coming back. I thought maybe you were going to stay with Carter.”

Steve balks at that. What? How could Bucky possibly think that Steve wanted that, that he ever wanted anything other than this -- than Bucky’s face in his hands and his pretty eyes looking into Steve’s? It feels like an impossibility.

Steve lets out an incredulous laugh. “What? Buck-”

“It’s stupid, I know.”

“So stupid,” Steve affirms. “Sure, Peggy’s great, but what am I gonna do in the fuckin’ 40s? Live without you?”

Bucky huffs out a little laugh and then looks away for a short moment.

“C’mon Buck,” Steve laments, and Bucky looks back at him. His eyes are damp. “ ‘Til the end of the line, remember? You’re it for me.”

He fumbles to catch Bucky’s hand where it’s hanging between them and gives it a firm squeeze.

Bucky’s face breaks slowly, surely, into a smile. “I love you,” he says. “I’m in love with you.”

Steve knew that, he thinks, deep down, but hearing it said still makes his heart skip like it’s 1936 and he’s just run seven blocks. When he says it back, he knows he’s never been more sure of anything.

Bucky kisses him again, for two, maybe three moments, until he pulls back with a little frown. “You’re okay though? Why were you late?”

Steve squeezes Bucky’s hand again. “I’m good. Great. I, uh- I went to see my Ma.”

Bucky gapes at him, his lips stretching into an smile. He lets out a disbelieving breath. “What?”

“I stole some extra particles and went to see my Ma,” Steve repeats. “I wanted- I needed to see her, to let her know I’d be okay.”

Bucky nods, because of course he understands. “She musta been real happy to see you.”

“Yeah. She was.” Steve thinks he might cry again. “She asked about you, y’know.”

Bucky’s eyes crinkle at the corners. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. She told me to go get my fella.”

Bucky laughs, sudden and bright. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he mumbles, turning away in a chuckle. “If I’d known that her word was all it took to get you to kiss me I would have made her tell you that back in ‘34.”

It should be surprising to Steve, maybe, that Bucky has loved him that long, and it is, but mostly it just makes perfect sense. It makes him wish he had seen it all for what it was sooner.

Steve lets out a little huff of a laugh, unable to voice any of that. “I- I’m sorry it took me so long.”

Bucky just shakes his head. “None of that,” he says, so achingly familiar in a way that Steve knows he inherited from his own mother. “Besides, you can make it up to me.”

“Jerk.”

But Steve pulls him back in, kisses that stupid grin off his face, and thanks whoever wrote the ineffable plan that he ended up here -- and his Ma for her advice.

A mother always knows best, after all.