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Bucky dumps Zemo’s clothes unceremoniously in the laundry when they get back, and because the lingering, victorious afterglow of killing HYDRA operatives has put him in a generous mood, he decides to graciously give Zemo the first pass at the shower.
It’s a mistake. The Sokovian shit stays in there excessively long, doing god knows what, and by the time Bucky gets his turn all the hot water has been spent and his soap, body wash, and hair products have all been unnecessarily rearranged.
The ice cold water is enough to sober him up from his good mood and purge what remains of his ill-advised magnanimity. He towels off as fast as possible, yanks on some pants and shoes, and drags out two shirts for Zemo’s inspection from his closet - determined to wring out some use from the bastard, at least.
Zemo’s staring raptly at the dryer when Bucky comes out, watching his clothes bounce around inside as if it’s the most fascinating thing in the world. He must be bored as shit, Bucky decides - a notion that prompts a surge of uncharitable glee to rise up inside of him.
“You know,” he says loudly, announcing his presence - as if Zemo could’ve missed the sound of heavy boots stomping over to him, “I do have a working TV. Cable and everything.”
“I don’t care for American programs,” Zemo says dismissively. He stares at the tumbling clothes for a second longer before he turns around to face him. Zemo doesn’t conceal his smirk as he notices Bucky’s undress - his gaze drifts over Bucky’s exposed torso with a slow, leisurely appreciation. He’s still half-naked himself - wearing only a towel around his waist - but he has a career soldier’s lack of regard for his own nudity.
Something flickers in his eyes, something that immediately triggers Bucky’s innate paranoia, and Zemo’s hips sway slightly as he approaches, his movements soft-footed and lithe enough to be fucking catlike - downright predatory - and Bucky has to fight against the instinct to shy back out of Zemo’s reach. Zemo’s gaze is fixed directly on his metal arm, honing in on it with sharp, unblinking intensity. Bucky tries not to take it personally - less than a minute ago Zemo was scrutinizing the fucking laundry with a similar expression - but the puckered, ugly mass of scar tissue surrounding the cybernetic prickles with phantom pain as the stare persists.
“Earth to Zemo,” he grunts, snapping his fingers to get the man’s attention.
Zemo blinks, and gives a lazy, indulgent smile. “Yes?”
Bucky grabs the two shirts still slung over his right forearm, and shoves them forward for Zemo’s appraisal. “Which one?”
Zemo spares them a brief glance. “The gray,” he says, returning his attention to Bucky’s metal arm, “it’ll bring out your eyes.”
Bucky has the thought that it might be satisfying - in a childishly petty way - to go with the other one instead, just to spite Zemo. The idea is tempting, and for a second he even considers it - lets himself briefly pretend there’s a real possibility he’s going to anything else than defer to Zemo’s choice. But only for a second. He drops the red one to the floor, kicks it behind him in the general direction of his room, and pulls Zemo’s selection over his head.
He smooths back his hair into place and glances back at Zemo, finding the man still focused on his arm. It’s getting fucking weird at this point, and a cold unease trickles down his spine. “What the fuck is up with you?” he asks warily, hardening his voice to keep his self-consciousness from slithering in and revealing itself. “Don’t make me regret agreeing to a date.”
Finally, Zemo looks up. “Can I ask you something?”
It’s rare that Zemo bothers to solicit permission before opening his mouth and letting the words spill out, and it makes Bucky curious - in that destructive, self-sabotaging way that nothing good can really come from.
“Sure,” he says, and he regrets agreeing as soon as the word has escaped his lips.
Zemo looks far more smug than any man dressed only in a shitty, damp towel has a right to. “Are you grateful to the Wakandans for your arm?” There’s a lilting quality in his voice Bucky doesn’t like - as if the question is a test, as if Zemo already knows what his answer will be.
Bucky shouldn’t respond. He shouldn’t say anything at all. He’s never going to be Zemo’s equal on this battlefield, never going to be able to verbally outwit the bastard or surprise him with some hidden reserves of cunning. Bucky’s fists are his strengths - his mouth and tongue are only good for sucking cock… they’re not made for clever, insipid wordplay. He’s well fucking aware of this. Zemo’s playing some kind of game, and the only way for Bucky to stand a chance at winning is to shut the fuck up. Saying anything at all would only play right into Zemo’s hands.
But he can’t seem to fucking help himself. “What do you mean?”
Somewhere behind them, Bucky dimly hears the drier beep and the lock on the latch release. They both ignore it.
“The Wakandans built you a new arm,” Zemo explains patiently. “It must’ve been quite the relief - no longer having HYDRA’s technology welded to you.”
What a joke. The arm - even kitted out in vibranium plates instead of Soviet steel - is still a reminder of what’s been taken from him, a keepsake of his days as HYDRA’s favorite whore. It’s trimmed with gold now and features some superficial Wakandan flourishes, but ultimately it’s still based on HYDRA engineering and design. It had to be - the procedure done to him was revolutionary, novel, experimental - and there’s no fucking way he would’ve survived it if he hadn’t been pumped full of serum. His tissues, muscles, and nerve clusters had all been carefully tethered to the arm - an intricate system of sickening ingenuity that is pure HYDRA through and through. The best the Wakandans could do was duplicate the work and add their own finishing touches. When he looks in the mirror he still sees HYDRA’s arm bound to his shoulder. What’s the difference if the metal was mined in Wakanda, instead of Germany or Russia?
He doesn’t say any of this aloud. What he says instead is, “Not really.”
Zemo looks disappointed by his answer, but unsurprised. “I see.” He pauses. “Do you remember it?”
He doesn’t elaborate on what he means by it. He doesn’t have to.
“Some,” Bucky tells him, and there is a hoarseness to his voice he doesn’t like.
Those old memories - from back when he was still being shaped into the Soldier, back when he was beginning to have trouble thinking of himself as Bucky Barnes but before HYDRA had completely beaten those notions of individuality out of him - are unreliable and the details often slip away from him like a nightmare dissolving in the light of day. Those early years are chaotic - what he managed to retain is alternatingly fuzzy and sharp - despair punctuated by bright shocks of pain and, on occasion, unwilling pleasure. They were still testing him at that point - testing the limits of his body and mind, of his enhanced physiology, fine-tuning the chemical cocktails to use on him that they would eventually refine into a science. They administered opiates and amphetamines and cyclopropane - often one after the other, in rapid succession, charting out his metabolic abilities, seeing how quickly his system would flush out the compounds. He has too many dim memories of whimpering on the floor of his cell, alternating between being a drooling, insensate wreck and a jittery bundle of directionless, terrified energy - his heart pumping a mile a minute, his mouth painfully dry, his muscles aching as if with a fever.
And his arm - they had made it beautiful, shaped it so fucking lovingly - there had been an artistry there, a deftness of sculpture to the false musculature and the clean, almost delicate lines of the fingers and the hand. Polished chrome emblazoned with that Soviet red star - he wonders how many board meetings they’d sat through determining the design, how many prototypes they’d gone through trying to make it fucking perfect before it even touched his skin. HYDRA had always liked to keep its weapons pretty, after all.
He remembers how the technicians and the man who would become his first handler had cooed over it when it had been installed, praising its workmanship, the fine motor control it had granted him. His handler - a Russian - had even had the audacity to smile at him and call it a gift - as if he should be grateful, as if HYDRA hadn’t sawed off what remained of his real arm in order to graft their metal monstrosity onto his body. He had tried to tear it off, that first night - tried to claw it from his shoulder, as if his nails were somehow a match for the weapon HYDRA had installed onto him.
The Russian had found him on the floor of his cell the next day, curled into a fetal position, dark bloodstains splashed over the silver and red of the arm. The self-inflicted wounds had already healed - even this pitiful attempt at rebellion had, in the end, amounted to nothing more than an empty, wasteful effort, doomed from the start. His would-be handler had laughed, and then arranged his features into a semblance of sympathy before kneeling to pet through his hair.
“Ah, soldat,” he had murmured. “I am sorry to see you so distressed.” He had modulated his voice, making it low and soothing - a trial run for the system of praise and punishment that would eventually prove to be so devastatingly effective.
Bucky remembers this particular moment well - it separates cleanly from the disorienting muddle of the rest: a snapshot emblazoned on his mind as clearly as the red star carved into his new arm. He remembers soft, deliberately gentle fingers carding through hair that was beginning to grow long, he remembers his handler hushing him as he began to sob. He did not bother to correct him anymore when he called him soldat or Soldier - in the early days he had furiously insisted that he was Bucky Barnes (a person, goddammit, not a thing) but he had quickly learned nobody was listening. And defiance only meant pain. HYDRA was cruel, but they were patient and they were clever - it had not been long before they had taught him to associate resistance with suffering, and obedience with relief. Once, before he had been a weapon, back when he was only a soldier, and not the Soldier, he had thought to himself that he would never be broken if he was captured. That his will, his human spirit, his fucking grit and guts and American-army-issued balls would keep him sane, keep him himself. After all: they can torture your flesh and rape your body but they can’t touch your mind.
He had been almost hilariously wrong on that count. And on the days when he feels like being honest with himself - or being cruel to himself - he admits he did not hold out very long at all, in the grand scheme of things. They had pushed and he hadn’t as much broken as he had shattered like rusted-away iron - in the end all his fucking will had given him were tears (wasted sodium, wasted hydration) and a throat sore and ragged from screams.
“Let this be a lesson to you, soldat,” his handler had told him, not unkindly, stroking at the knots of scar tissue where mangled flesh had been joined to the arm, “HYDRA is a part of you. Now and always. You cannot remove us from yourself.”
He had kissed Bucky’s forehead then - perhaps as a reward for his submissiveness - and the gesture was a mockery of tenderness, but he clung to it regardless - his days were nothing but pain overlaid onto drugged numbness. This was the first gentle contact they’d allowed him in too long to even remember, and in that moment he was too desperate for affection to care that it was a lie, that it was simply another face of their cruelty. In that moment it was everything, it was bliss: he would’ve done anything, debased himself in any way, just to hold onto that shred of comfort for a moment longer. This is how he remembers himself in those days: a man reduced to nothing more than a starving dog begging for table scraps. His dignity had been the greatest casualty of his imprisonment.
The Russian had let the touch linger, and the Soldier had moaned and leaned towards the dangled bait of kindness, and he had not protested when his handler rolled him onto his stomach and pulled down the waistband of his pants.
“You belong to HYDRA,” his handler had said afterwards, tucking his cock back into his pants and wiping his hand clean on the Soldier’s still-naked thighs. He had examined the Soldier, indifferently eyed the cum leaking from between his legs, and then knelt again to trace around the freshly healed skin of his shoulder, where the Soldier had tried to gouge out the new arm. “Do not damage our property again. I will not be so lenient with you next time.”
Bucky feels cool fingers sweep lightly over his brow, dragging him away from the dark hole of that memory, and he blinks rapidly, forcing himself to refocus. Zemo has moved close enough that Bucky can smell the scent of his own shampoo in the man’s hair - a discovery that is somehow simultaneously unnerving and comforting.
“James?” Zemo asks, hand migrating to Bucky’s temple, as if checking for a fever. His voice is low and soft with what is likely genuine sympathy, and Bucky scowls on reflex. “How are you?”
That’s not a question Bucky’s ever been good at answering honestly. He doesn’t try now. “Fine,” he says shortly. He hesitates. “Almost wish there’d been more of them with Rollins. I know they’re still crawling around out in the world. Would’ve been nice to be able to fuck more of their shit up in one go.”
“Ah,” Zemo says, and understanding dawns in the depths of his eyes. The hand still at Bucky’s forehead slips down, cradling his cheek for a second before dropping away. He offers a smile. “Next time, perhaps.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” Bucky mutters. He works his jaw and then forces a smirk that grows more sincere as he gazes at Zemo, still pressed close enough that Bucky can feel the warmth radiating off the other man’s body. Maintaining eye contact, he reaches behind Zemo and jerks open the dryer door. “Now get dressed,” he says, trying to summon all the flirtatiousness he knows he was once capable of, “don’t we have a date?”
Zemo moves through the city like he’s a native. It’s freaky, in a way, how well he knows the gridded layout of the streets, the intricacies of the subway system, the exact location of museums and restaurants Bucky hasn’t even heard of.
“When was the last time you were here?” Bucky asks him as their subway car grinds to a halt at the Central Park station. People flow out and people surge in - and Bucky is forced to shuffle closer to Zemo, squeezing tightly against him in response to the sudden crush of the crowd. There’s something novel and frightening about getting this close to Zemo in public - despite the fact that it’s just the same type of unsentimental physical proximity a packed subway car will foist upon anyone. He’s pretty sure if he tilts too far in the wrong direction he’ll be on a collision course with no less than three separate strangers. He loosens his hand’s vise-grip on the rail, letting it slide down slightly to brush against Zemo’s. He feels his cheeks heat, and he can’t quite bring himself to look directly at Zemo - he keeps his gaze rigidly forward, focusing on a patch of faded graffiti over the door - but out of the corner of his eye he sees the other man’s lips tug up into an amused smirk.
Zemo waits to respond until the passenger migration has run its course and the doors slide closed. “It was years ago,” he tells him, leaning in to murmur his words into Bucky’s ear. His breath tickles against Bucky’s neck, and Bucky can almost feel his smile as he continues, “I’m sure you remember I was in prison?”
“Ha ha,” Bucky says, glowering to avoid handing Zemo the win of seeing him laugh. “Good one.” The car screeches as it leaves the station, and the white noise of the train rolling over the track combined with the ambient chatter of nearby conversations makes lowering his voice unnecessary, but on habit he does so anyway. “But seriously. You run a lot of kill squad missions in the city, or did you come here doing rich boy shit?”
“You mean, was I here on business or pleasure?” Zemo asks slyly. It’s a rhetorical question, but he lets it linger for beat - probably, Bucky suspects, just to be dramatic. “Business. But nothing especially exciting, I can assure you.” His foot nudges against Bucky’s, casual enough to pass as accidental. “I certainly haven’t had the privilege of touring with such a handsome companion before.”
The subway shrieks as it makes a turn and brakes sharply, and he’s not sure if that sensation in his chest is from the floor jumping underneath him, or his heart skipping a beat. He distracts himself, staring resolutely at the spot of graffiti, trying to determine whether the green bits of spray-paint are supposed to be a name, or someone’s abstract attempt at a bird. There’s a flourish on the end that’s either the swoop of a wing or a drawn out letter M.
He clears his throat. “I’m flattered.” He’d intended for it to be a little playful, but he’s out of practice and shit at this, and his words end up coming out in the Soldier’s grating monotone, the same voice he’d use to alert ops that his Colt M4A1 was out of ammo.
Zemo is chuckling. “I could tell.” Maybe it’s a joke - teasing at Bucky’s awkwardness. Or maybe it’s sincere - maybe Zemo, in all his thorough analysis and study of Bucky and his mannerisms, really can detect when his stoicism is the result of being flustered instead of just pissed off. To his annoyance, Bucky finds himself hoping it’s the second option.
They go to a museum first, a nice one, with wood floors polished to a shine despite all the foot traffic, and an overwhelming amount of rooms. Bucky’s never had much of an eye for art, even back before HYDRA, and it’s all changed so much by this point it’s nearly alien to him.
He lets Zemo guide him through the maze of exhibits. It’s all mostly incomprehensible to him, but it’s entertaining to witness Zemo’s enthusiasm, to listen to him go off on tangents about the artists, or their styles, or the story behind the work. Bucky’s only half paying attention to the words, but it’s cute - in a weird way - seeing Zemo so animated. He lets himself imagine Zemo dragging his men here after some sketchy operation, a bunch of hardened Sokovian killers looking out of place in their civvies, trying to debate them about the finer points of contemporary art. He doubts it would’ve happened quite like that - but the mental image is sufficiently amusing, and he lets out a snort that he turns into an unconvincing coughing fit as Zemo glances over, an eyebrow raised.
They go through another few rooms, and Zemo waits patiently, lulling Bucky into a sense of security before he starts to spring questions on him. “What do you think this represents?” Zemo asks him with a smirk, gesturing broadly at a painting that looks like a malfunctioning circuit board.
“Uh,” Bucky says, struggling to come up with something halfway intelligent. He furrows his brow, glowering at the painting.
Zemo gives him a sideways look, and seems to take pity on him, although his eyes still glint with humor at Bucky’s expense. “Do you like it?” he asks instead.
“No,” Bucky says bluntly. He doesn’t - it’s an eyesore: not enough colors and too many patterns. He jerks his chin in the direction of a sculpture in the center of the room - a spiraling, ribbon-like thing twisting up towards the ceiling. “I like that one.”
Zemo turns to face it, tilts his head. “Why?”
Bucky hesitates, staring at it and trying to figure out the reason himself. It’s the color more than the design, he realizes. It’s a peachy kind of pink-orange blend - there’s a more technical name for the color, he’s sure, but he doesn’t know it. It reminds him of the way light from a setting sun reflects off the clouds - golden and rosy and pretty in a way that hurts to look at for too long.
“I like the color,” he says at last. And then, because Zemo is still looking at him expectantly, he adds, “it reminds me of a sunset.” It feels stupid to admit it out loud - embarrassing - but there’s no mockery in Zemo’s expression, and roughly, he continues, “Wakanda had a lot that looked like that. A bit harder to find here.” He misses it, sometimes, and he feels the sharp knife of regret slip between his ribs as he remembers that he's currently persona non grata from the country. His fault for getting attached to it - he should’ve known better than to assume their doors would always be open to him. It was a breathtakingly beautiful country. And deep down, he’d always known it was too good for him.
Zemo gives him a careful look, something unreadable flashing over his expression. “It is rather lovely,” he agrees. His lips curve into a smile. “You have excellent taste.”
Bucky raises an eyebrow, deadpans, “If that’s just a roundabout way of complimenting yourself….”
“Of course not,” Zemo says innocently. “But it’s sweet that I came to mind.”
Bucky bites back a smile. “Don’t let it go to your head,” he warns.
They hit up a sushi restaurant after that, an upscale place with cherry blossom trees painted on the walls and lacquered chopsticks instead of the cheap disposable ones he’s more familiar with, and he disappoints Zemo by not being able to taste the difference between the tuna and the yellowtail.
(“What does it matter?” he protests through a mouthful of sushi. “I said it’s good, didn’t I?”)
Zemo pays with a small stack of crisp twenty-dollar bills, and Bucky doesn’t even want to know where they came from - they don’t look like they’ve been through the laundry, which implies Zemo managed to pick them up sometime between leaving his apartment and arriving at the restaurant… a mystery Bucky decides he’s better off not contemplating.
The sky’s dark when they go back outside, but the streets are bright and full of life, and he lets Zemo tug him into the neon-tinged shadows beside a nightclub. Zemo kisses him, tasting of sake, and Bucky presses him against the bricks, tangling a hand in his hair and taking a thrill in disheveling it.
“It’s your turn to pick,” Zemo says when they pull apart, and he’s slightly breathless, but not lost in the moment enough to resist smoothing his hair back into place. “What next?”
“What did you have in mind?” Bucky asks, hoping Zemo’s answer will buy him some time while he racks his brain trying to think of things he does for fun.
Zemo isn’t particularly helpful. “Whatever you want.”
“Alright,” Bucky says slowly. “There’s this bar I sometimes go to - been around since the 40’s. Bit of a shithole but they’ve got good beer.” He’s not actually sure that last part’s true, come to think of it - he gets the same thing every time, and it’s decent at best - but Zemo is already nodding.
They move back onto the sidewalk, and Bucky pauses before reaching out for Zemo’s hand. He feels almost timid, slipping his hand into Zemo’s, like he’s a fucking kid on a first date, like he hasn’t already given Zemo access to every part of his body. He shivers as Zemo’s fingers intertwine through his, a jittery buzz suffusing him like the first hit of nicotine from a morning cigarette, or a shot of clean Russian vodka burning warmly down his throat.
It’s nice, he decides. The casualness of the touch feels like a form of intimacy in and of itself, and he’s missed this sort of thing badly enough that it almost hurts to have that need finally fulfilled. A part of him didn’t think he’d ever get to do this again - walk down the street hand-in-hand with another person. What man or woman would want to? He’s not even totally convinced he’s good for a fuck, let alone anything that extends beyond the bedroom doors. His body is a scarred up amalgam of HYDRA tech and HYDRA serum, and his mind is a ruin - all that’s left under the cacophony of bloodstained memories is the wreckage of Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes and the snarling, beaten attack dog that’s the Soldier - secretly waiting for someone to put a collar around its neck and snap out an order.
He must’ve slowed down, or maybe his face is just doing that stupid thing it sometimes does when he’s deep in thought - how it’ll get stuck on an expression like a frozen computer screen - because Zemo’s is staring at him, wearing a look that’s somewhere between thoughtful and amused.
“You seem miles away,” Zemo remarks, and there’s a low huskiness to the words that make his accent that much more pronounced.
Bucky’s stomach does a quick flip flop at the sound of it, and he feels his face spasm with an involuntary contraction of emotion - and sometimes he really fucking hates how shitty he is at hiding his feelings. He’s pretty sure his anger at the automatic response bleeds through too (it’s a vicious fucking cycle, really), because Zemo grins at him.
“Perhaps you’re cold,” the man purrs. “Would you like my jacket?”
“I’m fine,” Bucky grumbles.
“Take it,” Zemo says, his voice cool and silken. “I insist.”
It’s not quite an order - but it’s close enough. Bucky nods curtly and Zemo unzips the jacket and shrugs out of it, passing it over.
It smells of his brand of laundry detergent and his brand of dryer sheets, but it also smells like Zemo, like some perverse intermingling of both of them, and it’s not quite a collar, but he zips it up all the way up to his throat and inhales and somewhere in the wasteland of his fucked-up mind the part of him that’s still the Winter Soldier - that will always be the Winter Soldier - is pleased.
Music spills out from the bar as they approach. It’s been a while since Bucky’s been here - maybe a few months - and it’s the first time he’s ever brought a guest. He finds himself glancing over at Zemo, trying to gauge his reactions, as if he’s fucking shy, as if he’s a young man again, trying to make sure his date is happy with the flowers he got them, and his lip curls up as a potent wave of self-disgust crashes over him.
He had missed this place, though. It’s not much to look at, just from the exterior - windows that’ve never been properly cleaned, and doors that are wood, but painted gunmetal grey, as if the designer had been daydreaming of making a bunker instead of a bar. They’ve always been that color, maybe a shade or two lighter or darker, depending on the availability of the paint. When he first came back to Brooklyn and made the rounds on all the old places he used to frequent - mostly to see what they’d been turned into… a pizza place here, a Starbucks there - this bar had been the last one he’d expected to see still intact. Frankly, he wouldn’t have placed a single cent on it outlasting the end of the war. Pathetically, the first time he’d seen it again he’d had to choke down a sob. At that point Steve was gone, and it was as if he’d taken all of Bucky’s pre-war memories with him. And every physical touchstone of memory in Brooklyn had been erased by the decades - or just by fucking coffee chains - leaving him with a raw, bleeding, negative space in his mind where his history should be. Seeing that something of his still remained - alive and thriving with new blood, too - had been enough to remind him of what it had been like when was a young man, just getting his orders and trying to dazzle New York’s men and women with his fancy new uniform, and for a moment all the years he’d spent in HYDRA’s service had melted away as he’d lost himself in the memory.
The peak of that first euphoria has long since dimmed, but he still feels a swell of nostalgia as he tugs Zemo through the entrance, past a loose semicircle of patrons lingering by the door, trading around a shabbily-rolled joint.
There’s a bit of a crowd, but it’s not late enough in the night for it to be properly crowded, and Bucky secures a spot for them at the end of the bar, rests his forearms against the least sticky part of the counter, and begins to try to get the bartender's attention.
She ambles over, and Bucky recognizes her from the last few times he’s been here. She’d be hard to forget - she’s heavily tattooed, and almost as muscular as the bouncer lazily watching the dance floor - and her face breaks into a warm smile when she gets close enough to see him clearly in the dim lighting, almost as if she recognizes him too.
He pays for a beer for himself - his usual - and two shots of cheap tequila that smell suspiciously like pure ethanol. He passes one to Zemo and takes the other for himself. He can’t really get drunk unless he makes an extremely committed effort (and even then, the effects are short-lived) but partaking in at least the first round of shots seems like the polite thing to do. A sweep of violet strobe light from the dance floor reflects in Zemo’s eyes, and for a second they glow as luminous as the flare from a deploying atom bomb. Bucky’s hand shakes despite himself as their glasses clink together, and he tosses back the tequila, hoping the burn of the alcohol will steady him. It tastes like shit - like jet fuel mixed with artificial sweeteners - and he’s impressed that Zemo’s face doesn’t change as he swallows it down. With a laugh that’s lost to the noise of the bar, Bucky motions to the bartender for another round.
“I like this place,” Zemo tells him sometime after their fourth round of shots, raising his voice to be heard over the music. His cheeks are slightly flushed and he grins broadly - not quite drunk, but definitely not sober. It’s endearing, and Bucky grins back at him, a hot burst of something akin to pride blooming in his chest. It’s probably unearned - it’s not his bar, he just dragged Zemo to it - but there’s something intensely rewarding in knowing he hasn’t, at least, fucked up his part of the date.
Zemo is continuing, “Was it like this back when you originally knew it?”
“More or less,” Bucky says, taking a long drink from his beer before passing the bottle over to Zemo. The place is still an unpretentious dump - the kind of bar he’s always favored - and he recognizes some of the stains on the countertop and floor from the 40s, but there’s a couple modern touches scattered around. There’s a rainbow flag draped behind the bar now, for instance, the bottom just brushing over the vodka bottles haphazardly grouped together on the top shelf. This bar had always catered to those sorts of patrons, but back then it had been an open secret, at best. This is a blatant advertisement - one that had taken a while to get acclimated to.
Zemo follows his gaze and his expression grows contemplative, but he presses his lips together, evidently choosing not to vocalize whatever it is he’s thinking. He takes a sip from the beer and makes a face, handing it back. “Dance with me?”
Bucky smirks. “I’m good. You go ahead.”
Zemo doesn’t look especially surprised or put-out by his answer, making Bucky suspect the question was more of a courtesy than anything else. Zemo kisses him once before he heads towards the dance floor - softly, and teasing enough to be almost taunting - and Bucky leans back, reclining against the bar, watching the man as he begins to move to the music.
Zemo keeps himself in sync with the song, but that’s the only honest compliment Bucky could pay him. He dances horribly, and he’s completely unrestrained about it - and Bucky snickers into his beer, almost choking on his next sip as Zemo does something especially stupid with his hands.
Bucky was a fairly decent dancer, way back when, and he’s pretty sure the skills for it are still buried somewhere in his muscle memory. If he cared to, he could probably teach Zemo a couple moves, and he’s confident the man would be eager to learn. But there’s no fucking way he’s ever going to do that and risk ruining this. It’s a fucking riot - absolutely hilarious to watch, and Bucky decides Zemo’s screwed him over enough in the past that he’s got a freebie to be petty about at least this one thing.
And he’ll say this for Zemo, at least - he’s proving to be a popular attraction - there’s already a handful of people drifting closer into his orbit. Maybe it’s his natural charisma bleeding through, or maybe Bucky’s not alone in thinking the plain button-down shirt is a good look for the Sokovian.
He gulps down the last dregs of his beer, watching intently - almost hypnotized - as a man and a woman draw nearer to Zemo, pressing forward until they’re close enough to touch. There’s a tightness in Bucky’s throat and stomach - part jealousy and part arousal - as Zemo’s hands glide down the woman’s narrow hips, as he shifts himself in a way that gives the man access to grind up against him.
The song ends, and there’s a wildness to the one that replaces it - an electric, erratic tempo and a deep, rumbling bass that vibrates through Bucky’s ribcage and all the way down to his balls. It seems to have burned away some of Zemo’s gregarious, ridiculous movements too - he’s moving smoothly with his partners now, sinuous as a snake - the easy physical prowess of a trained soldier who knows exactly how to use his body, his muscles, to achieve his goals.
And right now Zemo’s goal is pretty fucking self-evident. Bucky swallows dryly as the man lowers his head, nuzzling against the side of Zemo’s throat, and the woman angles - impossibly - even closer, until her breasts are pressed to his chest. Zemo catches Bucky’s gaze, holds it as he squeezes the woman’s waist and slides his thigh between her legs, pushing up the hem of her dress as she begins to grind herself on it. Bucky stares back, heart pounding furiously, and there’s something dangerously thrilling in Zemo’s eyes - mockery and sensuality and challenge all rolled into one. Zemo tilts his head back - a motion that simultaneously beckons him forward and also exposes more of his neck, and the man at his back begins to suck and kiss along the pale column of it.
Bucky motions to the bartender, and she seems to intuit what it is he needs. She pours him a double of something that looks semi-related to whiskey, and he knocks it back - imagining it’s seeping into his body in the same way it used to back before HYDRA permanently fucked his physiology, imagines it drowning out the judgment centers in his brain and the nagging voice of common sense that whispers that this might be a colossally dumb idea - and then he sets down the emptied shot glass and heads forward.
Blinking, roving lights wash over his body, painting the exposed black metal of his left hand with glimmering, bright color - arsenic green, arterial-blood red, cryostasis blue. More people have begun to pour into the bar - he navigates around clusters of men and women on the dance floor, narrowly sidestepping a girl in a sequined miniskirt and two men feeling each other up in the least discreet way possible.
Bucky closes in on Zemo and his two partners, and the smell of weed and booze and shitty cologne smacks into him as he inhales. He feels almost hesitant, approaching any further, but Zemo’s still wearing a taunting smirk and he’s sure as fuck not about to back down now. He takes another step forward and perhaps sensing him, the woman pivots to face him, so that her back’s flush with Zemo’s chest and her swaying ass rocks against his crotch. She looks at him appreciatively, in the way he distantly remembers girls had often looked at him before he was HYDRA’s, and it ignites long-dormant vanity he’d begun to think had been permanently stripped from him.
She trails a hand down his chest and his stomach, making a soft, pleased noise as her fingers run over his muscles, and shiny lips part suggestively.
Bucky looks to Zemo. “Is this what you want?” he asks, and there’s a roughness to his voice that almost sounds like desperation. Tell me what to do is the unspoken plea he doesn’t dare say out loud.
Zemo’s hand twists, gently, firmly into his hair, and he leans forward, nips at Bucky’s earlobe. “Let’s show you off, soldat.”
He’s heard those exact words in that exact order before - but always coldly, sadistically amused at best - never so sincere, never so richly delighted. He shudders from the command, from the urgent arousal pulsing straight to his cock, from the old, unpleasant memories that are currently being warped into something that’s perversely hot as shit, and he stretches out a hand to the woman. She goes eagerly into his touch, eyelashes fluttering, and he threads his fingers through sweat-damp hair as he leans in to kiss her. Her lip gloss tastes like strawberries and she licks the taste of it into his mouth as her tongue flits inside and over his. She moans into the kiss, and her hand moves between his legs, palming over his crotch, inexpertly but enthusiastically rubbing at his dick - and he can feel Zemo’s gaze burning into him, watching him put on this show, and that more than anything else has him rock-fucking-hard in his pants.
He breaks apart from her, his lips sticky from her gloss, his head buzzing like he’s tipsy, and he kisses the man next, feeling Zemo’s cool fingers pet through his hair like a reward. When he withdraws, he’s panting, painfully hard, and Zemo untwines himself from the man and the woman, fists a hand into the jacket of his that Bucky’s still wearing, and pulls them both away.
They’re still surrounded by people but it feels almost like privacy - just Zemo’s hands on his body, just Zemo’s lips on his mouth - and Zemo’s murmuring in Russian, “You were exquisite, soldier.”
The praise is fucking intoxicating, it’s like a drug, like what he imagines snorting a fat line of coke would feel like if he didn’t have the serum floating around like a permanent buzzkill in his cells.
(He can get high, HYDRA’s drugs and tests proved that much, but the amount it takes is simply - not economical. Of all the consequences of what their experimenting did to him, this is the least debilitating, but perhaps the most obnoxious).
“Yeah?” he asks, and the words come out breathless and just a little vicious. “You like that? You like watching me?”
Zemo laughs. Kisses him again by way of response, and when his hand brushes lightly over Bucky’s straining cock it takes all of his willpower to resist coming in his pants, right fucking there under the pulsing lights.
They get pizza after, or rather Zemo looks on with some amusement as Bucky scarfs down three slices, and it’s mundane enough to be an almost surreal switch after letting Zemo watch him make out with two strangers, but he’s hungry as shit - and not particularly interested in giving himself time to regret anything from the last two hours. In a weird way this all feels like the first kind of romantic normalcy he’s had in decades - he’d almost forgotten the delirious, electric charge that comes from doing something impulsive at a bar, to impress a date.
And Zemo better be fucking impressed, he better use that as jerk-off material at least a half dozen times when he’s back on the Raft, because the guy’s cologne is still lingering in Bucky’s nostrils and if he can still smell it, he’s positive everyone else in a seven foot radius of him can too. He’d hate to think he became a goddamn walking biohazard risk for nothing.
He guzzles down water from the flimsy plastic cup that had come with the pizza, examines Zemo as he swallows. “You always this much of a partier?”
“Not before I joined the military,” Zemo says, “but there’s nothing quite like almost getting shot to teach you the value of letting loose.” He peers at Bucky, and almost casually adds, “The first time I killed someone in combat, my squad threw a party - to distract me, I believe.” His smile is fond, and a little wistful. “It worked. I’d never been so drunk in my life. I miss them, sometimes.”
The first time Bucky had killed someone it had been with a sniper shot, long range. He never saw the man’s face. It hadn’t bothered him in the moment - it’d felt too impersonal, and he’d been so hyperfocused on the mission that there just wasn’t room in his brain for anything else. He’d even spared a smile when his commanding officer had clapped him on the back after and told him he was a natural. It was later that night when the weight of what he’d done had hit him, and he’d thrown up on the spot - vomited up his field rations and then kept dry heaving for a while after, until his throat was raw and burning with regurgitated acid.
It had been easier the second time.
The third he doesn’t even remember.
“I’m sorry,” Bucky says, and he means it. “You ever-” He hesitates, rephrasing his thoughts. “Do you mind if I ask what happened to them?”
Zemo’s eyes shadow, and his next words are clipped in an uncharacteristic way. “I lost contact with most of them when I joined Intelligence, and then EKO Scorpion. One woman did transfer to my unit, but she was killed on an operation that went sour. Unfortunate.”
It feels weird to discuss this sort of thing here - in a greasy pizza joint populated almost exclusively by the first wave of people getting back from the bars and clubs. The sound of a woman retching carries out from the bathroom.
Bucky almost lets the subject die. But it feels a little fucked up to not say anything else, considering he was the one to ask in the first place. “What was she like?”
Zemo’s mouth pinches. “She was a good woman. Loyal. Easy to talk to. Dangerous at poker. My wife and son were quite fond of her.” He sighs. “These things happen. You understand this better than most, I am sure.”
“I do,” Bucky says. He reaches out for Zemo’s shoulder, squeezes briefly, not sure what else to do. He wishes he had some measure of Sam’s skill at being comforting, his knack for always being able to say the right thing. “Doesn’t make it any easier.”
There’s something hard and pained etched into Zemo’s features - like grief that’s gone stale. “No,” he agrees. “It doesn’t.”
The bathroom door squeals open, and the girl he’d heard puking her guts up stumbles out, mascara smeared around bloodshot eyes. Two other girls - also looking queasy - wave her over from a table pushed against the wall, and she wobbles towards them on golden heels. The mingled odors of vomit, vodka, and floral perfume drift over as she passes their table. The interruption is enough to snap Zemo back to the present, and he smiles at Bucky.
“Tell me, James,” he says. “I’ve been wondering: why did you come back to this city? Why not live somewhere else, try for a fresh start?”
Bucky scowls down the empty paper plate in front of him, reaches out and crumples up a napkin. “I’m not sure,” he admits. “Felt like I had to come back. Like I owed it to myself to see if it still felt like home.”
“And does it?”
“No,” he says shortly. Home is where the fucking heart is, after all, and HYDRA ripped out his almost a century ago. The thing that beats in his chest now belongs to the Soldier and pumps blood dosed up with Nazi serum. Russia and her howling Siberian winters feel like home. In a sick fucking way, the Chair and the cryostasis tube feel like home. But Brooklyn - Brooklyn’s kept at a distance from him, out of reach, even now. It had been a mistake coming back - like reaching out to an ex for a fuck, hoping to recapture some of the passion, the connection, and instead just realizing it’s been too long - that you’re different people now, and all that’s left are the cold shadows of fading memories.
“Where will you go next?” Zemo asks, as if it’s a given that Bucky will go somewhere else, instead of just staying here and wallowing in his own misery - which frankly, is rather willfully optimistic of him.
Bucky wads the napkin in his palm into a ball, rolls it around between his metal fingers as he thinks. It seems to annoy Zemo - the Sokovian stares, tracking it as it cycles around his hand. “I’m not sure,” he says at last. “What about you? If you ever get off the Raft for good, I mean.”
Zemo plucks the napkin from Bucky’s hands, flicks it into a nearby trash can. “I haven’t decided,” he says, flashing an easy smile. “Any suggestions?”
“Somewhere warm,” Bucky says immediately, thinking of Louisiana. “And near the water.”
“Not terribly specific,” Zemo chastises. “But I suppose it’s something. Perhaps somewhere in the south of France, or Croatia.” He tilts his head. “You’d be welcome to accompany me, of course.”
“Yeah,” Bucky says, before he can think better of it. “That’d be nice.”
Bucky’s barely had time to lock his door back up and toss his keys away before Zemo is making another good faith effort to piss him off. It’s the hand again - Zemo’s back to fucking with it, just this time he’s upgraded from verbal tactics to physical ones in order to get a response.
“Can you feel it?” Zemo asks, and he has that look on his face that Bucky’s always found intensely annoying - unsubtle, academic curiosity. Inquisitive fingers dart over the back of Bucky’s artificial hand, prodding, testing at the knuckles, the joint of the wrist.
“Cut it out,” Bucky snaps, yanking his hand out of reach. He’s not a fucking science experiment, and his arm is an instrument of murder - not some shiny toy for Zemo to idly play with for his own amusement. To his credit, Zemo backs off instantly - although he doesn’t bother to conceal a faint smirk at Bucky’s reaction - and Bucky sighs, squeezing his hand into a fist and releasing. “I feel pressure,” he admits, “and movement. But not anything more than that. I’d barely call it sensation.”
Carefully, Zemo reaches out for his hand, his eyes darting to Bucky as if asking ‘may I?’ Bucky hesitates and then nods, and with a small smile Zemo lifts the metal hand and then lowers his mouth to it. He presses a kiss to the inside of Bucky’s palm, and then licks up to the thumb, encircling it with his lips. His cheeks hollow as he sucks on it, and then he releases, moving on the next finger, and then the next. Zemo commits to his task with the same thorough diligence he uses when sucking cock, or when lining up a headshot, and Bucky shivers - utterly fixated on the sight as heat flushes between his legs.
“You mean you can’t feel anything?” Zemo asks, raising his face from Bucky’s hand, and the curiosity in his eyes is much less professional than before - it’s bright and sparkling and fucking coy.
“No,” Bucky says, swallowing thickly, pulling his hand away. It’s not quite true - he’s definitely feeling something, all right… just not in his hand.
Zemo seems to guess as much, eyes Bucky’s crotch. “That’s a shame.”
“Why the fuck do you like it so much?” Bucky growls, his cheeks heated from a heady combination of anger and embarrassment that Zemo has always been able to inspire so damn well.
“It’s lethal and beautiful,” Zemo says. He’s completely unapologetic, and there’s even something in his expression that resembles wonder. “Like you.”
“You like that, then,” Bucky says flatly. It’s not a question. “You like that I’m a weapon.”
“You’re a man,” Zemo corrects. He smiles, shrugs. “And a weapon, too, perhaps. Does it matter?”
It should matter. It should matter that Zemo doesn’t protest his assertion in its entirety, it should matter that his nonchalance is somehow more reassuring than a shrink insisting he’s not a weapon. Maybe he just appreciates that Zemo, a world-class manipulator who literally made an intelligence career out of those skills, doesn’t bother to bullshit him on this particular subject. Because Bucky knows himself: more than the arm, he is the thing that HYDRA built.
And it should matter that that particular fact makes Zemo’s cock hard. It should disgust him, that Zemo’s into the part of him that was made-to-order in a HYDRA lab, should sicken him that the Winter Soldier probably features in just as many of the man’s wet dreams as Bucky Barnes does. But maybe it’s better, this way. He thinks Zemo might be the first person in his life that wants every aspect of him - the ugly, twisted, fucked-up parts included. He’d have single-handedly gone up against armies for Steve and Sam, but neither of them would ever acknowledge that the shadow of the Soldier, of HYDRA, is always hanging over him.
Zemo doesn’t just acknowledge it. He fucking revels in it. And maybe that’s just a new and exciting type of fucked up, but… it feels good, to be seen without judgment or pity.
He peels off Zemo’s jacket, pushes up the sleeve of his shirt and flexes his artificial arm, watching the plates ripple with the motion. “I’m not sure,” he admits.
“That belongs to you, now,” Zemo says. “HYDRA is dead. This is the inheritance they left you. There is nobody else to claim ownership of your body, of your arm.”
Bucky steps closer, looming over him, angling himself in a way that is a bastard hybrid of a threat and an invitation. “Not even you?”
He can hear Zemo’s breath hitch, and the man’s tongue darts along his lips. “Only if you desire it.”
Bucky feels his head dip down of its own accord, and his breath punches out of him in a sharp exhalation. “I do,” he rasps. An electric buzz runs down the length of his spine. He swallows and the aftertaste of his words, of his surrender, leaves a dangerously sweet taste on the back of his tongue, like lead acetate. He knows this sort of submission could poison him - could seep into his blood and kill him slowly, gently.
But he’s the fucking Winter Soldier: and they built him to be immune to poison.
And more than anything else: they built him to submit.
And goddamn does he want to.
Zemo takes a half-step back, and begins to slowly circle him, his eyes gleaming darkly as he examines Bucky from every angle. It feels almost fucking intrusive, but Bucky forces himself not to shy away from the scrutiny. He keeps his gaze fixed forward instead, keeps his back ramrod straight, and his hands loose at his sides.
Zemo slinks back around to his front, and in a tone of voice that’s a fair mimicry of the one he’d used when he activated him in Berlin, asks, “Soldat?”
And fuck there it is - a full-body shiver goes through Bucky and his breath catches almost painfully in his throat. Maybe somewhere, buried in all the HYDRA files were a careful cataloguing of the Winter Soldier’s turn-ons: he can picture Zemo meticulously combing through the documents, committing his goddamn kinks to memory, unsentimentally storing the information alongside details about hidden HYDRA munitions or laboratory blueprints. Or maybe Bucky’s just predictable. Either way, Zemo always fucking knows just how to utterly undo him.
Fuck it. Bucky’s beyond caring. His cock is already straining against his pants, and the humiliation of submission is dizzyingly erotic in a way he’d never in a million years admit to his therapist or god-forbid, Sam. There’s no fucking way they’d be able to look at him the same after, if they knew the sort of fucked-up shit that gets his dick hard.
“Ready to comply,” he says hoarsely, in Russian.
Zemo doesn’t waste any time. “Fuck me,” he commands, slightly breathless. His hair is askew, and his hand trembles ever-so-slightly as he reaches up to push it back into place. He licks his lips again. “But open me with your hand first. I think you know which one.”
“Yes, sir,” he says, obedient, dutiful, and so achingly hard he can barely stand it.
(He had rarely enjoyed this sort of contact when he was the Soldier. It hadn’t been for his enjoyment, after all. But with Zemo it’s more than a want - it’s a fucking need - and it’s scorching through his blood like a wildfire).
He carries Zemo to the bedroom, strips down and crawls onto the mattress beside him. The Soldier was never instructed to undress his handlers, so he doesn’t now - he lets Zemo pull off his own shirt, shimmy out of his pants - and it’s hard staying patient, but he keeps himself still and modulates his breathing until it’s slow and steady, like he does when he’s hunkered down with a sniper rifle, waiting silently for his target to move into his crosshairs.
When Zemo’s finally naked, he pushes his legs apart, fucks into him with metal fingers, scissoring him open with mechanical precision. There’s no sensuality there, no graceful stroking of the inside walls of his body, no teasing, lighter touches or variation in rhythm. Zemo doesn’t seem to mind. He writhes shamelessly under Bucky’s ministrations, and his cock is fully hard between his legs, dripping with precum. He gasps out as Bucky pushes in a third finger, and his eyes are heavy-lidded, pupils blown wide with lust - and a white-hot frisson goes through Bucky as he imagines what Zemo must be seeing: the Winter Soldier, the deadliest weapon in HYDRA’s arsenal, completely under his control, fucking him open with the arm designed to crush bones and punch through stone and steel.
When he fucks him, he makes it rough and brutal - drives his cock into Zemo relentlessly, gripping his hips hard enough to press angry bruises into the man’s skin. Zemo jerks himself off, and it’s not long before he’s shooting lines of cum onto the rumpled sheets underneath him, and Bucky fucks him through it, continues to fuck him until Zemo’s entire body is shaking. It’s taking every drop of willpower he has to hold his own impending orgasm at bay - but he hasn’t been given the order yet, so he grits his teeth and pushes through, thrusting mercilessly into his handler.
Zemo’s hand is a blur over his own cock. He comes again, with a strangled moan, and Bucky’s motions falter for a split second as he redoubles his efforts to stay in control. He’s so fucking close - it hurts - he needs to come -
And Zemo is trembling underneath him, making pained noises, almost certainly oversensitized past the point of pleasure - but he holds off giving that final command, torturing Bucky by denying him that promised release.
“Do you want to come, soldier?” Zemo asks, voice strained.
The question is in Russian, so he responds in Russian. “I do, sir. Please. Please let me come, sir.” He doesn’t even care how shamelessly he’s begging - he’s way too far lost in the overpowering, feverish totality of the moment to be concerned for such trivialities like dignity.
“Very well, soldier,” Zemo gasps out, and Bucky’s not sure how but he manages to inject a note of smug pleasure into his voice, “you may come.”
Permission is granted and Bucky chokes back a cry and sees white as his hips buckle forward and he spills himself deep into Zemo’s body.
Zemo twists around, wincing as Bucky pulls out of him, but he makes a point to add, “Well done, soldat.”
The praise - delivered right on the heels of his orgasm - crashes over him and for a second he feels nothing but utter bliss, the sort of sunshine golden, hazy afterglow that sweeps away every other thought in his brain.
“Thank you, sir,” he hears himself say, and Zemo chuckles weakly.
Zemo reaches up for Bucky, drags him down to the ruined sheets beside him. Bucky lets himself relax into the touch, into the heat of another body pressed up against his. Zemo trails kisses along the scar tissue surrounding his artificial arm, his lips gentle and soft.
He starts to say something in Sokovian, pauses, and corrects himself in Russian, “You are so lovely.” Then, in English, “You are beautiful, Bucky.”
Bucky gives a sleepy, self-satisfied grin, dredges up all the old flirtatious skills he used to possess, and drawls, “Oh yeah? Tell me more.” He props himself up on his elbows, winks at Zemo. “Maybe you can lavish me with compliments in the shower.” He smirks. “If you feel capable of moving, that is.”
Zemo lets out a laugh. His smile is soft. “For you, James,” he says, pushing himself upright, “I will endure.”
“They’re coming,” Zemo tells him matter-of-factly the next morning, as if he can sense it, like a change in the wind, like the smell of ozone that heralds an incoming storm.
Bucky freezes with his hand on the microwave door, then jerks it open, silently pulling out the mugs and settling them on the counter. Mechanically, he plops in the teabags, hands one of the mugs off to Zemo.
(“Americans,” Zemo had sneered, watching Bucky commit the apparently grievous sin of efficiently utilizing his microwave, instead of purchasing an entire kettle just to heat up water).
He takes a sip from his tea, and it’s far too soon - it burns his tongue, but he holds it in his mouth, swallows it down. “Yeah.”
There’s something agonizingly tender in Zemo’s eyes. He nurses his steaming mug in his hands, blows on the tea without looking at it - right now, his gaze is reserved entirely for Bucky. “Will you visit me, James?”
“Yeah,” Bucky says, taking another drink. And then, because that alone seems insufficient, he adds, “I promise.”
“I’m glad,” Zemo says, and Bucky believes him - there’s a visible loosening of his shoulders, and something like relief in the dark depths of his eyes.
“You’ll get sick of me,” Bucky warns, forcing a playful smile. “There’s always time to reconsider….”
“Sick of you?” Zemo asks, with exaggerated incredulity, laughing. “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
Zemo’s smile fades, and he takes a half step towards the window, twisting his neck to peer outside, and the movement puts him directly into the rays of early morning sun filtering in. His hair is auburn in the light, in a way Bucky’s never noticed before, and his eyes look like liquid amber. Something unfurls deep in his guts - a warm blossoming of a sensation that feels like intimacy, and concern, and hunger, and affection, all jumbled into one. He wouldn’t call it pain, but it almost hurts, in a throbbing way he doesn’t fully understand. He wonders if this is love. He’s not sure - he can’t remember what it felt like, the last time he was in love. It was too long ago, and he was a different man back then.
Before he can give himself time to think, he drops his mug to the counter and surges forward to claim Zemo’s mouth in a fierce kiss. The man startles with surprise, before making a contented noise and softening, letting his lips open and letting Bucky’s tongue slip inside his mouth.
“I’ll miss you,” Bucky says when they pull apart. There’s a lump in his throat, and a dull ache in his chest, and he almost resents Zemo for doing this, for inflicting these feelings onto him.
Zemo pushes his own mug away, freeing his hands to rest against the sides of Bucky’s waist. “I’ll be back in the world again,” he assures him. “As I told you - even a man like Ross understands the value of an asset like me.”
“He fucking better,” Bucky spits out, because at his core he might be a snarling, half-feral mutt of a dog, but he’s a loyal one. In a vindictive rush, “I’ll sink his precious fucking Raft myself if he doesn’t.” He pauses, frowns. “I’d take you off of it first, before the sinking. Obviously.”
Zemo bites back a delighted grin. “Oh, soldat,” he breathes. “That would be a spectacular sight to witness. But I’m sure it won’t come to that.” He raises his hand, brushes down the side of Bucky’s face. “And when I’m free for good - can I count on you to join me? Don’t worry - I remember: somewhere warm and near the water.”
“I’ll be there,” Bucky says. Teases, “Just as long as you keep laying on the compliments.”
“Of course,” Zemo purrs. He kisses Bucky, slow and soft, and keeps himself pressed close when they break apart. Outside, there’s the sound of heavy, military-grade tires squealing to a stop, and boots hitting pavement. It won’t be long now. “I’ll see you soon, Bucky.”