Chapter Text
Bucky had been dead for seventy years. He saw regimes rise and fall like the tide, traveled the world without spending a dime, watched decades unfold around him and through it all he remained static. There were beautiful things about his existence. There were terrible things. The truth of the matter, however, was that for Bucky Barnes, Ghost, there wasn’t much to do.
He passed through the kitchen of his home and considered the bowl in the sink. His living housemate, Natasha, had oatmeal for breakfast. He could still remember that taste if he concentrated. It was pasty and flavorless. If there was a food that ghosts could eat, he imagined that fate would be just cruel enough to make it oatmeal. Not so. Even oatmeal was off the menu. Culinary pleasure and all other earthly delights, were unavailable to him. He had not eaten for seven decades.
Bucky shrugged and turned away from the dishes. Being a spectral body excused him from dish duty: one of the perks of being a member of the undead. With great concentration, he picked up his laptop and carried it into the living room.
“Morning.” Natasha said before she took a sip of her coffee.
“Hey.” Bucky said.
“What are you going to do today?” She asked.
“That’s a stupid question. What are you going to do today?”
“It’s not a stupid question. I have a depressed ghost taking up space in my house. The best thing I can do is encourage him to do something. Anything. And I’m going on a date tonight so I’m going to need you to clear out for a while.”
“But you’re going out. Why do I need to clear—Oh.” The realization dawned on Bucky. “I get it.”
“I have a feeling tonight is going to go well for me.” Natasha said. “Really. Well.” She had a look of fierce determination set in her features with which Bucky could not argue.
“Okay. Fine. I’ll find something to do. Maybe the library.” Nobody bothered him there, and the lighting brought out a certain sickly pallor in everybody, so he didn’t look too strange as long as he hid behind the stacks.
Natasha surveyed him over the top of her coffee cup and he felt as if he were underneath a microscope. He hated this feeling and he so often felt it when Natasha looked at him.
“What?” Bucky asked.
“Let me borrow your computer.” She said.
“Why? You have one of your own.” Bucky said. It was not hard for him to grasp the technology of the day. He watched humanity progress, he could see where it was going better than many of the living could. He was, however pleased with himself that he could touch it and hold it. Manipulating solid objects was hard sometimes and he held tight to the items that did not fight him. His computer and the phone that Natasha bought for him were high on the list of favored items.
“Yes,” Natasha agreed, “but this is how we are getting you out of my hair tonight.” She took the computer from him gently, careful to avoid touching any of the places where his skin would have been, if he had skin.
“Okay. Let’s see…” She hummed to herself while she typed away. “Bucky Barnes. For the sake of our purposes today you’re…” she paused while she typed “twenty-six.”
“More or less.” Bucky said. “What are you getting at?” He asked. Natasha angled the screen toward him. Displayed there was a series of boxes for information such as name, age, occupation, etcetera. “What is this?” He asked.
“A dating site.” Natasha said, simply.
“And you’re doing this why? No, don’t use that picture of me, for Christ’s sake, Natasha, I’m practically transparent.”
“We’re doing this because you need somebody else to talk to. A lone medium isn’t doing the trick, buddy, and it’s cheaper than therapy.” Natasha said, while she entered Bucky’s location into the correct box. “And, look, if I use this filter the vase behind your face just looks like a shadow—there.” She swapped the picture out. “All fixed.”
“I don’t understand, but you’re the smart one.”
“That’s damn right.” Natasha said. “Alright. That’s the basics. Start looking around for somebody cute, local, and available. You have a few hours.”
Bucky took his computer back to his bedroom, a carefully organized guest room, just in case company might deign to drop by for Natasha someday. Nobody ever arrived to visit Natasha, and although Bucky could not sleep in the traditional sense, he enjoyed the idea of a room to his own.
He set the computer down carefully and perched on the bed to scroll through the results. His matches. As if he could find a match among the living. To his surprise, there they were. Face after face of hopeful candidates looking to find love, or something like it.
As he scrolled through the results, he noticed the trend that many of these pictures displayed torsos instead of faces. Bucky felt a creeping chill crawl across his back. This was a game for the living in more ways than he could have prepared for. The window next to his bed rattled and the springs under his mattress quivered. He could not do this.
But there was one face that he liked. Bucky was drawn back to it over and over, hovering over it. DodgersFan1918 looked like somebody he knew, somebody from another life. He wanted to reach into the screen and touch that face in a way that he had not wanted to touch another person in decades. The swell of feeling cascaded within him and was smothered just as suddenly by a blip of noise from the speakers of the laptop.
DodgersFan1918: Hey! Cool profile. Welcome to New York. It can be hard to meet people here. Let me know if you want to get a drink sometime, or coffee if that’s your thing. Hope to hear back from you :)
Bucky thought, looking at the message. What did he say to that? I have actually lived here for longer than you or your parents have been alive, but thanks for the encouragement? Searching for answers, Bucky checked the profile that Natasha helped him set up. Sure enough, in the area where he was supposed to summarize himself, she wrote that Bucky was new to New York. Well, he thought, it would explain why he didn’t know anybody.
Bucky: Thanks. I’ve never really tried online dating. I’m not sure what I’m doing, honestly.
DodgersFan1918: Seems like you’re doing it just fine.
Bucky: You’re the one doing all the work.
DodgersFan1918: Maybe not if I play my cards right.
Bucky: Oh you didn’t! I can’t tell if that was bad or brilliant.
DodgersFan1918: Can’t it be both?
Bucky: You got me there. Okay, what do you do?
DodgersFan1918: Honestly?
You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you. It involves a lot of jumping out of airplanes.
What do you do?
Bucky: You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you. But there are fewer airplanes.
DodgersFan1918: That’s fair enough. I’m have some time off right now and I like not having to think about my job too much. You deserve the same.
Bucky: I think I can manage that. We don’t have to talk about work.
Never mind that Bucky had not worked in decades. He realized that he was smiling. The little screen in front of him was not the only thing glowing in the room, he felt like he could light up a football stadium. He saw the little animation signifying that Steve was typing and awaited his reply.
DodgersFan1918: Have I earned your name yet? If you don’t mind me asking.
Bucky: Sorry! I should have said. It’s Bucky.
DodgersFan1918: Bucky? Really? I thought that might have been a reference to something I didn’t get.
Bucky: No. Just my name.
DodgersFan1918: I like it.
Bucky didn’t know what to say to that. He was never very good at taking compliments, but this one felt intensely personal. Perhaps it was just that he was out of practice. After all, Natasha was hardly gushy about him.
Bucky: Thanks.
DodgersFan1918: What are you doing tonight?
Bucky: I don’t know. My roommate has pretty much kicked me out of the house because she has a date. It is going to get awkward here.
DodgersFan1918: Meet me for a drink. You won’t have to worry about it for a while.
Bucky: It’s a great idea, but I should probably go into work and catch up on some stuff.
DodgersFan1918: On a Saturday night?
Bucky: Remember how I said you wouldn’t believe me?
DodgersFan1918: Suit yourself. The offer stands if you change your mind.
Bucky: I will keep it in mind.
DodgersFan1918: Good luck with the roommate.
They signed off, and although Bucky had no breath to speak of, he felt breathless.
That night, a half hour before the doorbell was due to be pressed by a well-dressed suitor who could not hope to be half as good as Natasha deserved, because no such man existed in the world, Bucky vanished from their home.
He found himself wandering the endless aisles of a grocery store. He loved grocery stores. The way produce failed to have any time or season spoke to him. There was once a growing season for tomatoes or for peaches. Now, they could be purchased anytime the desire arose. Bucky found a disturbing kind of comfort in the immediacy of globalization, but he tried never to cling to the past.
He strode down the aisle that housed the candy bars. Natasha liked these. He considered picking one up for her. He could do it, he had money in his pocket and there were machines now that allowed transactions to be done entirely in private. Sure, he thought. Why not?
A man walked past him and brushed against the place where his right arm would have been, if he had a right arm. A nauseous wave of horror swooped through them both. It was a sick, panicked feeling that he knew from years of these accidental touches. This was why not. This was why never. This was why he stayed quietly and politely locked away in his house and why he would never, above all things, go out for a drink with a man like Steve.
The unfortunate innocent who brushed against the ghost considering candy bars looked over his shoulder at Bucky as if he had been stabbed. There were no words for such a betrayal of social niceties. There were no words among the living for what had just happened. Contact. That was the word. Brief. Brutal. Unpleasant. Bucky did not apologize as he picked up the Snickers for Natasha.
He wandered up and down the streets for a while and let his mind wander separately. There was not much left for it to do. The contact lingered in it like a bad aftertaste. He could still feel that man’s vibrations in his being. That man wanted very much to touch someone, but it certainly had not been Bucky. He felt into the man’s consciousness, against his better judgement. Bucky had not done this in years. He settled himself down in the mouth of an alley near home. Nobody would notice him here.
The contact he made was strong. He could feel the man. He could see and smell and even taste everything the man could. It was like being along for the ride, present in all the things the man could experience. Lifelike. These forays into the world by proxy could only be kept up for so many hours, Bucky knew, but it was nice to remember what it felt like to be alive now and then. It couldn’t hurt to give himself a night. Just one. For old time’s sake.
His host took his phone out of his pocket and opened an app. A picture appeared.
No, his host thought. Not this one. A picture of a different man took its place. Nah, his host thought again, Not this one either. Steve’s picture appeared.
Bucky thought.
Not sure. His host thought.
Yes, him. Bucky thought. You want this one.
Not really, he has more muscle than I like. His host thought.
An errant idea ran through Bucky’s mind. Possession. He was already more than half-way there. Arguing with his host was a fruitless effort. He might as well take that final step and grab the wheel for himself. There was no use in fighting the whole night. As if his host heard the train of thought, he felt the tension of the body drain away and give itself over to Bucky’s control. The mind slackened and dozed. It slept in a corner, unharmed except for the presence of another conscious being in its shell. Thank you, Bucky thought.
Now that he was in possession of the body, he felt it, from the roots of the hair all the way down to the toes which he wiggled in their shoes. He felt heavier, more real, than he could remember feeling in a long time. It felt good. He stood up straight. This body was used to slouching. He picked the head up high and cracked the neck, stretched the arms out above his head, shook the hands—his hands for the time being— as he brought them down to his sides.
He took a look at the phone again. Steve’s face still glowed up at him through the darkness and there was no residual glow from his hand. He liked this feeling. He nodded to himself. He could do this.
He arrived at Steve’s apartment building with an anticipatory buzz filling up the entirety of him. He bounced on his toes outside of the building. This body was just a tiny bit shorter than the one he once inhabited. His limbs were only slightly thinner. When he looked down at the hands that were now his, they surprised him for a moment not because they felt foreign, but because they fit so well. He pressed the button and waited.
“Hey, come on up.” The voice, Steve’s voice, came back so much deeper than he imagined.
“Thanks.” Bucky said. The door buzzed. He walked inside with purpose, as if this were something he did every day.
When he reached the door that Steve promised he would be behind, he felt the lurch of nervousness behind his bellybutton. What if he couldn’t do it? He had not touched another person in so long. Technically, he did not even know if he was a person anymore. And even if he could touch, this was more than touching, wasn’t it? The thought of what this was drove him forward into action. His fist met the solid mass of the door and he knocked three times.
Steve’s picture did not do him justice. He stepped into the hall to greet Bucky, a wall of muscle that towered over Bucky in such close proximity. Bucky took a step back to size him up properly. The overwhelming fact that could not be ignored about Steve was the sheer size of him. He filled the doorway behind him with shoulders that Bucky wanted to climb. He met Bucky’s eyes and smiled.
“Hey.” He said. In person, his voice was smooth and just as deep. It fit him.
“Hi.” Bucky said. His voice was of little consequence. It would not be his in a few hours.
“You want to come in?” Steve asked. His eyebrows rose as he asked the question and a smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
Bucky nodded. He made it as far as Steve’s doorway before the warmth of his body drew him in. The smell of him alone, so clean and good, but by no means sweet, was enough. Bucky needed this. They did not make it all the way into the apartment before their lips chased each other down. Steve’s lips were soft, but there was little softness in the way their mouths moved against each other, with vicious determination. It was an explosion of a kiss that burned up and left them gasping. He felt Steve’s hand run along his arm and push him inside. He almost forgot how to move his feet until Steve reminded him.
“Okay.” Steve said once Bucky made it all the way into his apartment. “Can I get you anything? Water? You want a beer?”
Oh god yes. Bucky thought, he hadn’t drunk water in longer than he could recall, but there were more pressing matters at the moment.
“No, thanks.” Bucky said. “I’m okay.”
Steve eyed him up and down, eyes heavy lidded and lips still red and swollen from their crushing kiss in the hallway. “Better than.” He said.
“Let’s find out.” Bucky said.
“My room is that way.” Steve jerked his head to the left, toward the door that stood ajar.
“Good.” Bucky said. He stepped toward Steve again. He could see himself, not himself, reflected back in the glassy, expanding darkness of Steve’s eyes, and it felt like falling. As quickly as falling he was back in Steve’s arms again, lips against lips. The feeling was less frantic this time, longer and more languid.
He mapped out the feeling of it. Steve’s kisses were generous, even for a stranger. They parted to throw shirts to the ground. Without realizing that he had done so, Bucky reached out a hand to touch Steve’s skin. There was so much of it, he thought, all of it so warm, sun kissed and smooth. His hand grazed across his chest toward a nipple that hardened in the cool air around it. Steve’s eyes fluttered shut at the touch.
The smallest reactions drove Bucky wild. He pressed both hands against Steve’s chest and pushed him backward, toward the support of the wall behind them, and dropped to his knees in front of Steve. From the ground, he looked up, as if to ask permission.
“Hang on.” Steve said. He brought Bucky back to his feet with one hand carefully cradling the back of his skull. “In here.” Bucky followed Steve into his bedroom. Neatly furnished, but with more things than Bucky owned. Of course, Bucky thought to himself. He’s alive. He tried not to think about it anymore, and carefully avoided the gaze of the faces in the framed pictures.
Steve returned to him with a couple of foil wrapped condoms.
“Are these okay with you?” Steve asked.
“Of course.” Bucky said.
“Can we still?” Steve began he glanced downward, toward the bulge in his pants. He wanted this nearly as badly as Bucky. Bucky pushed Steve backward again, onto the bed this time, and dropped to his knees in front of him.
“You want me to blow you?” He asked. “Is that it?”
“Oh fuck, yeah.” Steve said. He grabbed the sheets to his sides. Bucky shook his head and put his hands over Steve’s.
“Sounds good, but you gotta do something for me.”
“What’s that?” Steve asked.
“Pull my hair.”
“Think I can manage that.” Steve said.
Bucky did not know Steve, no, but he knew Steve’s type. He met many men in hostels and train stations, and while he had never before found the courage to touch them—even through somebody else’s hands—he had discovered the uniquely visceral brand of danger that they all craved in common.
Bucky brought Steve’s hands to the back of his head and felt the pressure there, a human touch, warm and invited, nothing like the cold distant feeling of ghostly contact. He leaned back against it while he undid the closure of Steve’s pants, relished the sound of the breath that escaped Steve’s lips, and pushed them down his thighs just far enough. He rolled the condom on without ceremony and followed with his mouth.
Bucky felt Steve’s fingertips dig into his scalp, the scrape of nails against the flesh there. He sensed that his movements, the way he hollowed his cheeks or moved his tongue, were rewarded by Steve’s long tapered fingers tangling themselves in his hair and tugging harder. Steve held on tight while Bucky worked him over. He slid his lips up and down over and over until he was lost in the sensation of it. He ran his hands along Steve’s thighs and wrapped his fingers around the base of Steve’s cock.
The sounds that Steve made when Bucky lapped lightly at Steve’s balls was heaven. He brought his focus there while his hands kept up the steady beat established by his mouth. All the while. The hands in his hair were careful not to direct, but to encourage his effort. Bucky moaned, delighted at the sensations. The hardness of both the floor under his knees and the cock between his legs. The sensations, all of them, felt like fireworks shooting through his nervous system.
“Okay,” Steve said. He opened his hand and rested his palm on the back of Bucky’s head to steady him. “Okay.” He said again. “Hang on.”
Bucky glanced up at him and saw a look of deep concentration on his face. Steve took a deep breath through his nose and let it out slowly through his mouth. His chest rose and fell rapidly as he worked to catch his breath he stared up at the ceiling, exposing miles of chest and neck from where Bucky sat on the floor. His cock still rested, hard and red and glistening with Bucky’s spit, between his legs.
“Come up here.” Steve said, glancing at the space next to him on the bed. He shed his pants, already half-way down his thighs and useless.
Bucky followed suit as he rose, discarding the remaining layers of clothing, to join Steve on the bed. He noticed with a removed level of interest that this body’s penis was circumcised. He tried to react as if it were not the first time he had seen it.
“I want you to fuck me.” Steve said. He shucked off the condom, unfilled but unneeded, and handed Bucky one of his own along with a bottle of lube. He turned over, and watched Bucky’s reaction from over his shoulder.
“Jesus.” Bucky said under his breath, catching the full effect of Steve’s ass.
“Is this how you want me?” Steve asked. Unable to answer, feeling the complete failure of human language not for the first time, Bucky leaned forward and let his tongue answer in another way. “Oh.” Steve said, surprise and pleasure rose in equal parts in his voice. “I guess so.” Steve leaned back against Bucky’s face and let Bucky grip his hips to steady him. Bucky tasted a trace of something chemical on his tongue as he pressed against Steve, not familiar but not unpleasant. Steve had prepared for this, Bucky realized.
“Oh fuck.” Steve said, “That mouth.”
Bucky drew away for breath and smiled. “You already did that.” He said, and slapped Steve’s ass. The moan that smack elicited rivaled any Steve made so far that night. “Hmm.” Bucky considered the implications for a moment before returning to the task at hand. Steve had been explicit in his request. He wanted Bucky to fuck him, and that was exactly what Bucky intended to do. “You think you’re good, or do you want me to prep you some more?” Bucky asked.
“No, I’m ready.” Steve said, his voice higher than it had been all night. “Please.” He said.
There was no resisting the request. He aligned himself and entered Steve in a smooth, agonizingly slow movement of his hips that pushed a breath from his lungs and a distant sigh from his lips. The sensation was at once so familiar that it felt like coming home and, at the same time, like nothing he had ever felt before.
Steve was the first to move, fucking himself on Bucky’s cock, doing all the work for him. Bucky let him.
“Oh yeah.” Bucky said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “Just like that, baby.”
“You afraid you’re going to wake somebody up?” Steve asked. His tone was casual, despite the slight hitch in it when he pushed himself back against Bucky. He smiled over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow and moved faster, committing to the movements of his hips. Bucky let out a low, guttural moan that resonated between them and filled up the air around them. “That’s what I thought.” Steve said as he moved.
Bucky caught Steve’s hips and thrust his own forward, snapping them together in a pace that brought beads of sweat to the surface of his back, neck, and shoulders. He felt it drip down his forehead and behind his ears and pressed on as the sensation—the wholeness and utter bliss of being inside Steve—carried him past reason and into a drive that was purely instinct.
Bucky came inside Steve, wrapped around him, lost to thought and reason. For the first time since his death, he closed his eyes and saw nothing: not the overwhelming vastness of the universe, nor the terrible chaos of life swirling around him, impossible to resist. He was inside Steve, a part of him in a small way, and he felt complete.
The world came back to Bucky slowly, in pieces. He pulled out and let Steve turn around in his arms. Bucky opened his eyes first, and saw Steve below him, equally thrown into bliss and taken from the harshness of reality. The blush on his cheeks suited him, Bucky thought. He felt the warmth between them, the sticky slick wetness of their sweat and Steve’s semen.
Steve opened his eyes, so blue, and smiled. Bucky returned it, lazy and slow. They both knew the same truth: they would have to move sometime soon. They would have to find it in themselves to clean up and carry on into the night, but in this moment, this was all they wanted. Bucky’s head lowered onto Steve’s shoulder and his breathing steadied.
Bucky left the man’s body with a parting thought of apology to its owner. The man would remember last night, of course. He would remember his actions as if his choices had been his own. There would be no lasting harm, but Bucky knew the neglect that he was about to inflict when he vanished. He wished for the best and thought himself away.