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“Hey,” Sam says three months in, sliding back into the car with breakfast. “You ever been to Paris?”
“‘45,” Steve says. “Not long. It was the liberation.”
“Yeah, and I bet you went to all the cool parties too.” Sam tears one of the paper bags open and makes a face. “Nope, this is your egg-cheese thing.”
“Protein, fat, calories.” Steve takes it and sinks his teeth into the sandwich. “Got used to it. Rationing’s a habit.”
“Hasn’t anybody told you the war’s over?” Sam says, starting on his wrap. “But get this. A couple buddies of mine are on vacation over there, and one of them says he’s seen your boy Bucky around town.”
Steve puts the sandwich down and says, very carefully, “You sure?”
“Not a lot of sure things in this business,” Sam say frankly. “But — well. Willing to spring for the plane tickets, anyway.”
One thing Steve likes about Sam: he doesn’t lie to him. “I’m paying for the tickets,” he says, just to be contrary.
“Yeah, okay, Mr. I-got-millions-of-dollars-in-back-pay.” Sam rolls his eyes. “Finish your damn breakfast.”
———
“So you’re Captain America,” says the guy Sam had introduced as Ian, looking at him with interest. “Wilson’s said a lot about you.”
“Mostly about how much he’s been getting his ass kicked,” Daniel puts in. “Bird Boy here’s never been great at fighting.”
“Oh, you wanna come over here and say that again?” Sam says. “I can kick yours any time, anywhere.”
“Don’t touch the face,” Ian protests, “I gotta look at him every day —”
“Not like he can get any uglier —”
Daniel has Sam in a headlock which Sam’s trying to elbow his way out of; Ian’s got a hand on Daniel’s shoulder, his teeth white and eyes crinkled with laughter. Steve looks at the three of them and feels something like a memory caught in his throat.
“Listen,” Sam says, finally extricating himself from Daniel’s grip, “the guy, right? You said you saw him.”
“Yeah, hanging out by the Louvre,” Ian says. “Didn’t go in, but kinda looked like he wanted to.”
“Sweet hand, though,” Daniel says appreciatively. “Smooth as anything. He serve with you?”
“Army,” Sam says, shaking his head. The other two make matching noises of disappointment.
“The Louvre,” Steve repeats. And then, “Listen: thank you. Enjoy the rest of your vacation.”
Ian shakes his hand, his grip firm. Daniel doesn’t, looking him over, then says with an almost defiant tilt to his jaw, “Honeymoon, actually.”
“Oh,” Steve says; he can’t say anything else.
“Pennsylvania got on the bandwagon,” Ian says with a shrug, like that explains everything. “And the military can’t kick us out now, so.”
Daniel’s still considering him like he’s expecting a fight. Steve takes his hand and says, “Good luck.”
———
“Daniel’s not a bad guy,” Sam says as they walk down Rue de Rivoli. “It’s just — sometimes you wanna know if you can trust someone before you like ‘em, you know?”
“You mean he didn’t want me to be like Captain America.”
Sam lets out an embarrassed cough. “I mean.”
“I read my mail sometimes,” Steve points out. “It’s informative.”
“You read your own — of course you do.” Sam looks appalled. “That list you got? Put the Unabomber on it.”
It’s strange; Steve had thought he knew what Captain America could be, dreams captured between those garish comic book panels. Then he woke up and found out that Captain America had kept on living, all those years while he was asleep in the ice.
They’re nearly at the Louvre. Steve says, “Sam. What you said before —”
“Yeah,” Sam says after a moment. “It was Riley.”
There are a thousand things Steve could say, and none of them would be right. “I’m sorry,” he says anyway. “I would’ve liked to meet him.”
Sam puts his hands in his pockets. “Me too.” Then he grins faintly. “‘Course, you were trying to pick me up in front of the Washington Monument the first time we met, so I’m thinking he would’ve done his best to beat you up.”
That startles a laugh out of Steve. “I guess I would’ve had to let him,” he says. “It’s only fair.”
Sam doesn’t ask about Bucky. Steve doesn’t know what he would have said if he did.
———
The truth is: Steve kissed Bucky, once. It was 1935, Bucky just in from a date, and Steve didn’t know if it was the dancing or the liquor making his eyes so bright but it had made him reckless all the same. He’d had to reach up to touch Bucky’s mouth with his, and it was over before Bucky even had time to react.
The truth is: Bucky kissed Steve, once, in the heart of war-torn London. They’d gotten in from the pub, and Bucky had downed enough glasses for Steve to worry but he’d been perfectly steady when he pressed Steve into the wall in his quarters. A brief moment, his hands on Steve’s shoulders and mouth on Steve’s mouth, then he’d pulled back and said, with a lopsided smile, “Carter’s probably looking for you.”
The truth is: Steve thinks maybe he and Bucky have never managed to really look at each other at the same time.
———
“What do you think, split up?” Sam asks. “Faster, but it’d be worse if he tries to kill us on sight.”
Someone had dragged Steve out of the river, and it hadn’t been Sam. “He won’t,” Steve says. “He might not even be here.”
“Yeah, okay, I’ll remember that when the French arrest us,” Sam mutters. “This is how my mom’s gonna find out I know Captain America. Take the top floors, all right? I’ll check out the ground floor and the — other ground floor.”
Steve pauses on his way up. “She doesn’t already know?”
“Look, she knows I live in D.C., she called me all worried,” he says defensively. “Didn’t seem like the best time to tell her I was actually the one who caused half the mess.”
“Easier to tell her now that you’re in Europe,” Steve says gravely, and cracks a grin at Sam’s sputtering. “You can tell her I’m responsible for the other half.”
“Yeah, that’ll go well.” Sam shudders. “No, I gotta ease her into it. Hey, where are you — you know they’ve got elevators that way.”
Steve takes the stairs.
———
He starts on the second floor, wandering past the rooms with his hands in his pockets. He feels incongruous here, this museum with all its delicate details.
Bucky had talked about it sometimes, like a dream: he and Steve in Paris, looking at art he’d only read about in drawing books. At sixteen, Steve had listened to him spin out the story and thought it’d be the closest he would ever get.
There’s a ghost in this place, Steve thinks, and doesn’t know whether it’s Bucky or himself.
———
He finds Bucky one floor down, in a room full of French paintings.
Bucky’s dressed in a dark jacket, his head tipped down just a touch, but something about the set of his shoulders is oddly familiar. It takes Steve a moment to realize: it’s what Bucky used to look like, one eye pressed to the scope of his rifle and his finger on the trigger.
He’s studying a painting on the wall, a faint frown creasing his forehead. Steve takes a step forward, then stops. The weight of history is heavy on his tongue and he doesn’t know how to swallow it down.
It’s been a very long time since he’s had the chance to just look at Bucky.
He used to think Bucky could belong in a place like this. Steve had tried his best to capture the bright edge to his grin, the grace of his limbs, and could never manage to get it right. Now, he seems to belong a different way: worn thin by the slow passage of time; a faded echo of his former self.
Bucky looks up then, and sees him.
Steve has a clear view across the gallery. Bucky doesn’t look surprised; he doesn’t look anything at all. He just turns his gaze at Steve in the same focused way he’d examined the painting, like Steve’s a thing he’s trying to puzzle out.
A small knot of people pass between them, suddenly; Steve blinks dumbly at them for a moment, feeling like he’s waking from a dream, and finally forces himself forward. His feet are awkward beneath him in a way they haven’t been since 1943, when he stumbled out of Howard Stark’s machine with a brand-new body.
But Bucky is gone.
———
Steve says, “He’s not gonna stay in Paris.”
“Yeah, I’d haul tail too if my long-dead best friend showed up on my long-dead assassin trail,” Sam says. “And we’d nearly killed each other the last time we met. Does he even know who you are?”
Steve pauses. “I think he was expecting me,” he says, finally. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Oh good,” Sam says. “Just what I wanna hear about a guy with amnesia.” He softens, just a touch. “Was he looking at anything? When you saw him.”
“Delacroix,” Steve says absently. “Liberty Leading the People.”
Sam blinks. “Oh, that’s subtle.”
“What?”
“Liberty,” Sam pronounces, jerking his head at Steve’s shield. “Leading the people. Hell of a coincidence if it is.” Then he grows thoughtful. “Maybe he’s trying to tell you something.”
“Maybe,” Steve says, only half-listening. He’s thinking about the painting — not the figure of Lady Liberty, but the small boy beside her.
———
Sam says, “So now what?”
They’re still in Paris, but not for long. Steve looks up from packing and says, slowly, “You know, you could go home.”
“Home,” Sam says, like he’s testing the word. “Listen, you’ve thought about getting out. Stop all this and go — retire in the country, I don’t know. Get a dog.”
“You know I have,” Steve says.
“So what if some guy came up to you tomorrow and said, ‘This is it. Put down your shield and walk away.’ Could you do it? Just like that.”
Sam’s got his wings between his hands, tucked halfway in his suitcase. “Sam,” Steve says, the guilt rising up. “I never should’ve asked you to get back in.”
“No, it’s —” Sam shakes his head. “It’s fine. I’ll do it, I’ll get out. Call my mom. My sister wants to set me up with a guy. I just — need a little time, you know?”
“Okay,” Steve says. “All right.”
“Besides,” Sam says, shrugging. “You didn’t ask. I volunteered.”
It’s the only thing that stops Steve from protesting. It’s important: Steve had made a choice. So had Sam. And Bucky —
“So where to?” Sam says, slamming his case shut. “You got any ideas?”
Steve says, “We should go to London.”
———
“It had to be London,” Sam says in despair. “There are probably fifty museums within walking distance right now. That’s me, not you, by the way. You could walk to every museum in this country and be back in time for dinner.”
Steve is thinking. “We’re going about this wrong,” he says. “Bucky’s looking for something. If we know what he wants, we won’t have to guess.”
“Well, you know him better than I do,” Sam says, dubious. “What’d you guys do when the SSR was in London? You ever take time off for sightseeing?”
“Too busy,” Steve says ruefully. “Besides, the collections were all evacuated.” He pauses, struck by a thought. “Which one’s the National Gallery?”
———
The National Gallery is a large, imposing building, with an art collection to match. Bucky is not there.
“I’m sorry, man,” Sam says as they start back along the Strand. “It was a good idea.”
“Maybe I was wrong,” Steve says. “Maybe this isn’t what he wants.”
“Hey, it was as good as guess as any,” Sam says. “Look, you never thought this was gonna be easy.”
“I know,” Steve says, rubbing his face tiredly, “you’re right, it’s just —”
He stops. “What?” Sam asks from beside him.
It’s the banner that’s caught his eye: a clean, simple one declaring itself the Somerset House. The name tugs at him, insistent. He shakes his head, frowning, and can’t get it clear.
“You go ahead,” he tells Sam, veering toward the courtyard. “I wanna check something out.”
“You sure?” Sam looks skeptical. “What is it?”
Steve’s not sure. He gives the most honest answer he has: “A memory.”
———
The house had been bombed during the war, before they came to London. It’s repaired now, of course — has been, for a long time, no rubble or shattered windows in sight. In the courtyard, someone’s installed a fountain. Steve stares at it for a moment, thrown, while the water burbles on as if it has always been there.
Bucky is upstairs.
The rooms here are smaller, nearly cramped, and Steve holds his head down and shoulders rounded, trying to make himself small. It’s funny; he used to do the opposite, stick-thin and ninety pounds wet, and here he is seventy years later with a whole new body that still doesn’t fit right.
He looks at Bucky first: Bucky, who’s staring at the wall with his spine held stiff, who’s got his left hand shoved deep in his pocket and his right hand clenched into a fist. He’s shaking slightly; Steve’s enhanced hearing can just pick up the shallowness of his breaths.
The painting on the wall stares back, a man with a heavy bandage over his ear.
The brushstrokes on the canvas are thick, blocky, and all Steve can think is that the man’s eyes, a bright blue-green, are almost unbearably sad.
It’s the same expression on Bucky’s face.
Steve lets himself be jostled closer, until he’s nearly touching Bucky — and then closer still, until he is. With the muscle of his shoulder pressed against Bucky’s, he can feel the cool metal plates beneath the fabric of Bucky’s jacket.
He doesn’t move. He stays very still, not even daring to breathe, while Bucky does the same and the servos of his arm whirl, frantic, as if a living thing between them.
Steve thinks, with a touch of irony: Well, that makes one of us.
———
“Let me get this straight,” Sam says, back at the hotel. “You saw him. You were in the same room together. And yet we’re still chasing this guy across this continent?”
“I didn’t —” Steve says, helpless, and sinks down onto the bed. “I couldn’t tell him to stay. Not like that.”
“Couldn’t you at least have asked?” Sam says. “Man, this is like the world’s worst treasure hunt.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve says, his head in his hands. “This whole thing — I don’t know what to do. If Bucky hadn’t come back —”
If Bucky hadn’t come back, maybe he would’ve tried harder to pretend. Maybe he could have buried the past and thrown himself into this century, until he could almost believe this was all he’d known. Would that have made it easier?
He doesn’t know. All his memories have come alive, and Steve thinks maybe he is looking for a home that no longer exists.
“Might have been easier, maybe,” Sam says, sitting down on the bed next to Steve. “Doesn’t always mean better.” Then he frowns. “Were you expecting mail?”
“What?”
Someone’s slid a white envelope underneath their door. Steve jumps up, nearly staggers in his haste to look out into the hall, but there’s no one in sight.
“Look at this.” Sam holds up a printout of what looks like a building, a section circled in red. “Dude, this is —”
“It must be where he’s headed.” Steve looks closer at the labels. “El Reina Sofía?”
“Madrid,” Sam says. “You ever been to Spain?”
“No.” Steve pauses. “Never picked up much Spanish, either.”
“Man, this is so not the way I imagined backpacking through Europe,” Sam mutters. “All right, let’s see what four years of high school is really worth.”
———
“Look, all I’m saying is, how does he know when you’re gonna come by? Is he just hanging out all day, waiting for you to show up? ‘Cause I feel like that means something.”
“I see you looking at your phone every evening,” Steve says. “How’s your mother?” It’s below the belt, and he regrets it as soon as he says it.
“Dude,” Sam starts, but then they’re inside the wide-open room and both of them go quiet at once.
There’s nowhere else to look; the painting, spread across the entire width of the wall, demands all their attention. The sheer scale of it takes Steve back — being sixteen, seventeen, eighteen and angry at a world that didn’t want him. The memory is sharp enough that it catches in his ribcage.
He’s looking at the horse. It’s been impaled on a spear; the sight of it wakes a phantom ache in Steve’s side where he’d once been run through with a length of rebar.
The artist had taken the horse apart and put it back together askew. Steve looks up at the terrified eyes, barely breathing.
He is thinking about stepping into a machine and letting himself be remade, the stretch of bones beneath his skin; he is thinking about Bucky, strapped down on a lab table and shaped into a weapon.
He is thinking about war, and the scars that it leaves — both the ones written across the body, and the ones underneath.
Sam says, shaky beside him, “You know, Riley would’ve hated this. Picasso. Abstract bullshit.”
“Well,” Steve says solemnly. “Everyone has flaws.”
———
Bucky’s not in the building. Steve thinks maybe he’d known that long before he stepped foot in Madrid.
Instead, it turns out, Bucky texts him a picture. Just the curve of a neck and shoulder, but Steve recognizes it in an instant. How many times had he thumbed his way to this page, drawn to it with a quiet sense of guilt in his mouth?
Sam squints at the picture over his shoulder. “Is that a statue?”
Steve hums. “What do you think about Italy?”
“Jesus Christ,” Sam says. “I just gotta say, this is some weird-ass foreplay, and I was in the Air Force, okay? There are people who wanna reenact Top Gun.”
———
Sam hesitates when they’re in front of the gallery. “You go ahead,” he says, a hand in his pocket. “Got something to do first.”
“You know,” Steve says, “that call’s gonna cost a fortune.”
“Do I tell you how to spend your money?” Sam waves him off with his phone to his ear. “Go. Do what you came here to do.”
Steve can hear him talking as he walks away: “Hey, ma.” Then, softer, “Been thinking about coming home.”
Inside, the statue of David stands tall on its pedestal, flooded by sunlight. And beside it, the small figure of Bucky, looking up.
Steve holds his breath. He is, distantly, thinking of a church; of confession. Of the way Bucky’s face had looked, once, under stained-glass lights.
Bucky turns then, and looks at Steve.
Steve can’t speak. His heart is hammering against his ribs, a sensation he thought he’d outgrown.
Bucky glances over his shoulder. “Statue’s up there,” he says. “Think maybe you’re looking at the wrong thing.”
Steve clears his throat. “Naw,” he says, holding his gaze steady. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got it right.”
He doesn’t know who moves first; all he knows is that they’re suddenly close enough to touch.
He raises a hand, presses it carefully to Bucky’s jaw. “Buck.”
“I ain’t the one made out of marble, Rogers,” Bucky says, raspy. “And I’ve been waiting a long time.”
So Steve tugs him in and kisses him, the way he wanted to in 1935, and Bucky kisses him back, like he’s remembering a night in 1943. And it took two lifetimes for them to get to this place but maybe it was worth it, to have this: Bucky pressed against him and his heart beating against Steve’s, a pair of fluttering birds.
“You’re gonna cause a scandal,” Bucky says against Steve’s mouth. “Captain America, Lewd Display in Museum Abroad.”
“Well, then,” Steve says. His hands are still on Bucky’s shoulders and he can’t suppress his grin. “The restroom’s around the corner. Might as well do it right.”