What he saw in Bucky's face concerned him: there was something about these memories that caused that flicker of disturbance in his friend's gaze, and he wondered if the subject of fighting and violence--even something as relatively harmless as a back-alley brawl--was too much for him, given what he'd done as the Winter Soldier, what he'd been made to do. If so, Steve was sorry for bringing up the subject, even if so much of his and Bucky's life had been fighting--through illness and loss and scraping together another week's rent, through the war, through meeting again seventy years later when Bucky had been sent to kill him. He couldn't imagine what part of their past wasn't defined by fighting, by a constant struggle to survive.

Well, there was a different part, there was something else they had done together that had nothing to do with combat. He was reminded again when Bucky's hands slid down his chest, as though cataloging the feeling of him against his memories of something different. Steve drew in a breath, felt his lungs and ribs swelling out under Bucky's hands. When his best friend asked him, he let himself lean forward a little bit, his hand still curved over the nape of Bucky's neck--gentle, not restraining, ready to let go at the slightest sign of resistance--so his lips brushed against Bucky's, soft and warm.

"Used to do that, too," he said quietly, barely breathing: when he was little, curled up in Bucky's arms.