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Bucky wakes gasping, with a heavy weight on his chest and cold steel kissing his throat. He’s familiar with the heat of a human body pinning his own, and he knows, even before his mind fully wakes or his eyes adjust to the darkness, who the threat is.
Above him, Steve’s eyes glitter. He’s doused in darkness, the dull light coming through the open window casting his face in shadows. Bucky’s a little grateful for that. He can pretend, then, that he has a good excuse for being unable to read the expression on Steve’s face.
“Steve,” he calls softly and tries not to let his heart break for the thousandth time when there’s no acknowledgment. Steve’s breaths are slow and even, and the sharp blade pressed to Bucky’s jugular hasn’t shifted an inch.
Bucky lets out a shaky sigh and shapes his lips into a familiar mantra.
“Your name is Steven Grant Rogers. It’s February, 2015. We’re in Brooklyn.”
No response.
Bucky breathes deep and wonders if he’s imagining how the knife presses a little firmer into skin.
“My name,” he murmurs, quietly desperate, “is James Buchanan Barnes. I’m your—”
“I know who you are.”
Steve’s voice is pitched low, with an angry rasp that seems permanent now. In the beginning, after Steve came to him but before they found the Winter Soldier files, Bucky thought it was because of disuse. Hydra didn’t seem the sort to let him be chatty. After the files—
There’s scar tissue on the inside of Steve’s throat from when they tried to remove his vocal cords. They grew back. Steve’s never going to sound the way he used to, but Bucky will recognize his voice even in death.
He loses track of how long they stay like that, Bucky limp under Steve’s heavy bulk, dragging in air through slow, careful breaths. The knife doesn’t budge. Steve could have severed his artery a hundred times over by now. Bucky doesn’t think too deeply about that. He’s used to being on the wrong end of Steve’s weapons, used to it not hurting as often as it does.
He waits, the way he always does, for Steve to make the first move.
It doesn’t happen until the sky outside is brightening with the first rays of dawn.
The knife slides across the mattress and stops just short of the edge, a few inches beyond Bucky’s reach. It looked like a careless toss, but Steve is anything but careless. Every twitch of his body is deliberate, calculated. A good weapon. A good soldier.
It was supposed to be Bucky.
“Steve,” he says, choking on the guilt but trying not to show it because Steve hates that, gets so angry. Not the righteous rage he was so fond of from when he was five-foot spitfire but a vicious, violent rage that makes every one of Bucky’s instincts bristle until he forces his mind into a sniper-like calm.
“I know the name,” Steve says. “You can stop reminding me.”
Bucky doesn’t respond to that, not because he doesn’t have anything to say but because it’s all been said already, over and over and over, and he can make Steve hear but can’t make him listen. Steve would have kept trying if their roles were reversed. Bucky doesn’t have his spirit. All he can do is bleed on the altar of Steve’s rage and pray the blood will wash him clean.
For now, he closes his eyes. It offers no respite. Steve’s face is burned into the back of his eyelids—sometimes, he’s as he was, golden and glorious, and sometimes, he’s the man on the bridge, mask at his feet and hair in disarray.
“What are you doing here, Steve?”
“Do I need a reason?”
Bucky doesn’t laugh. He wants to, but he might not stop.
Steve has attacked Bucky like this before. First, when he came home, a shadow leaping out of the darkness one night. Bucky fought back because he had no choice, and they both bled and broke, but in the end, Steve let Bucky scrape the blood off his knuckles and wash the grime off his lanky hair, and he didn’t say a word but his bright blue eyes lingered on the bruises he left on Bucky’s face with an expression of quiet horror.
It’s okay, Bucky said then. He chanted the same words just days later, when Steve screamed in his sleep and Bucky made the mistake of rushing to his room.
Cohabitation is now trial and error. Some days, he tries to console himself by thinking that it was much the same back when Steve moved in with him after Sarah passed. But he knows that was different. The anger had no real bite. Steve’s harsh diatribes were always aimed at his perceived weaknesses rather than at Bucky’s clumsy attempts to be sweet on him.
“You haven’t tried to kill me in weeks,” Bucky says, and god, is that his voice? He sounds worn and old, like he’s really in his nineties. He swallows and tries to be stronger. “So yeah, Steve. A reason would be nice.”
Steve’s thumb comes to rest under his chin, a few inches above where the knife rested. The blunt edge of his nail feels sharper than cold steel. When Steve nudges Bucky’s head up, he allows the movement without resisting.
“I wanted to see what you’d do,” Steve says. “You never fucking react anymore, Barnes. Maybe I wanted to see if this would put some fire in you.”
Bucky’s not sure whether he should be insulted. He tries to crush the flicker of hope inside his chest, but it’s insidious, writhing to life as if it’s not going to tear his heart to pieces when Steve eventually forces it to die.
When the silence stretches on, Steve scoffs and tips Bucky’s chin higher until swallowing takes effort. It bares his throat entirely, leaving it vulnerable for hands and knives or even a determined set of teeth, but there’s no fear in Bucky. His body remains limp under Steve’s weight.
“This is even more pathetic than I thought you’d be,” Steve murmurs.
Steve’s expecting Bucky to protest, probably. He does that sometimes, provoking without sense or cause, acid spilling from softly curved lips, sharp eyes intent on Bucky’s face, his balled fists, cataloguing every reaction. Bucky used to be helpless to deny him the satisfaction, if that’s even what he was after, but these days, he can’t quite summon the outrage. No fire left in him, like Steve says. Just a few, crackling embers that he can’t let die.
Steve huffs. His hand loosens its grip on Bucky’s face but doesn’t let go entirely. His fingers slide over Bucky’s stubbled jaw, deceptively gentle, and they’re dry and calloused, leaving behind a heat that seems to sink into Bucky’s bone.
Between one breath and the next, Bucky is breathlessly aware of Steve’s weight pinning him down, the warmth of his skin over a thin layer of fabric, and the way his touch feels almost like a caress.
Bucky has been in love this this boy since he was fourteen and knew no better. His body reacts.
He lies there, heart pounding, as heat pools between his legs. Steve’s silent and still, but he’s still straddling Bucky, positioned just so, and when he sucks in a sharp breath, Bucky knows he knows.
He expects—well, the usual. He’s been braced for rejection from the moment he realized the extent to which he wanted Steve, and he was never as careful as he should be. He couldn’t stop looking, touching, couldn’t stop the aching promises spilling from his lips, and it never mattered because Steve only ever smiled in blissful ignorance and called Bucky his best friend and died for him—
Steve settles more firmly over Bucky’s groin, and that’s not rejection, and Bucky’s shocked cold out of his spiraling thoughts.
“Steve,” he gasps, raw and broken.
Steve’s thumb rubs absently along Bucky’s jaw. Fissures of heat shudder down his body, warming his blood and making his gut twist in on itself. He’s fully hard now, and it must be digging into Steve’s ass even with clothes and the covers between their bodies. Steve looks as comfortable as anything, peering down at Bucky with his head cocked to the side.
“So you did fuck him,” he says after a long few moments. “I wondered.”
Bucky groans, but it’s colored with frustration, not pleasure.
He knows how Steve sees the man he used to be. He knows Steve’s memories are patchy and confusing. Sam said it was a miracle that he even came to Bucky, but Natasha said it was fixation, and they’re both right, Bucky knows it, but it’s hard when the man wearing his best friend’s face doesn’t remember the life they shared. Those years feel like a lifetime now and god, Bucky’s so tired of being so alone.
“No, Steve,” Bucky snaps. “We didn’t.”
“Hmm.” It’s not a skeptical sound. Bucky doesn’t lie to Steve, and he knows it. “But you wanted to.”
That shuts him up. He can’t lie. He can’t tell the truth; after all these years, his tongue won’t shape the words.
It doesn’t need to. Bucky’s body is honest enough. Steve’s staring, and Bucky wants to close his eyes and block out the world, but he can’t, trapped by the weight of those eyes glittering in the darkness. Steve’s vision is as sharp as Bucky’s, maybe sharper, and as dim as the room is, Bucky knows Steve can see the tormented truth etched in Bucky’s expression.
Steve’s thumb presses delicately into the thin skin under Bucky’s eyes. It’s not a caress. Bucky doesn’t know what the fuck it is, but it makes his breath catch.
“You did,” Steve says softly. “So why didn’t you?”
The words are pulled out of Bucky.
“You didn’t.”
Steve is very quiet. He barely seems to be breathing. Or maybe Bucky just can’t hear him, ears filled with the thundering of his own heart.
Slowly, Steve leans down, lower and lower until his hair falls in a curtain around Bucky’s face, blocking out everything except Steve’s face. This close, he can’t see Steve’s features well, but he can feel his heat, smell his scent. It’s too close, too intimate, and Bucky’s being torn apart by the warring urges to shove Steve away and sink into his warmth.
Steve breathes out, and Bucky can feel it on his lips, and for a single, wild moment, he thinks Steve is going to kiss him.
Instead, Steve says, very quietly, “I’m not him.”
His body moves over Bucky’s, a sinuous motion that brims with deliberation. Bucky’s breath catches. Steve does it again, chest sliding over Bucky’s, ass grinding on his crotch, and there’s no mistaking what he’s trying to do.
“Steve,” Bucky chokes out, dizzy with shock and searing need.
Steve rises, but it’s no relief. His movements are clumsy, but he’s hot and heavy over Bucky’s dick, and the pleasure bites into every aching inch of him. He claws at the sheets for some semblance of control because he can’t touch Steve, will be lost if he tries.
Steve makes a noise low in his throat, something almost like pleasure, and Bucky realizes with a jolt that it’s already too late.
And then, as suddenly as he started this madness, Steve stops, climbing off Bucky. He doesn’t go far, kneeling by Bucky’s hips, but the absence of his heavy heat leaves Bucky reeling, and by the time he notices what Steve’s doing, the covers are being yanked off his body.
He’s dressed in just a pair of boxers. Cool air ripples along his skin, but it’s Steve’s fingers trailing casually up his belly that makes parts of him perk up tight.
“Steve,” Bucky gasps, grasping at the edges of his fraying restraint. “What are you doing?”
“What do you think?” Steve asks mildly, flattening his palm over Bucky’s stomach. It feels like a brand. “You’re tense. Are you scared?”
Yes, but not in the way Steve’s thinking. Probably. There’s nothing predictable about him, nothing readable in what Bucky can make out of his expression.
When he says nothing, Steve just grows bolder, sliding his hand down, a slow, teasing drag that leaves no doubt as to his intentions. Protests wither on Bucky’s tongue, and he swallows the last drop of good sense, and then Steve’s hand settles over the bulge in his boxers, and Bucky crosses the point of no return.
The sound he makes is too loud. It pierces the night’s silence and rings in his ears. Steve makes a quiet, considering noise in response and squeezes Bucky over his boxers, gentler than expected. Bucky bites his lips hard and doesn’t let anything escape. The whole of him is wound tight, ready to snap at a touch. Steve’s always made him feel like fine china, breakable in ways that had nothing to do with the strength of his body, but god, it’s never been like this.
Steve yanks the boxers down and wraps his fingers around Bucky’s dick, and his brain goes blank but his body reacts, pushing up into Steve’s grip and crying out at how damnably good it feels.
“No,” Steve says, and Bucky closed his eyes at some point, but he can hear the smile in Steve’s voice. “Not scared at all.”
“Steve,” Bucky whimpers. It’s the only word his tongue can form. “Steve.”
Steve starts stroking.
It’s clumsy, the angle awkward and the skin too dry, but it’s been eons since Bucky’s felt the touch of a hand not his own. There was a soldier in a bar, a week before Steve fell, with broad shoulders and golden hair and eyes that were the wrong color but who didn’t mind if Bucky cried out the wrong name. Then, after he woke, there was Natasha and a weekend after a mission that went wrong in all the worst ways. They drowned their demons in each other’s skin, but they were too alike to make it work, and they were both in love with ghosts anyway.
Bucky’s ghost is flesh and blood now, and he’s got one hand on Bucky’s cock and the other fisted around his screaming heart, and it’s embarrassing, how little it takes to make him fall apart.
Steve makes a soft, startled noise when Bucky spills over his fingers. He strokes him through it, wringing out every last drop, and doesn’t stop until the slick slide of his palm makes Bucky shudder and twitch with oversensitivity. Steve’s slow to let him go, his messy palm cupped over Bucky’s spent dick. There’s something strangely tender about it—and just as obscene.
When Steve does take his hand away, Bucky’s cold all over. The good sense that fled when Steve touched him with heat starts to trickle back in, but Bucky’s growing horror dies a whimpering death when Steve unceremoniously shoves down his sweatpants and fists his hand, wet with Bucky’s come, around his own cock.
Bucky doesn’t think, just acts, one hand flying to flick on the bedside lamp as he hauls himself into a sitting position. The sudden light makes Steve grunt and close his eyes, but Bucky keeps his stubbornly open and on Steve. He’s helpless not to let them trail low, over the threadbare t-shirt stretched over Steve’s insane shoulders and further down. His breath catches.
Everything about this night has been surreal, but this is what threatens to break him.
He’s fantasized about Steve’s dick more times than he can count, has stolen guilt glimpses that fueled many nights’ fantasies. Each time he touched a man and was touched in return, he thought of Steve, let himself pretend in any way he could. That was all before the train and the ice, the fall and the plunge, but his body remembers.
Sweat breaks out along his palms, the nape of his neck, a hot thrill that spreads slow and sweet down the length of his spine. He swallows and his throat clicks dry, damningly loud in the heavy silence.
Steve’s hand shifts, baring more of his cock.
“Like what you see?” he asks, low and dark, dripping intent. “Yeah. I think you do.”
Bucky drags his eyes up to Steve’s face. His heart’s in his ears, his throat, taking over every one of his senses. When Steve reaches for him, Bucky shatters, falling to all fours in a mindless haze.
“Please,” he says, forehead pressed to the sharp curve of Steve’s hipbone, mere inches away from what he aches for.
Fingers card through his hair. They’re gentle at first, stroking the short strands, nails pleasantly scraping the scalp. And then they tighten, fisting a generous handful and yanking Bucky’s head up. It’s rough at this angle, makes his neck ache, but he blinks up at Steve without complaint.
Pathetic, Steve said earlier. He has no idea. Bucky has no idea about the lows he’ll sink to for Steve, in every sense of it.
“Why would I stop you?” Steve murmurs, heavy-lidded stare piercing through Bucky. “Open your mouth.”
Bucky opens his mouth.
He’s out of practice sucking cock, but after that first, electric moment, it’s clear that Steve’s not expecting any technique. He’s not expecting anything at all except a warm, willing mouth, and yes, he can be that, he can—
The head hits the back of his throat, and Bucky gags, throat convulsing unpleasantly. It tastes bitter from Bucky’s own come. Steve pulls out but not all the way, the head of him leaking warm on Bucky’s tongue. He laps it up as best as he can, suckling with an eagerness that borders on desperation, and it hits him like shotgun shot, the realization that he’s tasting Steve, that he’s on his hands and knees in shuddering supplication, lips spread wide around the man of his darkest, dearest fantasies.
Steve pushes in, and Bucky chokes again, his throat unused to the intrusion, but Steve’s rough and relentless, and Bucky doesn’t resist, doesn’t want to, letting himself be pried wide open. Drool wets his chin, and he gags each time Steve’s cock hits the back of his throat. There’s a raw ache there, throbbing in time to the frantic beating of his heart.
It's the messiest head he’s ever given, and he remembers the first time, with a boy his age who showed him how, and it’s only right that Steve’s the one to strip him of his grace and his pride. Bucky would give him anything. He tried so hard to give him his life.
Steve comes, sudden and violent, and he’s hot and it’s a lot—Bucky tries to swallow but it drips down his chin, messing him up, marking him. He shivers when Steve’s cock softens on his tongue and slips out from between his aching lips.
Bucky blinks and his vision clears. He didn’t know he was crying. He doesn’t know why he was crying.
Steve’s panting, dragging in ragged breaths. There’s a bright flush on his cheeks, his throat, and his eyes are dark, as wild as they were on the helicarrier when Bucky fell to his knees and bared his throat for Steve’s knife. He doesn’t know why Steve was so surprised earlier, when Bucky just lay under him and waited to be split open. It’s all he’s been doing since they found each other in this brave new world.
For a long time, they’re silent and still.
Steve is the one who moves. Bucky can only watch, frozen, as he pulls up his pants and climbs off the bed and leaves, a shadow slipping away as quietly as it slithered in.
On the bed, the knife glints as if it’s mocking Bucky.
By the time he manages to drag himself to the bathroom, it’s bright outside and the mess on his skin has dried.
-
Bucky spends the day with needles dancing under his skin.
He can’t untangle the knot of emotions plaguing him. He doesn’t even know where to begin. It leaves him restless, thrumming with nervous energy and devoid of any outlet.
Steve has locked himself in his room and shows no indication of coming out even to eat. It’s so quiet in there that Bucky would think Steve fled out the window, but now and then, there are sounds of the toilet flushing and the shower running, and Bucky plunges back to the vexing state of being happy Steve’s here, safe, and frustrated that the motherfucker’s hiding in his room.
It's not the first or the hundredth time Steve’s done that. He has bad days. In the beginning, he only had bad days, and for all that he came to Bucky willingly, he mostly acted like he couldn’t stand the sight of him. It’s better now; Steve still keeps to himself, but it’s not like living with a ghost anymore. Bucky knows it’s progress, knows it’s not fair to miss Steve when he’s just a room away, but—
God help him, he does. He misses that firecracker kid, his bones held together with spite, and he misses the brave monster who walked into hell to pull Bucky out of it.
And that’s just it, isn’t it? Steve pulled Bucky out of hell, but the stories all say it comes with a price. Steve paid with his life, his soul, and he was a ghost for seventy years and now he’s a wraith, and Bucky wants so badly to breathe him to life, but he doesn’t know how.
-
It’s evening when he manages to force himself to leave the apartment. The walls have been suffocating for hours, but he couldn’t leave because what if Steve came out, what if he wanted to talk, what if Bucky left and fucked it up, what if Steve left—
He escapes, somehow, before his brain eats itself, but he doesn’t—can’t—go far. He goes to that fancy deli the next block over, the one Sam liked when he visited, and manages to spend a whole half-hour there nibbling at a sandwich he doesn’t quite taste. But he buys a few to-go anyway because Steve hasn’t eaten all day, and if Bucky tries to cook tonight, he’ll burn the whole building down.
At home, he raises his hand to knock on Steve’s door and spends five minutes with metal knuckles hovering an inch away from the wood.
In the end, he puts the food bag down on the floor and says, “I’ve left you food,” and flees to his own room, throwing himself half-clothed into the shower so he has an excuse not to hear whether Steve opened his door or not.
-
He’s torn from a disturbed sleep when the covers are pulled off his body. There’s warmth at his back, and it takes him a moment too long to register it as another body, large and familiar even now.
Bucky tenses, but a hand runs along his side, from shoulder to hip, the touch almost possessive.
“Steve,” Bucky whispers, heart in his throat. “What are you doing?”
The only answer he gets is a kiss pressed to his nape. He’s not even sure if it’s a kiss or if Steve’s just pressing closer. His lips linger and his breath ghosts along Bucky’s skin. That entire side breaks out in goosebumps. Steve must be able to feel it with his hand resting on Bucky’s thigh.
Sure enough, he strokes the pebbled skin and makes a soft, interested noise.
“You’re naked,” he says, “Were you expecting me?”
The words echo in Bucky’s head, sound without meaning, until it registers, sudden and brutal.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says, shocked more than anything when his voices come out level.
Steve just slides closer, and god, he’s so warm. And his hand’s hot, trailing gentle fire down Bucky’s thigh and along the curve of his hips, skirting tantalizingly close to where his cock is starting to stir.
Nails scrape his belly, pressing in just enough to hurt in that dully pleasant way. Bucky bites the inside of his cheek and doesn’t let a sound escape. He knows it’s a losing battle, but that’s never stopped him fighting one. Steve starts playing idly with his treasure trail, running his palm along the length of it and tugging at a few of the short hairs. Bucky never thought he was particularly sensitive there, but now he’s about ready to burst just from that simple touch.
He wants to speak, say something, anything to break through this strange, heavy silence, but if he opens his mouth, he’s not sure whether he’ll beg Steve to leave or fuck him till he passes out, and that’s not a risk he wants to take. He doesn’t even know which option scares him the most.
Steve’s hand stops teasing and closes in on the treasure, and the sharp tang of blood floods Bucky’s mouth as he bites through skin trying to stay quiet.
“You’re more scared now than you were when I had a knife to your throat.” They’re soft, the words whispered into Bucky’s ear. Steve’s voice is low and husky, running over him like warm whiskey. “What does that say about you?”
“I’m not scared,” Bucky lies, barely recognizing the thin, trembling sounds that come out of his mouth.
“Liar.”
Steve strokes him from root to tip, and Bucky shudders violently. He’s rock-hard in Steve’s grip, already wet at the tip. He’s never this sensitive when it’s his own hand, never so easy, but he’s not surprised, not when he discovered his sexuality under the startling intensity of Steve’s stormy blue eyes.
That blue’s hidden from him now, pressed to his hair, but Steve’s touch is sure and firm, ripping Bucky’s pleasure out of his flesh.
It’s easy to give in—he still bites his lips bloody to stifle his sounds, and he doesn’t move despite his whole body screaming at him to fuck into Steve’s fist, but he doesn’t have to. Steve’s got it, got him, stroking him rough and dry at first and then spitting on his palm to make it wetter, dirtier. He’s not as hasty as last time. He flicks the aching head with a nail and when Bucky jolts helplessly, he does it again and again, until Bucky’s a shuddering mess of pained pleasure. Steve traces the veins down the underside and fists the base so tight it starts to hurt, and he changes his pace lightning-swift, brutally fast one moment and painfully slow the next.
It feels like he’s trying to learn Bucky, figure out what makes him tick. Bucky doesn’t make it easy for him but only because all of it spears him deep, and it gets harder, with each passing second and each ragged breath, to not let it show.
It’s a relief to just come, the dam breaking on a downward stroke of Steve’s fist. Bucky gasps wordlessly, Steve’s name fluttering in his throat and thrumming in his veins but stubbornly kept off his tongue.
Steve wipes the mess on Bucky’s own stomach, and he can’t even bring himself to be annoyed. He also doesn’t look too deeply at the dirty thrill that bolts through him at the wet, sticky touch.
Dazed and caught in the afterglow, he doesn’t pay much attention to Steve’s hands until they turn him over, shoving him on to his stomach in a move that’s not unkind so much as abrupt. Bucky gets a mouthful of pillow and turns his head to the side. Steve’s silhouette fills his vision for a moment before he vanishes. His weight settles on Bucky, a blanket of heat over his prone body.
Steve’s still dressed, but his cock is bare and hot where it digs into Bucky’s thigh. Steve shifts, slow and deliberate, and his cock slides between Bucky’s cheeks, the tip brushing the small of his back. It’s wet.
Bucky curls his fingers into the sheets.
Steve starts moving, and there’s nothing slow about him now. His dick slides over Bucky’s skin, a line of searing heat that makes his blood burn. Steve’s silent, his breaths harsh the way it is when you’re breathing sharply through your nose. It falls on Bucky’s neck, and Steve’s hair’s splayed over his shoulders, and it’s nothing at all like any sex he’s had. He doesn’t know what Steve’s thinking, what he’s feeling. His cock is clear enough, hard and demanding over Bucky’s willing flesh, but Bucky aches to know what’s happening inside Steve’s head.
He’s got Bucky pinned and at his mercy, and it’s nothing like what happened all those times before. Bucky doesn’t know what’s worse, Steve breaking his bones in terrified rejection or Steve looking at him and seeing nothing but a warm body.
He feels used, Steve’s silence and frenzied motion sinking deep into his bones, but there’s a perverse pleasure in that feeling. There’s no part of Bucky that wants to pull away, to ask Steve to stop. He wants to give him this. He wants to give him everything. He’d let Steve slit him open and tear him apart if it meant giving them both peace.
Steve sinks his teeth into Bucky’s shoulder when he comes—it’s close to the metal, the sharp sting of his teeth digging into the knotted scars there. There’s come on his ass, his thighs, trickling down his sides. Bucky’s gut clenches, heat shuddering through the whole of him. He would let Steve bite through his heart, he would—
Steve grunts and rolls away, and Bucky feels cold, his head suddenly hollow.
His cock, half-hard from Steve’s use, wilts in his absence.
The bed shifts. Footsteps. The door clicks shut softly.
Bucky lies there, shivering.
-
It happens again.
And again and again and again.
Steve always comes to him at night. Every night. Bucky once spends an hour staring at the keyhole, telling himself he should lock it and knowing he won’t. They never talk, and it’s always the same—Steve jerks him off and rubs off on him. Bucky doesn’t use his mouth again, and he doesn’t offer up the pieces of himself that he wrote Steve’s name on a long time ago. He wants to, but it terrifies him.
He doesn’t know what they’re doing. He’s not sure Steve does either.
The days are eerily normal. Or as normal as they ever were. Steve still spends most of his time in his room, but he ventures out, sometimes for hours, to curl up in the couch with one of Bucky’s books or to eat a meal with him.
The time Bucky catches him with one of the Captain America comics—one of the oldest, a vintage collection Tony gave to him—he can’t stop the tears, and it’s such a stupid fucking thing to cry over, but Bucky’s heart finds new ways to break over Steve every day, every hour.
Steve tracks the tears with wide, startled eyes and reaches out, thumb swiping one cheek dry. It’s more comforting than it has any right to be, and Bucky loses track of how long they stay like that, Steve on the couch and Bucky kneeling on the floor, touching like nervous schoolchildren. Steve doesn’t ask if he’s alright, and Bucky doesn’t offer reassurance.
They break apart eventually. That night, Bucky tries and fails to find some semblance of that tender touch in the fingers that carve bruises into his hips.
-
“There’s a mission,” Bucky says, trying to hide the relief and the fear. “Hydra base in Crimea. Intel says it’s got a bit of everything—weapons manufacture, research labs. Might take some time.”
Steve’s perched on the fire escape, folded up like he used to when he was less than half his current size. There’s a sketchbook open on his lap, but it’s blank. Bucky’s quick to avert his eyes.
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Steve says. “Not that that’s saying much.”
He says it with a laugh, dry and humorless. Bucky swallows thickly, platitudes warring with screams deep in his throat. Steve’s eyes narrow like he can hear every stifled word.
“When do you leave?” is all he asks.
“Fifteen minutes.”
“That’s sudden.”
“These things always are.”
“You gonna ask me to come?”
“You know I can’t, Steve. It’s dangerous.”
This time, Steve’s smile is real and all the more cutting for it.
“For me?” he asks softly. “Or because of me?”
The honest answer is both. Bucky would rather cut out his tongue than say it, even though they both know anyway.
“You’re recovering,” he says instead. “Maybe one day.”
Steve just keeps on smiling. His hair is pulled into a ponytail, leaving a few long strands to frame the sharp lines of his face. It’s the same as it was on the bridge, when the mask fell off and a stranger peered out at Bucky from behind a pair of beloved eyes. Steve is beautiful and he’s brutal, and Bucky’s good at swallowing hard truths, but standing here now, saying goodbye, he’s seized by a painful fantasy—Steve standing up and pulling Bucky close and kissing him on the mouth, telling him to be careful, that Steve will be waiting.
It's ridiculous. Even before all this, Steve was never the sort to wait home, worrying after Bucky with limpid eyes. He would have—god, he’d have hated the very idea of it.
Steve’s still looking at Bucky. He’s frowning now, head tilted to the side. There’s a question on the tip of his tongue, Bucky can see it, and he panics, mouth opening before his brain has quite recovered.
“Don’t kill anyone while I’m gone,” is what comes out.
Steve looks startled. Bucky, shocked at himself, is just glad he doesn’t seem offended. Or hurt. Fuck, that would kill Bucky. The surprise melts into a crooked smirk, and Steve turns away with a huff, fingers smoothing over the page in front of him.
“No promises,” he says.
Bucky makes himself smile, even though he doesn’t want to, even though Steve’s not even looking at him.
-
The base is active, as expected. There’s not much left of Hydra, but the remaining heads are tenacious, and the fascist fucks licking their own assholes are diehard fanatics.
Bucky feels almost guilty for the relief that floods his veins alongside the adrenaline. He didn’t use to enjoy the violence so much, but these days, all he needs to do is think of Steve looking at him with blank incomprehension to be filled with the sort of rage that lets him tear a man to pieces with his bare hands.
The four of them—Bucky, Natasha, Sam, and Clint—tear through the base, but Bucky’s the one in the belly of the beast when it all goes tits up.
“Shit,” Sam snaps, and even through the comms, his panic is tangible. “Barnes, Bucky, get the fuck out—”
“What—”
“It’s rigged to blow,” Natasha says, her voice deathly calm, conjuring the image of her with pursed lips and terrifyingly blank eyes. “Three minutes.”
Bucky’s been running since Sam cursed, but he’s deep in the lower levels and there’s not even a window to leap out of. He runs over bodies dead and unconscious, shield and weapons are useless.
“Two minutes.” Natasha, whispering. “James.”
“Sarge—” And that’s Clint.
It’s not any of their voices that Bucky wants to hear, just like it wasn’t Peggy’s words he wanted when he sent the Valkyrie plummeting into the ice. They’re unkind thoughts, but Bucky’s an unkind man, and all he’s ever wanted is Steve.
I’m sorry, he thinks, or maybe he says it out loud, he’s not sure. He has so many regrets. He thinks he was always doomed to die with regrets.
He’s nowhere near the exit when the ceiling comes crashing down on him. He raises the shield and says Steve’s name like a prayer, and the images blur together, Steve at five and sixteen and twenty-seven and ninety-four, different but the same, golden and true.
-
He wakes up cradled in someone’s arms.
Pain lances through his head when he tries to open his eyes, but he forces it anyway. The sunlight hurts, but he sees enough before he has to screw his eyes shut.
“S’eve,” he rasps, his tongue thick in his mouth. “Wha’ppened?”
There’s no response, just a tightening of the fingers curved over Bucky’s body. There’s a sense of safety to being carried like this, and Bucky pretends to hate it but secretly likes it. The old Steve could never do it, but these days, it feels like he’s just looking for an excuse to haul Bucky around. It’s nice, though he feels guilty sometimes for how much he enjoys it. It’s innocent for Steve, but it makes Bucky feel things. Impure thoughts. He doesn’t give a fuck. This war’s sucking his soul out through his bloodied fingers, the least he’s allowed is—
There are voices. Unfamiliar and then not. He knows Steve’s, but he sounds angry, gruff, the way he rarely is with the Howlies. Christ, whatever fucked Bucky up must have been bad.
“—supposed to be here,” someone says. Dum Dum?
“Soldier.” A woman. Peggy? “Mind handing him over?”
“No, Widow,” says Steve. “I don’t think I will.”
It’s not Peggy. It’s not the Howlies. This isn’t the war. Steve isn’t—
The voices rise again, and Bucky passes out gratefully.
-
He comes to in the Quinjet, and it takes a hot second for regret to usurp clarity.
“Ow.”
He doesn’t notice the chatter until it’s suddenly quiet. That kind of lousy situational awareness will get him killed in the wrong place and time, but Bucky feels more or less safe, and he’s woken up like this enough to know what it means.
Sure enough, he opens his eyes to find Sam crouched in front of him, holding gauze and a bottle of whatever the fuck it is that’s stinging all over Bucky right now. Sam’s got that particular pinched look that follows one or more of them almost getting themselves blown up. Bucky’s very familiar with that look. He’s seen it at least once every month for the last year.
“Hey,” Bucky groans. “Guess—guess I made it out after all.”
Sam’s expression grows pained.
Bucky sits a little straighter. It doesn’t hurt much to move. Now that he’s a bit more aware, he can tell that he’s not seriously injured. It’s just a lot of scrapes and aches, the kind that stings like a bitch but will be gone by morning. Thing is, that doesn’t sound right because he remembers the position he was in when the whole building came down on him, and it’s not so strange that he survived, not anymore, but he should be a black-and-blue mess.
“Not quite,” Sam says and looks off to the side.
Bucky follows his gaze automatically, and oh.
“Steve,” he calls helplessly.
The next second, he’s pinned by blazing blue eyes.
Steve’s in full Winter Soldier gear. Bucky doesn’t know where he got it—there’s nothing like that back home. Steve came to him armed but in plain clothes, with no baggage except the demons in his head, but now, here he is, clad head to toe in ominous black. There’s dirt smudged on his cheek and the knuckles of his left hand are bloody, but he still looks better than Bucky feels.
He thinks he remembers something slamming into him, pushing him roughly to the ground, right before he passed out.
Steve stalks towards him, Sam mutters a curse, and that’s when Bucky notices Natasha, following Steve with an expression of utter exasperation. She doesn’t seem angry or afraid, and Bucky takes that as a good sign. Steve though—Steve looks furious. His face is blank, but his eyes are anything but, and Bucky knows that fire.
That doesn’t stop him from reaching out when Steve’s close. Sam makes a despairing noise and even Natasha groans, but Bucky doesn’t look away from Steve’s face. Steve’s glare flicks from Bucky’s face to the metal palm pressed to his stomach, and he doesn’t look pleased but doesn’t back away either.
When he speaks, it’s at Sam.
“I’ll take it from here,” he says, nodding at the medkit open beside Bucky.
Bucky tears his eyes away and catches the gobsmacked look on Sam’s face a second before it’s replaced by his strangely friendly poker face.
“Thanks,” he says drily. “But I’ve got it.”
“I wasn’t asking.”
Sam doesn’t hide his irritation, and in his periphery, he catches Natasha shifting in a way that’s distinctly not friendly, and it’s easy, the choice. Bucky’s been throwing himself into Steve’s fights since he was ten years old.
“Sam.” Sam’s shoulder is a taut line under Bucky’s hand. He squeezes once. “It’s okay. He’s patched me up before.”
Sam gives him a look as if to say, Really, Barnes, really? Bucky musters a vaguely apologetic smile and plucks the bottle from his lax grip. Sam rolls his eyes and stands up, but he gives Steve a sharp glance before he walks away, ducking into the cockpit where Clint must be.
Steve kneels by Bucky’s legs and takes a fresh square of gauze.
“You can leave,” he says, and Bucky’s confused for a second before he realizes Steve’s addressing Natasha. “I’m the one who pulled him out of that crater while the rest of you stood around making sad faces. If I wanted him dead, he’d be dead.”
“Rogers,” Natasha says, her voice low and rife with warning. But when Bucky looks at her, he finds her looking back with something like guilt in the curve of her mouth.
“It’s okay,” he tells her, smiling in what he hopes is reassurance. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Steve makes a deep, rumbling noise. It’s clear disagreement, but Bucky diplomatically ignores him. Natasha doesn’t, her eyes narrowing as she stares at Steve. He makes an incongruous sight, kneeling in battle gear, trying to heal with bloodied fingers.
“Fine,” Nat says, biting out the word. Bucky’s not sure which one of them she’s talking to. “James, maybe get your roommate here to tell you how he managed to follow us on a classified mission with stolen S.H.I.E.L.D. tech. He sure isn’t telling me.”
She follows Sam. It must be a tight fit in there now, but Bucky appreciates the privacy. The illusion of it at least. He’s pretty sure they’re eavesdropping, likely ready to rush to his rescue. Speaking of rescuing—
“You saved me,” he says. “Thank you.”
Steve doesn’t acknowledge it. He takes Bucky’s flesh hand in his own, gauze at the ready. Bucky hisses when the antiseptic bites into what feels like a hundred tiny cuts. Steve’s not as gentle as Sam. He’s brusque and efficient, and it reminds Bucky of the way Natasha handles injuries. The comparison wouldn’t even offend her, he’s sure. Natasha is nothing if not self-aware.
“Stolen S.H.I.E.L.D. tech?” Bucky asks when Steve seems content to let the silence thicken into a wall between them. “You told me you didn’t know this location.”
Steve spares him an unimpressed glance. A flick of his wrist and a green projection flickers to life, an oval-shaped shield. Bucky doesn’t need to touch it to know it’s more solid than it looks. He does away, punching it with his left arm, and his strength isn’t what it was a couple of hours ago, but it’s still enough to bask someone’s skull in. The shield doesn’t flicker and Steve’s arm doesn’t budge.
Another minute motion, and it vanishes.
“I didn’t know,” Steve says. “And it’s stolen Hydra tech. Or have you forgotten?”
“Hardly. I burned them to the ground, didn’t I?”
For you, he doesn’t add.
“Did you?” Steve asks mildly. “Looked to me like they’re the ones doing the burning.”
He holds up Bucky’s hand, the blood and detritus cleaned off to expose raw, broken skin.
“No mission’s without risk,” Bucky says, a corner of his mouth twisting up into a grin that’s not wholly pleasant. “You told me that. Remember? Occupied France.”
Steve drops the hand and straightens, preparing another gauze before reaching for Bucky’s face. His eyes are still blazing, his mouth a thin line. Anger has always made Steve burn brighter. Bucky used to feel guilty for finding it beautiful, and that, at least, hasn’t changed over the decades.
“You followed me,” Bucky murmurs, quiet enough that he’s reasonably sure the others won’t hear.
For a moment, Steve’s silent.
“Did you think you defanged me?” he asks eventually, soft and dangerous. “Take away my chains and make me play house. Sure. I’ll play the part. Be your good ole buddy. But don’t forget what I am. The Winter Soldier didn’t make me. I made him.”
There are no words for the feeling that shudders down Bucky’s spine.
Steve’s mouth sharpens into a smile, bitterly triumphant, and god, Bucky’s tired.
“You protected me, Steve,” he says. “Stolen tech, S.H.I.E.L.D. or Hydra, I don’t care. You came for me. I don’t know why you did it or how. You came.”
Steve looks more furious at that than when he thought Bucky was accusing him. But his hands don’t waver, and his touch isn’t gentle, but it doesn’t turn harsh either. Soon, he’s done dabbing at the cuts on Bucky’s face. The whole right side feels like he made out with gravel, which is probably not too far from what really happened. It’s healing already, and he doesn’t really need the antiseptic, but when Steve lingers, pushing Bucky’s hair back to get to the half-hidden scrapes on his temple, Bucky melts into the care, his heart a throbbing bruise.
He’s usually the one fussing, before the war, before the ice, and now too, but it’s always made him feel soft and tender inside when Steve returned the favor, rare as those times were. And it means something that he’s doing it now, that he insisted, and of course Bucky’s not angry that Steve followed him and pulled him out of a burning building; he’s so relieved, he could cry.
Steve pulls back and puts the bloodied cotton on its tiny pile.
Bucky expects him to pull away, but Steve lingers, too close for it to be casual. His hand’s tight on Bucky’s shoulder, and it slides down, coming to rest on the center of his uniform, over the gleaming star.
“They shouldn’t have put the star on your chest,” he says quietly. “It’s only good for the killing.”
Bucky closes his eyes and ruthlessly swallows the tears.
“I was good for that long before they gave your mantle to me.”
“No,” Steve says. “Not for killing them. Killing you.”
“Steve—”
“It’s killing you,” Steve repeats softly. “Or am I?”
Bucky’s too stunned to speak. Steve stands before he can find his tongue, and he’s on the other side of the Quinjet in the blink of an eye, slipping into the tiny box of a bathroom. His name withers on Bucky’s lips, and he’s so cold all of a sudden, the pain fading into numbness.
-
When they land, there’s a heated debate about who gets to take Bucky home. He feels both like some fair maiden in a knight’s tale and a juice piece of steak left out for starved strays.
He just watches for a while. Steve’s facing off against Sam’s and Nat’s combined forces, which is terrifying enough that Bucky probably wouldn’t dare. Steve, of course, is more stubborn than an ox and doesn’t have the sense god gave a mole, so he’s standing tall in all his buff glory, glaring and snapping out scathing retorts that make Nat’s careful non-expression grow blander with each passing second. Sam’s not faring much better, his usual cheer vanishing in the face of Steve’s belligerent Steveness.
Beside Bucky, Clint looks like he wants to be anywhere but here but also like he’d love a bowl of popcorn since he’s stuck.
“Not getting involved?” Bucky asks him quietly, grinning when Clint snorts.
“Come on,” he says. “We all know who’s gonna win.”
He says it with a significant look at Bucky that he chooses to ignore, even though it doesn’t matter a second later when Bucky notices Steve’s fingers twitching longingly for his knife and decides to put an end to this charade.
“I have a very nice apartment,” he says, pleased when all three of them immediately fall silent and turn to him. “And I’m barely even injured anymore. There’s no need to go to the med wing. Nat can debrief Hill. I’m going home.”
“With him,” Sam says pointedly.
“Well, he does live with me.”
It doesn’t fool anyone and for good reason. Bucky shrugs in the face of Sam’s exasperation and Nat’s resignation, looking at Steve who’s apparently not so invested in his disaffected façade that he won’t let his smugness show.
Bucky ignores how that self-satisfied expression makes his heart flip.
The levity doesn’t survive the ride home. They take Bucky’s bike—he rode to the Tower, but Steve’s the one driving now, Bucky barnacled to his broad back. There’s something surreal about the whole thing. But Steve’s warm and solid, and if this is a dream, Bucky doesn’t want to wake up.
He keeps trying to imagine how Steve saved him. He must have been in the base before the trap closed. He must have been close to Bucky, must have been keeping an eye on his location. And he must have chosen, when it all came crashing down, to protect Bucky instead of saving his own skin.
He was clearly smart about it, given how he’s barely hurt. But he still chose.
Sometimes, he feels like there are many different versions of Steve in this one body. Captain America, the Winter Soldier, and that little guy from Brooklyn all raging inside the golden glow of this man who emerged from the debris of all that they were. A patchwork monster.
He’s Bucky’s monster though. And he’s known from the beginning that that’s what makes the difference.
By the time they pull up to their apartment, Bucky’s exhausted, mind and body. It takes more effort that it should to detach himself from Steve’s back. He stumbles and Steve steadies him. Bucky can feel his eyes boring holes into the side of his head, but he doesn’t dare meet Steve’s eyes. Not now. He can’t handle it now.
The elevator ride is tense and lasts an eternity.
It’s not much better when they’re inside their apartment.
“I’m…gonna shower,” Bucky says, setting down the shield and stripping off his gloves, anything to avoid Steve’s steady stare. “Wash off all this shit. Yeah.”
It’s not the most graceful escape, but it works.
Getting out of the suit is a study in pain. No one injury is severe, but he’s got a hundred little ones all over him, and they’re healing, yes, but that brings its own unique ache. His whole body feels like a pulsing bruise.
He manages to stagger into bathroom instead of collapsing on the bed. He considers it, but he’s a disgusting mess from fighting Hydra and having a building collapse on him, and the thought of putting all that on his nice, semi-clean sheets is too horrifying to ponder.
The hot shower is heaven on his skin, as if life is rewarding Bucky for the rare good decision.
When the door opens and Steve steps in, Bucky’s lack of surprise surprises him.
Steve’s naked already, a towel slung across his shoulder instead of somewhere sensible like his hips. He hangs it up, making himself at home in Bucky’s shower like this is a thing they just do.
“Steve, what are you doing?”
Steve’s answer is to join Bucky under the shower. Bucky catches himself in the middle of shifting to make room for him and then does it anyway because he’s weak to Steve, always has been.
He looks up at Steve, looming close. They’re almost the same height, but the sole inch Steve has on him feels like several feet. Bucky swallows roughly.
“What are you doing?” he repeats, voice dropping to a whisper.
“Had to make sure you wouldn’t collapse in here,” Steve says, suspiciously lightly. “Waste all my hard work.”
It’s an out. Clumsy but effective. They can close their eyes and fool themselves easy enough. It’s what they’ve been doing, one way or the other, ever since Steve’s mask came off on that bridge.
Bucky could do it. He has before.
But god, he’s so tired.
“No,” he says calmly. “That’s not why you’re here.”
“No,” Steve agrees. He’s smiling, a golden gleam. “It’s not. Hand me that.”
He doesn’t wait for Bucky to hand it over, taking the shampoo Bucky forgot he was holding. He watches blankly as Steve squeezes a generous amount into his palm, but when those soapy fingers slide into Bucky’s hair, he startles so badly that he knocks into the wall.
Steve stills.
“Bucky,” he says very softly. “I won’t hurt you.”
The noise that escapes Bucky can barely be called a laugh.
“That’s not what I’m worried about.”
No, that’s not true. Of course he’s worried Steve will hurt him. He’s terrified. But not the way Steve meant it now. It’s not the broad expanse of his body crowding Bucky against a wall that’s the problem. Bucky would let him do worse. He’d let Steve slit open his ribs and eat his heart.
That’s the problem.
“Then come here,” Steve says, an order or an entreaty or both. Bucky stumbles forward a step, right into Steve’s waiting hands, and this time, when those fingers sink into his hair, Bucky’s groan is one of pleasure.
Steve’s gentle again, gentler than he was with Bucky’s injuries in the Quinjet. That’s a little ridiculous, but it’s not humor or even ire that knots up, thick and wet, in Bucky’s throat.
By the time Steve’s done with his hair, Bucky’s draped limply over him, barely staying upright with the help of those mountainous shoulders. He doesn’t do more than groan in wordless encouragement when Steve slathers his hands in soaps and sets those strong palms to the knotted muscles of Bucky’s back. It’s not a massage, but Steve’s just the right kind of rough. Sensation buzzes along Bucky’s skin, skewering deeper, and he notes, absently, that he’s breathing harder and getting warmer, but he’s tired and drowsy and doesn’t register the extent of his reaction until Steve’s knuckles brush the hard curve of his cock.
The air is punched out of his lungs, and his knees almost buckle, but Steve’s arm snakes around his waist and pulls him fast, taking both their weights with damnable ease.
“Steve,” he gasps. “Steve.”
Steve says nothing, just backs Bucky up until he’s leaning on the wall. It’s not as strong a support as Steve’s firm muscles, but then Steve drops to his knees and Bucky’s brain exits the picture for a second.
When he shakes himself out of it, Steve’s scrubbing at his thighs, gamely ignoring the dick bobbing an inch from his face.
Bucky gives up, lets his head thud against the wall, and closes his eyes in the vain hope that the world will make more sense when he opens them again.
It doesn’t, of course. Steve does stand and turn the shower back on, his hands returning to Bucky’s skin to help wash off the suds. There’s no need for him to drop to his knees again, but he does, and Bucky whimpers and lets it happen, spreading his legs for the hands that slide up his thighs and over his balls and along the insides of his cheeks, wet fingers rubbing against that tense ring of muscle. It clenches, dread or anticipation, but Steve doesn’t linger, doesn’t press his advantage, and Bucky’s left with his heart in his throat and an eerie hollow feeling.
The heat of Steve’s mouth shocks him to the core.
Iron hands take him by the hips, pinning him to the wall as Steve’s mouth swallows him inch by inch, a slow, torturous slide that twists Bucky’s world into a deluge of aching heat. His fingers find flesh and scrabble at wet hair, but none of it’s grounding, not when Steve’s tongue is ripping his soul out through the tip of his cock.
“Please,” Bucky whines, and he doesn’t know what he’s begging for, and Steve’s name on his tongue shatters into a high-pitched wail when the writhing heat of a tongue is replaced by the tight clench of Steve’s throat.
Bucky’s hot all over, and there’s salt on his tongue, washed away by the water. He cries and cries out, and Steve’s relentless between his legs, fingers burning bruises into Bucky’s flesh as his mouth slides over the pulsing length of him. Bucky’s aches and pains vanish under the barrage, and he’ll regret it later, probably, but it’s not even like he’s doing much. Steve’s got him pinned, a slave to his mouth, and all Bucky has to do is stand straight and not shatter.
But he does, an electric eternity later, spilling into Steve’s mouth with a garbled warning that only makes Steve take him deeper.
Steve sucks him through the shocks and on the other side too, until pleasure sparks into pain. Bucky pushes weakly at his head and whimpers a plea, and Steve draws back, letting Bucky slip out of his mouth with a quiet hum.
Steve stands and without his hands to lend him strength, Bucky does collapse, but he’s caught and hauled upright, held tight against Steve in a quasi-embrace.
Bucky can feel him, hard and hot against his thigh, and he reaches down because he knows how this goes, he’s learned the script. Steve threw it off, using his mouth, but Bucky can—
Steve’s hand closes around his wrist and pulls it away, gently pinning it behind Bucky’s back.
“No.”
It’s not a harsh rejection. It doesn’t sound like a rejection at all, Steve’s voice low and rich with gentle things. But the word hits Bucky like a blow, and it’s been a long, confusing day after some long, confusing weeks, no, fuck, months, and Bucky breaks with a whimper.
“What do you want from me?”
Steve is, at least, brutally honest.
“I don’t know.”
Bucky buries his face in Steve’s shoulder, and he doesn’t know what it says about him that the solid warmth of it still gives him strength.
“I’ve loved you since I was fourteen years old,” he whispers, furious and broken. “I loved you before, too, before it turned into this. I loved you in the ice, and I loved you when you were dead, please, please—Steve, please, I can’t keep doing this, I can’t.”
“I’m not him,” Steve says. “I’m never going to be him.”
“I don’t care,” Bucky rasps, half a sob, and that’s not true, he does care, he loves that bright-eyed spitfire and that golden hero, but he’s mourning them, he’s been mourning them for years. “I don’t care which you is you. It’s you. Just fucking stay with me, just—please.”
His voice breaks, shuddering into tears, and it’s pathetic, this whole thing’s a mess, but Bucky doesn’t care, he’s just so fucking scared.
“Where would I go?” Steve asks, fingers sliding into Bucky’s wet hair and gripping a little too tight. “Why would I want to leave? You’re all I have.”
-
The trip from the bathroom to the bed is a bit of a haze. Steve does most of the work—Bucky vaguely remembers being led out of the shower and patted dry. He groans when he sinks into bed, is almost asleep the next second, but some animal instinct writhes to life when Steve’s warmth vanishes from beside him.
“Stay.”
There’s a pause, and then, “Are you sure?”
Bucky answers by reaching out, eyes still closed as he gropes wildly for Steve. He finds a hand and clutches tight, pulling Steve down into bed with him. Steve swears, but he sounds amused, and he’s quick to lie down, body pressed close to Bucky’s. He’s a little damp, like he dried Bucky but forgot to attend to himself. Bucky curls into him, pushing his face into what feels like a firm pectoral.
He's slept tangled with Steve more times than he can count, first during Brooklyn winters that leeched the warmth from their bones and then in the war, when accommodations were sparse and Steve’s unfamiliar body was familiar in the way it sprawled over Bucky. He felt guilty for the pleasure, though not the comfort, but not so guilty that he stopped.
And there’s no need for guilt now. Steve knows everything there is to know. Bucky’s his, for better or for worse.
The covers settle over them, thick and pleasantly heavy. Steve shifts, settling more comfortably, and he draws Bucky closer, holding him like a lover. Bucky doesn’t know what that means.
“Sleep,” Steve says, and Bucky wants to, aches to, every cell in him exhausted beyond words, but his mind’s firing off in ten different directions, sluggish but too fucking awake all the same.
Fingers slide into his hair, scritching the scalp. Bucky’s whole spine melts.
“Sleep,” Steve says again, doing obscene things with his fingers, and it’s so good, being held like this, surrounded by Steve’s warmth and his scent. It makes Bucky feel safe despite all the history, all the tragedy.
-
He wakes up alone. He doesn’t remember, at first, why that feels wrong, and then last night hits him full force.
It’s strange to feel more devastated now than he did when Steve rubbed off on him and left without a word, but it does, and Bucky just lies there, blinking up at the ceiling and letting the tears trickle warm down the sides of his face.
“Enough,” he tells himself. “Get up, Barnes.”
He gets up. Goes mindlessly through his morning routine. He brushes his teeth a little too hard and his gums bleed, but by the time Bucky rinses out his mouth, it’s all healed.
The rest of him is too.
He studies himself in the mirror, turning this way and that. There are no visible marks. Even his face doesn’t hurt anymore. The skin of his knuckles is reddened, but it doesn’t ache. He…doesn’t quite remember where else he was hurt. Most of yesterday is a slightly surreal blur. It doesn’t matter now. He’s all good and got the ravenous appetite to prove it.
He steps out just as the bedroom door opens.
Steve’s dressed up, coat and scarf and all. Bucky blinks, uncomprehending, as the surprise on Steve’s face melts into the bare suggestion of a smile.
He holds up a brown bag.
“Bagels,” he tells Bucky. “Figured you’d wake up hungry. And I can’t cook.”
Bucky jumps him.
Steve, to his credit, reacts pretty well to a crazy supersoldier crashing into him. He doesn’t punch Bucky and doesn’t drop the food; he doesn’t even stagger back more than a step, and his body’s tense, prepared for violence, but Bucky doesn’t want to hurt Steve, he wants too—
It doesn’t register, until his mouth is already on Steve’s, that this is their first kiss.
It’s not a very good one. Bucky’s lips land off-center, and Steve is dangerously still under his mouth. He pulls away as quickly as he surged up, heart in his throat and a million alarms ringing in his head.
“I—” he starts but finds that he has nothing to say. Steve is staring at him, expression eerily blank. That’s worse than any kind of shock. Bucky hates not being able to tell what’s going on in that head, though god knows he should be used to it by now.
Something makes a low, thudding sound, and Bucky looks down, startled, and finds the brown bag on the floor.
Hands grasp his face, warm palms swallowing the sides, and hope flares with a vengeance in Bucky’s chest in the split-second before Steve yanks him into a kiss.
It’s better this time—clumsy and desperate, a little too wet, but Bucky likes it, the way Steve’s a little uncertain, with no grace and finesse to the slide of his tongue or the bite of his teeth.
Bucky draws back, lips tingling in a way that has to be in his head. There might as well be fireworks in the background with how he’s feeling.
A calloused thumb traces the curve of his lower lip, and it takes that for Bucky to realize he’s grinning wide enough to split his face in two.
“You got me breakfast,” he says.
Steve blinks.
“I—yes?”
He’s confused, it’s obvious, but Bucky doesn’t have the words to explain what he thought and what he feared and how it’s all gone now, replaced by the kind of joy that bubbles up and spills out of every aching crack in his soul. He doesn’t know how to tell Steve that, so he shows him instead, with frantic lips and roaming hands. Steve’s quick to adjust, and they stagger to bed, losing clothes along the way. Bucky’s hunger morphs into a different kind of need, and he’ll pay for that later, probably, but all he cares about now is the heat of Steve’s skin under his hands.
“I want you in me,” he says when Steve’s pressing him down on the mattress. “Please.”
Steve looks at him like he’s in a dream, eyes wide and brimming with things Bucky can’t name.
“Please,” he repeats, stroking Steve’s face with a trembling hand. “I’ve wanted—for so long, sweetheart, please.”
Steve blinks, shuddering like he’s breaking out of a stupor.
“We need something," he says, voice a low rasp. “Slick.”
Bucky nods at the bedside drawer. Steve tries not to move away from Bucky more than is absolutely necessary, and it’s a small, thoughtless thing and it warms Bucky all over.
He takes the bottle from Steve when he finds it, fumbling open the cap to squeeze out a generous amount. It’s hard to maneuver with Steve still plastered to him, but Bucky manages, smearing the slick on them both as he does. Steve moves helpfully, shifting into a kneeling position by Bucky’s hip. His eyes are intent on Bucky’s hand, and Bucky likes the way they darken when Bucky pulls his knees up for better access.
He rushes it, shoving two in and gritting his teeth at the sting. But his body’s quick to adjust, and Bucky’s very, very familiar with the company of his own hand. He knows what he can take and how fast he can take it, how rough.
But Steve, as always, is not one to just stand aside and watch.
Bucky gasps when his thighs are pushed wider open. Steve settles between them like he was born to be there. His eyes are hungry and his hands possessive as they roam over bared skin. He gives Bucky’s cock a quick stroke but doesn’t linger, sliding his palm down, over his aching balls and along the taut skin behind them. Bucky’s breath stutters in his throat when Steve prods at where Bucky’s fingers are knuckle-deep inside of himself.
“Let me,” Steve says, and his words are a suggestion but his tone is not. Bucky slides his fingers out, sighing at the ache left behind. He hands the lube to Steve and tries not to combust on the spot at the sight of Steve slicking up his fingers with an expression not unlike the one he wears when he’s on the cusp of a fight. That shouldn’t make Bucky’s blood burn, but he knows the war that runs in Steve’s veins, knows what it means to be looked at with those eyes.
And then Steve’s pushing one absurdly long finger into him, and Bucky falls apart embarrassingly fast.
Steve’s not gentle so much as careful, exploratory, and it drives Bucky mad, all that intent focused on the wet grip of his ass. Steve slides in another finger, then another, and Bucky’s not quite ready for that. Steve’s got big hands, always did, and everything about him is alien to Bucky, and he loves it, god, he’d dying for it.
“More,” he rasps, toes curling on the sheets, thighs trembling. “S’enough. Fuck me, just—yeah.”
Steve doesn’t need much encouragement. Bucky whines at the sight of his cock, hard and red, the tip wet. He wants to wrap his fingers, his lips, around the insane girth of it, but the hollow ache inside of him is sharper.
“Like this?” Steve asks, palms running up Bucky’s thighs, smearing sweat and lube along the sensitive skin.
“Yes,” Bucky confirms, drawing his legs up, and thank god he’s flexible because he wants to see Steve, wants his eyes, his mouth.
Steve guides himself to Bucky’s hole, face furrowed in concentration. He looks like a golden god, a fallen angel. But the way he presses into Bucky is wholly, painfully human.
“Are you—” Steve asks, cutting off with a low, gutted groan. He’s not quite inside Bucky; there’s pressure, hot and claiming, and Bucky’s holding his breath trying not to scream.
“Won’t—" Steve rasps, and he looks pained, expression twisted up, whole body taut. “Won’t fit, you’re—you feel so small.”
The sheets tears under Bucky’s fingers as he tries to wrest back some control from the abyss it vanished into. It’s a sight that could break a man, Steve panting above him, speaking in shattered tones.
“It will,” Bucky grits out, thigh tensing as he digs his feet into the mattress. “I can fucking take you.”
He bears down, driving his body into Steve’s, and Steve is the one who shouts, one of his arms buckling. Bucky sees white as the pressure bursts, the tight muscle giving in, slick and sweet.
It’s just the head, but even that’s too much. Steve’s fucking huge and fuck, no wonder Bucky feels small to him.
He opens his eyes, and his gut clenches at the expression on Steve’s face. He looks like he’s hurting, but when he opens his eyes, the hunger in them skewers right through Bucky.
“Keep—keep going,” Bucky pants, barely coherent.
Steve does. It’s a slow, relentless slide, overwhelming—the heat and the pressure and the rough grunts that slip past Steve’s lips. Bucky is split open inch by inch, aching muscles forced to part over a cock longer and thicker than anything that’s ever been in him. Bucky’s dreamed of this, in sleeping and waking hours, working himself into a frenzy over stolen glimpses and intimate touches, but god, his mind never did this man justice.
It lasts forever, and Bucky loses track of anything that’s not Steve’s cock carving him open.
“Bucky, Buck, Bucky.”
His name pulls him out of his haze, and Steve’s there, looming over him, his face flushed red. He’s got Bucky’s legs over his shoulders, and he doesn’t even know when that happened. Bucky places a hand—the right one, trembling like a leaf—over his stomach and digs his nails into the flesh. Steve’s in so deep, like he’s got all of Bucky impaled on his cock. It’s maddening. Bucky wants it to never end.
“Gotta move,” Steve says, and he barely sounds human, voice wrecked. Sparks bolt down Bucky’s spine. “Bucky.”
“Yeah,” Bucky gasps, and fuck, his throat hurts like he’s been screaming, was he…?
He can’t remember, and then Steve starts to move, his cock dragging fever-hot along Bucky’s clenching walls, and everything else splinters into nothing. He sinks his fingers roughly into his stomach, clawing at the skin to ground himself, but it’s not much help when Steve’s tearing him open inside.
It hurts good, so good, and Bucky forgot, didn’t he, how much he loved this? But it’s never been like this either because it wasn’t Steve before, and nothing, no one has made Bucky burn the way Steve has.
He’s beautiful, bowed over Bucky, face twisted into lines of exquisite agony. His body’s relentless, always in motion, and it’s Bucky he’s moving into, over and over and over, thrusts growing harder, rougher with each moment.
Bucky wraps his hand around his cock, pulsing with need against his belly. He’s so fucking wet, and it throbs hot and electric in his grip as he smears the precome along the whole length.
“Faster,” Steve says, and Bucky doesn’t understand until he looks at Steve’s face and finds him eyeing Bucky’s dick.
He speeds up, obeying without thought, and it’s too much all too soon, Steve inside of him and his own hand over him. Steve’s fucking him at an angle that makes pleasure spear into his gut with every thrust, and it feels there are hooks inside his flesh, carving deeper, the pleasure they bring sharp and merciless.
“I’m—” is all Bucky can say, devolving into soft keening.
Steve keeps fucking, keeps watching, and Bucky shudders into pieces under him. White eats the edges of his vision, but he keeps his eyes open through every bone-deep pulse of pleasure, staring at Steve, drinking in the sight of him unbound. His fingers and belly grow messy with come, but his cock’s still hard, a line of heat in his faltering grip. He has to stop, too sensitive, but he doesn’t miss how Steve’s eyes sharpen at the sight.
Hands grip Bucky’s thighs bruisingly tight and hauls him up like he weighs nothing. Bucky doesn’t have the breath to react with more than a whimper as his hips are lifted off the mattress. He braces himself with both hands, but Steve doesn’t need it, holding Bucky where he wants him and pulling out and out and out—
It hurts when Steve fucks into him again, a raw throb that has Bucky throwing his head back with a cry. It’s brutal, then, whatever restraint Steve clung to vanishing as he fucks Bucky like he wants to break him. Each thrust jolts Bucky, drags him along the bed like a ragdoll, and the pleasure bites, blending with pain until it’s a sharp-edged barrage.
He can’t come, not yet, not like this, but his body convulses around Steve helplessly, clinging to his cock and its ruthless heat.
“Steve,” Bucky’s saying, half conscious, half coherent, a prayer and a plea.
Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve—
Heat bursts inside of him, drenching his walls and filling every hollow inch. Steve fucks him through it, and Bucky’s cock, rock hard in its own cooling mess, aches for touch.
Steve doesn’t go soft, and he doesn’t pull out, rocking into Bucky with gentle, absent thrusts. It’s nice, lazy, and Bucky melts into the sheets, bones turning liquid.
“Kiss me,” he says softly, “Steve?”
Steve lowers Bucky’s legs from his shoulders, careful not to pull out. Bucky’s muscles ache a little from being so tense and holding that position, but it’s a sweet pain, and it’s sweeter still when Steve’s weight comes down on his front, pinning Bucky to the bed as he’s caught in a breathless kiss.
Steve’s gentle, almost playful, as if the orgasm has mellowed him. Or maybe it’s not that. It never did before. Bucky’s not complaining; he likes this, Steve smiling against his mouth, nibbling carefully on his lips.
It’s hard, though, to not be distracted by the fullness inside of him. Bucky squirms into it best as he can, but Steve’s holding him down with his weight, and Bucky likes it too much to try and wrest free.
Steve’s smile widens as if he can sense Bucky’s dilemma.
“Don’t tease,” he chides, trying not to match Steve’s grin. “It’s rude.”
“I’m being nice,” Steve murmurs, and god, his voice. “Letting you rest.”
“Don’t fuckin’ need it,” Bucky says, biting down none too gently on Steve’s jaw and getting pinned with a hand on his throat his trouble.
It’s not tight, Steve’s hold, but it’s very…there. Present. Real.
Bucky’s gut twists into a pulsing knot.
Steve eyes his hand on Bucky’s throat and the expression on his face and smiles, slow and a little terrifying, and that goes right to Bucky’s cock too.
“You don’t, huh?” Steve asks. “Got a lot of practice, pal?”
“Got enough,” he shoots back because Steve should know better than to think a hand on his throat will shut him up. “What, you didn’t?”
For some unholy reason, Steve’s grin widens.
“I don’t,” he says. “If I’ve fucked anyone, I don’t remember it. And if he did…well, I don’t think he did.”
And he must see it, the way Bucky’s teasing glee turns to horror. He shakes his head, still smiling, the amusement splashed across his face seemingly genuine.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says, leaning in, and his hand tightens on Bucky’s throat, molten pressure, but his lips are feather-soft over the line of his jaw. “I don’t care. He didn’t either. I lied to you.”
“What?” Bucky rasps, confused, fear flashing cold.
“You said I didn’t want you. That he didn’t. He did. I don’t know much, but I know that.”
The words dance in Bucky’s skull, echoing until they’re just meaningless sounds.
“Guess we’re not so different as I’d like us to be,” Steve says very, very quietly. “Not when it’s you. It’s always you.”
“Steve—”
He’s cut off by Steve surging up and away, and Bucky’s muddled thoughts fade into a scream as Steve pulls out with sudden violence and flips him over. Fingers sink into his hips and hauls him up, and Bucky just manages to brace his elbows on the bed before Steve rams into him.
It's nothing like last time. Steve’s savage, driving into Bucky like he’s going to rip him apart. It’s rough and sloppy, Bucky wet and raw from before. A shallow thrust sends him crashing down, arms giving way. It’s laughable, how easy it is for Steve to ruin him, how easy Bucky makes it.
Steve grabs his hands and pins them over his head, and his body presses down on Bucky, a line of solid, scorching heat.
Bucky bites a pillow and lets Steve tear into him.
He comes quietly, Steve’s name fluttering in his throat, filling up his lungs. His cock’s caught between the mattress and his body, making a warm mess, and Steve growls into his ear, Bucky’s name mangled on his tongue. Steve fucks him harder, with barely controlled savagery. The pleasure’s fire, and Bucky wonders whether Steve’s trying to prove a point, stake a claim, sink his touch so deep into Bucky that it will be imprinted in his soul.
He doesn’t have to. Bucky’s been his since he didn’t even know it, but if this what he needs, Bucky will take it, will fucking beg for it.
Steve’s pace stutters, ravaging thrusts turning into deep, dirty grinds. Bucky tries to clench up around him, tries to make it good, and Steve moans, the sound low and almost tormented. Bucky aches for him.
“It’s okay,” he says, muffled by the pillow. “I’ve got you, Stevie, I’m here.”
Steve shudders, a full-bodied thing, and comes, filling Bucky up again.
After, he’s quiet, so quiet that Bucky starts to worry. He lifts his head, straining his neck, and calls, “Steve?”
Steve pulls out. He’s gentle but it still stings. Bucky misses the bruising grip around his wrists and the suffocating weight over his body.
But Steve doesn’t go far. He’s right there, lying on his side, spent and flushed and watching Bucky with bright eyes. Bucky reaches out and runs his hands through the graceful fall of his hair. Slowly, cautiously, like he expects Bucky to push him away despite every evidence to the contrary, Steve takes that hand and presses his face to it. His lips press to the center of Bucky’s palm, a gentle kiss.
Bucky slides closer, and Steve lets go of his hand to wrap his arm around Bucky.
“I love you,” he says, placing a hand on Steve’s naked chest, over his pounding heart. “I don’t know how not to.”
Something terribly tender breaks across Steve’s face. It transforms him. Bucky’s transfixed, but his chest aches.
“I know,” Steve murmurs. “I know, Buck.”
That name coils around Bucky’s heart, squeezing until it threatens to burst. He presses his forehead to Steve’s and breathes, rough and ragged. If he could pour his memories into Steve, he would, even if it left him a blank state. But he can’t, and it doesn’t matter anyway because what’s in Bucky’s head is not what was in Steve’s before they took it all from him.
But he’s here with Bucky, even after it all. He came to Bucky. He chose Bucky.
Like Bucky chose him, in a schoolyard and in back alleys and in the battlefield, a hundred times over. Like Bucky will choose him, again and again, no matter the price, forever.