Chapter Text
Steve was alone. He sat on the couch and stared at the wall. It hurt, but he didn’t know how to make it stop. Heel of his palm pressing over his heart to try and suppress the ache. It started with his ma, Sarah Rogers, coughing as rust bloomed in her handkerchiefs and disease strangled her lungs.
It deepened living with Bucky and watching him learn to love. Always including Steve in his escapades at first, but leaving him behind at the end of the night to be with his conquest for the night. Stumbling back in with the setting moon or rising dawn. Peggy had changed things.
Or she was supposed to.
The war took precedence over stolen moments and unspoken promises. There was time enough later. But later came far too late.
70 years too late.
Steve in stasis while the world moved on and Peggy became a mother and grandmother and Steve was still the same earnest young soldier who had died all those years ago.
The avengers should have been a second chance. A new generation of commandoes fighting to save the world from evil. But Tony was no clever Dernier. Thor was not Dum Dum. And even Sam was not patient Monty who looked at them all with an indulgent smile.
That not quite enough catching like splinters on an unfinished wood chair. They didn’t have the cohesion that Steve remembered in his team.
They came together, but split apart just as easy. Tony to his glittering tower and loving girlfriend. Clint and Natasha vanishing like ghosts. Thor following his scientist around like a lovelorn puppy. The team dissipating once the mission ended, leaving Steve alone as they went their separate ways.
Steve thought he could slide in to just friendship with Sam. Two souls who’d lost something. Left a piece of themselves on the battlefield alongside their lost loves. It had been enough once. Always beside Bucky. Under his arm, wrapped up in his affection. Cared for, even if not precious.
But even Sam was drawn into the beauty of being in Bucky’s orbit. Even after the winter soldier had destroyed his things and tried to kill them. Even after he’d once told Steve that Bucky wasn’t the sort you saved.
He found them in the common area, wrapped in each other’s arms and kissing like they didn’t need to breathe.
He hadn’t known Bucky felt that way about men. Bucky had never even hinted those years they’d lived together. Steve still didn’t know what to do with that. With knowing Bucky could love men, but Steve wasn’t one of them.
He pressed harder as the ache turned into a sharp knife, scraping against his heart, but never quite piercing.
The call to Assemble was almost a relief as he stood and gathered his things.