Archive of Our Own ^beta

Bucky’s sitting on the floor in front of the couch, reading a Twilight Zone script while Steve reads a newspaper up on the couch cushions, when Steve gives the newspaper a decisive shake and asks, “Do you want me to wake you up tomorrow morning?”

Alarm clocks are an issue for Bucky. Regardless of the sound, half-asleep, he tends to panic and crush them with the metal hand. “Oh, geeze,” he said after the fifth one. “I’m done with this,” and since then, he’s been letting his body wake up when it wants to. But mostly that’s been a little late in the day, and next week he’s starting a job at publishing company, and he’d like the nine to five to become what his body wants.

He says, “Please,” and takes Steve’s hand, and kisses the palm, then licks it. He puts the script down beside him on the floor and twists to face Steve more fully.

Steve strokes the side of his face. Bucky leans into it, and then Steve’s grabbing Bucky’s nose and pinching his nostrils shut. He tries to hold his breath for Steve, but Steve raises one eyebrow to let him know that isn’t what he’s looking for. Instead, Bucky opens his mouth to breathe.

“Stick your tongue out,” Steve says. Bucky does, and Steve smiles. He says, “To be clear, I did just mean wake you up. As in shouting, ‘Hey, it’s morning. Get a move on. Daylight’s wasting,’ and so forth.” He lets go of Bucky’s nose.

Bucky puts his tongue back in his mouth. “Oh. Did you have to just mean that?” And Steve smiles again, but this time like he’s planning to rip out Bucky’s fingernails or rub hot peppers in his eyes. If only some feelings weren’t better as fantasies.

Actually, Bucky did ask Steve about rubbing peppers is his eyes once. Steve looked worryingly concerned for a moment, then said, “Bucky, what if I accidentally got them in my eyes,” and Bucky said, “What kinda a wimp are you?” and Steve pulled on his hair and feigned punching him in the jaw and they both ended up laughing all over each other, a complete mess.

Anyway, eye stuff is a no-go.                                                                                              

“Nope,” Steve says, popping the “p,” in a way he picked up from Natasha, though once Bucky pointed it out and Steve said, I say it the normal way everyone else says it. “I could mean something else.”

Bucky says, “That would be nice.”

Steve pinches his nostrils shut again. “You know, I don’t remember saying you could put your tongue away.” Bucky sticks it back out, and Steve digs the nails of his other hand into the tip. They’re short and square, but ragged. He bites them and lies about it when caught.

He says, “You got anything in particular in mind?”

Bucky draws his tongue in and licks his dry lips, gathering his words. Steve says, “Come on. What did I not tell you to do?”

“Right, yeah.” Bucky puts his tongue out again. He even says, “Ahhh,” with a faintly mocking tone, and Steve’s mouth quirks up.

“Answer my question, Buck. You want anything particular?”

Bucky moves his tongue a little, narrows his gaze, and makes a formless noise of bafflement.

Steve rolls his eyes. “Oh, what, so this is my problem? Answer the question. Figure something out.”

Steve lets go of his nose, but this time Bucky doesn’t assume that means anything about what he’s allowed to do. Drool pools in his mouth. He looks around, trying to figure out a solution that won’t require getting up off the floor; Steve didn’t say he could do that either.

Oh. Of course.

He leans forward and sticks a hand under the couch cushion to Steve’s left, groping around. His fingers find two different pens and he grabs both in case the first one he tries is dead.

It’s a fine-point black Sharpie, and it works just fine. He’s able to scrawl on his right arm, “I WANT YOU TO WEAR ME OUT.” He writes it upside-down, because he is very talented, and not only in destructive or eerie ways. He’s been good at writing upside-down since they were kids. When he first started writing again, it was always upside-down.

He shows it to Steve, who frowns but nods. “Okay,” he says, taking the pen from Bucky’s fingers. “I’m gonna need more clarification than I think you can fit on there. You can—Or, no. Hold on.” He sounds like he always used to early in the war when he thought of something new he could try to make his body do. Triple backflip out of a tree. Pick Bucky up way off the floor by his shirtfront.

He presses the tip of the marker to Bucky’s tongue. Bucky can feel the shapes of the letters. “Slut,” Steve writes, plus a period. So proper. It’s cold, and a horrible, harsh taste. Thank god for the serum. Steve might not be willing to put toxic ink on his tongue if he were still human.

“There,” Steve says, pleased. “Now you can stop sticking that thing out like a dumb dog.”

Bucky does, and swallows a few times, and gags only barely at the continuation of the Sharpie taste. He says, “I can be one of the smart talking dogs they have in kids’ movies now. I’ve already got creepy and ugly down.”

Steve rolls his eyes but obviously thinks it’s funny, running a thumb over Bucky’s lips. He says, “What exactly are you asking me for?”

Bucky shrugs. “What it says on the arm.”

“’Red star’?”

“Oh, sure. I want you to Red Star me. I read about it on the Urban Dictionary. How comfortable are you with pig’s blood, anyway?”

“I can work on getting more comfortable.”

“You’re a giver. I always tell people.”

Steve tugs on Bucky’s earlobe. Last time he did that, he said, Maybe I should pierce this. Studs or hoops? Or you can get ones shaped like junk food now.  “What were you doing on Urban Dictionary?”

“Don’t worry about it. We’re getting off-topic.”

“I never get off-topic,” Steve says. He uses Bucky’s hair to steer his head to his lap, letting him turn to the side so his voice won’t be muffled. He pets him, firmly. “I have a notoriously one track mind, or so someone claims.” It isn’t true, really. Steve has a lots-of-tracks mind; he just doesn’t switch from track to track well at all.

Bucky rubs his cheek against Steve’s thigh. The denim is rough, catching on his skin briefly. He thinks about asking Steve for the Sharpie back so he can add to his arm, “INVESTIGATE: CARPET BURN FROM JEANS?” just for his own notes, but instead he laughs and says, “Like you talk to anyone?”

Steve presses a fist against the base of Bucky’s skull, a sweet and empty threat. “All right, back to wearing you out. You know I’ve been assuming I usually do.”

“Well, I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. I’m not so much bouncing off the walls when you get done with me ever, but it’s hard to wear me out, not really. Bone-deep.” He runs his nails over Steve’s calf for the rough surety of the fabric, something more to ground him. “I want to be exhausted.”

Steve rubs a little circle over the back of his neck, and Bucky sighs, trying against the laws of physics to press himself even further into Steve’s legs.

Bucky says, “It’s the same for you. Isn’t it? You get back here from running two fucking marathons every morning looking like you could still stop a speeding train.”

Steve stops stroking, though he keeps his hand spread over Bucky’s head, cradling him. Bucky wants to move and look at his face, but he waits instead. It’s rare when Steve can’t find words—he finds the wrong words, sure, all the time, but hardly ever doesn’t find any—and Bucky always treats those moments delicately.

Finally, he says, “No, Buck. I’m always worn out. Like you said. Bone-deep.”

“Oh.” Steve starts petting again, more slowly now, but still with the firm pressure Bucky needs from him. “Guess it’s good I’m used to being exceptional.”

“Exceptionally a pain in my ass.”

Bucky moves down and fastens his teeth around Steve’s kneecap through his jeans, and Steve yanks his head up by the hairs along his neck, secret beneath the longer layers. Bucky smiles at him. Steve scratches his cheek, cat-quick and burning, and smiles back, and kisses the scratch.

“I need more specifics than that, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah. I don’t remember you having such a hard-on for thinking things through before I was a cyborg.”

When Bucky wakes up, he’s on his stomach, how he usually wakes up, but his boxers are pulled beneath his ass and Steve is sitting on his calves. He’s shaking Bucky’s right shoulder, hard. He says, “Hey. Don’t keep me waiting. You keep me waiting any longer, I’ll go find something else to fuck, huh?”

Bucky wants to start purring like the neighbor’s cat he feeds sometimes. A little warm perpetual purring machine, but his body doesn’t do that. Fucking dumb. They augmented him for all these other things and they couldn’t give him that?

He also wants to demand Steve give a guy a second to take his pills and comb his hair back into shape, but that isn’t what they discussed, so instead, he says, voice still raspy with sleep, “I’m up. You can fuck me.”

“Oh I can, can I? And may I, also?”

“I’m not the ranking officer here. You tell me.”

Steve spreads Bucky’s ass with one hand and smacks him on the inside of a cheek. Bucky hisses. Steve didn’t hit that hard, but the placement had been unexpected, and he isn’t all the way awake yet. He comes awake instantly if he wakes up alone, but when Steve’s there, his brain stays like microwaved oatmeal until repeatedly prodded.

 “You’re a hell of a lot smarter first thing in the morning than I was led to believe,” Steve says like Bucky’s said more than barely anything.

“Thank you. I mean sorry.”

Steve sighs. He gets off Bucky’s calves to sit cross-legged on the side of the bed closest to the wall. Well. It isn’t a bed in the traditional sense. It’s more a wooden dining table Bucky bought at Goodwill and spent a couple days reinforcing to take two supersoldiers worth of weight.

Steve yanks the sheet off of Bucky and unceremoniously shoves him to the floor.

Bucky bangs his skin-and-bone elbow and both of his knees. Worse, he’s getting pins and needles where Steve’s weight was cutting off his circulation. He starts scrambling up to a kneel, then thinks better of it and gets back down into the awkward splay he landed in.

“Good catch,” Steve says, peering over the edge, and Bucky nods, knowing his face is inappropriately grim.

Steve is happy to push him about most things, but never about taking compliments well, probably not wanting him to feel bad about how much better he used to be at that. How naturally he used to wink and say, “Gee, thank you. That’s sure swell to hear.”

Steve has no similar compunctions about telling him he sounds like a cartoon when he tries to recall how he used to talk. When he does that, Bucky always makes an effort to look puzzled, and says, “I wasn’t a cartoon? How were you a cartoon and I wasn’t, Cap’n?”

Steve says, “On your knees now,” and oh, he had Bucky’s pill case and a glass of ice water hiding somewhere. Bucky opens his mouth, and one by one, Steve places the pills on his tongue, tender, and tips the water glass to his lips to help wash them down.

It’s quite the production. He usually just dry swallows. His teeth are freezing.

When the pills are all gone, the glass is still most of the way full, so Steve dumps it over Bucky’s head.

Bucky flinches, spitting involuntarily. But instinct passes and he relaxes, slumping back, dropping his shoulders. Some of the water splashed onto the front of his boxers, which are still hooked carefully over his erection even as they’re down in the back, and the iciness on his dick sends a small warm arrow up through his center. He blinks, his eyelashes wetted together now, his vision a little blurry like he’s already crying, and more water runs out of his hair and down his forehead and neck.

“Just a little wake-up,” Steve says, smiling at him. He grips a chunk of Bucky’s hair that’s positioned perfectly for him to squeeze it and make a bit of water run into Bucky’s open mouth. Then he takes another chunk of hair and puts it in his own mouth and grips it with his teeth and sucks.  His teeth do yank at Bucky’s scalp, but it’s mostly the sucking.

Bucky says, “What are you doing?” and Steve purposefully yanks Bucky’s hair with his teeth more, sharp, before pulling off and saying, “I’m thirsty. You wasted all the water, so now you’re my water bottle. If I need water, you better give it up to me. You want me to die of dehydration?”

He’s pretty sure Steve wants Steve to die of dehydration based on all of his day-to-day habits, but of course Bucky won’t say that right now when the best thing he can imagine saying is, “Take whatever you want.”

Steve smacks him where there’s a wet patch of t-shirt over his nipple and the impact of the chill over the hardened nub is a jolting sting that makes him want it on the other nipple, but he isn’t wet over there, so it wouldn’t be the same. “Correct answer,” Steve says. He lifts his sock foot and kicks Bucky in the center of the chest, not at full-force, which would end with a Bucky-shaped hole in the wall, but hard enough to wind him for a moment and topple him backward.

Since his legs are still bent under him, the muscles in his thighs pull, and all his weight is taken onto the flexed tops of his feet. He makes no move to get more comfortable, staying leaned back on his elbows and folded in half like he’s doing yoga again. He tried yoga when he was alone and gathering himself up and stepped into a studio once to get off the street when he thought he was being tailed.

He has other methods, now, for getting out in the world. For settling his breath.

Chin tipped up and jaw firm, he looks at Steve from beneath his still-wet lashes. He tips his chin up more as a show of baring his neck. Steve notices, and reaches forward to run his finger up and down over Bucky’s bulging Adam’s apple. He presses on it lightly and Bucky’s brain tells him to hold his breath, but he breathes against the touch and feels his throat make a subtle fluttering. Steve flicks him there. The sensation is nothing more than a tap, but he gasps once, twice, and shudders.

Steve strokes up, underneath his chin, ending with poking his fingertip under Bucky’s front lip so the nail jabs into his mucous membrane. After a moment of that, Steve transfers his finger to behind Bucky’s teeth, hooks it toward himself, and drags Bucky back up that way. Between the gagging stretch of his mouth and the dragging of his wet boxers, it’s hard to keep ignoring his erection. He huffs, like practicing pleading. Hot air on Steve’s finger, like kissing him.

With his finger still in place, Steve asks, “Your neck hurt?” and Bucky says, “As usual,” around the intrusion, his tongue flattening against Steve’s knuckle, which makes Steve smile, and his words garbled and soft, which makes Steve laugh.

Steve says, “Okay, come on. Get back up on the bed without standing.” He stands up, and he crosses to Bucky’s dresser. Bucky shuffles forward on his knees, trying as best he can not to let his boxers move from exactly where they are; Steve hasn’t said anything about it, but he isn’t dumb. He knows what isn’t allowed. He puts his hands flat on the edge of the bed, the smooth-polished surface, and lifts himself up wholesale—still with his knees bent, floating like that—then forces himself forward so he lands face-down, half-on and half-off the bed, his fabric-covered dick smashed into the wood.

Steve says, “That’s good, actually. Stay that way, but keep your feet off the floor.” Bucky curls his knees up into the air again and leans more of his weight onto his chest to keep his balance.

Steve comes back over, and with him, the pungent medicinal smell of the Icy Hot Bucky keeps in a drawer with everything else he intellectually knows he should be making more use of. Peppermint tea bags. A voice recorder. Steve kneels on the floor behind him, leaning with one arm resting across the top of Bucky’s ass, Bucky’s raised feet pressed into his thighs. With his right hand, he brings the Icy Hot to the back of Bucky’s neck, his touch silky and warm.

It took him a while to be any good at this, though Bucky kept letting him do it anyway, even as he alternated between grabbing roughly like a mother cat picking up a kitten, and overcompensating for that by barely rubbing the stuff in at all.

Now, he exerts a soothing, flat force against the curved knob of Bucky’s neck, the sides, down to where his neck and shoulders join, and the hollow of his throat even though there’s no pain there. It makes the smell more abrasive in Bucky’s nostrils. All over, as Steve keeps rubbing, the balm starts to cool, and he does feel the pain he usually tunes out ebbing away infinitesimally. He breathes deeply, slowly. He can’t believe he hasn’t asked to go to sleep all the way under Steve before, buried in the tomb of him.

He whines, and Steve says, “What’s up?”

“Can you get more on top of me?”

“May I.”

“Oh, you may,” Bucky says, and Steve just clears his throat, and that’s enough for Bucky to squeeze his eyes shut and amend to, “May you get more on top of me?” 

“Is that a rhetorical question or a shitty excuse for begging?” Steve’s pushes Bucky’s t-shirt up, so it’s rucked under his armpits, and starts stroking the Icy Hot down his back.

“Please, Steve. Get on top of me? Just for a moment. I really need you to hold me down. I need you to keep me in place. Put me in my place and keep me there. I want you to press my face into the wood and only let me up if you want me to breathe or talk.”

He would want him to talk.

Steve says, “How’s your neck feeling now?” A light, conversational voice, like he can’t hear the begging.

Bucky says, “It’s fine. It’s good. It feels so much less awful. You should get on top of me and hold me down and feel for yourself how much better it feels.”

“That makes no sense, Buck.”

“Please?”

“If you’re good. And I’m glad your neck feels better. I don’t want you in any pain I didn’t give you myself.”

Bucky says, “Thanks,” and Steve tousles his hair. The motion is awkward from the residual balm on Steve’s hand, the hair not moving freely.

There’s a long moment where Steve isn’t touching him with his hands at all, and then his fingers, heavily coated in the Icy Hot, are probing at Bucky’s ass. He’s taking his time, spreading Bucky open for his view, prodding his hole like he thinks it might do something interesting, switching to brushing barely against the first ring of muscle with one fingertip. Bucky clenches up at the gentle detachment, the caring refusal. With a small moan, he pushes back against Steve’s hand, and Steve snatches it away.

“You want this or not?”

“Yes. I need it. Please, Steve, I need you to fuck me now. Please don’t keep me on edge about it. Please decide I’m what you want to fuck right now.”

Steve laughs and rewards his babbling by patting him on the back of the thigh, letting the pat turn into a painful squeeze. “I know you need it. You always need it, don’t you?”

Bucky gasps, a “Yeah,” immediately and Steve squeezes him harder and says, “Rhetorical question. I don’t need you fact-checking me.”

“Sorry. Keep going.”

Steve must look so put-upon right now. “As I was saying. I know you need it, but if you want it, show me like a good boy. Lie there sweet and still and let me give it to you. We good?”

“Yes. Good. Please.”

Steve plays around with him again, at first, and Bucky tries hard to be good even as he can feel his asshole trying to clutch at Steve’s fingers, a thready, bubbling buzz zinging up his spine with every almost-touch, and then, one quick after another, Steve presses two slick fingers into the tensed-up tightness of Bucky’s body.

The sting is instant, and it goes straight to his dick. That and Steve’s steady fucking, slow but persistently there. He groans, and clenches involuntarily around Steve, provoking Steve’s other hand to pinch the skin at the back of his knee. He tries to still his clenching, but his hole is on fire now, and the sensation somehow spreads to the skin of his whole ass. It’s kind of a pleasant warmth, like burying his face in clothes fresh from the dryer.

When the intensity of the burn is greater than that of the fucking, Steve pulls out and rests his hand on the small of Bucky’s back, the pads of his fingers still balm-smooth. He’s silent, waiting, and Bucky takes the cue to try to be silent too, but, fuck. Unpredictably, the pain will spike like a harsh bite and then ebb back into a more subtle cluster of bee stings.  The cold starts setting in, and he feels empty with it, like he needs something in there immediately.

He says, “Steve,” and Steve says, “Hmm? Something the matter, Buck?” like he just noticed Bucky was there. He pets him a little, and Bucky stretches his back under the touch, rolls his shoulders.

It’s cold and burning at the same time in a way it never is when Steve massages it onto the places it’s supposed to go. He says, “Steve, put your fingers back, please?”

“Think carefully about that. If I put them back, they’re gonna have more on them.”

Deep in his throat, Bucky makes a noise of frustration. His dick is still hard and leaking against his stomach from the first few seconds of the burn, and he knows he won’t be getting off any time soon. The cold sting in his ass is starting to resolve itself to just cold, and with the sting, the emptiness leaves as well, shaping the cold into a hard, solid presence, like Steve’s shoved a whole icicle into him.

That’s a thought.

He makes the frustrated noise again. He might not feel empty anymore but he still wants.

Steve adds, “And my fingers are going deeper this time. They barely went in at all before you started whining and humping the bed like a needy little mutt bitch.”

Bucky does whine for real now, but he follows it up with, “Why a mutt? Why not a Labrador?”

“Labradors are smart. And dignified.”

“Mutts can be smart and dignified. Do you ever listen when you talk or do you run on an algorithm?”

Steve takes Bucky’s ass and presses his cheeks close together around his hole, then pushes inward, flattening the flesh of his ass as much as he can. The burn, which had subsided into a vague, pleasant soreness, reignites all over like Steve’s been beating him with a ruler.

“You know, I think I will give you more after all. I won’t even ask you to beg for it.”

Shaky, Bucky says, “Oh. Thanks for that.”

“Like you said. I’m a giver. Gonna ease you into it first, though.” Bucky knows Steve must be using “ease” loosely. Being eased into anything isn’t what Bucky asked for.  

Steve nudges his bent-up legs down with an elbow, but Bucky keeps his feet hovering just above the floor, not sure whether to read into Steve’s silence that the earlier order to keep them up has been rescinded or not. Steve doesn’t say anything, so it must not have been. With the change in position, he’s aware of his tightened calf muscles in a way he wasn’t before, having let awareness of his legs drop by the wayside in favor of the parts of his body lighting up with pain or the soothing away thereof.  

Now, Steve’s able to move in closer to his body, to drape himself over Bucky’s ass and lower back and wrap his left arm around his stomach, pulling him a smidgen up off the bed, but only at that one point, like Bucky’s one of his kneadable erasers and he’s pinching at him to make a smaller surface area. He says, “Let me get these for you sweetheart,” and pulls Bucky’s boxers all the way off, slowly so the cotton drags agonizingly along his dick, and a pair of whimpers one-two punch their way out of him.

Bucky says, “Thanks,” as his boxers drop to the floor, and Steve, still clutching him, says, “You got it.”

He dips his fingers into the Icy Hot again, and his right hand shoves the front of Bucky’s shirt up higher, even stymied as the rest of it is by his armpits, to make sure no fabric covers his nipples. He thumbs at Bucky’s right nipple, an easy slide. Then two of his fingers find the right, squeezing it up between them, patting it like it’s done something good, drawing circles.

He pulls away. He fusses with Bucky’s t-shirt so that when Bucky’s chest is flush with the unyielding bed again, the shirt’s hem cuts perfectly across the center of each nipple.  

The balm takes a little longer to hurt there than it did in his hole. First, there’s nothing but a nice warmth that makes him close his eyes and exhale deeply. But slowly, the sensation of being pricked with needles. Tiny needles—kitten claws of hurt. He wants to reach up and massage it in deeper, or drag Steve’s hand back up and get him to make it really painful. There’s no closure. His nipples go cold, and he settles into the feeling that Steve’s somehow clamped his teeth around both at once with no plans to let go any time soon.

Meanwhile, Steve is scratching at Bucky, all sensation and no pain. His back and hips. The sides of his ass. Down his thighs and calves, which Bucky could swear are starting to shake, though it must be psychosomatic; he could hold this position for hours on end without wavering a bit. Steve scratches more painfully at the soles of his feet, like thanking him for remembering not to put them down flat.

He asks, “That feel good on your poor nipples?”

“Steve, I need more.”

Steve’s sigh is so loud and long you’d think the dollar store was out of the shitty earbuds he likes and snaps in his mammoth hands after only a few wears (or unknowingly donates to Bucky’s large pile of wires and wire-related objects that no one needs to learn about).

Steve says, “I try to do something nice for you and all I get is bitching.”

 It’s something he said the other day, when he offered to split a pack of Hostess cupcakes with Bucky, and Bucky, upon being handed his cupcake, said, “What the hell? All my icing’s still attached to yours,” which it was. But Steve sounded joking-wounded then, not like he was aiming to wound, and he dangled his cupcake above Bucky’s head so Bucky could reach up and rip the extra icing off with his teeth.

“I’m sorry. It would just be nice if—” Steve pinches the back of his knee again, and his thoughts stumble as he kicks reflexively—“Fuck. Sorry. It’s nice, it is. But it doesn’t hurt. I need it to hurt.”

“It sure sounds like it hurts with all that blubbering you’re doing. How does it feel if it doesn’t hurt?”

“It’s kind of.” As he pauses to gather his words, Steve shoves three fingers into his hole without warning, and Bucky moans, the intrusion huge and warm. He’s wriggling his fingers all independently of one another, and at some point he apparently veritably doused himself in the Icy Hot, because the wriggling is slippery-smooth.

Bucky bucks forward, his dick grinding into the wood, and well. Thank god Steve talked him into sanding and lacquering the surface or he might have just stripped all his skin off.

Steve curves his fingers to one side and he squirms around again, seeking some kind of something. It’s clear now why Steve arranged the hem of his shirt like he did; every time Bucky moves even a centimeter, the stiff, double-thick fabric presses down and into each nipple, like the phantom teeth already holding him tight are now shaking him like a chew toy.

“It’s kind of what?”

“Never mind. Steve, it’s. It was anticlimactic, but it isn’t anymore. I’m good.”

Steve pulls his fingers out in slow-motion and then plunges them straight back in so that Bucky shoves forward again and his balls thump against the bed, causing him to make a strange, twisted, guttural noise and scrunch his face up. Steve’s fingers are deeper than before, and so the burning is too. He wouldn’t be shocked if it crawled up into the rest of his body, until all of him was shaking and dissolving.

That would be easier. That would be balanced. Right now, his whole nervous system is in his ass and all his blood is in his erection and his legs are definitely starting to shudder and twitch now from having to stay off the ground when his body has more interesting and pressing places to put its energy.

Steve says, “No, I’m sorry. I should be doing a better job taking care of you than that. I can make it worse if that’s what you need. You still have those binder clips?”

“No. I mean yes. I mean, please, if you want to, but I don’t need you to. I.” Steve taps him on the back of the head in a gentle reminder to get his thoughts in order. He reels himself in. “They’re all on the scripts on my bookshelf.”

“You know I own a stapler.”

“I like being able to shuffle the pages.”

Steve removes his fingers. He quickly reaches up and under Bucky to tweak one his nipples, twisting the fabric of the shirt hem with it.

“Nngh,” says Bucky; “If the Lord wanted us to shuffle pages, he wouldn’t have given me a stapler,” says Steve. He gets up to rummage through the bookshelf.

Bucky says, “I’m a real heathen.” He thinks something’s off with his voice, but he can’t pinpoint what. Probably the fact that it feels like Steve’s stuffed a fully occupied wasp nest up his ass and won’t even fuck him through it.

 “Well, don’t worry,” Steve says as he returns. “I’ll put in a word for you at the pearly gates.” With a clatter, he drops a small pile of binder clips right in front of Bucky’s face.

“Did you fuck up all of my scripts? What the hell?”

Steve grabs most of Bucky’s hair in his fist and yanks his head back, straining his neck so soon after soothing it. “Tongue,” he says, and Bucky sticks his tongue out. He wonders if it still says Slut. Steve doesn’t enlighten him, just picks up one of the binder clips and clamps it onto his tongue’s tip, which hurts immediately, absorbingly.

“You talk back, you don’t get to talk. You know that.”

Bucky makes the saddest noise he knows how to under the circumstances, which is maybe sadder than any noise he could make if he had full use of his mouth, because it’s very hard right now to not make sad noises, and Steve shakes him by the hair. “Keep this up as best you can. I want that tongue in the air.” Gravity will make the binder clip more of a pain this way. Bucky knows all of Steve’s dumb tricks, and thinking about that, about knowing, he whimpers and twists his hips against the bed.  

“I didn’t fuck them up,” Steve murmurs in his ear. “They’re all laid out individually on your desk and I’ll put the clips back on later.”

Before Steve can move of out of reach, Bucky lifts his right arm and puts his hand to the back of Steve’s head, a Thank you. Steve squeezes his hand in understanding before lowering it to the bed. He stands.

“Now, remind me: What was I going to do with all. Of these clips?”

Bucky’s mouth is already dried out. The only sound he can make in response is weak, short, and high. Like he’s trying to impersonate a steaming tea kettle but he’s too shy to commit. He opens his mouth wider so he can pant around his weighted tongue. Otherwise, it feels like he’s going to dry heave.  

“Hmm?” Steve says, clamping a hand down on Bucky’s hip. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me right now, Buck.” He sounds like he’s having the time of his life. He grips Bucky down to the bone. He’ll leave a bruise in the shape of his thumb.

Bucky curls both hands into fists. It’s useless with the left, but with the right, he can dig his nails into his palm and focus on tightening his hand so hard it shakes. His face is all screwed up, and he has to actively keep his tongue touching his upper lip to stop it from dropping down.

It’s a shame Steve can’t see. It would be great right now if he said, What are you making that ugly gargoyle face at me for? You know, if you keep that up, you’ll freeze that way and I’ll have to store you with a paper bag over your head. Even with his face frozen and a paper bag over his head, he would be expected to talk to Steve, to answer his questions and make fun of him and tell him about his day. There’s nothing Steve will do to him that he won’t ask Bucky to communicate through.

Steve puts a hand over Bucky’s fist and gentles his voice. “Shh. Shh. Come on. You know my memory’s not what it used to be in my old age. I need you to be a good boy and help me out. What did I take all these clips from you for?” His hand is warm, and familiarly calloused from the shield. Bucky relaxes his fist so he can intertwine their fingers. Steve lets him.

Bucky thinks about it. He does a few experimental things with his dry, gaping mouth, and finds that if he pants harder and shorter and does his shitty tea kettle impersonation at the same time, he can approximate the sound of sobbing.

“Oh! That’s right. I got them out so I could make you cry.” Steve pats him on the head. “Thanks for giving me a hand.” He gives Bucky’s hand a squeeze—which Bucky knows he means as a pun—then moves his own hand back to Bucky’s bruising hip and flips him over onto his back.

It’s startling enough that Bucky might have bitten his tongue if he weren’t holding his jaw pried so far apart to give himself air. He thinks now must be when Steve’s gonna comment on his ugly face, but Steve isn’t looking at his face; he’s studying the pile of binder clips with an exaggerated furrowed brow. 

“Wait, a minute. I could have sworn I grabbed nine clips. This is only eight. You seen a ninth one, Buck?”

Bucky said to him once, “You know, sometimes when we’re fucking, you sound like Dora the Explorer,” and Steve said, “I sound like what?” and Bucky didn’t feel like summarizing any of the things he used to watch on motel TVs when he wasn’t sleeping, so he just stared wide-eyed and ominously at Steve until Steve tackled him to the floor and they wrestled for a while.

Bucky kicks him in the shin. Steve grabs the offending leg and grips it like he’s gonna rip it off and beat Bucky with it. Bucky can’t help but hump the air.

Steve gives him a hard look, finally, and opens his mouth to reprimand him, but stops himself, grinning, as he takes in Bucky’s face. “Oh, right. There it is. Thanks for holding that for me.” He drops the leg and pets it, forgiving him. “You only kicked me because you couldn’t speak, hmm? I know you would never do that otherwise. That wouldn’t be a very smart choice.” He releases Bucky’s tongue from the clip and Bucky shrieks at the return of blood. “And I know how hard you try to be smart.”   

He brackets Bucky with his arms and kisses him, though it’s mostly him sucking on Bucky’s still-out tongue, drawing more blood back, making it feel swollen up to twice its normal size. He stops sucking and kisses the corner of Bucky’s open mouth chastely. Bucky licks Steve’s cheek in response; it doesn’t have quite the effect he’d like, dry-mouthed as he is, but he means it.

Steve laughs, low and good. He catches Bucky’s tongue between his middle and index fingers, pressing them together gently; even that amount of pressure causes Bucky to try to whimper, though he can’t at this point; all his noises have left him.

“You probably shouldn’t use this for a while,” Steve says. He lets go to nudge Bucky’s tongue into his mouth, like a turtle’s head into its shell. “Make sure it heals up good.”

Bucky nods, his lips pressed together protectively. He focuses on generating as much spit as he can. The freedom to do so seems heaven-sent.

“Now,” Steve says, “back to making you cry,” and it’s hilarious, because Bucky’s already starting to. Not enough that most people would notice, or at least not enough that he would have no choice about letting other people notice. He lets Steve notice. His vision blurs and he blinks it back but he knows Steve notices.

“So I don’t think I’m going to need all of these,” Steve says, fake-oblivious. “At least I won’t if you behave. But—” He takes one from the pile.

Intent as he was on his own mouth, Bucky forgot about his nipples. The soreness has subsided; they’re just cooler than usual, so he welcomes it as Steve pushes his shirt back up, strokes his right nipple, and fastens it in place with the binder clip.

“There we go.” Steve pets his pec, feather-light next to the clip’s precise, growing bite, and between the two sensations, Bucky tightens his lattisimus dorsi muscles, which steadies him, but pushes his chest up against Steve’s hand, and somehow, in the process, makes the clip feel tighter. “That good?” Steve asks, and pushes down against Bucky’s risen chest so that Bucky vibrates with the resistance from his back muscles.

Bucky says, “Fuck,” but it’s a subtler pain than the burning was; his breath slows and deepens with it.

“You need to let your tongue rest, remember?” Steve picks up another binder clip. “But I need to know, yes or no. That good?”

He’s adjusting already, but that just means his right nipple won’t steal the show from the left. He closes his eyes and rolls his head back. He relaxes his muscles. He makes the Ok sign with his metal thumb and finger.

 “Thanks for telling me,” Steve says, and clips Bucky’s left nipple, and actively presses the clip tighter with his fingers, which is not so subtle.

He feels a few tears roll from under his shut eyelids. He makes the Ok sign more emphatically this time, and opens one teary eye to see Steve’s smile. It’s more in the left side of his mouth than the right. It’s an achingly perfect smile. Bucky thinks about kissing it. He wouldn’t be allowed to use his tongue, which is a restriction he likes for kissing when Steve isn’t kissing back. It feels more deferential, like instead of Steve’s mouth, he’s kissing a queen’s outstretched hand.

He crooks a finger at Steve, opening his eyes wide and making his lips into a soft, pleading shape to show he isn’t trying to order him around.

Steve acquiesces, letting go of the clip and sitting down on the bed and bringing his face in close to Bucky’s. He doesn’t do anything, only looks, and Bucky stares into his eyes as long as he can. When it gets overwhelming, he drops his eyes to Steve’s mouth, and kisses him there three times—left corner, center, right corner. Steve responds by biting his jaw. He holds on, sucking a bruise into the skin, and Bucky holds still.

Steve lets up and lifts his head and smiles again. Absentmindedly, still watching Bucky’s face, he flicks the binder clip on his right nipple. It’s like the burn from the balm’s come flying back; Bucky’s whole face flinches and his right hand flies up to cover it, but Steve catches him around the middle of his forearm.

“Let me see,” he says. Bucky lowers his arm, willing it to become one with the wood, pushing down like the pressure will generate glue. He figures Steve will flick the left clip now, but he goes for the right again. Bucky fucked up the first time, and Steve is being sweet enough to give him a second chance.

He flicks it three times in a row, then twists the left as far around as he can, and Bucky keeps his whole body still for Steve, but breathes sobbing sounds through his nose, folds his whole lower lip between his teeth and squints, and now is when Steve says for him, “What are you doing that for? If I knew you weren’t going to give me something prettier to look at, I wouldn’t have minded you trying to hide.”

The sting is going, going, and Bucky twists his mouth into a pained smile. Steve does this thing with his face where he cocks his head and looks to the side as if to say, Oh, the world. Disappointing me as usual, and Bucky thinks about Steve jerking him off with that look on his face, and it’s so much. It always is.

What Steve actually says, looking back at him, is “You know, I think your tongue must be healed up by now. I sure hope it is, because you’re going to need it when I take these off.” He flicks both the clips at once and Bucky rolls his hips, clenches his ass, curls his shoulders in closer to his body. “Congratulations. Your tongue’s off bedrest.”

Bucky says, “I want.” He swallows. He feels like there’s too much saliva in his mouth now.

Steve says, “See Dick. See Dick want. Want Dick, want.”

“Oh my god,” Bucky says. “I want to come. Please. Steve. Please?”

 “Come, Dick, come?” Steve says. “Nah. I don’t think so. I’m a little busy with other things, Buck.”

“Please.” Bucky voices hits a whine. “It’s distracting. My dick’s distracting me.”

“Hmm. Well I don’t want you distracted.” For the first time since they started, he wraps his fist around Bucky’s dick. Bucky thrusts up and Steve takes his fist away and smacks Bucky’s erection with the back of his hand.

Bucky yelps.  

Steve says, “I’ll help you with that soon. I mean it that I’m busy right now. I’ve got a to-do list—” he taps the side of his own head with one finger—“and I intend to go through it in order.”

Bucky hums dejectedly and humps the air some more. “I’ll have my people call your people so you can pencil me in.”

“That’s a good plan. What a responsible boy.” He kisses the tip of Bucky’s nose, and Bucky feels overheated under that attention. “Now. Where was I?”

“Ripping the clips off.”

“An attentive boy too. I guess you’d have to be to get by, stupid as you are.”

He hovers his hands above the clips but doesn’t do anything, just watching Bucky, who grunts, “Yeah. It makes it easier.” He shuts his eyes, but Steve snaps his fingers, so he opens them again.

“There we go.” He staggers it, yanking the left clip off first and the right clip off four seconds later.

Bucky gasps at the sudden stretch on each of his nipples, but then it’s over and it’s obvious from Steve’s face that he was expecting something else. “Huh. Those were supposed to hurt more coming off.”

“They didn’t. Have you been googling ways to make me cry?”

“Yes. Every morning, the moment I wake up, I say to my phone, ‘Google, what’s the best way to turn Bucky into a disgusting red-eyed mess getting his tears and snot all over our nice, clean home?”

Bucky laughs, breathy, but—“I hope you’re at least using a VPN like I showed you.”

“I’m lying. I say, ‘Fucky.’”

“Fuckrag,” Bucky says, though he knows something’s off with that. That’s not a word.

“There we go. ‘Google, what’s the best way to make my fuckrag cry?’ ”

“I might cry if you don’t tell me you’re using a VPN to research you and Fucky’s sex life.”

“Is that any of your concern right now?”

“A little bit.” He doubts there’s a single government agency in this country or several others not keeping tabs on their internet usage.

Steve purses his lips. He puts his palm flat on Bucky’s stomach and pushes down, straightening his arm and back so that he’s looming. “We’re going to try this again. Is it your job to be questioning me right now?”

He’s looking down at Bucky like Bucky’s something distasteful he found buried in his yard. Bucky could get out from under him, tell him he’s serious, but he trusts Steve, and if Steve actually carelessly told the NSA the details of their sex life, Steve would confess.

“No,” Bucky tries, but Steve keeps looking at him. “You are using the VPN. Of course you are. I know you’re smart about security.” Steve raises his eyebrows and shifts the heel of his palm so it presses into Bucky’s bladder for a moment. He doesn’t need to piss right now but it’s not like he’s gone since last night. “Ah, fuck. Sorry? I’m sorry.”

Steve moves his hand back to calmer territory, but he’s still looking down, waiting for something. Bucky continues, “It’s not my concern. It’s not my job to question you. My job is to be a crying fuckrag. Your crying fuckrag. Crying fuckrags shouldn’t even even know how to use the internet,” and he’s pretty sure Steve only relents at the point because he’ll start laughing otherwise.

There’s amusement in his voice, anyway, when he says, “Bingo,” and pats Bucky’s cheek and stops looming, settling back down on the bed. He rubs his finger over the nipple closest to him. “These are all red and stiff now at least.  Like teats.” Bucky wishes he were still on his stomach so it wouldn’t be misbehaving to hide his face.

“I probably didn’t leave the clips on long enough. That’s okay. We’ll gather data on that when I’m feeling more generous with my time.”

Steve hasn’t gathered data on him yet, even though Bucky bought him a graph paper notebook and a mechanical stopwatch and multicolored pens months ago just for that. At the time, Steve stared, and said, “Um, Buck. You know I’m happy to test things out on you, but this seems a little unnecessarily. Um.” He shifted his jaw around, thinking it over, then said, “Clinical,” in the tone he used whenever he didn’t want to come out and say, “Um, Buck, I think you’re acting like I’m Hydra.”

Which maybe sometimes he was right about, but a lot of the time he wasn’t. Most of the time, these days.  Bucky got confused, but not that confused.  

“Oh no,” Bucky said, settling on the back of the couch and leaning his head on top of Steve’s, “you’re going to do science experiments so you can figure out how to make me happy. I’m terrified, Steve,” and Steve said, “Okay, fine, shut up. But I’m using the stopwatch on my phone. That thing creeps me out.”

Bucky felt bad, then, having forgotten that they’d done science experiments on Steve too, after he grew. Stupid and harmless science experiments, yeah, but that didn’t mean he didn’t get to hate them, even if he would never just say that’s why it creeped him out.  

When Bucky said, “You don’t have to do it at all, you know,” Steve said, “I’m using the stopwatch on my phone,” and Bucky slid down to lie on the couch with his head in Steve’s lap and took Steve’s hand and kissed each of his knuckles and placed Steve’s palm against his heart.

Still with his finger swiping lazily over Bucky’s stiff, red nipple, Steve murmurs, “This does throw a bit of a wrench in things. Oh! Do you think that’s what I should do now? Should I take a wrench to these? Make sure they’re screwed in all the way?”

“That’s a—” Bucky swallows some excess spit—“screwdriver.”

“It’s a wrench if I say it’s a wrench.”

“Sir, yessir. Wrench my nipples, sir.”

Steve snickers. “Nah. I can take care of my crying fuckrag perfectly fine without bringing a tool box into it.”

“You just don’t know where the tool box is.”

“I’m not seeing the relevance. Oh, okay. Got it.”  In the kind of stupid complicated maneuver Bucky will remember to call him a showoff for later, Steve all at once bites down on one of his nipples hard enough to draw blood, digs his nails into the other one and twists, and uses his free hand to yank on a small chunk of hair at the back of his head, then lifts the hand twisting his nipple and backhands him across the face.

Bucky’s screaming before he registers what he’s feeling, his shoulders twisting off of the bed, and while he’s still screaming, in a few fluid motions, Steve pushes his legs up so his thighs hit his nipples, coats his fingers in the Icy Hot again, and sticks two in Bucky’s hole, corkscrewing them around.

Bucky’s screaming dies to insistent whimpering pretty fast, but he’s breathing hard, and very aware of the electric throbbing in his nipples, made worse by the wiry hair on his thighs brushing the sensitive skin. He is less distracted by his dick.

“There we go,” Steve grunts. “That’s what I was looking for.” He fucks his fingers in and out.

Bucky didn’t realize how much he was crying, but he has to sniff a couple times before he can say halfway-intelligibly, “Glad all wasn’t lost.”

“Nope. Grab yourself behind the knees for me, really press your thighs into your chest.” He pulls his fingers most of the way out and spends some time running them over Bucky’s clenching hole, over the skin surrounding it, getting the burning everywhere he can. Bucky watches him, how intent he looks on making sure Bucky’s hole hurts as much as he needs it to. It hurts a whole fucking lot.

When Steve’s done, he gets back up on the bed, lying on his stomach perpendicular to Bucky. He kisses him on the cheek. “You can let go of those now,” he says, his voice low, “but keep keeping your feet off the floor, okay?”

The lack of rough pressure on his abused nipples is a relief, and Steve’s pushed him far back enough on the table that his legs can dangle instead of having to be held consciously away from the ground. His hole burns and stings more once he’s less spread open, but it’ll cool off soon.

Steve’s hand spans his stomach as much as it can, matching the rise and fall of his breath. Bucky lets himself close his eyes, and Steve lets him too. But before there’s any risk he’ll fall back asleep, Steve whispers, “You know, I didn’t shower after my run because I had to come in here and attend to you.”

“You know, I did notice the sweat.” Bucky cracks an eye as he leans in to nose at the still-damp sweat at the collar of Steve’s shirt. 

“Well, I’m showering now. Come on. Back on the floor.” He stands up and snaps his fingers. “Come on.”

Once Bucky’s slid down, Steve arranges him so he’s kneeling, sitting back on his heels with his arms above his head. Steve kneels in front of him to peel Bucky’s long sleeves up and off, one at a time, so that the body of the shirt stays looped loosely around his neck. He takes his time rolling it up into a wreath shape, one of the sleeves tucked in to get it out of the way. Without a good view of Steve’s hands, Bucky watches his face, his set jaw and narrowed eyes. Like he’s doing something that really matters.

Bucky swallows. Face unchanging, Steve moves one hand up momentarily to cup Bucky’s throat where it meets his jaw.

Finished, he takes the end of the remaining loose sleeve and stands up. Bucky’s shirt is going to be stretched out to hell by the time they’re done. “Sorry,” Steve says, “but the hallway has a strict no off-leash policy.”

“Wouldn’t want you breaking the law for me or nothing.”

“What kind of role model would I be? Down, boy.” Bucky rolls his eyes, but gets into position to crawl for Steve, who last time Bucky checked said he wasn’t that into the whole dog thing.  

Steve says, “Hmm,” and Bucky tilts his head back to look at him.

“How about this.” Steve lets the sleeve drop and walks around to Bucky’s side. “Crawl to the doorway but don’t cross the threshold.” Bucky does, aware of Steve’s eyes on him the whole time. “Good. Okay, and—” Steve comes up behind and leans down to twist the shirt around his neck so that the dangling sleeve is laid flat down his spine.

Bucky imagines his own metal hand still poking out of the end and helpfully pointing at his ass, which is burning again, the balm stimulated back to life by the rubbing as he crawled. He drops his head down for a moment to take a deep breath and close his eyes and smile.

“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Steve says, and Bucky lifts his head back up and opens his eyes, though all he can see is the blank wall, and the baseboard that he painted a deep blue to work himself through a panic attack. “You’re going to crawl in front of me. I think you know your way to the bathroom by now, unless you’ve been pissing yourself and not telling me about it. I’m not discounting the possibility, but do your best.”

As he keeps talking, his weight shifts enough that the floorboards creak, and he slides a finger into Bucky’s still-slick asshole and just holds it there. “I’m going to walk behind you while holding this nice leash I made you so you don’t run off chasing rabbits.” Bucky laughs and tries to tighten around the finger, but it isn’t large enough to feel like anything more than an incidental presence.

Steve doesn’t reprimand him for trying. He keeps yammering like he doesn’t even know his finger’s in there. “But I don’t think you’ll try to do that. You’re very well-behaved, aren’t you?”

He doesn’t want to talk while Steve’s using him like a finger splint, but he makes himself say, “That’s up to you, Steve.”

“Of course it is, but I just said you are, so let’s try that again. You’re very well-behaved, aren’t you?” He puts a second finger in and scissors them. Bucky’s stomach clenches and he breathes shallowly through his nose.

“I’m very well-behaved.” The one exception to the no-pushing-Bucky-to-accept-compliments rule is making him compliment himself. Compliments are great when he gets to treat them like a grueling task to grit his teeth through. Something he’s doing for Steve and not himself.

“There we go,” Steve says, and pulls his fingers out, stretching the rim of Bucky’s hole longer than he needs to, and then rubs the excess balm off on Bucky’s thigh. He smacks Bucky in the center of his ass and stands, picking the loose shirt sleeve back up. “Stop distracting me from my shower. Come on. Daylight’s wasting.” 

Bucky starts to crawl, moving slowly and carefully until he can get a feel for setting the pace. The carpet looks soft, but it’s actually a tough kind of nubbly, not steel wool but not a far cry from it either. Younger than him and Steve, but older than carpet should be. Bucky said once that they should rip it up, and Steve agreed, but that was almost a year ago and they still just wear socks around the apartment.

His knees and right palm are gonna be bright red and stuck full of debris when they finally get to the bathroom (Steve vacuums when he can’t sleep, but the carpet grabs at bits of trash and holds onto them for dear life; Bucky gets that).

He registers that for this to work, Steve must be hunched comically over or walking with his knees bent deep or something else undignified. But no one’s looking at Steve, so who cares. Steve is looking at Bucky. Looking at the clenching-shimmying of his ass and hips. Looking at the back of his head, his stiffened spine. He can’t get very far from Steve without choking himself, and so he shuffles even more slowly than he started. His hands and knees rub agonizingly on the ground.

He doesn’t run off chasing rabbits. He’s very well-behaved. Making him choke is Steve’s job, not his, and if Steve wants him to choke, he’ll say so.

By the time they pass the doorway to the living room, his right hand is so raw he can’t help but put as much pressure on that side as possible. He shoves the sting deep inside himself and shudders with it. The living room, when he glances to his right, is flooded with soft sun, the hardwood floors gleaming. It looks peaceful, like somewhere people with quiet lives live. Floral couch. Lemon-scented clean. 

Daylight’s wasting. He hasn’t checked the clock since Steve woke him up. That could have been either ten minutes or three hours ago. He blinks a few times and looks away from the living room. He asks, “What time is it?” and Steve stops walking. The shirt presses into his throat for one fumbling moment, but he catches himself quickly and stops too. He looks behind him, at Steve, who is, in fact, hunched over. But he doesn’t look undignified when he’s literally talking down to Bucky.

“Do you need to know?” It’s a real question. Last night, Bucky said in passing that he wanted to lose track, but he suddenly isn’t sure. Now that the time question has occurred to him, he can feel his brain tuning all the way into his internal clock, trying to calculate, scrabbling to relocate a momentarily forgotten hypervigilance.

“Yeah. I think so. Sorry.”

“Not an issue. It’s 6:33.” Steve wears a watch. Bucky’s tried to wear one, but hates that much sensation against his wrist.

“It’s only been half an hour?”

“I’m very efficient. You want regular time checks?”

“No. Just. If I ask.”

“Well, keep me in the loop. I don’t need you drawing sundials in your head.” He shakes the makeshift leash for punctuation. “I don’t need you trying to think at all.”  

Bucky says, “God help us,” and smiles at him.

“That all?”

“That’s all.”

“Okay then. Stop dawdling.” He shakes the sleeve again. “Mush,” he says and Bucky smiles at him larger. Steve quirks his mouth at Bucky’s smile but raises his eyebrows at his disobedience. Bucky is well-behaved; he is, but he can’t help but smile at Steve when he looks so serious leaning down to keep Bucky tethered to his hand.

Holding eye contact with Bucky, still smiling in the way he’s able to pass by most people as thoughtful instead of menacing, Steve says, “You move now or the only reason your dick’s gonna stop distracting you is the cold shower I’ll aim at your crotch when we get in there.” He kicks at Bucky’s ass.

“Ah! I got it. I’m going.” He looks front and center and resumes his slow shuffle. Normally when he crawls for Steve, he keeps his legs parted both to distribute his weight and to put himself more on display. But with Steve so close at his back, he can’t part his legs without risking tripping Steve up. He has to keep himself small. The rubbing of his thighs makes him wince.

When they get to the bathroom, Steve says, “Hang on,” before Bucky is able to crawl through the doorway, and Bucky hangs on. “You’re not on the verge of collapsing, are you?”

“No. You’re not going to ask me to do jumping jacks while you shower, are you?”

“No, but file that idea away.” Steve steps closer until he’s standing with his legs on either side of Bucky’s torso, and then he sits on Bucky’s back.  

Reflexively, Bucky tenses all over, becoming a sturdier place for Steve to rest. His stomach and pelvis tighten in tandem with the sweaty, warm weight of Steve holding him down, his thighs clenched around Bucky’s ribcage.

Steve’s hand finds the back of his neck. He rubs with the same motions as the earlier massage. “Stop tensing. You know full-well you can take my weight without trying.” He moves his hand up to tangle his fingers in Bucky’s hair.

Bucky drops his head and relaxes his muscles group-by-group until he’s a soft, pliant ottoman under Steve’s body.

“There we go. Good boy. See? Your body wants to take me.”

Bucky says, “Yeah.” He bites the inside of his cheek and closes his eyes. He could sleep like this, maybe. Would try sleeping like this sometime if that wouldn’t get real boring for Steve real fast.

“Now,” Steve says, and squeezes at the hinge of Bucky’s jaw. Bucky opens for him, and gets the loose shirt sleeve between his teeth. “Bite down.” Bucky does. The fabric is chewy and nice, and he sucks on it, grateful to have something to do with his mouth now that he doesn’t have crawling to keep his mind off his dick.

Steve says, “Good, thank you. Now. When I stand up, you’re going to crawl into the bathroom on your own. You don’t need the leash anymore. They have very relaxed laws in the bathroom in this apartment. It’s not like the hallway.”

Bucky makes a miffed noise, and Steve laughs and pinches the flesh high on Bucky’s cheekbone.

“Not that relaxed. Calm down before you hurt yourself.”

Bucky lifts his right hand, holding himself and Steve up with the metal arm, and gives Steve a thumbs up. He feels it throughout his body when Steve snickers. He lowers his hand but doesn’t return his weight to that arm, instead rubbing at the tender palm with his fingers. As anticipated, it’s embedded with staples (from Steve’s stapler) and little bits of wood and flecks of who the fuck knows what.

“Anyway. You’re going to lie on your back on the floor next to the bathtub. You’re going to take this—” he plucks at the shirt-wreath—“from around your neck and use it to cover up your face. And you’re going to wait for further instructions, very quiet and very still. You got all that?”

The answer isn’t really yes or no so Bucky cocks his head to one side. Steve says, “Okay, spit the shirt out,” and regretfully, Bucky lets the now spit-soaked fabric drop from his mouth.

“What do I do with my hands.”

“Hmm. That is a good question. Thank you for reminding me.” He absentmindedly puts a portion of his hand in Bucky’s mouth, and Bucky sucks on two of his knuckles while Steve thinks. “How’s your dick?”

Bucky says around Steve’s hand, “Awful.”

“Well, I’ll need to keep an eye on that then. Frame it with your hands while you’re down there. In a diamond shape, with your index fingers and thumbs touching. But not touching your dick, just each other. Can you do that for me?”

“I can.” Getting awful artsy there, wouldn’t be intelligible with his mouth busy, and also he wouldn’t be able to keep the waver out of his voice from thinking about being Steve’s tacky bathroom art installation.

“We’ll see. Good job finding the bathroom, by the way. I thought I’d probably have to drag you there after all.”

Bucky hums around Steve since he still physiologically can’t purr. Steve kisses the top of his head and pulls his knuckles out. Bucky frowns, but doesn’t complain. When Steve stands, he doesn’t wait to crawl forward; he already has his orders.

The bathroom light is off, and paranoid as they are, they keep the window covered with blackout curtains—God save them from CAPTAIN AMERICA AND WINTER SOLDIER ENTANGLED IN SADOMASOCHISTIC GAY SHOWER SCENE headlines—but his night vision is even better than Steve’s. It’s a shame. He’d like to crawl into total darkness for Steve sometime without having to involve any blindfolds.

The tile hurts much more on his knees than it would have before he scraped them up on the carpet, like how he remembers it feeling to touch a sunburn, so he’s regretful about having to turn over before lying down. His right fingers are clumsy as he works at the shirt, untwisting the sleeve from around its rolled body. Steve is still hovering outside the door. When Bucky lifts his head to pull the shirt off, he sees that he’s watching him.

Well, of course he is. Even if he were pretending to tie his shoes or examine the drywall when Bucky looked, Steve would really be watching him.  

Bucky waves. Steve waves back. Steve says, “Sayonara.”

That’s his cue to put his face away, but it occurs to him that Steve wasn’t very specific about how he should cover his face. He has two obvious options: he can drape the shirt on top of himself, or he can start putting the shirt back on but stop before his head can get through the neck hole. That has its appeal. Something about it reminds him of a dunce cap; he imagines acting up while they’re around other people, and Steve shaming him by yanking his shirt up like that and leaving it there.  

That’s also the problem with going that route; no matter how spooky or stupid he looked, the implication would be that he was, a moment before, a person wearing people clothes. There’s a passive shame, instead, to the shirt lying on top of him. Like he’s just a part of the floor, but not even a part of the floor that anyone cares about keeping neat. He goes with that, and hopes he didn’t take too long deciding.

He can see the ceiling light switch on through the fabric of the shirt, then dim to how Steve prefers to have it when he showers. The shirt’s a breathable fabric, but he’s still left taking more shallow breaths than usual with its weight pressed flat against his open mouth. His breath sounds louder also, and its warmth flows back onto his skin.

He rests his hands on his pelvis and makes a diamond around his dick like Steve instructed.  The strain of the position isn’t much, but he also doesn’t have a hell of a lot to focus on except for the small forward pull of his shoulders, the responding increased bend in his neck, the discomfort in his right hand whether he keeps his other fingers lowered or raised.

That, and his breath, and the proximity of his hands to his sore cock, and how he must look to Steve, who hasn’t moved except to turn on the light, or made any kind of noise, let alone a noise resembling further instructions.

He’s standing by the door and looking at the hideous life-sized erotic Halloween decoration somebody left on his floor.

Bucky is very still, very quiet. His own warm breath. The kind of lighting Steve likes. A trembling in his right arm (not enough that he thinks it’ll knock into his erection, but enough that he can’t guarantee it won’t).

Eventually, Steve says, “Well, I don’t think I’m going to have to step on you, but this isn’t the largest bathroom in the world, you know,” like Bucky’s at fault for Steve putting him there.

Steve steps all the way into the room so he can shut and lock the door, and he stands with his legs on either side of Bucky’s instead of stepping on him; it is, in fact, a very small bathroom.

“Here’s what we’re doing: I’m showering and you’re lying there.”

“Is that it?”

“That’s all that you’re doing. What I use you for in the course of my shower is my business.”

“Yes,” Bucky says, though he knows that Steve didn’t need an answer, and yes isn’t exactly an answer to that anyway. But he wanted to say it.

Steve says, “Glad you agree.”

He’s still standing over Bucky when he starts stripping; where else is he gonna go? He has to lift his legs away to get his sweatpants and socks off, but then he’s back to bracketing Bucky’s shins, a solid presence, now skin-to-skin. He can hear Steve folding the sweatpants up before throwing them with the socks so that they land neatly on the floor by Bucky’s hip.

Steve doesn’t wear underwear when he runs because he’s some kind of fucked up deviant. Bucky asked him about it once and Steve said, “The ancient Olympic athletes competed completely nude,” and Bucky said, “I swear to God, Rogers, you’re killing me. What the fuck is with you and the ancient Olympic athletes?” as though he doesn’t know perfectly well why a tiny pubescent Steve spent so much time in the library reading up on homosocial rituals.

The first time Bucky jerked it thinking of Steve was after Steve, sounding bored out of his mind, eyes still on his book as they hid in a derelict corner of the library, said “Hey, Buck, listen to his,” and started reading aloud from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. “’Thou hast made a clean confession,’” Steve read, “’acknowledging all they misdeeds, and hast received the penance openly from the point of my edge,’” and Bucky excused himself.

Steve’s prolonged fixation on Arthurian legend was difficult to get through.

“Can I. Can I have your shirt?” he asks before Steve’s fully undressed.

“You already have a shirt, and you’re not even wearing that one correctly. Why would I give you mine?”

“I like the smell.”

“Really? That’s pretty disgusting. How often do you jerk off thinking about me suffocating you in my armpit after I work out?”

“Not usually?”

“Oh yeah? So what do you think about?” Bucky huffs. “If you want my shirt, you’re gonna tell me. I’m not running a charity over here. Tell me what you think about when you’re so mewling and desperate for it you can’t just wait me for to get you off properly.”

“I think about a lot of things, Steve. Please.”

“Most recently, then.”

“Oh, god. You—”

“No shit, me.”

“I’m trying to tell a story here. You hung me from the ceiling at the gym and um. You pretended I was a punching bag. The other people all acted like it was normal. Of course that was what you would do with me.”

“Of course.”

“And afterward when I was tenderized all over and my face was covered in blood you acted like you’d made my stuffing leak out, and you fisted me with your boxing glove still on to push it back in. I know you don’t wear gloves; don’t get offended.”

“I’m a little too distracted to get offended right now.”

“Happy to entertain. And then you taped my mouth and ass shut so I wouldn’t leak again.”

“That it? You don’t get the shirt if you hold out on me. Did my broken punching bag get to come?”

“No. A guy came over and asked if he could take me off your hands for five bucks, and you said no. You. You threw me over my shoulder and said you gonna keep using me anyway.” That was where it ended, because at that point, Bucky had started crying, and the sensation of crying had tipped him over into orgasm.  He adds, “Waste not, want not. You know.”

“Okay,” Steve says. “Okay, I think you earned the shirt. Cross your arms over your face and then keep holding still for me.”

Bucky does, the metal arm over his eyes to block out what light peeks through the fabric, and the crook of his flesh-and-blood elbow cutting off the air to his nose. He feels Steve’s hand on his ankle, spreading his legs open further, and then Steve kneeling in the space he made. He makes an interrogative noise; he’d been expecting Steve to throw the shirt down on top of him, maybe onto his dick or as a triple layer blanketing his head.

Steve pinches the skin of his kneecap, making a bit of stuck debris dig in harder, and says gently, “Quiet in the peanut gallery.” Then: a whispery press of something at his cock, damp and rough, Steve’s t-shirt, and he can’t help moaning, which makes Steve pinches him high up on his inner thigh, fingers brushing his balls, and Bucky’s abs clench; his dick leaks some more.

“Fuck,” he says, “Steve, fuck, I’m really sorry. I can be quiet or I can hold still but I really can’t do both, I’m sorry.”

Steve sighs dramatically. “If you’re sure. I guess it was unfair of me to think you could multitask when you can barely ever do one thing well at a time. That was cruel.”

He pulls the t-shirt away, and Bucky says, “Please. Steve. Please, if you keep going I can multitask. I can figure it out.”

“No, hey. Here.” He drapes the shirt over Bucky’s calf. “You’ll get it back. I definitely want to get this filthier for you, and I think it’s time to take care of your little distraction. Two birds. One stone.”

“Yeah?” Bucky says.

“Yeah. But you tell me: noise or moving.”

“I don’t want to decide.”

“You’re going to decide or I’m just going to get in the shower and leave you to fuck the air. Not that you’ll be allowed to. If I look out of the shower and catch you, you’re getting punished.”

“Oh my god. Noise, Steve. I want to make noise.”

“Good. Thank you so much for telling me.” He rubs Bucky’s shin through the shirt before lifting it and wrapping it around Bucky’s dick again, more firmly this time. “And of course you do. Sometimes I think you could come just from whimpering and crying like a desperate little slut.”

Bucky says, “Steve, please,” and Steve squeezes him painfully.

“You didn’t say talking, remember? You said noise, and that’s what I want to hear out of you. You make as many noises for me as you need.”

Bucky barks like a dog, and Steve laughs. “Really?” Bucky meows this time, because he thinks it’ll make Steve laugh more, and it does, but as he’s laughing, he finally starts moving his hand on Bucky’s cock, and the birdcall Bucky was thinking about making next—he knows a lot of birdcalls—gets abandoned for a small, stuttering scream.

“You can come whenever you need too,” Steve says. “I’m not interested in delaying my shower any longer just to watch you squirm around down there,” like not being allowed to come until Steve says is something that Bucky chooses to spite him.

That disdain alone is almost enough. To be fair, he has been on the edge for—Jesus, he’ll ask Steve the time after; now isn’t the moment—and Steve is moving the shirt on his dick fast as Bucky makes high, wounded sounds and tightens all his muscles to hold them perfectly still, and Steve’s saying, “Maybe I should always wipe my sweat off on you after a workout. Maybe I should bring you with me on my runs to use as a moist towlette from time to time—” and of all things, it’s the word “towlette” that has his shout catching in his throat and his arms pressing tight around his head as his mind whites out and he spills into the t-shirt.

He shifts the arm pressing on his nose up and forces his mouth wide so he can breathe more deeply, just for now. He squeezes his eyes shut. Steve is still jacking his softening cock, less tightly than before, but it hurts anyway, the sensation too much, perfect. He lets himself sink into it, lets nonsense syllables spill from his open mouth. Steve coos, “There we go. I bet that feels better.” Bucky gives him a happy, high sound.

He doesn’t want to cut this short, this too much, even if he knows it won’t go anywhere with his refractory period being what it is on his meds, but his brain is dragging itself back to the present bit by bit, and he has to know.

“Steve.” His voice is hoarse. He clears his throat.

Steve’s hand stops moving. “You got a good reason for talking?”

“Yeah. What. What time is it?”

  “6:48.”

“Thank you.”

“You don’t sound so great. You need water?”

“Soon, I think. Not urgent.”

Steve’s hand starts up again, slowly, and at the same time, he lowers himself over Bucky’s boneless body to kiss him on the mouth through Bucky’s shirt. Bucky kisses him back, using his tongue, even though all he can taste is bland cotton and he doesn’t know how well Steve can feel what he’s doing. It’s nice to lick at Steve even when it’s futile.

Steve’s tongue pokes at him in turn. He draws back enough to talk. “In a minute, I’ll get a glass of water and leave it by your head. Once I’m in the shower, you have permission to do what you need to do to drink it. When you’re done, lie down again and cover your face back up, but with my shirt this time. I want you breathing in my sweat and your own mess and thinking about how filthy you are while I get to be clean.”

Steve sits up, definitely smiling and stupidly proud of himself and beautiful. His hand on Bucky’s dick is getting more overwhelming by the second, and Bucky bites his lip as he tears up at the constant thrumming jolt of it. He whines. He wants whether Steve stops to be up to Steve, but that doesn’t mean he won’t beg as much as he can without words.

Steve says, “What are you whining about? You wanted me to keep kissing you?”

Bucky grunts, short and sharp.

“No? Is that a no? I’m gonna need you to be clearer, Buck.” His other hand starts playing with Bucky’s balls now, rolling them around like an afterthought.

Bucky does his best to sound soft and broken. His best is very good right now. It doesn’t matter that Steve’s going to stop soon no matter what, not wanting Bucky to be dehydrated; it won’t be the same if he stops when Bucky hasn’t earned it.

“You speaking Russian? I don’t understand what you’re saying to me, sweetheart. If you didn’t want me to keep kissing you, what’s got you so worked up? ”

Bucky sounds soft and broken in several different keys. It takes no effort. He’s full-on crying now. It’s enough to make Steve pretend to get with the program.

“Oh! Oh, is it this?” He stops stroking and softly squeezes the base of Bucky’s dick, moving the hand on his balls up to cup over the head, and the fabric might feel nice against him, not in motion, if he weren’t so sensitive that any touch is agony. “I’m just trying to do something nice for your poor dick, Buck. Does this not feel good?”

Bucky whimpers once, and Steve relents, removing the shirt and both hands. Steve kisses his hip. “Well, thanks for putting up with it for that long. I forget how fragile you are sometimes. That’s my fault.” He scrapes his nails up and down Bucky’s thigh. “You could have said something, though. I’m not a mind-reader.”

Bucky scoffs, and Steve slaps him where he kissed him. He startles, hips thrusting up. Steve slaps him again, lower down, close to his dick. “You’re staying still until I’ve started my shower, remember?”

Bucky mms an affirmation. Steve gets up and steps around Bucky to get to the sink. At the sound of Steve running the water to let it get cold, Bucky takes a deep, slow breath and lets it out. It’s hot against his face. He licks his dry lips. His body is softening into the absence of active sensation. He holds even his left arm more limply where it lies across his eyes. It isn’t a difference anyone else could ever notice, but it’s good.

The water turns off. Steve crouches down to place the glass to the right of Bucky’s head, and puts the soaked, crumpled shirt on his chest. He says into his ear, “Now just give me a moment and then you can do what I told you. You remember what that is.”

It might not be a question, but Bucky says, “Mm-hmm.”

There’s a moment of silence, stillness, and then Steve’s hand is on his right hand, turning it palm-up, brushing away the remaining debris from the carpet with gentle fingers. When he’s done, he folds Bucky’s fingers into a loose fist so that he can feel the newly smoothed surface with the pads of his fingers, and turns it back over.

He stands and steps over Bucky’s head to get in the tub. “Oh,” he says, “and the next time I see you, your arms better be at your sides. I don’t want anything on your face distracting you from that disgusting rag you wanted so bad.” Then there’s the rattle and shush of him pulling the curtain shut. The squeak of the old faucet knobs. The shower starts roaring, and Bucky slowly pulls his t-shirt off his face.

Even with how dim Steve has the lights, he has to squint into the sudden change. But he adjusts fast, and he pushes himself up so he can drink the water. He sits cross-legged on the tile and takes small, cool sips. He watches the closed shower curtain as he does. It’s a dark, opaque blue, Steve’s body a secret behind it, but knowing Steve is in there makes it something nice to look at.

He’s feeling quiet and melted inside, or he might have noticed the protein bar on the side of the tub faster. There’s a Post-It on top, and he shuffles closer to read it. Also eat me (you’re allowed). Steve must have left it there before he came in to wake him up.

Bucky rolls his eyes. He can’t stop himself from grinning widely. Steve’s a fucking idiot. Steve knows Bucky loves being left written orders, but he’s never done it when they were in the same room before.

Once he’s drained the water glass and left it on the counter, he downs the protein bar in three bites. It’s chocolate caramel. It sticks in his teeth. He isn’t sure what to do with the Post-It, but decides to leave it next to the glass, where it’s safe, in case Steve wants to re-use it to tell him to eat something else.

Soap. His own come. Another protein bar. He rakes his fingers through his hair, and it stays standing up, more full of sweat than he realized. His hair? Would Steve ever cut his hair for him and make him eat the trimmings? That sounds really awful. He should write that down and mull it over.

He lies back, leaving his own shirt on top of Steve’s sweatpants and socks, and draping Steve’s fucked up, sweaty, and come-covered shirt over his head. His come is still wet, smearing against his mouth and cheek. He takes some on his tongue. It’s sweet, almost; he eats a lot of fruit these days, but Steve would want him to taste it no matter how bitter and vile.

He pets a hand over his soft dick for a moment, wincing at the sensation.

Steve’s sweat is all over, on Bucky’s tongue when he licks the come off, clinging to his forehead, pressed up against his nose. Ripe, raw, and somehow still bright and clean. Steve heavy all over him. Steve using him like a laundry hamper. Like the bottom of a laundry hamper.

One of the first things he was grateful for after Steve rescued him from Azzano was the realization that he could recognize Steve’s individual scent. It was different, probably, from before, with whatever hormonal changes the serum had wrought, but that and Steve’s voice, when Bucky’s eyes were closed—It was easier to convince himself that his mind wasn’t playing tricks.

Steve was real. Bucky must be too.

The shower creaks off, but Steve waits for thirty seconds before pulling the curtain back, giving Bucky some warning in case he needs to finish up. Always so polite.

Steve starts whistling, some new pop song, Bucky thinks, something he maybe heard once in a drug store or on the radio of a passing car. His godawful I’m-pretending-to-ignore-you whistling act. Bucky loves it, has always loved it, the cartoonish zeal Steve sometimes picks up and puts on to more fully give Bucky what he wants.  

He used to only whistle that Steamboat Willie tune, vaguely tidying the apartment with Bucky tied up in the middle of the floor, sketching with Bucky naked and fidgeting face-down on the table. Someone’s been working on his musical education.

He whistles and stands dripping over Bucky. He squeezes the water out of his hair, letting it run onto Bucky’s stomach and thighs and nipples. Each drop is a small shock, and Bucky shivers, even if the water is relatively warm. Only relatively; “I don’t shower so I can enjoy myself,” complains Steven Grant Rogers to total strangers when he sees a shampoo ad on the subway, probably.

The soft sound of Steve getting a towel from the hooks, roughly rubbing at his body, at his hair.

Bucky has told him before, “You’re supposed to pat it dry, Steve,” and Steve has looked scandalized, and said, “That sounds exhausting. Do you do that every time?”

He stops whistling and lowers himself, fitting a knee between Bucky’s jaw and shoulder to nudge at his neck.

“You make a good bath mat,” he says. “You deserve something nice for that.” And he presses the shirt further into Bucky’s face with his big hand, shoving the fabric between Bucky’s teeth, flattening his nose, everything, everything, filthy and breathless and bodily and familiar, and Bucky bucks up, writhes, and Steve lets go and drags the shirt down to reveal Bucky’s face.

Steve is grinning. He rubs his still-wet hair across Bucky’s face, and Bucky croaks, “Now you have to wash it again. I’m covered in come.”

Steve shrugs. “Do it for me.”

“I’m not your valet.”

“You’re whatever I say you are.” Bath mat. Fuckrag. Dumb mutt. Needy slut. Bucky.

Bucky hums tunelessly and rolls onto his side to wrap his arms around Steve’s thighs. Steve is shirtless, but with a towel tied around his waist. It’s rough and comforting against Bucky’s face. He bites Steve’s thigh through it, really more a greeting than a bite, his teeth exerting barely any pressure. Steve runs a hand down the back of his head and then presses down, holding him there.

“You want to shower too?”

“Am I allowed?” he says in the way that means he doesn’t want to be.

“No. Just making fun of you. I didn’t get you all dirty just to ruin my handiwork right away.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“But I do need to brush my teeth, and I think we should brush yours if you want me to kiss you any time soon.”

Steve has kissed him just after he’s vomited. Steve has kissed him five days in the woods with no type of hygiene to speak of.

But— “Wait, you didn’t say I could talk again.”

“I was wondering when you’d remember that.” Then Steve is on him, pushing him onto his front, digging one knee between his shoulder blades, the other shoved up against the side of his face. He pulls Bucky’s head back by the hair, resurrecting some of the neck pain he massaged away earlier, and firmly squeezes Bucky’s nostrils shut.

Bucky opens his mouth, breathes steadily, closes his eyes to zero in on the weight of Steve on his back, shoving him into the hard tile, which is fucking cold against his dick.

Steve says, “What do you do when I tell you not to do something?” Assuming it’s a test, Bucky says nothing, but Steve grinds his knee in harder and shakes him by the hair.

“No, you were perfectly fine disobeying me before. Don’t go pretending to be good on me. It won’t make me any easier on you. Answer my question.”

“I don’t do it, Steve,” He says, and his voice is stupid, nasal and blurry. Steve doesn’t laugh at him out loud, but is definitely laughing at him, and Bucky’s face is hot. “If you tell me not to do something, I don’t do it.”

“Well, clearly that’s not true, is it?”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I fucked up and it won’t happen again. Please, Steve.”

“What do you want?”

“Please make sure I don’t do it again.”

Steve gets off his back and stops pinching his nostrils, but keeps holding him by the hair. He walks on his knees to get in front of Bucky’s face, the motion twisting the hair in his grasp, pulling at Bucky’s scalp, the pain a prolonged press on a bad bruise. A particularly large needle. A lot. Bucky cries out. From in front of him, Steve somehow yanks his head back even further.

He slaps him across the face, and the motion of Bucky’s head to the side is halted by the hand in his hair, so his scalp and cheek burn at the same time. Steve slaps him three more times, all on the same side, loud and sharp and fast, so Bucky gets dizzy with it. The whole world is the weight of Steve’s calloused hand, and then Steve is standing and pulling Bucky up with him, so he’s got a stooped Bucky by the hair like a marionette.

He asks, “Can you sit on the edge of the tub without losing your balance?”

“I.”

“Never mind.” Steve drags him to the toilet and sits him down on the closed lid.  

“I’ll be right back. Stay perfectly still.” Bucky does stay perfectly still, besides the heavy rise and fall of his chest, and Steve is, Bucky thinks, right back, though his perception of time is successfully swimmy at the moment.

Steve’s in jeans and a sweatshirt with the sleeves shoved up. He’s in socks and shoes.

He strokes Bucky’s slapped cheek with the knuckle of his index finger; his other knuckles brush Bucky’s lips, so he kisses them, reverent, and Steve smiles. It’s a genuine smile, but not an overly kind one. He butts his knuckles into Bucky’s lips, the ghost of a punch, before turning to the sink.

Water. A cap unscrewing. No more water. Steve bends in close to Bucky’s face and thumbs at his jaw to tilt his head back. “Say, ‘Ahhh.’”

Bucky says, “Ahhh.”

Steve takes his time brushing Bucky’s teeth, a lot more time than he would ever spend on his own. He doesn’t look while he’s doing it, instead holding Bucky’s gaze. He holds Bucky’s jaw steady in the hand not holding the toothbrush, which moves in rough, careful circles. Bucky’s drooling and he can’t do anything about it. A bit of toothpaste drool lands on his upper thigh.

He puts his hand on Steve’s chest, over his steady heart.

This, he thinks, is definitely a way he could fall asleep. Steve brushing his teeth, the little circles. Looking at Steve.

The hand on his jaw moves to his mouth, and Steve tugs on Bucky’s tongue until Bucky gets it and sticks it out all the way to be brushed. His toothpaste drool gets on Steve’s hands, and maybe Steve will act mad at him about it and maybe he won’t. That isn’t something Bucky can control.

But Steve doesn’t act mad, just looks at his hands and rubs them clean on the side of Bucky’s neck. His moist towlette, always useful.  

Steve takes him by the hand and pulls him over to the sink. His body goes, but it feels heavy, sluggish. Steve keeps an arm around his waist as Bucky spits and turns the tap on and swishes water in his mouth and spits that too. “There we go,” Steve says. “That better?”

Bucky nods.

“Your mouth is mine, right? It’s for whatever I say it’s for.”

Bucky nods again, and groans like popping his back. He sags against Steve theatrically and Steve laughs and pushes him back up, twisting him so they’re facing each other. He kisses him, almost chastely, and Bucky ruins it to stick his tongue in Steve’s mouth and run it all over the pointier edges of Steve’s teeth. He can feel Steve smile against him and bite down on his tongue, hard enough that he yelps into Steve’s mouth. Steve ends the kiss. “Don’t tell me that’s not what you were angling for.”

Bucky shrugs. Of course it was. A lot of people would accuse him of being subtle, but Steve never would.

“Okay, sit back down. I do need to brush my teeth. You can talk again. You learned your lesson.”

“I never learn my lesson,” Bucky says he settles back on the lid of the toilet, watching Steve’s shoulders, the still-strange straightness of his spine.

“Is that a request?”

“No. I learned my lesson. I’m a very fast learner. That’s why they kept me out of cryo for such short periods. They were intimidated by the speed of my learning.”

Steve brushes his teeth quickly, without much interest in pretending that they’ll ever rot out. He has an electric toothbrush, something Bucky refuses to buy himself both because of how it would feel in his mouth and because of how pointless it seems. He already knows how to brush his teeth and he doesn’t need a tiny robot to help him. Also, Steve insists, “You barely have to touch your teeth at all with this thing. It’s the flying car of dental hygiene, Buck,” and that’s obviously ludicrous and not deserving of validation.   

(“So it’s gonna blow up? I’ll pass,” Bucky said the first time Steve claimed this, and Steve, like he was imparting some great wisdom, said, “That was a hovering car.”)

When Steve’s done, instead of spitting in the sink, he spits onto Bucky’s dick, which has been slowly making an effort toward hardness again.

“I’m not a trash can,” Bucky says, and his voice sounds tired, half-gone.

“You spit your toothpaste in the trash can when I’m not around?”

“Oh, I put all my bodily fluids in the trash can. Is that not correct?” He thinks he’s mumbling, maybe, his ability to enunciate having dozed off.

 Steve frowns and shakes his head. “I thought I taught you about recycling.”

“Yeah, but. I erased my memories. So I could have the pleasure of you teaching me again.”

Steve explained the city’s system like he was being personally attacked by the different numbers of plastic. Like someone was blackmailing him into sorting the recycling correctly. Bucky likes the system. Sorting anything is peaceful.  

He grabs at the front of Steve’s sweatshirt and drags him forward until he gives in and plants his hands on the wall behind Bucky’s head, curving his big body over him, a cocoon, holding himself where Bucky has to strain to reach his face, to kiss him all over, his dark eyebrows and the line of his jaw and the corner of his right eye. Steve rewards his strain by kissing the top of his head, then his mouth.

They neck for what’s maybe a couple minutes, but even when they’re done, Steve stays curved over him. 

“How you feeling, Buck?”

“I’ve still got. Some energy to burn.”

“I don’t want you dead on your feet.”

“It’s okay. I don’t die without coming back.”  

“Well, get on the floor again. I can at least have you dead on your knees.” He straightens up and gives Bucky room to obey.

Bucky takes a moment, gathering the energy up. He has it, humming inside him, but low, hard to touch. “Undead. Ghost story.”

“My mistake. I want you undead on your knees, Buck. Get to it.”

Bucky sort of gracelessly throws himself to the ground, landing on his side, his legs on top of Steve’s feet. Steve jostles him with the toe of one sneaker. “Need a little help there, sweetheart?”

Bucky says, “Mmm,” and shakes his head. He can move, but he’s slowed down enough inside that he can enjoy, for the moment, faltering. Staggering. Dragging himself up like his muscles are weak from disuse.  He gets on his knees for Steve, in the middle of the floor. Steve sits down too, leaning back on his arms, with his legs over Bucky’s thighs.

He looks so casual like that, but he’s pressing down with his legs, making sure to root Bucky in place. Bucky puts his hand on Steve’s ankle and smiles at him, and finds his eyes wet when he blinks. Steve smiles too, a fast thing. He evaluates Bucky, making a show of it, scanning him like a document.

He says, “I think I was wrong.”

Bucky breathes a small laugh. “Which time?” Steve nudges his sneaker against Bucky’s waist but doesn’t rebuke him beyond that.

“You’re not a mutt. You’re a poodle. But you’re a shaggy mess right now, aren’t you, honey? I oughta drag you to the dog groomer and get you all fixed up and pretty. Right now, people might not be able to tell what you are.”

Bucky says, “What am I?” He can guess, but it’s not the same as hearing Steve tell him.

“Come on. You know you’re just a little trophy for me to tug around and show off. Don’t play dumb.”

“Not playing.” Why play when he can just let himself really be dumb for the moment? Dumb and held down, by Steve’s legs and Steve’s critical stare. He’s definitely halfway to hard again.

“Right answer. But we can’t have everyone thinking your owner doesn’t know how to take care of you. We’ll get you permed and declawed.” He waves his hand vaguely. “Maybe dyed up a nice lavender.”

“You hate declawing. You think that shit’s cruel and a waste of money.” Arguing is harder than it was earlier, but a good hard. A thing to work hard to give to Steve, because he likes it. Because he likes that Bucky likes it.

“Well, I make exceptions for you on both fronts all the time.”

“I don’t think people declaw dogs.” But he also didn’t know they declawed cats until recently, so what does he know.

“I know. I’m a pioneer in a lot of ways.”

Steve lifts his legs and scoots around so he’s sitting next to Bucky, his knees pulled to his chest. He runs a hand through Bucky’s hair, and Bucky relaxes into the touch. “The dog groomer you, Steve?”

Steve fakes a gasp. “How’d a dumb little thing like you make a good guess like that?”

“Dumb little luck, probably.” He hides his face against Steve’s shoulder. Closes his eyes. Breathes in the scent of a clean Steve, still recognizably Steve beneath the fabric softener and cheap, rough soap. He lifts his head to lick at Steve’s neck and Steve laughs and shoves him off.

Bucky whimpers and frowns, widening his eyes to show off his almost-tears.

Steve says, “You know me better than to think I’ll be affected by that.”

“Well, you’ll be affected.”

“Oh, you know what I mean.” Steve stands. “Sit with your back against the tub. Lean your head back on the edge.”

“You dying me lavender?” Bucky asks as he gets to it.

“If you want me to later, I’m happy to help, but I don’t have any dye right now, no.”

“So unprepared.”

“You know me. Half-cocked.” He gets something from the counter as Bucky stares up at the ceiling, missing the gentle pressure of a shirt on his face. “You, however.” Steve comes over and climbs into the tub to settle behind him. “Your cock’s looking full.” He’s staring straight down at Bucky, looking deeply serious like he didn’t just say what he said.

“Ugh, don’t set yourself up for puns. It’s unbecoming.”

 Steve covers Bucky’s eyes and mouth at once with each of his hands. There’s something hard and plastic in the hand over his mouth.

“If you say one more smart thing, you’ll be unbecoming.” He takes his hands away, and before they’re back in the tub, Bucky sees that the plastic thing is a black pocket comb.

“Is.” Steve raps the comb against his forehead to get him thinking clearer.

It’s something he used to do a lot when they were young, pretending Bucky was a robot that needed to be knocked on for recalibration. When he did it for the first time in this century, he looked immediately guilty, but Bucky said, “What? Now your stupid joke makes sense! I love it!”

Bucky swallows. His mouth is getting dry again. “Is it smart to ask if that was a pun? Or if you mean you’ll make me ugly.”

“As a matter of fact, it’s not smart. It’s very, very stupid because you’re obviously already grotesque and it was obviously a pun.”

Bucky kisses two of his metal fingers and touches them to Steve’s cheek. “Good to know.” Steve strokes the metal as Bucky pulls his arm back to his side.

Steve puts his hand on Bucky’s forehead like he’s taking his temperature. Maybe he is, but he doesn’t say anything about it. “But just because you’re hideous doesn’t mean you can’t look neat and presentable.” He pets his hand back to tangle it in Bucky’s hair, which hangs down the inside of the tub.  “I was going to make you wait all sweet and patient while I fixed myself up for the day, but I think this is a dire situation, don’t you?”

“Yeah. It’s dire, Steve.”  

Steve starts working the pocket comb through his hair, which is pretty fucked up from sleeping, and being on the floor, and probably from having come nesting in a knot somewhere. He starts out gently, running the teeth through the less tangled portion, but then there’s a sharp yank and Bucky shrieks, his eyes opening; he hadn’t realized they were shut.

“Something wrong?” Steve sounds so earnest.

“Ow.”

“Don’t be a baby. You do this every day.”

 “Not when it’s this tangled. I don’t let it get this tangled.”

Steve starts combing again, pulling on a few smaller knots, and Bucky chokes on a sob for each one of them. “Maybe you shouldn’t have been rolling around on the floor in your own semen like a filthy animal. You’re getting off lucky. I could just take your hair off with hedge clippers and be done with it.”

Bucky is very aware, in this moment, of how hard he’s gotten. So maybe his refractory period is only garbage compared to where it was before they got him all drugged up. He growls a little in the back of his throat. “Steve.”

“That’s me.”

“Can I touch myself?”

“What, like applaud me for doing something so nice for you? That’s acceptable.”

Bucky laughs, somewhat hysterically. “Jesus Christ.”

Steve breaks up a particularly nasty knot and Bucky actually screeches like a wild bird. “I can’t help if I don’t know what you’re asking me for,” Steve says, still going about his combing. “Your nose itch or something?”

“My dick. Can I touch my dick, Steve? It’s. Fuck. You really don’t know how to comb hair.” Steve stops.

“Should I leave you to do it?”

“No! I’m sorry. Please keep combing my hair, but please let me jerk off while you do? I’m really hard right now. This is really, really making me need it.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yes. This is so good and I’m so desperate, okay? Please.”

“If you need it that bad, I guess. Tell me when you’re close, though.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Can I use your shirt again?”

“I’m gonna need to burn that thing when we’re done.”

“That’s a yes?”

“Yeah, jerk off on my shirt. What I was using it for except clothing my body? Something you’re apparently too shameless to bother with.” He snakes his hand down to twist Bucky’s nipple. They aren’t sore anymore, but the sting is sharp and sudden, and Bucky’s flinch is sharp and sudden as well.

“Then you should—” Another knot. A grunt. “Make me ashamed. Make me ashamed please, Steve.”

“I’m doing my best.”

“I know. Thank you.”

He gets a hand on his dick, and starts stroking loosely as he kicks the dirty shirt closer to himself until it’s in reach. Every jerk of the comb in his hair sends a shot of heat to his groin. Combined with the friction from just his hand, he would have popped off in a minute. As it is, with the shirt, he has maybe two minutes. The sweat is probably all dry by now, but the fabric is soaked from Steve’s post-shower dripping and still has some of Bucky’s come on it, and the sensation is good and strange against him, several things at once, and he tries to go slow, but.

“Steve.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m close. I’m. I’m right there, fuck.”

“Well, stop then.”

Right. Bucky stills his hand, then removes it completely, because that’s probably what Steve actually meant. He focuses on his breathing, which got full and fast and is now tripped up on the absence of more.

Steve clambers out of the tub and crouches over Bucky. Wordlessly, he takes the shirt out of Bucky’s hand and hovers it over Bucky’s face, asking with his eyebrows. Bucky opens his mouth, and as much of the shirt as can fit gets stuffed inside. The rest dangles against his neck. He’s just short of gagging on it, biting down as hard as he can.  

“Here we go,” Steve says. He slides a hand under the back of Bucky’s head and pulls him to sit up properly, facing him. “Keep your eyes open.” Bucky nods, and while his dick is slicker now from the shirt and from how much he’s leaking all over, the harsh tug of Steve’s palm still has him gasping into the wadded fabric when Steve has barely moved. Then Steve pulls out the comb and starts running it over Bucky’s nipples, digging the teeth in, scraping at them in all directions with a determined look on his face, moving his hand a little more, and that’s enough. Bucky comes crying, and Steve keeps dragging the comb over his nipples, even once he’s released Bucky’s softening cock.

 His body has nowhere left to put how intensely good it is, so he makes a muffled noise of protest through the shirt and flops onto his side, out of the comb’s line of fire.

Steve pulls the shirt out of his mouth for him. “You good?”

“Great. Just. I can’t do more of that. Sorry.”

 “You could’ve just grabbed my hand.”

“My way was. Funnier.”

“Yeah, too bad the era of silent slapstick had to end.” He lies down on his side too, and rests his hand on Bucky’s neck, protecting the carotid how Bucky likes. “We can’t be putting that fucked-out voice in the talkies.”

He shoves his face into Steve’s chest and mutters, “They can dub in someone more virtuous. A priest.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because I’m a genius.”

Steve tucks some hair behind his ear for him, a silent agreement even as he’s saying, “Not last time I checked.” He traces the furl of Bucky’s ear with his thumb.  “You get what you needed?”

“Mmm. I don’t know if it’s bone-deep. But. Closest I’ve been in a hell of a lot of years. Thanks.”

“I had a good game plan to work with.”

“I’d be gangbusters at book blurbs, huh?”

“You could make up summaries and sell them to the authors.”

“Nah. They’d all fuck them up. I’m choosy about my creative team.” He takes his face out of Steve’s chest and works on propping himself up against the tub, groaning. Steve steadies him with a hand on his metal bicep. “I’m fucking parched.”

“You should have said something. We can take a water break any time you need.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s how I organize my priorities. Definitely care more about water than keeping your hand on my dick. It’s all right. I’m on it.” He drags himself closer to the faucet and turns on the cold water.

“I can get you a glass from the sink.”

“This is better.” He sticks his head in and drinks from the cold stream. They chose an apartment with low water pressure for reasons Bucky hopes to go to his grave without discussing with anyone, so it’s easy to drink, and perfect.

“I think you’re taking the poodle thing too seriously, Buck.” But Steve sounds soft.  

When his thirst is sufficiently sated, he says, “I don’t take anything too seriously,” which he wishes were true. Which maybe used to be true? The memory of feeling is there, fresh in his mind. Particular intensity of feeling less so.

Steve is still lying down. A little steadier with the water in him, Bucky pushes to his feet and goes to fill the glass by the sink. He sits, cross-legged, and hands it over to Steve. “Your turn.” Steve looks dubious, but sits up enough to down it before pulling Bucky back to him by his metal hand. Bucky goes, tangling their legs together, putting his chin over Steve’s shoulder and leaning his head against Steve’s head.

He whispers in Steve’s ear, “You didn’t rip out any hair, right?”

“I ripped it all out. Then I knocked you unconscious with chloroform, left, got a wig made, and glued it to your head before you came to. You look a lot nicer this way.”

“That was very thoughtful.”

“I’m lying. You still have all your hair. What a shame.”

“Lying is a sin, Steve. You better tell that priest.”

“Which priest?”

“The one they’re bringing in to dub all my movie lines.”

Steve grunts and squeezes an arm tightly around Bucky’s back, but Bucky’s feeling chatty now, so melted and worn through that anything could spill out, he thinks, and it would be okay.   

He whispers in Steve’s ear again. “It’s a lot easier to comb when you’ve conditioned it first.”

“Oh, really? It’s a complete accident that I was doing it the most painful way.”

“Shut up. I’m just sharing good grooming tips with you.”

 Steve rolls them, so they’re chest-to-chest with Steve on top. He says, “Write a magazine. I’ll tell my friends about it,” breathing all over Bucky’s face, minty and sweet.  

“Get off me,” Bucky says, but he’s laughing, shoving at Steve’s shoulder light as a mouse. Steve goes totally limp, head down like he’s dead, and Bucky laughs, so loose inside himself, but says, “Okay, okay, seriously, though, I gotta wash my hair for real. This is disgusting,” and Steve leans back on his haunches so Bucky can wriggle out from under him.

Steve sits on the floor and watches him as he shakes each of his limbs out, rolls his neck around, blissfully sore and overwhelmed all over, before starting his shower.

Steve asks, “You want breakfast? I mean. We only have more protein bars.”

Bucky says, “We should go out,” and turns on the water.

He gets home and the lights are off, a just-popped-on streetlight the only illumination, filtering past the living room curtains. Steve texted him, “Groceries,” about twenty minutes ago, so he’ll be back soon enough. Bucky gets a script out of his room and lies down on the floor in front of the couch, on his back, limbs close to his body, holding the pages in the air over his face.

When Steve comes through the door, his arms are full of paper sacks. Bucky knows before he sees him in the doorway, by the rustling, and the shift in his gait. Steve can hear him too, breathing, flipping pages, and calls to him on his way into the kitchen, “Hey, let me put these away.”

“You got it.”

He doesn’t stop reading as Steve steps softly into the room, having abandoned his shoes in the hallway. “Hey, there,” he says.

Bucky says, “Hey there,” then nothing else. He moves the script from in front of his face for a second to look at Steve’s half-smile. He moves the script back.

Steve flops down on the couch, so he can look down at Bucky. He knocks on the script, and says, “It’s the police. Open up.”

Bucky knows he shouldn’t encourage a joke that dumb, but he does. He always does. He sets the papers to the side and smiles at Steve, hoping it’s as beatific as he means it to be. “You gotta pick a better line. If you were the police, I’d already be jumping out the window.”

“Lucky me you see through everything.”

“Lucky you.” He reaches up to hold Steve’s hand. It’s cool and wet; he always washes his hands soon after coming through the door.

They look at each other. Steve’s thumb swipes back and forth over Bucky’s knuckles, steady as a metronome. Making sure to give a notifying squeeze first, Bucky lets go, and rolls over onto his stomach. He turns his head to the side and glances up. He reaches out again, this time with the metal arm, this time without making contact.

Steve raises his eyebrows. “Is that my cue?”

“I’d like if it were. It’s okay if it’s not.”

“I guess that’s okay.” And Steve settles on top of him, spreading out like a starfish, hooking each of his legs around each of Bucky’s from the inside, turning his head to the side to use the space between Bucky’s shoulders as a pillow. “This good?”

His whole body is safe, sandwiched, solidly held in place. Steve radiates enough heat that you could use him to keep your coffee warm.

Bucky exhales for a long time. “It’s good.”  

Steve presses a kiss to his shoulder blade. “Talk to me, Buck,” he says.

“Mmm. What am I talking to you about? I saw a huge pigeon on my way home. I took a photo for you.”

“For me?”

“For you to show to Sam. You know what I mean.”  

“Soon one of you’s gotta stop thinking it’s entertaining to only talk through me.”

“You a betting man?”

Steve skips a few beats before answering. “Only when I’m sure.”

Bucky rolls his head to press his face into the wood. Captain America gets talked up a lot as a very earnest figure, pure of heart and word, but Steve Rogers is a fucking asshole, and that makes Bucky’s heart burst with joy on a regular basis, but Steve being honestly earnest—it claws at something inside him, and he rubs his face against the floorboards until he feels quieter inside.

Steve pinches some flesh on Bucky’s palm for him and waits until he has his cheek against the wood again instead of his forehead. He releases his grip. “The job good?”

Bucky sighs. “Well, they haven’t made me kill anyone yet.”

“That all I’m getting?”

“Seems good. Fast-paced. They like my organization skills. The woman with the desk next to mine makes her own coffee mugs.” That’s all he has. He doesn’t feel all the way filled up by any of it, but it’s little pieces, glued together; that’s what he needs. Regular hours. A walk home where he might see a huge pigeon.

Steve says, “We need more coffee mugs. You should ask her. Sam told me he’s an expert with a pottery wheel, but he won’t make me anything.”

“Yeah, Sam says he’s an expert at a lot of shit.” Steve flicks him on the chin. Bucky laughs, soft. “What else should I talk to you about?”

“Let’s see. What were you reading?”

“It’s right there. You can look at it.”

“I didn’t ask where it was. Tell me.”

“It’s an episode of The Prisoner.”

“What’s that?”

“They put him on an island.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yep. Every episode. This guy gets put on an island. Can you pet my hair?”

Steve answers by doing, dragging his left hand off the floor to rest at the crown of Bucky’s skull. At first, he just exerts a downward pressure, holding Bucky there, pinned to the floor by his head.

“Steve, please.” Please start petting me; please never stop pinning me; please some time trap my head between your thighs while you read and ignore me, whatever; he means a lot of things, most of the time. He can’t always sort out which one, which time.

“Hey there,” Steve murmurs, and his hand moves now. Soft, sweeping motion. The occasional pause to toy with one section of hair or another, to run his hand up against the grain. He’s very thorough, always.

“Howdy.”

“Talk to me.”

“He gets put on an island and he tries to get off the island. That’s the whole show, more or less. But also everyone’s always being watched. There’s a lot of politics in it. Petty stuff. He didn’t look like you, I don’t think, when I watched it. But he had the same kind of disappointed expressions you have on all the time.”

“What expressions? Point to the expressions.”

“I would, but you’re on both my arms. I bet you look disappointed right now.”

“Only because I want to know everything about this island and you’re keeping it from me.”

“My point is, I picture you when I read it. You fighting like a never-ending furious fucking freak to get off this island they keep sticking you with.”

“That’s sweet.” He switches from petting to massaging little circles with the pads of his fingers, and Bucky stretches his neck, sinking into the touch.

He says, “I’m pretty sure it’s weird. Why can’t I think about any of the actual shit you’ve ever done instead?”

“Oh, I’ve never done anything. The credit belongs to Captain America.”

“Well. You went and got groceries, didn’t you?”

“That was also Captain America. He gets a ten percent discount.”

“Only ten? That’s highway robbery.”

“Tell me more.”

“Oh, that’s when you drive your getaway car onto the interstate.” Steve smacks him on the side of the head. He yelps and laughs, at the feeling and at his own joke.

“About what you were reading. On topic.”

“This one. The line you would like in it: ‘The fact that you won’t explain explains everything.’ I highlighted that the first time I read it because I bet it’s something you shouted at Fury before.”

Steve snorts. “Oh, good. What’s the context?”

Bucky shrugs a shoulder, nudging Steve’s face along with the motion. “It’s a lot of backstabbing. It’s very Shakespearean. A political conspiracy, shifting of power. How it goes.”

A hot exhalation. A shifting of enormous muscles.

Bucky says, “That’s all,” and Steve says, “Okay. I got frozen pizzas,” and Bucky says, “Okay, but can you lie on top of me for another couple minutes?”

He does, starting the petting up again, and presses an oddly-angled kiss to Bucky’s shoulder through his wrinkling button-up. It really wouldn’t be too hard to fall asleep like this, and he could trust Steve to shake him gently awake, and pull him into the kitchen so they can heat up the pizzas.

“You’re a good sport,” he says.

Steve says, “Oh yeah, the best sport. You know me,” and Bucky considers flipping them over, wrapping his arms around Steve and kissing his neck just to get shoved away with a smirk, and he thinks, Yeah, in a minute. He has a lot of plans, a lot of time, a lot of Steve.