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I could love you with the lights on. What if I don't wanna wait until our clothes come off?
I'll still be here when the night's gone.
When Bucky fell from the train, he thought about something his mom had told him. They hadn’t been religious growing up, when Steve’s mom passed away, that was the first time he’d ever set foot in a Church. The windows were made of stained glass, depicting scenes, stories of people long gone. ‘People he didn’t know the first thing about. There was one window that Bucky had stared at the whole service, of a man lying dead in a bed, his eyes closed, but his hand was raised, reaching out to an angel that was hovering above him. The man’s fingers were beginning to fade away, the closer they got to the figure, and something about it had unsettled him. Afterward, when everyone was walking up to the casket (Buck’s family had paid for it), he stood in front of the window. He didn’t hear his mom walk up behind him and startled slightly when she laid a hand on his shoulder. They both just stood there, watching the window.
“They say that when you die, in Heaven, you forget any sort of pain you had here on earth. There’s nothing you don’t have, nothing you can’t have.” He ignored how her eyes flickered ever so slightly away from the window, to the short boy standing by his mother’s still body. “I think that sounds nice, doesn’t it? Forgetting all of this and just living in bliss.”
Bucky hadn’t taken his eyes off the glass, ‘hadn’t turned from where his fingers were almost gone, ‘where his arm was disappearing into the light. “But if we forget all of this, then what was it all for?”
His mom had just smiled, her fingers slipping off his shoulder, and she had spun on her heel, her gaze falling on Steve instead. Her brown curls brushed against his suit jacket, and his eyes fell down to hers. She was only inches shorter than him in her shoes, but she was watching him with authority. “How is He supposed to give us everything we want if we never know what we lack?”
As he fell, he watched Steve reach out, but fail to grab him in time. He remembered that day. ‘Remembered the window, the old man disappearing from this life into the next, and he tried to imagine what he would see in a moment. He’d open his eyes to that dirty, wet alley behind the public school. His lunch would be on his lap as he ate in solitude, tucked away from everyone else and his gaze would flicker up, just like it had all those years ago, to see a small boy get pushed into the mud mere feet away from him. He would watch as two teenagers, bigger than the kid by pounds, started toward the muddy boy, and he would toss his lunch to the ground, charging toward them and shoving them over. He would help the boy stand up, brush mud off him, try to get it out of his hair, just for the kid to tell him that was just how it looked. He would watch as he held out his hand, and shook Steve’s hand for the first time, and he would smile.
That was what he would see, so he closed his mouth, stopped screaming as his arm hit against the cliff and a searing pain shot through his body. He closed his eyes, willing himself to see it soon, an angel reaching out for him, carrying him into something more. But that didn’t happen. He hit the ground and was knocked unconscious, and the next thing he knew he was being dragged across the woods. He was being hurt, he was being tortured, his brain was melting, he couldn’t remember what the sun looked like. What had he used to want? What had he used to imagine when he closed his eyes, before he just started seeing the smear of blood on the wall, and the faces of his missions on his eyelids?
Then he saw Steve again, on the bridge, and he went to the museum to try to learn more about him. He glanced up at the pictures on the walls, glowing with the technology of the future, and it was almost like the windows again. He was on it with Steve, they were smiling, laughing together, and all the shimmering pictures said that Captain America had come back to life. The newspapers they had shown him when he was trapped in that chair, had said Steve was dead, but right there, on the screens like the stained glass windows back in that small church in Brooklyn, said he was alive. Bucky hadn’t known who to believe for a long time, until Steve was standing in his kitchen, holding his memories between his fingertips, asking Buck why he’d saved his life. Bucky had told him he didn’t know why he saved him, but maybe part of him had wished he could earn back that memory of Steve. The one he thought he’d have after he died. Maybe part of him wished he could be Steve’s heaven too. He saved his life, and then ran when Steve came after him.
Sitting in that warehouse, when Steve trusted him enough to take his arm out of the contraption, Buck saw that scrawny little kid again. Who picked up his fallen milk container from the ground and thanked him like Buck was the president. ‘Not just some random kid who had saved him from a black eye. The next time Bucky had seen him after that, Steve had had a bruise on his jaw, and Buck had rolled his eyes and said, “you’re gonna need someone to protect you, huh?”
“Steve?” Bucky’s voice was quiet, still getting used to asking for things. ‘Wanting things. It didn’t come naturally to him, not after everything.
“Yeah, Bucky?” Steve, from his spot at the counter chopping carrots, glanced up to Bucky at the dining room table. It wasn’t really a dining room, since the apartment they’d rented out in Brooklyn was small, but it had a table and a light above it. That was all it really needed. After Bucky had been cleared by almost every single doctor in Wakanda (including T’Challa), they had told Steve and Buck that they could go anywhere they wanted. The two men had practically run back to their roots, to where they began. They didn’t have a lot of money, just some that Steve had saved up, and some Bucky had… found… “The museum, I was wondering if there was anything that wasn’t true. I just- when I first read it, something seemed off… but I don’t know why.”
Steve pursed his lips, brushing off the scraps of carrot that had stuck to his knife. It was one of Bucky’s, a utility knife he’d had stashed on him for years, but being low on cash meant everything had three uses. Buck had been a bit standoffish to the idea of using the knife he’d used to try to kill Steve with to cut vegetables, but he’d been shot down by whining. Steve still whined when he was trying to convince Bucky of something, that was something he hadn't read in a museum, he just knew. There had been a time when he would tell Steve something he remembered, and Steve would pause for a minute to think back to the museum, ‘to think about whether or not it was something Buck had actually remembered, or not. He tried not to talk about it a lot, the false stained glass windows hanging from the walls, but it had been bothering him.
“What seemed wrong?” Steve asked, dumping the cut carrots into a pot. He was making chicken noodle soup, something Bucky had just tried for the first time. He had started crying after taking his first sip and had had no clue why until Steve told him that they ate a lot of it after his mom died. He remembered the funeral, but what came afterward was messy. Steve said Buck had walked him home and then stayed over and they’d eaten chicken noodle soup from a can.
“We were… friends? Just friends? Never anything more? I keep remembering, I don’t know, I keep remembering wanting something from you.” Steve dropped a few carrots on the ground, and Bucky picked up one that had rolled toward him. He liked the new arm he’d gotten from T’Challa, ‘liked that he got to pick it. He stared at the carrot piece between his fingers before standing and throwing it into the sink beside Steve. He leaned against the counter, hip on the hard wood beneath it. He stared into Steve’s eyes, and he thought ‘if only they could make a stained glass window with that exact shade of blue.’ “What?” Bucky whispered, looking up at Steve with his eyes hung low, worry lit up in his chest ever so dimly.
Steve just shook his head and put the knife down, brushing carrots from his fingers. He turned toward Bucky, his knees pressing into Buck’s. He smiled, and Bucky watched his light brown hair dangle on his forward. He hadn’t had a chance to cut it in a few months. Bucky pushed it out of the way. “I didn’t want to say anything. In case you didn’t want me again, after everything...”
“Well, that's a load of shit.” Bucky whispered, and the small smile on Steve’s face grew wider. “You fucking broke me out of 70+ years of brainwashing by just having that pretty face.” He tapped Steve’s cheek with his fingers, and only realized a moment later that he had used the metal hand. He must have made a face, because Steve’s hand wrapped around the wrist of his left arm and he held up the cold fingers to his mouth. “Can I-“
Bucky didn’t get the rest of his sentence out as Steve leaned forward, capturing Buck’s lips in his. Bucky gave in immediately, his body leaning into Steve’s, his hands pushing into muddy blond hair. He kissed him back like he’d always wanted to do it, and thinking back to that day behind the school, he really had. Steve whined, deep in the back of his throat, and Buck smiled into the kiss at the sound. They’d have to add another section to the museum when people found out. He thought it would look really pretty, maybe he could visit with Steve. He pulled back after a moment, tongue sweeping against his kiss-bruised lips, and Steve just grinned at him. His arms had gathered around Buck’s waist during the kiss and he was holding him against his body, hard angles that Bucky wanted to trace like a map.
“Steve-“ Bucky whispered against his mouth, and those blue eyes opened to focus back on him. His damn face was brighter by a few hundred shades and Buck almost tore his shirt to pieces right then and there. “Do you remember the stained windows in that old church?”
Steve’s eyebrows dipped in the middle, confusion replacing the lust (the goddamn lust that Steve had in his eyes for Bucky) for a short moment. “At St. Mary Magdalene’s? Where we held Mom’s funeral?”
“Yes. Do you think we can go there tomorrow?” Bucky whispered, his eyes dropping down to the ground between them. He didn’t know why, but he still flinched, like he would be hit for requesting something. Steve just smiled, tipped up Bucky’s face, two fingers under his chin. He pressed a kiss to Buck’s nose.
“Of course we can. Y’know, I think someone should make you into a stained window. You’d look beautiful with light shining through you.” It sounded inappropriate, even if he hadn’t meant it like that, and Bucky lifted his eyebrow with a smirk. Steve just laughed and dropped his face into Buck’s shoulder.
“Oh my god, please ignore that.”
Bucky just gasped, flicking his fingers against Steve’s head softly. It made him lift his face and look back at Buck. The sides of his lips twitched like he was trying not to smile, and Bucky slid his fingers onto his face, turning his mouth into a grin. “I think you’d look beautiful with light shining through you too. How about we try to see it?”
Steve just blinked at Bucky. “Are you sure? We don-“
“Steve.” Bucky whispered, shaking his head softly, a laugh forcing its way up his throat. “For so long, the only thing I could remember about you was how desperately I needed you. Don’t hide now.”
Steve just swallowed, stepping forward, pressing his knee between Bucky’s legs to separate them. He did it slowly, carefully, and Bucky just watched, transfixed.
Bucky lifted his head to kiss Steve, but only realized after a moment that the man was gone, on the ground in front of him. Bucky rolled his eyes and pulled him back up. “I love spending time together, just the three of us, you, me, and your insistence to never let me get you off first.”
“You-“
“Yes, dickhead, I remember.”
I could love you, I could love you with the lights on. I don't wanna read your heart wrong. I'll be patient, baby tell me everything you want. If you're still here when the night's gone.
I could love you, I could love you.