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Bucky found him about where he’d thought he might, in the art studio just behind their home. Steve was wearing an old t-shirt, a worn pair of pants Bucky wouldn’t even wear to feed the goats, and a splash of blue paint across his nose. For a moment, Bucky just watched him paint, totally involved in the colors he layered on the canvas. The pattern meant something to Steve, but to Bucky it was still formless. “So you heard from the doc?” Steve said softly. “Didn’t think you knew I was here,” Bucky replied just as quietly. Something about Steve was always…less loud in his studio. Calm, even. “Yeah, I heard.”Steve nodded and returned his attention to the painting. Bucky understood what he wasn’t saying---they’d agreed to allow the first detailed mapping of what, exactly, Erskine’s serum had done to Steve’s DNA and his and… “And you’re okay with it?” Steve asked. Bucky smiled. “Eh, what’s another hundred years together?”Steve placed his paintbrush on the palette. “It could be longer, you know. Not Asgardian-long, but long enough.”Bucky could still see Shuri’s face as she’d delivered the news. They weren’t aging---or rather, they were aging, but at a near-glacial pace. Steve, who was now in his late 30s, probably wouldn’t show any signs of aging for another half century or more, and even then, the process would be very slow. Bucky’s own serum, close to Steve’s but not close enough, would at least grant him a similar long life, but---quite possibly---without as much of Steve’s own ridiculous good health. “And you think I mind? Way I figure, we got at least a century to catch up on anyways.”Steve raised an eyebrow. “It’s a fair point. But you might get tired of me.”It was said lightly, but in the way of people who are trying to say something serious. They did have times when they were mightily sick of one another, but tired of him? Tired of him to the point of not wanting him around? Never. “What’s got you worried, Stevie?” Bucky asked, letting the old Brooklyn accent come out. “We’re gonna outlive everyone,” Steve replied. “Everyone we know, everyone who is a child now, we’re gonna see them grow old before we do. You might---”“Might what?” Bucky demanded. “Forget what we got here, the life we’ve built?”“No,” Steve said, “of course not. But ‘the end of the line’ wasn’t supposed to be a century or more.”Bucky had a memory then---of a much smaller Steve, hacking his way through another bout of pneumonia, trying to force Bucky to go to work anyway. They needed the money, true, but Bucky needed Steve alive a lot more and said so. “Pal, you can’t even walk down the hall to the bathroom by yourself right now. What you gonna do when I’m at work?”They’d argued, as much as Steve could when he couldn’t even get enough breath to breathe properly. It came out that Steve had been afraid then too---afraid that Bucky would never have a “normal” life if he stayed with someone who was sick all the time. “It don’t matter to me,” Bucky had said. “You’re my home. Wherever, whenever.” Even if this is all there ever is between us, even if we can’t ever openly love each other. I’m not going anywhere without you. Maybe a much older Steve needed that reassurance as well?***When the natural light in the studio grew too dim even for Steve’s enhanced vision, he put the paints away, washed his brushes and placed the canvas in a corner of the studio where it would dry, but not too fast. Then he stood and stretched. He didn’t really need to---he hadn’t had scoliosis in almost a century, and the painful spasms it had caused were literally a thing of the past---but there was some comfort in an old, old ritual. The sun was setting fast; they were in Wakanda’s version of winter, and the days were growing shorter. Briefly, Steve considered a walk along the river that ran behind their home, but decided against it. He was too restless to pay attention to the many predators around them that were nocturnal (it was something of a miracle they hadn’t lost a goat yet, though Bucky ascribed that to even panthers being afraid of the Shelob the She-Beast goat in his herd.) Instead, he walked back to the main house and found Bucky in the kitchen, pouring coffee into an old thermos. “What are you up to, Buck?” Steve asked.“Oh, this isn’t for me, it’s for you.” Bucky handed him the thermos and a couple of sandwiches. “What…why?” Steve asked, bemused.“It’ll be dark in a bit. You gonna tell me you don’t want to see the stars?”Wakanda had very little in the way of actual light pollution and the stars would be vivid tonight. Still. Bucky had known where Steve was most likely to go when he needed to think, and wasn’t that a thing? “Thanks,” Steve replied, meaning it. Did he even know where he began and Bucky ended?“Hey, don’t think too hard,” Bucky said lightly, cloaking the concern under a tone that fooled neither of them. “You might bust a gear.”Steve shot him a one-fingered salute and chuckled. “You gonna join me up there?” They’d slept on the roof more than a few times, when the oppressive heat of the Wakandan summer had defeated even their home’s climate control. Bucky shook his head. “Nah, pal. You’ve got all the signs of a man who needs to think, and I’ve got a project I need to work on for Shuri anyway. Go have a sit and ponder the universe or something.” Steve kissed him and left, heading for the ladder that would take him to the rooftop. ***Bucky hadn’t been lying about the project with Shuri---or projects ; she was nothing if not prolific---but even so, he was surprised when the message flashed across his workstation just as he was running a test cycle of a program that would improve the safety and speed of the nation’s vibranium-powered railways. They’d been tinkering with it for weeks now, and it was almost ready for its first simulation. Almost. Everything all right?He smiled and opened up the communications program. Fine. He’s on the roof. Shuri had been over at their home enough to understand exactly what that meant, had known the two of them long enough to hear the words Bucky wasn’t saying. So, deep thinking?
Lots of deep thinking.
And what do you think?
Bucky watched the readouts on the program while he considered the answer to her question. My grandmother was well into her second century when she rejoined our ancestors, Shuri went on. Did you know we that live longer as well? The vibranium? Bucky guessed. It was literally in everything here---air, soil, water---but only long-term exposure seemed to provide any health benefits…something which Wakanda was still at great pains to keep out of the global news. He hadn’t heard about the extended life expectancy, though. Maybe, she replied, and Bucky could almost hear her wry chuckle. But you should not think you will be totally alone. You’ll just have more time together. It’s hard to wrap my mind around it, Bucky admitted. Time was, I didn’t think he’d survive the winter. Those times aren’t now, she answered, and Bucky grunted a little. He had great respect for the Wakandan world-view, which (almost universally) seemed to honor the past while being focused relentlessly on the future, but he wasn’t sure he could explain even to Shuri the effects of the time displacement he and Steve had endured. Still, Shuri wasn’t wrong and this was one more thing they’d have to figure out how to adapt to. The test program finished its cycle and let out a gentle chime. He touched a holographic button and sent the results to Shuri. What do you think?
I think if anyone is going to live a very long life, I’m glad it’s you and Steve.
Bucky rolled his eyes, but couldn’t quite keep from grinning. About the program, Princess. The program. ***The stars were vibrant, glittering above him. Steve stared at them and wondered if he and Bucky would live long enough to see the stars move and the constellations change. Shuri and her team hadn’t even been able to guess at the upper limits of his life expectancy, but he remembered, abruptly, a conversation he and Bruce had once had, not long after the Battle of New York. It had been early morning at the tower; Steve had stayed there since his apartment (and his gym) had been under rubble and the remnants of one of the Chitauri space whales. He had been sure everyone else would still be asleep, but instead had encountered Bruce Banner, watching the sunrise over the city. He’d tried for a quick, silent retreat, but the other man had stopped him. “Did you know they say I’m going to live a damned long time?”What could Steve say to that? He didn’t even know who ‘they’ was. “I just met you yesterday,” he said instead. The shock of all of that, of his ten days awake in the future would undo him if he let it, so he forced it back and spread his hands— here, see me, I am no threat. “It was in my file,” the doctor stated. “You must have read it.”He’d skimmed the thing on the way to the helicarriers but hadn’t dwelled on it much. “It was in the file,” he acknowledged. “I didn’t read a lot of it. Only what I needed to know.”Banner’s face softened. “Grab a seat, Captain. We can keep an eye on eternity together.”Steve had taken his meaning; if the Hulk was immortal, then so, most likely, was he. But back then, he’d been still raw and grieving and furious by turns from the ugly facts of his survival in the future, and had pushed the notion away. Later, he’d encountered it again, in a shot of Thor’s Asgardian brandy that “was not for mortal men”…but which Thor had poured for him. Even then, he hadn’t dared to ask Thor what he knew. Now, sitting on the roof of his home, watching the stars arch above him, Steve could only be grateful. Grateful that he had Bucky to love for however many years they’d been granted, grateful too that he was at a place in his life where staring over the precipice wasn’t as fearful, so long as he had Bucky with him. ***Bucky had long ago mastered the art of not making a sound as he climbed up the ladder to the roof. He thought Steve didn’t hear him, as deep in thought as he was, so Bucky paused a moment before jumping lightly onto the roof and just…watched. Steve had taken his shirt off, heedless of the chill in the air (though Bucky supposed, after seventy years on ice, a little tropical cooling wasn’t going to do much to him.) The starlight was silver on his bare shoulders. Bucky remembered the first time he’d actually seen Steve---not the sickly kid with the perpetually bloody nose that had earned him a reputation (the kind of reputation that made tenement mothers tsk about “that Rogers boy,” though not where Sarah Rogers might hear) long before they’d hit their teens, but the young man he was falling in love with. Steve had been healthy, for a change---it had been during one of his few good summers. Bucky had banged up his ankle something fierce working on the docks with his cousins and it had been Steve being the nursemaid for once. Sarah had taught him well; Steve’s touch on his ankle had been light but sure.They’d opened the single window to let some air in and Steve had stood there for a moment, haloed in the rare bit of sun. And Bucky had felt the sudden lurch of desire, something he’d not felt for all the girls he’d dated until an equally sudden lurch of shame and fear made his stomach turn. They’d found David dead in the street only months before—how could he think of putting Steve at risk? Bucky shook himself mentally; those times were not this time, this place, this man and their home. “You gonna take a picture?” Steve asked and Bucky grinned. Of course, he’d heard him. “Nah, punk,” Bucky told him. “You done havin’ your think? I brought a blanket and those cookies from Deliwe downriver. You know the ones.”“I do know the ones,” Steve said, all Brooklyn drawl. Deliwe was the local herbalist and her baked goods produced either a mild euphoria or a mild calm depending on the mood of the person eating them. “How many did you have?”“None yet. Got a half dozen. Want to have some?”“That depends,” Steve replied. “Want to share eternity with me?”Bucky came to sit next to him and folded the blanket over their shoulders. “God, I love you,” he breathed. “Ever since you were ninety pounds of fierce in a ten pound sack, I’ve loved you. Even when I couldn’t say it or act on it. It’s always been you.”Steve pulled him closer and Bucky felt some residual tension subside. “I don’t know who I’d be without you,” Steve murmured. “It’s just always been you for me too.”“Sap,” Bucky said.“Guilty,” Steve responded.“So what are we going to do with eternity?” Bucky asked. “Live,” Steve said. “Love. Raise our family, if we’re lucky enough to get that chance.” Bucky smiled at that, and the idea that Steve saw it as a possibility. Bucky remembered the long, fine-boned fingers of the younger Steve; the hand that held his now hadn’t changed that much. And if that much hadn’t changed throughout all the intervening years, then… “There was a time I thought I’d never see you grow old,” Bucky told him. “When we buried your ma, I thought that was it. It took two of us to see you through some of your worst illnesses---what was I going to do without her?”Steve swallowed and when he spoke, his voice was ragged. “Buck---”“Nah, shhh,” Bucky said. “Listen. I’m not afraid, do you hear me? The thought that I might not ever see you grow old? That I might live to be with you all the remaining years we’re given? I’m not afraid to face that future.” A lock of dark hair fell into Bucky’s vision; Steve reached out to tuck it behind his ear and his hand was warm against his face, almost fever-hot. That was just Steve’s normal now, Bucky reminded himself, and smiled. “To the end of the line, then, no matter how long that line might be?”“Was there ever a doubt?” Steve asked, and kissed him.