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“We’re basically empty-handed on this.”
“You are indeed empty-handed, James.”
“Oh please, like they would let me bring you cherry blossom tea to a fucking maximum security prison.”
Zemo looks at him, amused. Bucky could swear he was about to either start pouting his lips like a small child or do that stupid head tilt thing Sam had been talking about.
The problem was that the man who had once almost ruined his life was one of the smartest sons of bitches Bucky knew, and it just so happed that at the moment he was (once again) the only person they could get to help them. Of course, it was Zemo who was calling the shots, apparently — the bastard had the audacity to make demands.
And that’s why right now Bucky was sitting in front of the man in a completely surveillance-free parody of a holding cell – no cameras, no security guards, no nothing – those were his conditions. How the hell did he even get to decide whether he wanted to have visitors or not? He was in the fucking Raft, for God’s sake.
“I have a few conditions”, Zemo says, small, thoughtful smile playing on his lips.
“Too many conditions for a man of your position, don’t you think?” Is he testing his patience or does being behind bars really mean nothing to a man like that? Bucky was sure that blowing up the rest of the Flag Smashers had been his doing, but could he really get out of a prison of that kinda security level like it’s nothing? Honestly, he wouldn’t be surprised.
“As of late, we have seen each other one time too many, James, don’t you think?” Bucky blinks. What the fuck is he getting at?
“I’m here because…” But he doesn’t get the chance to finish the sentence.
“Because you’re desperate. Again.” Zemo narrows his eyes. “Are you going to break me out of this prison, too?”
Bucky huffs out a laugh. It comes out nervous for some reason.
“My hero”, Zemo puts a hand over his heart, like he’s in a Disney cartoon and the ill-fated princess is finally saved by her knight in a shining armor. “But I’m afraid I can save myself”, he continues as if reading Bucky’s mind. “Don’t take it to heart”.
“Haha, it’s funny”, Bucky says, humorlessly. “Will you help or not?”
“My conditions…” Zemo starts and this time it’s Bucky’s turn to shut him up.
“I don’t think you understand. You’re in no position to…” But he can’t finish this sentence either because the amused look on Zemo’s face is suddenly pulling at his every nerve. He clenches his jaw, hard, his left hand curls into a fist. He wishes he had a glass to throw at the wall, like the last time they were in a room together, but maybe this time it would be Zemo’s head instead.
Zemo doesn’t say anything, just eyes him, no particular expression on his face. And Bucky’s pissed.
He takes a deep breath and gives the man a look to let him understand that it won’t end well if he keeps pushing his buttons.
The look doesn’t seem to work. Because Zemo gets up, folds his hands behind his back and takes a couple of steps towards the tiny window to Bucky’s right.
“I think you’ll do anything to get me to help you. Because you’re here and you’re desperate, James. I remember what it’s like when you’re desperate. And unless there’s some other reason you’re here that I’m not seeing, you’ll listen to what I have to ask of you.” He holds his head up, bathing his face in the empty gray air, like one would if sunlight was streaming through the small piece of glass. When was the last time Zemo saw the sun? Or was one of the walls in his cell made entirely of glass penthouse-style?
It doesn’t matter, Bucky tells himself. He’s not about to agree to anything this man wants.
“You’re giving me the intel or I’m putting something through your goddamn neck”, Bucky growls, tearing his gaze away from the table and looking at the standing man.
Zemo doesn’t so much as flinch. Just turns his head in Bucky’s direction, licks his lips and moves back to the table, stopping right beside him. He looks down, curious. Bucky lets him look even though it makes the bare skin on his neck feel like it’s being pierced by a thousand splinters. A few seconds pass in silence and then.
“I think…” He reaches his hand out and catches Bucky’s jaw, lifting it up so he could meet his eyes. “…that…” Bucky freezes, taken aback by the fearlessness of the action. “…you…” He looks at Zemo, all wide eyed and breathless. The man holding his face is silent for a few seconds, busy with staring into his eyes, his soul. “…are just playing hard to get, Sergeant.” He finishes and Bucky blows.
What the fuck was that supposed to mean?
The next second Bucky’s on his feet, his human hand is closing on the collar of Zemo’s shirt, then the back of Zemo’s skull bangs on the wall opposite the table Bucky was sitting behind two seconds ago.
Bucky waits for some sort of a shocked expression to make an appearance on the man’s face. He waits a moment, then two, then three. Whole five seconds pass by when he realizes that Zemo isn’t going to give him that satisfaction.
Instead, the man parts his lips and starts speaking.
“Violence isn’t the solution with me”, Zemo breathes out. “You know that, James”. And Bucky does. He knows. He just doesn’t really understand what he himself is trying to do here, not exactly. He holds Zemo to the wall, his human hand’s on the man’s chest, the other one – the deadly-weapon-one – is on the wall next to Zemo’s head. No, violence isn’t the solution. But he really wants to do something violent right about now.
“I still have a few… stipulations”, he says that right to Bucky’s face, like he’s teasing him now or something, Bucky can almost feel Zemo’s breath touching the skin on his nose. “They are minor, I assure you, just to get me a little bit more comfortable, so to say”.
“How about fuck you”, the words escape Bucky’s lips before he can even care to think about it.
“Now that would be very bold of us to do that in here, no?”
A joke. It’s a stupid childish joke, Bucky says to himself.
And a dead end.
How the hell was he supposed to be playing at a game he didn’t know the rules for? A game he didn’t even see coming in the first place? It was supposed to be “ask questions – get answers – get the fuck out” kind of a situation. A routine, really. But they’ve been at it for a while now and Bucky was so fucking tired of going ‘round in circles.
“Stop it”, he hears himself say. “I’m not your boy toy, Zemo”. The last part comes out weak for some reason. And he sees the way Zemo literally latches himself onto it. But he doesn’t say anything outright, just narrows his eyes at him one more time.
“This may come as a surprise, James, but I don’t want you to be my boy toy”, he sighs, almost tiredly, but there’s still that undefeated spark in his gaze – no, he’s nowhere near finishing this game.
“Then what the fuck do you want?” He gnarls through his gritted teeth, moving his face closer to Zemo’s, still half-expecting to elicit some sort of uncomfortable reaction from the man.
“I would tell you…”, instead of recoiling like a cowed dog Zemo moves his head, bringing himself even closer to Bucky’s face while simultaneously placing his right hand onto his shoulder and then moving in to the base of his neck. “…exactly what I want right now”. He finishes the sentence, throwing a quick glance to check what his hand is doing on Bucky’s neck before fixing his gaze on Bucky’s again. “But I’m afraid…” He’s dragging the words out as if savoring each and every one of them, his eyes unblinking. “…that you simply cannot handle it, Sergeant”.
And Bucky’s brain is suddenly short-circuiting. He completely stops understanding what the hell is going on anymore. What was he doing here again? Getting intel? Then why is he pinning his source of that much needed information against the wall? Zemo had conditions, stipulations, demands… He was trying to tell him no, right? Because Zemo’s a dangerous man. Because Zemo’s got stipulations… Because Zemo’s warm hand is touching the skin on his neck and the air is suddenly full of something sparkly and sharp.
Why did it all have to be so fucking complicated? Was there anything easy in this world anymore?
Kissing, his brain suggests. Now that was easy. Or at least it used to be. Back in the 40s. It wasn’t supposed to be – just think about it, all the things a dame had to think of when she wanted to get with a guy, just for a simple kiss – it was a case of honor, reputation, family name.
Don’t get him wrong, war wasn’t that black and white. War was also desperate kisses stolen in alleyways and promises that were never going to be kept. But it was still easy. Because war was bigger. War was a force to be reckoned with, war just took what it wanted, so you had to get there first. And then you made your vows and went off to die hoping that it wouldn’t be as painful as they wrote in the books.
The twenty first century though, now that’s where the real intricacies lay. You wanna kiss somebody? Wanna fuck somebody? You’re free to do just whatever. You don’t have to marry them. There’s no family reputation to destroy, not really. Just take your pick and enjoy the walk of shame in the morning.
And it shouldn’t matter that sometimes it fucks you in the head just that little bit more. It shouldn’t matter who you kiss if you want to kiss. It shouldn’t matter that it happens in a little sealed off room with no cameras. That it’s with somebody you’re supposed to despise.
So he kisses him. He tilts his head, he lifts Zemo’s chin with his vibranium fingers just a little bit and their lips meet in the middle. It’s rough and it’s messy. Almost painful, if the sound Zemo makes seconds in is anything to go by. It’s all teeth and tongue and no foreplay whatsoever. Zemo whimpers a little bit and opens his mouth wider, letting Bucky’s tongue in deeper. Bucky sucks on his lower lip, hard, just on the verge of drawing blood but not quite. Yet, he thinks briefly, and immediately pushes that thought somewhere in one of those darkest corners of his mind. Maybe eventually it’ll go up in smoke like all that other scary-monster-is-still-inside-me mental evidence that’s been showing up on the doorstep of his brain every now and then.
Zemo’s hands clench the collar of his jacket, his knuckles white from the force of it. He returns the kiss with no hesitation, yet it’s half-afraid, like Bucky still might smack his head against the wall any minute or crack his skull with his shining black-and-gold left hand like it’s nothing and walk away.
But Bucky didn’t think Zemo was afraid of him. He was ready to die by the barrel of his gun once, once before that - with T’Challa, and that miserable look on his face? Didn’t go anywhere. Was still present on his face every second of his every waking hour. And while Bucky didn’t spend every second of his every waking hour staring at Zemo’s masterfully half-hidden desolate expression, he was still sure it was the case. So what was all that touchy-scary charade for?
He brushes Zemo’s hands off from his jacket dismissively, presses himself even closer to the man and licks into his mouth, tongue brushing over teeth, his tongue, the roof of his mouth. It turns into a battle, the air still disappearing from his struggling lungs, refusing to come back, asking for mercy, for oxygen, anything. Meanwhile his hands relocate to the man’s hips squeezing them lightly only to bring himself even closer in one rough movement.
Zemo hisses at the touch, unceremoniously grabs him by the shoulders and the next thing Bucky knows is that his back is against the wall instead of an empty air that was there a second ago and Zemo’s hands are creasing the t-shirt he’s wearing under the leather jacket. That the only thing left unchanged from that second ago is his lips on another man’s lips moving just a tad slower but somehow deeper, dragging the leftover oxygen out of his lungs and into the heated air encompassing them.
Bucky’s brain feels too big in his own head like the gray matter is about to burst through his ears or something. So he takes a second, puts his hands into Zemo’s silky hair then pulls the man’s head down and keeps on slowly crushing the man’s lips with his own, stopping every now and then to lightly bite down on Zemo’s lower lip and catch some much needed oxygen in between.
Barely a minute goes by and Bucky feels the hands that have been tormenting his poor t-shirt push at his torso, then just like that the kiss is broken and two brown eyes are on his, intense and searching. Bucky stares back. Zemo’s chest is moving heavily, lungs in pursuit of all that lost air. One of his hands is still clenching the hem of Bucky’s t-shirt. He moves the other one to the leather jacket and tags hard at it pulling himself closer to Bucky’s chest and then his forehead is bumping against it, pressing in.
Bucky stills himself and tilts his head backwards in a movement to rapid not to bang it against the wall. And then he feels Zemo’s lips somewhere on his throat, or was it his collarbone? He honestly couldn’t tell. His senses are screaming and cursing at him as if he put every nerve ending on fire having generously soaked them all in gasoline beforehand. But his brain still seems to be out of commission, so that’s why he squeezes his eyes shut and takes another swing at thinking clearly.
Zemo kisses his collarbone, then his teeth brush against it, and Bucky isn’t sure how his eyeballs haven’t yet dropped through the back of his head from how tightly he had to screw his eyes up so that his throat wouldn’t betray him by making any sounds. Next off Zemo’s palm is warm against the skin under Bucky’s t-shirt, against his stomach, and it keeps travelling down, lower, touches that trail of hair, presses hard to the skin underneath. And then Zemo’s wet tongue is on his throat again, licking and biting and kissing.
Bucky pries his eyelids open and lowers his face only to meet Zemo’s ardent eyes. The man stares at him as if demanding some sort of instruction. “What should I do next, James?” or maybe it’s not a question but an order instead. “On your knees, soldier!” That seems more likely. After all Bucky was never the one to give commands. He was always the one to be commanded. He will do anything you want, Zemo said to Selby in Madripoor and he was right. He would.
He catches Zemo’s hand as it moves from under his t-shirt to grasp his neck. Shiny eyes keep looking at Bucky, holding him in place simply by doing so. There is still no hesitation, he doesn’t even flinch at the feeling of Bucky’s unhuman fingers encircling the flesh on his very human wrist. Like he knows him somehow. Like he can predict his every thought. But how? “I’ve decided that I’m not going to kill you”. Why? Why him?
Ever the exception. See, he was supposed to die falling off of that train, give his life in service of his country the way so many other soldiers did. Hydra decided he was the exception. He was supposed to perish on that helicarrier, never having gotten out from under that hunk of metal. Steve decided he was the exception. He was supposed to get beaten to a pulp by Iron Man himself for killing his parents in Siberia. But Tony Stark wasn’t a killer even though he was pretty damn mad back then. And he had the definition of loyalty and stubbornness for a best friend. And so Steve decided he was the exception once again. Apparently even the freaking universe thought he was the exception by not somehow forgetting to bring him back after Thanos.
“I don’t think I’m worth all this, Steve”, he said. And God knows he wasn’t.
His brain was working in some capacity after all because he registers Zemo’s other hand, the one that he isn’t currently holding between his vibranium fingers, moving back up to the hem of his t-shirt, caressing the skin underneath.
What he wasn’t prepared for, however, was Zemo bringing himself closer to him in one abrupt motion, pulling up on his tiptoes a little so they were breathing the same hot air again, and then trailing his palm all around his waist, touching his lower back, travelling down to his ass. He pinches the skin there lightly and proceeds to go lower, all of this while looking him right in the eyes. Zemo rubs his hand against the raw skin of his ass, squeezing it ever so slightly, and Bucky’s breath hitches. He feels two fingers sliding in between his cheeks pressing in, hard.
And so Bucky moans – an almost loud, almost desperate moan escapes his treacherous throat, and he squeezes his eyes shut only to open them half a moment later to see the corner of Zemo’s mouth quirking up. His wrist is no longer in Bucky’s grip and he honestly has no idea how that happened, deadly assassin’s reflexes be damned. Zemo slams their hips together, and Bucky feels him through the fabric of his pants, acutely aware of how good it might feel if he were to press even closer, grind harder.
Bucky stops breathing at the thought but then his oxygen supply is suddenly being cut off completely when Zemo’s hand covers his mouth probably to prevent any more sounds that were about to break free. Right, because the guards outside still might hear them. They might hear them and then they would come inside and see them. They would come inside this miniature excuse of a holding cell and see him flat against the wall with their prisoner’s hands and mouth all over him.
And what a sight that was. He could almost laugh at that thought if it were anywhere near to being any sort of imaginary. Except it wasn’t, was it?
He forces himself to open his eyes (when did he even close them again?). It doesn’t even take a second for the realization to settle in Zemo’s haze-covered eyes. The man only manages to snatch his hand back from Bucky’s lips when cold artificial fingers lock around his throat and thrust his whole body forward. His back hits the edge of the tiny interrogation table, his hands randomly trying to catch something, anything to hold on to. Bucky launches himself onto the man and puts his weight on top of him pinching his chest with his unhuman arm to the table.
Zemo takes a raggedy breath, squinches his eyes even more tightly before slowly opening them. And Bucky notices. He sees that fleeting terror, that tiny millisecond of fear hastily running away from his blue-eyed gaze. He moves the fingers on his left hand then, tightening his grip just a little bit, still observing Zemo’s features. And yes, there it is again. Fear.
Zemo’s not afraid of death. He’s afraid of pain. He’s had enough of that to last a lifetime after what had happened in Sokovia. And he’s afraid of what it brings with it. No matter the anguish – both physical and emotional. When you’ve felt it for so long you stop distinguishing between the two. You just live in it. But what about the aftermath, you ask? When (or if) it’s gone, it’s supposed to make you stronger in the end, right? Bullshit, that’s what it is. Maybe pain can make you move mountains, but it doesn’t mean you don’t fear it. So is there really any strength in you when you’re afraid? He’s sure that some would say yes. But the others? The others would simply crumble.
“Don’t touch me”, he whispers more to himself than to his opponent. It’s because of the guards, Bucky adds mentally. Because he doesn’t want them to walk in on them. Not because the feeling of a hand against his mouth made him want to crawl in the darkest corner he can find and curl into a ball and never see or hear anything ever again.
Zemo blinks at him, looking like it’s suddenly become very hard to organize his thoughts in his own head. But he’s a smart man, so what if it takes him a second, he still gets where he needs to be and then the body underneath Bucky’s arm is struggling to straighten out and Bucky almost lets him get away with it. Almost.
A barely audible “Hm” and Zemo’s calculating eyes are examining him yet again, there’s something akin to curiosity in his gaze again. Bucky can’t help but compare himself to some kind of piece of art hanging off the wall somewhere in a swanky Parisian gallery. He doesn’t know Zemo very well. But he’s sure that’s exactly how he would look at a thing like that. Curious, appreciative. Intrigued.
Bucky gawks at him, almost offended. He’s not a fucking Van Gogh painting. There are a ton of hidden layers underneath his skin, sure. But he’s not a fucking object to ponder over. Not anymore.
“Open the door!” He hears himself before he’s even decided to do anything. And the next thing he knows is that there are footsteps outside and he’s releasing Zemo’s soon to be bruised throat from his grip, takes a step back and then dashes towards the door right when it starts to open. Away from Zemo, away from that curiously amused look on his face.
Damn that intel that he never got from him, he’s not coming back here again.
***
He hasn’t lied to himself in a very long time. See, that was the thing, at some point in his life he made a pact with himself that there would be no lies. He could tell anything to anyone, make up stories and compliments, try and protect you by never telling you the goddamn truth, but he wouldn’t lie to himself. Because all he ever had? That was himself and nothing else. Even when he couldn’t remember who that person was.
So why is he standing here again? In front of that tiny metal door. Breathing in and struggling to breath out. He keeps telling himself that he still desperately needs that intel. But maybe the truth is that he honestly has no idea.
The lights behind him are flickering, making him even more uncomfortable in his own skin. Unwanted thoughts are circling around in his head suffocating both his brain and lungs. He wonders if it’s going to go the way it did last time. You know, that time when he swore he wasn’t coming back here ever again? So much for never lying to himself.
But maybe – just maybe - Zemo’s hands made him feel something. That’s what he realized right after leaving the cell that day. He felt something.
He could at least admit it. Now, he wasn’t the one to feed himself with love fairy-tales, all that children stuff. And honestly speaking he wasn’t about to go and attach himself to anyone like that (ever again, if he could help it). But that, feeling something, feeling that kind of something was better than being numb, better than being in a state of constant cryostasis while simultaneously walking and talking, making sure your bullshit game is still strong.
The last time he felt that something was with Steve. And yes, maybe it was another kind of something in their case. But he took too many hits off those memories and Steve was gone now anyway so what the fuck was he supposed to do with that? Never thinking about it could only last so long.
He didn’t particularly want to think about Zemo either. But they desperately needed to bring those bastards terrorizing the city down and Zemo still managed to be the only one competent enough to get them anywhere with that.
He decides that he can rack his brain over the way his pulse starts racing every time he thinks back to how Zemo’s hand felt roaming around in his jeans some other time.
So he takes a deep breath, plasters his best murderous glance on his face, then opens the door and steps inside.
The man sitting behind the table curiously quirks one corner of his mouth up and somehow Bucky finds it within himself to not feel so annoyingly uncomfortable about it anymore.