Posted by: taste_is_sweet

Story Title: Find Your Way Home
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe (Captain America and Avengers movies)
Link(s): Here at AO3
Summary:
Steve Rogers met Tony Stark in Afghanistan in 2011, when they were taken captive after their convoy was decimated by the Ten Rings.

Three years later, Steve is slowly getting his life back after the trauma of an imprisonment he can barely remember. He still has nightmares and attacks of paranoia and panic, and still blames himself for the death of the soldiers under his command. But he also has his friends, a cat and a good job. Most of the time he's happy.

Then he comes back from a weekend away and discovers someone's been staying in his apartment. And then he sees a beautiful, haunted man who shouldn't be familiar, but is. Steve's nightmares suddenly include a stranger with blue-grey eyes, and he wakes up mourning for someone who may not even be real.

And then Steve learns in the worst way possible that there was another soldier with him and Tony in the cave: James Buchanan Barnes, who kept them alive and then supposedly died helping them escape. And who no one told Steve about, because he couldn't bear to remember.

Bucky is alive, and he was in Steve's apartment. But with his careful, quiet life unraveling under the strain, Steve might never be able to find out why.

Warnings HOVER OVER THIS SENTENCE FOR WARNINGS AND POSSIBLE SPOILERS.
Characters: Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Tony Stark, Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton, Pepper Potts
Pairings: Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers; Pepper Potts/Tony Stark; Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov/Sam Wilson
When I Started: Um. Late last year? Really early this year? I can't even remember anymore.
How I Lost My Shit: I was inspired to write this because of a different prompt entirely that led to kicking around AU plot ideas where either Steve or Bucky was a ghost. Then I conflated it with an idea I probably got from one of the several thousand Law and Order shows, and ended up with this. And I wrote the first 5 or so thousand words and then didn't know how to continue.
How I Finished My Shit Knowing that if I finished this thing I could get art for it was one hell of an incentive, let me tell you. And my sister helped me figure out how to end it, which helped a lot.

(The art I received from Ensign-Cannonfodder and Feanor in leather pants is absolutely gorgeous. The pictures are posted with the story, and you really, really need to see them. They're amazing. ♥)