Bucky turns toward him, sliding his hand onto Steve’s hip as he mutters a lazy “G’night” and presses a soft kiss to the corner of Steve’s mouth. It takes him by surprise, and he barely has time to register Bucky’s half-closed eyes and the warmth of whiskey-ripe breath on his lips, before it’s over.

When Steve’s mother is diagnosed with tuberculosis, Bucky makes it his mission to take care of him after she’s gone. They both scrape to make ends meet in the wake of her death, but Bucky always makes sure he scrapes just a little harder. That’s what good friends do.

Bucky Barnes and the Great Sexuality Crisis of 1938.

The thing is Bucky hadn’t the slightest clue when it first began. Maybe it was when he was old enough to understand what the meaning of the word desire was. Maybe it was when he saw that crooked smile for the first time and really noticed the brightness that was barely contained behind blue eyes. Maybe it was when they had to start sharing a bed together in the winter because their too small apartment got far too drafty. Or in which Bucky writes Steve notes and Steve finds them years later.

“You’ve known me all your life…” James Buchanan Barnes only wanted to go and play catch with the kids down the street, he didn’t expect for his ma to bring him with her when she watched the kid next door.

The collected private correspondence—unedited, uncensored—of Steven Rogers, later known as Captain America, and his longtime companion, James B. Barnes, spanning the years from childhood to World War II.

In which a young Steve Rogers is very sick, a young Bucky Barnes is very desperate, and a distressed Sarah Rogers sees something she wishes she hadn’t.

Bucky worked the bag a while longer before collapsing on the floor, chest heaving, lips glistening as he licked them. This was provocation, Steve was certain. If he couldn’t get Steve to admit to his perversion, then Bucky would find a way to tease it out of him.

“Buck.” Steve says, soft as he can, so he won’t start to cough again. The light from the stove hits his face just right, makes his eyes light up bright, spring sky blue. Bucky’s head aches just looking at him. 1943, in fits and starts.

“He couldn’t remember when he first started feeling the pull. Perhaps it was too long ago, or perhaps it had been gradual, something that crept up on him. But by the time he was sixteen, Bucky knew that the axis of his world spun around Steve Rogers in the worst possible way.” Inspired by finding out that in the prequel comics for Captain America: The First Avenger, Steve and Bucky are in art class when the news breaks about Pearl Harbor.

Steve frowned and turned into his side, shuffling further away from Bucky’s wriggling, and curled into a ball. “My heart ain’t never beat right, Bucky. Don’t mean I’m in love.” Bucky scoffed quietly, and Steve could practically hear the small smirk in his voice. “Maybe you have been, ‘nd you just didn’t know it, Rogers,” he murmured. Steve craned his head towards Bucky and watched as his eyes fluttered closed. A tiny smile played at the other’s lips and all Steve wanted to do was lean over and trace their outline. Instead, Steve turned away again, idly massaging his chest and pulling his blanket tighter over himself as his traitorous heart beat faster. “Nah,” he said, licking his dry lips and huffing quietly. Behind him, Bucky was already half-way to snoring. “I just got a shitty heart, s'all.

There’s an influenza outbreak in Brooklyn. Bucky goes a little crazy.

Bucky Barnes and his best pal Steve Rogers stumble into a situation that leaves Bucky feeling tongue-tied, out of his element, and convinced that Steve—Steve!—has more experience with the ladies than he previously let on. It’s terrible.

“You should be careful of that one,” Mr. Hendrickson says, with a nod to Bucky outside the window. “It ain’t right. Looking at you all the time as he does. The way he should be looking at girls.” Steve laughs, because damn, but what a ridiculous idea. Or, five times Steve caught Bucky looking at him, and the one time he looked first.

It’s August and sweltering when Steve asks, out of nowhere, if Bucky wants to try kissing. Just to see what it’s like. Bucky then spends far, far too many years pretending it didn’t mean anything at all.

He should have worked it out sooner. But then, Steve always was a sneaky little bastard—had to have been, just to survive this long.

He wants to explain to Steve that he hopes that someday he’ll find the right gal and he won’t feel constantly sick to his stomach about what he is and what he wants. That he hopes someday he’ll be normal. (He doesn’t know how to say any of this without telling Steve that he is in love with him, so stupid in love that he can’t think sometimes.) Or: Bucky is lovesick and Steve might be the cure he’s looking for.

You are six years old, your name is James Buchanan Barnes, and you think Steve Rogers could teach you a thing or two.

If Bucky’s smile was legendary in Brooklyn, it was because even in the middle of the Depression, it was still proudly attached to Bucky’s lips, night and day. What the good people of his neighborhood didn’t know was the reason why he was always smiling.

He told his ma that one day he would have a good job, a real job where he could wear a nice suit, and a swell house, and Steve would live there with him, and he’d take care of him always, the way his dad took care of his ma. And his ma got a strange look on her face. She hugged him tightly and told him not to think about things like that, it wasn’t right for a boy his age to think about it. Bucky wondered why. Bucky Barnes has always loved Steve Rogers. This is the story of how that love grew.

Steve always put up the token protest, but they ended up this way as often as not in the winter, sharing covers and space and heat and not freezing to death. If anyone were to walk in, it would seem reasonable, even. It was the best.