Archive of Our Own

It is easier to train a wolf than to break a man. A wolf is instinct — howl at the moon, hunt in the woods, mate for life (avoid pain, stay alive, protect the pack). A man has instincts, too, and some of them the same, but human beings don’t listen to their blood; they listen to their thoughts, and blood comes after.

“Never underestimate instinct,” Bucky’s father tells him, when he is very young and looking at the moon. “A wolf that underestimates the power of instinct is a wolf that ends with blood in his mouth and lead in his belly.”

Bucky is too young to even change, then, but in a harsh world, parents must prepare their young.

“Yes, Papa,” Bucky says, his eyes full of moonlight’s inescapable pull. He knows instinct already.

—

“This is your sister,” Bucky’s mother tells him, holding the infant to her breast. “She’s family. She’s pack, and pack comes first. Always protect your pack — and don’t trust anyone outside of it.”

“Yes, Mama,” Bucky says. The new baby, Rebecca, smells like family, smells new and sweet, feels small and fragile when his mother puts her into Bucky’s arms. Mama’s right — she needs to be protected. He takes her words to heart, but as it will turn out — not all her words weigh the same.

—

Bucky meets Steve Rogers when he is seven years old. Steve is human and fragile. He smells like fading illness and like the fire in his eyes. The girl he’s defending doesn’t even thank him after, but Steve doesn’t care. Bucky offers him a hand up. He is bleeding, palm scraped from when he was shoved to the ground.

Steve looks up at him with bright, suspicious eyes — and then he takes Bucky’s hand.

Steve is not pack, is not even a wolf, and Bucky does not care. He will protect Steve anyway.

—

“You can’t trust humans,” Bucky’s mom says, her mouth drawn into a tight frown. “They always try to destroy what they fear.”

Steve, Bucky thinks, is not afraid of anything. Therefore, he must be safe. Bucky runs out to meet him.

—

“You can’t tell that Rogers boy what we are,” Bucky’s dad says, in the woods, moments before the moon changes them. “Telling a human brings danger to your door — to you, your pack, your family.”

Bucky nods, dutiful, lost in the heady rush of the moon, and the scent of pine and damp earth, but Steve is his best friend, and best friends don’t have secrets.

—

Bucky’s mother knows her boy. She sees the way he looks at Steve, like he’s watching the moon — an inescapable pull.

“Bucky,” she says, when they are in the kitchen. She kneads the bread with her strong hands while he minds the stew. It smells like yeast and meat and home. “You know we don’t care about that the way the humans do. It’s easier to live by their rules in their world, of course, but that doesn’t matter. Choose anyone you want — but choose a wolf.”

“Ma,” Bucky lies, “I don’t know what you mean.”

She looks up from the dough, one pointed glance. Bucky takes the lid off the pot to give the meat and potatoes and vegetables a stir. Beneath the weight of her gaze, he’s six and not sixteen.

“They’re not like us, Bucky,” she continues. “It’ll be life for you the moment you touch him. He will always be able to leave.”

Bucky is a good boy. He’s spent a lifetime minding his mother’s words, his father’s words — Steve is the only time he disobeys. It’s been life for Bucky since the first day they met, since he helped Steve off the ground, palm to bloody palm — and that’s not the touching his mother means, but it was enough. It was enough.

—

The day it happens, the day that Bucky will remember for the rest of his life as bright and light and glowing is grey and rainy, just another chilly November afternoon. Every minute of his life since the minute he met Steve has been an inevitable march towards this.

They’re both wet from the rain, and Steve might catch cold if they don’t get him out of those clothes and —

Well, there will be no more hiding aches and pains from Bucky for Steve now.

When Bucky comes home, there’s no way to hide what has transpired. Even if his mother didn’t have a wolf’s nose, she would know by the smile on his face.

She returns his smile, her blue eyes watery. “You’re both so young, darling. I hope you’re right. I hope he’s good to you.”

“You’re not mad?” he asks, sheepish.

“No use in it,” she tells him. “Steve’s your family now. More than me, more than your father or your sisters. That makes him my family, too.”
__

That night, he helps Becca untangle her hair while his mom and dad mind the twins. “What’s it like, having a mate?” she asks, making a face. She’s ten, with a boundless curiosity that makes the thought of being tied to one being for life even more unappealing than it is to most kids her age.

“Someday, you’ll know,” Bucky says. He’s not sure himself yet, but you don’t tell that to a kid sister. There’s a dull ache in his heart, and he knows that it’s because Steve is not by his side. There’s a calm in his bones, and it is because he knows their bones will one day rest together.

—

Bucky’s bones don’t rest, of course. That’s the trouble.

—

They wake Bucky up on a clear and beautiful Wakanda day.

The first thing he knows is the beep of a monitor. The gnawing fear that always accompanies coming out of cryo — even when he does not remember why he is afraid, even when he doesn’t know his own name — fills his mouth with bile. What will they make him do this time? Who will be the bloody ruin that’s left when he is done?

The panic rises like the tides and then, and then — he opens his eyes.

There, golden like the sun, brighter than the full moon, sits Steve. He’s not an apparition or a lie: he is Bucky’s mate. He smells like wanting and belonging and home, his eyes full of worry and hope. Bucky remembers. He’s in Wakanda, under the protection of a king. HYDRA is gone, and they’d never have woken him like this, in a room full of light and large windows, tucked under a blanket, kind faces surrounding him.

Bucky has been asleep waiting to be free, not waiting to be used.

He reaches out, and Steve takes his hand, like the first day they met. He is warm and real, palm perfect and un-scraped. “Welcome back, Buck,” Steve whispers. “You’re safe.”

—

The medical staff buzzing around him records data on glowing tablets and asks Bucky questions to gauge his awareness. There are questions — there were always questions (“What is your name?” “I — I don’t know.” “What is the year?” “I don’t know.”) — but now, he has the answers. He has his mind.

He has Steve, sitting next to the bed, stroking the back of his hand with one soothing thumb.

Shuri shows him charts and explains the scientific process behind the procedure they used to get in and get the trigger words out.

There was a time when Bucky would have found this all fascinating, magical. Now, he has just one question. “And the other thing I asked about? Can you do it?”

“No,” Shuri says. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t.”

Bucky swallows his disappointment. It’s the answer he expected, but —

He is alone in his head, at last — him, the beast, and what he has done.

—

They keep him under observation, for a day, in the slim bed surrounded by the hum and beep of machines. Bucky is used to being an animal pinned under a slide. Every time he closes his eyes, there are flashbulb memories. He breathes too fast, and his heart pounds in his ears and —

When they were young, and Steve was the one in the bed, he always tried to leave early, before any right-minded doctor would allow. Bucky doesn’t have the luxury of being a bullheaded punk. He needs to know that everything is really, truly clear.

Steve doesn’t leave his side, sleeps on a chair by the bed, feet tucked under Bucky’s thigh, the point of contact grounding, an anchor Bucky uses to pull himself back when he spins out too far. Steve’s scent cuts through the smell of antiseptics. It’s the only reason Bucky’s anything approaching sane when they cut him loose the next morning.

There’s nothing wrong with him — medically, observably, anyway. The brain damage from years of being cut and shocked — and from trauma, Shuri tells him, showing Bucky some photos of healthy brains and brains with PTSD, so he can see what happens, and isn’t that just great — is healing. She’s done something and the frayed nerves from the arm that Stark blew off don’t hurt. He’s fine. He’s fine.

—

Steve's got one big hand on the small of Bucky’s back as they walk to their rooms. Bucky spent one night there before he went back under. He didn't sleep. All he remembers from that night is Steve's sad eyes when Bucky said he wanted to spend the night alone, and the one spot he kept watching on the ceiling.

Bucky hadn't. Wanted to spend that night alone. He'd ached for his mate after the decades of forced separation and the two years of running. Bucky aches, even now, with Steve next to him, touching him. It isn't enough.

That night, he'd felt too dirty to be touched, tainted by Hydra’s words in his head, by the monster they’d made him.

Now, he just wants to lie down, and he's too tired to argue when Steve lies down with him.

Steve wraps around him, their bodies like brackets, closed parentheses, breathing each other's warm air. “We’re going to get you through this,” Steve whispers. He kisses Bucky's forehead. He pulls the blankets around them, so Bucky is warm.

Bucky doesn't deserve this. He cannot help this. He buries his face in the crook of Steve's neck and loses himself in the heady high of being surrounded by Steve's scent for the first time in decades. It feels like flying. It feels like safety. It’s home. Bucky's asleep before Steve's hand can run up and down his back three times.

—

Bucky wakes up, and Steve is reading beside him.

—

Bucky wakes up, and Steve is tucked behind him, one arm wrapped around his waist.

—

Bucky wakes up, and Steve brings a glass to his lips. He drinks. It's the kind of care he hasn't been shown in the better part of a century.

—

The year is 1943, and Bucky's mom says, “Being away from him will be like resisting the change.”

He's got his orders.

“It will be like being torn apart. It never gets easier. He won't understand.”

—

The year is 1943, and the Steve that plucks him off the table must be a vision, must be Bucky finally gone mad from the pain and the want of him, must be — his smell hasn't changed (except for the blood and the illness). It's him.

The year is 1952, and the Winter Soldier snarls, changes, changes again, flexes claws turned to hands turned to claws and it's wrong — it's all wrong. Something's gone. Something is missing.

“These things and their mates,” the tech says. “It’s remarkable. Primitive, but remarkable.”

“Have they told him that —“

“Yeah, none of the techs there survived. Don’t even say his name.”

—

The year is 1991, and the Winter Soldier changes in an alley in New York City. He has to find — and his nose will be stronger with the change.

Where is —

He needs —

—

The year is 2014, and the Winter Soldier rushes across the bridge because the mask is off and the smell is so strong and he can’t, he can’t —

—

The year is 2018, and Bucky wakes up in his mate’s arms. It’s dawn, and the moon is fading. He presses closer, nuzzling Steve’s neck, where he can feel Steve’s skin. He shakes, almost breaking. He can hold this in — he isn’t weak. He can’t be weak.

“Hey,” Steve says, his voice a morning murmur. “I’ve got you.” He hugs Bucky tighter, close like they both want to be.

Bucky is caught in that moment, torn between desire and shame. He swallows, trying to quell the rise of emotion in his throat. It aches.

It’s been so long, and he is so unworthy.

Bucky does the only thing he can: he surges up in the confines of Steve’s arms for a desperate, hungry kiss.

Steve tastes like the half of Bucky that’s been missing. He feels like warmth in the freezing cold. Bucky forgets to breathe, forgets to think, forgets to do anything but kiss him harder. Steve kisses back with all the ardor of a man who’s lost the love of his life and gotten that love back again.

Steve breaks the kiss and pulls him closer than close again, hands fisted in the soft cotton of Bucky’s sleep shirt. They’re chest to chest, breathing each other’s air, because morning breath doesn’t matter when you’ve been so in love and so alone for so long.

Steve kisses him again. Steve is cautious in his desperation, hands everywhere, but only above Bucky’s waist. Bucky wants more, takes Steve’s hand and guides it to his ass, intensifies the kisses and the friction. It feels good through the thin fabric of sleep pants, but it isn’t enough — it isn’t enough.

He straddles Steve’s hips, moves to pull off his shirt, and suddenly it all breaks apart.

(They’re on the helicarrier and Steve is down and the Soldier is changing and — )

Bucky rolls them over with a press of strong thighs, so Steve is on top of him, and pulls Steve down for another kiss. But it is too late, he is already shaking again. Fuck. Fuck, he’s so fucked up.

Steve cups Bucky’s face between two heated palms and watches him. Bucky pulls him back down and kisses him harder. He can do this. He can have this. He doesn’t deserve it.

The Steve of his fogged-up memories is insatiable, always eager for more and new. Here, too, he has something to prove.

The Steve of today breaks away from their kisses and strokes Bucky’s cheek. He watches Bucky’s face, taking in the sorrow and the need. “It’s alright, honey,” Steve says. “We can wait. We have our whole lives.”

“It’s supposed to help,” Bucky says, shaking. “Last time, it helped.”

When Zola took him apart on that table, the only things that kept him functional (if not sane) were sex (with Steve), and long runs in the woods, accompanied by the thrilling realization that Steve’s preternatural new strength and speed made it possible for Steve to keep up. And Bucky’s not doing the latter.

“We could go for a run,” Steve says. “It’s beautiful here — in the city, and in the wilder places, too.”

“No,” Bucky says, hoping against hope that Steve won’t push the question.

Bucky catches his first break in seventy years when Steve just rolls off him, nuzzles his cheek and takes Bucky’s hand, intertwining their fingers. He brings Bucky’s hand to his lips for a gentle little kiss, and something twists in Bucky’s chest. “Whatever you need, Buck,” Steve says. “I’m here.”

Bucky lays his head on Steve’s chest to listen to his perfect, steady heart. He didn’t extinguish that. Steve kisses his forehead, and Bucky tilts up for a soft kiss on the lips. He sleeps.

—

Bucky wakes up to the sound of Steve breathing, steady and clear. It had confused him at first, when the memories started returning — one lover for his whole life, but two bodies. Then, when the memories grew stronger, he recalled the crystal-bright soul, always the same.

That was when he’d started missing Steve in earnest, not just an idea, not just a mate — this man. That was also when he had decided to stay the fuck away. His life wasn’t a fairytale, and where else do princes love monsters?

“Welcome back,” Steve says, then, “I sleep a lot when I’m healing, too.”

It’s nice that Steve thinks that this is healing sleep. Bucky hasn’t been resting: it’s the abyss that he deserves.

—

“When was the last time you changed?” Steve says. They’re having breakfast in bed, and Steve alternates between stealing bites from Bucky’s plate and feeding Bucky forkfuls of his own food.

If Bucky didn’t already know Steve loved him — that Steve loved him when he didn’t know his name loved him after the gunshot wounds loved him with his teeth in Steve’s throat — the fact that Steve shares food with him would be enough. Bucky knows, like only a mate could know, that he is always hungry.

Bucky doesn’t answer. Steve will draw his own conclusions

“The moon is in three weeks,” Steve says. “We should go out at least once before then, or it’ll be hard.”

‘Good,’ Bucky thinks. ‘It should be hard,’ but all he says out loud is, “No.”

Steve feeds him another bite of pancake. It’s syrup-sweet on his tongue, just the way Bucky likes.

Even after all this time apart, Steve knows him. Soon, they’ll be tangled back together, and Bucky won’t be able to keep secrets from him, not even a single one. The longer they’re together, the stronger the bond will grow — the more that Steve will feel. Bucky can hold it back, but not for long.

—

“Buck,” Steve says, a full week later, when he still hasn’t gotten out of bed for any non-essential functions. “I know we’re no good at this kind of stuff, but.”

He pauses. Bucky grunts, and hopes Steve understands it means, ‘What do you want, Rogers?’

“You’re sleeping fourteen hours a day,” Steve says. “You only get out of that bed to piss.”

“Should I be up and dancing?” Bucky says.

“What you’ve been through, it does things to people. You need help. Real help. I know our bond isn’t back all the way, but I know you, and I can feel enough to know that you’re struggling.”

“Like you’re one to talk,” Bucky says, “You didn’t take care of yourself one minute I was gone.”

Steve doesn’t take the bait. “We’re not talking about me, Buck. I’m worried about you.”

First of all, that’s bullshit. They should be talking about Steve, too. Second of all, Bucky would rather saw off his remaining arm than talk about this. Unfortunately, that would not result in Steve worrying about him less.

Steve’s got him backed into a corner. Bucky has had one surefire way of distracting Steve since circa-1935, and he takes it.

He summons up his strength to rise from the big, comfortable bed, and pulls off his shirt, the movement slow but not particularly sensual. Seduction was never the Winter Soldier’s game, and Bucky Barnes is rusty. “I can’t talk about this until I’ve had a shower. It’s been like four days.”

Bucky walks towards the ensuite bathroom. Shockingly, what with the sex appeal and stink, Steve doesn’t follow.

Bucky summons up the memory of his old charm, and looks over his shoulder, smiling a half-smile and willing some sparkle into his eyes and some flirtation into his voice. “You gonna come wash my back?”

That line has worked on Steve for more than eighty years. Bucky watches the change in Steve’s face for a moment. The emotions play out in three acts: annoyance, longing, and frustrated resignation. When he walks into the bathroom, Bucky knows Steve will follow.

Bucky strips and turns on the hot water and waits. It’s an unthinkable luxury to step underneath the gentle, steaming stream — something he never could have had in all the other times and places he’s existed.

It’s a few minutes before he hears Steve approach. Bucky can smell the stress on him. He feels a guilty thing twist in his chest — he did that — but it’s a small wrong in a life full of big ones. Steve won’t be stressed soon enough.

Bucky shivers at the sound of Steve stripping down — it’s fear and it’s guilt and it’s anticipation. When Steve steps into the shower, he wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist from behind. He nuzzles Bucky’s neck and kisses a tender spot behind Bucky’s ear. His beard tickles.

Bucky shivers again. It’s not fear.

Steve’s chest is broad and warm against Bucky’s back. His arms are strong and protective. It’s the first time they’ve touched like this in more than seventy years. Steve kisses lower, a spot on Bucky’s neck; again, at the juncture between his neck and his shoulder.

Then the bastard steps away, grabs a washcloth, and starts lathering up Bucky’s back for real.

Bucky huffs in shocked frustration.

When you’ve been fucking the same person for the better part of a century, you both know how to push each other’s buttons.

Steve soaps up Bucky’s back and chest and shoulders. He’s gentle and thorough. Bucky hates him. He turns in Steve’s arms for a lingering kiss.

Steve indulges him for a too-brief moment, and then grabs the shampoo. He lathers up Bucky’s hair. His long, clever fingers on Bucky’s scalp are bliss, and Bucky sighs when Steve’s shampoo job turns into a prolonged massage.

It’s the pleasure of his touch and the anticipation of what’s coming, the impatience.

When you’ve been fucking the same person since you were sixteen, sex is a story.

Steve rinses his hair and pulls Bucky close, holding him a while underneath the warm stream. Then, Steve kisses him, real and desperate and wanting.

Bucky didn’t start this because he wanted the sex or even the intimacy, but he’s forgotten that now. Steve’s mouth on his mouth, Steve’s skin on his skin, it’s so good. It’s all Bucky wants.

This is his mate. When you’ve been with your mate since you were sixteen, he knows just how to wind you up and get you off while warm water laps at your skin. He knows what spot on your neck to kiss and how to twist his wrist right and how to show you he loves you without saying a damn word.

Bucky comes with a shout, held tight in Steve’s arms, and sinks to his knees to return the favor.

—

Bucky hasn’t wanted sex in a very long time, and the drive roars back to life with wild vengeance.

After their shower, he takes Steve to bed.

After three hours, he says, “You spent all that time getting me clean and look...”

They take another shower. Bucky licks the water from Steve’s skin. Bucky’s lines work on Steve, no matter how bad they are.

—

The next few days are a blur of Steve and all the ways that Steve can touch him — Steve’s smell and the salt of Steve’s skin; Steve in his memories, with concave hipbones and a crooked smile; Steve, built like a brick shithouse, concern and love shining in his eyes.

—

In a life full of unspeakable horrors done and experienced, it’s nice to still have “making Steve Rogers curse a blue streak while he comes” on his list of accomplishments.

After six days in Steve’s arms, Bucky dreams again, for the first time since the ice — wolf dreams, four feet on the ground, the smell of the earth, and his eyes in the sky.

The moon is coming, and this reprieve — like all reprieves — is temporary.

The first change after the ice is always hard. His skin is twitching.

Bucky goes to see Shuri. He will do what must be done to protect everyone here from the monster he becomes.

—

Okoye is with her — it’s reassuring to know Bucky still hasn’t found any luck. They’re talking in Shuri’s lab, bright and animated until Okoye senses his approach. She is on guard in the space between breaths. Shuri rolls her eyes and waves to dismiss the gesture.

“His change is coming early,” Okoye says, speaking to Shuri only. “I can smell it.”

Bucky’s used to people talking about him like he isn’t in the room, but this time, he doesn’t mind. It’s because she sees him as an intruder, not a thing.

“You cannot run with us,” Okoye says — to him, a surprise. “Women only.”

“That’s not what I need,” Bucky tells her.

In this proud, unbowed nation, what Bucky is asking for can only be shameful, and he feels judgement in her eyes. That’s alright. He would be willing to face worse. He tells them.

Shuri looks at him, her large eyes full of empathy. “I can make you a simulation, so it’s like you’re running free.” She doesn’t try and talk him out of it.

Bucky shakes his head. Anything that messes with his perception of reality would only make it worse.

“I will provide you with what you have asked for,” Shuri says. He’s made her sad — another small guilt, but this time in service of a larger good.

“Thank you,” Bucky says. “Thank you.”

—

It’s another fucked-out afternoon when Bucky tells him. The moon is coming soon now, and Bucky feels the restless bliss it brings his kind, and the dread of what he’s going to become. There can be no putting this off any further.

“About the moon — “ Bucky says.

“I’ve been looking for good spots for us to run,” Steve tells him.

He runs his hand up Bucky’s chest, his palm warm on the scars, and steals a quick, deep kiss. Bucky’s heart sinks. He enjoys the moment of tenderness, bracing himself for what’s to come.

“I’m not running,” Bucky says. He closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see the look on Steve’s face, and oh — he is a coward.

“What do you mean, Buck?” Steve says. “You’re not gonna sit and stay once you’ve transformed.”

Bucky opens his eyes, and there it is — everything he heard in Steve’s voice: concern, confusion. “I’ve arranged to be kept somewhere,” Bucky says, “So I can’t hurt anyone.”

Steve goes from worried to indignant in the space of a heartbeat (Bucky hears that beat change). “So you’re going to be chained up. Like a beaten dog in someone’s yard.”

“Yep. That’s me,” Bucky says. “Minus the yard and plus a few feet of vibranium wall. Woof.”

“I wouldn’t let someone treat an animal that way — let alone you,” Steve says.

Bucky takes a deep, slow breath. “It’s not your choice. It’s my choice. And it’s happening.”

Steve puts his hands on his hips. “We can find another way, Bucky. Somewhere you can turn far away from people.”

“You can’t guarantee that,” Bucky says. He curls his fingers into a tight fist, short nails biting into his palm. “No one can. My way’s the only safe way.”

Steve shakes his head. “What about you? Is it safe for you?”

Bucky shrugs. “Irrelevant.”

“How did HYDRA treat you, when you were a wolf?”

The images flash through Bucky’s head in quick succession — silver digging into his flesh, the hot sting of a cattle prod. His canines tearing through —

“And now you’re doing it to yourself?” Steve says.

Bucky grits his teeth. “I am doing what I have to do.”

“You’re just scared to change,” Steve says.

“Get fucked,” Bucky says.

Steve, damn him to hell, stops steaming with righteous indignation just long enough to raise a wry eyebrow at Bucky’s word choice.

Bucky loves him. Bucky hates him. Bucky wants to laugh and also cry.

“Let me stay with you, then,” Steve says. His voice tight, like it’s painful to ask. “I can comfort you. Minimize the damage. You’d never hurt me.”

Bucky really does laugh, then. “Steve, I tore out your throat with my fucking teeth. The only thing that saved you was how fucking fast you heal. I’m not letting that thing near you again. Ever.”

“That thing? That thing is a part of you.” He’s back to full indignation, now.

“Thanks for the reminder. Because I don’t think about it every moment of every day.”

“Buck, this isn’t okay. You can’t punish yourself like this. You can’t deny your wolf like this. What would your parents — “

“Trust me, Steve, you don’t want me thinking too hard about what my parents would think. It won’t end well,” Bucky says. He’s shaking now, screaming, saying things he doesn’t even want Steve to know. “I let my wolf get trained like an attack dog. I was the thing that goes bump in the night. I set werewolf rights back decades, all by myself. I nearly killed my own damn mate.”

Steve reaches out for him, face ashen with worry, all anger doused by Bucky’s distress.

“No,” Bucky says, flinching. “Please, please don’t touch me.”

Steve jerks his hand away like a child who’s just grabbed a candle’s flame. Bucky can’t look at him a moment longer.

“Please,” Bucky says. He doesn’t even know what he’s asking for.

Steve understands. He leaves the room, shuts the door, and does not come back.

—

Bucky blacks out, like he hasn’t done since Romania, time slipping into a dark void. The next thing he knows, the sun has set. The room is dark, as he hasn’t bothered to turn on the light, or rise from the spot where he has crumpled in the corner of the room. It doesn’t really matter.

Bucky hates, so much, that he can still see. Even when he is unchanged, his eyes are the eyes of a predator, keener than any human, fine in the dark — able to perceive the slightest movement in the leaves, a mile away, through the scope of a rifle. He is always a killer.

Fuck, he can’t stop shaking.

The moon in the sky it’s — it’s so close, and he can’t stand to look. He’s like a river that’s a drop of rain away from flooding, a green thing that’s a centimeter of growth from bursting through the earth, a spark that’s a moment from catching a dried out field of grass —

One more night. He has one more night.

—

Bucky does not sleep a wink. Someone — probably Steve — leaves food by the door (pancakes with syrup beside the Wakandan specialties he likes best), a collection of his favorite things, but he can’t bring himself to eat.

He reports to Okoye at noon, because he’s not taking chances.

She leads him to the room that Shuri made without a word. It’s nice, the silence. He nods to her in ashen-faced thanks.

Shuri appears on a screen, inside. “It’s as you requested,” she says. “Only I can unlock it, and it would withstand a dozen wolves.”

“Thank you,” Bucky says.

“The restraints are here, and will lock when you engage them. They will change with you, but they are not —” She pauses, obviously distressed at his pain (one more crime of which he is guilty). “They’re really not necessary. You won’t escape.”

“Thank you,” Bucky says. He could thank her the rest of his long, unnatural life, for all that she has done, and it still would not be enough.

“If you need assistance —” Shuri says.

Bucky just shakes his head. He engages the restraints. A heavy metal collar locks around his neck; he grits his teeth, and goes on.

—

The change starts early, the way it always does, when he has gone too long with his wolf locked away inside. He feels the sharp pull of pain in his bones. They’re going to break soon, break and reform — destroy to create, and then destroy, destroy, destroy.

His stomach is churning, the organs starting to rearrange, preparing for his new form.

He’s done this every month since he was six years old. This part is easy.

Except — Bucky’s lungs pull tight, and his heart hammers. The collar around his neck has plenty of space — he has had so much worse — but he feels like it’s choking him.

It’s just a change — just a change, he tells himself. Except changing, changing means ruining and ripping and hurting — it means innocent blood in his mouth, like his parents warned him, and the woodsman never comes to stop him, because it isn’t a fairytale and —

His teeth have sharpened, this he knows, because he’s bitten through something and can taste the blood, and that taste makes it worse — it makes it worse. He can feel his heart in his temples, and he isn’t going to make it. Panic only slows the change down, fucks it up, makes it hurt more. Every muscle in his body is tight, twisting, aching, and —

“BUCKY,” he hears, shouted loud enough that it pierces three feet of vibranium. It’s Steve’s voice, and no — Steve cannot be here. If Steve’s here, he can hurt Steve, and no one knows where this room is, except two people who certainly wouldn’t have told Steve, and —

“Bucky!” Steve yells again. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do this alone! You’re panicking.This isn’t safe.”

Bucky just whines — a gross, weak sound.

“Shuri,” Steve shouts, “Please, please let me in with him. He’s in trouble! I can feel it — I’m his mate!”

—

Steve smells different. It’s more disconcerting than the physical transformation. He’s still himself — but something is gone, some other things, new.

It’s two days before Bucky realizes the thing that’s gone is sickness, and he feels sick for being anything but overjoyed that Steve is free now.

Steve’s curled around Bucky, their bedrolls presses together, when he asks, “Does me changing change things...for you, for our bond?”

Bucky shakes his head, an automatic reflex. Nothing changes it, for him. Wolves mate for life.

“It’s changed it, for me,” Steve says.

Bucky’s heart sinks in his chest, one thousand warnings from his mother playing back at once. Now Steve is a hero, and Bucky is a traumatized mess — of course, things are different — but not for him, never for him. He’ll only ever be Steve’s, even if Steve stops being his.

Steve nuzzles in, closer, his body at odds with his words, and Bucky doesn’t understand. He wants to pull away, and can’t bring himself to do it, because this could be the last time and —

“Jesus fucking Christ, Buck. Sorry. Didn’t think before I spoke, like always. Guess I took all the stupid with me after all,” Steve says. He plants a soft, apologetic kiss on the back of Bucky’s neck.

Bucky waits, with no small apprehension, for Steve to explain what the fuck is going on.

“Werewolf DNA was the base of the serum,” Steve says.

Suddenly, it all clicks into place. Something like joy — and oh, how long it’s been since Bucky felt that — replaces his panic. “You can feel the bond,” Bucky says.

“Yeah,” Steve tells him. “I feel you. I knew, at the factory, that you were alive, that you needed me.”

“Now you know my trick for finding you when you were getting your ass kicked in alleys.”

“Hey, I had them on the ropes,” Steve says, laughing. “It’s not exactly what you feel, because I’m not a wolf — I’ll never be one, the serum makes me immune. But I understand, now.”

Bucky twists around in his arms for a kiss. There’s only one way to celebrate this kind of closeness.

—

Steve steps into the room, and he is a vision to Bucky’s swimming eyes. There is no moonlight here, except the moonlight in his pale skin. He smells incredible, like warmth and love and home. He is memories and dreams, every good thing about the past and the present.

“Steve,” Bucky manages, with his bleeding, changing mouth. Then, he remembers. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I’m sorry, Buck,” Steve says, “I could feel you, and I wasn’t leaving you like this.” He reaches out to stroke Bucky’s cheek. Already, Bucky’s heart is slowing, just because he’s here.

“How did you find me?” Bucky says, half dreaming. Steve’s hand on his cheek is incredible. His bones barely hurt.

“I just followed my heart,” Steve says, his smile sheepish.

Bucky can’t even tease Steve for being a sap, because his teeth have changed too damn much.

“Shuri,” Steve says, “We don’t need that collar. I know he asked for it, but we’ll be fine.”

The metal around Bucky’s neck clicks open; quicker than a breath, Steve pulls Bucky into his arms. “I’m so sorry, honey,” he says. “I’m so sorry. Breathe with me. Easy and calm.”

Bucky listens to his breathing, steady and even and perfect. It’s so easy to fall into time.

“There we go,” he says. “You can do this.” Steve lets go of Bucky and steps back, but keeps one hand on his back, right between his shoulder-blades.

The change, arrested by Bucky’s panic, now resumes.

His bones snap and shift — a supernova of pain. His muscles tear and mend. He’s on all fours now, flesh turning to fur.

Steve never breaks contact, never steps away — the damn idiot.

--

Bucky stands, no longer human, waiting for what comes next.

Steve crouches down to meet him on his level. “There you go, Buck,” he says. “There you go.”

His words echo in Bucky’s changed ears, twisting like kaleidoscope colors. The strongroom locked behind Steve when he came in, and he is all that Bucky smells, all Bucky sees. Bucky takes in each distinct facet of Steve’s scent: he ran here, through the whole palace, following, seeking. There’s sweat. Smells from the kitchen, a garden — their room — all cling to his clothes and his hair. His cologne is faint — amber, musk, spice, citrus. Bucky knows the smell of his skin, has known it for a hundred years.

Bucky’s last orders, like this, were to kill him.

Steve reaches out. Bucky flinches away, a reflex.

Steve smells like heartbreak, but only for a moment. “Okay,” Steve says, “no touching. Got it.” He sits in front of Bucky, cross-legged — vulnerable, not defensive, not anything.

There’s not a note, not a touch of fear to his smell — but then again, there never has been, not even the first time that he saw Bucky change.

Bucky makes a sound, because “no touching,” doesn’t sound right. They have always been touching.

He is restless, every bone in his body desperate for freedom, for the moon and the whisper of night air. Instead, he listens to the whisper of the walled metal room — the hum of the screen, the hiss of the air in the vent, the beat of Steve’s heart, steady and unfaltering.

He’s supposed to have orders. Someone is supposed to be in charge.

“You have confused ears,” Steve tells him. “What’s confusing, Buck?”

Bucky bumps him in the shoulder with his snout, and Steve laughs.

“Are you bored?” Steve asks. “I’ll bring dog toys, next time.”

Bucky wants — wants to pounce on him and play and get revenge for the joke at his expense, wants to escape the frantic confines of this tiny room. He can’t —

“I hate them so much for hurting you, Buck,” Steve says.

It’s sudden. Bucky didn’t even smell the shift in mood before he spoke.

“I hate them for making you afraid,” Steve says. “I missed you, you know? This you. All of you.”

He’s radiating sadness, in his posture, in his face. Its scent emanates from his every pore.

Flat-eared and miserable, Bucky pounces on Steve and knocks him to the ground.

Bucky’s fear of hurting Steve means nothing, not when Steve is already hurting.

It’s not a contest.

For Bucky, Steve always wins.

Steve is shocked, and then he is laughing. He puts his hands on Bucky’s ears and gives him a scratch.

There’s not much room, but it’s enough to tussle and play a little. The smell of Steve’s joy makes Bucky forget fear.

They end in a pile on the floor, and it’s not running with the moon, but it’s Steve’s laughter and Steve’s hands running through his fur and the satisfaction of smelling his own scent on Steve’s skin. It’s enough.

“Hey Shuri,” Steve says. He scratches behind Bucky’s ear. “Could you please have someone bring food?”

—

There’s always been something tender about the mornings he spends with Steve, after the moon. It’s amplified, this time. Bucky is in Steve’s arms, naked and adored, and this is his heart. This is everything.

Steve strokes his hair. “How do you feel, Buck? You want anything?”

Steve’s eyes are so blue, full of warmth and care. He smells like spice and sweat and worry, and Bucky’s own scent is all over his skin. Bucky buries his face in Steve’s neck. Honestly, Bucky wants sex and food, and he’s not sure in which order, but saying that out loud might make him sound like a caveman.

Instead, Bucky grunts.

“Am I allowed to take you back to our room yet? Or are we still quarantined?”

Bucky punches Steve in the arm. It takes some contortion, and a lot of effort, but it’s worth it.

—-

They shower together — after both of Bucky’s primary needs have been fulfilled. Steve reels him in for a kiss under the steam.

“I’m sorry I’m a mess,” Bucky says.

Steve strokes his back. “Yeah, well, you’re my mess.”

Bucky takes his hand. The sound of the water is soothing, and so is the steam on his skin. “I’ll be better. I’ll tell you what’s going on.”

“You need a pack, Buck,” Steve tells him.

Bucky shrugs.

“I’m serious,” Steve says. “You need to be around wolves.”

Bucky doesn’t want to say anything, but he can't break a promise when he’s only just made it. “Who’s gonna want a monster in their pack, Steve?”

“Becca would,” Steve says.

Bucky feels the words like a blow. Without Steve’s arms around his waist, he’d probably buckle at the knees. “She’s still leading the pack?”

“Ninety six years young,” Steve says.

Bucky shakes his head. “I can’t —“

Steve just holds him.

“Have you seen her?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, his voice strained with emotion. “It took me a while to gather the courage, but I’ve seen her.”

“How was she?”

“Fantastic. Perfect. Sharp as a tack,” Steve says. “Even before we knew you were alive, she and hers treated me just like family.”

“You are her family,” Bucky says, automatic — still, after all these years, used to Steve’s insecurities.

Steve’s hand runs up and down his back soothing, grounding. It’s the measure of the moment and the measure of the distance they still haven’t bridged that Steve doesn’t say the things that Bucky knows he’s thinking.

“We can look for a pack,” Bucky whispers.

—

Shuri comes to see Bucky the next day. “Being a wolf hurts you,” she says. “I didn’t realize how much.”

“Yes,” Bucky says. “Yes.”

“What you asked for...I’ll try,” Shuri says. “It’ll be dangerous. I won’t ask a Wakandan wolf to test this.”

“That’s okay,” Bucky says. He takes her hand, squeezes it, rendered wordless by gratitude. What he asked for...would make his parents roll over in their graves, but it’s the best way forward Bucky can see. “Please, you can’t tell Steve. He won’t understand.”

They’re going to look for a pack. Bucky is hoping that soon — he won’t need one.

—

In the meantime, Bucky plays along. It’s more crucial than ever to fight back against the bond, to keep Steve out of his head.

“The most prominent pack in Wakanda are the Dora Milaje,” T’Challa says. “They are not an option, for obvious reasons.”

Steve laughs. Shuri gives T’Challa a look.

“There are, however, other packs,” Shuri says. “I could introduce you. Help you learn their customs...You definitely need the help.”

Bucky stares at the floor. He’s enough of a hard sell for wolves who know he was raised with their ways. What does he have to offer to a pack if he has to be taught their traditions like a new pup? And wow, he must seem pathetic right now if Shuri won’t even tease him much. “I don’t want to impose,” Bucky says.

“I will speak to my friend in the mountains,” T’Challa says. “Perhaps he will be open to meeting you.”

—

“Wolves who worship an ape deity,” Steve says. “Huh.”

“The Jabari were isolated from the other tribes of Wakanda for a long time,” Shuri says. “But they came to our aid when my cousin returned. It will be good for you to meet them, I think.”

Bucky feels a stab of guilt at that — add one more to the list. Shuri and T’Challa have done — everything — for him, and in their hour of need, he was asleep in a glass case.

Shuri reads the shift in his mood as surely as if she could smell it — and she gives him a look that articulates exactly what she thinks about his guilt. Shuri, Bucky thinks, would make an excellent wolf.

She reminds him of his own sister sometimes, a world and a century away, but another bright girl blazing her way through the world as she and no one else sees — saw — fit. The last time Bucky saw Rebecca, she was nineteen, scarcely older than Shuri and so full of dreams and plans that he thought she might burst with it.

It is strange, sometimes, that a Wakandan princess should remind him of a Brooklyn werewolf in such a sharp and aching way. And if Bucky thinks it through, it makes all the sense in the world.

—

The crash course on the Jabari continues.

“Vegetarian wolves?” Bucky asks. “Huh.”

Shuri shrugs.

“Can you do that?” Steve asks.

Bucky shrugs. “I mean...sure, why not?”

It’s a big, wide world out there, and Bucky knows enough to know how much he doesn’t know. Different packs have different traditions. If a pack wants him, he’ll learn.

—

M’Baku grants Bucky an audience later that week — apparently he and T’Challa have come a long way.

He and Steve journey into the mountains together. They make the trek on foot.

“I get it,” Bucky says, looking down and watching the sky turn shades of pink and gold over Wakanda.

“What do you get?” Steve asks.

“Why M’Baku took such a strong protectionist stance for such a long time,” Bucky says.

“Yeah?”

“Look at Wakanda from here,” Bucky says. “It’s so beautiful. But it’s small, vulnerable. You’d have to protect it, seeing it like this all the time.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, looking from Bucky’s face to the rose-colored sky. “I understand.”

—

They’re set upon by the pack partway up the mountain path, which Bucky expected, and Steve did not. He wouldn’t want super-powered outsiders knowing the secret path to his pack’s home, either.

For all that Bucky knows it’s well-intentioned, and that M’Baku probably does not intend to brainwash Bucky and send him to kill the Jabari’s enemies for seventy years, he still panics when the cloth covers his face.

Then Steve, who wasn’t thrilled about this particular greeting from their hosts feels him panic. That’s when things get really interesting.

—

Time slows down, adrenaline pulling it like taffy.

Bucky has about fifteen seconds before Steve’s fuse — which, regrettably, did not grow any longer when the rest of him quadrupled in size — blows. In fifteen seconds, Steve is going to do something ridiculous like take the head off the Jabari pack member who just blindfolded Bucky, starting a big fight and an even bigger diplomatic incident. Bucky knows it, like he knows that the sky is blue and that HYDRA are some real motherfuckers.

Bucky is also having a panic attack — which is to say he cannot breathe, sort of feels like he’s dying, and might, at any moment, do something completely out of his control like start weeping or decapitate someone. Talking is out of the question because his mouth will not form words.

Bucky does the unthinkable.

He closes his eyes beneath the heavy fabric of the blindfold, and he lets Steve in.

Because the thing is, the bond connects them in a flood of ways, and there’s no way to stop it, but you can push back — a little. Bucky’s done that. He’s carved out a place where he can be alone and hurting without it splashing all over Steve until the pain gets too loud. He’s carved out a place where he can keep his secrets.

And now, Bucky crushes that space like a strawberry — something impossible to reassemble. He closes his eyes and he lets Steve in and he thinks of — the first light of the moon, the smooth skin of Steve’s chest, sharing hot dogs on Coney Island and kisses on the war front, and every good thing in his unreasonably wretched life. Most of those good things are standing ten feet away, blindfolded and fuming.

Bucky feels Steve feeling it — the shock of his joy.

There will be no shutting Steve out now, but Bucky’s saved the day.

They make it to their audience with M’Baku without further incident. Bucky does not think about the thing that he asked Shuri to do — it’s absolutely vital that he doesn’t think about what he asked Shuri to do.

—

M’Baku is very tall. “So you’re the white wolf I’ve heard so much about,” he says.

He sits on a carved throne, the inky Wakanda night sky and the mountains behind him. Bucky feels — like a speck of dust against the velvet of that starry sky, M’Baku’s clear, dark eyes on him, judging, evaluating.

M’Baku sniffs. “Your partner — he’s not a wolf. Not regular, but not a wolf.”

“Yes,” Bucky says. His back stiffens, ready for this fight. He has, after all been fighting it for most of his entire life.

“Simmer down, white wolf,” M’Baku says. “It takes all kinds. Take whomever you please to bed.”

Bucky exhales, willing his shoulders to do something they probably haven’t done since HYDRA welded something heavy and metal to his bones — relax. Body language is key, when wolves judge wolves. M’Baku might be okay with Steve, but that doesn’t mean he’s okay with Bucky.

“However, he cannot be part of the pack,” M’Baku says. “No human has seen us transform. No human can know our ways. It is tradition.”

“That’s okay. We can work with that,” Steve says at the same time as Bucky says. “I’m sorry, and thank you so much, but that won’t work for us.”

They look at each other.

M’Baku raises an eyebrow. “I’ll give you some time to figure this out.”

It’s a lovely evening. There’s are fires going, and people gather around them, glowing in the flickering light. Steve and Bucky sit down by a fire, too.

This will be one of the most romantic arguments they’ve ever had.

“Talk,” Steve says. “Explain.”

“You first,” Bucky tells him.

Steve sets his jaw — the mulish, stubborn line of it clear even beneath his beard. Bucky knows that jaw. There’s no point in arguing the small print — Bucky’s here to win the big fight.

“Changing without you didn’t work,” Bucky says. “There’s nothing to argue.”

“You didn’t want me there,” Steve points out.

“Accurate,” Bucky says. “But then you ignored my explicit wishes, and we tested your theory and found out that my wolf wants to cuddle with you and not eat you.”

Steve looks a little guilty, but also smug. The guilt, however, is an opening, and Bucky will take it.

“We do not, however, know what my wolf will do without you around,” Bucky says. “And if it wants to eat anyone else.”

“A pack will be able to help you through the change,” Steve says, “and if you lash out, I think M’Baku can handle it. He doesn’t seem like he’d be a small wolf.”

“And when he handles it, there’s every chance that leads to us fighting to the death,” Bucky says.

Steve’s eyes sparkle in the firelight, and he smiles. “Well, I like your odds against anyone, Buck, even if he is pretty big.”

“You asshole,” Bucky says, punching Steve’s arm, “That’s not funny!”

Except, of course, he’s laughing. It’s the first time Steve has joked about it — about the bleak, seventy-year chasm in Bucky’s life and his soul — and Bucky loves it. If they can joke about it, maybe he can live through it. Maybe it will be alright.

He keeps laughing, so hard that he can’t stop, and that sets Steve off, too. “It’s not that funny!” Steve says, rubbing his arm where Bucky punched it, and then throwing said arm around Bucky’s shoulder.

Steve laughs, and Bucky laugh with him, pressed close, smelling the skin of his neck, warm in the firelight. They have been laughing together for a hundred years.

Bucky stops. The feeling hits him like a truck. “I’m sorry,” he says.

Steve kisses his hair and sighs. “What the hell are you apologizing for now?”

“For staying away for so long, when I came back,” Bucky says. It’s so clear now — he’d thought it was a sacrifice, thought he was doing the right thing for Steve.

“That’s okay,” Steve says, automatic. “You needed the time.”

“No,” Bucky says. “If I lost you — if I lost you, and then you came back, but not to me…” The imagined grief is so vivid that Bucky’s heart aches with it.

“I wouldn’t —” Steve starts, stopping himself when he realizes what he’s about to say.

“Exactly,” Bucky says. “It was easier to run away from you, to hide — but we’re partners. It wasn’t right. I’m sorry.”

Steve’s arms tighten around Bucky. Bucky strokes his back.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers, lips to the shell of Steve’s ear. “I’m sorry.”

Bucky can feel the moment when the wall that Steve has built around his own feelings cracks. He sags against Bucky like his strings have been cut. Bucky holds Steve through it. This is a hurt that he caused, but he can heal it.

Bucky hasn’t seen Steve cry since Sarah — and even then, barely. That doesn’t change, but it’s a near thing. He shakes — Bucky’s tough guy, big and strong even back when he wasn’t. This is a wound deeper than bullets in Steve’s gut or teeth in his throat.

“I love you,” Bucky whispers. “I’m sorry. It’s us now, like we’re supposed to be.”

Steve holds onto Bucky like he’s an anchor, so tight it would bruise if Bucky were anyone else. But Bucky is strong, too.

“I’m not joining a pack without you,” Bucky says. “You’re my mate, my partner. There’s no discussion. I’ve got you.”

Steve doesn’t respond — Bucky knows him, though, knows a lack of argument is almost as good as acquiescence.

—

Bucky gets them set for bed with some cooperation but very little input from Steve. “We should tell M’Baku,” Steve says. “He’s being so nice to us.”

“In the morning,” Bucky says, spooning up behind him. It’s nice to be the one offering comfort, if only for a little while — nicer still, to wrap his arm around Steve and feel the hard lines of his muscle and the smooth skin. Fuck, he’s got amazing skin. Bucky kisses the back of his neck. Steve’s hair is short and prickly in the back — Bucky rubs his face against it. Incredible. Just, wow.

“I love you,” Bucky whispers in his ear. He feels it so strongly that his heart aches — a fever that hasn’t broken in almost a century. “I love you so much.”

Steve intertwined their fingers and brings Bucky’s palm to his lips. “I love you, too.”

Honestly, thank the lord for that particular mercy. What an absolute mess it would be to feel like this if Steve didn’t feel it, too.

Falling asleep wrapped around him, lit by the glow of the fire and by the glow of their bond, Bucky almost forgets what he asked Shuri to do.

—

The next morning, they go before M’Baku with their decision. “You’re sure?” Steve asks, one more time. “This is a good pack.”

“But not the right pack,” Bucky says.

M’Baku watches him, curious, when Bucky says, “I am grateful for your kind offer, but I cannot accept it.”

“I trust you know what you’re giving up, white wolf,” M’Baku says.

“Of course,” Bucky says. “I’m honored. But pack is family, and Steve is my family.”

M’Baku looks at him that way that wolves who haven’t taken a mate always do — a blend of interest and sympathy. Bucky cannot fault him for it. He wouldn’t understand this road if he weren’t on it. “Loyalty,” M’Baku says, after a long time, “is an important quality. You will make a fine member for the pack you choose, White Wolf.”

“I offer my friendship to you and the Jabari,” Bucky says. “Thank you, again, for your hospitality.”

“The Jabari and I accept,” M’Baku says. “Enjoy it for another night.”

They stay with the Jabari one more night, eat their food and watch their dances.

Bucky’s family had dances, too — Irish ones, brought from the old world to the new. Their packs are not so different. No one changes, in mixed company as they are, but Bucky sees the beats where they would do it, take the dance from two legs to four.

After the dancing, M’Baku has questions — Bucky suspected as much.

“You were an ordinary human, before the serum that changed you, yes?” M’Baku asks Steve.

“Yep,” says Steve at the same time as Bucky says, “Ordinary?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Genetically ordinary.”

M’Baku turns to Bucky. “Then why not change him, since he was your mate?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Steve was too sick. He never would have survived the bite.”

“I asked all the time,” Steve adds.

“And now you’re immune?” M’Baku asks.

Steve nods. “Wolf DNA was the core of the serum.”

“I understand,” M’Baku says with a derisive snort. “It gives you the power without the change.”

“Something like that,” Steve says, mouth curled.

“More?” M’Baku asks, either intrigued or indignant.

Bucky has known Steve long enough to know where this is going: some sort of wrestling match and possibly a scandal.

Fortunately, Bucky has a convenient means of distraction available to him. He asks a few questions about the engravings on M’Baku’s throne, and suddenly, M’Baku is talking about Jabari art while Steve listens, rapt.

Another Wakandan diplomatic incident neatly avoided, Bucky lets himself imagine the wrestling match that might have been. Would it have been hot? Would he have been jealous?

—

“I’ve got something for you,” Shuri says, when Bucky returns to the city and visits her in the lab.

His heart leaps in his chest.

“Don’t get too excited — it’s not what you asked for. Not yet, anyway.” She frowns, for a moment. “You don’t have to take it.”

And oh, Bucky should have known she’d make it. Of course she’d make it — the challenge, her curiosity, her kind heart.

“It will change with you, but it won’t hurt you — not like the old one.”

Of course she knows how much it hurt, how the change made its electrical currents go haywire, how it never quite fit when he was a wolf. There hadn’t been much left of it when he came to her, but enough — enough for Shuri to figure all of it out.

“You’re not ready,” she says. “I can see that.”

And Bucky needs to...be better than this. She’s a teenager, and she did something beautiful for him, and why can’t he stop this?

“Thank you, Shuri,” he says. He can’t breathe? Why can’t he breathe? Why won’t his heart stop racing?

Bucky blinks, and he’s outside, where he can feel the sun on his skin. He doesn’t know how he got there, but it was the right thing — he wanders, mind reeling, and follows his senses. It helps. He closes his eyes and smells the goats grazing, smells rich earth and ripening crops.

It’s not long before he hears a familiar footfall on the path behind him. Steve doesn’t run like anybody else, each step light, strong, and agile.

“There you are, Buck,” Steve says.

“Here I am,” Bucky says. “Must have scared Shuri outta her skin.”

“She was worried,” Steve says. “Said you had a panic attack.”

A panic attack. So these are a regular occurrence now. Bucky opens his eyes. The sky is very blue and very bright, like Steve’s eyes. Steve is squinting in the sunlight, brow furrowed with concern. The earth is gold, like Steve’s hair, which is mussed, like Steve’s been running his nervous fingers through and through it.

Bucky’s wandered nearly to the village. It’s a long way to go without seeing or knowing. Steve found him anyway. Peace crashes over him like waves. He thinks of the ocean.

“Can I?” Steve asks.

Bucky nods, and Steve pulls him into a tight hug.

In Steve’s arms, Bucky feels like himself again. Steve’s skin smells of salt and home. Bucky’s heart is still racing, but he’s here now, present.

Bucky thinks of Shuri and her beautiful gift, and he wants to cry with the shame of it, rising like a knot in his chest.

“Christ, I’m a mess,” Bucky says, clinging to Steve. He could do this with two hands if he weren’t fucking crazy.

Steve strokes his back. “Buck, this is trauma. It’s normal. Sam gave me a lot of books. All the doctors say...”

Bucky huffs, miserable, because no way — no way is this normal.

“They hurt you, when they put on the last arm, didn’t they?” Steve says, his voice gentle.

Bucky — tries to think about the procedure, and can’t, because suddenly he’s very dizzy and also might puke. He nods, trying very hard not to throw up on Steve, who’s being so nice to him.

“Your body remembers that, Buck,” Steve says, hands cradling Bucky’s waist. He’s the only thing keeping Bucky from buckling at the knees. “It’s just trying to protect you.”

He presses his face into the crook of Steve’s neck. “Protect me from Shuri?” Bucky says — it’s muffled. “The first new friend I’ve had since like 1945?”

Steve kisses his hair. “Protect you. Doesn’t matter from what.”

Bucky sighs, and wriggles out of Steve’s arms. “I hate it. I hate being like this.”

“I don’t,” Steve says, very blunt. He reaches out to touch Bucky’s cheek and caress the divot in Bucky’s chin— something he’s been doing for a hundred years. Gently, he turns Bucky’s face so Bucky’s looking into his eyes when he says, “It’s a symptom of surviving.”

It’s hot outside, beautiful and very quiet but for the bleating goats and the far off laughter of children, when Bucky’s heart slows down. Steve’s eyes are huge. Bucky knows what he wants to do about the arm.

—

“I want it,” Bucky says, sitting in the lab with both Shuri and Steve, Steve cradling Bucky’s hand in both of his own.

All of them know what this will cost him, but neither Steve nor Shuri puts up a fight.

It’s his body, his trauma, his decision.

—

“I’ll be the last thing you see when you fall asleep and the first thing you see when you wake up,” Steve says.

“You sap,” Bucky grouses, complaining because it is easier than acknowledging his current emotional state.

Steve just kisses his forehead. It’s very tender. Bucky hates him. (Bucky doesn’t hate him, not even a little).

Shuri offers to show Bucky charts of what she and her team are going to do. Bucky declines. He can work himself into a panic attack or (what he now knows is called) a dissociative state about the procedure without any help.

—

It’s three days till the procedure, and Bucky honestly — he’s grown weak. How did it happen so quickly? Because this is nothing, this is something he wants, something good; Shuri is someone he trusts, and Steve will be right there.

It’s three days, and it’s agony, and that is pathetic. Agony used to mean something real to him — punishment, the hot spark of electricity on every tender part of him, and flayed strips of fur. Now, three quiet days of Steve hovering over him, wafting the scent of love and concern while Shuri works in her lab apparently qualifies.

—

T’Challa takes time out of his very, very busy schedule of ruling an awe-inspiring nation and following the woman he loves around the continent while she does awe-inspiring things and visits Bucky.

“You should not feel pressure to accept my sister’s creation,” T’Challa tells him. “She has the kindest heart, but she is always fixing things, even when they are not broken.”

“Trust me, pal,” Bucky says. “I’m plenty broken.”

“In my travels with Nakia, I’ve learned much about the resiliency of the human spirit,” T’Challa says. “Being hurt does not make you, or anybody, broken.”

Bucky shrugs.

T’Challa smiles — kind but without pity. “You will believe me one day.”

In this moment, wrecked over nothing, over a kindness, Bucky cannot imagine it. Could there ever come a time when he feels whole?

“You will not hurt her feelings if you wait,” T’Challa says. “Shuri will understand.”

Bucky shakes his head. “I can’t. I can't wait. I want it. It’s...everything she does is the nicest fucking thing anyone who isn’t Steve has done for me in like seventy years.”

T’Challa glows with pride for her, his baby sister. Bucky understands.

“You and her are the first friends I’ve made in this century,” Bucky says.

“And you’ll always have our friendship,” says T’Challa. “Nakia wants to meet you, you know, next time she is home.”

“I’d love that,” he says, trying to sound bigger than he feels.

—

Bucky sits and watches the sky, boundless and beautiful. He is a speck before the vast field of blue, like in New York, when he was young and watching the ocean. Then, he’d been in awe, had known a sweet sort of peace. Now, he is dust, a thing inconsequential enough to be blown away from the wind.

He can feel it, when Steve comes up the path, can smell him from a mile away, the sweetness and worry and home of him. Of course Steve knows — fuck, he knows everything now. Bucky loves his mate and he loves his bond, but he hates this. He hates having nowhere to hide.

There’s nowhere to hide, so Bucky runs. It’s pathetic. The anxiety is a gnawing pit in his stomach, an ache that overtakes him. And he can run, but he can’t run away from it, but maybe, maybe if he goes faster, if he feels the wind on his skin, if he —

—

Bucky runs. Somewhere in the city, there is Steve, and the white, righteous rage of him is burning hot even by his perpetually spiky standards. That can only mean one thing: another fight (another broken nose another bruised hand another cracked rib another —).

Bucky turns off his brain and lets the roar of instinct take over. Steve is too far to see or smell but he’s not too far to feel the campfire glow of him that sits somewhere in Bucky’s heart. And Bucky can follow that sense of Steve as surely as his scent.

He runs, careening down alleys and around corners, unbidden, unmarked, marking no one. Steve’s scent bursts into his awareness with all the subtlety of fireworks exploding over a parade. He’s close. Bucky can smell his skin and his sweat and the stale bun he ate for breakfast, can smell the sour tang of his anger and the metallic note of blood, can smell every messy piece that makes up the golden whole of him.

Bucky gets ready for the fight that he’s been fighting all their lives — Steve against the world, with everything to prove and only Bucky on his side. He will be enough, Bucky swears. He has to be.

Bucky runs, even faster. He rounds another corner, vaults over some garbage bins, sidesteps a stray cat, and there Steve is: blood flowing from his busted lip, eyes bright with determination, knuckles pink and scraped raw.

Oh, he is beautiful.

Nobody who lays a hand on him has ever stood a chance.

Bucky doesn’t let the man Steve’s fighting see the wolf in him, but he shows enough. A couple blows, a too-long flash of teeth when he smiles, and a predatory sparkle in his eye is enough — the man runs, caught by mortal terror he can neither name nor explain.

“What was it this time?” Bucky asks, looking around the alley and sniffing the air before kissing Steve’s temple.

“He kicked a cat,” Steve says. “And laughed about it.”

“Of course he did,” Bucky says. There’s no use fighting Steve’s fire for justice, like there’s no use fighting the change when the moon comes.

—

Bucky sits, alone and very small. Running had helped, for just a moment, until it hadn’t. Something brittle has snapped in him, and it won’t fit back together. The jagged edges scrape at the corners of his conscience.

He is past tears. Tears are a release, and if he lets go and feels them, there will be no turning back.

He tucks his knees to his chest — a childish thing, a futile gesture — and feels the weight of them, the things buzzing in his brain.

—

There’s a sharp ache in Steve’s chest. Bucky knows, the way he knows all of Steve’s aches and all of Steve’s pains. Steve’s face is calm, placid — even cheerful. Bucky...might have been fooled, if he hadn’t known Steve since they were five years old and didn’t feel Steve with the perfect clarity of a werewolf very deeply in love. Honestly, the amount he’s been smiling is sort of a giveaway.

Bucky focuses. The pain, this time, is physical. He pulls Steve close and presses his nose into the soft hollow behind Steve’s ear. “You have walking pneumonia, you bastard,” he says.

Steve pulls away and frowns. “Show me a medical degree.”

Bucky taps his nose. “I know what both pneumonia and bullshit smell like.”

“Now where would you learn a thing like that?” Steve asks.

Bucky kisses Steve’s golden hair. “Right here.”

“You supposed to talk shit about your mate like that?” Steve says, crossing his arms.

Bucky wraps his arms around Steve in response. “Steven Grant Rogers, love and light of my life, you have walking pneumonia. Now get in bed before before I toss you over my shoulder and carry you there.”

—

Steve finds him, of course. They are, the both of them, pulled by the same thread. He drapes a blanket over Bucky’s shoulders, and pulls him close until he’s something close to warm again. He kisses Bucky’s hair and holds his hand.

And Bucky tries so hard — he tries so hard to keep together — but he can’t even speak, and Steve already knows. He already knows everything.

Bucky keeps shaking, still too wrecked to even cry, and Steve whispers in his ear, soft apologies and soothing nonsense.

“I’m sorry, Buck,” Steve says, thumb drawing patterns on the back of Bucky’s hand. “I’m so damn sorry it happened to you, and I’m so sorry it hurts like this.”

Bucky deserves the hurt, of course — and then some — but Steve’s sweetness unfurls something in his chest anyway.

—

It’s one day till, and Shuri summons him to her lab for a few more scans from her unobtrusive machine. Shuri chats happily while she works — it’s a put-upon diversion if there ever was one. Bucky’s not sure she even needs him here for whatever she’s doing — she certainly has enough scans of his brain.

“Your bond with the Captain,” she says, “I’ve always been curious. This one —” she gestures to Okoye, who’s still not at the point of leaving the crazy assassin with the princess, “never told me much about her husband.”

Okoye’s husband — her mate — whom she helped jail, whom she would have killed. Bucky flinches. Okoye frowns. Bucky assumes that Shuri is poking this wound on purpose.

“What’s it like, having a mate, especially a human one?” Shuri asks. “Can you feel his feelings? Can he feel yours with the serum?”

“It’s like an echo,” Bucky says. “Not the whole feeling. But we can’t…hide from each other, when we’re close. And being apart is...bad, but you can follow the bond to where your mate is. It only went one way, before the serum. He has most of it, now.”

Bucky had loved and hated the change in equal measures, after the rush wore off. There had been quite a lot, after Zola’s table, that he would have preferred to hide.

Shuri makes a face, moving letters and variables on her virtual screen. “Why would anyone do it?”

Bucky thinks about his life with Steve — every brilliant, frustrating minute. Steve at fifteen, and their sweet teenage kisses, young love too big for Catholic or maternal guilt to contain. Twenty year old Steve, all sternum and sharp attitude, getting into too much bullshit for Bucky to even keep track. Steve since twenty-five, intimately familiar with every dark thing crawling around in Bucky’s mind, and still his, still loving him.

“If I had to choose between keeping Steve and saving the universe,” Bucky says, trying to put words to the screaming vastness of it, “I would...probably choose the universe. Probably.”

Shuri blanches and looks down, away from Okoye. She pulls together fast — the kid is nothing if not composed for her age — and grins. “So since wolves have sex to cement the bond, does that mean all wolves without mates have never...had sex?”

Yeah, Bucky’s not answering that one.

—

Bucky dreams of the procedure — the first one — that night.

Steve wakes him, but it’s too late. The sound of the buzz-saw is already in his head, the feel of its vibrations in his bones. The anesthetic hadn’t worked — or maybe they hadn’t bothered with it. Christ, it hurt so badly.

This time, Bucky does throw up, retches till his stomach is empty, and then dry heaves because there’s no way to stop. Steve pulls his hair back and rubs his back and scoops him off the floor when it is done.

Bucky dreams again, when he goes back to sleep, clinging to Steve like a sweaty barnacle. He dreams of Shuri figuring out how to do it, how to take away the wolf. He dreams of waking up to Steve, gone — gone from his head, gone from his heart, gone from his side.

—

“You don’t have to do this,” Steve says. He’s kept the words out of his mouth for three days — an admirable and uncharacteristic display, quite possibly the first time Steve has ever kept an opinion to himself for that long.

“I do, actually,” Bucky says, continuing his purposeful stride towards Shuri’s lab.

Steve rolls his eyes, like he doesn’t understand needing to prove something to yourself even when you don’t need to prove it to anyone else. Bucky ignores him.

Steve reaches for him, grabs his hand. “Don’t be mad at me. I don’t want you going in mad.”

“Then don’t be an asshole,” Bucky says. He’s been consumed by an airy, blanked-out calm, and he’s got no time for this shit.

Steve frowns, and then brings Bucky’s hand to his lips, placing a sweet, courtly kiss on his palm.

Bucky remembers this, but in reverse — when Steve was the one pushing himself past reason and Bucky was the one pumping the breaks. His kisses were sweet, then, too.

He prides himself, at least, on being calmer than Steve was, back in those halcyon days. The sweet, sun-dappled days of their youth — Bucky understands them now.

“Did you hate me?” Bucky bursts out.

Steve raises an eyebrow.

“Before, when you were sick; and you couldn’t keep me out of your head,” Bucky says.

Steve intertwines their fingers and gives Bucky’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Sometimes. But never as much as I loved you.”

They walk into Shuri’s lab hand-in-hand.

—

Bucky wakes, the familiar sights and sounds — but not, he notes, the smells — of a medical ward around him. Bucky breathes in, tightness in his chest and a cold knot in his stomach.

That is when he finds it — the vanilla-woods, shaving-soap-and-sunshine smell of him, of Steve.

Bucky breathes out.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Steve says, materializing by his side.

Shuri is there, too. She rolls her eyes.

“The arm?” Bucky asks.

“I’ve performed the necessary repairs and upgrades on your shoulder socket,” Shuri says. “You can put it on — and take it off — any time.”

Steve helps Bucky up, a gentle hand on the small of his back. He smells of caution and he touches like it, too. Bucky must have done a number on him, the last few panicked days. Steve can’t find caution with a map.

“Now,” Bucky says.

He closes his eyes as the arm clicks on. It is familiar — the frisson of nerve paths connecting, brain synapses firing. It is completely new — there is no pain.

Bucky looks up at Shuri in awe. “It doesn’t hurt.”

“I’ve done my best to repair the nerve damage that was done to your shoulder, and this arm is much lighter — vibranium — and shouldn’t put as much of a strain on your musculoskeletal system.”

There’s nothing to say, so Bucky reaches out to give her a hug

Shuri jumps back. “Woah there,” she says. “We haven’t tested that yet! I trust my skills, but maybe you should start with this one here first. He’s sturdier than I am. You won’t crush him if the calibration is off.”

Bucky laughs. He looks over at Steve, suddenly shy.

“I see how it is,” Shuri says. “Him, you’re afraid of hurting.”

Steve smiles — a beautiful thing — and says, “Even if you crush me, I’ll bounce back pretty quick, Buck.”

“Get over here, you big idiot,” Bucky says. He wraps his arms — both arms — around Steve.

The new arm is gentle. He feels the soft cotton of Steve’s tee-shirt underneath the vibranium fingers. His first action with this hand is not violence — it’s an embrace.

Bucky feels light as air.

—

The message from the Widow comes to Steve in code.

Steve spends a happy half hour puzzling it out, because his ridiculous supersoldier brain loves code-breaking. The Widow, Bucky admits (begrudgingly), is an excellent friend. He is not emotionally prepared to say the same about the bird yet.

“Pack in Russia. Could do the job. Maybe,” the message says. It links to some news articles. The pack is, indeed, in Russia, and it takes a progressive stance on human-wolf relations, with human partners receiving full pack membership. It’s an activist pack — which means it’s big, and that it tries to use its size to make a stand.

“Russia?” Steve says, suspicious. He knows all the places the Winter Soldier was made.

“Russia,” Bucky says, considering. He’s got a few dozen more articles to read through before he can make any kind of decision — and a few missives to send.

—

The message from Shuri is not in code. It’s a note. “Come see me in the lab.”

Bucky doesn’t think much of it — she probably wants to check the arm.

But when he gets there, he knows what it’s about right away. It’s in the tense set of her shoulders and the look in her eyes, her characteristic humor all but gone.

“You found a cure,” Bucky says.

“Cures are for illnesses,” she says. “I’ve made what you asked for, but don’t call it a cure.”

“Can I —” Bucky says. “How does it work?”

She taps a kimoyo bead and explains it in gorgeous, glowing charts — the series of injections that would change his DNA, undo the way that he was born. It won’t undo the damage he has done, but it’s something. It’s better than nothing.

“When can we do it?” Bucky asks.

“Please,” Shuri says. “I’ve made it, but please — don’t take it. At least not yet.”

Bucky watches her, waits.

“You can be happy, I think,” Shuri says. “With Steve, with a pack, with time to heal.”

“The people I hurt, when I wasn’t in control,” Bucky says, trailing off. “They don’t get to be happy.”

“That’s true,” Shuri says, “But it’ll still be true if you ruin your own chance at happiness.”

“I could — I could be happy without the wolf,” Bucky says.

“And your bond?”

To that, Bucky cannot say anything, anything at all.

—

“I don’t think they’ll take me,” Bucky says. He knows how these things go. “But I think we should try.”

He’s corresponded with the Russian pack. He mentioned the non-werewolf lover, and he mentioned the history of murder. Their responses were kind — encouraging, even — but that can only go so far. Bucky’s going to give this one more shot. He’s going to give finding a pack and being a wolf — all of it — one more shot.

Steve looks at Bucky with the kind of naked love that makes Bucky want to punch through walls. “Alright, Buck. Guess we’re going to Russia.”

They take a quinjet. Bucky, against all his better judgement, lets Steve fly.

“What,” Bucky says, when they land, in the woods outside of St. Petersburg, “Did Erskine do to your sense of self-preservation?”

Steve is too cheerful when he says, “Buck, you know I never had that.”

It’s true. Bucky comes down from the adrenaline high, and then they get off the plane and head towards town, through white birch trees and early spring snow and to one possible vision of their shared future. It is, perhaps, the only version of their future that can still be shared.

«Подснежник!» Bucky says, stopping their trek to take many photos of a white flower poking its face through the snow. Steve doesn’t share his excitement. He might have to send it to the Widow. She’d understand.

A highly politicized pack of wolves is not easy to find, unless you are a very famous spy and also a biologically enhanced werewolf. Bucky finds their scent without even having to transform, which feels impressive. He’s proud of himself, at the very least.

Showing up unannounced at the wolf pack’s lair is a...risk-seeking behavior. The fact that Bucky doesn’t even question it until they’re practically there means that it’s finally happened. After nearly a century, Steve’s lack of self-preservation has rubbed off on him.

Bucky tells Steve that, and Steve smirks. “I’ve rubbed off on you plenty.”

Bucky rolls his eyes heavenward, to the pale, overcast sky. Steve plants a big, sloppy kiss on Bucky’s cheek.

“We could get arrested for that here, you know,” Bucky says, very prim, drying off his face.

Steve looks entirely too delighted at the prospect.

—

The pack reacts at the arrival of strangers about as well as Bucky expects them to.

There are a lot of sharp teeth in the room very quickly.

“Hey there,” Steve says — in English, the loser.

To be fair, Bucky has no idea what to say. How do you ask for the kind acceptance that you do not deserve?

Bucky doesn’t get the chance.

«Это он!» one of the wolves says. He gestures at Bucky’s metal arm. The other wolves, those on two legs and those on four, snarl. It seems that they are, indeed, familiar with Bucky’s work.

“We hoped it was you, when you wrote. So we wrote back,” the wolf says. “You looking for new pack, new home. The nerve.”

His English is good — soft accent with just the dropped articles and the V and W confusion Russian speakers never really lose. He smells of long-simmering rage. The English, Bucky knows, is for Steve’s benefit. Whatever this wolf says next is going to be rough.

“You know what you did to wolves of Russia?” he says. “Our parents, our grandparents — all taken by KGB, tortured into compliance or killed, because everyone wanted another you. My mother? They took her as pup. To this day, she hates to cook — they used to prod her with hot poker, and she still fears fire.”

Bucky, frozen in time and space, can’t say a word to silence him, can’t look away — certainly can’t look in Steve’s direction.

“The people? They think we all monsters. Cossacks shoot us like rabid dogs. Post videos of our friends dying on internet. Government does nothing,” the wolf says. “You think you done with killing? You still kill every day. The least we could do was bring you here, kill you back. You are monster. And you will not leave this place alive.”

The speech isn’t over, and Bucky can’t imagine where he’s going to go next. That is when Steve steps up and decks the wolf — a walloping right cross that sends him a good two feet into the air.

“You didn’t have to punch him,” Bucky says, forlorn. He feels — well, how someone probably should feel after having his worst fears about himself spoken aloud by an objective stranger.

“Some fucking asshole talks to my mate like that,” Steve says, “I’m gonna fight him.” He sounds like the picture of rational calm, like starting a fight with an entire pack of werewolves is not a literally insane thing to do. The expression on his face is so innocent. Bucky would be fooled, if he didn’t know better.

The downed wolf’s pack is gathering around, ready to attack. They smell like they mean business. Another day, another fight to the death — par for the course in the disaster that is Bucky’s life.

That’s when Steve steps up. He leans in and gives Bucky a soft kiss. Then, he smiles the shit-stirrer grin that Bucky’s been seeing since long, long before Steve could win a fight.

“Listen up,” Steve says, to all assembled. Because he is Captain America, everyone does.

“Bucky Barnes is the best person, werewolf or otherwise, that I know. He’s loyal, and he’s kind, and he’s put up with more of my shit than you can imagine. He had his free will, his memories, and his wolf stolen from him for seventy years. Anyone trying to blame him for what he was forced to do during that time? Is gonna have to go through me.”

He smiles, cracks his knuckles, and waits.

The wolves encircling them begin to change. Bucky sighs, and braces himself to do the same.

Steve shakes his head and makes a face. “Don’t worry about it, Buck. I’ve got this. I’ve fought Strike, and they were a way tougher pack than this.”

Two of the wolves look at each other, incredulous. Bucky looks at the sky through the canopy of the trees, hoping it will provide some kind of explanation for why Steve Rogers had to be it for him.

Steve’s extreme display of support overwhelms him, or something. After the empty decades of being entirely alone in the world, it’s a lot. Bucky lets him do it. He lets his idiot of a mate do the very stupid thing that he is asking to do and fight an entire pack of wolves alone.

He can — he can jump in if Steve’s in trouble, or something.

It’s a terrible decision, which is usually Steve’s MO. Shit, Steve really has rubbed off on him. “Shut up,” Bucky says to the Steve in his head — not to be confused with the real Steve, also often in his head. The real Steve is busy.

There are eighteen werewolves coming at him, and the asshole is having the time of his life. Apparently he thinks drop-kicking members of Bucky’s species is a good technique, because he’s done it like three times already.

A wolf lunges at his throat, and Steve catches him by the neck and throws him. He takes some teeth to the arm from another wolf, but he uses his free hand to pry open her jaw and throws her, too.

They’re going in for the kill — Steve isn’t. He’s striking out to incapacitate, only. It really ought to be a recipe for catastrophe, and yet, as they come at Steve in bunches, he takes them down, one by one — okay, more like three by three.

Bucky gets briefly distracted from the life or death situation unfolding before him by the flex of Steve’s ridiculous back and triceps.

In the end, there Steve stands, the ground around him littered with werewolves in various states of change. With werewolf healing being what it is, they’ll all be on their feet soon enough.

“Buck,” Steve says, eyes sparkling, brow dripping with sweat, blood, and dirt, “Let’s get out here, darling.”

Bucky throws his head back and laughs — hopped up on adrenaline and absurdity. This was it — this pack was their last, desperate shot.

Steve offers Bucky his arm. Bucky takes it. The touch feels like a static shock. Steve reeks of sweat and testosterone. Bucky cannot stop playing the events of the previous hour back in his mind, with all the technicolor of his senses.

There is Steve, eyes bright with indignation as he tells off the wolves, tells the world how damn special he thinks Bucky is.

There’s Steve, muscles straining to keep back a wolf who’s going for the artery in his thigh while he throws an elbow to knock away a wolf who’s coming from behind.

There’s Steve, still standing while eighteen werewolves start trickling back into consciousness.

Steve — damn him — realizes with the speed of his tactical genius brain exactly how his display of alpha male bullshit has affected Bucky.

And well, if Bucky’s gonna lose him soon, Bucky’s damn well gonna have him like this.

“Babe,” Bucky says. “Get that insufferable smirk off your face and take me somewhere private. Now.”

“So you like it when I throw werewolves around,” Steve says, insufferable smirk firmly in place.

“So you like throwing werewolves around, huh, you big, ridiculous jerk,” Bucky says, scowling.

Steve moves fast, which is obviously, clearly the only reason Bucky doesn’t get away in time when Steve lunges at him. There’s no way he wanted to be tossed over Steve’s one of Steve’s ridiculous, broad shoulders in an ungainly heap and carried wherever the hell Steve decides to take him.

—

It’s not the first forest clearing Bucky’s had sex in, and it definitely won’t be the last. There’s never been a quinjet involved before, though.

They go a few rough and tumble rounds, wild like it hasn’t been since Bucky came back. All Bucky has to do is let go and let Steve throw him around, till he’s not thinking of anything, anything, anything. Bucky has missed this — all of Steve’s sharp-toothed, relentless imagination turned to his body and what they can make it do.

“God,” Steve whispers, after time number three or four or who knows, because Bucky sure doesn’t, all two hundred odd pounds of him pressing Bucky up against the side of the quinjet.

“Just me,” Bucky says, voice rough, but the quip makes Steve smile.

Steve holds Bucky’s face between two warm palms for a long moment, just looking. Bucky looks back into his eyes. What he sees there leaves him breathless.

Lit with the incandescent glow of Steve’s love, Bucky can probably do this. He can probably do anything.

—

“Back to Wakanda to regroup?” Steve asks.

“Yes,” Bucky says, and then, he remember what he’s going to do when they get back — “Not yet.”

St. Petersburg is beautiful, and Bucky has only seen it as a captive.

First order of business — stop reeking of blood and sex.

They go to a sauna. No one asks any questions. Bucky likes that about the Russians.

There’s a mirror in the locker room and Bucky twists around and pushes his hair out of the way to look at the bite mark Steve left on the back of his neck. Bucky shivers.

They stop by a shop to get winter wear — a transaction Bucky handles while Steve nods and smiles and harasses Bucky about getting himself warmer clothing than he thinks he needs, the mother hen. Appropriately bundled up, they walk along the Neva. Steve holds Bucky’s mittened hand, still delighted at the prospect of being arrested. Bucky lets him.

It’s stupid and careless and draws too much attention, but mostly it’s beautiful — being loved by someone who is always ready to fight for him.

“I know you’re dying to see the Hermitage,” Bucky says.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “But I’m good here, too.”

“It is beautiful.” Bucky stares at the buildings over the water, reflecting.

“Something like that,” Steve says. Bucky can hear the smile in his voice without trying.

“What?” Bucky asks. “Is there something on my face?”

“This is the first time I’ve ever walked down a city street holding your hand,” Steve says. “I’m so lucky.”

The weight of that hits Bucky like a train. A whole damn century together, and they’ve never had a chance.

Bucky leans in to kiss him — so what if this place doesn’t like it — in this time, it’s fine.

He’s so damn old, but he’s also twenty-eight and in love. Steve’s smile is sweet against his lips.

—

Bucky knows — Bucky knows — they're being careless. He’s let Steve carry him away and wash away quiet, sensible things — like OpSec and paranoia. It’s easy to do that, with Steve.

They’re on day two of the Hermitage; Steve is staring at some Rembrandt of a man with a book and a lacy collar as if he means to take it home. Bucky is planning an exit strategy for the painting, just in case. “The eyes,” Steve says. “There’s just a spark of life in them you can’t explain.”

Bucky, who can’t really tell a Rembrandt from a Banksy unless Steve explains the difference, nods. “Maybe he was a wizard...who could trap people in canvas.”

Steve doesn’t look away, just laughs and punches Bucky in the metal arm.

There’s a man in the Rembrandt Room with them. His gait suggests one gun at his ankle, another at his hip, and no less than three knives. For the fifteen odd minutes Steve has been examining each detail of his scholar, the man has been staring at The Return of the Prodigal Son.

—

Bucky leans against Steve’s side, sweet and affectionate, just enough to get his attention. He doesn’t want to ruin this — the sweet place they’ve been the last handful of days. He also doesn’t want to be ambushed.

For an easy decision, it’s still awful hard.

Bucky taps Morse code on the inner side of Steve’s arm — the tender skin and the blue of his vein, a straight line to his heart. “SOS. Hostile present.”

Bucky hates how Steve shifts from art school to war machine in less than the blink of an eye.

“He won’t get you,” Steve taps, rapid-fire on the back of Bucky’s hand.

“I know,” Bucky taps back.

—

As expected, their new friend follows them out.

“What do you think, Buck?” Steve asks.

Bucky shakes his head and he sighs because he knows. “HYDRA. They must have heard that I’m here.”

“Good,” Steve says.

Bucky raises an eyebrow.

“One more cell to find and take out,” Steve says.

Bucky should be scared of that particular smile. He’s not, though. It’s a lifelong problem.

—

Bucky takes point on getting them back to the hotel to regroup, and they take their tail on a merry journey all through the city. Bucky’s particularly pleased with himself when he gets the man to steal a paddleboat. They head for their room when he’s halfway across the river.

Bucky sweeps their suite. “Good news — no one followed us here. Bad news — they definitely know where we are. There are...so many bugs here. So many.”

He’s been sweeping the room every six to eight hours — Bucky’s not new. The bugs weren’t here in the morning.

“Hostiles incoming?” Steve asks.

“Almost certainly.”

“Weaponry?”

Bucky lays out the arsenal, one polished weapon at a time. Steve raises an eyebrow, and then draws the plan of engagement on the hotel notepad.

Bucky loves watching him work. In five minutes, Steve has thought this thing out from every angle. Bucky helped by picking a room in a good defensible position, of course, but it’s art the way he sees different variables.

“I can change, if we need,” Bucky tells him.

Steve flips the page. “I’ll draw out some plans with you in wolf form, but you don’t have to. You’re great in a fight on two legs, too.”

He looks up at Bucky, eyes very blue and sincere. It twists something in Bucky’s chest. Bucky could lose this — he could lose all of this.

—

First engagement comes in the form of sniper fire through the window.

“Dogshit,” Bucky says at the large caliber holes in the bed. “I’d have killed us.”

“I know you would have, babe,” Steve says, very reassuring.

Sufficiently comforted, Bucky deploys countermeasures. He scoped out the sniper nest in advance, obviously. It takes one, clean shot for Bucky to eliminate his target. “I’m not going back, but I understand why they miss me,” Bucky says, laughing.

Steve punches him in the arm — the metal one, because he’s a tactical genius but also occasionally as stupid as a box of bricks.

“Dark humor is a totally valid coping mechanism,” Bucky says, snickering as Steve shakes out his hand.

Steve reels him in for a quick kiss. “Look at you, you’ve got coping mechanisms!”

Bucky flips him off, but kisses back, and then it’s back to work.

—

Fighting by your mate’s side is just...fantastic. Bucky can feel Steve’s next move before he makes it. Steve is the same.

They fight in perfect, seamless rhythm.

Bucky, as the target of this particular recovery mission, has five guys on him at any given moment, all attempting to use non-lethal measures. Steve, meanwhile, is mostly being shot at.

It works out pretty well — Steve beats Bucky’s attackers to a bloody pulp, while Bucky mostly ignores them and concentrates on returning fire.

Occasionally, Steve shoots someone and Bucky punches someone in the head. Theirs is an equitable division of household labor.

“Did HYDRA really think these cheap hired guns were going to get the job done?” Bucky asks.

Steve shrugs and knocks a man’s teeth in with his own taser.

The crowd of mercs attacking them thins out, like a dive after last call. Bucky and Steve weed out the stubborn drunks, and soon, the ones left make a run for it.

Bucky lets them get out of the building, almost to their vehicle, and then picks them off from the window, one by one. Damn, this room has a good vantage point.

They all go down except one — a man whose arm Bucky grazes.

Steve looks up and raises an eyebrow, and then his own weapon.

“Don’t,” Bucky says.

“Yeah?”

“I can track him,” Bucky says. “Especially bleeding. Easiest way to find the base.”

“You sure?” Steve says. He reaches out to pat Bucky’s hand. They just took out like thirty armed men, and Steve is worried about Bucky’s feelings.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “It’ll be like that time in Paris.”

That time in Paris, they’d had to track a Nazi office who had infiltrated the resistance. They’d pretended Bucky was Steve’s dog. Steve and Dernier had, with the aid of Steve’s round-eyed faux innocence, feigned outrage and confusion at the terror of Parisians watching them walk down the street with what was clearly an enormous wolf.

Fuck, Bucky misses the Howlies.

“We don’t have time to get a leash and collar for your disguise,” Steve says.

Bucky shakes his head. “Won’t matter so much here. Russians have seen weirder.”

Steve laughs. “Never how I pictured seein’ the world — between fights.”

“One of these days, you and me are going on a real vacation.”

“Deal,” Steve says.

“I’ll believe Steve Rogers taking a break when I see it.”

“Fair.”

—

“You sure?” Steve asks, one more time.

Bucky just takes off his pants and folds them into a neat little pile, stacking the holsters and knives how he likes because there’s no way Steve will do it right.

Steve runs his hand down Bucky’s bare back, two parts soothing and one part distracted by Bucky’s exposed skin.

Bucky slaps Steve’s hand away, but Steve responds by kissing him behind the ear. Bucky takes a moment to bask in the glory of being so thoroughly desired by his partner of roughly 85 years. How many centenarians can say that?

Steve is smirking when Bucky looks at him, and Bucky realizes why — he’s not afraid anymore, and Steve feels it.

“I’m here,” Steve says. “I’ve got you.”

“Let’s do this thing,” Bucky says. He shoves his phone into Steve’s hands. “Film the arm changing for Shuri. Keep my dick outta frame.”

Steve laughs and pulls out his phone. “Not what I’d have imagined if you’d told me I was gonna be filming you naked.”

Now there’s a thought. “Later,” Bucky says. “For now — I need you to think with the head that’s capable of battle strategy.”

Steve salutes. His form is terrible.

Bucky takes a breath. He can do this — he can change; he can protect his mate; he can make sure this HYDRA cell never hurts anyone again. Steve places a hand on his shoulder — just a little touch. This is it. Bucky is going to turn and he is going to tear and destroy — but it’s his choice. There will be blood in his mouth.

He thinks of moonlight.

Bucky can feel his wolf, bright with the joy of being called, of being wanted. The torn-to-bits of him, desperate to be made whole. This is either the start of something or the last time that Bucky will ever turn.

Bucky wills his nails and teeth sharp. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, his vision has changed. Some colors are gone; those that remain are brighter.

This body begins to rip itself apart and reassemble, and he focuses on the sweet, familiar smell of Steve’s skin. The pain is a whisper, a breath. It comes and goes, and he is on four legs, ready for the mission.

This time, the mission is his own.

Steve ruffles Bucky’s fur, on the scruff of the neck, where it feels nice. “Come on, Buck. Let’s go eat some Nazis.”

Bucky looks at his phone in Steve’s hand, pointed.

“That’s right — texting Shuri first,” Steve says, and then they’re off.

—

With a human nose, blood is a metallic tang, all the same. As a wolf, Bucky can smell the skin it touched, the fear in it, the heat of the bullet that pierced the vein.

The smell of Steve beside him, all sweet support and mission adrenaline, is a distraction — the beast in Bucky wants to stop the hunt and nose against his collarbone to snuggle. Ferocious killer instinct it is not. Although the wolf has the run of the place right now, the man in Bucky still gets a say, and that part of him is trained professional.

He resists the urge to tackle Steve onto the floor and use him as a giant dog bed, and follows the trail of blood his prey left during his escape.

“You were right, Buck,” Steve says. “People in Russia do not react to a giant wolf — erm, dog, definitely a dog — walking down the street the way they do in Paris.”

Bucky stays on the scent, which disappears into a big, old apartment building.

It smells of brick and bad memories. Bucky hesitates.

“This is the compound?” Steve asks. “Then what are we waiting for?”

He looks at Bucky, smelling like affection, like searching.

Steve finds the answer. “I won’t let anyone in there lay a hand on you, Buck,” he says, curling his hand into Bucky’s fur, at the scruff of the neck, where it feels good to be touched and where Bucky’s scent gets all over his skin. “No one is going to hurt you. I promise.”

—

Steve takes the reinforced door down with one blow. They begin.

—

The year is 1948, and they prod the Winter Soldier until he transforms. The captive placed before him trembles. He smells of fear and stale sweat. The Winter Soldier does not bite. They prod him again.

These things take time. There are worse punishments than the prod.

—

The year is 1962, and the Winter Soldier, on four legs, ravages an enemy compound. He has orders — a mission. HYDRA is his pack, and he must protect the pack. He goes one room at a time. They shoot; they scream; there are no survivors.

The year is 1965 and 1968 and 1974…

—

The year is 2018 and Bucky Barnes is on four legs and he is going to tear out the throat of every last motherfucker who wants to take his freedom — unless, of course, Steve shoots them first.

They take the compound one room at a time, together, because Steve won’t leave his side, and that is right — the two of them together is always right.

Steve smells like home, and this place smells like hell — like the bullets from the gunfire and like the antiseptic from the lab and like decades of fear.

They engage.

One room at a time, and there is blood in his mouth, but it’s blood that he chose, and that makes all the difference.

They come to the lab. Steve takes out two techs with two quick shots.

The scientist reaches for the gun he has taped under one of the counter, but Bucky’s eyes track the flicker of movement. He is faster.

He rips out the scientist’s throat, fresh blood overwhelming his senses. That’s when he sees it — with all the vividness of wolf eyes — the chair in the corner of the room. It’s here, and they’re going to take it all away again, they’re going to —

Bucky cowers, ears flat, muzzle to the cold, sterile floor.

Steve is by his side in an instant, smelling of sweetness and sweat and home. A big hand runs through the fur on Bucky’s neck, scratches behind his ears. Steve promised — Steve promised.

“Buck,” Steve says. His voice sounds like velvet and love. “Can you change? I think this may be easier to deal with on two legs.”

It’s an instruction that Bucky can follow, and so he does, wills his body to tear itself to pieces and reassemble. The first thing he does on two legs is fall into Steve’s arms.

Steve, champion that he is, has all of Bucky’s tac gear, and he helps Bucky dress, very gentle. The whole time, he keeps Bucky’s body angled away from the chair, so Bucky can’t see it.

“Steve,” Bucky says, when his newly-rearranged jaw feels capable of moving again. “I’m going to patrol and make sure we’re done. Please make sure...that thing is gone before I come back. We probably can’t blow this place up without taking out the surrounding buildings.”

“With absolute pleasure.” Steve kisses his forehead and makes sure he’s steady before he lets Bucky go.

Bucky looks over his shoulder as he walks out of the room. Steve doesn’t vanish into smoke. The strong muscles of his back flex as he tears the chair into shreds with his bare hands.

—

It’s easier to focus on the mission — still, after all this time.

He makes his way through the compound, room by methodical room, finding nothing but ghosts.

There’s something that gets his hackles up in one of the rooms. He sniffs — there’s scent blocker and fear. They’re not alone.

Bucky looks around — he’s been in this facility, he knows. He follows the ghost of a memory.

The boy, whose pale skin indicates that he hasn’t seen the light of the sun or the moon in a long, long time, is chained in an enclosure with an electronics-heavy collar. He can’t be older than fifteen. The collar, and the enclosure, were both made for a larger creature.

It’s Bucky’s fault he’s had to live through this. If they hadn’t made one Winter Soldier, they never would have taken this child.

This cage was built to hold Bucky, but it never could have — not really, not without him too whipped and well-trained to ever try and break it. The metal folds like tissue paper underneath his metal fingers.

The boy frowns. «Солдат».

«Я пришёл помочь», - Bucky says.

The kid does not trust him, for which Bucky cannot blame him.

The collar is rigged with an explosive, but Bucky can diffuse a bomb with a head injury and one arm tied behind his back.

The boy is free. Now there’s the small matter of figuring out what to do with him.

—

“Good news,” Bucky says. “No more hostiles.”

“And the bad news?” Steve asks.

“These jackasses were trying to make another me,” Bucky tells him. “They decided to start younger.”

The look on Steve’s face speaks volumes.

“Honey,” Bucky says, “how do you feel about kids?”

—

«Как тебя зовут?» Bucky asks.

The kid scowls.

Bucky scowls back.

«Ваня Иванович.»

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Kid Just called himself John Smith,” he tells Steve. “Either he’s being an ass, or he doesn’t know.”

“What would you bet on?”

“Both.”

“Hard to blame him,” Steve says.

“Speak for yourself,” Bucky says. “I’m going to try and find some files. Watch him. Figure out if he understands any English.”

—

As ideas go, noted HYDRA experiment Bucky Barnes looking through a bunch of files on HYDRA experiments is not the best. There is, however, nothing to be done for it. Steve wouldn’t understand the Russian (underachiever), and they need to know if this kid has a pack somewhere, looking for him. They need to know how far this experiment went — whether the boy has trigger words.

Bucky can compartmentalize. It’s fine.

It is, of course, absolutely not fine, but Bucky makes it through the files without blacking out, and he only throws up once. He will take the win.

—

“Kiril Gregorivich Barkovski,” Bucky tells Steve. “Fifteen years old. He has no family. He has no one.”

The boy doesn’t so much as blink with recognition at his own name, and all Bucky can think is — it’s all my fault it’s all my fault.

Steve gives his hand a worried squeeze. Kiril watches the affectionate gesture with curious eyes.

“If you want to take him, we can do that,” Steve says. “We can ask T’Challa about bringing him back to Wakanda. No English, by the way — though he can quote some sitcoms pretty good.”

Bucky shakes his head. “He’s just a kid. I know what he’s going through, but he needs a real pack, a family. No trigger words by the way, thank fuck.”

Steve gives him a pointed look, which Bucky ignores. “M’Baku?” Steve asks.

“They’re a good pack,” Bucky says, “But I think I know what he needs.”

—

“Hey fellas,” says a familiar voice, whose owner has somehow managed to sneak up on Bucky Barnes, assassin and werewolf.

It can only belong to one person.

Bucky turns around, and Steve is already hugging the Widow hello, lifting her up off the ground. “Natasha!” he says. “It’s so good to see you! Is Sam here?”

“Left Sam in Acapulco. We took out some gun runners and he needed some R&R.”

“He banged up?” Steve asks. Bucky can smell the guilt coming off him.

Widow makes a face. “None of that shit, Rogers. You’re taking all the time you need. Sam’s fine. He’s laying on the beach, drinking lima-ritas, and getting hit on by every single person who’s there for spring break.”

“With a bullet wound,” Steve says.

“It’s a scratch,” she tells him.

“Should have texted,” Steve says.

“OpSec,” Widow and Bucky say in unison.

She smiles. Bucky smiles back.

Steve blanches. “Fuck, there’s two of you. Natasha, did you come here just to meet Bucky un-brainwashed and team up against me?”

“Thought you might need a hand, since word was spreading that the Winter Soldier was in Питер. Looks like you’ve got this, though,” Widow says. “Good job, boys. I like the murderous child! Didn’t realize you two were on the adoption market.”

The aforementioned murder child is watching the three of them interact like they’re a show on TV. He doesn’t talk, and he doesn’t try to run.

“Speaking of the murderous child,” Bucky says. “Might you be able to help two fugitives and a Russian teenager without any documents sneak into Brooklyn?”

Widow — Natasha — smiles. “Oh yeah. Sounds fun.”

—

Natasha’s St. Petersburg safe house is a beautiful apartment with river views and the best security system Bucky has ever seen. Steve, Bucky, and the kid settle in while she makes preparations.

Steve calls Sam on Natasha’s secure line, and the hypocrites spend about forty minutes scolding one another about safety.

Bucky listens to them going at it with unease. Crap, he should have gotten unfrozen sooner. He’s been replaced as Steve’s best friend.

“Maybe you and Sam should get married,” Bucky says, when Steve hangs up, a little misty eyed.

“What?” Steve says. And then he smiles this one smile Bucky really likes, where just one corner of his mouth curls up, and starts talking about how Sam would be an excellent husband.

“None of the schoolchildren who watch your PSAs know you’re a giant asshole,” Bucky says.

Judging by the way Kiril’s mouth quirks, he might know some swear words in addition to Friends quotes.

They pass the time playing дурак and watching bad Russian dubs of Brazilian soap operas. Steve can say whole sentences in Russian after two days.

«Я тебя терпеть не могу», Bucky tells him, because his information retention skills are not even a little bit fair. Sure, Bucky knows like seven languages, but he’s pretty sure they just got stuffed into his brain.

«Я тебя тоже, моё солнышко», Steve says.

Kiril laughs at Bucky, the traitor, at least until Bucky looks over and the kid resumes his previous, dead-behind-the-eyes expression.

—

The cover story Natasha comes up with is both simple and effective — Steve and Bucky are representatives of an adoption agency taking Kiril to his new family.

The speed at which she falsifies ten years of history for the agency is astounding.

When Bucky comments on it, Natasha just sighs. “It’s too easy here. No challenge.”

—

Kiril is hesitant as he follows them into the plane. Bucky can’t exactly blame the kid for not being trusting. But he only flinches a little when Bucky claps him on the shoulder — an improvement. «Давай дитё. Мы найдём тебе семью».

Kiril glowers. «Я не дитё».

Bucky smiles. That is exactly what a kid should say. They might actually pull this thing off and salvage some of this boy’s childhood. Kids are resilient. He gestures at Steve. «Ты можешь по дороге учить его как ругаться матом».

Kiril seems mollified. Steve learns a lot of very, very rude words on the flight over. Natasha, currently also known as private pilot Dasha Kaminskaya, giggles like an eight year old from the cockpit. She’s pretty impressed by Steve’s accent. She also probably shouldn’t be able to hear them so clearly from there — Bucky still doesn’t know if she’s a werewolf, but it’s becoming less unnerving as he gets to know her.

“Soon you won’t care at all,” Steve tells him, shortly before stealing Natasha’s phone so he can video call Sam and swear at him in Russian. Bucky hates this.

“I hate this,” Sam says, after Steve makes some very impolite anatomical suggestions. “You and Nat are gonna start keeping secrets from me.”

“Natasha is a spy. Her whole life is already a secret,” Steve says.

Bucky cuddles up to Steve, making sure he’s framed in a flattering manner on the screen. He’s just modeling affectionate behavior for Kiril and certainly not marking his territory in front of Sam. That would be crazy.

Steve, who knows exactly what Bucky is doing, laughs at him but wraps an arm around him anyway.

Sam rolls his eyes. “Good to see you, Morticia. How’s your spooky love, Steve?”

Steve looks at Bucky and shrugs — they’re both missing the reference.

“Add The Addams Family to your list,” Sam says. “But you two are doin’ okay?”

Steve intertwines his fingers with Bucky’s and gives Bucky’s hand a little squeeze. “Yeah, Sam. We’re happy.”

—

Rebecca Barnes, prominent werewolf activist, adoptive mother to eight children, aunt to fourteen, grandmother and great grandmother to countless more, leader of the Barnes pack — never married — still lives in Brooklyn, in a beautiful brownstone.

Bucky stands at the door, searching for the courage to knock, an uncharacteristically patient Steve by his side, one hand on the small of Bucky’s back.

There’s a gaggle of people inside — Bucky can hear them. It smells like warmth and cooking food — a real home.

“What time are they expecting us?” Bucky asks, for the fifteenth time.

“Any time this evening. They know this is hard,” Steve says. He strokes Bucky’s back.

“Why is this hard?” Bucky asks.

“You haven’t seen your sister, the last living member of your immediate family, in over seventy years,” Steve says.

Bucky takes a deep breath. Seeing Becca is a good thing. Helping Kiril is a good thing. This is good. He knocks on the door.

A young woman, with dark hair and soft eyes answers the door, quick like she’s been waiting. “Hi, Bucky,” she says, “Hi, Steve. My name is Amy. My grandma has told me so much about you.”

She leads them inside, and through the living room. “You can meet everyone after. Grandma’s waiting.”

—

Becca holds court in a study, where sits in a plush chair, chatting with a young woman who has their youngest sister’s eyes and nose — a grand-niece.

“June, take Steve and introduce him around,” she says, without looking up. “Everyone is going to want to meet Bucky’s mate.”

June dutifully complies, and Steve gives Bucky’s hand a reassuring, parting squeeze before he goes.

“Becca,” Bucky says, trying very, very hard not to cry in front of his little sister.

Rebecca Barnes has aged over seven decades. She has not changed an inch. Her Barnes-blue eyes are as sharp, and her posture as perfect as ever when she rises from her chair.

“Buck,” she says, tears already coming down, even as she beams, her smile — her same smile that Bucky first saw when she was a baby their mom put in his arms. “You don’t have to play tough with me. I already know you’re soft.”

Bucky hugs her. She’s thin and delicate with age against his hulking frame, but it’s the same. It is the same. He holds her, and he cries, because maybe tears don’t count if she can’t see them. She smells like nice perfume, like knit wool, like a Brooklyn spring. She smells like family.

Becca pulls away first. Bucky cannot stop staring at her. He cannot speak.

“So,” Becca says, after a long moment, nearly a century stretching between them. “What’s it like, having a mate?”

After all these years, Bucky finally has the answer to the question she first asked when she was ten and he was scarcely older. “It’s family,” Bucky says. “Someone who sees through the bullshit, knows every bad thing about you, and keeps you anyway. Except you choose them, and they choose you.”

“And you chose right,” she says.

It is at this precise moment that Bucky realizes he’s not going to ask Shuri for the cure — not when he comes back to Wakanda, and not ever.

“Hell yes,” Bucky tells her. “Have you seen him?”

Becca laughs and punches his arm — the flesh one, smart girl. “Seeing you and Steve, back when we were kids, that never looked like a choice,” she says.

“It was a million choices,” Bucky says. “Even now, I keep choosing him.”

“Mom and Dad were always so worried…” she says. “Especially after they found out he was Cap. When he put that plane in the ice, they were heartbroken, of course, but in some ways it was a comfort.”

“Yeah?” Bucky says, incredulous. He knows how the story of Steve’s aviation adventure ends — with Steve in the next room, swarmed by a good two dozen members of the Barnes pack, warm and alive and probably serving as a playground for at least one toddler. Thinking about Steve going down, slowly sinking, still makes Bucky feel a combination of rage and bile-inducing worry that can only come from Steve Rogers. He has no idea how his parents landed on relief.

“They knew it was real for him, too. That you had the kind of mate they’d imagined for you,” Becca says.

“Becks, you don’t know the half of it,” Bucky says. “They sure as hell didn’t.”

“Oh yeah?” There’s a sparkle in Rebecca’s eyes at the challenge.

“He pulled a helicopter out of the sky and committed treason for me,” Bucky says. “That was just one afternoon.”

She laughs. “Sounds about right for little Stevie Rogers. You know how many biographers I’ve had come to my door the past seventy years?”

“Can’t imagine. Anyone of ‘em on the right track about us?”

“A few,” she says. “Especially the wolves, once word got out you were one.”

“Must have been hard to lie.”

“Even by omission,” Becca says. “But the world wasn’t ready, and I wasn’t ready to deal with its bullshit.”

“I wish the most scandalous thing I’ve done was still being Captain America’s male werewolf lover,” Bucky says, laughing.

Becca sees through the joke, and lays her hand on Bucky’s arm. It is small, grown bony with age, but she is still so strong.

“How much do you know?” he asks.

“Enough,” she tells him. “And enough to know it wasn’t your fault.”

Bucky looks away. “How can you just —“

“This family knows trauma, James Buchanan Barnes,” she says. “What happened to you wasn't your fault, and this isn’t a discussion.”

She sounds just like their mother. Bucky thinks of the children she raised, while he spent seventy years as an unspeakable horror. Some of them must be the older people in the next room, with their own kids and grandkids. Becca built something, like their parents built something.

The boy, waiting with Natasha at the hotel, could endanger all of it, but Bucky has to ask — he has to ask Becca to take him. Kiril is fifteen, with a void in his eyes and a void in his mind, and he has no one and nothing to fight for him if Bucky won’t do it.

Bucky blurts it out. “I came to ask for something.”

Becca raises an eyebrow. “Oh? What’s big enough to finally bring my not-dead brother to my door?”

That stings, like only a sibling’s words can. Bucky takes the guilt and saves it for later.

“There’s a kid,” Bucky says. “He’s been through a lot, and he might be dangerous, but I thought — I thought you’d know what to do.”

“So you know about my kids,” Becca says.

“Yeah, Becca, and I’m so damn proud of you.”

Becca smiles. “Then you know I won’t turn away a hurt child because what he’s been through might have made him dangerous.”

“He’s an orphan. They were trying to make him like me,” Bucky says. “He won’t be easy.”

“My kids weren’t easy either,” Becca says, “And I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, back then. The pack will take him. He’ll have parents — a family. He’ll have the support he needs.”

“Thank you. So much. Any pack members speak Russian, by the way?”

Becca smiles. “You do.”

Bucky looks down.

“This is your pack, Bucky, your family,” she says. “Even when I’m gone, you and Steve will always have a place here. Anyone you find and save will always have a place here, too.”

Bucky hugs her again.

“You’re staying for the moon,” she says. “It’s not a request.”

Bucky just keeps holding her.

—

Eventually, Becca and Bucky rejoin the masses in the living room, where Steve is serving as a jungle gym to not one but two toddlers.

Arm in arm, Becca leads Bucky on a whirlwind tour of introductions of and two everyone in the room. There are at least three men and one young girl named James.

“Becks, I have brain damage,” Bucky tells her. “Memorizing this is going to take the rest of my life.”

Becca laughs. “This is less than a quarter of the pack.”

Bucky shakes his head. “I bet Steve knows everyone’s names already. Damn super-soldier.”

Bucky looks over at his partner, who’s on the floor, being shown a collection of plush wolves by one of the kids he’s been entertaining. Bucky can feel the hum of Steve’s contentment: There’s nothing like this in their future — only more missions, more wars — but it twists something in Bucky’s heart anyway.

“You two really are still besotted,” Becca says, smiling. “I’m glad.”

“Things were hard for a long time, after I...came back,” Bucky tells her. “But we’re good now. Really good.”

“You didn’t ask why I never took a mate,” Becca says. “I’m glad of that, too.”

“I figured it was my fault,” Bucky admits. “Bad example and all.”

“Not how you think,” Becca says.

Bucky raises an eyebrow.

“My grief was so deep, those early years. I never wanted anyone to feel that. I never even wanted anyone to know,” she says. “And then I went to the carnival with Billy Proctor...and I found my purpose. After that, it was all about the mission.”

“Werewolf activist, Rebecca Barnes,” Bucky says, so proud he could burst with it. He’s read all the articles.

“Still underground back then, of course,” she says. “But once I got my eldest out of that terrible place, I knew what I had to do with the rest of my life. A mate would have had to be a part of it…”

“And no one ever fit the bill,” Bucky finishes.

“Exactly,” Becca says, pleased with his understanding. “Oh, I had my heartbreaks in those days, but I don’t regret a moment.”

“I wish Steve and I could have been there,” Bucky says, “helping.”

“More times than I can count, I wished the same,” Becca says. She pats Bucky’s hand. “But you’re here now, and you’re already helping.”

—

Bucky goes back to the hotel to get Kiril alone, throwing Steve to the literal wolves. This is a moment he and the kid should share alone.

«Все прошло нормально?» Natasha asks.

Bucky nods.

Kiril, in the corner of the room, pretending very hard to be absorbed by the stupid sitcom he doesn’t understand, un-tenses a little.

«Давай», says Bucky. «Идём знакомиться».

Kiril looks at Natasha, and she curls her mouth into a reassuring little smile. She understands him — perhaps better even than Bucky can. It’s all he needs from her. Kiril takes his backpack, full of the things they’ve bought him over the last week and a half — the total sum of his earthly possessions.

Bucky studies Natasha’s face — peaceful and pleased. He’s got a sudden hunch. «Одну секунду», he tells Kiril.

“You knew,” he says to the Widow. “You planned this. You knew what would happen if I went to Russia.”

“I can’t see the future,” Natasha says. “I’m not Wanda or Strange.”

“But you knew the pack wouldn’t work out, and you knew that we’d wind up taking out the base. What we’d probably find there,” Bucky says. “...And you knew where I’d take a kid. But why?”

“If,” Natasha says, “I had done something like that. It would be because Steve’s my friend, and you’re his mate, and he needs you to be happy. But I didn’t do it. Because that would be absurd.”

Bucky shakes his head. He doesn’t know whether to be furious or grateful, so he taps Kiril (who is frowning, betrayed, at all the English) on the shoulder. They leave the hotel and step out into the night.

The waxing gibbous moon floats behind shifting, grey clouds. It draws both of their eyes, like the moon always must for their kind. There’s a slight breeze. Kiril shivers — it’s not from the cold.

«Всё будет хорошо», Bucky tells him. He cannot remember the last time he said those words — let alone meant them. But here, walking underneath the Brooklyn streetlights with a scared kid, they are real.

—

Back at the house, Steve and Becca are waiting.

Becca has had so many broken children brought to her, but she treats Kiril like he’s the first.

“Do you want to meet the pack?” she asks him, after they’ve been introduced. “We can wait if you want.”

Bucky translates. Kiril, still nervous, but also something like excited, accepts.

Steve, the asshole, knows everyone’s name already. He takes Kiril (and Bucky) on a fresh tour of the room.

“There are like four psychologists who specialize in trauma in this room alone,” Steve tells Bucky. He squeezes Bucky’s hand, all tender and romantic. “This is the right pack.”

Kiril looks at him, annoyed. Now that Steve has shown signs of being able to communicate in Russian, the kid expects it.

«Я стараюсь», Steve tells Kiril, who remains impassive. Steve pokes him in the ribs.

Bucky feels light and happy, and some of that is Steve, and some of that is his own heart, floating, weightless, surrounded by good things.

«Это наша семья», Bucky whispers.

Kiril doesn’t smile, but it’s a close thing, and Bucky will take it. Steve grins — bright and so beautiful Bucky can hardly bear to look and certainly can’t bear to look away.

—

Later, in the dark of the guest room, Bucky turns to Steve. He cannot keep the terrible secret — not one moment longer, not after all that.

“Steve,” he whispers, praying that the many sets of sharp ears in the house will not hear what he’s about to say.

“What’s wrong, Buck?” Steve whispers. He takes Bucky’s hand and strokes his knuckles, soothing.

“I did something pretty terrible,” Bucky says. “Back in Wakanda.”

“You can tell me,” Steve says, a sharp and desperate edge to his voice, to his smell. “You can tell me anything.”

“I asked Shuri to make a werewolf cure. Something that could turn me human. She did it it,” Bucky says.

Steve laughs, sad and bitter. “I know.”

“You know?”

“Since the bond’s been getting stronger, I knew you didn’t want to be a wolf anymore. I knew you were keeping a secret. Wasn’t hard to put it together.”

“That’s why you wanted me to find a pack so bad,” Bucky says. It’s his turn to put things together. “That’s why everything hit you so hard when we were with the Jabari.”

“So,” Steve says, “Are you going to take it?”

He sounds almost calm, but Bucky can feel him, can feel his anguish. Bucky can hear his unspoken,‘Are you going to leave me alone?’

He pulls Steve close. “No. I’m not going to,” he says. “I’m never going to.”

Steve kisses him, and it feels like the moonrise, like waves breaking. This is the start of something, Bucky knows.

—

The pack keeps a home upstate, on expansive private lands with great fencing — the perks a century of building wealth and power brings. They’re there the morning of the moon, waiting.

Steve hovers. Bucky should be annoyed, but all he wants is to breathe Steve in, to curl into the warm and safe of him. Steve spoons up behind him and makes herbal tea (which he trades to Bucky for sweet, thirsty kisses).

Kiril is appalled by the public displays of affection, but he is with wolves, and he is happy. He doesn’t smile, and he doesn’t have to. He plays like the child that he is with his own kind, surrounded by support that he doesn’t need words to understand.

Bucky leans back into Steve’s arms, drinks his steaming mug of peppermint tea, and looks into the woods. When did he last feel this kind of peace?

They head out when the sun starts dipping in the sky, lazy and golden. The moon is calling — it has been calling for such a long time, and this time, Bucky won’t fight.

He goes, soft and willing, into the moonrise. His body shifts, and there is pain, but it’s an old pain — like healed over scars. His body shifts, and there is the moon, pulling him with its rhythm, and there is the pack, calling to the sky.

There is Steve — there is always, always Steve — brighter and more constant than even the moon, moving him like the tide.

They run together, Bucky and Steve and the rest of the pack, the warm scent of earth beneath and the sparkle of stars above, warmth all around.

“But I knew him,” Bucky had said after the bridge, a few short years and a life ago. The scent-blocking mask had fallen to the earth. He knew Steve — his smell and his voice and oh, the pain on that face had twisted him up. There was nothing anyone could have done to really make him forget. He was a frayed wire that day, sparking after so long of feeling nothing.

Running, the wind in his fur, breathing the scent each living thing around him, Bucky feels everything. Steve is beside him, running as fast as his preternaturally powered body can carry him, his heart beating sweet and steady. The wolves are around him, loud and free; for the first time in a very, very long time, Bucky truly understands that he is not alone. really, truly isn’t alone.

—

Bucky wakes to dappled sunlight and a strong arm slung across his chest. Steve kisses Bucky’s neck — a tender spot that Bucky has fond memories of him biting.

“Stop, you heathen,” Bucky says, finding words with a newly human mouth. “There are children around.”

“Wolf children,” Steve says. Bucky can feel his smile.

Bucky would like to lay with him in this sunbeam all day, and maybe forever.

“Has Becca decided where Kiril is going to go?” Steve asks.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, “Two of her granddaughters and their partners share a big house in the suburbs. All the kids there are older. He’ll have lots of family, and everyone will be safe.”

“They know what they’re getting themselves into?”

“Becca says they can handle the challenge.”

“Good,” Steve says, but Bucky feels it — his bones-deep conflict about leaving Kiril behind. It’s not their call to make, and the kid belongs with the pack, but that doesn’t make it easy.

“We can visit,” Bucky promises. “At least once every few moons.”

“Shuri loved the transformation video,” Steve says, clearly deflecting.

“I think,” Bucky says, “That I’ll change for her in person...when we get back?”

“Yeah?” Steve says, and Bucky feels it — his boundless joy.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “I know...I know I won’t hurt her.”

Steve squeezes his hand, stroking the metal plates. Bucky feels it — the tenderness and the touch.

“I still won’t be easy,” Bucky says.

“Buck, you’ve been easy since we were sixteen,” Steve says.

Bucky smacks him on the ass without looking — the perks of knowing your mate since you were both idiot kids. They laugh, soft and bright and without malice, together.

“I know you miss missions,” Bucky says. “I think that once we get back, I’ll be ready for that, too.”

Steve doesn’t say anything for a while, just holds Bucky closer. “Do you think you’ll ever want to come with me?” he asks.

“I always want to come with you,” Bucky says, “...ever since I was sixteen.”

Steve pinches his side. Bucky squirms. They laugh again and tussle for a while, in the forest clearing, surrounded by sleeping wolves, wrapped up in the only home they’ve ever really known: each other. Steve settles down, holding Bucky once again. His palm — perfect and un-scraped — rests on Bucky’s chest, right over his heart.