Chapter Text
1937
The grates of the fire escape dug into his ass, and his neck was getting a crick in it from the way he was staring up, but it didn’t matter, not really, because Steve was next to him and he was happy.
There weren’t any clouds tonight, just the sky dark and endless, which meant the air was clearer, better for Steve’s lungs. His presence was a warm beacon next to Bucky, and he was staring up watching the fireworks paint the sky in shades of blue and indigo and red, not that Steve could see their brilliance, with his colourblindness.
Something that while Bucky loathed, because Steve deserved to see every colour in all its glory, he was secretly happy for, because what else would he be good for if not describing the colours to Steve? To tell him how it felt to see the first budding yellow flowers in spring. To describe the ugly greens and blues that adorned Steve’s ribs after he got into it with another drunk in an alley.
“I got you another gift, not just the fireworks.”
Steve looked at him, his blue eyes reflecting the red of the fireworks, a smirk slashing across his lips, cutting them into something sharp, sharp enough to sink into Bucky’s bones, into his marrow, and nestle there, to be held and loved in secret. He coveted all of Steve’s smiles, catalogued them and kept them like a hoarder. Here was the feral grin of an animal when Steve looked up through his lashes after a fight. And here was the small, private smile he’d get when he was real proud of his painting. And here was the quirk of lips when he tried not to laugh at a dirty joke.
“Thought you already got me my gift? Makin’ me feel like the President over here, a guy could get a big head Buck, if you keep treating him so well.”
Bucky laughed, a soft barely there huff. This gift was decidedly selfish and not fit for the President, something he’d been given from the guys at the docks that he wanted to share with Steve.
Bucky told him this as he pulled it out of his pocket.
The reefer was tightly packed. Better than when Bucky hand rolled his cigarettes, and he handed it to Steve who took it between two fingers. If he had been a better man he would’ve let Steve light it himself, but he was selfish, especially in this moment with the light from the street spilling onto the fire escape and casting Steve’s face into shadows. He held the flame of his lighter up to the end of the reefer reminding Steve not to breathe too much in.
All he got in response was a side long stare from the man, his mouth a frown at being treated so gently, but his eyes betraying him, full of mirth and something else, something Bucky refused to see, refused to name.
He watched, transfixed, as Steve’s throat bobbed and his lips formed an O around the smoke as he exhaled, Bucky felt the weight of his desire sitting atop his shoulders. He was reminded of a story he had been told when he was real young, about a guy named Atlas, who had the weight of the world on his shoulders, who had been condemned to this eternal punishment by the gods, and that was Bucky, cursed to shoulder the enormity of his love for Steve, and god he would do it, if it meant he got to have this, the stolen glances and the brushing of hands as they walked, he would do it and he’d do it gladly.
“You gonna have some or are you gonna keep staring like a loon Buck?”
He was shaken from his reverie at Steve’s insistence, he took the offering gratefully, the peace offering, the breaking of bread, that said ‘I saw you looking but it don’t matter’.
He stuck the reefer between his lips, cupping his hand over the flame as he felt the rush of smoke fill his lungs, he inhaled feeling it coat his throat, the warmth rushed to his head making everything soft and beautiful. He felt his worry ebb and flow out of him as he glanced back at Steve, with his eyes closed and his lips parted. Steve’d once told him that it looked like the cigarette was draining the life straight from his bones, making them brittle and dry whenever he smoked, but right now with the smoke going to his head and pulling his eyelids lower, with Steve a sight to behold, warm and healthy next to him, he felt so fucking alive.
And what a sight he was, his righteous fury and his rage simmering below the surface, he was so good and Bucky just was, never quite good enough to look the sun in the eyes, yet he was trapped in its orbit, unconcerned with anything except Steve and the warmth he radiated on nights when his skin fit his body right and he had nothing to prove to nobody.
“Happy Birthday Stevie.” He smiled at Steve, feeling braver than he had before, Steve’s knowing gaze flicked over to him, a smile forming on his lips.
“Thanks Buck” And in that moment he was Icarus, flying too close to the sun, drunk on a good thing and listing towards oblivion. But he catches himself before he does something irredeemable and stupid, like blurt out those god forsaken words that are branded onto the inside of his skull, I love you, you prickly bastard, his traitorous mind whispers, I love you so much it makes me sick, it makes me burn up and sweat and it makes my palms clammy and my breathing shallow.
1941 - interlude
It’s an ugly clawing monster, something he’s never been brave enough to name that crawls its way out of his mouth in a sob that sounds wretched and wrecked even to his own ears. He knows Steve won’t hear, he’s fast asleep in the bed they share, his good ear squashed to the hard pillow.
The draft letter stares up, taunting him, and he was never as brave and as good as Steve but god how he’d tried. He wanted so badly to be as good as Steve thought he was, because that was the danger of being trapped in Steve Rogers orbit, you thought you could be better.
But the draft screamed at him, its knowing eyes following him as he paced, as he lit the cigarette, the burning ember the only light as he sat out on the fire escape. That damned letter with its Mona Lisa eyes, looking into his soul, he couldn’t get that monster out of his mind, couldn’t purge it from inside his soul, and now he was going to a place where everything, every bad and awful thought he shoved down, everything he had begged to be absolved of in confession was going to come crawling from the shadows into the light.
The cool brick and the hard metal lines of the fire escape scratched at his too soft skin. The cigarette had been burnt down to the butt and it was singing his fingers, but god he didn’t care, he wanted more time.
Bucky Barnes was not a man who had known want, not the way Steve had, Steve had wanted to go to art school and he wanted to be stronger, he wanted things in the physical and he had wanted abstract intangible things, things he would only admit to in the sanctuary of their bed, muttered in the dark space between their bodies as they drifted off to sleep.
Bucky didn’t know want, yes he loved Steve but wanting him was a death wish, he had loved him for years and had grown comfortable with what he had been given. Bucky had yearned for him in the quiet hours before the world woke up, and he had craved his touch after a night of dancing, with Steve at the bar haloed by the lights above him, like some biblically accurate angel, but want wasn’t something he was familiar with. But now? God he wanted so strongly that it pounded at his ribs, and made his hands shake, he wanted more time, he wanted to make the journey to Olympus and pound at the pearly gates, to scream and beg for more time. To fight Zeus himself, and he was sure he would win, because when it came to Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes would fall down to the depths of Tartarus and still find his way back to him.
1943
He’s feels like a gun, hollowed out, cool, sleek metal, he’s a hairpin trigger away from something terrible.
But he’s steady, always steady, never even a tremble in his calloused, blood soaked fingers. He has to be steady, he’s a sniper and a damn good one at that.
The army saw to it that that was all he was, he’s rough and sharp now, everything he was scared of becoming, every monster under the bed that he would protect Becca from, that’s who he is now. He’s already forgetting the soft and beautiful things, like Steve’s voice in the morning and the pastel orange of the sunset as they sat on the fire escape in the burning heat of the the evening.
The army saw something in him that was never there, because now he has the title of Sergeant and no best friend to follow from fight to fight, shadowing Steve like a dog with a bone. He has boys fresh faced and green looking to him like the fucking Messiah, they are in his care and he has to bring them home safe and sound to their Momma’s, and that weight that’s been digging into the soft flesh between his shoulder blades since he was 17 fucking years old just gets heavier.
“Sarge I’ll take first watch.”
That’s Monaghan, he’s young and desperate to prove himself in war that don’t give a rats ass about him. He sets Bucky’s teeth on edge and gives him grey hairs that he ain’t old enough to have.
“Nah kid, get the rest, I’ll take it.”
It sounds like he’s being nice, but really he’s just been balancing on the precipice of insomnia since he blew that first Krauts head off. Yet he feels like he could sleep for a thousand years, he craves Steve’s presence next to him, to hear him breath in raggedly, while begging with everything he has that Steve stays where he is, safe and ten thousand miles away from the mud caked, blood soaked purgatory that is the war.
His watch is short-lived, because the sky is turning a brilliant orange from the onslaught of bullets as they rain hellfire on their camp. Absently, Bucky notices himself yelling at the boys to get on out of their foxholes and get shooting, but he’s deafened by the reverberation of the bullets. He always thought the noise of the war, of men falling to their knees and the grenades being thrown into the trenches would be piercing, would follow him into sleep. But all he hears during these attacks is the deafening beat of his heart as it jackhammers inside his chest, pressing up against his ribs, beating so loud its all he can hear next to the dulcet ringing inside his ears.
He’s climbing up a tree, his calloused hands gripping onto the damp bark. Like a dancer and their stage, a performer and their microphone, a sniper needed their vantage point.
He was fucking exceptional, just like the dancer, just like the singer and he made killing a fucking art. The battlefield was his stage, the enemy fire his stage lighting, and him, the principle dancer, killing Nazi’s, protecting a mother’s son, thinking of Steve, always thinking of Steve.
Would Steve still brush Bucky’s hand in the street knowing that they were covered in sticky red blood, wet like a newborn colt, covered in sins he could only hope to repent for? Would Steve, the sun, with his righteousness, forgive Bucky for killing, not in defence of America, and not because it was the right thing to do, but because it was all he could do?
He watched as Kraut after Kraut dropped limp, his bullet never missing its target, no matter how badly he felt like he was cracking apart from the sickly fear crawling up his throat and lodging itself at the back of his mouth. The gun fire was settling and Bucky yells again at his men to get running, he stumbles down from his perch, tripping through mud and grass and shit. He keeps running, his breath tumbling out of him as the sky lights up, smoke billowing up and clouding his vision.
“Help…” a low groan catches his attention “Please.”
Bucky stumbles over bleary eyed, legs weak under him like a baby calf. The man on the ground is on his back looking up at the stars with his head lolling to the side. His eyes are glassy, and as Bucky falls to the ground beside him he realises it’s Monaghan. It’s one of his boys, that he was meant to protect, to bring home to their Momma’s and their sweethearts safe and sound. “Fuck kid, you’re okay, you’re gonna be fine kid, promise.”
He knows it’s a lie, and so does Monaghan, but they play along because Monaghan’s dying and you take what’s offered to you. “Sarge…” He doesn’t finish his sentence, but Bucky’s gonna do right by this kid, and no matter how little merit he has in religion right now, what with his Holy Ghost being half way across the world, Monaghan was Catholic. Bucky knew cause he’d seen him with that damn rosary after each firefight thanking his lucky stars, that it was some Kraut and not him.
“Hey kid stay with me ‘kay? We’re gonna pray, Hail Mary…”
Monaghan joins in, called to the prayer like a moth to the flame, and while Bucky hadn’t been raised Catholic, Steve Rogers sure as shit had. So Bucky knew those prayers, because they were Steve, he knew these prayers just like how he knew the vertebrae that stuck out real bad when Steve curled himself up in a ball, he knew those prayers like how he knew the scent of Sarah Rogers perfume that permeated through their apartment on Sundays.
“Full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb…” Monaghan’s voice rang out along with Bucky’s, his voice a dull groan through the pain “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.”
“Amen” Monaghan clutches his rosary, red like Bucky’s hands, and red like the growing patch on his army fatigues. Monaghan looks up at the sky, the stars bright against the clear night sky, and God he looks so fucking young in this moment, a fucking baby who was sent to this war for fucking nothing. Bucky seethes at the unfairness of it all, this kid, with his rosary and his hairless face with his baby fat and big eyes. A son, whose mother was going to get an empty coffin with an American flag, and condolences from men who had never seen how brave this boy was, who had never seen that in his last moments he prayed like a little boy in reconciliation for the first time.
Monaghan let out a gasp, his lungs collapsing and his eyes fading, and Bucky had never seen the light quite literally leave someone’s eyes, but now he has. And he feels hollowed out, as dead as the kid in his arms and he doesn’t know what the fuck to do.
Here is a kid, who died for nothing, and here is his Sergeant, alone in a field of mud and grass and shrapnel. A fucking cemetery, and everyone in it is dead.
…
Steve was his Achilles heel. That stupid, dumb motherfucking punk he thought. They say Achilles was vulnerable only in the place where his mother had held him, but that’s not true by a half. Because Bucky was vulnerable wherever Steve’s hand had been, the back of Bucky’s knuckles, where the skin pulls taut, where their hands used to brush in the dark on walks back from the bar, vulnerable. The soft, pale, underside of his arm, where it used to drape over Steve’s shoulder, shoulders that were fragile as a bird and yet carried the weight of the worlds injustice, like Jesus on that damn cross, also vulnerable.
But god, he loved it, he craved it, those soft vulnerable places where Steve had latched his teeth into.
And now? Now Bucky’s a lab rat and all he can think is that they’ve found it, that last tender place where they can sink their needles into his skin and touch so much more than a vein, they can touch his life source, his happiness, they can get to Steve. But to tear Steve from Bucky, to extract his imprint from the marrow of Bucky’s bones? That would kill him, he was sure of it, whether his heart still beat after it was irrelevant because Bucky’d be gone.
And god it hurts, he thought half-delirious, every injection and every test and every slice of their fucking scalpel, it hurt like nothing else.
Not like that winter in ’36 when the rattle of Steve’s chest, the collapse of his lungs as he tried to breath, hurt. The way Bucky’s jaw was clenched and his eyes were shut, praying to the big man in the sky, that if he had to take one of them, ‘let it be me’. That had hurt and now Bucky supposed that this was his retribution, this was God holding up his end of the deal, because Steve had survived that bout of sickness, and the next, and the next. But there was no way in hell that Bucky Barnes was getting back on American soil unless it was in a goddamn coffin.
Because the war had chewed him up and spat him back out, left him to pick up the pieces, and he knew that if he went back now and saw Steve, with his eyes like the first blue of the day, and his hands so big and warm and rough, that he’d collapse at Steve’s feet like an alter. To beg for absolution from the only divine body he’d ever really believed in.
And secretly, hidden between the gaps of his ribs Bucky had always worried that he’d ruin everything by saying it out loud, accidentally let it slip that his love for Steve was religious, that it was food for a starving man, but now in this building that feels like a tomb, He wished Steve knew. Knew that Bucky would have sliced himself open and presented Steve his heart, bloody and raw in the hopes that Steve would take it and make it good again, make it something worthy of love.
But now his hearts gone, bloody and mangled and outside of his body, it’s in the hands of the Swiss man with a sharp tongue who leered down at Bucky like he could see through every defence. Knew the monster that resided under the surface.
Zola heard Bucky say Steve’s name in his sleep last night, he knew as much because Zola had sneered it at him as he tied him down. But Bucky knew he musta said it real soft like, ‘Stevie’. How he used to say it when he knew Steve couldn’t hear. The dream had been real good, they were on that fire escape, the one with the rusty ladder and the grate that dug into Steve’s bony ass, and he’d swear up a storm about it, but it had been the only way to stay cool when the apartment felt like a sauna.
And it was summer, it was always summer out there on the escape and Bucky had thought Steve looked so fuckin’ pretty, with his hair like spun gold always falling in his eyes, and freckles sprayed across his nose that had been broken and reset wrong more times than either of them could count, Bucky’d always thought that summer was Steve’s season.
And he had known it was a dream because as they were talking about nothing Steve had leant down and put his head in Bucky’s lap.
…
“Bucky”
He’s been reciting the number on those dog tags so fucking often he’d probably respond to them like they were his birth given name. He hadn’t heard anyone call him that in so long he was blindsided.
“Buck”
But no one ever called him that, no one except for…
“Steve?” He felt himself smile, the relief so palpable he would’ve fainted if he hadn’t been strapped down. Steve, Stevie, his, strong and brave and so fucking gorgeous with his mop of blond hair like Gabriel himself had decided to make friends with someone like Bucky. And even if he wasn’t here, even if Bucky had invented him because in this moment he was scared like a little kid, Steve’s voice was still the same, and his hands were the same as they patted him down, and if this was it, he was so fucking glad that it was Steve who was there.
But he was here, so much taller that it was giving Bucky vertigo, his hands, his strong hands still the same were guiding Bucky out of that room.
“I thought you were dead.”
‘Pal so did I’ He would never have said it, but he felt half dead, flayed alive, brought back from the precipice of the river Styx and guided out, only to shy away from the light, because once something had died part of it truly stays dead. But he couldn’t say that, not now, because if he started talking about the horrors he had witnessed, he worried he’d never shut up, that every darkened awful though he had would spill out from his lips and taint Steve. No, instead he voiced his other concern,
“I thought you were smaller.” Because his Steve, the one he left safe in Brooklyn was barely 90 pounds soaking wet, and the man guiding him now was Heracles, sent to complete his 12 labours and return victorious. “What happened to you?” Was what he asked, but what he meant was, are you still there? Where did you go and can I find you again?
“I joined the army” Deflection, something the stubborn idiot had learnt from Bucky himself. Steve Rogers lived his life on half truths and now Bucky seemed no longer the exception to this rule.
They keep running, the explosions reverberating through the building as Steve guides him.
“Did it hurt?” He can’t help it, he refuses to believe that something so big could have happened and he’d just been slugging it through the forests of France, unaware, surely he would’ve felt it, some cataclysmic change, a shift of tectonic plates under his feet. For this boy so deeply ingrained into his own being changing so much, for Bucky not to have felt it seemed blasphemous.
“A little bit” If Bucky’s words had been bullets Steve was just barely skirting past, Steve’s answering response a barest hint away from being hit.
“Is it permanent?”
“So far”
Who was he now if Steve did not need him? If he was so strong, with two working ears and fully functioning eyes, Bucky was becoming obsolete. Steve had been too good for him when he had a laundry list of ailments and a chip on his shoulder the size of Europe, and now he was the pinnacle of manhood, and Bucky was a stained shirt he couldn’t wear anymore.
They were running up to the top gantry, Schmidt’s flesh burning beneath them, and Bucky was on that ladder terrified, as he’d always been of heights. And Steve was on the other side, trapped, and Bucky was fucking frantic. And then Steve in all his superhuman strength was jumping, like a fucking suicidal idiot, dumb motherfucker with no self-preservation.
…
1944
He used to ghost his hands over Steves ribs when Steve was still real small and fit in the hollow of Bucky’s chest. He would do it after Steve had gotten beat real bad, to see if any of his ribs were broken, but mostly just so he could, selfishly, feel Steve alive beneath him, his skin was always cold, and his bones were always jutting out unnaturally from his pale Irish skin. He would fit his fingers in the divot between each rib and think that if the world were to end, and only Steve were to remain, that his ribs should be the one to create women from, that any woman made in the likeness of Steve would be enough for Bucky to finally be like the other boys. Because he realised real young that a boy who likes other boys is better off dead, and now more than ever there was the very real possibility of a blue ticket, and who’d watch Steve’s six, make sure he didn’t do anything stupid if Bucky was back in Brooklyn, sitting alone without his heart?
God, the campfire made him melancholy, the whole war admittedly made some ferocious beast with fangs like poison and words like a grieving widow sprout up from the gaping hole inside him.
The glow from the fire reflected off his skin, making his face burn and itch, reminding him what it was to feel. Monty was taking first watch, but Bucky had stayed, too keyed up to go and lie next to Steve in their tent, to lie next to him and no longer fit, a physical reminder of the fact that Steve no longer needed him. He groaned as he stretched out his legs, lighting a cigarette just to have something to do with his hands.
“Looking spritely there Sarge” Came the lilting reply from Monty.
“What can I say Falsworth, ‘m getting old.”
“You aren’t old though Barnes” His face was cast in shadows and oranges from the fire, but his eyes were cutting deep into Bucky. Reminding him of just how transparent he had become, a ghost walking aimlessly through the fields of Asphodel with nowhere to go, so translucent that every thought was cast into the low light of the fire to be inspected by the other man.
“Gee thanks Monty, but it’ll take more than that to get my panties off.” Deflection. A talent that he had perfected at the dinner table with his Ma and his sister’s watchful eye, enquiring after him and wondering when he was ‘going to settle down with a lovely girl’.
“Oh haha Barnes you’re a real regular comedian. But I am serious, you aren’t old and yet… Yet you walk around like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders you don’t ever smile Sergeant-“
“What can I say? Happiness is a lost cause on me, consider me Saint Jude.”
“Well Jude, I was going to say you only ever smile when the dear Captain graces us with his presence.”
Bucky felt the colour drain from his face, he schooled his features into something stoic, “Monty” he said, his tone a low vibrato of warning.
“I’m not saying anything Sarge, just make sure you got more to live for than that.” Monty stretched out, standing up to go to his tent, his watch done. He cast a singular glance back to Bucky, all-knowing and enough to make Bucky grip his cigarette tighter, his hands sniper still despite the fear creeping into his bones.
Was he so easy to read, so easy to see that his world spun on the axis of Steve Rogers?
But, he supposed, it was the war and when men are treated like dogs they become them, guttural and feral, reduced to their base instincts. And he supposes that on that day when he waded into a schoolboy fight with a sinners prayer on his lips and saved little Stevie Rogers he was condemning himself to this, to have his basic instincts rewritten around the orbit of Steven Grant Rogers. So it makes sense that his love and his desire is written so plain for others to see, he supposes when the war has stripped away their humanity and all that’s left is his love for this golden boy, this boy who’d fight God himself if he thought the cause was right, Bucky would have no choice but to follow unquestioningly.
The fire continued on, her warm caress across his face a comfort in the forest. The fire was always kind, in his memories her hearth burns in the first home he had ever known, with his Ma and Becca and his father. He had read about Hestia once, and thought it was a crying shame that they didn’t write about her nearly as much as they did the others. He told Steve as such, and Steve forever pragmatic had laughed and told Bucky that ‘maybe he should start makin’ offerings to the woman if he cared so much’. And so he had, tossing his cigarette butt into the fire he recited in a low murmur, “Hestia, in the high dwellings of all, both deathless gods and men who walk on earth, you have gained an everlasting abode and highest honour: glorious is your portion and your right.” The fire crackled on, as is nature’s right to ignore the suffering of men, Bucky smiled, small and private as he laid back to stake out the rest of his watch.
…
They had been given 3 days furlough while the SSR figured out what to do now that all the known HYDRA bases in Western Europe had been laid to ruin by the Howling Commandos. They had been laid up in a pub that was still miraculously standing despite the efforts of the Germans, and Steve had offered to stay with Bucky.
And Bucky, not ready to face Steve and the divide that spanned hundreds of miles between them; the both of them so wholly out of sync with each other that to breathe the same air as Steve and for their chests to rise and fall out of sync was enough to send Bucky tumbling down the canyon between them, well he had decided to stay in the pub.
He was nursing his sixth drink of the night, he had been drinking Guinness and then switched to beer, even though neither got him drunk anymore. A fact he stubbornly refused to acknowledge, because to acknowledge it would mean thinking about what Zola had done, how each needle that pierced his skin had changed something so fully inside of him that even he had yet to fully realise.
He sighed, a melancholy, dramatic thing, he felt frozen to his seat, he had looked into the jaws of death, into the dark, dirty underbelly of war, and it had turned him to stone just as Medusa had turned her enemies into statues.
He paid his tab and made his way up to their shared room.
As he opened the door, he was unsurprised to see Steve on the bed closest to the window, drawing. It had been too long since he’d seen Steve where he was most himself, with a pencil and paper. He looked almost comical now, his great hulking frame curled protectively over the paper, with the fine and fragile pencil held delicately between his hands.
Steve didn’t even look up, so focused that not even an air raid would have moved him from his reverie. Bucky sat down on the opposite bed, moving to untie his boots and head to the shower. He still hadn’t said anything to Steve, because what was there to say? They were so different, Steve was fucking Helios, and Bucky was Selene, and now they were out of balance and the shift ached inside of him, the chasm in his soul growing and deepening with every unspoken word.
As he got back from the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist, Steve had gone to get ready for bed, his drawing left open on the bed. Bucky glanced over at it, surprised to see that it was him. His face was shrouded in shadows, and his eyes danced with an unspoken world weary pain, he looked weighed down by his ghosts and wholly unlike himself.
He had been vain back in Brooklyn, coiffing his hair and spending too long getting ready to dance, and now he just didn’t care. He had three days growth of stubble on his face, and his hair curled along his forehead, in need of a cut and some Brylcreem. But he just didn’t care and yet, it was still a shock to seem him on the page, drawn so carefully by the only man who had ever seemed to know him, and it was cutting to known that he was barely there, even on the page, so nervous that he almost disappeared. He heard Steve clear his throat from behind him.
“You drew me.” It wasn’t a question, and yet Steve still coloured.
“Yeah I did.” Bucky looked over at him then, he’d said it softly, he seemed nervous like maybe Bucky wouldn’t like what he saw. But when would the idiot learn that Bucky loved anything he drew.
“It’s real good Steve, it always is.”
“You ain’t mad?” Bucky raised his eyebrow at that.
“Nah, why would I be mad, you always draw me.” God, had they really fallen so out of sync that Steve couldn’t even read him anymore?
“It’s just… you know, different.” Bucky cracked a half smile then, his lip curling up, but not in laughter. Their conversation was stilted in a way it had never been.
“Different how Steve, just fucking say it.” He was picking fights where he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t fucking help it, he was cracking apart and it felt like no one could see, see that he was fading into the abyss. He just wanted to feel something, because even Steve’s anger was better than this, this cold conversation with a stranger who wore his friends face.
“You fucking know Buck.” But how could he fight with someone who knew him better than he knew himself? Steve could hurt him, destroy him, with some well placed words, but isn’t that what he wanted when he started this fight?
“Clearly I don’t Steve so why don’t you fucking enlighten me?” He was getting louder, walking up to Steve and getting in his face, in a way that Bucky knew would annoy Steve, he pushed on his sternum accusingly as he spoke, his sentence punctuated by a finger to Steve’s chest.
“Oh come off it Bucky, you’re not yourself okay. Is that what you want me to say? That you’re picking pointless fights, and walking around me like I’m made of fucking glass, you don’t look me in my eyes and your a thousand miles away- His voice cracked then, “If you would just talk to me… please, I want to help you Buck, so fucking bad, but I can’t help if I don’t know where to start.” Steve was begging, and Bucky had never heard Steve beg, not when his Ma died and not when he was having his last rites read to him and Bucky embarrassingly felt tears gathering in his eyes.
“You can’t help me Steve, I don’t… I don’t even know what they did to me, it’s pointless trying to fix me, I’m a lost cause honey.”
If Steve was surprised by the endearment he didn’t show it, instead he responded, “Let me try Bucky, please, nothing about you is pointless, okay? Not to me, I want to help and I want to try. You spent your life helping me, let me return the favour.” He was looking down at Bucky, his eyes so impossibly big and blue, begging and imploring, his mouth in a soft frown.
“Don’t you see Stevie, it was never a favour you idiot, I did it cause I wanted to, how can you not see that?” He felt a tear run down his face and hastily moved to brush it away, his shoulders were sagging and he was listing towards Steve, uncaring of how it looked, because it was just them in the room and he was so fucking tired. Steve’s big palm came up and cupped his cheek, wiping away another stray tear. “Oh Buck, course I knew sugar, I just…” And Bucky was looking at Steve then, and what he saw was his longing and his love and his desire reflected back at him in Steve’s eyes.
And Bucky was a coward, he couldn’t face it, the enormity of his desire was overwhelming and he closed his eyes, unable to face the sun in all his shining glory. But as he closed his eyes he felt the ghost of Steve’s lips, unbearably soft and holding the promise of every unspoken declaration, ghost over his own. He whined a low sound in his throat and surged forward, their lips meeting in full force.
Bucky wouldn’t consider himself a poet, he was no Keats, no Williams, but if he were to say anything, he’d say that kissing Steve was like arriving at Elysium, it was the untouched Isles of the Blessed which bore honey-sweet fruit and where his soul had been untouched by sorrow. Steve tasted like home, like Saturdays spent on the fire escape, and cold malt shakes on hot afternoon’s. And Bucky felt his blood turn holy, ichor flowing through his veins as he felt Steve’s tongue meet his, he bit down on Steve’s lip unable to not turn ravenous when given everything he had ever wanted, and Steve responded, a low groan leaving his mouth, which was swallowed by Bucky, who was greedy and desperate to learn everything Steve had to offer.
“Steve” He whined, pulling apart and gazing up at him, his eyes blown huge and dark, the blue swallowed up entirely by his pupil. He was tugging at Steve’s shirt, desperate and wanting, Steve followed obligingly, crowding around Bucky and invading his sense as he ushered him to the bed. As his the back of his knees hit the bed and he fell Backwards Steve followed. His big body looming over Bucky, blocking out anything else until it was just them.
He tugged at Steve’s shirt until he took it off, as Steve moved off him to take off his pants, Bucky looked at him in all his glory, like some kind of deity who Bucky was offering up his soul and his body to, in order to be cleansed and forgiven, to be made anew. Steve tugged off his pants and did the same to Bucky’s towel, leaving them naked and vulnerable, hard and wanting. And for all Bucky had dreamed about it, he had never imagined that he would get to have Steve like this. He found himself speechless.
“Bucky, honey, what do you want?” Steve was talking to him, kissing down his neck and tugging at the thin skin of his collarbones. All Bucky could do in response was gasp, breathless and needy like a dame.
“You, want you so bad Stevie please.” He didn’t care how, he just needed Steve to hold him tight enough that all his splintering pieces would meld back together. He felt Steve nod against his sternum and then move away to the bathroom, he returned with a tin of vaseline.
And Bucky wasn’t dumb, he knew what that meant and he felt his stomach swoop as he watched Steve put a pillow under his hips. He was laying like a rag doll as Steve’s lips ghosted down over his stomach, and stopping to bite at the jut of his hipbones, Steve travelled further down, over the thatch of curls, and licked his way up to where Bucky was hard and wanting and leaking at the tip. His cock was an angry red as Bucky propped himself up to look at Steve between his legs, a sight to behold, to see Steve at his knees for Bucky. Steve wrapped his mouth around the head, his pink lips creating an ‘O’ as he began to suck, swirling his tongue obscenely against the head of Bucky’s dick. Bucky’s head fell back on a groan as his eyes shut with pleasure.
He felt Steve’s fingers wet with vaseline probing at his hole, gentle at first and then more insistent as his first digit breached Bucky’s entrance. He let out a stuttering gasp, his eyes squeezed shut, “Stevie” he whimpered, his hands flying to Steve’s hair, golden yellow in the lamplight. Steve popped off his cock, his lips red and swollen, “breathe Buck, just relax you’ll be okay sugar.” His voice was rough and low, warming Bucky up from the inside out, as a second finger joined the first.
He scissored his fingers, curling them as he thrust and Bucky let out a long drawn out moan as Steve's fingers brushed up against Bucky’s prostate. He saw fireworks behind his eyes as Steve brushed it again, more insistent this time, a knowing smile on his face as he looked down at Bucky sprawled over the sheets, face twisted up in pleasure. “Please Stevie, need you in me, ‘m ready, promise.”
Steve withdrew his fingers at Bucky’s insistence, rubbing vaseline onto his cock as he lined up with Bucky’s hole, he pushed in slowly, unrelenting, just what Bucky needed, he felt his head tip back as Steve started kissing down his neck, tongue laving over his pulse point, pressing in until all Bucky could feel and see was Steve, Steve above him, and Steve inside him. Taking and giving in equal measures. “Bucky, feel so fucking good baby, please.” Bucky nodded, delirious and overcome with the sensation of being so full.
At Bucky’s assurance Steve started thrusting at a steady pace, forceful and consistent, his mouth skating across Bucky’s torso as he tugged a nipple between his teeth, biting gently at the reddened bud. Bucky let out a sharp gasp at that, his mind going blank as heat built in his belly. Steve was gripping his cock then, sliding his skilful artists fingers over the head, his hand coming away wet from where Bucky was leaking steadily, his grip was firm and his cock was nailing that spot inside Bucky every time, forcing him to let out staccato gasps and cries. To be taken apart so thoroughly by the single minded determination of Steve Rogers was a heady experience, and Bucky was overwhelmed, so in awe that he could have this.
“Stevie, I love you so bad, you gotta know, love you so much it fucking terrifies me.” He had to say it, with Steves heady presence surrounding him and his loving touch against his face and on his dick he felt sure that Steve had to know, felt that it was written across his face.
Steve kissed him then, hard and purposeful, before smiling down at him. “Course I know Buck, cause I love you like that too, love you so much I can hardly breathe baby.” Steve had a light sheen of sweat over him, making him glow like a renaissance painting, like Botticelli’s Venus. And Bucky was so fucking in love.
He felt the pressure building from Steve’s careful ministrations, he was whining loudly and wantonly now, uncaring as to anything except Steve, “Steve ‘m gonna-“ It was all he could do before he felt his pleasure crest, his orgasm rolling through him in waves, his eyes falling shut as he tipped his head back baring his throat, a high feminine sound leaving his bitten cherry red lips as he came between them.
Steve followed soon after, a low groan leaving his mouth as he pushed forcefully inside Bucky, pulsing as Bucky felt Steve filling him up. Steve pulled out slowly so as not to hurt him, and rolled over on to his back, as they both stared up at the roof, panting and satiated, Bucky felt Steve’s hand reaching for his in the space between their bodies.
1945
Bucky thought he knew cold, knew it when it seeped through the thin walls of their tenement, knew it when it set in to Steve’s lungs and almost sent him to an early grave. But fuck the Europeans don’t play around with the cold, his toes, and his fingers, and his nose, are so icy they feel removed, like if he moved to fast they’d just fall right off. None of the others are much better, except for Steve, Steve who is exempt from the rules of lesser men now that he’s gone and gotten himself blown up to the size of a house, a walking target that Bucky desperately wants to protect.
But the cold was too much, and it was all around him, in his vision, whooshing past his ears, stealing his voice as he screamed, and wrapping its fingers around his arm, kissing his eyelids shut as he landed in its merciless confines.