Chapter Text
Timmy went 15 miles an hour over the speed limit the whole way up the I-95. Bucky was grateful. Now that he’d decided to come home, he was itching to be there pronto.
“Take my bag home, would ya?”
Timmy pulled up in front of Steve’s apartment. Bucky got out on the curb and leaned back in on the passenger side windowsill.
“Christ, I come and get you. I drive you up here, no charge. And now you want me to be your damn butler?”
If you weren’t complaining, if you weren’t teasing a guy, you were dead.
Timmy grinned across the passenger seat at him. “No problem, kid. Be good. That boy’s been missing you bad. Hell if I know why, but--”
“Shaddup,” Bucky grinned back, concealing the fact that his chest was fluttering with everything he wanted to say to Steve. He was going to explode into a thousand incandescent shards.
“Wait,” he called out before Timmy put the cab back in gear. Bucky reached back into his bag and grabbed the shoebox. He slapped the roof of the car to say goodbye before he turned to the front steps.
Steve’s buzzer rang faintly through the second story window that was cracked open a hair. Bucky waited a few seconds and pushed it again. Then again, insistently. He was going to vibrate out of his skin.
The first floor neighbor lady opened her window and leaned out.
“He’s not here, ya know.” She looked him over, chewing her gum double-quick. “You that guy from the sketchbook? You look like that guy from Steve’s sketchbook. You is, isn’t you? Yeah, you are. Damn that boy can draw good. Mm mm, yes he can. And you look just as good in person as you done in those drawings. He left ‘bout an hour ago with those drag girls. Went over to the parade all glammed up, looking like he was trying to reach Jesus in those heels they put him in. Wobbling all over the place like some kinda baby animal wearing lip gloss. Did make his butt look fine, if you know what I mean. All high and pert and mm mm, yes ma’am. Like a little peach you just gotta bite, you know? They had to drag his sorry ass out of bed, though. Been in there depressed as shit for weeks. That because of you? Huh? What you gotta say for yourself, sketchbook boy? You better go make it right, cuz ain’t no one fucking over Steve Rogers and gettin’ away with it ‘round here.”
Bucky felt like he was in a strong wind trying to process all of what she was rapid-fire saying.
“Where…?” was all he managed to ask in response.
((☆))
He had no idea how he was going to find Steve in the crowd of half-dressed, sequined, leathered, rubber, chaps-wearing, rainbow-draped people. He felt swallowed by the press of them, the blur of movement. Panic tried to force itself to the surface when people bumped into him jostling the shoebox.
The sea of smiling faces -- everyone seemed so happy, and that did help settle his nerves -- nudged him forward like the flow of a river. Bucky was spit out by the crowd at the edge of the parade route. An all-lesbian marching band was going by playing “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” while their cheerleaders threw dental dams and condoms at the crowd. One of the condoms landed on Bucky’s shoebox and he put it in his pocket in a trembling surge of optimism.
He scanned the sides of the street trying desperately to spot that head of blond hair. But, what if he’d gotten a haircut? What if he had on a hat?
A glint of blue made him think of Steve’s eyes. He’d spend hours rememorizing the exact shade if he could just find him.
Two dozen Harleys driven by black-clad men rumbled by, waving at the crowd and tossing flower petals. The last bike had a bearded bride riding backwards astride another man’s lap, his arms around him to the handlebars and his chin over his shoulder to see the path ahead. It was ridiculous and joyous and risky.
The jockstrapped kid next to him caught the bouquet that came whipping toward him when Bucky flinched away from the sudden movement.
“Hey, there,” the kid said. “You ok?”
“Fine. Trying to find someone.”
He looked Bucky over and sidled up closer. “I can be your someone,” he purred too close to Bucky’s lips.
“Thanks, but--” Bucky stepped back.
“Aw, my loss, baby. Hope you find him,” and he looked him over again, “lucky son of a bitch, damn.” He tapped Bucky’s chest with the bouquet and hissed, “I hope ya’ boy ride that til you cross-eyed.” Then he was on to the next man in the crowd and the next, flirting his way down the line.
Bucky felt overwhelmed by the sunny happiness and freedom that bubbled through the people here. It was impossible to stand still. If he stopped moving, he’d jiggle apart into a pile of nerves and fake arms. He pushed upstream. The shoebox burned in his grip. The pictures inside it were Steve Rogers’ heart. Bucky had to bring them back to the man who owned his.
Further down the line of floats and marchers was a simple white banner. As it and Bucky converged on each other, he could just make out 107th . His gut jumped into his throat. 107th Street. He broke into a jog. 107th Street Clinic.
Behind the banner was a ratty old checker cab, Gabe in the driver’s seat. The car had been fitted with a hitch and it was pulling a float. Drag queen nurses and drag king doctors strutted on the flatbed. Dead center was a gurney. On it was the blond head of hair, the slim frame, the blue eyes that Bucky had come here for.
Fifty yards separated them. Bucky froze in the middle of the street. His heart took over from his head. Nervousness was drowned out by the first look at Steve in living color.
Hero was printed on Steve’s red, white, and blue pageant sash. Towering red platform heels dangled off his feet. The auburn-haired queen was wrapping a bandage around his head…
Steve grabbed her wrist suddenly, holding her still. He locked eyes with Bucky down the block.
Time stopped. Balloons floated past in slow motion. There was no sound except the thundering thump of Bucky’s full heart.
It mattered if he fucked this up. Please , he thought, forgive me for almost fucking this up.
Steve toed off the high heels, shrugged off the banner, and then he was sprinting barefoot toward Bucky. Bandages unraveled from his head, leaving a streamer of gauze trailing behind him on the street.
“Steve,” Bucky whispered, and then he was running too.
They collided at 9th and Prospect Park, mid-parade and to the sound of a thousand cheers. The shoebox smashed between them before Bucky lost his grip on it, spilling the drawings into the soft breeze that swirled across the park. For the moment he didn’t care because Steve was in his arms again, saying his name over and over. His fingers danced over Bucky’s face.
“I missed you,” Bucky choked out. It was so much, this feeling that filled him. Steve , in his arms, he lifted him and spun them in a circle in the middle of the street.
“Put me down, you asshole,” Steve smiled blindingly. “I waited, I woulda waited forever. Buck, let me kiss you.”
(And that was how their picture landed on the front page of Get Out ’s next issue.
Not that a picture could really capture the feeling of soaring and drowning that Bucky had in that moment.)
“Get in,” Gabe yelled at them when the cab rolled up to their position. “Get the hell in here.” He laid on the horn while he was yelling.
(And that was how Bucky ended up making out with a guy in the Pride parade.
Gabe took a picture when they weren’t looking -- because hell if either of them were taking a break to pose for a snapshot -- and sent it to everyone they knew.)
“I’d appreciate it if y’all remember I’m driving up here. Keep your clothes on, is what I’m saying.”
((☆))
Gabe didn't even stop at the end of the parade route. He drove the entire float -- cab, flatbed, drag queens, and the two of them tangled in the backseat -- over to Steve's apartment.
“Next time I’m tying tin cans to the bumper and dumping some rice on you. Get out and say hello to each other in private. Cripes,” Gabe scolded them affectionately.
“Thanks. Owe you one,” Steve mumbled against Bucky's lips. He was half on top of Bucky, pressing him against the door. Seat belts be damned.
Bucky was just as unwilling to pull away. He couldn’t stop touching Steve now that he started. Some distant part of his brain was telling him, however, that this would be better in a bed than in a back seat. He fumbled behind himself for the door handle, returning Steve’s kisses while he tried to find it.
“ Mmph , gotta-- Steve, I gotta-- Steve! I gotta get the door with my good hand,” Bucky said.
Neither of them had acknowledged the elephant in the cab until now. Steve stopped kissing him long enough to search Bucky’s eyes for… something. Bucky wasn’t sure what, but Steve took Bucky's left hand and slowly brought it to his lips.
“This hand?” he asked, gazing up at Bucky with intensity burning in his eyes. Steve placed a kiss on the tip of Bucky’s pointer finger. He moved to his middle finger and did the same. Then his ring finger, and his pinky. “Seems like a good hand,” Steve murmured.
“For cryin’ out loud,” Gabe grumbled loudly.
A second later, Bucky had to catch himself from falling out on the curb when Gabe yanked the door open.
“Take it inside.”
Bucky stepped out of the car a little sheepishly, but Steve leapt out and back into Bucky’s embrace.
“Still here with my size 11’s.” The comment -- it was a threat -- came from the float. Steve’s friends were leveling him with looks that were a mix of excitement and disapproval.
“Looks like you found him,” the neighbor lady called out from her window. “No more moping, Stevie.”
“No more moping,” Steve agreed, threading his fingers through Bucky's left hand and drawing him up the front stairs. “And no more waiting.”
At least a half a dozen condoms pelted them. Bucky didn’t miss it when Steve grabbed one and shoved it in his pants pocket.
Bucky was glad they were inside, away from witnesses, when the weight of Steve's words registered. No more waiting.
“Thanks… for waiting. And sorry,” Bucky said with a thick voice.
Steve halted on the stairs. He turned back to Bucky and put his arms around Bucky’s neck. He was taller this way. Even barefoot, he was taller than Bucky. Baby blues gazed down at him.
“When you're ready to tell the story, I want to know everything.” He laid a gentle kiss on Bucky's forehead. “But for now I’m happy to just say welcome home. With my mouth. On various parts of your body.”
A jumble of feelings ambushed Bucky. A surge of lust he hadn’t experienced in a year, a wave of relief. He hadn’t thought about it outright until now, but deep down he’d been worried that Steve would be disgusted by him. He was worried that Steve’d touch his new arm once and bow out. But here Steve was with lust -- and now concern, since Bucky was tearing up -- written all over his face. Bucky’s relief and gratitude had nowhere to go but up and out his eyes.
“I’m good, I’m good,” Bucky said, wiping at his cheeks with the back of his hand.
Steve thumbed away the rest of the moisture. “Come on. We’ll take it slow as you want. I’m just saying,” he smirked and licked his bottom lip, “my mouth is ready whenever you’re ready.”
Bucky snorted. Steve was too much.
Inside his apartment, Steve led him to the bed. He straddled Bucky’s lap. He fingered Bucky’s dogtags in a moment of contemplation that seemed to slow his urgent need to be horizontal.
“I wasn’t sure you still wanted me,” Steve confessed. “Maybe I was coming on too strong with all the letters.”
Bucky’s heart jolted. “The letters! I brought ‘em back with me. Shit! I dropped them at the parade. I wanted to show you that… ah, fuck.”
“You read them?” Steve interrupted hopefully. He met Bucky’s eyes with his wide blue ones.
Bucky goggled at him for a second. “Yeah I read them. I mean, eventually. Took a… um, a while… before I could.”
Steve quieted him with a gentle kiss. “You read them. It’s ok.”
“Now it is, yeah.” Bucky kissed him back and tightened his arms around Steve.
But Steve shrugged and looked away, blinking. In a whisper that was rough with emotion, he said, “I was worried you wouldn’t…”
“Come back?”
Steve shrugged again, and then nodded. He looked back at him beneath wet eyelashes. “I knew you’d come back. I mean, guy built like you,” he joked. He squeezed Bucky’s biceps, the real one and the fake one too. “I just… I didn’t know if you’d come back to me .”
“Hell, Steve, I shoulda written back to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“That I carried you here,” he patted his chest, “the whole time. In my pocket, and in my… you know.”
Steve’s eyes were shining with emotion. He cocked his head and grinned, “ You know ? Can’t say the mushy stuff out loud?”
Bucky tucked his face against the side of Steve’s neck. “Guess not. Maybe I’ll have to write you a letter about it.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“You do that.”
“I will.”
“What, you gotta have the last word or something?” Bucky kissed his neck, and again, so he felt the huff of laughter rise in Steve’s chest.
“Jerk,” Steve retorted, and his smile was easy to hear.
“Yeah, but your jerk if you’ll have me. What’s left of me,” Bucky whispered against his skin.
Steve pushed him flat on the bed then. “Every inch.”
They eyed each other. Seemed like Steve was doing the same thing he was: trying to figure out what the limits were for this. Bucky felt like he could crack open and spill every emotion -- joy and lust and sadness and regret and love -- across Steve like a hurricane. He wanted to give Steve all of that. He’d share with him the bad stuff if he wanted to listen. But he didn’t want to overwhelm him and make him back off.
Steve’s searching eyes seemed to be saying the same thing.
“I’ll go slow,” Steve said.
He reached for Bucky’s belt. There were no sudden movements. Just the hypnotically erotic tug and push of Steve’s hands as they unfastened his pants. His knuckles pressed against Bucky’s length as he lowered his zipper.
“I dreamed about doing this,” Steve said quietly.
He slipped off Bucky’s lap and unlaced Bucky’s boots. He tugged off his socks and kissed the bone of his ankle. The touch of his lips sent an electric buzz up his leg. Warmth settled in his groin, filling him to hardness.
Bucky shoved urgently at the waistband of his pants. He needed to be bare in front of Steve now. In his mind, a flash of Steve’s drawing… Steve straddling him, looking down at him as they fucked.
They didn’t have to wait anymore.
Steve yanked at the ankles of Bucky’s pants, sending them flying into the little apartment’s kitchen.
“Shirt on or off,” Steve asked. His eyes flashed as he looked Bucky over.
Bucky heated under Steve’s gaze. “Off,” he said boldly. He wanted Steve to see every inch of him. Even his scars. If Steve couldn’t take it, Bucky needed to know now.
“Yes,” Steve hissed. He shucked his own shirt off to the floor.
Their hands worked together to tug at the hem of Bucky’s shirt. When Bucky emerged naked from it, Steve’s eyes were raking over him.
“How are you so fucking hot?”
He didn’t fixate on the scarred flesh at Bucky’s shoulder. He treated it the same as the rest of him, looking over him with thirst that bordered on ridiculous.
“You should see your face right now,” Bucky grinned.
“You should see your face,” Steve bantered back lamely.
“Good one.”
Steve rolled his eyes.
“Your turn,” Bucky said. He sat up and unbuttoned Steve’s jeans. His left hand cooperated, to his relief. “I want to see you too.”
Steve nodded. He was breathing heavily and flushed red to his chest. He stepped out of his jeans.
“Can I go down on you?” Steve asked, looking at Bucky’s cock and then dragging his gaze up to Bucky’s face to wait for his answer.
“Since you asked nice,” Bucky shrugged.
“Please, you jerk, may I go down on you?”
Bucky laughed and nodded. He was an idiot. He should never have waited so long to come back to this.
Steve licked a line up Bucky’s cock and all laughing ceased.
“Fuck,” Bucky gasped.
Steve hummed and licked another stripe from balls to tip. He tongued around the head until it was wet with spit. Only then did he take Bucky’s dick into his mouth.
The groan that escaped from Bucky’s throat was loud. He threw his head back and fisted the sheet to hold himself back from thrusting deep. A tearing sound made him struggle to loosen his left hand.
“Sorry,” Bucky gritted out.
Steve laid his hand over Bucky’s left one and he bobbed on Bucky’s cock.
Bucky felt himself rocketing toward his orgasm within seconds. Tingling heat pooled in his belly, his lower back, his balls. Pleasure radiated out toward his extremities. Phantom warmth lit up his left arm from shoulder to fingertips.
“Steve!”
Bucky jerked with ecstasy, and Steve’s mouth never left him until the last drop of come was licked clean.
“Nice,” Steve purred. He was still kissing Bucky’s skin. The join of leg to groin. The softening curve of his balls. “Can I?” Steve asked softly, pushing Bucky’s knees wide and then up.
“You can do anything you fucking want,” Bucky sighed happily. His body was still flooded with endorphins. His muscles were loose and he let Steve put him the way he wanted him, leg draped over Steve’s shoulder.
“You’re easy to please,” Steve said. “Let’s see if we can do it again.”
He disappeared against the bed. Bucky jerked with surprise when he felt Steve’s tongue swipe over his hole. When he licked a second stripe, Bucky spread himself wider.
“Yeah,” he grunted.
Steve settled in deeper, tonguing across him again. Every tastebud tickled across him again and again. Rough enough to light up every nerve ending. Wet enough to slick him from ass to balls.
“I want to--” Steve’s words cut off when the tip of his firm tongue pressed against Bucky’s hole.
He clenched in surprise, then relaxed to let him in. Again and again, Steve’s tongue thrust against him. Bucky felt a thousand miles wide, opening himself to that heat and press. He pulled against the back of his thighs to open wider. Steve hummed his approval and the vibration made Bucky gasp.
“Condom,” Bucky begged.
“You sure?” Steve kept tonguing at his hole.
Bucky was hard again. His cock was leaking against his abs. “I am so fucking sure.”
“Tell me.” Steve thrust his tongue deep.
He groaned. “Steve Rogers, get a condom on and fuck me while I watch your damn face.”
Steve groaned then. “When you say it like that.”
Steve leapt up off the bed, frantically pawing through their discarded clothes to find what they needed.
“You got lube?” Bucky panted.
“Side drawer. Where the fuck is it?”
“My pocket. There’s one in my pocket.”
Bucky clicked open the bottle of slick and spilled a puddle on his right palm. He circled his fingers around his hole, experimentally pushing one inside. The smooth glide of it made him try a second.
“Christ, Buck.”
Bucky opened his eyes -- he’d squeezed them shut hard when he started fingering himself in earnest -- and found Steve watching him.
He reached out with his left hand and pulled Steve close by the wrist. He wasn’t sure he could control his grip like this, so he dropped his hold when Steve climbed back on the bed. Bucky slicked up Steve’s jacketed cock, his first touch of it in so long, and guided it to himself with his right hand. The press of it to Bucky’s loosened hole was perfect. Steve leaned over him and bore down to slowly sink inside of him.
“Go,” Bucky gasped against Steve’s lips. “I won’t last long.”
Pleasure spiked through him again when Steve snapped his hips. Bucky curved upward to keep his lips within kissing distance of Steve’s. He wanted every one of Steve’s breaths inside of himself. Each stroke of Steve’s cock inside him drove him closer and closer.
“Bucky,” Steve croaked.
Sweat beaded along Steve’s upper lip. Bucky licked at it. He pulled his knees higher so Steve could drive in deeper and deeper.
“Fuck me,” he begged.
Steve was gasping, “I-- I’m--”
“Do it,” Bucky growled.
Steve’s rapture was Bucky’s too. Steve gripped Bucky’s shoulders for leverage and pounded into him. Bucky shoved his hand between their bodies and let the rhythm fuck his cock into his fist.
“Fuck, I’m gonna--”
Steve arched back and shuddered. The sight of it made Bucky’s body clench down. Come curled across his fist.
When they came down from their high, Steve rose to find them a wash rag and throw the condom in the john. He wiped Bucky clean and settled in the curve of Bucky’s left arm.
“I’m glad you waited,” Bucky murmured.
“I woulda forever,” Steve smiled against his skin. “And it’s my turn later, by the way. Don’t think you get out of this without doing a little work on me too.”
Bucky snorted. “Can’t wait.”
((☆))
“Who invented ze fourth floor walk-up? Because zis is inhumane,” Jacques complained. “You two pick a basement apartment next time, yes?” he yelled up the stairwell.
“Quit your bellyachin’, and put your back into it,” Dum Dum grunted. “Gabe and I are the ones with the ass end of this thing.”
The three of them heaved the couch onto the landing with a screech of the legs on the floorboards. Three sweating bottles of beer were waiting for them outside the open apartment door.
“I woulda lent you a hand, but…” Bucky was grinning from his perch on a ladder, putting a last coat of paint on the wall. He shrugged with his left arm. There were white streaks of paint on his shirt, slightly obscuring the 25% OFF printed on the chest.
“Har dee har har,” Gabe said, flopping down on the couch and taking a swig.
“Regular comedian,” Steve said fondly. He tugged at Bucky’s beltloop until Bucky leaned down and kissed him.
Steve had a hammer and nails and went back to hanging a few framed sketches on the opposite wall. After their picture had shown up in Get Out , people came out of the woodwork to return the drawings that had blown all over Brooklyn. It was good to have them back. It reminded them both of what they’d survived to make it to this place. It was sweeter that way.
((☆))
After the guys left and Steve was futzing with boxes in the living room, Bucky paused to lean on the fridge and watch him. Steve was muttering to himself as he unpacked books and art supplies, trying to figure the best place to put them all. He looked up when he felt Bucky looking and gave him a soft smile before getting back to it.
Bucky had found a magnetic poetry kit in Steve’s stuff earlier. He absently moved the tiles around until one caught his eye: wait . His heart kicked up a notch. He scanned the mess of words for… there it was, you. He tried pushing it with his left fingers but it stuck onto the synthetic-coated metal.
“Fucker,” he mumbled, pulling it off with his right and putting it back on the freezer door.
You do not have 2 wait N E more , he spelled out. Love U.
Then he walked over, silently laced his new fingers with Steve’s flesh ones, and led him to the bedroom to christen it home.