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The latest world-threatening megalomaniac didn’t seem to know when he was beaten, and he was going to make the Avengers fight for every inch of the complex. Steve had just kicked a door down and was starting to move cautiously into a room that looked like a workshop, with Bucky at his side. He saw the weapon out of the corner of his eye just before it fired: a beam of green light that caught him and Bucky, pinning them; he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, and everything was going black—
---
Steve woke with a gasp, but Bucky was already sat up in bed, wide-eyed.
“Nightmare too, huh?”
Steve sat up, took Bucky’s hand in his. “Yeah. I was—we were—I—I could remember it a second ago.”
Bucky squeezed his hand. “Can’t remember either. But I feel… ugh.” He shook his head, like he was trying to dislodge something. “I ain’t going back to sleep for a while.”
“Me neither.” He scrubbed his hand across his face. “Want some cocoa?”
“Nah, but making cocoa sounds better than sitting here.”
Steve smiled and leant in to kiss Bucky. It was strange—he’d just intended a peck on the lips, for reassurance as much as anything else, but as soon as he made contact it was—it was like he was kissing Bucky for the first time, and he couldn’t stop the kiss. Steve parted his lips, then parted them further at the swipe of Bucky’s tongue.
The fear of the nightmare was still there, a crawling feeling in his spine, but he was kissing Bucky, and that was all he could think about.
They were making out like they were dumb teenagers, like the first time they’d kissed. The first time—they’d both just gotten their acceptances to college (the same one, Steve for nursing and Bucky for physical therapy), and had gone out to get drunk to celebrate. They’d ended up on the roof of Bucky’s apartment block, lying in a drunken haze, watching the clouds and the moon, talking nonsense. Bucky had said, “Bet you’ll be the only straight guy in nursing school.”
“Who says I’m straight?”
Steve had stayed lying on his back, but he could see Bucky had rolled onto his side to look blearily at him. “You and Peggy Carter. She left for England and you were—“ he had waved his hand, looking for words and, failing to find them, “not happy.”
“Bisexual, Buck.” He had rolled onto his side too, to better see Bucky’s reaction, but with the alcohol he hadn’t calculated how close they really were. They’d ended up nearly nose to nose, and Bucky had looked at him with all the bright-eyed intensity of the truly drunk. He thought they’d both moved together, ended up kissing on the roof. And that had been that. They’d pushed their beds together in the college dorm and had barely spent a night apart from each other since.
Now they were making out like that first night, desperate, with hands everywhere. Like that first night, Bucky took charge, got their pants down (they’d been too far gone that night to think that anyone could have come up onto the roof), so they could press together.They were skin to skin, and Bucky slid his hand between them to squeeze their erections together, and Steve was moaning into the kiss, pushing up into that grip.
Bucky came, swearing, hot on Steve’s skin, and that was enough to make Steve come, arching up into Bucky as he did.
They lay there, foreheads pressed together. The creeping wrongness of the nightmare was still there for Steve, but a little quelled. Bucky wasn’t his usual self either, no flirting or joking or drifting off to sleep—just holding Steve, almost watchful.
“Want that cocoa?”
Bucky managed a smile, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes.“Sex and cocoa? You sure know how to show a boy a good time.”
Steve just kissed him on the forehead, hitched his sweatpants back up and headed for the kitchen. They’d both be tired for work tomorrow, but he certainly needed to settle before he could sleep again.
---
It had been three weeks since that nightmare, and Bucky still couldn’t shake the feeling of wrongness. He could see that Steve was feeling it too. Strange things, little things—like how Steve didn’t want to hold his left hand any more.
Steve had always loved the tattoos on that arm, which had started with a large red star on the shoulder (that one was during some dumb teenage Che Guevara phase) and grown over the years to a full sleeve of delicate monochrome patterns running from shoulder to wrist. Now Steve stuck to his right side, held his right hand, only touched his right arm. He didn’t flinch when he touched the left, but Bucky could see his expression, the slight brow-furrow, the feeling that something was wrong, but no idea what that was.
“Are we going crazy, Steve? I mean, they covered this in our psych intro classes—folie à deux, when two people have the same delusion—“
“So what’s the delusion? Vague weirdness?”
Bucky shrugged. “Everyone else is fine, so it ain’t the weather or the water. So it’s got to be us. We could be going crazy—”
“We’re just tired. Or getting a bug. It’ll pass.”
“If we’re getting a bug, we can avoid Tony’s party tonight, yeah?”
Steve sighed, “It’s not very often, and it’s a pretty good deal for the rent we get.”
It wasn’t a pretty good deal. It was an amazing deal.
Tony Stark, heir to Stark Industries, had been sent out by his father to make his own way without the support of the Stark fortune to prove that he was worthy of inheriting it. Tony had proved that ten times over, and now his own electronics company had been merged into Stark Industries, with Tony at the head. Tony had liked the first apartment he’d been able to buy in New York so much that he hadn’t moved someplace bigger with his success, but just bought up the rest of the building. So now the four apartments at the top of the building were one penthouse. On the floor below were two double-sized apartments, one occupied by Bruce Banner, head of Stark R&D, and one occupied by James “Rhodey” Rhodes, head of Stark legal. The first floor was all offices, and the four apartments on the second floor Tony rented out at ridiculously low rents to people who he found interesting.
There had been the usual media furore when one of the apartments fell vacant. Bucky and Steve had applied as a joke as much as anything and were stunned to have been chosen. Bucky was sure that they’d only been chosen because someone had decided that the block could use a gay couple for “diversity”, and that Pepper had vetoed lesbians. Steve was pure eye candy, and any guy who wasn’t a Kinsey zero would appreciate that. Not that Bucky was going to complain. They’d ended up in a bright, airy, roomy, well-maintained, two-bedroom, central New York apartment for a rent that made only the tiniest dent in their income.
The only slight issue was the party rule: no parties except those hosted by Tony, and everyone in the building had to come to Tony’s parties. They weren’t bad parties—just packed with rich bastards who were too full of themselves for Bucky’s taste. He’d rather have been curled up on the couch with Steve. But he could stand them as long as they stuck with the other residents of the block. There were Clint and Natasha, a couple (an acrobat and a dancer, respectively), and after living with them for two years, Bucky had just about managed to stop vividly imagining the incredibly bendy sex they must have been having with each other. Then there was Thor (Bucky still couldn’t get over that being his real name), a Norwegian meteorologist who looked like he could walk through a tornado without blinking. Finally Sam, a social worker and closet ornithologist (when he was sober he’d deny any such hobby, but enough drink inside him and he’d ramble about the red-tailed hawks in New York like a man in love).
So that was their little huddle at the party, sticking out by virtue of being far worse dressed and far more interested in the buffet than anyone else in attendance.
Bruce arrived late, as he usually did, only there at all because some Stark Industries minion had physically extracted him from the office or workshop where he had been hiding out. He made a beeline for them.
“Hey Bruce,” said Steve. “How are the raspberries?” Though they all pitched in a little, the roof garden was really Bruce’s baby. It was lovely up there: the garden contained a small pool and a small seating area, and the rest was a lush forest of planters filled with herbs and fruits and vegetables. He tried not to think about how much Tony must have paid to reinforce the building enough to take the weight of a swimming pool on the roof.
“The birds are getting them again. We need netting.”
“Next you’re gonna say you need a strong man who’s used to working with his hands, right?” said Bucky.
Bruce smiled. “Carpentry isn’t my area.”
“I will help,” said Thor. “It will be similar to constructing casings for weather stations.”
“And,” said Bruce, looking pointedly at Sam, “it wouldn’t be as necessary if someone hadn’t put bird boxes around the roof, encouraging them.”
Sam gave an innocent look. “I think it’s local kids. Vandals. They get up there, put up birdhouses and bird feeders—“
“What are the youth of today coming to,” deadpanned Natasha.
That was how, the next day, they ended up on the roof, wrestling with two by four and netting. It was just a little too warm for that sort of work, even with pitchers of iced lemonade by the pool. After working for a while, Bucky stripped off his t-shirt unthinkingly and threw it over one of the chairs before going back to work.
“I think someone should take that hammer off Steve before he hurts himself,” said Clint.
“That or Bucky puts his shirt back on,” said Natasha, smiling.
Bucky looked up to see Steve blushing and hurriedly looking away, looking very much like a man who had completely forgotten what he was supposed to be doing and how he was supposed to do it.
Bucky grinned. Hell, it was one of his favorite things, that he could do that to Steve just by taking his top off on a hot day. But at the same time, he’d rather that Steve didn’t end up off work because he’d broken his own fingers with a hammer.
He stood up and sauntered over to Steve. There may have been more of a hip-swing to it than his normal walk, but he’d deny everything if anyone asked. “Want a hand with that?”
Steve looked up from where he was seated and visibly swallowed.
“You have ten seconds,” said Sam, “to stop making this roof look like a cheap porno, or you can go inside.”
“Cheap?” said Bucky, “I ain’t cheap.”
Steve laughed, spell broken, and gently pushed Bucky away. “Finish with that end.”
Bucky gave a mock salute, and there it was again, that feeling of wrongness he still couldn’t identify, and from the little crease between Steve’s eyes he’d felt it too. But it had effectively thrown enough cold water on his libido to get the raspberry nets finished and set up, and he’d forgotten all about it by the time they headed back down to their apartment.
They were both sweaty, and Bucky would swear that Steve was fucking glowing from the sun (not that he ever burnt, pale as he was), so it wasn’t a hard choice to drag him into the shower.
The shower wasn’t quite big enough to do this, but they’d had practice. Steve turned round, hands braced against the tiles, legs spread, water coursing down his back and ass, and fuck, it didn’t matter that he’d seen it before; it was still one of the most erotic things Bucky had seen in his life.
Bucky traced a lubed finger from the small of Steve’s back to his ass, revelling in the full-body shudder that got him. He stretched Steve just enough (but the guy was pretty relaxed to start with), and then he was pounding into him. He wrapped his hand around Steve’s erection (his right hand; not using his left to touch Steve was becoming second nature), and jerked him off in time to his thrusts. Shower sex was never meant to last long, and Bucky didn’t even try to draw it out; he just took Steve as hard and deep as he could, not holding anything back.
Steve came with a groan, and Bucky soon followed. Steve turned round and kissed him, letting the water rinse them clean. Then Steve picked up the soap, lathered up his hands and started to wash Bucky down. Bucky made a little pleasurable noise in the back of his throat before grabbing the soap to return the favor. He loved this, and he didn’t care that it made him a sap (not that he was going to go round telling anyone what went on behind their closed door).
Steve’s hands were working into his hair, massaging his scalp as Steve said, “All that carpentry and now this. I’m gonna sleep well tonight.”
“You sleep like a log every night.”
“And you don’t?”
Bucky would have been ready with another comeback, but it was hard to keep focussed with the sensation of the scalp massage he was getting. Steve was right—they’d be asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow tonight. And tomorrow would be all late lazy breakfasts and doing almost nothing all day. This weekend was shaping up to be just about perfect.
---
It had been two months since the nightmare, yet Steve still had enduring vestiges of strangeness. He still hated touching Bucky’s left arm, and avoiding it had now become second nature. It was now mainly flashes of wrongness that hit him (hit both of them; he could read Bucky’s reactions). Once, while flicking between channels, some footage from World War Two had come up, and the sensation was the most intense deja-vu he’d ever experienced—like he could smell the mud and the wet uniforms. Bucky had squeezed his hand, and Steve had looked at him to see that his brow was furrowed.
They didn’t say anything, just changed the channel.
But apart from that, things went on as normal. They went to work, ran together in the park, followed baseball, put money by for the big trip to Europe they never quite got round to taking.
“Hey sexy.”
Bucky slid into the seat next to Steve at the nurses’ station. Steve smiled back at him, “Hey handsome.”
Whenever he had a client in the hospital Steve worked in, Bucky would come round at lunchtime and they’d have lunch together. Steve looked at the clock.
“Client cancelled on me, thought I’d do some paperwork ‘till lunch.” Bucky grinned and looked him up and down. “And this desk has the best view in the hospital.”
“I have work to do. You’re not going to be distracting—“
“Me?” Bucky gave an innocent look and pulled some papers out of his bag.
He was very distracting. Bucky could flirt without saying a word, using long meaningful looks or just some frank ogling. In between that and charming all the other nurses on the ward, Steve reckoned that Bucky had written all of five words in the last half hour.
Steve leant over the nurses’ station to pick a form off the desk, and Bucky leant up and kissed him—just a peck on the lips—then gave him another wide-eyed, innocent look. “Is it lunchtime yet?”
“No. If you’re not going to behave, you can go do your paperwork someplace else—“
“Nurse! You come here right now, boy!”
Steve sighed and turned round. He’d been lucky so far; all the times Bucky had come in, openly flirty and affectionate, he’d never had anything homophobic from any patients or other staff. Steve guessed it was overdue.
Steve walked into the bay. Mrs. Gillies was sat up in her bed, her tiny, frail figure belying the loudness of her voice and the strength of her opinions on everything from the food (“not fit for a dog”), to the doctors (“unqualified children”) to her grandson’s choice of girlfriend (“that gold-digging whore”). He could only guess what her verdict on gay nurses who flirted with guys at work would be.
The other patients in the bay were obviously also expecting some street theatre, and two of them were already grinning.
“Yes, Mrs. Gillies, do you need anything?”
“That young man, is he your husband?”
“Yes, he is.”
“How long have you been together?”
Steve had a bad feeling about this, but answered anyway. “Ten years, thereabouts.”
She pointed a finger at him, and Steve braced himself for the lecture. “You’re a goddamned idiot, boy. I ever had a man look at me like he looks at you, I’d have dropped my panties for him on the spot. He’s looking at you like that after ten years and you tell him to go away? You,” she leaned closer and jabbed her finger at him, “are damn well going to take a break and go to lunch with him and appreciate what you’ve got.”
Steve was overtaken with a confusing combination of horrendous embarrassment, the fierce bloom of affection he always felt when thinking about Bucky, and mild horror at the mental images of Mrs. Gillies in a sexual situation.
“There needs to be someone to cover the ward—“
“You’re due thirty minutes, Steve, you can take an early lunch. I’ll cover.” Sharon, senior nurse on the ward, had appeared at the entrance to the bay, along with most of the rest of the ward staff. All of them looked on the verge of giggling.
“Uh—“
But Mrs. Gillies hadn’t finished yet. “I bet he’s a tiger in bed too. He looks the type.”
Steve was blushing so hard he thought he might spontaneously combust. Fortunately, Sharon came to his rescue and said, “You go on your break, Steve.”
He walked out of the bay deliberately slowly, towards where Bucky was standing grinning at him. Steve was just about regaining his composure when Bucky took his hand, leaned into him and growled, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Steve virtually dragged a laughing Bucky out of the ward.
They were walking down the corridor towards the staff canteen, Bucky still snickering, when everything started to go wrong. Like the corridor was tilting, telescoping, like he could hear voices from somewhere else. He’d have thought he was drugged, but Bucky lurched into him as the corridor tilted, they grabbed onto each other and—
---
Steve woke, lying on his back on a table, feeling nauseous, and hearing Tony say, “See, one re-route and they’re back.”
He sat up and the room spun unpleasantly. Bucky sat up next to him, leant over the side of the table and threw up. Steve automatically put a hand on Bucky’s back, and that was when it really hit him. None of it had been real. None of it. They’d never been lovers, never even kissed, never mind some ten-year romance. It had been a hallucination, plain and simple.
Even- that whole half of himself, the part that had always watched the guys as much as the girls when he’d gone out dancing with Bucky—that was a part that had been buried deep a long time ago. He liked girls as well, so he always could deny that there was anything else, and he’d never told a soul. Now it was all there, in the front of his thoughts, something he’d only ever even contemplated late at night, in the dark, alone.
He just had to hope that he hadn’t said anything while he was under.
Bucky had finished retching and, still with his head between his knees, said, “The fuck just happened?”
Tony was stood with Bruce beside a row of monitors and controls, and Steve realised that they were still in the same room he and Bucky had been in when they’d been knocked out. Clint and Natasha weren’t there, presumably dealing with things in the rest of the complex.
Tony said, “Our mad scientist—”
“We agreed, mad engineer—” said Bruce.
“Mad engineer is either going for some sort of psychic containment, or an impressively devious truth ray. Use the subjects’ memories to create a hallucination. The output’s not working yet, don’t worry, we didn’t see what your little shared hallucination was—”
“Shared?” Bucky said that at exactly the same time as Steve.
“Does that sound like guilt to you? Sounds like guilt to me. What did you get up to in that hallucination?”
Bucky sat up, and Steve took his hand off his back, only realising then he hadn’t moved it. Bucky scowled at Tony and said, “Why’d you even care?”
“I’m thinking the Wizard of Oz, pair of you as Dorothy and Toto.”
“Yeah, and you were there too, Wicked Witch of the West.”
“No obvious tin man joke?”
Steve sighed. “How long were we out?”
“Little over twenty minutes.” said Bruce.
“And I would point out that it took most of that twenty to mop up the last of the guards. Reversing that ray was child’s play.”
Twenty minutes. It had been two months, or a lifetime, or both. All in twenty minutes.
He should be asking the sensible questions though. “Any long-term effects?”
“Apart from the scarring mental image of you as Judy Garland, no.”
Steve pushed himself up from the table. He switched into autopilot, supervising the clearup, getting everyone where they needed to be, although what had happened whirled through his head the whole time. It had been a shared hallucination. Bucky—Bucky knew everything that happened. Knew all of those things that had been nothing more than half-realised buried fantasies. But Bucky had been part of it, had initiated half of those imaginary kisses.
They had been manipulated by it, sure, dropped into a relationship they’d never had. But all through it, he’d felt like himself, that it was some genuine core of Steve Rogers in there. And if he hadn’t wanted that, then surely the relationship in the hallucination would have broken down?
And…and perhaps it was something he’d wanted for a long time. Something he’d never let himself think about. Because Bucky had always been handsome and unattainable (in so, so many ways).
None of this told him anything about what Bucky was thinking, aside from the fact that he was very obviously running on his own autopilot.
So they cleared the facility, went back to SHIELD, debriefed—including giving a vague outline of their hallucination, though missing a very key detail; but no one seemed particularly interested in a delusion that was so pedestrian and so domestic. He thought that perhaps he caught Natasha momentarily giving the two of them the side-eye, but that might have just been paranoia. Then they all headed for the showers (which meant that he and Bucky weren’t alone, and he wasn’t going to pretend that wasn’t a relief) and headed for home.
It was late evening, and after a very silent journey, they arrived back at their apartment. Stepping through the door made a lump rise in Steve’s throat, because the apartment in the delusion had been exactly the same (not quite exactly the same; here, in the real world, Bucky had his own room, but in there it had been a spare room, filled with forgotten weights and broken furniture). He had memories of snuggling with Bucky on that couch, of pressing Bucky against that kitchen counter and kissing him senseless, memories upon memories that had never happened.
He was aware that Bucky was standing next to him. Steve turned to face him and said, “So, are we gonna talk about it?”
“About what? That in your domestic fantasy you pick a job where people puke on you?”
“You know what I mean.”
Bucky closed his eyes and scrubbed his hand through the back of his hair. “Fucking sick of people messing with my head. How the fuck do I know that’s what I felt before that thing hit me? Managed to convince me of a whole fucking life that wasn’t mine.”
“There were things that always felt…wrong. But—but kissing you never did. That was—” Steve took a deep breath, “is something I want.”
He saw Bucky’s jaw clench. “Never said anything before.”
“Too dumb. Too scared.”
“This is real life, Steve, not some imagined domestic—”
“Yeah, it’s real life, where there’s a good enough chance one of us isn’t going to make next Christmas.”
That was low, but it was true. They were damn good at what they did, but one day, that wasn’t going to be enough.
Bucky was just stood there, staring at him, as tense as a bow-string.
Bucky hadn’t said that it wasn’t something he wanted, had he? Just that it was a bad idea.
Steve cautiously stepped forward, waiting for any sign that Bucky was going to back off, until they were almost nose to nose, Bucky’s face tipped up to his. They stayed like that for a few moments, just staring at each other, until—he wasn’t sure which of them moved, whether it was both of them, but they were kissing. It was gentle and tentative at first, then deeper and more desperately, until Bucky pushed him back against the door.
It was—and it wasn’t—like the hallucination. It was messier, less coordinated, with their teeth clashing more than once. But it was more real, more intense, and Steve was already harder than he thought he’d ever been in his life. Bucky was pressed against him as they kissed, and Steve parted his legs, pulled him in even closer. The pressure in his groin was becoming an ache, and he could feel how hard Bucky was as well, and now Bucky pressed in and pushed up and—
Steve’s orgasm almost took him by surprise, and he gave a little choked moan as he came. He tried to pull back from Bucky out of sheer embarrassment, and Bucky had a momentary look of incomprehension before dragging him back, grinning, and that was even worse. Steve twisted to get out of his grip and Bucky’s grin disappeared.
“Steve, hey, Steve, c’mere, lemme take it as a damn compliment that I can make you come in your pants just kissing you.”
Steve could feel his blush as Bucky pulled him into a loose hug, smiling at him.
“You’ve not done this before, have you? Not for real.”
It was asked without accusation, and Steve shook his head.
Bucky kissed him, sweet and gentle. “See, here’s the difference between real life and some asshole’s fantasy machine. It ain’t perfect, and it ain’t always the best sex you’ve ever had, and sometimes it’s just plain stupid, ‘cause sex is kinda ridiculous if you actually think about it. And...” Bucky’s hand was at Steve’s groin, squeezing and stroking him through his damp pants, and Steve was getting hard again. Bucky grinned. “...yeah, thought that serum might have helped you out in other ways too.”
“Jerk.”
“That’s what I’m doing.” Bucky smirked as Steve gave him an exasperated look. “Bed.” Bucky started to move, then said, “My bed. Betting I’ve got a helluva better stocked nightstand than you.”
Steve couldn’t argue with that, and he let himself be led to Bucky’s room. They both shucked off their clothes, and Bucky pushed him gently back onto the bed, crawled on top of him, and continued where he’d left off with the kissing. Steve didn’t know what to do with his hands because he wanted them to be everywhere, feeling the muscles of Bucky’s flanks or thighs and at the same time wanting to squeeze his perfect ass, pull him in closer so their erections slid together.
Then Bucky was moving down the bed, taking Steve’s dick in his mouth, and as if the hot wet suction wasn’t enough, he was looking down at the frankly obscene sight of Bucky’s mouth sealed around his dick. Steve fisted his hands in the sheets, not trusting himself not to hurt Bucky accidentally if he put his hands in his hair.
“Bucky—Bucky—‘m gonna—”
Bucky’s only reaction to that was to smirk (who the hell could smirk with a dick in their mouth?) and take him in deeper. Steve came even more intensely than he had the last time. Bucky pulled off, coughing slightly, and propped himself up on his metal arm, while he wiped at his mouth with the back of his other hand.
Steve was about to apologise, when Bucky said, “So, it might have been a kinda long time since I last did this, and I might be kinda more out of practice than I thought.”
“And I thought you were going to say you did that deliberately.”
“Course I did, just to make you feel better.”
“Punk.”
“Asshole.”
Steve pulled Bucky down into another kiss, and, uh, that had definitely tasted better in the imaginary version—not that it was too unpleasant, and certainly not enough to distract from kissing Bucky. Steve slid his other hand down his torso to wrap around Bucky’s erection, but Bucky pulled his hand away.
“Nope, ‘cause I think you’ve got at least another round in you, and I want you inside me.”
Steve breathed, “Bucky…”
“I could get used to you saying my name like that.”
If Steve had been able to string some coherent thoughts together, he’d probably have some comeback about Bucky being a cocky asshole, but Bucky had wrapped his hand around Steve’s dick, and—yeah, he was getting hard again. Bucky kept up stroking as he leant over and rummaged in the nightstand with the other hand.
Bucky made an annoyed noise. “If I’d had this planned, I coulda been prepared. Too much damn crap in this drawer.”
He spent a good few minutes rummaging and removing no less than two handguns, three spare clips, and two knives from the drawer, a delay which Steve didn’t mind at all because Bucky’s other hand never stopped moving on his dick. He finally pulled out a slightly tacky-looking bottle.
Bucky grinned and handed him the bottle. “You might not actually have done this before, but I know you know what you’re doing.”
Bucky was kneeling, straddling Steve’s hips, watching intently as Steve squeezed the lube into the palm of his hand. Steve slicked his fingers, put his hand between Bucky’s legs, fingers tracing the crack of his ass and sliding into Bucky’s hole. Bucky gave a contented hum as he pushed down onto Steve’s fingers, and that went straight to Steve’s dick; he couldn’t help the way his hips twitched up from the mattress.
“Eager, ain’t ya?” Bucky picked up the lube and slicked Steve’s dick (and that was another way reality was different; lube didn’t stay just where you wanted it, but spread and dripped, and these sheets were going to need changed).
Then Bucky gently pulled Steve’s hand away and shuffled forwards, took Steve’s dick in his hand and lowered himself onto it. This was real, not some hallucination, they were really doing this—and at just about the point that Steve managed to wrap his head around that, Bucky started to move, and all coherent thought deserted him.
He was just about together enough to wrap a lube-slick hand around Bucky’s dick, which had Bucky swearing and increasing the pace. Steve could feel his orgasm building from the tips of his toes as he pushed his hips up to meet Bucky grinding down, until it crashed over him like a wave.
Bucky moaned and came, spurting across both their stomachs. Bucky grinned breathlessly down at Steve, and then dropped down onto the bed next to him. Steve rolled onto his side to loosely drape an arm across his waist, and Bucky tucked his head under Steve’s chin. The metal arm was under Bucky, and Steve could feel it against his side. He’d thought that it might be unpleasant, but the metal, while hard, was smooth and warm from their body heat.
After a few minutes, Bucky said, “So, how’s sex for real?”
“Messy.”
Bucky chuckled. “Thought you might say that.”
“But worth it.”
“That means you’ll wash the sheets, right?”
“Jerk.”
The warm contentment of having Bucky in his arms was lovely, but it was eventually overridden by the unpleasantness of the feeling of the come drying on his stomach, so Steve rolled out of bed to go and find a washcloth to clean the both of them up. Then he pulled the covers around them both, drew Bucky into a hug (which got him a muttered “not a damn teddy bear,” but no actual resistance), and couldn’t help smiling as he closed his eyes.
---
Bucky woke alone, straight into full wakefulness. Yesterday he’d dreamed his ideal domestic life, all of it, years and years, come back to reality, and gone and ended up in bed with Steve. Shit. He should have stopped that before it started. It was one thing for Steve to build a life with the version of him from the fantasy—a version of him who wasn’t broken, who wasn’t a killer—but it was quite another for him to want to do that with the real him. There were a lot of mornings that Bucky didn’t want to wake up with himself, and he didn’t think that Steve should have to wake up with that too.
The worst of it was that he wanted that badly. All of it. Not just the sex, but everything else, someone to wrap himself around when the world was too much, so he could pretend that there wasn’t anything else in the world but him and Steve.
He could hear that Steve was making breakfast, normal enough when they had a day off (they’d been given four days, which he guessed was SHIELD just giving enough time for any fallout of their heads being messed with to manifest, at least in the short term).
He got up, pulled some sweatpants on, and headed to the bathroom; he pissed, washed his face, cleaned his teeth, and thought about taking a shower, but realized that this would make the fact that he was stalling even more obvious, and headed for the kitchen.
Bucky had intended to sit on one of the stools in the kitchen to have that serious conversation with Steve about how last night had been great but real life wasn’t like that, but then from where he was standing at the stove, Steve flashed him a smile that was both brilliant and fragile. Bucky found himself instead walking over to him, plastering himself across Steve’s back, wrapping his arms around his waist, and pressing his face into his neck.
Steve said, very quietly, “Hey handsome.”
“Hey sexy.”
Bucky felt all the tension in Steve’s body go as soon as he said that. Shit shit shit. Steve had gotten up, made breakfast, all the while assuming that Bucky was going to reject him. And Bucky was going to do that, had to do that—and it wasn’t because he didn’t love him, but because he loved him too damn much.
“Buck, I kinda need to breathe.”
That thought process had left him half-crushing Steve in a hug that probably would have broken most guys’ ribs. He loosened his hold a little, but couldn’t make himself step away. “Sorry.”
He felt Steve sigh and heard him take the pan off the heat. Steve’s hand covered Bucky’s flesh-and-blood hand, and Steve said, “Are you gonna talk to me?”
Bucky didn’t want to let go, because if he stopped pressing his face into Steve’s neck, if he talked, it would all fall apart, it would all end. Steve’s thumb stroked along his hand, reassuring, and Bucky didn’t want to give any of this up.
Eventually Bucky stepped back, looked at Steve. “We can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not him. I’m not a nice kid who went to college and got a nice job helping people, I’m a killer—”
“And I’m not?”
“You damn well know that’s not the same. You deserve the best, Steve, not some broken, messed-up assassin. There are so many people who’d love you and do the right thing by you. Better people ‘n me.”
“What do you want?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does. What do you want?”
Bucky looked away from Steve; he’d always had a hard time lying to him. “You know.”
“So you know that’s what I want as well. Bucky, if I’m never gonna convince you that you’re worth it, or that you deserve to be happy, I can tell you that if you walk away now you’ll...it won’t be as bad as when I thought you were dead, but almost.”
Bucky grimaced. “People out there got no idea how much of a manipulative little bastard you can be.”
Steve smiled. “All those people you said were better for me would never say that. You—I think sometimes you’re the only person who really understands me.”
This was all going to go wrong, horribly wrong, and it was all going to be his fault when it did. But Bucky couldn’t say no to Steve. He’d never been able to. He stepped forward and drew Steve into a hug, saying into his ear, “You just remember I said this was a dumb idea.”
Steve kissed him on the neck. “We’ve always been about the dumb ideas. Why stop now?”
“One thing—I am not having people know that I got together with you because of some asshole messing with my head.”
“So how did we get together?”
Bucky pulled back to look at Steve. “We don’t tell anyone. We wait for ‘em to work it out by themselves. And when they do, we tell them…hmmm.”
“After you nearly died on that mission in Bulgaria three months ago. I—” Steve looked down then up at him again. “Haven’t been that scared in a long time.”
Bucky kissed him, because after that, how could he not? “You were making breakfast. Are those special ‘I got laid’ pancakes?”
“I don’t even know what—”
“Dick shaped.” Bucky grinned.
“So, no, regular ones.”
And after that, it was just so easy. Even without being messed with, they’d been living in each other’s pockets for years, and moving to include kissing and fucking, it was all the most natural thing in the world. It was just…better. Better to be curled up on the couch in Steve’s arms than just seated next to him. Better to be sleeping with Steve wrapped round him than on his own. And obviously, regular hot sex—that was a helluva lot better.
Though after the first few days they did spend some time lying under Steve’s—their bed, poking at the slightly bent metal of the frame reinforcement and the small cracks that they’d made in the wood of the frame itself. Eventually, after a slightly dusty debate, they couldn’t think of a way to reinforce the bed themselves and couldn’t bring themselves to go out and buy a reinforced bed, so they dismantled the bedframe and dropped the mattress onto the floor.
He was fairly sure that Natasha guessed after the first week, but she didn't come out and say anything, just passed a couple of meaningful looks the next time they met. But if she wasn’t going to say anything, then he wasn’t going to say anything.
It was Clint who was the first who actually asked, a few months later, when they’d been teamed up to rework SHIELD’s sniper training.
“So, you and Cap…”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t make me say it.”
“Say what?” Bucky gave his most fake-innocent look.
“It’s the end of all my childhood innocence if you make me say it.”
“How old are you? And I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You do. You know exactly what I mean, and I don’t even know why I’m asking because Natasha’s certain and it’s not like she’s ever wrong.”
“Whatever it is, which I have no idea about, she’s probably right.”
Clint made an exasperated noise. “I just—I wanted it confirmed, okay? And if you think asking you is har—difficult, you have no idea how much I’m avoiding asking Cap.”
Bucky just smiled sweetly.
Clint said, “I hate you so much.” He took a deep breath. “Are you and Cap fucking?”
“Yeah.” Bucky beamed. “It’s fantastic—”
“Stopstopstop, all I wanted was a yes or no.”
Bucky couldn’t help his grin. “And while I’m destroying your childhood, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy aren’t real.”
“Ok, wiseguy, so who brings presents at Christmas?”
“Fury. He definitely knows if we’ve been good or bad.”
Bucky found out when he got back that Steve had been having a similar conversation with Sam at roughly the same time. Though there had been less of Sam actually asking and more of Sam just looking at Steve with his patented “don’t you give me any more of that bullshit, Rogers” expression until Steve ‘spontaneously’ told him.
That was the point they decided that they really should officially tell SHIELD. Bucky thought there was something somewhere about declaring relationships, but given that neither he nor Steve had exactly had the standard induction, neither of them was sure.
There was a form. It was very boring and non-judgemental, and since they’d each named the other as their next of kin a long time ago, it changed virtually nothing.
Steve was thinking about coming out, Bucky knew that. He also knew that Steve was putting it off because of the wringer that the media had put Bucky through when he reappeared, and while that made him feel guilty, he wasn’t going to pretend that it wasn’t a relief. He hated the limelight even more than Steve did, if that was even possible. But Steve thought that it was the right thing to do, and Bucky would stand by him.
“Whenever you want to come out, that’s fine with me. No surprises, though. I want warning. Then I can at least try and seem like a nice respectable boy you might want to take home to meet your mom.”
Steve smiled. “You can try, but I don’t think you’ve ever managed to look like the sort of boy to introduce to your mom.”
“Nope, I look like the sort of boy who’s gonna show you the dirtiest good time you’ve ever had in your life, and do you want to come to bed?”
It wasn’t long after that they ended up in the field together, for the first time since they’d started fucking. It worked, same as it always had, and Bucky wondered if the fact that the sick horror at the idea of something happening to Steve hadn’t changed meant that he’d always been in love with him. He wasn’t going to go chasing down that thought, though. If he got started on life regrets, he’d never fucking stop.
They fought side by side, like they always had, working with the rest of the Avengers to deal with the waves of aliens. Aliens who kept coming and kept coming, and if there’d been time to draw breath, perhaps he would have thought that this was the end, exhaustion starting to blur his aim. But eventually Tony managed to work out a way to close the portal, and it was over.
He wasn’t sure how he made it back to the helicarrier, but Steve was as wiped as he was, the pair of them supporting each other. They didn’t get as far as the debriefing, ducking into the first break room and collapsing on the couch.
Bucky didn’t know how long they’d been asleep (not long enough), but he woke up as Steve stirred, to find that they’d snuggled together on the couch in their sleep and were now held tightly in each others’ arms.
Steve sat up and said, slightly muzzily, “C’mon. Up. Supposed to debrief. Up.”
He grumbled incoherently but stood up to follow Steve. The briefing room was empty apart from Tony, Bruce, and a large scatter of alien weapons and armor across the conference table.
“You looked so sweet we decided not to wake you for the debrief.”
Bucky curled his lip into a snarl at Tony. No one who wasn’t Steve (and possibly Natasha, but only in very limited circumstances) was allowed to call him sweet.
Tony grinned. “Ha, Barnes. I thought we’d get that reaction, so I took the precaution of photographic evidence.”
The holographic display in the middle of the table was suddenly filled with a huge picture of him and Steve, in dirt- and blood-streaked uniforms, sleeping on the break-room couch wrapped around each other. He must have been seriously exhausted if he’d let Tony sneak up on him—except, no, the angle, it was a still from the security feed. That, at least, made him feel slightly better.
Steve looked sweet, face relaxed in sleep, even under the mud and the blood. He never would, with the brutal lines of his metal arm, the gun attached to his thigh like it was meant to be there.
Tony was still talking. “Could do with less blood for a coming out photo, and yes, we had all worked it out; thanks for telling us, Cap—”
“There were more pressing things at the briefing, Tony.”
“You want to come out, you give the word. Pepper’s got almost all the details worked out, thinks she can get just about everyone except Westboro Baptist on your side.” Tony caught up with himself. “Not, of course, that we have worked on this at all, and any seeming plans and preparations are completely spontaneous and off-the-cuff.”
Bucky kept his expression sour, but even though it was slightly creepily intrusive, it was nice at the same time.
Steve hesitated, then said, “I guess if everyone’s working it out for themselves, we really should come out, before someone outs us.”
Bucky wrapped an arm around Steve’s waist and pulled him close. “Home. Shower. Food. Sleep. Then coming out.”
Steve smiled. “I think we should let the dust settle on an alien invasion first.” He looked up at Tony and Bruce. “And gives us time to veto any parts of Pepper’s plan we don’t like.”
Bucky didn’t say that the other reason he needed to get home was that, in the back of the hidden weapons locker in the spare room, under a pile of clips, was a small box, with two rings in it. He may not have wanted assholes like Stark finding out about it, but deep down, Bucky had always been a romantic. And if they were coming out, he was going to do this right.