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It was clear that their time in any one place was limited, even after the struggle to get him free from the hydraulic machine. There was some kind of unit coming to capture him, and it was on false charges. However, it was clear that he was considered dangerous enough that questions would not be asked, his rights would not be given, and there was no way that he would be arrested. Too much anger, maybe too little professionalism, but whatever he had been set up for had been heinous enough that it had provoked a complete hunting party of SWAT that were bearing down on the warehouse.

He remained quiet and more on his own as Steve and Sam decided that they would go to some pre-planned and organized safe house in an apartment block that was currently under some kind of assessment or renovation. At this point, he was mixed on his feelings on going anywhere with Steve, aware that his very presence would increase the danger to his old friend. A part of him was still grappling with the sheer notion that after two years, they had met up again face-to-face and Steve only seemed to ache to be close to him, not hold against him what he had done on the helicarrier. Sometimes everything was so confusing.

The Soldier still went quietly, hiding his metal arm in his pockets and keeping his head down so that his hair curtained his facial features. It didn't take long, not with how easily he disappeared in and out of shadows and especially when Steve looked for him before he emerged again, their eyes meeting several times with little hopeful promises for a quiet moment.

The apartment was a single bedroom, a corner unit that was close to the emergency stairs and it was clear that Steve and Sam had been here a few hours based on the uniforms that were here. Steve's shield was as well, and he found himself looking at it, eyebrows gently bunched on his forehead before he was directed into a small clean bedroom and risked toeing off his boots and rolling up his sleeves as he reached out and ran his mismatched hands over the bed's surface.

How long had it been? He didn't tend to sleep on beds.

Now though, knowing there was a guard on duty in the form of the Falcon, he slipped onto it and pressed his back to the wall and tucked an arm under his head as a pillow, leaving the actual one for Steve. He watched the blond silently for a few moments, hardly believing that they had a spare moment or two to just watch one another. "You... were always taking stupid risks for me in the war," he said softly.

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It had been a long time since Steve lived anywhere he could have called home. But the safehouse felt like something close to it when he and Sam brought Bucky there, the three of them battered, tired, Bucky walking between them in his hoodie and jeans with a gleaming silver hand hidden in his pocket. Steve ached to give him a place, a moment that felt like solace and shelter, even if only briefly. His best friend had been deprived of both for too long. When their eyes met Steve thought he could see a little bit of hope in their tired blue-gray depths; it made him want to put his arms around his friend, just keep him close and quiet for a while. There wasn't anything from the past that Steve held against him, not the events on the helicarrier or the two years spent chasing a ghost--all he wanted was Bucky here with him, safe.

Sam offered to take the first watch, and Steve was unimaginably grateful to him when he could lead Bucky into the bedroom and watch his guard come down a little, watch him toe off his boots and run his hands over the bed like he wasn't quite sure how to use one of these anymore. He had to turn away so Bucky wouldn't see the pain that cut through him, mastering himself while he took his shoes off and changed his dirty, worn shirt for a clean one. He propped his shield against the corner, as comforting a sight to him as it apparently was to Bucky. Then Steve turned back to find that Bucky had already laid down, his arm curled under his head. Steve moved quietly towards him, drawn by his friend's silent, watchful gaze, and sat on the bed; after a moment or two he reached out his hand and carefully brushed a few strands of long hair out of Bucky's face.

"You were always doing the same for me," he answered with a smile. Bucky hadn't had a shield to duck behind, but he'd still always been right behind Steve, following him into the line of fire. Covering his six, putting himself in danger to take out the enemies Steve didn't even see. "You remember the war, Buck?" Every memory, every shared remembrance was another pang of happiness, more than Steve had ever thought he'd feel again.

He never allowed himself close enough to another person to notice how the tension seemed to drain from the set of Steve's shoulders, how there was a light to the blond's eyes that hadn't been there before. It hadn't been there until he had spoken of Steve's mother, and he now suspected that, despite the danger and situation, that Captain America could hope and maybe even be happy again. When was the last time Steve had been truly relaxed and at ease? He was curious of the answer, but he couldn't yet bring himself to ask the question in case it wasn't to either of their liking.

The bed dipped with Steve's weight, but he remained where he was in the most defensible position. "No, even then... I think I was in the shadows mostly. Never in front... always behind," he remarked, his eyebrows knitting together as he considered the fumbles of his memories. It was hard to put them in order, which was his major problem at this point.

Yet, his expression smoothed again as Steve's fingers brushed back some of his hair. "Some," he admitted softly. "It's... jumbled up, so which events came before others doesn't always seem obvious." Steve would be the first one that he admitted such to, and trust was a very difficult thing after all that had happened to him. Slowly, tentatively, he reached out and grabbed the back of Steve's shirt, gently tugging on it.

"We each took the risks the other couldn't," Steve offered, as a way of helping Bucky make sense of the roles they had played to one another. It had to still be unclear from the confusion in Bucky's face, the way his gaze focused on a middle distance as though he was trying to look back and remember. It didn't matter if he didn't have all the details; Steve just wanted him to know how much he'd valued him back then, how much he valued him now. It gave him a quiet, possessive kind of pleasure to see how Bucky's expression smoothed when he ran his hand over his hair. It made him do it again, stroking him, letting the strands of his hair slide through his fingers, watching Bucky's eyes half-close. He thought of leaning down to kiss him, still undecided when Bucky's hand curled in his shirt and tugged.

Steve took that invitation, swinging his legs up to the bed and lowering himself to his side facing Bucky. "I'll help you unjumble it if I can," he promised quietly. They didn't have a lot of time for sifting through old memories, Steve knew--maybe only tonight, maybe only a few hours to sleep and talk before they were on the run again, but Bucky had trusted him enough to share what he remembered, and Steve wanted to help him any way he could. He reached out again, his fingers brushing over Bucky's stubbled cheek. "First, though--are you hurting anywhere? Do you need anything?"

The Soldier considered that for a moment, flicking through the jumble of scenes that clamored for his attention and noting a few that seemed to match what Steve had said. There was so much that he knew but couldn't recall, but somehow, it was no longer a frustrating battleground of his mind anymore. If anything, Steve could confirm and deny the lies that his brain made up to fill in blanks or from what HYDRA had told him. Steve would perhaps be the only living individual who had memories of that time.

He shifted away from the wall to settle closer to Steve's body, and he inhaled as fingers touched his face, eyes narrowing slightly. His fingers twitched before he slowly raised them up between them and tentatively ran the flesh pads along the firm line of Steve's jaw and up that smooth forehead and then down to stroke the ridge of the blond's nose. "No, I'm uninjured, just sore from being in the same position for more than a share of hours. Are you?"

His touch stilled as he heard Bucky's indrawn breath, but didn't lift away; he waited for some sign from Bucky that this wasn't welcomed, wasn't wanted, but a moment later his friend was touching him in return, slowly and hesitantly, and Steve let out his own breath, cupping his cheek more firmly. His eyes closed briefly as Bucky's fingers caressed over the bridge of his nose. "Some bruises, that's all. I'll be all right." He opened his eyes again to look at Bucky, so close, so tangible and real. His eyes were the same blue-gray shade Steve remembered, though they were different somehow, more serious, more intent and grave. He didn't like to think of his best friend trapped in that crushing metal vice, alone and maybe afraid, not knowing what was coming. Steve had almost feared to approach him, not knowing what Bucky he would find--his old friend? The Winter Soldier? A man being hunted, not knowing who to trust, who was friend and foe?

He drew in a breath, studying Bucky's face. "You talked about my mom. You remembered her...you remembered me." The hope in him was alike a candleflame, flickering but bright. "Is there anything else?"

He knew from his own healing time that Steve's was better, so bruises were an acceptable burden of coming to find him. They would no doubt be gone within a day or two at most, though he resisted the urge to shift his hands in order to locate and touch the bloomed colour on his friend's flesh. Instead, he found himself simply appreciating their close proximity and the heat that Steve's body generated as they lay side-by-side on the bed just touching one another with no expectations of more or less than what they were giving.

"Yes," he admitted softly, his fingers trailing over Steve's cheek and then tracing the blond's lips and then chin. "On cold nights, I would sleep over at your apartment and keep you warm. The heating was pathetic and the pipes made noises which we would say meant the building was about to fall down on top of us." There was more, still not all of it in order, but it was there. "You called me your jerk."

He felt the smile on his face growing wider with each word Bucky spoke: those cherished memories of the young man from Brooklyn who had looked after him with such devotion even when Steve was too proud to admit to needing help were even more meaningful coming from Bucky's lips. Steve had held out hope for so long of Bucky remembering after the first devastating blow of seeing no recognition in his friend's eyes when they'd met on the bridge. Even after that, there had to be something of Bucky left in the Winter Soldier; if not he'd never have pulled Steve out of the Potomac. But the last two years had tested that hope, the long search on the trail of a man who apparently didn't want to be found. Steve had questioned himself dozens of times, wondering if he ought to give up, if that wasn't what Bucky really wanted--but he didn't think he was capable of letting go.

He laughed a little, quietly, feeling a pain of happiness and old, familiar anguish in his chest. "Yeah, I did. And you called me your punk." His hand fell away from Bucky's face to brush over his side, his ribs. Steve touched his thick, solid body curiously, fingers curving over the subtle dip of Bucky's waist. "You kept me warm a lot of nights. Probably would've died of pneumonia about a dozen times over if not for you."

It was painful to talk about those things, but it was a good kind of pain, if that were possible. It was an acknowledgement of the jumbled mess that still happened to be in his head, and he could watch as each word spoken hurt Steve in the same way that it hurt him. For once, there was someone to understand what it was like back then, to remember those old days of saving everything, struggling through the Depression, of facing the prospect of war, of having a dial phone that required an operator to connect a call. So many little things lost over the years.

His fingers continued to trace every aspect of Steve's face as they lay facing each other. He kept his arm off of his side so that Steve could explore him in return, a bittersweet contact from someone who had been chasing him for two years. "Sometimes I can't tell if some events happened more than once or if its just a repeat in my head," he said softly. It was good to know all those times curled together in a small bed were multiple times. It meant more to him that way. "You got in fights in every alley, street corner or behind buildings that you could. You were the only one to bring a trash can lid to a fist fight."

He laughed a little again at that; it was a joy to remember with Bucky, and hopelessly sad, too, and bittersweet. He wasn't sure which it was more than the others. "You used to say I liked being punched. You were usually the one knocking down the guys I couldn't finish." Hanging back long enough to let Steve fight his own fights, to let him hit and get hit back, let him get bruised and roughed up and do a little roughing up of his own. He'd understood Steve's need to prove himself, his need not to be made helpless. "I got into a lot of fights," he added reassuringly, to let Bucky know that those multiple memories weren't false or the same one played over and over in his mind.

His hand wandered up along Bucky's spine to the nape of his neck and curved there, gripping him gently; he was so close, his blue-gray eyes so near to Steve's, and he wanted to close the inches of distance and kiss him. Would Bucky welcome that, would he remember it and want it the way Steve did? He felt such a yearning for him that he was sure it must be opening him up, spilling out of him.

Inflicting violence on others seemed legitimate throughout his life as he could remember it, and while the innocence of the past backyard brawling was nothing compared to what he had done as his life as the Winter Soldier, it was a trend that caused a shiver to run down his spine. He was living a life where he was deployed to tip the scale of combat. "I remember some of them," he agreed softly, trying to force his lips up but finding the expression hollow even to himself. "Do you like being punched?"

His eyes dropped, staring at nothing in particular as he simply allowed his hands to slip from Steve's face to slide down that broad muscled chest. Part of him remembered something much more different, the poke of ribs here and there rather than the rise and fall of hard muscle. Heat radiated from Steve, but there was also a tension of restraint, which caused his eyes to flick up and study the blond for a long moment.

"What is it?"

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.

Life was a struggle he had come to realize, though laying here quiet and safe on this bed drew him back from the memories that sought to clog up his mind. Despite his freedom, he knew that there would come a time when he would fight and probably kill again. From past to present, it was clearly how he and Steve operated, how they had thrived in their lives when they had nothing but each other. He had little bits and pieces of memories of their struggles that had nothing to do with bloody fists. Survival, he decided. They would survive; they had spent years mastering that niche market against all odds.

His hands paused just to feel the way the skin under his grip shifted with expansion of Steve's ribs to breathe. He flexed his mismatched fingers and then dug his fingernails into the flesh between Steve's ribs and then went back to stroking them down the rest of the blond's abdomen until his hands caught and grasped Steve's waistband.

Yet, his breath caught in his throat at the brush of lips on his own, not at all bothered by the grip to his neck. His eyes widened slightly before he dipped his head so that he could press his forehead against Steve's lips. "I don't remem... no, I want to remember. Show me. Please," he requested as politely as he could manage. Even that light brush had sent a thrill through him.

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