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There it was again. Movement on the floor below him, a door closing with too much care to be casual. Bucky took a slow breath, eyes closed to cut the distractions of the excessively plush bedroom, discarded the sounds of Sam running the shower and instead chased the footfall of Zemo descending the staircase. Where the fuck was he going at this hour? The heavy swing of the door and thud as it latched closed again had him on his feet and at the window almost before he realised he’d moved, the old sash giving way to him with a complaint as he opened it far enough to climb out, leapt, ice cold midnight air rushing past him as he dropped to the cobblestones below.
Zemo stopped in his tracks for just a heartbeat as Bucky hit the ground, the pause his only acknowledgement before he was starting to walk away, coat billowing as a gust of frigid wind swept up the street. If he thought he was gonna bail on them now he had another thing coming. Bucky was moving to intercept him before he could take more than a half-dozen steps, barrelling into him and grabbing his wrist, slamming him bodily up against the stone wall and meeting his grunt of discomfort as the air was knocked from his lungs with a snarl.
‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’
Zemo looked up at him with a calculating gaze, that infuriating smirk curving the edges of a mouth that had been driving him to distraction with frustrating regularity since all this had begun. Bucky’s blood stirred, and he wanted to scream.
‘I am not fleeing, I am simply entertaining the idea of seeking out companionship for what remains of the evening.’
Zemo tilted his head a little and Bucky wanted to bite the smirk from his lips, exasperated with himself for the impulse even as his skin prickled electric with jealousy and desire.
‘Surely you wouldn’t wish to deny me this? I believe you understand as well as I how cold and haunted an empty bed can become.’
It felt like a trap, a question about one thing that hid a deeper search for something else, Zemo’s tactics slippery and shadowed enough that even though he could always feel himself being led into something he could never manage to work out what exactly until it was too late. He felt compelled to give him answers, to crack open his damaged brain and let him poke around in there until he was satisfied. Another impulse to get annoyed with himself about even as something in his chest whispered yes yes yes. The air stalled in his lungs as Zemo’s tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip, eyes flicking down to watch the movement and only realising his slip as that smirk settled back in place. He hadn’t said a word but he’d told Zemo every damn thing he needed to know, walked right into it like an idiot.
‘Or perhaps it’s that you would prefer I look a little closer to home?’
The question was startlingly gentle and he met Zemo’s dark eyes with a start, expecting to see mockery but feeling his stomach drop at the undisguised desire there. The hunger.
This was insane.
His grip on Zemo’s wrist tightened, bones grinding, the pulse he could feel beneath delicate skin picking up as he squeezed. Zemo’s lips parted around a soft gasp, breath falling heavier, gaze totally unashamed as he tracked every expression that Bucky was totally incapable of hiding. He wanted to lean in and take what he hadn’t had in so long, the comfort, the heat, wanted it from Zemo, wanted to hurl himself over the precipice he’d been approaching for days.
Zemo was right, he knew that haunted feeling better than he ever wanted to acknowledge. Loneliness had taken up residence in his bones so long ago he couldn’t fathom things being any other way. The thought of trusting anyone to get close had always made his gut clench, made the Soldier bare his teeth, a feeling that had sent him running from the few opportunities to ease the isolation that had presented themselves since he woke up. The stirring of the Soldier in the back of his mind never failed to remind him that he wouldn’t ever be free in the way people thought he was, in the ways they all expected him to be. Zemo had recognised it in him the moment he’d met his gaze through the plexiglass of his cell, had seen it in his eyes as the old words echoed, that even though he wasn’t a thing to be controlled anymore the Soldier was still knit through the very fabric of his being, a damaged, deadly presence resting deep in his grey matter that would be a part of him until the day he died. Zemo hadn’t been afraid. He saw him, all of him, and he wasn’t afraid. Welcomed it, even. Maybe that’s when this had started. This almost-trust that made him want to leave space for Zemo to draw near. This fixation. This strange curiosity for a man who might be as bloodstained and broken as Bucky but somehow, somehow, was at peace with it.
‘I...I shouldn’t want this.’
I don’t deserve it. He cursed the crack in his voice, the edge of confused desperation that bled into his whispered words, wondered if Zemo had heard the echo that reverberated into the cold depths of him, the longing, the hope, the ache to be held by someone who understood. He felt so fucking vulnerable, wanted to cut out his tongue, wanted to rage, wanted to run.
Wanted to get closer.
‘Life, I have found, is rarely that simple.’
Zemo’s eyes hadn’t left him, they hadn’t left him in days and he couldn’t help but wish he knew what this felt like to him. This undeniable pull towards one another that had maybe started years ago but had grown suddenly taut after the fight in the bar, the Soldier moving through his blood and muscle memory at Zemo’s command, the easy way he slipped into taking orders, unsettlingly close to something he’d hated himself for on the occasions when the urge had crawled like spiders under his skin. No one owned him now, no one would ever own him again, everyone kept telling him he was free but what did that even mean if sometimes in the dark of night he lingered over the idea of someone else taking control? Of offering it up to someone willingly? Zemo seemed to understand it immediately about him, that giving him the opportunity to step into the gravity of his past by choice would be more illuminating than anything he’d ever experienced in therapy. Proof of life than years of living hadn’t been able to provide. He and the Soldier were inseparable, his past couldn’t be severed from him no matter how insistently people kept telling him otherwise, and he didn’t want it to be. He’d be lost without it, was lost, the more he tried to twist himself into becoming what everyone wanted him to be.
Everyone except Zemo.
The last few days had felt like breaking through the surface of an ocean that had been drowning him for years, his head wild with a mix of confusion and clarity and life. Zemo didn’t want him to be anyone other than himself, the permission given so calmly to just exist as one man without fear of his own shadow felt like permission to breathe. He gentled his grip on the man’s wrist enough to brush his thumb over his pounding pulse, let himself acknowledge the heat growing in his belly, the undeniable desire that kept tugging him deeper into Zemo’s orbit.
‘Come upstairs with me James.’
His heart stuttered as Zemo’s voice turned to gravel and wine, accent growing heavier, shaping his name into something erotic, the temptation dripping through his synapses to settle syrupy behind his navel.
‘Next time I could make it an order if you’d like, Soldat.’
A growl left his throat as his restraint snapped and he crashed his mouth into Zemo’s, demanding a kiss that the man returned without a moment of hesitation, opening to welcome Zemo’s tongue as he felt a hand bury in the short strands of his hair. It felt like being swept up in a hurricane, lightning cracking across his skin and storm-winds howling through his bones. He braced his vibranium hand against the brickwork and felt stone that had held strong for generations give and crumble beneath his clawing need when Zemo bit at his bottom lip. He rocked his hips down against Zemo’s, felt him shiver beneath him, pressed a strangled moan into his mouth that Zemo licked from his tongue as their rapidly responding bodies ground together.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been with anyone and felt like he was actually wanted , like he was anything more than a mistake in the making or a possession. Memories curdled in the back of his mind as he tried to force his thoughts away from too much blonde hair, away from the gaping black spots, away from the horrifically not-so-black spots, don’t look don’t look don’t look, and suddenly he was so sick of his own brain that the desperate need to just feel drove him to pull Zemo away from the wall and shove him towards the door. The urgency must have been coming off him in waves because Zemo didn’t even pause, just took his hand and tangled their fingers as he led them back inside with long strides, the foyer and staircase vanishing beneath Zemo’s heavy boots and Bucky’s bare soles.
He heard Zemo’s bedroom door slam shut behind them but barely registered it as he grappled with the man’s coat, dragging it down his arms and letting it fall to the floor as his hands sought shirt buttons with enough impatience to send some snapping loose, a soft huff of laughter pulling his gaze from Zemo’s bare chest to his kiss-swollen lips. He’d never heard him laugh before, not like that, the sound fond and honest and something he was absolutely certain he’d never be able to forget. Had anyone ever laughed for him like that? Anyone other than...he stopped himself chasing the thought and stole another kiss before Zemo could speak, let his hands continue their frantic mission to rid him of his clothes.
‘I’m so sick of thinking. Want you to shut my brain up.’
Zemo hummed in response around another kiss and then his hands were yanking at Bucky’s shirt, forcing them apart to pull it over his head, dark eyes dropping to linger on his dog tags for just a second too long before the moment snapped and then deft fingers were unbuckling his belt with quick snaps and popping the button of his jeans. Bucky pulled back and dropped to his knees, sucked a bruise into the soft skin of Zemo’s stomach, dragged his lips over ragged lines of scars that caught silver in the flood of moonlight pouring through the window. The moan that escaped Zemo’s lips echoed loud in the room and he wanted more, wanted to hear him lose his perfect composure entirely before this was over.
He rested his forehead against Zemo’s thigh and drew dizzying breaths as he worked quickly to free the laces from his boots and tug them from his feet, rubbed his cheek against the bulge in his pants and breathed him in for a moment, Zemo’s hands carding through his hair with surprising tenderness. He climbed back to his feet and let himself get swept back up in another messy kiss, hands working at Zemo’s pants as the man kept his own tangled in Bucky’s hair, the fine fabric opening to let him grip at his hips and walk them backwards towards the bed until he felt his thighs hit the edge of the mattress.
Zemo loosened his hold on his hair to cup one hand at his jaw, breaking from the kiss to pull in shaking breaths and sought his gaze, thumb reaching to trace the curve of his mouth. The gentle touch was sending him reeling, gestures so utterly foreign they almost hurt. Zemo stroked along his jaw, fingertips skimming his temple, and when Bucky leaned into it the look in those whisky-dark eyes softened with surprised understanding. Bucky held his gaze, felt grounded there, felt seen and wanted by this man who equalled him in so many dangerous ways, who matched and met him where no one ever had before. And maybe the bubble would burst later but right now it seemed like he was being allowed to see Zemo too, being given an honesty that was normally kept under heavy guard. He was becoming totally untethered, hungry for as much as Zemo would give him.
Another kiss was dropped against his mouth and Zemo was pushing against his chest, urging him down to the bed before he strode quickly towards what he assumed was a dressing room. Bucky shed his jeans and settled himself back against the pillows, the quiet broken by his laboured breathing and the sound of Zemo opening draws. His heart hammered in his chest, tendrils of anxiety creeping through the heat in his blood beginning to make him antsy, but before they could take hold Zemo was walking back to the bed stripped down to his dark underwear and clutching lube and a couple of rubbers and the wave of nerves was replaced with something sparking and bright bursting like champagne bubbles under his skin.
He hauled Zemo against him the moment he was on the bed, dragged him up and opened his thighs to settle him as close as he could manage, kissed him like a starved man for endless minutes as they ground against one another. He kept his legs wrapped around Zemo’s, kept the man close as though even the idea of him leaving would be enough to ruin him. Zemo stayed braced by his shoulder, free hand wandering to stoke over Bucky’s body, mapping out every inch of him he could reach, a sureness in the touch that was making him shiver. Zemo clutched at his thigh and hitched it further over his hip, both of them moaning at the change in angle, Bucky almost choking on a sob that caught in his throat. Prison and grief might have softened Zemo around the edges but he was strong, dense muscle shaping powerful thighs and banding steady arms, firm where their abs pressed tight. He rolled his hips up against Zemo’s, chased the hard press of him, the warmth and the weight and the friction. He felt dizzy, arousal and reciprocated desire burning through his bloodstream, swallowed up by soft bedding and a man sculpted by an unrelenting life. He felt human.
‘Is this what you want? You want me to fuck you?’
He moaned as the question was brushed over his mouth, Zemo’s hips rocking down hard against his to punctuate his point. He thought maybe he hadn’t ever wanted anything more in his life.
‘Yes.’
It came out so shaky and needy that he felt heat rise in his cheeks, Zemo’s gaze heavy on him, body urgent and perfect against his, pressing him down into the mattress as he trailed kisses along his jaw, his throat, teeth finding purchase beneath his ear and lips soothing in the wake of the bite.
Zemo’s mouth ventured further down his body, kissing and bruising by turns as Bucky arched against him, took a nipple between his lips and sucked until Bucky groaned, hands slipping over his hips and tugging at his underwear until he lifted up and let Zemo work them down his legs. He had just a moment to feel the itchy kind of too-aware of his body before Zemo was leaning down to take his cock in his mouth with so much enthusiasm that Bucky almost forgot any other part of his body even existed. He flung his vibranium arm above his head and clutched at the headboard, buried his other hand in the mess of Zemo’s hair and held on, moaning recklessly loud as Zemo sucked him down, worked him with a skill he hadn’t been expecting until he was breathless, until his legs began to tremble under the onslaught. Just as his gut pulled bow-string tight and the edge began rushing towards him Zemo pulled back, released his cock with an obscene sound and braced his hands on Bucky’s hips, held him down and chased his gaze as he leant over him.
‘You’re very beautiful like this. It suits you.’
It was almost enough to send him over, the flattery, the praise. He wet his lips and reached out, Zemo smiling down at him with a soft, wrecked expression so far removed from his usual calculating smirk that it left Bucky speechless. He pulled him forward until Zemo tumbled against his chest, kissed the taste of himself from Zemo’s tongue and let himself float on the heady feeling of Zemo’s cock against his hip, of the almost-orgasm still hot in his blood. He got a hand between them and encouraged Zemo to lose his underwear, moaned as he settled back against him at the feeling of full skin contact. It had been so, so long. Forever, maybe. A cold, haunted bed indeed.
Another kiss and he couldn’t remember ever kissing someone this much, a fleeting thought that just made him chase more, the unlikeliness of the whole situation striking him with incredible clarity for long enough to feel the press of destiny in a way he was sure he’d recall with embarrassment later but right now it felt like something greater than him had stepped in to make everything in his life lead to this. Lead to Zemo. And maybe it wasn’t fate, or the hand of a god he’d never believed in, maybe it was just that he’d been adrift in the dark for so long, reaching out for a man all bright and shining and righteous when what he’d actually needed was a lifeline to someone like him. Someone drenched in blood and grief and rage but still somehow breathing.
‘Zemo…’
Fuck, this was insane.
It was perfect.
Zemo barely broke the kiss as he fumbled for the bottle of lube, as he spread Bucky’s thighs and slicked his fingers and pressed two inside him, the sweet hot stretch of pleasure-pain making him whimper against Zemo’s mouth.
‘Beautiful.’
The whimper turned into a moan at the uttered word and he rocked down against his hand, chased more, gripped Zemo’s shoulder too tight and just moaned louder when Zemo hissed at the bruising pressure. A third finger quickly joined the others, worked to stretch him, Zemo’s mouth finding his throat, his collarbone, the curve of his shoulder. Distantly he recognised he was avoiding the chain around his neck, the tags having slipped down to disappear into the pillows, a hesitancy in the gesture that he’d think on later. Right now his head was spinning, overwhelmed, and he knew he was begging but the words maybe weren’t forming, just a mess of desperation on his lips as Zemo’s attention seemed to unwind every hidden thread of tension buried in his body and pour oxygen into the burn behind his navel.
He gasped as Zemo slipped his fingers from his body and sat back enough to open space between them, felt like he was free falling until Zemo touched his jaw and coaxed his tripping gaze to focus on his own, anchoring him. He smiled that ruinous, soft smile as Bucky watched him and then looked away to seek a condom. Bucky was moving to still his hand on autopilot, his brain taking a second to catch up and his shattered voice stalling a moment longer.
‘I don’t...if...we don’t need it. I know you know we don’t need it.’
Zemo’s expression flitted through something complicated for a few beats before settling into that look that said he was under Bucky’s skin, sifting through his brain to piece together more than his few stuttered words relayed. The serum burned through everything it touched, Zemo knew that as well as he did, which meant that the rubber was what? An offer to keep one last bit of distance? A request for it?
‘I just...I want to feel you. All of you. Everything.’
He wasn’t sure if it was a revelation or a confession. Probably both. The little foil packet landed back somewhere on the bed a moment later and Zemo leant in to steal a quick kiss before rising back to his knees and massaging at Bucky’s thighs.
‘I think I might give you anything you ask for. What a dangerous man you are.’
The smile that he felt curving his lips at the surprise in Zemo’s tone came so easy, another relic from a long-forgotten past, and Zemo returned it before breaking his gaze to retrieve the lube and slick his cock. The next kiss was sweeter, a brush of lips and flick of tongues that slipped suddenly into something biting, a distraction from the substantial stretch as Zemo pressed into his body. He tried to relax but his lungs had clenched down on their last gasp of air and every muscle in his body felt like it had stopped responding to his brain, his thoughts slipping through the past before landing in the present, cascading with the knowledge that it was Zemo inside him, Zemo wrapped around him, Zemo finding him out in dark, drowning waters and holding him safe amidst the pitching swell. Zemo Zemo Zemo. Lips brushed his temple, the ghost of a kiss.
‘Breathe for me James, just breathe.’
His throat worked, lungs stuttering, Zemo’s body stilling as his hand stroked down Bucky’s shoulder, his ribs, back again until a switch seemed to flick and he drew a deep, shivering breath. Another followed with whispered encouragement against his neck and then time sped up, his body arching to chase more as Zemo began to move again, a wrecked moan tearing from them both as he sank to the hilt. He looped his arms around Zemo’s shoulders, tried to keep his grip careful even as he held tight to him, hitched his thigh back over Zemo’s hip and begged, wordless, for more. It was loud and clear if the next roll of Zemo’s hips was anything to go by, hard, rough, barely a retreat before driving into him again and again, Bucky clinging to him as the intensity built, unrelenting, his head thrown back as Zemo took them both higher through wave after wave of pleasure.
He’d forgotten what this was like. Or maybe he’d never known. Maybe it only got to be like this when you stumbled upon someone so in sync with you that it felt like toppling a regime and seizing the power for yourselves when you finally came together, when you finally found each other, glorious and dangerous and unstoppable.
‘Zemo…’
A hand settled at his jaw and he realised his eyes had closed at some point as he opened them to meet Zemo’s burning gaze, his shell-shocked expression doubtless a mirror of his own, mouth open and panting and eyes blown dark and wild. Zemo’s fingers sought his mouth, pressed inside and Bucky sucked at them, bit the soft pads as they scraped over his canines, took the kiss that trapped them there eagerly, messy and desperate. Zemo bit at the corner of his lip and if he’d had words to give they would have been torn from somewhere deep inside him that wanted Zemo to draw blood, to tear him open like so much ripe fruit and consume him. He moaned at the thought, at the sting, buried his flesh hand in Zemo’s hair and gripped hard, harder, until Zemo was moaning too, the shaking heat of it spilling over Bucky’s bruised mouth and he wanted more of it, more of Zemo’s ruin, his need.
He released his hold on the tangle of soft hair and cupped Zemo's cheek, a tender gesture returned in the midst of their storm, Zemo’s fingers slipping from his mouth and leaving a wet trail down his cheek as his own touch moved in mirrored echo for a moment, a delay that felt like Zemo was directing his fingers for a beat and then Zemo’s eyes were growing wide as Bucky settled his hand at his neck and squeezed. The sound that choked from that delicate throat was like nothing he’d ever heard before, a flicker of violence subsumed by pleasure, a stuttering moan that felt like hunger and threat and desperate begging in one, Zemo’s gaze fluttering for a moment before growing crystalline and boring into him, stripping him open and flaying him as he pressed into Bucky’s grip and offered him up more power. He pulsed his hand, felt Zemo’s heart rate kicking up in furious staccato, gasping breaths tearing free as his hips stuttered in their rhythm and full-body shivers ran through his muscles. Bucky’s own breath caught at the sight, at the trust, the feeling of Zemo letting him see so much.
He wondered where the line might be, for both of them, if the urge to chase pain was self-destructive or if they both just needed it like this to reach through their scar tissue, to reach through and grasp at each other after an eternity drifting alone. He squeezed again and pressed their mouths together, swallowed down the wrecked breath that escaped Zemo’s lips as he eased the pressure back until he was cradling Zemo’s bruised throat in a gentle grip, pinky finger toying with the fine chain resting around his neck, their brows cinching tight.
‘Fuck, Zemo... Helmut ...I…’
The devastated sound that Zemo made as Bucky whispered his name clawed at the tender muscle beating deep in Bucky’s chest, the powerful hips driving into him faltering for a few trembling moments before Zemo found his rhythm again.
‘James...’
He wanted to fall apart in this, in them, in the arms of a man who had let him breathe unburdened for the first time he could remember. He wanted to take Zemo with him, be there together, wanted to hold on as they both broke and reformed into something he didn’t have words for yet.
‘...I’d see you let go... show me.’
Zemo’s voice was desire and shattered glass, and the call of his name on those kiss-bitten lips would be his undoing, a final point of no return. He’d never been James before, always someone else, always a dozen other facets carved to reflect what the people around him wanted to see, never just him, and he wasn’t sure if it was part of Zemo’s siren song or if it was just another missing puzzle piece falling into place but he realised he wanted it so fucking badly his teeth ached.
‘With me. Wanna feel you.’
He chased Zemo’s gaze as he felt the heat in the base of his spine turn molten and burn through his gut, felt his eyes sting, Zemo’s mouth crashing back against his to steal one more kiss before breaking away to cry out his name as he came, Zemo’s on his own lips in aching, devastated reply as he spilled between their stomachs. He brought his vibranium arm down to lay his hand heavy at Zemo’s lower back when he felt him begin to shift, the gesture all it took for Zemo to let his weight rest back against Bucky’s body and stay buried deep, face tucking into his neck, breath falling hot against his sweat-damp throat as their hearts gradually slowed.
Part of him was waiting for the shock to wear off, for the peace to slip away and leave him cold again, for Zemo to tell him he was imagining more where there’d just been a casual fuck. But as long minutes passed and Zemo’s fingers traced idle patterns along the curve of his shoulder, lips grazed kisses over his skin, the warmth remained steady beneath his ribs and he began to feel it; the undeniable presence of something that had maybe been sown as seeds back in the snow drifts of Siberia finally sending tendrils up through the permafrost. This could be a beginning between them, if he allowed himself the possibility of it.
‘I want... fuck ...I don’t know how to do this, whatever this even is.’
Zemo hummed against his throat with a not-quite brush of lips before he was shifting out of his body and over to lay by his side, going only so far as a shared pillow would allow, their limbs still tangled and that gaze when Bucky met it warm and limned with enough uncertainty to somehow feel reassuring. He wasn’t alone in this either.
‘I have let exactly one person truly close before and when I lost her I lost myself as well, handed myself over gladly to be ground to dust by my grief. I thought that was the end of me, but it would appear that something survived, somehow, and it feels as though I’m being called back by you, James Barnes. I am...surprised. To say the least. And I too have no idea how to do this, though I feel compelled to try.’
Zemo found his hand, fingers slotting easily between his own, magnetic, as though they belonged there and the hint of a nervous smile playing at the corner of his lips made the weight in Bucky’s chest lighten a little. It felt honest. Zemo sounded just as flayed open as Bucky felt, raw with something that had taken him equally as off-guard. Trusting him didn’t feel like a risk, it felt like maybe this was where they were meant to end up.
‘I want you to run. Tomorrow. When the chance comes I want you to run.’
The words had passed his lips the moment he thought them. He wouldn’t let the Wakandans take him, he could feel it in his bones. He’d fight, he’d burn every bridge to keep hold of him, to have even a chance to find out what might come of this. But maybe it didn’t have to be like that, maybe Zemo could flee and they could protect whatever this was without razing everything around them. Dark eyes were watching him closely again, stripping him bare and leaving him nowhere to hide, that clever mind working him out, maybe better than he’d ever been able to work himself out. It was a strange thing to realise that, maybe for the first time, he didn’t mind someone digging around in his brain. As the moment drew long he began to wonder what Zemo was finding, if his own ideas about how this would play out - Karli’s destruction, the return of the Dora, the future as a whole fucking concept - were now as decimated as Bucky’s and if he was now trying to reroute, to reconcile all of it with the way this night had gone, with what Bucky was suggesting. With the possibilities.
‘I have an apartment in Warsaw, a little like this one, in the Old Town. You can see the Wishing Bell from the lounge room window. I always found the stories of it a little foolish but perhaps if there were ever a time to embrace a little foolishness it might be now. When all of this is done, will you join me?’
Relief sparked through his bloodstream like sunrise kissing ocean swell, lit him up.
‘Yeah. Yeah, I’ll come find you.’
Zemo was dragging him over into a kiss before he’d finished speaking and he went easily, crawling over him to press him back into the bed, Zemo’s arms wrapping around him and a leg hooking over his, keeping them close as the cooling sweat on their skin began to warm again. It felt so easy. It had never felt easy. Trusting, being close to someone. Fuck, nothing had ever felt easy but somehow this did. Complicated and overwhelming and easy as breathing. It made him want to hold on so damn tight if for no other reason than that he never imagined he'd get the chance to feel this way. What did it matter that it came from a surprising place? Surely it just mattered that he was here, that they were both on the same page. They could navigate it together.
‘Maybe we can work out the rest then. Spend the nights like this.’
‘James, I would spend every waking moment like this if you’d allow me the indulgence.’
There was laughter colouring Zemo’s words, hunger and astonishment too and he felt it bubbling under his own skin in answer, a promise of things to come, a sense of certainty. He knew he’d have to face more than his reanimated heart once morning came, the ramifications of aiding Zemo’s escape would be far-reaching and they couldn’t run forever, couldn’t live like that, and he suddenly, desperately wanted to live. The Dora wouldn’t stop hunting them unless T’Challa called them off, and negotiating that might be more than he could manage alone. And Sam. Sam would struggle to understand this and Bucky didn’t know how to even start explaining. Or if that was even something he owed anyone. But all of it could wait. All of it. For now he just wanted to sink into the heat of Zemo’s arms and let himself breathe, be greedy with the peace being offered up and let it settle in his bones, an indelible mark being carved deep inside him by a man he’d stumbled upon by chance or destiny or maybe a chaotic mix of both. He stole another kiss, tasted hope.
For now, he just wanted to be James.