Archive of Our Own ^beta

Steve is incredibly, inexpressibly grateful to have Bucky back. He is. There is no amount of nightmares, of rage, of grief and alcohol-fuelled fights that can make him anything less than absolutely humbled by the wonder of having Bucky in his life again after losing him, after living without him for three excruciating years.

But.

It’s so selfish he’s a little disgusted with himself. He’s got what’s as close as dammit to a bona fide miracle — and still, every now and then, in the darkest recesses of his mind, he’s not satisfied. It’s awful of him. They were friends long before they were anything else, and they were friends all the way through ‘til the end. He shouldn’t wish for something Bucky doesn’t want to give him anymore. So he tries not to.

He fights Bucky when Bucky needs a good fight, whether it’s a screaming match or taking it to the mats; he makes sure Bucky eats right because for all that he’s plenty bulked up, there’s something gaunt about his face, and there’s finally, finally enough to eat, even if Steve isn’t very good at cooking it. Bucky eats every bite.

Slowly, the desperation in Bucky’s eyes eases. He still only ever sleeps in his own room, barricaded in. Steve spends several nights sitting in the hall outside Bucky’s room, listening to Bucky’s screaming nightmares and unable to get in without making it worse. Steve always makes pancakes the morning after those nights. He’s getting really good with them now.

But it does get… better, if not actually good, and Bucky is cleared for field work with SHIELD. Steve has a long, mostly silent conversation with Fury over what Bucky’s role is going to be, and the two of them begin to be sent on missions together — not as Captain America and the Winter Soldier, or anything else, just Agents Barnes and Rogers, in standard SHIELD uniform, not a spangle to be seen. They’re just little milk-runs to start with, often with junior agents, but it’s good — so good — to have Bucky at his back again, and Bucky does better when he has a sense of purpose. Their success rate is near perfect, and the missions become more challenging, the other agents more senior, and he and Bucky are more likely to go have a couple of beers after a debriefing than to have a blazing row over nothing in particular and their entire lives in general.

Of course, with SHIELD, more challenging assignments also means weirder assignments. Sometimes they sit over their post-debrief beers, and Bucky laughs like he used to — free, however briefly, of the shadows he’s carried since sometime after he shipped out from New York, seventy-odd years and a couple of lifetimes ago.

Bucky’s sniggering quietly over the fact that their latest mission is almost literally a walk in the garden. Steve’s not so sure. There’s something about the mysterious plants that are making him uneasy, even aside from the fact that they’re growing unnaturally fast, taking over several city blocks and making whole buildings uninhabitable.

They find what seems to be the centre of the growth on one of the upper floors of the building. The growth is thick here, lush and verdant, and there’s something tremblingly expectant about the blowsy flowers.

There’s a… person? Being? Steve doesn’t even know, and he’s really more concerned with following their wild, excitable rants and vague almost-threats about the flowers and what they might bring.

Steve tries to distract them by talking, and Bucky’s got a bead on them with what Steve hopes is a tranq gun when the being yells something incomprehensible. There’s a soft sigh, and the room fills with sparkling gold glitter. One of the flowers has collapsed somehow. Bucky is wiping some of the gold off his face. He has the most peculiar expression. The manic ranting has stopped, and when Steve looks around, he finds that the being of indeterminate gender/species is gone.

He tries to work out where they’ve gone, but it’s getting warm, and the glitter keeps catching his eye and distracting him; the smell of it is thick and sweet and cloying, and somehow he can’t quite think straight, and he needs to make sure Bucky’s all right.

“Buck?” Steve calls, and his voice rings strangely in his ears. A noise comes from behind him and to his right, and he’s pretty sure that’s where Bucky had been before, so he heads towards it, stumbling a little. “Bucky!”

Bucky’s on his hands and knees, head dropped between his arms, and he’s heaving for breath, and — god, what if this stuff’s noxious? Steve’s okay, mostly okay, but he’s got the serum, and Bucky hasn’t, and what if something happens to Bucky?

He’s got his gloves off and reaching to check Bucky's pulse before his brain can catch up with the action. He presses his fingers to Bucky’s neck, and his skin is hot, too hot, and his pulse beats madly against Steve’s fingertips. He makes a sound like he’s choking, and Steve is seconds away from a full-blown panic, when Bucky chokes out, “Shit.” He jerks back from Steve’s touch, but he’s unsteady, even worse than Steve, and when he falls over, Steve can no more stop himself from reaching out than he could have walked away from the HYDRA camp in Austria.

They’re face to face, and against the sheen of gold covering his face, Bucky’s pupils are dark and wide in a way that Steve knows well, and his own breath catches to see it again after so very long. Bucky drops his head to Steve’s shoulder, then nuzzles against his neck above the line of his uniform. Bucky draws in a breath that shudders through him, and when he lets it out against Steve’s skin it sends shivers down his spine like a fever. There’s a fine sheen of sweat on Bucky’s forehead, and Steve bends down to kiss it.

Bucky surges to his knees, and his metal fingers tangle in Steve’s hair, holding his head still as he presses his mouth to Steve’s with the same kind of desperation Steve feels, but which they haven’t shared since the weeks after Zola’s lab. Bucky’s all teeth and tongue, and he tastes of stale coffee and himself under the rich sickly sweetness of the glitter that fills the room and his nostrils and his lungs.

He ignores the squawk of his communicator to stroke his tongue against Bucky’s, to savor the slick wet heat of it. He’s missed this so much.

When Bucky pulls back, Steve can’t hold back the whine from deep in his throat. Bucky pushes him back, holding him off with his left hand. He smiles at Steve, but it’s a small, bitter thing. “Guess we know how they’re planning to distract the city long enough to take it over, huh?” Bucky says, and it would be his usual, slightly sarcastic tone if he could catch his breath.

Steve just blinks at him for a second, then looks around. Three of the flowers have collapsed, the bright colors of the petals faded, and the air is full of gold. Pollen, he realizes. Then he remembers the hundreds, maybe thousands of buds sprouting all over the city; thinks for a second about trains, buses, buildings full of people, of strangers, all feeling like this, maybe worse. And there are children out there.

He lies on the floor and covers his eyes so he at least doesn’t have to see Bucky looking like every teenage wet dream he ever had, then reaches for his communicator. AD Hill is coordinating this mission, and she’s not a fan of the Avengers existing at all, but Steve doesn’t think he imagines the relief in her voice when she answers.

He explains as best he can, with his dick aching hard, and probably leaking a wet patch through the uniform, stressing the importance of not touching or breathing the powder. Not being able to see Bucky isn’t the same as being able to pretend he isn’t there, just as hard, wanting just as badly as Steve, even if it’s only for right now.

“Sex pollen?” Hill demands. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I don’t know wh-“ he says before he decides it doesn’t really matter. “I am not kidding you, not even a little bit.”

“Jesus Christ,” she mutters. Then, “Uh, we’ll send in a team to extract you and Agent Barnes, stat. Are you-“

“No,” Bucky pants.

Steve opens his eyes, which is a terrible mistake. Bucky’s kneeling with his knees spread, and his hand pressed to his dick. He’s probably just trying to find some relief from the pressure, but the sight out of him is shorting out what’s left of Steve’s brain.

“No,” Bucky says again. Steve isn’t even sure what he’s saying no to anymore. “You want to go back to SHIELD like this? ‘Cause I’m not a-” he grunts a little, and his hips are moving now, like he can’t help himself. “Not a fan of that plan.”

Bucky doesn’t want them to see him like this; Steve’s not too stupid from the stuff to fail to understand that. Under their eyes he’s been another person, been stripped of everything he thought he was, and put back together with the pieces of someone else. He’s killed and raged and screamed and wept, and he doesn’t want them to have this, too.

“No,” Steve says to Hill. “We’ll call.”

“Captain Rogers, are you s-“ He cuts the call and switches the communicator off.

Bucky’s half way out of his uniform by the time Steve looks up. It’s the first time he’s seen him without a shirt since, well, since, and the ache in his heart at all the new scars almost overwhelms everything else for a moment. The fine gold sheen clinging to him does nothing to disguise them.

“It’s- Skin,” Bucky stutters. “It’s better.” And then he’s sitting astride Steve’s waist, strong thighs pressing against his sides, as he leans in to pop the snap at the neck of Steve’s uniform and tug the zipper down. When he works his hands into Steve’s uniform, Steve understands what he means. The heat of Bucky’s hands on his skin is intense, and when Bucky leans forward, pressing them together, it’s like a sunburst going off in his chest.

Everything is somehow magnified, and Steve’s not sure how much of it is the pollen and how much is just the fact of having Bucky under his hands again. His palms tingle as they slide over Bucky’s naked back, and his hair is like silk around Steve’s fingers as he pulls him down to meet his mouth. The thrust of Bucky’s hips, driving his dick against Steve’s own, over and over, sets off sparks behind his eyes, even through their clothes.

They always had to keep things quiet at home, but now there’s nothing in the world that could stop the sounds Steve makes as Bucky yanks their uniforms off. There’s nothing in the world that matters more than this, than Bucky, and the feverish heat between them.

Bucky’s fumbling with his boots, and Steve doesn’t care, so he rolls them so Bucky’s on the floor.

“Christ, Steve,” Bucky moans as Steve licks his adam’s apple, scrapes his teeth over his collarbone, gently kisses the point where Bucky’s skin gives way to metal. Bucky’s dick is hot and hard and leaking against Steve’s stomach, and that and the feeling of Bucky’s fingers clutching at his hair are all he can think about. He kisses his way down over Bucky’s scars, old and new, runs his hands over the soft skin on the inside of Bucky’s thighs.

Bucky doesn’t last long once Steve gets his mouth on his dick, and Steve doesn’t last long in Bucky’s hand after that, but it’s not enough. They can’t get enough of just touching each other, and the pollen must cause some kind of amazing recovery effect because it seems like no time before they’re ready to go again.

Steve settles on his back with Bucky between his thighs, wraps his legs around his waist. More than anything he wants Bucky inside him, hot and alive, and fucking the ice right out of Steve’s veins.

“I don’t- Steve, I don’t have anything.”

“Uh-huh,” Steve murmurs, as he licks over the heavy pulse in Bucky’s neck.

“Steve, I can’t- oh shit,” Bucky groans as Steve brings one leg up to wrap it over Bucky’s hip, and Bucky’s dick is nestled right against his ass and it’s almost, almost perfect.

“Buck,” he whispers into Bucky’s ear, following it with his tongue.

Bucky hasn’t changed so much. His hips hitch helplessly, and that’s nearly it; it’s so nearly what Steve wants…

“How long’s it been, Steve?” Bucky asks against Steve’s jaw. His fingers dig into Steve’s hips like he’s trying to hold him down, and oh, that’s lovely.

“Steve!”

“What?” He opens his eyes – when did he close them? – and Bucky’s face is right there. Older, more worn than it used to be, but back next to Steve, and his pupils are dark in that way they get, just the thinnest ring of blue around them…

“How long, Steve?” Bucky thrusts his hips a little and Steve gets it.

“I dunno, ‘bout seventy years?” He squeezes Bucky’s ass. He thinks it’s tighter than it used to be. It’s nice. Firm.

“Oh Christ, you’re not funny.” Bucky bites Steve’s lower lip, and it’s supposed to be a punishment, but the sharp little pain zings down Steve’s spine. “How long since you had sex with anyone, Steve?”

“About seventy years,” he repeats. “Quit messing around, Buck.”

Bucky stills, like the eye of a hurricane. “What the hell am I going to do with you?”

Steve bites at the place where Bucky’s neck meets his shoulder. “’ve got some suggestions,” he mumbles against Bucky’s hot skin.

Bucky’s moving constantly, shifting against him, hands everywhere, and it’s damn distracting.

“Well stow ‘em,” Bucky says, trying to sound firm, but he’s as breathless as Steve. “You ain’t getting’ fucked today, either.”

Steve starts to protest, but Bucky kisses him quiet, tongue thrusting into Steve’s mouth in a tease, and all of Steve’s focus narrows down to that in an instant.

They pull apart, both breathless. “I want-“

“Yeah, no kidding,” Bucky says. “But we haven’t got anything, and I am not fucking you dry. No,” he says when Steve opens his mouth to argue – he can and has suffered all sorts of things for worse reasons than this. “Steve, quit bein’ a jerk.” Bucky’s hot and so hard between his legs, and Steve wants him so badly, but Bucky wouldn’t tell him no for no good reason.

He leans in to kiss Bucky's throat in apology, and Bucky cradles his face in his hand, tips his head up to kiss his mouth again. How did he ever live without this? These are teasing, nibbling kisses, and Steve doesn’t know how much teasing he can take.

Bucky’s fingers slide across his cheek in a rough caress, then edge between their lips, and Steve slips his tongue over and between them, sucks lightly at the tips, and watches Bucky’s eyes go vague with lust.

“Oh,” Bucky says, like he has an idea. Steve likes Bucky’s ideas. Bucky pulls down a little, fingertips against Steve’s teeth, and three fingers slip into his mouth, stretching him wide and oh.

Part of him wants to be embarrassed by the rough, muffled sounds coming from his throat, but shame seems very far away just now.

He’s so lost in it that he can barely keep track of what happens, but one minute he has three fingers in his mouth, holding down his tongue and testing his gag reflex, and the next his thigh is hooked over Bucky’s shoulder and there are two fingers pushing into his ass, wet and relentless.

It burns, a sharp clean fire amid the sultry, cloying heat of the room. It’s a stretch, like his body is somehow too small to encompass everything that’s happening. He hasn’t felt this good, this alive, in seventy-some years, in spite of the bleary fog of his thoughts.

He’s barely starting to adjust when Bucky starts working in a third finger, and any hope he ever had of thinking about anything flies out the window. Steve pulls Bucky down to him to kiss, if you can call it that, mouths open and moving together, tongues tangling wherever they meet, and lets go.

Somewhere in the fiery haze, Steve comes, but he wouldn’t be able to say exactly when, only that everything blurs into golden heat, and that as awareness seeps back in, Bucky comes against his hip, slick between them, and they collapse in a boneless sated heap.

When they wake, it’s cold. Where everything was shining and golden, it is now covered in a fine grey sludge, and there’s a faint smell of rot in the air. Bucky doesn’t say a word, just rolls away from Steve and starts pulling his clothes on. He won’t meet Steve’s eyes.

Steve has never felt anything as repulsive as the sludge. It’s cold and slippery, and just slightly sticky, and it’s everywhere.

He sits up to find his underwear and uniform, and realizes they’re still hanging, inside out, off one ankle, where they’re caught over the boot they never took off.

He pulls the y-fronts up to his thighs, then works that leg of the uniform back up, turns the other leg in the right way, works it on over his sock. The inside of the uniform is coated in sludge, and it’s cold and slippery against his skin but pulls on all of the hairs on his legs. He stands to pull the lot up, and his back, thighs, and ass all ache and pull, and he should be enjoying the afterglow, and instead the atmosphere is as cold and grey as the awful sludge. They’ve just had sex for the first time in-

The guilt hits him so hard, so fast, he wants to throw up. They’ve just had sex for the first time since Bucky… got back, because Bucky didn’t want to. He’s not- and they’re not- and Steve just-

He doubles over, hands on his knees, at the familiar sensation of straining for breath. What has he done?

“You okay?” Bucky asks him. He sounds a little concerned, and part of Steve wants to say that no, he isn’t okay at all, and let Bucky look after him. The rest of him is appalled at the thought of making Bucky deal with Steve’s problems on top of whatever he’s feeling now about the fact that he’s just had sex that he didn’t want to have, and Steve didn’t even try to protect him from that.

He waves his hand to say he’s fine and focuses on his breathing. In-two-three, out-two-three. He’d thought he was done with this, but apparently old habits die hard.

“Pick-up from the roof in five,” Bucky says. His tone is dull, and he’s facing the window, his back to Steve.

“Thanks,” Steve says, and casts about for his other boot. He finds it halfway across the room. The laces are snapped, and the leather is so stretched out he’ll never be able to wear it again. It’ll have to do get him home though. He shoves his foot into it, and pulls the ruined lace out, finds the longest piece, and loops it through two of the holes just to keep it on his foot in the meantime.

The ride back to HQ is tense and uncomfortable, the debriefing even more so, and when it’s all over, Bucky grabs his bag from his locker and heads to Avengers Tower and the rooms that Tony keeps there for them all.

Steve gets the subway back to Brooklyn, unable to shake the remembered cold creeping feeling of the grey sludge all over him, even after two long showers.

They barely speak for days. It’s nothing overt, and at least partly Steve’s own fault since he doesn’t opt out of his rotation on the Helicarrier, so he’s out of circulation for 72 hours. He calls in remotely for the briefing on the outcome of the mission and the initial findings of the eggheads working with the flowers. He doesn’t see Bucky on the screen, but when he speaks, Bucky sounds tired.

Steve’s rotation passes without incident, and when he checks in at HQ he’s told that Bucky’s on assignment and expected back in a couple of days.

He passes AD Hill in the mess. He’d kept his report as general as he possibly could and glossed over the effects of the pollen, and he was pretty sure Bucky would have done the same, but she more than anyone would have an excellent idea of just what happened and how that day.

Steve’s not ashamed of what he and Bucky had, he never was, but he’s well aware that this time is nowhere near as accepting as it likes to tell itself, and the fewer people who know, the safer they’ll be.

Hill’s look is sharp, but all she does is tell him to avoid the chili if he values his tastebuds, and carries on.

He’s still wide awake at 0330 when the text comes through from HQ to advise him that Bucky is back safe and sound from his assignment, although there’s nothing from Bucky himself. He’ll have the rest of the day off, and Steve makes up his mind to go and see him in the afternoon. He’s no coward, and he hates the feeling that he’s avoiding the consequences of his actions.

Decision made, he finally sleeps.

Bucky’s expression is resigned when he opens the door of his apartment at the Tower to Steve. He looks wretched, weary, and Steve really just wants to wrap his arms around him and never let go. But he’s already taken too much advantage, so he jams his hands in his pockets to keep them from reaching out.

“I’m sorry,” he says, as Bucky opens his mouth, presumably to ask what he’s doing here, or maybe just to tell him to leave.

Bucky closes the door behind him, and leans back on it. “What are you sorry about?” he asks, like he doesn’t know.

Steve’s honestly a little confused, because Bucky’s never been one to rub his nose in something, but if he wants to hear it out loud, that’s what Steve will do.

“I took advantage. Before. With the plants and everything. I knew you didn’t want m- didn’t want it. And I did it anyway, and I should’ve tried harder not to. So I’m sorry.”

“Oh shit, Steve.” Bucky looks horrified. “You didn’t do anything I didn’t want you to do.”

Suddenly, maybe irrationally, Steve’s furious. “Don’t you lie to me, James Barnes. You’ve been keeping me at arm’s length since you got back. Don’t you try and let me off the hook by pretending different now.”

“I’m not letting you off the hook, asshole,” Bucky snaps back, “and I’m not lying.”

“You barricaded yourself into your room at night, Buck. That’s a pretty clear message.”

“Oh Jesus, Steve. What, did you try to get in?”

“You were having a nightmare,” Steve says, because whatever he wants, it wasn’t creepy. Not until the sex pollen, anyway.

Bucky rubs his hands over his face, the metal of the left gleaming dull in the early afternoon light. “It was mostly to keep me in, you dumb lug,” he mumbles into his hands.

It doesn’t make any kind of sense to Steve, but sometimes that’s how it goes with Bucky.

“I don’t understand.”

Bucky pulls his hands down his face, so his fingers are covering his mouth. “I didn’t wanna wreck your entire apartment if I woke up not knowing where I was,” he says. There’s something else he’s not saying, but Steve’s not quite sure what it is, and whether he ought to just accept what Bucky is saying.

But faint heart never won… well. Bucky’s no maiden fair, but it’s close enough, all things considered.

“That’s not all of it though, is it?” he says, and Bucky’s wince is confirmation enough. “Come on, Buck. Can we just, get it out, whatever it is?”

“I don’t-“

“Bucky. We’ve been tiptoeing around this since you opened your eyes and were you again, and I don’t even know what it is. Just…” He throws his hands out to the sides. “Throw me a bone here. Anything.”

Bucky’s jaw works, and suddenly he looks like he’s ready for a fight. Maybe Steve shouldn’t have said ‘anything’.

“I’m sick of the mother hen act, Steve,” Bucky says, and the Winter Soldier could lie like it was the Word of God, but Bucky Barnes rubs his left thumb over the knuckles of his hand when he lies, and Steve doesn’t even need to see it anymore, because he can hear the soft clack of metal over metal. And it’s just as well really, because Bucky’s a hell of a guy to talk about the mother hen bit, with the way he used to fuss over Steve back in the day.

It’s not like this is their first fight since Bucky got back, but Steve has a feeling that this might be the big one. And he wants to get them through it, but Bucky has always been able to get him where he lived – Bucky has always been where he lived, and that’s not all rainbows and flowers for either of them.

“Well, sorry if watching you die made me a bit over-protective,” Steve snaps, and he knows, he knows, he shouldn’t but he still dreams of reaching out and falling short, and he can’t help it.

Bucky flinches a little, but that’s it. Of course it is, once his back’s up there’s no stopping him, never has been.

“I ain’t a kid, Steve, I ain’t your pet,” Bucky says, and now Steve’s really lost, and getting kind of mad. “I ain’t your responsibility,” he all but spits the word.

“I know you’re not, Buck. What the heck?”

Bucky stalks forward, and it’s the Winter Soldier’s movements, but the eyes are all Bucky in a fury. It’s an expression Steve hasn’t seen since before the war, usually after Steve had shown up after getting himself into trouble that Bucky hadn’t been able, or around, to get him out of.

“I don’t need you to look after me. You don’t hafta to take me for walkies or wipe my goddamn ass for me.”

And OK, if this is about Bucky’s dignity, it’s going to be Steve throwing the first punch this time. “Oh, is that a thing we fight about now? Because I’ve got about twenty years of you playing sick-nurse that I can throw into that ring.”

Bucky’s right up in his space now, and yes he’s angry, but there’s something a little desperate as well that makes Steve wonder what’s really going on here, and whether he can derail the whole thing before they somehow fall apart completely. “Come on, Buck, it’s what we do, it’s what we’ve always done. You and me, looking out for each other. I don’t understand why you’re mad about it now!”

“You don’t have to,” Bucky shouts. “I don’t need you to ditch your life to watch me be a mess.”

“I want to,” Steve shouts back. He’s not even sure why he’s shouting, but everything’s tied up in knots in his chest and he needs to get it out. “I missed you. I missed us. And I understand if you don’t want it. I do. I know it’s different now, we both are-“ Bucky snorts, and Steve knows Bucky thinks he hasn’t changed at all. “And I don’t care, but I-“ God, he hates this. He wants to grab Bucky and flat-out refuse to ever let go. But Bucky’s had so little choice in anything for so long, and Steve won’t take this choice from him, no matter how much Bucky’s choice might hurt Steve. “I will understand if you do.”

Bucky pulls back so fast that Steve can practically feel the air rush back in between them. Bucky leans against the door, his face turned away, staring out the window and probably not seeing anything but the inside of his own head. Steve can see his jaw working as he works out what to say.

Bucky sighs and it’s like watching the air go out of a balloon. Not so much leaning on the door now as slumped against it so it’s the only thing holding him up. His head falls back with a thud against the door.

He won’t meet Steve’s eyes, just stares up at the ceiling as he says, “I don’t want you tied to me outta some sort of obligation, okay? Just stop. Quit hanging around me because you feel like you gotta, and go, I dunno. Be free.”

“What?”

“I just…”

“Free,” he says, and he’s obviously adjusting to this strange new world, because he catches himself actually making the quote marks with his fingers. “Bucky, I had to do this for three whole years without you. I’ve been free, it was awful.” Even now, the cold hollow ache in his chest can suck the breath from his lungs as brutally as a New York winter ever did. “Please don’t make me be alone anymore.”

Bucky looks like he’s been slapped. “Steve,” he says, “come on. You’ve got your shiny new super-powered pals, you got a good life here. You don’t want some broken-down wreck of an ex dragging you down.”

“Have you gotten stupider or something? I’m not here out of pity, or whatever notion you’ve got into your leaky sieve of a brain. I missed you like hell, Buck. And I don’t know where you’re getting that ex bit from, either.” He folds his arms over his chest, not sure whether it’s defensive or aggressive. Maybe both.

“Come on Steve, it’s been seventy years. You don’t still have to-“

“Accidents don’t count,” Steve says, and maybe he’s being stubborn and stupid about this, but he doesn’t care, because he’s right. “So unless you’re breaking up with me right now, you can cut it out with the ‘ex’ bit.”

Bucky’s staring at him like he’s lost his mind, but he just glares back.

“You know I was fucking Natasha, right?”

“You didn’t remember me. You didn’t even remember you. It doesn’t count. Also,” he says over Bucky’s attempt to interrupt him, “even without your memories, you got good taste.”

“You are actually out of your ever-lovin’ mind, aren’t you?” Bucky says, but there’s a note of wonder to it. “So what, seventy years of murder and mayhem, and furthering the Soviets’ communist agenda, especially against my own damn country, and sleeping with whoever took my fancy all goes under the carpet and we just pick up where we left off?”

“I’m not stupid, Buck. I know it’s not that simple. I just- It’s-“ His breath goes out in some kind of mix of huff and sigh. “Isn’t everything hard enough already? Why do we have to make it worse? And why the heck should you get punished because they hurt you?”

“I still did it, Steve. Me and my metal hand. You can blame whoever you want, but I did it.”

“Could you have said no?”

“I didn’t want to say no. That’s kind of the point.”

“But if you had wanted to, could you have said no?”

Bucky looks down at his feet, where he’s poking the carpet with his bare toe. “It’s not that simple.”

“No,” Steve acknowledges. “I know it’s more complicated than that. But it’s basically more complicated because you feel bad about it, so maybe it kind of is that simple.”

“And what about Natasha?” Bucky challenges, like he really thinks that’s going to be some kind of deal breaker.

Steve shrugs, partly because he knows it’ll annoy Bucky. “Given the circumstances, I can’t fault you for Natasha. I’m kind of glad you had each other, really.”

Bucky stares, so Steve keeps talking. “And when you were given the choice, you both ended up here, so.”

“You really are a special kind of crazy.”

Steve grins, because none of this is sounding like Bucky breaking up with him.

“And what about you?” Bucky asks. “You really didn’t find someone to celebrate not being dead with?”

It’s light-hearted, so Steve doesn’t point out that at the time he hadn’t really felt very much like celebrating the fact that he wasn’t dead. Just keeps it to, “I didn’t want anyone else.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do with you?” It’s what Bucky said that day, and from way he winces, he’s only just remembered, himself once it was out of his mouth.

Steve hesitates just for a second, then, “I still have some suggestions about that.”

“Seriously.”

“I don’t know how many times I have to say it before you believe me, but I’m gonna keep saying it until you do.”

“I genuinely believe you are actually insane. I just want you to know that,” Bucky says, but he’s starting to lean away from the door.

“You keep saying that like it’s a thing that’s new. I thought you said you remembered everything.”

Bucky laughs, then looks a little startled, like he thought he’d forgotten how, and Steve would be perfectly happy to spend the rest of his life making Bucky smile in that way that eases the harsh lines around his eyes, shaping them into something warm and soft.

Steve takes a half step forward, then stops himself. It feels like it used to for a moment, but it isn’t really, and he’s not actually naïve enough to think that he can make it by sheer stubbornness alone. Which isn’t to say that he can’t try…

And maybe it works, because Bucky lifts an arm in a tentative sort of way, like he’s just as uncertain as Steve is, which is just all kinds of wrong, and then somehow they’re hugging and a little bit of tension that Steve didn’t realize he was still holding onto loosens in his chest and lets go.

Bucky’s metal fingers dig into his hip, like he’s gripping harder than he means to, and maybe the way Steve clings to Bucky is a tiny bit desperate, and one or both of them is shaking a little.

He doesn’t know how long they stand there, just soaking in the warm press of each other, but eventually he feels Bucky take a deep breath that becomes a giant yawn in his ear. Steve pulls back a little to meet Bucky’s eyes, and it’s clear he’s holding back another one. Bucky shrugs a little, rolls his eyes.

“Ain’t been sleeping too good lately,” he says, sheepish.

“You got no one but yourself to blame.”

“Hey, I was trying to look out for you, you ungrateful punk.”

“You were throwing yourself under a tank and dragging me with you, jackass,” Steve throws back, before ruining the impact with a jaw-cracking yawn of his own.

“I guess we should get some more sleep,” Bucky says, pulling back.

Steve hesitates, not sure whether that’s an offer for him to stay or if he should-

“Unless you’d rather-“ Bucky’s face gets that closed off look he’s had since he came back to himself, the one that makes Steve’s heart ache, and his fists itch.

“No!” Steve blurts out, then winces. “No,” he says in a more normal tone, “I just wasn’t sure if…”

Bucky’s metal fingers clench on his hip again. He wonders what it would take to still have bruises in the morning.

“Listen,” Bucky says, “I am too goddamn tired for anything more complicated than a quick handjob-“ He puts his hand over Steve’s mouth when Steve takes a breath to register his enthusiasm for this plan. “And I think we both deserve something better than quick handjobs, don’t you?” He doesn’t move his hand, which Steve takes to mean he’s not actually asking, so Steve just nods. If it’s what Bucky wants, it’s good enough for him.

And then Bucky’s stepping back, tugging Steve along with him by the wrist. “Come to bed with me, yeah?”

Steve smiles. He probably looks like a complete goof, but God, he’d really thought he would never get to have this again. Had thought, on the way to the Tower this afternoon that they were so broken they maybe couldn’t even be friends anymore. This is so much more than he dared to hope for.

Bucky smiles back, and it’s softer than anything else that Steve can remember seeing on his face.

“Yeah.”

Bucky’s bedroom is cool and dark. Bucky strips off his jeans and throws them in the corner, then sits on the edge of the bed, watching Steve take off his own clothes. There’s a peculiar little smile on Bucky’s face.

“What?” Steve asks, as he pulls his socks off and tucks them into his shoes.

“Nothing,” Bucky says, though it’s obviously a lie. Steve raises his eyebrows at him.

“I just… I remember this. Belt first, then shoes. Tuck your socks in your shoes. Then you’ll take your trousers off and hang them, then the shirt goes over the trousers on the hanger.” He waves his hand. “It’s nothing, it’s just… nice. It’s a nice thing to remember.”

A brief impulse urges Steve to do it differently, just to prove that he can, but Bucky has too few nice memories left for Steve to ruin one just because he doesn’t want Bucky to think he’s predictable. Anyway, the way Bucky watches his hands go to his fly is all the balm his ego needs. And this way he’ll be able to wear his clothes again without looking like a scruff.

The fact that the look on his face was no different when Steve was short and weedy doesn’t hurt any either.

Down to his y-fronts and undershirt, he steps toward the bed. Bucky doesn’t move back, just tilts his head back to look up at Steve, eyes wide and dark, every inch of him tempting Steve to touch.

He points a finger and touches it to Bucky’s forehead, pushing gently. His breath catches a little when instead of pushing back, Bucky falls backward to lie sprawled on the bed. Warm fingers trace lightly up his thigh, and he leans over Bucky, hands either side of his head. He’s about to go in for a kiss when Bucky yawns in his face.

He rolls over onto his back next to Bucky and laughs and laughs.

“God dammit,” Bucky sighs, and elbows Steve in the ribs.

“Come on, Romeo,” Steve says. “Get in the bed, and get some sleep.”

“Hey listen,” Bucky says, abruptly serious once they’re under the covers. “I wasn’t kiddin’ before about trashing your apartment. I have a… a nightmare or whatever, don’t try and wake me, okay? Get out of the bed.”

Steve nods. He’s not… unfamiliar with the problem. “Okay, but you have to promise the same, yeah?”

Bucky’s mouth quirks in a way that’s not reassuring. “Sure thing, pal.”

“Bucky.” He leaves it there, like a rock in a river. “Promise me.”

A frown, a slow blink, and then, “Yeah, okay. I promise.”

He’s still not convinced that Bucky understands that it wouldn’t have been the first time Steve’s apartment got busted up in a case of the night terrors, but it’s just too hard a conversation to have right now.

They lie next to each other, parallel, for about five minutes before Steve rolls to his side, his back to Bucky. A few moments later Bucky presses against his back, nose to the back of his neck. He waits for Bucky’s arm to slip around his waist until he realizes that he’s lying on his right side. That he might have messed this up without even trying. But even as he tenses, a cool weight wraps around him. It’s heavy and the joints are slightly rough, and it feels a little strange, but he’s prepared to work with a lot worse than ‘a little strange’ to have this back, so he laces his fingers through the metallic ones at his belly and says nothing. He feels, more than hears, Bucky’s slight huff against his neck as they settle down to sleep.

***

The carriage is burning, flames licking the walls and his boots, and he can’t find Bucky anywhere. He’s here somewhere, and Steve has to find him, has to get to him somehow, but when he finally wrenches the carriage door open, he steps through into a giant warehouse. And he’s been here before, he knows where he’s supposed to go – through the door there on the other side, only he’s sure it’s not supposed to take this long to get to it. When he finally gets through the door, the fire hasn’t reached this carriage yet, and Doctor Erskine is filling it with cold slippery sludge. He looks at Steve and says, “It was supposed to be happy.” Steve has no idea what he means, but Bucky’s not here, so he has to keep going, and when he steps out onto the rooftop it’s raining. The water is warm, but he knows it’s supposed to be cold and this is where Bucky is. He knows it, but he can’t find him and the Chitauri are trying to stop him, to keep him from getting to Bucky in time, but he can hear him. Steve can hear Bucky’s voice, saying his name, not desperate and frightened, or cold and disinterested. It’s warm and calm, and he’s got Bucky pinned face down on the bed, right arm pulled brutally high up his back.

“Hey buddy, you with me?” Bucky asks, in that same calm, gentle voice. “You’re okay, I’m right here.”

Steve doesn’t remember moving, but suddenly he’s pressed to the bedroom wall like he’s trying to dig through it with his shoulderblades. “I told you! I tried to tell you, and you promised and you didn’t listen. I could have hurt y-“

Bucky holds both hands out, palms open, and rolls his right shoulder. “Hey, easy. Nobody’s hurt, no harm done, see? Little stiff in the wrist and shoulder, no big deal.”

“I told you you shouldn’t and you didn’t listen, you should have listened,” Steve rambles, and he can hear himself, can hear how he sounds around the desperate gulps for air, but he can’t seem to stop.

“Nope. That’ll teach me a lesson, huh? Hey, come on, deep slow breaths, you know how this goes.”

Steve bites his tongue to try and stop the wild rush of words tumbling out of his mouth. In through the nose, out through the mouth. In-two-three, out-two-three. He’s hardly had to think about breathing in over five years — or over 70, depending on how you slice it — a couple of little upsets aside, and now twice in one week. Great.

As his breathing slows, Bucky moves off the bed. “I’m gonna get you some water, okay?”

Steve nods. In-two-three, out-two-three.

“Door open or closed?”

“Open. Make noise,” he wheezes.

“This is great, actually,” Bucky calls as he walks down the hall. “You're making me look like the well-adjusted one here. I can't wait to tell my therapist.”

Steve's pretty sure Bucky's not actually going to tell his therapist much about this at all, but he's keeping talking, and that's all Steve really needs – to hear Bucky, to know he's right here, and not still lost somewhere Steve can't find him.

“Mind you,” Bucky shouts a bit louder over the running of tap water in the kitchenette, “I'd give a lot to see your therapist's face when you try and explain this. Have you told them about us? Or are you gonna have to start with explaining what you were doing in bed with me in the first place?”

A tall glass appears in his field of vision and he reaches out for it. His hands are still shaking a little, and Bucky holds it until he's sure Steve's got a good grip.

Bucky sits next to him, back to the wall. “This okay?”

Steve nods and leans a little to rest his shoulder against Bucky's. He sips at his water. He hadn't even realized how dehydrated he is until he feels the cool water sliding down his throat, curling in his belly.

“So hey, what did you tell your therapist about us? I’m assumin’ you haven’t told anyone else.”

Steve closes his eyes and focuses on the water and gives a vague sort of grunt. Bucky doesn’t say anything, and Steve wonders if he’s got away with-

“Steve,” Bucky says, in that eerily calm tone that means Steve’s really in trouble. “All those therapy sessions you’ve been bullying me into going to.”

He hasn’t got away with it.

“Is it too much to expect that you’ve been going to yours?”

“I don’t-“

“If the next words that are about to come out of your mouth are ‘don’t need to’, we are gonna be having some very serious words,” Bucky says lightly, but Steve knows better than to take them as anything but dead serious.

“I tried to tell you,” he counters, for whatever good it’ll do him. Bucky’s always been like a dog with a bone once he’s got ahold of something.

“Yeah, and I didn’t listen as good as I should have. But you’re not even doing anything to help yourself, here.”

“I don't really want to talk about it,” he says.

“Jesus, Steve. No one wants to talk about it. It's not like I enjoy spending six hours a week reliving my Soviet glory days and talking about how nothing feels quite real because it's all just a little off, like the whole world's two degrees off its axis, but it helps. You dumbass.”

Steve’s never wanted to pry into what Bucky talks about with his therapist, it always seemed intrusive, and for all the things Steve couldn’t do to help Bucky, allowing him some privacy was such a small thing. Now he feels it like a stab in the gut, that even after all this time, Bucky still feels that way and Steve had no idea. Bucky never told him, and maybe it’s stupid to think it, but he feels like he should have known, or what’s the point of him?

“What was I supposed to say, Buck?” He addresses an invisible audience. “'Sorry I'm not very excited about your bright sparkly new century, but my heart fell off a train and died seventy years ago, and I don't quite know what to do without it.' I'm not saying that to a complete stranger.”

Bucky's silent, and it slowly dawns on Steve what he's just said. They’d never really talked about it, never needed to. They'd been an inseparable unit for twenty years, there was nothing that needed to be said.

And now he's gone and said it. He's debating whether he should say something more and risk making it worse or just pretend he didn't say anything at all when Bucky takes the option away.

“That's real poetic, Steve. You gonna buy me flowers, too?” he asks, elbowing Steve hard in the ribs.

“Sure,” Steve says, relieved to have a direction at all. “I'll buy pretty flowers for my pretty girl.”

He barely gets the word 'girl' out before Bucky wrestles him to the floor in a headlock, rubbing his metal knuckles hard in Steve's hair. The glass of water ends up all over them, and there's only one way to respond to this. He digs his own fingers up into Bucky's armpit, and apparently all the Russian brainwashing in the world can't break Bucky of the squeak and flinch response he's always had to that particular maneuver.

It's only a short tussle, they're both too tired to bother for long, and Steve ends up lying on his back with his head on Bucky's belly, Bucky's fingers combing through his hair. He's perfectly happy to just lie there, until Bucky stops and smacks his head instead.

“Come on, chump, get up. There's a bed right there, I'm not sleepin' on the damn floor.”

Steve rolls to his feet, and shivers a little at the cool air hitting his shirt where it’s damp from the spilt water and the sweats from his nightmare.

“I, uh-”

Bucky gets up and heads for a closet. “Go shower, I’ll change the sheets.”

Steve hesitates, and Bucky rolls his eyes. “What, like you think this has never happened to anyone else before. Go on, shower’s that way.” With that, he throws a towel at Steve’s head.

Contrary to popular opinion, Steve does know when he’s beat (it just isn't very often, and usually only by Bucky), so he obediently heads for the shower.

The shower has three heads. At first Steve isn’t quite sure what to do with that. He knows that Stark’s philosophy of life is pretty much that if one thing is good, more must be better, but what the heck is he supposed to do with three shower heads?

Then he gets in it.

The water’s hot and plentiful, and seems to come from all sides. He meant to just jump in and wash off quickly, but the hot water beating down seems to wash away all sorts of tension he didn’t know he was feeling, and when he opens his eyes, Bucky’s sitting on the lid of the john, watching him.

“Pretty great, huh?”

“Do you think I could get one of these at the apartment?”

Bucky just grins, and lets his eyes rove over Steve in a pretty lecherous way. Steve’s not above maybe flexing just a little for an appreciative audience.

“You’re a pervert,” Steve says as he soaps his chest again, completely unnecessarily.

“At least I’m a happy pervert,” Bucky answers. “Although I’d be happier if you’d drag your pecs back to bed so I can go back to sleep.”

Steve rinses quickly and shuts off the shower with a pang of regret, but waggles his eyebrows at Bucky in the most ridiculous way he can manage.

“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” he asks, and Bucky throws the towel in his face again. It’s as soft and fluffy and enormous as one would expect from Stark.

“Haha, wiseguy,” he hears Bucky say through the fluff of the towel as he dries his hair. “Some asshole woke me up about two hours into a good sleep.”

Steve wraps the towel around his waist and eyes his briefs from yesterday with disfavor. Not that it would be the first time he’s had to make them go longer than a day, but between the shower and the absence of the weight of grim anticipation that’s been hanging over him for days now he feels clean and light, and yesterday’s underpants have no appeal.

“When the hell did you get fussy?” Bucky asks, and more fabric hits Steve in the face when he looks up to reply. It’s a clean pair of sweats, so he swallows his ruder reply and goes with, “It’s nice to have the option to be fussy. Although I don’t think that not wanting to put yesterday’s underpants back on is exactly fussy.”

Bucky’s eyes go distant and his mouth grim, and Steve wants to kick himself. For all Bucky’s had more awake-time over the years to get accustomed to everything that’s changed, Steve’s the one who’s further from hand-to-mouth times where necessity rules. He opens his mouth to say he doesn’t even know what, when Bucky shakes off whatever thought or memory Steve had kicked up with his stupid big mouth.

“Fussy little punk,” Bucky says, and if his smile is a little tight at least it goes all the way to his eyes.

They crawl back into the bed. Bucky tries to change which side they’re on, but Steve grabs his left hand, and pulls the cool weight around him. It’s- There’s something about the fact that there’s no one else in the world it could be, and no other time they could be. Something weirdly comforting, even if that isn’t how Bucky thinks of it.

The bed warms up quickly, and Bucky falls asleep, his chest rising and falling gently against Steve’s back, his breath warm against the back of his neck. After a while he starts to snore and Steve drifts off to the soothing familiarity of it.

He doesn’t really sleep, although he dozes heavily. There’s a point when Bucky stirs behind him with a little noise of distress, and Steve gets ready to roll out of the bed in a hurry, but Bucky settles and Steve goes back to counting breaths and letting his mind drift.

Growing up in a dorm full of boys of various ages, he’d learned early to politely ignore guys’ morning wood, but it’s a whole different matter when it’s pressed up snugly against his ass. He’s enormously tempted to do something about it, but Bucky’s tired and Steve’s already woken him up once already. Of course, this would be a much nicer way for him to wake up, hard in Steve’s mouth, and it wouldn’t be the first time… But. Bucky said it was okay, but Steve can still feel the crushing weight of guilt after the sex that hadn’t been either of their idea.

So he lies there and waits for Bucky to wake up, and then maybe he can talk him into it. It’s not all about the sex, but it has been a damn long time, and it’s easy to imagine how it might go – Bucky nuzzling Steve’s neck, taking his time stretching him out, just one finger till Steve’s so hot he’s practically begging for more, Bucky’s mouth hot and damp against Steve’s ear as he whispers all kinds of filthy promises. Or maybe he starts with two fingers straight off, just stretching him enough that it only burns a little but doesn’t hurt when he pushes in.

He sort of wants to touch himself, he’s hard, he’s so hard, and Bucky is pressed warm against his back, and it wouldn’t take much, not much at all, and it would be the best wank he’d had this century, but there’s something about just lying there, warm and safe, with Bucky hard against his ass and he sort of wants to just enjoy the anticipation. Because Bucky is here, right here with him, and he doesn’t want to wake him, but when he does wake up, Steve is pretty sure he’s going to make it worth his while.

Bucky’s arm tightens around him a little in his sleep, and his hips move restlessly, pressing against Steve, and though he breaks it off as quick as he can, Steve can’t hold in a little moan. He feels Bucky freeze behind him, although his breathing doesn’t change. He’s used to Bucky sleeping like a log and taking half an hour to wake up properly in the morning, although that had changed some even by the time Steve made it into the war. He never quite got used to it, though.

“’s just me,” he murmurs, keeping his voice low, and Bucky lets out a breath that seems to go forever until he’s slumped against Steve’s back.

“Sorry,” he mumbles against Steve’s shoulder.

Steve’s not even sure what Bucky’s sorry for, too focused on the touch of Bucky’s lips on his body, even if it’s as innocent as talking into his shoulder. “’S okay,” he says, because it seems like a pretty safe response, but his voice has gone rough, and Bucky leans up on his elbow to peer at Steve’s face, which of course gives Steve away every time.

“You starting without me?” Bucky asks, voice fond.

“No,” Steve mutters, embarrassed by how hot and bothered he can get over nothing much. “I was just thinking.”

Bucky presses himself in tight along Steve’s back and nuzzles at his neck. “Yeah? You thinking anything particular?”

And because it isn’t just about the sex, although he would really, really like for it to be that too, he says, “Mostly that you’re a jerk.”

The rare sound of Bucky’s laughter mostly makes up for how clingy and desperate Steve is feeling.

There’s some wriggling behind him that doesn’t help anything, and then Bucky is stroking his warm flesh and blood hand up Steve’s back and pressing kisses randomly. His hand wanders over the small of Steve’s back and curves over his ass, thumb dragging gently along the crack while Bucky presses his dick against the back of Steve’s thigh.

“Wait,” Steve says, and Bucky goes dead still behind him, which wasn’t what he- “No, just wait,” he says as he twists around to end up nose to nose with Bucky, and he can press a kiss to his mouth. “Hi.”

He really hopes that one day Bucky will stop looking lost and confused by things like this. The expression clears in moments, replaced by a slightly dopey looking smile that Steve’s going to tease Bucky about like hell, some day when everything’s a little easier, when they’re a little easier.

It’s fairly early in the morning, and the sun is low, sending soft warm light rolling through the bedroom door they’d left open the night before and sneaking around the edges of the blinds. It eases some of the grim lines around Bucky’s eyes and mouth, and if Steve pretends that the knuckles brushing against his cheek aren’t smooth metal, they could almost be back in Brooklyn, in old Brooklyn. He’s not going to, though. They’ve been through so damn much, and had so many lucky breaks to get here, he’s nothing but grateful for now.

“Hi,” Bucky says back, leaning in to kiss Steve back. Steve rolls onto his back, tugging Bucky over him, not breaking the kiss.

Steve runs his hands down Bucky’s sides, down to his thighs and up the back of the boxer shorts he’d slept in to cup his ass, which is definitely firmer than it used it to be. Bucky’s hand, his real one, cups his cheek as they kiss, and kiss, and kiss.

He wants to make all kinds of declarations, but he’s pretty sure Bucky won’t let him get away with any more, so Steve presses them into Bucky’s skin with lips and hands instead.

“Jesus, Steve,” Bucky gasps, eyes going dark when Steve wraps his legs around Bucky’s hips and presses up against the hard heat of his body. “You in some kind of a hurry?”

“Yes,” Steve says firmly, “We’ve got about seventy years to catch up on, and I want to get started.”

“The tragic thing is,” Bucky breathes into the soft skin behind Steve’s ear, “No one would ever believe me if I tried to tell them that Captain America, the perpetual virgin, is actually a complete horn dog.”

“I’m not a virgin!” Steve turns his head to look at Bucky, and nearly clocks him in the face with his chin.

“I know, buddy.” Bucky grins at him, wide and bright, with a filthy edge. “I was there, remember?”

“And no one says horn dog anymore, either.”

“What, are you going to criticize me the whole time now?” Bucky asks, as he sticks his hands down the front of the track pants Steve’s wearing to cup his dick. “How about, ‘Captain America’s a slut for my dick’? Does that work?”

Steve’s so torn between laughter and horror he’s mostly distracted from Bucky’s hand on him. “Never say that to me again. Never say that to anyone. Never say it again at all. That’s terrible.”

Bucky laughs and kisses him, moaning when Steve sweeps his tongue into his mouth. Bucky sucking on his tongue is almost more than Steve can take. He rolls them over so he’s straddled across Bucky’s hips, holding his wrists to the pillow above his head, but lightly, ready to pull back the second Bucky looks uncomfortable. It’s strange, not knowing anymore what Bucky will like and what will send him at best retreating off into his head, and at worst going into violent defense.

The way Bucky pushes his hips up against Steve says he likes this. Steve tightens his grip and leans in over him to kiss lightly at his lips, his cheek, his jaw, everywhere, not stopping long enough to let Bucky catch his lips. He pulls back a little to watch as he rolls against Bucky, sliding his dick against Bucky’s, and it’s amazing even through their pants, so he does it again.

Bucky’s fingers curl around Steve’s where they’re holding his hands down like he’s the last solid thing to hold on to in the world. “This is going to be over real fast if you keep that up.” He pulls Steve’s hips down tighter against him anyway. “And I really wanna get in you this time.”

Steve leans in for another light kiss. “You’re all talk anyway.”

“Oh, you think so?”

“You got anything here?” he asks, and watches the slightly dazed expression slide right off Bucky’s face, replaced first with panic and then frustration.

“Fuck!” he yells. Then, “Why are you laughing? This isn’t fucking funny!”

He smoothes his hands down Bucky’s chest and sits up. “I think we should probably check the drawers before we panic. Stark probably had some put in here somewhere, either out of courtesy or to try and freak you out. Knowing Stark, probably a bit of both.”

Steve is definitely starting to get a handle on Tony. Sure enough, there are condoms and little packets of lube in a cabinet in the bathroom, right next to a couple of new toothbrushes and disposable razors, all still in their packaging.

Bucky grabs several packets of lube, then lifts his eyebrows when Steve grabs a couple of condoms as well.

“What, are you worried about getting pregnant? I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works, buddy.”

Steve punches him in the shoulder. “Funny guy. You wanna leave a mess on Stark’s sheets for his housekeeping people to find?”

Bucky’s only response is to grab a facecloth off the towel rack. “Come on.”

They throw the packets and the cloth on the bed by the pillows and turn to face each other. For a moment it feels awkward, and Steve wonders whether they’re just playing pretend that they’re fine, that everything’s fine; whether they’ll ever really be as easy together as they used to be, or whether they’ll be tripping over moments of disconnection for the rest of their lives.

“How do you want to do this?” Bucky asks, and Steve decides that the best way to get through the awkward moments is to ignore them. He yanks the track pants off and leaves them by the side of the bed, then gets up on his knees and elbows and looks over his shoulder at Bucky, who screws his eyes closed and takes a deep breath.

“Jesus Christ, Steve.”

The bed dips as Bucky gets on his knees behind him, and this is finally really going to happen.

Bucky’s hand is warm and strong on his right hip, and there’s a pause before cool metal comes to rest hesitantly on the left.

“It’s okay, dummy,” he says without looking back.

Bucky’s palm slaps against his hip. “You’re a dummy,” he says, but both hands settle more firmly on him, thumbs smoothing up and down over his ass.

“Are you just going to look all morning, or what?”

Bucky reaches past him for one of the packets of lube, and Steve’s stomach clenches a little in anticipation at the sound of the tearing foil. He shifts a little, resettling himself, restless as he waits. And then Bucky’s finger is sliding into him, warm and slick, and when it quickly becomes two, he can’t help pushing back for as much as he can get, or hold back the noise he makes deep in his throat. Bucky teases a bit, but not for long, just enough for Steve to loosen around him. They’ve neither of them the patience for this to be the long, slow kind of screw, but there’ll be time for that later, when the edge of the need is less keen.

When Bucky pulls his fingers away to open the condom packet, Steve sits up to watch him roll the skin, much thinner than they’re used to from before, over his dick. He’s licked his lips before he even realizes he’s doing it. He really wants it in his mouth, hot and thick against his tongue, without the foggy effects of the pollen clouding his mind; wants to focus on taking Bucky apart piece by aching piece with his mouth, his hands, not just be driven by the mindless impetus to touch. Later. He has to believe, for now at least, that they’ll have all the time in the world.

Instead Steve presses his mouth to the scowl twisting Bucky’s face, the corners of his eyes, the pout in his lower lip. He wraps an arm around Bucky’s waist to turn him, and presses him down into the pillows. Bucky lets Steve arrange him, but there’s a wariness around his eyes that Steve is determined to get rid of, however long it takes.

There is no golden haze this time, no desperate compulsion to get off as fast as possible, just him and Bucky and the seventy years of ice and blood that drove them apart but also somehow brought them back together.

He settles over Bucky’s stomach, thighs spread wide and balls resting on the tight muscle of Bucky’s abs. Bucky tugs at him, his arm, his waist, pulls him down to press together, chest to chest. He stretches up to kiss Steve and only breaks it off when Steve reaches back to hold his dick and slide back onto it. Bucky’s entire body tenses, curling in on itself, as Steve pushes himself further down, further back, taking as much of Bucky as he can, as quickly as he can. The stretch, the feeling of his body shifting and adjusting to take Bucky in is both harder and better than he remembered. Bucky presses his face into the crook of Steve’s shoulder. Steve doesn’t think he’s breathing.

Steve takes a second to get used to the fullness, the sense of taking and being taken, owning and being owned, of belonging. He really wants to see Bucky’s face though, watch his expressions, so he pushes lightly against Bucky’s chest. He can feel the twist of scars beneath his fingers as he raises himself to sit up, but he doesn’t linger over them, not this time. He runs his hands over Bucky’s chest to his biceps to gently push Bucky’s arms up over his head again. The left is cool and smooth except for the slight lip of the articulations. That’ll wait, too.

Bucky twists his head to press his face into the pillows, but on his back like this there’s nowhere to hide the way his eyes slide shut and his mouth goes slack for just a moment, before he bites his lip. His breathing is rough, and so is his voice when he says, “Jesus, Steve.”

Circling his hips pulls a groan from Bucky that sounds like it’s being dragged from somewhere deep down, so he does it again. Bucky’s helpless thrust in response gives him a rush like nothing else has managed in this century.

Bucky twists his wrists and Steve lets go of them immediately, hands hovering awkwardly in the air and ready to back off as far as Bucky needs – not enthusiastic, but ready. But Bucky rocks his hips and mutters, “Need-” before he grabs Steve’s wrist, pulls him back down to lie against his chest. Bucky threads his fingers through Steve’s hair and tugs, pulling him down to meet Bucky’s mouth.

The kiss is mostly tongue and gasped breaths, both wanting too badly, too urgently for any kind of finesse. Steve’s dick is pressed between them, and lying sprawled like this gives Bucky enough control to change the angle of his thrusts, to hit that place inside that makes stars explode up and down Steve’s spine. Steve knows he’s moaning like something out of a blue movie, but all he can really hear is Bucky urging him on, muttering encouragement and filth against Steve’s mouth, cheek, neck and he comes so hard it’s a little like dying, like being reborn.

Beneath him, Steve feels Bucky arch into a tight, helpless curve as he comes with Steve’s name on his lips.

***

“Am I going to get a turn, or is this a new thing?” Bucky mumbles against Steve’s temple, as he cards his fingers — his metal fingers — through Steve’s hair.

Steve traces his own fingers gently over the scars that pepper Bucky’s body. The slash where some Brooklyn thug pulled a knife in a fist fight, the round puckers of German bullet wounds, the dozens of mysterious marks left by years as a fighting machine that he doesn’t know the exact origins of and doesn’t need to. He just concentrates on learning the new topography of Bucky’s body.

“Hmmm?”

“I don’t remember you being this insistent on getting my dick,” Bucky says, his voice still slightly blurred by the afterglow and both arms wrapped firmly around Steve. “I was just wondering if you’ve changed your mind about fucking me.”

Finally lying here, skin to skin with Bucky, warm and loose and safe, Steve finally feels the last of the ice under his skin melt away like the first warm morning in spring, but he doesn’t really feel like trying to explain that to Bucky, so he just stretches his face up to press a kiss to the pout of Bucky’s lower lip.

“I like your dick. And I figure I’ve got about half an hour before I’m good to go again.” It’s probably more like twenty minutes. It has been a long time. “How long do you think you’ll last if I start now?”

He strokes his hand over Bucky’s ass and down the back of his thigh, spreading his legs a little wider so he can run the tips of his fingers up the crack of his ass and smirks a little as Bucky shivers.

Steve stretches his hand out for a new packet of lube and twists so that he’s leaning over Bucky instead of cuddled up against him. Bucky’s sprawled out and more relaxed than Steve’s seen him since before the war, and his pupils are blown dark. His head tips back in the start of an arch that runs all the way down his spine as Steve slides one finger inside him.

Steve presses his lips to Bucky’s ear and whispers, “Do you think I can get you to ask nicely by then?” before sucking his earlobe.

Bucky’s breath catches and speeds up, and Steve presses his advantage with a second finger that makes him moan softly.

“You are such an asshole sometimes,” Bucky says, but it’s soft and breathless, so Steve just licks over the pulse in his neck as he goes for more lube. Bucky makes an objecting sort of noise when Steve pulls his fingers out, and again when he just rubs his fingers lightly around the edges instead of sliding them back in. It was an off-the-cuff comment, a tease, but Steve’s starting to wonder now if he really could make Bucky beg.

He mouths at the points of Bucky’s collarbones and presses the pad of his thumb to the soft skin behind Bucky’s balls.

“You do remember that some of us don’t have superpowers of recovery, right? I will not be getting it up again anytime real soon,” Bucky says, trying to be a smartass. Steve just hums and runs his teeth lightly up and down Bucky’s neck because that’s not really the point.

Steve’s not really sure what the nerves are like around the join between Bucky’s left shoulder and the metal arm, but now seems like a good time to find out, so he sets his teeth where Bucky’s neck slopes down to the shoulder and worries it. It’s low enough that it shouldn’t matter if it leaves a mark, and it’s entirely worth it to make Bucky moan and squirm like that. He lips and sucks more gently down toward where flesh gives way to metal.

“You don’t have to-“ Bucky starts, and Steve has a fair idea where he’s probably going with that, so he curls his fingers to brush against Bucky’s prostate while he licks the seam of his arm, tasting soft salty skin and the tang of smooth metal, warm from Bucky’s body.

“Fuck you, Rogers,” Bucky chokes out, hips moving against Steve’s fingers.

“We did that already,” Steve replies as smoothly as he can while rubbing his cheek against the slight scratch of the hair on Bucky’s chest. “You got all worried about getting yours. So now you’re getting yours,” he says, and strokes his tongue over Bucky’s nipple.

He watches Bucky’s face as he licks patterns across his torso, the scars old and new, the tight definition of muscle, the sharp cut of his hips. It’s a little strange, because Steve’s been so familiar with Bucky’s body for so long that the new bulk of muscle is a little disorienting. But Bucky had taken it in stride when Steve showed up with an extra six inches and hundred pounds of muscle, so Steve owes him nothing less.

Bucky’s face is older than in Steve’s memories, with grim lines around the eyes and mouth that Steve will never be able to erase, but most of his expressions are the same; the way his eyes close and flutter like he’s trying to keep them open but can’t, the twist of his mouth. The way he bites his lip to keep quiet is new, and Steve isn’t a fan. He wants to hear every noise he can get Bucky to make.

Steve sticks his tongue into Bucky’s belly button to get his attention. It works a little too well, and he nearly gets kneed in the stomach, but it does work. He reaches up to gently run his finger along Bucky’s lip. “When did you start worrying about keeping quiet?”

He knows exactly when, but he’s pretty sure he gets the point across. Although it’s difficult to be sure of anything much when Bucky sucks his finger, running his tongue over the pad.

But he has a plan, and no intention of getting distracted from it, so he licks his way down the sharp cradle of Bucky’s hips. He’s grateful for his serum-fast reflexes when he puts his mouth to Bucky’s dick and Bucky’s hips jerk, leading an arch up his spine. Steve’s just quick enough to avoid an unfortunate teeth incident, but he holds Bucky’s hip firmly with his free hand.

“Shit, Steve,” Bucky pants, which will do nicely for a start.

Bucky’s dick is soft and warm in his mouth, and tastes sharply of come and latex. But when he takes it all in his mouth and sucks gently, Bucky’s hand grabs the back of Steve’s head, fingers clenching in his hair like he’s holding on for dear life, and Steve decides it’s entirely worth it.

“Come on, fuck.” Bucky’s teeth are gritted and he can’t keep his hips still. “I told you it’s not going to happen, it doesn’t matter what you do.”

Steve shuffles back to lie between his thighs and gently pulls his fingers from Bucky’s ass. Bucky makes a disgruntled sound and Steve kisses the inside of Bucky’s thigh just because it’s there and he can.

“Does it feel bad?” he asks.

Bucky glares at him. Steve stares patiently back.

“You’re sucking my dick, of course it doesn’t feel bad. Knucklehead.”

“Do you want me to stop doing it?”

“I… Look, if you want to do it, you carry right on, I ain’t gonna stop you. I’m just sayin’ you’re not going to get anywhere with it anytime soon.”

Steve looks up, trying to read Bucky’s face. He’s saying yes, but with everything that’s happened, Steve’s not accepting anything short of enthusiastic consent.

Bucky’s fingers sift through Steve’s fringe. “It just seems like a waste of effort, is all.”

“I like it,” Steve insists. “And if it makes you feel good, then it isn’t a waste of time. For once in our lives, we don’t have to get anywhere in a hurry. I’d kind of like to take some advantage of that. But not,” with a pinch to Bucky’s hip, “if all you’re going to give me is, ‘Carry on if you’re enjoying yourself.’”

“So you’re just going to waste your time on my limp dick? I don’t really see the appeal.”

Steve decides it’s time to break out the big guns, and fixes Bucky with his best ‘Stern Captain’ look. “I would very much like to suck your dick and finger you till you’re a sobbing mess, and your dick’s so hard you think you’re going to die, and then I want to fuck you for as long as I possibly can. Although to be fair, I can’t swear that’s going to be all that long, given that I haven’t been in you since the 1940s.”

Bucky exhales on something that hovers between a laugh and a sigh. “Sobbing mess, huh?” he says speculatively. “Sounds like a good time to me.” He spreads his thighs wide around Steve’s shoulders. “Jump to it then,” he says with a filthy grin.

It’s different than normal, the texture of the skin, the soft warmth in his mouth. Steve thinks vaguely that maybe it’s good, that maybe now’s the time for different. Mostly he thinks that the little hitches in Bucky’s breath are the best thing he’s heard in a long time.

By the time Bucky is hard and leaking in Steve’s mouth, Steve is aching, pressing himself against the mattress for the slightest bit of relief. Bucky is writhing against the four fingers Steve has inside him, and Steve’s jaw aches. He has no idea how long they’ve been doing this, but he feels like he’s flying.

Bucky’s fingers are clenched tight in the short hair at the back of Steve’s head, and Steve can hear him chanting his name. “Steve, Steve, just- Steve, c’mon, Christ.”

Steve pulls away from Bucky’s dick with a long, slow suck that makes Bucky moan, “Fuck,” helplessly. It’s close enough to begging for Steve, and he really just needs to be inside Bucky now.

He stays put for a moment though, waiting for Bucky’s eyes to flutter open before he crawls up along his body. Neither of them looks away, and when Steve leans in to kiss him, Bucky licks the taste of himself off Steve’s tongue.

“Come the fuck on, Steve.”

“You’re such a romantic,” Steve teases as he slides his fingers out and pushes Bucky’s leg up over his shoulder.

“I’ll be romantic as hell later, just hurry up and fuck me now, Jesus.”

Steve wouldn’t normally let that obvious an opportunity to mock just pass by, but they’re too urgent now, both too close to the raw edge for joking around. He just manages to remember to get a rubber on before he’s pushing into Bucky. He slides in, and it’s wet and easy.

There’s a desperate moan, and he’s not sure which of them made it.

Bucky wraps around him, arms around his back and shoulders, legs around his hips, drawing him in closer, deeper. Everything about him is strong and warm, even the fingers of his metal arm, which dig, sharp and reckless, into his shoulder.

Steve tucks his face into the crook of Bucky’s shoulder and tries to take a deep breath to get himself together, to focus on making this good for Bucky, but Bucky’s having none of it – he kicks Steve in the thigh with his heel. It’s a lot more forceful than it used to be. Steve gives up and lets go. He gracelessly shoves in with his hips, and Bucky grunts roughly before huffing, “Fuck, yes.”

After that, it’s short and brutal. Steve squirms his hand between them to grab Bucky’s dick and squeeze a little, biting his lip hard to try and keep it together long enough to feel Bucky come apart under him before he can’t hold back anymore and it’s all white vision and tight spine as Steve loses himself in the feeling of being wrapped up in Bucky again.

They lie as they are for a while as their breathing slows back to normal — Steve’s more quickly than Bucky’s, always now. Until Bucky’s leg twitches and he shoves at Steve, who rolls to one side.

“Oww, fuck,” Bucky says, rubbing at his hip. “Man, this was easier when you only weighed about a hundred pounds.”

Steve reaches over to rub his hip as well and takes the opportunity to kiss Bucky’s neck, since it’s just there.

“On the plus side, you don’t have to worry about whether I’m going to have an asthma attack halfway through, anymore,” Steve replies. He digs the tips of his fingers into the place he can feel Bucky’s muscles spasm. Bucky grunts, tenses, and after a second relaxes with a sigh.

Bucky turns his head and presses his mouth against Steve’s shoulder in what would probably be a kiss if either of them had more energy.

But this isn’t their own apartment, and of all places, Stark’s place is one of the last where they can expect a reasonable amount of respect for their privacy. Stark does seem to have an awful lot in common with SHIELD, given how much he despises them. Then again, Steve supposes the same could be said for his relationship with Howard. At least the man’s consistent in his neuroses.

Steve takes care of the condom and reaches up with one hand to feel around for the facecloth. He gently wipes as much of the lube as he can from Bucky’s thighs and ass before swiping the soft terrycloth across first Bucky’s belly and then his own before carefully folding the edges of the cloth around the mess in the middle and dropping it over the side of the bed.

“Why aren’t we doing this at home?” Bucky asks, heaving a sigh.

“Because you’re a jerk,” Steve says as he turns back in to wrap himself around Bucky. He’s clinging like a limpet and he knows it, but he’s pretty sure Bucky is clinging right back, so as long as neither of them says anything about it they’re fine.

“Oh yeah.” Bucky tucks his face into Steve’s shoulder and mumbles, “That.”

Steve kisses his temple, his ear. “It’s not like I didn’t already know you were stupid since you swallowed a penny on a dare when we were seven.”

“Thanks a bunch, Captain Asshole,” Bucky snarks back, but he settles more snugly against Steve.

“That’s Captain Assmerica to you, soldier.”

Bucky goes still, but there’s glee in his voice as he says, “What?”

“You haven’t heard that one? Captain Assmerica. Usually plastered across pictures of my butt.”

“Are you serious? I mean,” Bucky pulls back to look Steve in the eye, which isn’t what Steve had been going for, but he’s not wallowing so it’s worth it. “It’s a great ass, don’t get me wrong, but seriously?”

Steve can feel his mouth twitching. “Come on, do you really think I could make that up?”

“It’s true, you’re not that creative.”

“Hey, I’m plenty creative. Just more so when I’m thinking about your ass than mine.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

Bucky isn’t moving, so Steve leans forward to press himself along the line of Bucky’s body, and his face into the warm curve of Bucky’s neck. “I’m delightful, and so’s my ass.”

Warm breath puffs against his ear as Bucky gives a soft laugh. “Sure thing, buddy,” Bucky murmurs, settling one hand in Steve’s hair, the other stroking gently up and down his back. “You keep telling yourself that.”

They doze gently for a while, the changing light the only marker of time passing until the come and lube drying in the fine hairs on Steve’s abdomen start to itch.

“Quit wriggling,” Bucky mutters.

Steve pulls a face at him and complains, “Itchy.”

“Oh no,” Bucky says and starts twitching. “Why did you have to say that?” He scratches at his own belly, then the top of his thighs. “Dammit, Steve, I was comfortable.”

Steve takes a breath to reply, then has a better idea. Something must show on his face, because he gives no other warning before jumping off the bed to race for the shower, but he can hear Bucky right behind him.

He’s half way to the bathroom when Bucky ankletaps him. He goes headlong but turns it into a roll. Bucky tries to jump over him, but Steve rolls into his landing point, taking Bucky’s feet out from under him and they collapse on the floor in a slightly hysterical and carpet-burned heap.

Bucky elbows Steve in the kidney and calls him names.

Steve untangles them enough to get up, grinning wildly, and pulls Bucky up by his wrist. If he pulls hard enough to pull Bucky up and against Steve, neither of them are going to say anything.

“Come on, into the shower, stinky.”

“Oh, ‘cause you’re one to talk, jackass,” Bucky retorts, but he leans in as much as Steve. “I was trying to shower before you got in my way.”

“You were not, you were whining about how you’d rather laze around in bed covered in jizz and sweat.”

“How do people always think you’re so sweet and butter wouldn’t melt in that dirty mouth of yours?”

Steve smiles the movie star smile they taught him on the USO tour, the one that looks confident and trustworthy. “Get in the shower and I’ll remind you just how dirty my mouth can be.”

He loves that he can still cause the dull stain of red to wash up over Bucky’s chest and face. “Anyway,” Steve says, pinching Bucky’s side. “Quit being mean to me, you promised to be romantic.” He and Bucky have never been romantic in their lives, not together. Romance was for the girls Bucky took out so that no one would think to look at the two of them and start asking questions.

It backfires a bit. Bucky leans back and looks him in the eye, dead serious. Steve doesn’t want serious today. There’s too much serious in their lives already, and he just wants a chance to pretend that they’re carefree, more so than they’ve ever had a chance to be. He knows it isn’t true, but surely it wouldn’t hurt to pretend for a little while.

“This isn’t going to be like it used to be, you know,” Bucky says.

Maybe he should have said he wanted to pretend. “What is?” Steve answers.

Bucky gestures in the narrow space between them, frustration in his face. “This. Us.”

“No,” Steve says. “I mean. I get it. What I meant to say was, what is the same? The guys are all long dead. Peggy remembers me perfectly, but it only makes her more convinced that the nursing home is some kind of HYDRA mindgame and she tries to escape.” His hand tightens a little on Bucky’s hip, because oh, that hurts, and Bucky’s hand strokes over the small of his back in an old gesture of comfort. “Howard’s kid flies around in a suit of armor. There’s smartphones and the internet; the only things that are the same are bigotry, rich people being assholes, and cars still don’t fly. So, we’re not the same as we used to be. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“You’re not taking this seriously,” Bucky accuses, and maybe he’s not wrong, but he's not right either.

“No, I am,” he says. “God, Buck, of course it’s serious. I just don’t think it’s as insurmountable as you think I should.”

Bucky’s expression is unbearably weary, “Come on, Steve. I’d love it to be simple, but we can’t pretend it is. There’s a world outside that door that-“

“Hey,” Steve interrupts, grabbing Bucky’s chin so they’re looking each other dead in the eye. “It can be that simple. I would put the shield down and walk away from it today if it would help. If that’s what it takes, I’ll do it, because having you with me is more important than all the rest.”

Bucky’s are wide and disbelieving. He laughs like it’s a joke. “How would you get your saving people fix?”

“I could be a firefighter,” he says. He’s not joking. He could be useful, beyond useful. He could help people, without going anywhere near the military. Steve’s rent’s been covered by SHIELD, and he’s never needed much, aside from groceries, so he’s got a lot of savings put aside. That and a medium sort of salary would keep them going.

“You would, you crazy bastard.” It’s barely above a whisper. “You’d really do it.”

“Say the word.”

Bucky’s hand snakes around Steve’s neck to pull him down for a kiss that would knock his socks off if he was still wearing them.

“Come on,” Bucky says, and Steve’s maybe a tiny bit proud that it’s a little breathless. “Get in the shower, we reek.”

There’s plenty of room for them both in the shower. They take their time, being ridiculously self-indulgent, doing things they never had the space, the time, the privacy for. There’s nowhere they have to be, and no one to tell them they can’t do what they want.

It would never have occurred to Steve to think about Bucky washing his hair at all, let alone that it might be a turn on, but Bucky plastered to his back in the endless stream of hot water, mouth pressed against his shoulder, and fingertips rubbing his scalp is doing things for him he never imagined.

In return, he runs soapy hands all over Bucky, over his shoulders, down his back, and the long strong muscles of his thighs and calves. Steve washes Bucky’s feet, and somewhere in there it becomes a cleansing of more than just the mess of good sex; it’s something like a benediction, reverent. He’s on his knees at Bucky’s feet. He looks up through the spray of water, and Bucky is looking down at him, eyes wide and dark and awed in a way that makes Steve feel uncomfortable, like he’s too big for his skin. He closes his eyes and leans in to press a kiss to the sharp new cut of Bucky’s hip, and feels fingers smooth over his wet hair.

They stay like that for a while, and Steve half wonders how he would draw this moment, to capture it, pin it down with pencil strokes, or charcoal, or oils, so he can never lose it.

Bucky strokes his hand over Steve’s hair again, and then sticks his finger in his ear. “What are you doing down there, you dope?” he asks, but his voice is a little husky, and his eyes are wide and dark.

Steve grins back, a little embarrassed, and gets to his feet. He has a job to finish. He washes Bucky’s chest and belly, scritching below his belly button when he gives a pleased little moan. He wipes gently at Bucky’s nose, cheeks, forehead with a facecloth, and then he’s done. He feels like there should be something to say, but if there is he can’t think if it, so he presses his lips to Bucky’s forehead.

Bucky’s hands are resting on Steve’s hips, and he takes s breath to say-

“I beg your pardon, Agent Barnes, Captain Rogers,” JARVIS’ voice says out of nowhere, and Steve nearly jumps out of his skin. “I’m terribly sorry to intrude, but Ms. Potts is expecting you to join her in the penthouse, Agent Barnes.”

For a pair of super soldiers, they come embarrassingly close to collapsing in a wet startled heap on the shower floor before they get themselves upright and apart.

Bucky winces. “Oh shit, I forgot. Tell her I’ll-“ He breaks off and raises an eyebrow at Steve, who shrugs and turns the water off. “Tell her we’ll be right along.”

“Certainly, Agent Barnes.”

Bucky steps out of the shower and picks up a towel, and Steve follows, leaning around him to grab another, when Bucky presses the towel up against his chest. Steve looks up, and Bucky’s avoiding his eyes by focusing on drying Steve’s chest and shoulders.

“Ms. Potts is expecting you in the penthouse, huh, Agent Barnes?” Steve teases as Bucky turns him with a hand to his shoulder and dries his back. “Anything I ought to know about?”

“Shut up and get dressed, you yuck,” Bucky says, giving himself a quick scrub down with the same towel. “I forgot I was going to have breakfast with her. But my hand to God, if Stark has got cameras in here anywhere, we are gonna have words.”

Back in the bedroom, Bucky pulls a pair of denims on over his underwear and takes a pretty nice shirt out of the closet, while Steve takes his clothes from the hanger. They show little signs of wear, the creases at the waist of the shirt where he tucks it in, and the knees and hips of the trousers, but they’re neat enough, and Ms. Potts is used to the way Tony dresses, so hopefully she won’t think he’s a scruff.

They’re just about to go out the door when Bucky grabs him by the arm and says, “Hey.”

Steve turns, and Bucky cups his face in the cool metal of his left hand, plants a swift kiss on his lips, and then pushes him out the door.

They walk into the penthouse, and Bucky leads the way to an open kitchen with views to rival Rockefeller Center. Ms. Potts is sitting on a stool at the central island, sipping a tiny cup of espresso and scrolling absently on a tablet. She looks up when they chorus, “Good morning, Ms. Potts,” in a way that would have made the sisters at the orphanage proud.

“Oh! I’m sorry, Captain, I wasn’t expecting-“ She breaks off, and her eyes flick between them before they go wide for just a second. She blinks very quickly a couple of times, and takes a deep breath. “I was not expecting this.” Her mouth twitches like she’s enjoying a little joke, but it doesn’t seem malicious, so he just smiles.

Bucky walks over and kisses her on the cheek. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

Steve can’t see her expression when she says, “That’s quite all right, I completely understand,” because Bucky is blocking her, but something she does makes the tops of Bucky’s ears go bright pink.

“You boys help yourselves to coffee,” she says, gesturing to the full pot on the coffee machine. She’s typing something into her tablet, and Steve’s pretty much got the hang of them, but he doesn’t know how she can type that fast on one. “What do you want this morning?” She makes a soft noise of satisfaction as she taps the screen with a flourish then puts it aside on the benchtop. “I’m pretty sure Tony still hasn’t found the waffle iron, so that should still be safe, and there’s always pancakes.” She smiles brightly, and that and her worn, oversized t-shirt and track pants are almost enough to disguise the sharpness of her eyes as she looks back and forth between him and Bucky.

“Whatever you’re having is fine, Ms. Potts,” Steve says as Bucky wanders over to the enormous metal-doored cupboard that is apparently a giant refrigerator and starts to rummage. “I know you weren’t expecting me, and I’m really sorry to intrude on your morning.”

She smiles again. It’s a pretty smile that makes her eyes crinkle a little and he starts to wish he’d brought his sketchbook with him yesterday.

“Please, it’s Pepper,” she says. “And you’re very welcome. There’s plenty of food, that’s not a problem.” She raises her voice slightly to say, “And since I basically just ask Bucky to hang around as eye candy, a twofer is really no trouble.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Bucky says, dumping a huge box of eggs — it must have two dozen eggs in it — on the bench. “I was thinking maybe an omelet.”

Mushrooms and onions follow, and then Steve has to catch a red pepper that’s aimed at his head. He looks from it to Pepper with her long red hair, and opens his mouth to say something before deciding that discretion is probably the better part of valor.

Pepper is looking at Bucky with a quizzical expression. “Not pancakes this morning?”

Bucky leans back against the fridge door, throwing and catching a block of cheese with his right hand, and grins at Pepper. Steve wonders if she knows Bucky well enough to register how hard he is avoiding looking at Steve.

“It’s not really a pancake morning,” Bucky says, which answers the question of whether Bucky had ever realised what Steve was doing. It also gives him a little bit of ground back on the sappy declarations front. Not much, but he’ll take what he can get, so he makes a little snort just to show he gets it. Bucky glares, and Pepper looks confused, and it’s… It’s so normal.

Enjoying having breakfast with his… partner he supposes the word is now, and part of him likes that because they always were partners, him and Bucky, but another part of him despises the safe ambiguity of it. But Steve’s sitting in a kitchen, having breakfast with his partner and his partner’s friend on a sunny morning. Maybe ‘normal’ is overstating it – there’s the sheer size of the kitchen, and the views, and the fact that Bucky is breaking eggs into the bowl by tapping them with his metal fingertips, but he’ll take it over the crushing loneliness and grief of the last few years any day.

“Earth to Rogers,” Bucky calls, and even serum-enhanced reflexes can’t save Steve from the mushroom that hits him dead in the centre of his forehead, although they do let him catch it on the rebound. “Quit wandering off.”

“Sorry,” he says, and tosses the mushroom back, where it goes under Bucky’s knife.

Pepper is mixing milk into the eggs, and looking between them with a little smile. If Steve had to describe her expression, he thinks he would choose ‘charmed’.

“I’m not reading this wrong, am I?” she asks tentatively. “I don’t want to be intrusive, but I’d hate to assume…”

Bucky stops chopping and looks at Steve, cautious and a little hopeful.

Steve takes a deep breath. He’s a little surprised by the tight twist of anxiety in his stomach.

“No,” he says. “No, you’re not wrong.”

Pepper and Bucky both smile at him so brightly that he blushes. Bucky’s smile in particular is soft in a way Steve hasn’t seen in a long time, and it’s almost enough to ease the anxiety he can’t quite push down.

“Hey,” Bucky says. “You okay?”

Steve smiles back. “Sure, I just… I’ve never told anyone before. It’s a little- It’s a little strange to say it and for someone else to know, is all.”

Pepper says, “I’m very honored by your confidence.”

There’s a silence that’s stilted and awkward. Steve has no idea what to say to her, no idea how to talk to other people about him and Bucky.

Luckily Pepper is a pro at managing conversation, and she smoothly asks, “So how long have the two of you been together?”

Bucky says, “Which time?” at the same time as Steve says, “Since 1938.”

Steve looks down, because it’s silly to feel hurt, and he doesn’t really want either of them to see that he is. He never could hide anything much from Bucky, though, and Bucky’s sigh tells him this time is no exception.

“Oh come on,” Bucky says. Steve can see him in the corner of his eye turn to Pepper to explain. “He’s got this idea in his head that 70 years of murdering a lot of people and sleeping around just, I don’t know, doesn’t count or something.

Pepper makes a humming sound that’s quite a lot like the noise the therapist Steve had when he first woke used to make a lot. Her voice is very gentle when she says, “And you’ve got this idea in your head that you don’t deserve it?”

Bucky sucks in a breath. “You fight dirty, Potts.”

Steve’s watching them now, and sees Pepper pat Bucky’s shoulder gently before she changes the subject. “So, 1938. You’d have been…” She pauses, either working it out or doing a good job of pretending.

“Twenty-one,” Steve supplies.

“I was twenty-one,” Bucky says. “You were nineteen.”

“I was twenty!”

“You were almost twenty, Steve.”

“Picky, picky.”

“Shut your stupid face and make yourself useful,” Bucky says with stunning maturity. “Put some toast on.”

“You invited me,” Steve point out, glancing around and trying to work out where the bread is. Behind Bucky’s back, Pepper points to the fridge.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Well now I’m inviting you to shut your piehole.”

Pepper sounds amazingly like Steve’s ma when she says, “Boys, no fighting in the kitchen. No setting fire to breakfast, even if you won’t get hurt much.” Amused and fond, but taking no nonsense. He can start to see how she copes with Tony.

“As if you would,” Bucky says, which makes no sense to Steve, but Pepper glances sharply across at him, and Bucky looks like he’s said something he shouldn’t have.

The atmosphere is tense, and Steve doesn’t know why. The room is filled with a silence that has weight. He opens his mouth to say something, try to defuse the situation. He doesn’t know what he thinks he’s going to say, probably something about the weather, or maybe baseball, he really doesn’t know, but Pepper breaks the silence herself.

“There were some things we managed to keep out of the media after Tony’s… little contretemps last Christmas,” she says, and she’s smiling, but it’s a media smile, a bond sales smile, and he can see something tight and unhappy around her eyes.

“You don’t have to-“ Steve starts to say before he recognizes the look in her eyes. It’s one he’s seen on a lot of men in his time, in the war, and most recently on Bucky — the need to confess, to open up something they’ve been keeping hidden in the dark, to let it out into the light.

Pepper holds a hand out, palm towards herself, fingers spread. There’s a look of intense concentration on her face, and suddenly her hand glows. The skin seems to crack and shift around bright lines of fire beneath her flesh. There’s a heat haze in the air around her hand, and in the silence of the kitchen, Steve can hear a faint sizzle.

Then she clenches her fist and it’s gone, as though it were a figment of his imagination except for the slightly defiant look on her face, and the concerned frown on Bucky’s.

“The latest attempt at creating super soldiers,” Pepper says, and Steve’s heart sinks. He knows that he, and through him Doctor Erskine, have done a lot of good in the world, but sometimes he wonders if it was worth all the pain caused by people trying to do it again, and falling short.

“I wasn’t-“ she starts, then flicks her eyes away. “I wasn’t hiding out while all of that was happening,” she says. “I was shackled in a basement somewhere in New Jersey, getting pumped full of the latest attempt at recreating the super-soldier serum. 50/50 odds on whether I’d survive the attempt, or explode and take out half the block.”

“The explosion in Chinatown,” Steve says, putting pieces together. Tony and Pepper had both been close-mouthed about the details of that Christmas, and Steve hadn’t pursued it, but there had been a lot that didn’t seem to make sense.

“Killian wanted his own back on Tony, so he had me kidnapped and…” She turns her head away, but not before Steve catches a glimpse of the bitter twist to her mouth. “You know, I get so tired of the idea of women as possessions, as status markers. He didn’t even want me, he wanted Tony Stark’s girlfriend, and even then he needed to-“ The sound she makes is only technically a laugh. “He needed to fix me first.”

And suddenly the time Bucky spends at the Tower, the closeness with Pepper that Steve had never suspected, makes complete sense in a terrible way.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you. Or that anyone thought for a second that there was anything about you that needed fixing.”

Pepper looks like she’s torn between telling him to take a hike, and punching something, and he’s sure he’s said the wrong thing until she lets out a breath that’s too forceful, too controlled, to be called a sigh. She flexes her hands on the countertop a little, and the three inch thick solid oak groans. Then she takes a deep breath, shakes her shoulders a little, and smiles at him.

He winces, and her smile settles a little, becomes a little more real.

“Careful,” Bucky says. “If he gets started trying to bolster your self esteem, it’s all over.”

She frowns. “Is he likely to-“ She looks at Steve. “My self esteem is fine, thank you. Tony would have drunk himself to death ten years ago without me, and I’m the only thing that’s kept Stark Industries even standing in the last few years, let alone the fact that it is now rock solid, even when Tony accidentally breaks Massachusetts. And I have an entire closet full of great shoes. I also occasionally catch fire and break things, but I’m good.”

“That’s fair enough. And they are great shoes,” Steve says, and Bucky makes a noise of outrage.

“How come I get hours of unending ‘you’re a good person’ lectures and she gets ‘great shoes’? This is so unfair!”

“That’s a fair point,” Steve says and turns to Pepper. “Do you suffer from crippling self-doubt?”

“Hey!” Bucky shouts.

Pepper’s mouth quirks up at the corners. “No.”

“Do you believe that you in some way deserved what happened to you?”

“This is low, Rogers.”

“I do not,” she says gamely, though her smile is a lot sadder now.

“And do you ever consider abandoning everyone you know and love to go and contemplate your sins in glorious isolation?”

There is a soft regular thump as Bucky bangs his head repetitively against the bench.

Pepper looks thoughtful. “Do week-long spa retreats count?”

“Nope.”

“Then no, I don’t.”

Steve spreads his hands, and doesn’t look at Bucky at all. “So there you go. Also, I really like the pointy red ones with the black heels.”

“Thank you,” she says brightly, “those are some of my favorites, too.”

“They do fantastic things for your ass,” Bucky says, slightly muffled from where he’s standing bent over, resting his forehead against the countertop.

Steve buries his face in his hands. “James Barnes! I know you were raised better than that; I was there.”

“Anyway,” Bucky says, pushing up from the bench but still leaning against it. “At least I’m going to my therapy sessions, unlike certain commissioned officers I could mention.”

“Bucky!”

Pepper looks like she wants to look disapproving but is fighting it. “It’s none of my business,” she says. “But that doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

He’s been living with the twisted and ugly thing in his chest since he failed to reach Bucky in the Alps for so long now that he’s almost afraid to let it into the light, to tear himself open for a stranger to see inside like that. He doesn’t even know what to say now, here, and he doesn’t know where to look, can feel his shoulders pulling up into a hunch.

“And,” Pepper declares, “this is neither the time nor the place.”

Steve’s breath escapes him like a deflating balloon.

“And don’t think, mister,” she continues, punctuated by a thwacking noise and a protest from Bucky, “that I don’t know exactly what you were pulling there, and I’m not impressed.”

When Steve looks up, Bucky is rubbing the back of his head and pouting.

Pepper looks at Bucky sternly. “I’m going to allow the subject change, because I think the point’s been made, but don’t think it wasn’t tragically transparent. Now get a pan heating for the onions and mushrooms.”

Bucky groans in relief, and grabs a pan from a cupboard. “I was getting desperate.”

Pepper rolls her eyes and points at Steve. “Toast.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Standing by the toaster (which looks alarmingly complicated at first glance, but is relatively easy to decipher when you’re familiar with Tony’s little… design quirks) puts him near Bucky, and Steve pauses a moment just to lean against his shoulder. Bucky leans back against him without ever taking his eyes off his pan of onions and mushrooms. Pepper takes longer than necessary rummaging for a pan that she already has in her hand and tries to hide a little smile.

It’s only a moment, and Steve gets on with making toast, four slices at a time.

“Anyway,” Pepper says, setting her own pan up for the egg. “Let’s go back to the 1930s, where you were barely out of your teens and hooking up... Oh my god, this sounds like the opening to a bad porno.”

“Hey,” Bucky objects. “It would have been a damn good porno, I’ll have you know. Real top shelf stuff-“

“You can stop talking any time now, Buck,” Steve interrupts. “In fact, please, for the love of little green apples, stop talking now.”

“An Officer and a Genitalman,” Pepper says.

“Gone Down With the Wind,” Bucky throws back, making Pepper laugh. “Although I kind of like the ones that don’t even need changing – Fast and Loose, Of Human Bondage, It Happened One Night…”

Steve can feel his face pulling into a horrified grimace. “Oh God.”

Pepper’s eyes go wide as she bursts out, “Topper!”

“Please make it stop. Somebody make it stop,” Steve begs, which only makes Pepper laugh harder, and Bucky snort in that way that means he’s trying desperately not to crack up. “You are bad people and you should feel bad.”

Pepper starts laughing so hard she has to take the pan off the element so the omelet doesn’t burn. “Oh no, when did you learn to talk like an internet meme?”

Steve finishes buttering the piece of toast, carefully spreading it right to the edges and into the corners because it’s the stupid little things that still catch him out, like having as much butter as he could want for his toast, and reaches for the next piece. “After spending a few hours on the internet?” he says. “It’s not difficult to pick up the gist of things, even if you don’t know what they really mean, and ‘Know Your Meme’ will get you past a lot of it. So, you know.” He shrugs. “French was more difficult.”

“I found French was okay,” Pepper says. “Mandarin has been a challenge.”

Bucky takes the pan from the stove top. “Mushrooms are done,” he says. His tone is perfectly normal, but he keeps his eyes down.

Steve’s about to ask what’s wrong when he realizes that most of his languages were learnt at the sharp end of HYDRA’s machines. Pepper seems to realize as well, and steps in before Steve says anything.

“Perfect!” she says, and dishes some of the mushrooms onto the omelet in her pan, tops it with some cheese and sticks it under the grill. “So, Brooklyn in the 1930s. You were around 20, and…” She waves her hand in a ‘come on’ gesture.

Bucky’s smiling a little, but he’s still looking intently at the floor, so Steve says, “And we met when Bucky came to the orphanage when he was about 10, so it was actually the 20s. He was just another new kid until he got between me and some bullies-“

“Between you and a broken nose,” Bucky interjects.

Steve rolls his eyes. “I was fine. And we-“

“Sure, you had ‘em on the ropes, right?”

“Anyway,” Steve continues, rolling over Bucky, because otherwise there’s no stopping him once he gets going. Pepper plates the omelet and starts on the next one. “He kept doing it, and once I got over being ticked off at being treated like I needed to be rescued, we started being friends. We pretty much grew up in each other’s pockets, and when we aged out of the orphana-“

“Not we,” Bucky breaks in. “When I aged out. You coulda had another year or so-“

“Sure, living the high life on my own, with the thirteen-year-olds kicking the snot out of me ‘cause they were bigger than me already, and Father Donatello getting ready to give me last rites every time I coughed.” To Pepper he said, “I coughed kind of a lot.”

“Which is why you should have stayed where they had access to medicine, you moron.”

“Are we actually going to have this fight again, eight decades after the fact? Really? You couldn’t convince me then, and you’re sure not going to convince me now.”

“Eat,” Pepper interjects as she shoves the next omelet at Bucky, then points at Steve before starting on the next one. “You too. So at the height of the Great Depression you struck out on your own…”

Bucky glares at Steve, apparently still not over an eighty-year-old quarrel, then takes an unnecessarily large bite of omelet and chews it real slow so that Steve will have to answer. Steve rolls his eyes so Bucky knows he’s onto him.

“The nuns were real good about it. Pulled some strings to get Bucky set up with some work at the docks, and me some work designing posters for the WPA so we could get a room in a boarding house. That was about all we could get, so we spent a lot of time queuing at soup kitchens but,” he shrugs and loads up a bite of omelet onto his fork to quell the phantom pangs of remembered hunger. “We got by. Only ended up having to doss down in Hoovervilles a couple of times.”

When Pepper’s omelet is ready they sit at the breakfast bar and eat in silence for a few minutes. It’s a simple meal, but Pepper’s good at making it – the eggs are light and fluffy, the mushrooms are rich and buttery, and the toast is crisp with some kind of seeds in it.

Bucky finishes first and picks up the story. “We got a place of our own in ‘38. Tiny one-bed cold-water walk-up, sharing the bathroom with everyone else on the floor, but it was all ours. And that was about the point we got our acts together. It was kind of funny. Suddenly we were…”

“Banging like a screen door in a storm?” Pepper suggests, and Bucky goes nearly as pink as Steve feels, but smiles.

“Something along those lines, yeah. And nobody noticed. It was a little weird how nothing changed.”

“Except for you trying to get your hands down my pants in public places,” Steve points out, since he’s blushing anyway. “That was new.”

Pepper laughs, and Bucky gets up to top up the coffee cups. “But nobody noticed!” Bucky repeats.

Bucky sits down, dragging his seat a little closer to Steve so their knees knock together under the benchtop. At the other end of the room, the door bangs open and Tony - who else, with an entrance like that – walks in.

“Hey, Pepperpot,” Tony says, walking into the room, apparently without even noticing them, to kiss her cheek.

“Tony,” she says, her tone reproving but her smile indulgent, “we’ve got company.”

“Oh hey, it’s Capsicle and the sidecube.” His eyes narrow as the dart between the three of them. “What’s going on?”

Steve drops his eyes to focus on his plate, and hopes he’s not still blushing. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Bucky lean back in his chair and grin in a way that means he’s going to say or do something terrible and he can’t be talked out of it, and all Steve can do is brace for impact.

“We were just filling Pepper in on our torrid, decades-old love affair,” he says cheerfully.

“Bucky,” he protests. Bucky just grins harder.

“Haha, funny, gramps,” Tony says. “Pepper?”

Pepper blinks a couple of times and says, “They were just filling me in on their torrid, decades-old love affair.” Then she gives Tony a bright and obviously fake smile. “Dear.”

Tony throws his hands in the air and heads for the fridge. “Fine, don’t tell me!” He pours a glass of something green and kind of sludgy, and drinks half of it with apparent relish. “I’m going to get some sleep,” he says to Pepper with a kiss. “You keep your secrets for now. Ciao!” The last seems to be addressed to Steve and Bucky, although he doesn’t bother looking at them when he says it.

“JARVIS,” Pepper says as soon as he’s out of earshot.

“Discretion protocols are initiated, Ms. Potts.”

“You’re a gem,” she says.

“Discretion-?” Steve sort of asks, feeling like something’s gone over his head. From Bucky’s expression he feels much the same.

She finishes her omelet and reaches for some yoghurt, which she offers to Steve, but he’s never developed a taste for it. It always just tastes of sour milk to him, no matter how much fruit or sugar they put in it. He does open the paper bag she nudges towards him. It’s full of fresh pastries, and he snatches a cinnamon twist before Bucky can get to it.

“When it became clear that other people would be living here with us,” Pepper says, “JARVIS and I had a nice chat about the difference between things Tony needed to know for security purposes, and things he didn’t need to know except out of pure nosiness, because people who are less used to him still expect some degree of privacy.”

Steve wants to ask how a computer programme can exercise discretion, but that might be offensive, and if JARVIS can be discreet, presumably it- he can also be offended. Although, if JARVIS has discretion and a sense of self, Steve probably needs to start thinking of him as a person.

“Yeah, I meant to check,” Bucky says, snatching for Steve’s pastry. He almost gets it, but Steve’s reach is just a little longer than his. “Cameras and so forth…” He grunts as Steve elbows him in the side and tries to kick Steve’s chair out from under him instead.

Pepper leans back to keep herself and her yoghurt out of harm’s way. “There are no cameras in private quarters, and mics are hooked directly up to JARVIS who monitors everything in real time, so nothing is recorded.”

Abandoning the last of his omelet, Steve gives up on manners and shoves the entire pastry in his mouth, with an apologetic glance at Pepper.

“There is more than one cinnamon pastry in there, you know,” she says, laughing at them. Bucky lets go of Steve with one last shove before reaching for the bag. Steve kicks his ankle and puts his hand over his mouth to hide the worst of the chewing.

Pepper finishes her yoghurt and gets a pastry for herself, and reaches over to pat the hand that isn’t covering Steve’s mouth. “It’s okay; I had two brothers growing up.” She frowns. “Well, three.”

“You’re confused about how many brothers you’ve got?” Bucky teases.

“Jason didn’t start presenting as male until he went away to college,” Pepper says breezily, but with a tiny edge to her tone, and it takes Steve a second to work out what she’s saying because people talk about it differently now. At least she’s being straight about it. The number of people who try to talk sideways around it, as if he didn’t grow up near the Brooklyn Navy Yard amongst the highest concentration of nancies and pansies and fairies in New York – like his head would explode at the slightest suggestion of people having sex that wasn’t missionary, in the dark, and under the covers, let alone the idea of men who wanted to be treated like ladies and women who didn’t.

By the time he’s finished his mouthful of pastry (really not the most mature thing he’s ever done in his life, but Bucky’s always had that effect on him), Bucky’s asked, “And he’s doing okay now? I didn’t even know you had brothers.”

“Jason has a job working for a not-for-profit in San Francisco, a cute girlfriend, and a rescued pit-bull; Mike’s a mechanic in Cleveland, married to a hairdresser, with three kids, and Andy works in radio in Cincinnati and has a complicated relationship with at least one of his co-workers, possibly two - he keeps the details vague.”

Steve finishes his mouthful of pastry, carefully wipes any crumbs away and tries to act like he remembers the manners his mother taught him. “And you were the eldest? No wonder you can keep Tony in line.”

“Eldest of four, Treasurer of the Art History Club, head of the debate team, and the Model UN. It still wasn’t adequate preparation for Tony, but it helped.”

“Art History Club?” Steve asks, because there’s a lot of art around – in the Tower, but also in restaurants and cafés and just everywhere – but it often seems generic, like there are some pieces or styles that have been pronounced ‘popular’ or ‘appropriate’ and everything is just cheap prints or spiritless imitations. He starts really looking at the art in the kitchen and thinks that he might not have been paying enough attention.

“I got together a couple of other kids at my high school, and kids from three other schools in the area. We’d get a teacher or parent to take us on road trips to museums. We talked them into taking us to the Art Institute of Chicago once; it was amazing.”

“I always wanted to go,” Steve says. “We had a show in Chicago in ’42, but we left first thing the next morning and Herbert, he was the tour manager, he wouldn’t let me go out before the show. I really wanted to see their O’Keeffes.”

They talk art for a while over coffee. Pepper’s knowledgeable and able to suggest some newer artists he might enjoy based on what he likes from before. She refers to having curated a collection, but with a twist to her lips that suggests that using the past tense is not something she is pleased about.

“Tony had a phase,” she says when Bucky asks. She rubs her brow as she says it. “For reasons I won’t go into he saw fit to, amongst other things, give my art collection, which to be fair was actually the Stark Industries art collection, away to the Boy Scouts.”

“Wow,” Steve says. “That’s…” He cuts himself off before he says something unfortunate about Tony, since Pepper must have more or less forgiven him, but still. To just give away a collection that someone had been working on…

“He had his reasons,” Pepper stresses. “Mostly I just wish it hadn’t been the Boy Scouts.”

Steve looks at Bucky to see if he knows what she’s getting at, but he’s obviously drawing a blank too.

Pepper notices. “The governing body of the Boy Scouts of America have made some… unfortunate decisions about how homosexuality fits, or rather doesn’t fit with their membership or their leadership. And unfortunately Tony’s well-intentioned but poorly-timed donation implied that Stark Industries supports their stance on the issue.” She grimaces. “I was not pleased with him.”

Steve’s used to Bucky being the pragmatic one between them, but he may never get used to the sharp-edged bitterness he carries now, so he winces a little when Bucky’s lips twist and he asks, “You’re real sure it was a mistake?”

It must be something Pepper’s used to though, because she just rolls her eyes at him. “I’m sure. He genuinely has no issues with people’s gender identity or sexual orientation, he’s just tragically oblivious sometimes.”

Bucky grunts in an ambiguous sort of way, and Steve asks Pepper about the collection. It’s a little sad, in a way, because from the way she talks about it, she must have loved that collection. Steve tries to include Bucky in the conversation, but even before the Winter Soldier he never had much interest in art, except in so far as it directly related to Steve.

“I did take you to the Louvre that time,” Bucky says.

Steve looks at Pepper. “'That time' being when it was empty because of the Nazis.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Bucky says, defensive. To Pepper he says, “I made him stand at the top of the stairs and pretend to be the Winged Victory.”

“Which, of course, was exactly when Peggy and Colonel Phillips came looking for us…”

Pepper’s hand goes over her mouth to muffle her laughter. “Oh no!”

Eventually Pepper has to get on with her day, so they leave her to it, although not until they’ve both been kissed on the cheek, and Steve has promised to escort her to a gallery opening that she wants to go to and Tony doesn’t.

Back in Bucky’s rooms, Bucky throws some things, mostly weapons, into a bag, while Steve wonders if it would be paranoid to take the bedding home and wash it there.

If it is, it’s Bucky’s kind of paranoia.

They strip the bed, gather up the flannels, and bundle everything into a rucksack. Tony’s housekeeping staff will probably redo it all when they return it, but at least they’ll only be able to guess why, rather than knowing for sure.

They take the A line east, because it’s easier to walk a little in Brooklyn than to get to the B on the island. They don’t really talk about anything, just sit in the subway carriage with their thighs pressed together and breathe with the sway of the train, bags on their laps – Bucky’s small but heavy bag of weapons and Steve’s bag of soiled linens. He knows it’s silly, but he’s not sure which he’s more worried about someone discovering.

Halfway up the stairs out of the station at Nostrand, both their cell phones go off with text messages. From his ringtone, Steve can tell it’s AD Hill. The ringtone from Bucky’s phone is catchy and familiar, but he kills the sound before Steve can place the tune.

Steve lets Bucky call in. Sometimes he can hear the other person on the line, but the street noise is too loud, so he has to try and work out what’s going on from Bucky’s side of the conversation.

“This is Barnes… Yeah, he’s here…” A complicated expression crosses his face, although enough of Steve’s attention is on not walking into fire hydrants or other people that he can’t quite make it out. “I was kind of looking forward to my day off,” is said with a sly look at Steve. “Do you need us?”

Steve holds his breath and hopes hard that this is a courtesy ‘would you like to come’ call, rather than a ‘suit up now’ call. And then sniggers to himself like a twelve-year-old, because he would like to come, but he doesn’t want SHIELD agents involved if it can be helped.

“I think we’ve had our fun with that one,” Bucky says. “You have fun deforesting Pennsylvania… Look, if you need us, we’ll be there, but if you’re just asking if we want in, we’ll pass, we’ve got plans.” Bucky looks at Steve with a raised eyebrow, presumably checking that Steve has no objections. He doesn’t, none at all, so he just shrugs. “Make sure everyone has hazmat suits and gasmasks and what all else, and best of luck. Let us know how it goes. But, you know. Later.” Bucky cringes a bit as he hangs up. “I swear I used to be smooth,” he says, shaking his head.

Steve grab’s Bucky’s arm and starts pulling him along, leans in to say in his ear, “Why don’t we get home so you can show me how smooth you are?”

Bucky walks faster.

When they get home, Bucky has to be more careful with his bag than Steve, and it loses him the advantage. Steve throws his own bag to one side and pushes Bucky up against the wall next to the door with a slight thud.

Bucky’s grin is wild. “Oh, you want to play it like that?” he asks, and pushes his thigh between Steve’s legs as best he can in close quarters.

Steve gets his hand into the longer hair at the top of Bucky’s head and uses it to none-too-gently pull his head back and suck on his adam’s apple. Bucky retaliates by shoving his thigh in and up. As retaliation goes, it’s pretty feeble – Steve shifts his stance a little wider, and then Bucky’s thigh is snug between his own, nudging up under his balls. Steve shifts them slightly so he can lean his own thigh in against Bucky, and he loses track of time while they make out against the door, rubbing themselves off against each other in the hallway.

Bucky, as ever, is sneakier than Steve could ever manage. He doesn’t notice Bucky tangling his leg around Steve’s knee until he uses it to topple Steve to the floor. On the one hand, it’s uncomfortable – he lands with his leg bent awkwardly up behind him and will probably have bruises on his ass and the back of his head for a good five minutes. On the other hand, Bucky is on top of him, hard and warm and real, and grinning like a kid with more candyfloss than he knows what to do with. Steve will put up with a hell of a lot to see Bucky look like that.

“You’re such a jackass,” he says, and Bucky laughs, head thrown back and too many teeth showing. Steve twists his hips to throw Bucky off and almost succeeds. ‘Almost’ just gets him rolled over a couple of times, nearly banging his head on the sofa, and still on the bottom. “Are we really going to do this on the floor? Seriously? You promised you’d be romantic later.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “You nag worse than Sister Louisa. Come on then,” he says. He gets up to a crouch, grabs Steve by the belt and the front of his shirt, and swings them both around to land on the sofa, which should really not be as hot as is.

While Steve is trying to get his eyes uncrossed, Bucky slouches on the sofa in an indolent sprawl and arranges Steve to straddle his lap. “Liked that, huh?” he asks, rolling his hips.

“Cocky,” Steve says, unconsidered, and Bucky sniggers.

He’s still sniggering, and probably about to say something awful when Steve shuts him up in the best of all possible ways – by otherwise occupying his mouth.

Somehow between the hallway and the sofa, the pace has changed, slowed. The kiss is slow and deep. Steve cradles Bucky’s jaw in one hand, the other tucked down around his waist. Bucky is clutching Steve’s belt and stroking his back in a gesture that could be soothing at any other time, but now makes Steve feel like his skin might catch fire any minute.

Steve tips Bucky’s head further back so he can get up on his knees without breaking the kiss, and undoes the bottom buttons on Bucky’s shirt so he can get at the fly of his denims. He pushes the waistband down, and Bucky wiggles and lifts his hips in a way that should probably be illegal to get them down to his thighs.

Bucky makes up for it by nearly kneeing Steve in the balls when he shuffles his legs to get them all the way off. He just laughs when Steve makes an indignant noise at the narrowness of his escape.

Eventually Bucky’s pants are off and Steve settles his hips between Bucky’s thighs, making him spread them a little wider than before. While Steve was busy worrying about the family jewels, Bucky’s been busy with his hands, and pushes Steve’s now-open shirt off over his shoulders and shoves his undershirt up over his pecs. Steve yanks the shirt cuffs off over his wrists and hauls at the neck of the undershirt. He can sew the cuff buttons back on if he needs to - he has other priorities right now, like getting his hands back on Bucky.

Bucky’s fingers are tangled in Steve’s hair, and his mouth is hot and wet against his jaw, licking, sucking, biting. Steve puts his hands up under Bucky’s shirt, lifting it to run his hands over the warm muscle and the slight catch of chest hair against his palms. Running his thumbs over Bucky’s nipples, already tight, gets him a startled noise and a bite right at the hinge of his jaw.

He rolls his hips down against Bucky, and Bucky presses back, and suddenly they have a rhythm of push and thrust and rub, and Bucky is making approving noises in the back of his throat, and Steve would be happy to just stay like this forever.

Bucky has other ideas. “Come on, Steve. I’ll make a mess of my shirt if you want, but at least get your dick out.”

Steve hadn’t been planning it, but as soon as Bucky says the words, he can’t get the image out of his head. “Yeah. Yeah,” he pants, short of breath in a way that’s become unfamiliar after so long. He squeezes Bucky’s wrists to tell him to keep them where they are, and wrestles his belt and fly open.

He shoves the back of the waistband of his trousers down under his ass and tugs his dick and balls out. The teeth of the zipper catch at his hair, and bite uncomfortably into the tender underside of his balls, but Bucky’s eyes are wide and dark, and his mouth is shiny and wet, and getting out of his trousers would take more coordination than he can manage right now.

Bucky smirks in a loose, almost stoned, kind of way that twists his red, red mouth. “No underwear? How’d I miss you losing those?”

Steve presses a kiss to Bucky’s bottom lip. “Never put ‘em on. I didn’t have any clean, remember? They’re in the laundry bag.”

Bucky pulls his head back against the couch cushion as best he can when he’s already pressed up against it and stares up at Steve a bit gobsmacked. “Did you just sit through breakfast with Pepper and all the way home commando?”

Steve’s smile feels a little wicked. “There’s a joke about Commandos in there somewhere,” he says.

“Oh my god, leave them out of this,” Bucky says before doing… something with his thighs. His hands don’t move off the back of the couch, but Steve bounces and tilts forward and his zipper digs into his balls even worse, but his dick slides along Bucky’s, hot and hard and good. Bucky makes an encouraging noise and thrusts his hips up, but the angle’s awkward and they just sort of slip along each other in a terrible kind of tease.

He leans in and captures Bucky’s bottom lip between his own, sucking a little, and Bucky moans a little.

They’re pressed so close together Steve has to wiggle a little to get his hand between them, but he manages it, and gets his fist around both their dicks. “Fuck yes,” Bucky groans against Steve’s jaw.

His grip is dry and kind of uncomfortable, but damned if he’s getting up to find some grease now when he’s got Bucky right where he wants him. They’re both hard and leaking, and that helps, but after a couple of minutes Bucky says, “Oh for,” and grabs Steve’s wrist.

Steve frowns at him for moving his hands off the back of the couch, but Bucky just rolls his eyes and then licks Steve’s palm. It’s warm and wet, and pretty disgusting, but it’s good enough. Bucky pushes Steve’s hand back down between them and returns his own wrist to the back of the cushion. “Get on with it,” he says, and gives his hips a little thrust.

Steve takes them both tight in his hand, squeezes, tugs, waits till Bucky moans. It doesn’t take long, and when he does, Steve leans in to press his mouth against the long line of Bucky’s throat and blows a raspberry at the same time as he rolls the palm of his hand across the tips of their dicks.

Bucky makes a sound that’s a glorious mix of turned-on moan, squeak, and startled laughter that makes Steve smile into Bucky’s neck, even as his own breath speeds up with the pace of his hand.

“What the hell, Steve?”

Steve runs his mouth along the underside of Bucky’s jaw to the hinge. “Made you laugh.”

“You are so weird. Why are you so weird?” Bucky asks, but he tilts his head to give Steve better access. His hand settles against Steve’s head, fingers combing through his hair, and Steve presses up into it at the same time as he tightens his grip a little. The air between them is warm and damp with their breath and sweat, slick and sticky, and it’s the best feeling in the world.

“Don’t complain like you don’t like it, liar,” Steve whispers in his ear before sucking gently on the lobe. Bucky leans forward a little to put his mouth to Steve’s collarbone, to lick and suck and nibble, and make filthy, muffled noises when Steve manages to get together enough coordination to mouth at his ear, speed up his hand on their dicks and pinch Bucky’s nipple all at once.

“Oh fuck, Steve. Come on,” Bucky moans. He squirms and pushes his hips up for more contact, more speed, but his hands stay right where Steve put them.

Steve pulls his hand back a little, loosens his grip to a light slide that makes him shiver and Bucky whine. “Tell me how much you like me.”

“You are the dumbest asshole I’ve ever been in love with, would you fucking hurry up,” he says.

It’s good enough for Steve.

It doesn’t take much to push Bucky over the edge, cursing a blue streak all the way, and Steve has never been able to hold out much past watching Bucky come, however hard he tried, and he’s not trying that hard right now.

They sit, heaving for breath, with their foreheads pressed together, slippery with sweat. Steve gradually becomes aware of the teeth of his zipper still digging into his balls in a way that’s really unpleasant way, and a twinge in his hip that could become a nasty cramp any second now, peak of human perfection or not.

Steve manages to roll to one side on the couch, so his head rests against the arm and he can get his legs enough in the same direction to get his pants off, then tugs Bucky’s arm. Bucky groans a complaint but tips toward Steve till they lie tangled together along the full length of the couch (plus a bit, really). Bucky’s head is tucked under Steve’s chin, his breath warm against Steve’s shoulder, Steve’s hands stroking up under the shirt Bucky’s still wearing.

He focuses on the feeling of Bucky’s metal hand against his chest to try and fight off the sense of double vision he has – lying tangled up together in their apartment in the middle of the afternoon, in the sticky aftermath. It’s hard not to imagine the smell of garbage and leaded gas and cigarette smoke and dinners from half a dozen different cultures coming through the window, fluttering net curtains, the soft laboring of his lungs as he gets his breath back. But it seems somehow disrespectful to dwell on it, instead of just being grateful for the here and now that they’ve both been through so much to get to. So he breathes deeply and focuses on the smell of the shampoo Bucky uses and whatever it is that Magda the cleaning lady puts on the carpets, the hum of the air conditioner, and the way the familiar sounds of the New York streets are muffled by the tinted, double-glazed windows.

“You’re really sure about this?” Bucky asks. His face is burrowed into Steve’s shoulder and he won’t meet Steve’s eyes, like he knows how stupid the question is, but just has to ask anyway.

In the afternoon sunlight that filters through, Steve realizes that there are strands of grey in Bucky’s hair. He closes his eyes and presses his cheek against it, concentrates on the familiar soft prickle of it against his face. “I’ve always been sure of you, Buck. Sometimes you’ve been the only thing I have been sure of.”

The patches of light on the floor get gradually longer, stretching out towards them on the couch, and he feels Bucky relax against him on a long slow exhale. Neither of them sleep, but they don’t speak either, just lie there wrapped in their own thoughts and each other as the afternoon passes until says, “We should go to bed,” and pushes himself up. Steve follows, takes his hand, and they shuffle to the bathroom for a quick wash.

Bucky pulls a disgruntled face as he takes his shirt off, trying to avoid getting the drying come all over himself.

“Well,” Steve says, “You still failed at romantic, but you did make a mess of your shirt.”

“Pretty sure this isn’t all me, buddy,” Bucky says, and shoots him a filthy look that makes Steve- well. He hopes it’s a grin, but suspects it might be a goofy, love-struck smile.

Steve leans in for a quick kiss and helps him get rid of the shirt. They wash up cursorily, just warm water and flannels, and more touching than lends itself to efficiency or a dry floor. When they’re done, Bucky puts his shirt in the basin and runs cold water over it, and the sheer familiarity of Bucky doing laundry in the sink hits Steve like a sense memory.

“I like this shirt,” Bucky says, like he has to explain, and Steve… God, Steve can barely speak, it’s washing over him so deep, so he smiles and shakes his head instead, and hopes that’s enough.

Bucky raises his eyebrows and shrugs, so it seems to be. “It can soak. Nap?”

He’s not really tired, not in the sense of being physically weary. It takes more than anything he’s done today to wear him out, although that leads him to wonder what it would take, how long he could go. They’d never really had enough time and privacy to test it, but maybe they could find out.

Bucky’s voice is low and a little rough when he asks, “You going to tell me what that look was about? ‘Cause it looked like fun.”

“Nap, yeah. Yeah, we should nap.” He isn’t tired, but he’s not going to turn down an opportunity to curl up in bed with Bucky and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist for a while.

And maybe, maybe he needs a little time to work out which way is up again, because he wasn’t expecting this, not any of this. It seems almost impossible that the same time the day before he’d been heading to the Tower, half convinced (and completely terrified) that Bucky would want him gone, that their friendship was irretrievably broken, and instead in the last 24 hours he’s had nearly as much sex as they managed in several months during the war.

“You aren’t that excited about a nap, Steve. C’mon, share and share alike, huh?” Bucky digs his elbow, his metal elbow, into Steve’s ribs, and his elbows were always pretty sharp, but damn.

He shoves Bucky’s arm and manages to get him in a headlock that Bucky could break in two seconds flat if he wanted to, but doesn’t. “I’ll tell you later. Nap first.”

“Fine, fine, whatever,” Bucky says, wrapping his arm around Steve’s waist and steering him down the hall.

They end up in Bucky’s room, more obviously his than the apartment at the Tower, especially the warm autumn tones of the thick comforter on the bed. The antique poster from Steve’s USO tour, nicely framed and hanging in pride of place, is new. He takes advantage of the headlock he’s still got Bucky in to rub his knuckles hard against his head, and Bucky doesn’t so much laugh as cackle. Steve shoves him onto the bed and he rolls onto his back.

“I wondered how I was going to get you in here to see that,” he says, still chuckling to himself.

Steve goes for the top corner of the comforter and throws it over Bucky’s head, and makes out he was just getting in the bed. “Oh, is that what you wanted me in here for? Shall I go now, then?”

Bucky does some kind of roll that manages to land him neatly in the bed, head on a pillow and properly under the comforter. Steve’s honestly pretty impressed.

“Do you want to go?” Bucky asks, and it sounds like a tease, but Steve’s pretty sure it’s at least half serious, so he curls in to rest his head on Bucky’s shoulder.

“There’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be,” Steve answers, and feels Bucky press a kiss to his temple.

They don’t say anything else as they arrange themselves to sleep. Steve’s almost drifting off when Bucky says, “You remember the rules, right?” voice sleepy but urgent.

“Rules?”

“Nightmares means you get straight out of the bed. Just because it was all your drama last night, don’t mean mine are miraculously gonna stop. And I’ll bail from yours, and no one gets hurt.” Steve looks up and there’s nothing sleepy in Bucky’s face anymore. He’s serious and intent and hell-bent on protecting Steve from harm, even if Bucky’s the source, and Steve can’t help whatever his face looks like, but it’s probably something soft and warm.

“I promise,” Steve says.

Bucky settles, apparently satisfied. “All right, then. But,” he says, “you’re coming with me next time I go to therapy and we’re vetting someone for you, and you will do everything they tell you to do, no matter how dumb you think it is.”

Steve opens his mouth to accede, because he knows Bucky’s right, however little he’d like to admit it, but he doesn’t get a chance.

“Don’t argue with me,” Bucky says, before Steve does more than take a breath. “I will drag you by the ear all the way if I gotta.”

“Okay, Buck,” he says pressing a kiss to Bucky’s chest, right over his big dumb heart, and curling in closer.

Steve wakes several times, just unused to sharing a bed anymore, and conscious even in sleep that the bed he’s in isn’t his, and he suspects Bucky does too, but when they both wake for real around midnight neither has had a nightmare at all. Steve is willing to take small mercies where he can find them, these days, and really there’s nothing small about the feeling that he’s got his life back, that he’s got his ability to live his life back.

The peaceful silence is broken by Bucky’s stomach making the kind of noise that inspired Lovecraft. “Fuck, why is it midnight?” he groans into the pillow he’s lying face down in.

“Because we went to sleep at about 3 in the afternoon?” Steve answers, pretending he’s being a bit of a shit.

He gets a pinch to the side for it and laughs.

Bucky rolls over and puts his hands behind his head, which does very nice things for his chest. “Right. Go put the coffee on and order like, five pizzas.”

Steve tries to give him a raised eyebrow, but he’s pretty sure he’s smiling too much to make it work. “You sound like a man with a plan.”

“Damn right,” Bucky says. He stretches his back in an arch that makes Steve’s mouth water. “Coffee, pizza, and watching Adventure Time in our underwear until we run out of episodes, fall back asleep, or decide we can be bothered going for a run. Whaddaya say?”

“Sounds good to me.”