dysmorphics | it's you and me up against the world, it's you and me

"We can trust Pegs, and Howard, but I ain't sure how things work now that the war's over." Steph worried for Bucky, too; they never did find out just how the serum affected him. She had hoped to talk to the Wakandans about it at some point, but she'd ended up spending nearly all of her time with him whenever she visited. She would let Howard run some tests on them both for their peace of mind, but not until they were sure that wouldn't reach anyone else. Even if they'd destroyed all that they knew of HYDRA by now, she didn't want to take any chances. There could still be other moles and sleeper agents.

She touched her fingertips to her picture in his pocket watch. "I don't remember ever being this happy since you told me you enlisted." She'd been so mad at him that she wouldn't speak to him for a whole day, then she was morose and moody in all those weeks after that. She understood doing one's duty, but why did he have to leave? Why did he have to leave her? It wasn't fair.

If she'd known then that he loved her too, she would've begged him to run away with her. She instead tried for the next best thing: that if he must die, then at least they could die together.

She glanced back at him in surprise, expecting him to take back the endearment. When he didn't, she felt her stomach twist — in a good way — and she had to grin. "Too bad we were so dumb. I could've given you a proper dressing down while we made our way through Europe. What a wasted opportunity." Did he catch the innuendo? She'd never really flirted before.

"Yeah, guess I wasn't exactly someone that could call some shots with them after your war, was I?" Not if he was off being a POW with a missing arm. "But we'll be careful about what we tell people, and who we tell it to, alright?"

Oh. That was right. Oops. "Yeah, I sorta lied about that," Bucky started with a frown. "I didn't enlist. I was trying to stay here in the city with you, and had even uh... convinced myself I needed to actually tell you how I felt, but then I got my draft letter and decided to wait and tell you when I got home." It would give him a reason to make it home, after all.

Bucky looked down at the picture in his watch. He didn't have to see it, he had every single part of it burned into his mind, and he had for a long time. "I don't remember what she said, but Becca said something you thought was funny. Then I took your photo." And while he had many photos of Steph, that one was one of his favorites. It's why he took it with him.

"I don't know if it woulda been better or worse if you had been over there with me," Bucky said, grinning as he looked back up at Steph. "I mighta gotten distracted with the dressing downs, or with just wanting to protect you. But I would have at least been with you instead of half a world away."

"You were drafted?" That was news to Steph. All this time, she'd believed Bucky had chosen to go off to war on his own accord.

But that also had a new implication: "You could've gone home. After Azzano, they offered you and the others an honorable discharge." At Steph's insistence, actually. She'd strong-armed Colonel Phillips into convincing top brass to send their captured boys home in exchange for her going into service, since she was worth a hundred men in battle anyway. "You didn't take it. You said I needed a second-in-command and you didn't trust anyone else to watch my back." The gesture had moved her, and she'd selfishly accepted, because she had been so afraid. But to now realize that he'd stuck around because of her, which then led to the train and all the tragedy that followed...

She suddenly grabbed him in a fierce hug, mumbling into his hair, "You absolute moron," with a sob. He wasn't the Bucky who made that choice, that was true, but she knew now that he would've done the same. That, and to keep his being drafted from her was such a dumb move. "We could've gotten married and run far away. Lived in a farm on the mountains and tended to goats or something." People made such a big deal about how honorable and heroic it was to be a soldier, but having been there, they knew of war's true horrors and now had to live with what's left of themselves after it had destroyed them both.

Bucky wrapped his arms around her in return, hugging her back tightly as he sighed. "Can't blame him for sticking around for you," he said, his voice soft. "But I wasn't given the discharge option. I'd been captured, but clearly I wasn't injured enough to get sent home." What they didn't realize was that it was because most of his injuries had healed already, because of what they did to him.

"I thought about grabbing you and running, you know," he said with a sad laugh. "Woulda been a shit life for you, though. And if I got caught and sent to jail, where would that have left you? Alone in a place you didn't know that well?" Steph didn't have any remaining family (even though everyone always insisted she was an unofficial Barnes), and with her health? He couldn't risk leaving her abandoned and alone somewhere.

"Better a shit life with you than one without you." Which wasn't all that different from Bucky's declaration that he would rather live through everything HYDRA put the other version of him through than lose her. They clearly were peas in a pod.

Steph pulled back to look at Bucky again. Yeah, this wasn't the best time period. The food was bland, healthcare sucked, and there were still more wars to come. But she meant it, that she would rather be with him through all that shit than be alone once more. "Need me to put my promise in writing, or can we kiss now?"

They could spend all night being hung up on their pasts and all the what-could-have-beens. Or they could try to move forward. In any case, they were together now at least. That was the most important part.

Bucky looked back up at her then, focused on those beautiful--if red-rimmed from the off-and-on tears they'd both dealt with that evening--blue eyes. His left hand came up to rest on her cheek, thumb brushing over her cheekbone. That didn't last long, though, before he slid his hand to the back of her neck and tugged her in so he could kiss her for the first time.

It wasn't exactly how Bucky imagined it over and over for years, of course, but that was simply because he didn't ever picture himself being the shorter one of the pair, or Steph not being a skinny little thing. That didn't make it any less perfect as his eyes slid closed. She might have been built differently, but she was still his dreamgirl.

This wasn't how Steph imagined kissing Bucky would be like either. She certainly never imagined it to be so hungry, so desperate, as if he was about to go off to war again. Or maybe this was what their homecoming would have been like in a world where she never got the serum and he never fell off the train.

Steph had never kissed anyone before. What she knew about kissing she learned from Natasha, who'd kissed her when they'd been evading some HYDRA goons. "Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable, especially between the same sex," had been the redhead's brilliant idea. It had worked, but in those few seconds all Steph could think about was Bucky, even through the scent of Natasha's perfume.

This time it really was him, and Steph buried her hands into his hair as she kissed him like he was the very air she needed to breathe. She was sloppy and inexperienced, she didn't really know what to do with her mouth and tongue only that she had to taste him — but if he wanted her then it didn't matter, right?

Bucky had kissed before, but not as much as many people seemed to assume he had. And, honestly, those kisses (that he generally didn't even want) never felt right, because he had always wanted to be kissing Steph instead of whatever girl cornered him.

But none of those past kisses could have prepared Bucky for how right it did feel to finally kiss her. It had started gently, but it took almost no time for them to be all but clinging to each other as it got deeper and more desperate.

Eventually, Bucky broke the kiss so he could do that pesky breathing thing, but he didn't go far. He only pulled back enough so he could take a couple of deep breaths as he looked at her, grinning. "I love you, Steph."

This hadn't been part of the plan. Steph was supposed to disappear after the war was over and she'd finished tying up those loose threads involving HYDRA. It certainly hadn't been her intention to take the place of this Bucky's Steph, in his life or otherwise. But it seemed like the universe had other plans. If this was destiny or fate or whatever it was called, it was shitty as fuck, but she was going to take it.

That grin? It made everything worth it. Maybe she did succeed, after all. Just in a way she didn't expect.

"I love you too, Buck." She would always love him, that she was sure of. Any version of him, at any point in time. It didn't make sense, but also it did, somehow. She leaned in to rest her forehead against his, smiling contentedly. "I'm gonna need a new picture for my locket."

it's you and me up against the world, it's you and me

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