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"I don't think he's noticed, you know."
"What?" Bucky yanks his eyes away from the way Sam sprawls out in his sleep, each limb thrown out wide, hands open like he's reaching for something. "What are you talking about?" He doesn't have to pretend at ignorance. "He who? If you're not going to stop talking, you could try making sense."
"Sam," Zemo shapes Sam's name into a creature three times its natural size without lengthening it at all. "He hasn't noticed."
"Sam hasn't noticed what," Bucky bites off, feeling the snare bite into his ankle and fighting it anyway.
"Your attraction to him. Your... feelings for him." Zemo looks at Sam and smiles fondly, like he has any stake in him. Any goddamn right to pretend Sam would take that smile laying down. "Blind, for such a perceptive man, but we all have our weaknesses."
"Want me to find some of yours?" Bucky can feel ice cracking on his skin. His toes spasm in his boots, an anxious flex of movement. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't I?" Giving the question a moment to settle, Zemo arches his brows. "So you don't think of him, when you want to be touched?"
Fuck. Zemo would probably like it too much if Bucky heaved up everything in his stomach on his fucking shiny shoes, but the idea has some real merit anyway. "Fuck you."
"And when you touch yourself, James? Do you think of Sam then, as well?"
Of course he fucking does. Sam's smile, his hands, the mean flex and push of strength Bucky is promised and denied day after goddamned day. What Sam could do, if he was the kind of guy who wanted that. Wanted Bucky, at all.
"Are you trying to get me to kill you?" Threats are comfortable. Threats are safe. Threats aren't Zemo yanking his secrets out and pawing through them with his too-fucking clean hands.
"Would you like to kill me, James?" Zemo’s voice is mild, but Bucky knows when he's looking into the eyes of the beast. He owns a fucking mirror.
"Doesn't take the serum to make me want that.” He bristles, all too aware of the implications behind that particular question. “Just meeting you that first time handled it fine."
"I have apologized for that." Zemo inclines his head. "But we were speaking of Sam, not our past together. You never answered my question. Though, if you would rather not..." if you're afraid, he might as well have said.
"You're so smart, you tell me."
"James," Zemo scolds, and the way he says it sets the hairs on the back of Bucky's neck standing to full attention. He knows that voice. The accent's not right, but something about the tone... "I asked you a question."
"Yes. Fuck you. Yes." The strange deja vu settles into a blanket of uneasiness dulling his senses. Bucky tastes old pennies and plastic, smells rubbing alcohol and feels the itch of saline in his forearm, each sensation strong and sharp as if they’re not just echoes. "Any other burning questions for me?"
“Now that you ask, yes.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“How long has it been, James?”
Bucky waits for him to just fucking ask, but Zemo only sits there, head tilted like a cocker spaniel from hell. He’s absolutely delighted with this new avenue to explore, just fucking thrilled, and he’s not even trying to hide it. “How long since what.” Knowing he can still break that fast turns the cool trickle of saline in Bucky’s veins to an icy flood.
“Since,” Zemo says kindly, and the blanket of familiarity becomes a shackle, “you have been touched.” Tracking the way Bucky’s hands grip the armrests, Zemo tacks on delicately, “As yourself. Not the soldat. You’ve made it so clear he is another man entirely, I wouldn’t assume that should count.”
Zemo’s voice. Not Zemo’s voice. They blur together, smearing the lines, and Bucky comes just shy of reading the memory in their overlap before it slips away.
He licks his lips and tastes cordite. “What makes you think I’m going to tell you that?”
“Why did you tell me about Sam?” Zemo counters reasonably, leaning closer. “How long has it been since you’ve been touched? By someone other than Sam.”
“Sam doesn’t touch me.” Bucky catches the tip of his tongue between his teeth, stemming the flow of any other stupid confessions. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Not like I hope to touch you, no, but he does touch you. All the time, you can’t have failed to notice. A hand on your shoulder, your arm. Leaning into your side…” Bucky’s mind pulls up a helpful file of each and every time Sam’s done exactly that, crystal clear as all the other echoes. Zemo lets out an approving little ah of breath, like Bucky’s thrown his guts on the floor for real. “Of course you have. How could you not see it? And then, not enjoy it. No one could blame you. I certainly don’t, James.”
“Shut up.” His throat is so dry now it feels like it’s been scoured. “You made your point.”
“Have I?” Zemo’s hand on his knee is about as much of a relief as the sword was to Damocles. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“A long time.” That’s in another neat file; long hair, short hair, rough hands and angry mouths. Before the thaw, after, it’s all as good as the same.
“How mysterious. Before or after we first enjoyed each other’s company?” Jesus fucking Christ. Bucky shakes his head, too awed by the length and breadth of that complete horseshit to push back on it. Enjoyed each other’s company. Like they’d crossed paths by chance then decided to throw caution to the wind and head out for drinks and dinner.
“I’ve been a little busy with more important things since then.” Getting defensive is what Zemo wants, and Bucky’s going to do it anyway. “Some asshole framed me for murder, it really cuts down on the chances to get out there.”
“Mmm,” Zemo agrees sympathetically. “A shame. Would you like to be touched, James?”
There exists a brief space between impact and pain receptors. Bucky knows that. Doesn’t matter the instrument you use, the gap’s always there. He knows that like he knows how to breathe, the instinctive impossible to explain just because of basic human machinery. So he isn’t surprised when he doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move out of the way or cut him off, just watches Zemo’s mouth and stands with his feet bogged down in the muddy ground between cause and effect.
“Fuck you,” he falls back on the time honored refrain of the losing side, utterly incapable of finding something more effective to ward off Zemo’s version of friendly conversation. “Don’t you have anything better to do right now than ask me invasive shit like this?”
“Not really, no.”
“Fuck you,” Bucky repeats, but this time it’s a surrender. “Yeah, you asshole. Yeah, I wouldn’t mind a chance to slow down and enjoy myself with somebody. Who doesn’t want that? Doesn’t mean anything.”
“Somebody?” Bucky doesn’t mean to do it, but his quick glance over at Sam says enough. “As I said. So, if Sam can’t provide you that…”
“What,” Bucky says, watching the hole he’s dug for himself deepen and fill with spikes. “You’re going to step up? Lend a hand?”
“If that’s what you’d like, yes.”
“Fuck me.”
“Or that, yes. If you insist.”
Bucky glowers down at Zemo’s hand, well-manicured fingernails catching the lights. “Not a chance.”
“Oh?” Zemo moves his hand up Bucky’s thigh, slow enough it would be simple to shake him off. “The hand, then.”
His zipper sounds loud enough Bucky darts a panicked look at Sam, sure he’s about to sit up and ask what the fuck Bucky thinks he’s doing, but he’s still snoring peacefully away. When he looks back at his lap, Zemo is done rolling his sleeve up carefully and is mapping Bucky’s cock through his underwear, touch just a shade away from clinical. Bucky thrusts up into the barely-there pressure like he’s been shocked, biting down on his cheek to keep from making a sound.
“I thought as much,” Zemo says, and doesn’t seem to expect the reply Bucky couldn’t give him if he wanted to. “It shouldn’t take long, I think.”
He must have gotten his too-happy to provide valet to scrounge up lube from somewhere, because his fist is too slippery to be spit when it closes around Bucky’s dick, arm fish-belly white up to the elbow and still somehow elegant.
“Oh Christ,” Bucky groans, and Zemo chuckles.
“Not hardly, though it’s sweet of you to say so.”
“Don’t…” Bucky’s head thuds back. “Just don’t talk, all right? Shut up and do it.”
“You could close your eyes, if you like.”
Narrowing the eyes in question suspiciously, Bucky lifts his top lip in a sneer. “Around you? Yeah, I’ll pass.”
“I could hardly do anything you wouldn’t be able to stop, not when I’m this close.”
“You could pull out a syringe with your free hand and drug me,” Bucky points out mulishly, but the idea of closing his eyes so he can imagine it’s not Zemo’s hand on his dick sounds pretty fucking great.
“But if you close your eyes, you can pretend I’m someone else, James. Anyone you like.” Zemo’s words are too close to his own thoughts to be anything but a real fucking concern. “I won’t drug you.” Zemo places a hand over his heart. “I promise. If it puts you at ease, I’ll use both hands.”
“Worth nothing to me,” Bucky grunts, but he squeezes his lids shut tight and hates himself a little for it all the same. “Look. I said fucking do it, so do it.”
Miracles must be real because Zemo actually gets on with it and keeps his mouth shut. Bucky tries to think of nothing but the relief of somebody else touching his dick for the first time in way too goddamn long, but he knows what Zemo looks like. Left with nothing else to fill the void, his mind throws Zemo’s elegant fingers and the fine bones of his wrists into the ring to duke it out. One quick jerk and Bucky could break those bones, but Zemo is touching him, not hurting him—or it’s both, but Bucky can’t sort through the difference.
Frantic, he shies away from that thought. Stewart, Gable, Steve—no, not that either. For a million reasons, never that. Not anymore. Sam’s face, though, Sam’s hands.
Guiltily, he follows Zemo’s suggestion and pictures it. Zemo’s giving him what can only be called an efficient handjob, all maintenance and no passion, but Sam wouldn’t be like that. Sam would be messy and loud and joyful, jostling him around and saying stupid shit while he rushes in to fill every space Bucky’s got. The air has more purchase on his skin than Zemo, other than the tight tunnel of his fist moving in a steady up-down twist, up-down up-down twist rhythm that works just fine to get him there, but he can’t lose himself in it.
Sam wouldn’t be like that, either. The Sam he’s got locked away in his head would make a goddamn wreck out of him. Maybe throw him around some, pretend Bucky’s not the one who could break Sam over his knee.
Shit. He can’t hold back a moan, thinking about it. The Sam who isn’t actually Sam would do that, too, until Bucky’s ass is black and fucking blue. It’ll heal too fast, and so he’ll have to do it again, and again, just to see if it’ll ever stick, Buck, look at fucking you—
Zemo’s hand slick when it claps over his mouth, smearing a sticky trail over his cheeks. He doesn’t need to be told to pull it back a heartbeat later, but Bucky feels the air hit his face and start to dry what he’s left and shudders. “Apologies. I thought you might not wish Sam to wake up, and you were becoming rather loud.”
Bucky allows the will needed to open his eyes drain away from where he’d been gathering it up. He’s not about to say thank you—feeling grateful is bad enough. Still. “Don’t do it again. Pinch me, or something.”
“Of course, if you’d like that.” The ache of Zemo gathering up the meat of his thigh and giving it a savage pinch should not be a surprise.
Bucky jumps anyway. “If I get loud,” he says, trying to hold back another moan and proving Zemo’s point. “Fucking if.”
“My mistake.”
Bucky’s not sure if who he’s trying to punish when he keeps his eyes open until Zemo gets it over with and speeds the fuck up after an eon of slow, steady pressure.
Sam’s face is behind his lids when he closes them, what he would say mixing with Zemo’s low, approving murmurs and tracing pathways Hydra lit up with new lines of fire. There you go, Bucky hears when he comes, hips jerking upwards violently as Sam’s voice drowns Zemo’s praise. Doing good, Buck. Doing so good for me.
“Feeling better?” Zemo ruins any chance at lingering in the fantasy by thrusting a handkerchief in his face. “Here, you may need this. I’m afraid your aim… it could have been better.”
Bucky looks down. White splatters cling to his shirt, and his abandoned dick is limp and messy against one thigh. “You’re the one who had my dick in his hand. You aimed.” Tucking himself back into his pants and growling, Bucky takes the useless little piece of silk and tries to clean up. It’s really only effective for smearing the mess around, but as long as Sam doesn’t try to examine him close up it should be fine. “This was a mistake, Zemo. A very stupid mistake, that’s all it was. And if you say anything about it to Sam…”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. In this, your secrets are also my secrets, James.”
“The hell they are.” Bucky shudders. “And it’s not going to happen again.”
“Of course. A one off, I believe they say. I would not assume otherwise.” Zemo nods agreeably, like they both don’t know it’s a lie. “Though—if you would allow me one last word on the matter, I think you missed a spot.”
Cursing under his breath, Bucky scrubs at himself harder this time and does his best not to anticipate next time.