Work Text:
Midlife Crisis
Steve isn’t expecting much of anything from life, he’s content to coast by, letting life flow past. Get up, get dressed, get to work, get home, get to sleep, rinse and repeat. He’s a construction manager whose fuzzy dreams of success and moderate wealth died some years ago, long enough that he’s stopped trying to measure time separating him from the days his career as an architect failed, the days his marriage went up in flames and recriminations. There’s a new contract in town. He needs to get up. get to work. Get home. Get to sleep.
Rinse.
Repeat.
There is a new contract in town, and for once it means Bucky doesn't have to suffer through traffic for an hour and a half just to get to some suburban school stadium construction site or other. The project is quite close by. He’s been put on the crew for these two low-rise apartment blocks.
Ever since he finished high-school and decided to “throw his life away,” as his parents so kindly put it, Bucky has been a steelworker, an electrician working on high voltage lines, and now he’s working on this building project that’s supposed to span at least six months. It’s going to be a while, he thinks. Maybe he should keep the flat he’s living in.
Bucky’s never considered settling down, jumping from construction crew to construction crew, changing companies… He’s past forty and thinks that life has passed him by.
The contract in itself is good, interesting, but Bucky and Steve, they’re both weary. This is a job, they think as they go on site, changing crews barely feels like a change at all. There’s nothing to their job, it’s just a job, really. They are existing, each in his drab and unexciting life.
Sometime during that first day, once the first crew has met Steve, once the orders are given, the blueprints shared, at some point, their eyes meet across the construction site, and they smile, polite, nice, a reflex — a strange one, since they don’t have much to smile about in their everyday life, neither of them — and that could be it. And maybe in another universe that’s it. Their eyes meet and the moment passes, and nothing happens, or they smile, and it’s the simple politeness of two people in the same line of work, working on the same big project at the same time. In some other universe, they get on with work, with their lives, nothing comes out of it, they keep on existing and never think that…
But they’re alone — lonely, really. In this universe, it feels like an acknowledgement. Bucky nods, Steve is bemused, looks down at his blueprint. But they saw each other. The rest of the day, and the next too, they smile and they keep smiling every time they meet on site. It’s just the polite thing to do. Bucky thinks Steve is one of these nice bosses, not the asshole manager, not the crew leader who’s always yelling, or just a lazy piece of shit. Steve is glad to see some people smile; people don’t smile at Steve anymore. Because he’s the boss. Because he’s divorced. Because he’s a hulking white man, and that doesn’t put everybody at ease.
They smile every day now, a crooked little thing for battered men.
The work is hard, and summer is encroaching, making everyone sweaty, smelly, dirty.
Some weeks in, the building hits a snag, and Bucky calls the manager, and Steve comes, they point and converse and assess the situation. There’s a pipe that shouldn’t be there. The excavation material nearly nicked it. There’s damage on it already. They should bring a camera to explore the cave in underneath. And since it’s the end of the day, Steve calls the day off, but they keep talking. They learn each other’s name.
They talk as the crew filters out. As Steve checks the locks.
They talk about work.
About everything else.
It’s been such a long while since they’ve had someone to talk to. Apart from the ex-wife. The successful sister who lives abroad. The estranged friends. The estranged parents. They don’t have a lot of people and they’re old enough now, beaten up enough by life now, to not really be people persons.
They break it off at the gate, when Steve checks the padlocks. They mumble goodbyes and see you tomorrows, and feel foolish for being so friendly as they both go their separate ways.
Is it because they don’t have anyone? Is it because they feel alone? Whatever it is, they end up talking the next day. And the day after. Just some words exchanged over the blueprint table, over by the clunky excavator that Steve wondered aloud how the company could give them such shitty equipment.
They share some coffee during break, then after hours, after Steve locks up. Their conversations are mostly silent. The first time they end up at a coffee shop about two hundred meters from the site, once the afternoon crew takes over, they both feel at odds with the world around them. Everything goes too fast for Bucky nowadays, and everything Steve does leaves him with the sour taste of defeat and not being enough. They look too blue collar in a sea of youngish people whose struggles must be so very different from their own.
Next time they agree to just forgo the coffee and wash up at a dirty diner further away, like bad seaweed pushed ashore by a random wave.
Outside of work, they live in a transient, liminal space they carve for each other. Deep into the night, early in the morning before work, somewhere around noon when they finish their shifts.
Maybe it’s all because of loneliness, and not knowing how to behave with other people anymore, but they talk and talk and it’s personal. It’s always personal. In between the lines, they say what they can’t admit to anybody. One night, hours after sunset, they exit the diner and Steve receives a call; his ex.
These calls are never easy, never good, always leave an aftertaste that he wishes he couldn’t feel. As he presses end call with his big fingers on a too small tactile keyboard he’s always fumbling with, he feels a hand clap on his shoulder. Bucky. he’s so grateful for him. And Bucky slides his hand around his shoulders, until he can give him a sideways hug. Steve sighs and lets himself enjoy the warmth, puts his own arm around Bucky in return, awkward, comforted… Still shaky.
“Ya wanna come to my place?” Bucky gently pats Steve’s back, “you can get drunk all you want, tomorrow’s Sunday?” he asks as if the day of the week was a question.
Steve says yes, of course. Because right now, he wishes he wasn’t alone and the one person he talked to regularly — aside from Bucky — didn’t hate his guts.
At least one of those two likes him for who he is, what he does. Which isn’t a lot, he knows. He’s silent, all the time, but Bucky is too, so at least, it’s okay, that one thing can be okay. And what if Steve had lost his fire, and lost his touch with the present, and lost most of everything he really wanted out of life?
Bucky didn’t care.
They go back to Bucky’s and he crashes on his couch in the shitty apartment he’s living in because Bucky never put down any roots whatsoever. He never saw the use, and he tells Steve just that as he drinks his weariness away. Is it Steve who reaches out or Bucky who offers, they don’t really remember, and they’re both ready to let that night eat the memories away; all this to say that at some point, they hug again, a full on hug this time, a visceral hug that Steve has been waiting years to get and Bucky had thought he’d forgotten how to deliver years ago.
It just goes on, and they don’t let go. Neither says anything about how hugs have a conventional time above which it begins to be awkward. They can’t let go, really and it’s less them stopping the hug and more them slowly getting drowsy and falling asleep, which relaxes their hold.
They sleep, and they don’t talk about it. They’re both a little hungover the next morning, nothing much. They share a cup of joe, and the last bread slices Bucky has, with some peanut butter spread on them. Then Steve skedaddles.
Time passes, in a weird way, in a “maybe time has passed or it hasn’t”. In a “for sure days have gone by, but they all look the same” way. Days have the tendency to be repetitive even in construction. Get up, get dressed, get to work, get home, get to sleep, rinse and repeat.
Except now, they look, and watch, and see each other all the time, and Bucky meets Steve outside of work and Steve goes back to Bucky’s or Bucky goes to Steve’s house that he’s been trying to fix up for fucking ever. They drink, or talk, or just pass the time. And sometimes, the days are too long, the frustrations are too big, the people are too hard, and they have this secret sign, that neither of them knows how they agreed upon. They’ll look at each other, and one of them will sigh, big shoulders sagging a little, eyes dropping to the ground. It’s the cue. The other will approach, and fold his arms around the first, an engulfing, all encompassing hug that can go on for less than a second or last several minutes.
It’s weird. Or strange. But then things are only strange when there’s someone to judge it, right? So it’s weird, it’s strange, but it isn't because it’s just for them. They need it. They don’t really know what being touch-deprived is, they are middle-aged men who would balk at the idea of talking about their feelings. But here in this room, in Bucky’s shitty apartment or in Steve’s dingy kitchen in his half-renovated house, waiting for pasta water to boil, Steve hugs Bucky because he missed his sister like a limb and she doesn’t really call, it’s always him, maybe she’s trying to forget what a loser he is.
They hug hug hug, and Bucky buries his nose in Steve’s thick neck and breathes there the warm smell of skin.
Whatever it is, what they have between them, whatever it is, maybe it started with that first midnight hug that lasted for hours, or maybe it starts here and then, weeks later, as Bucky moves his head and now Steve can hear the soft huff of his breaths right in his ear. It’s a silent variation on their ritual, heads held close cheek to cheek. It’s a touch of their skin in an unusual place and there’s no denying the electricity that courses through each of them. Steve tightens his grip, Brucky exhales as his cheek rests in the crook of Steve’s neck again. This is just skin, this is just a hug.
Nothing to see here.
They are both men, in their forties, what is there to discover in life anymore?
Everything, perhaps. Everything, maybe.
The building project they are working on didn’t hit any big snags until recently. Now it’s just slogging through the days from issue to issue, bad terrain and bigger digging for foundations. Three pipes that weren’t supposed to be there. It’s not that bad, nothing Steve or Bucky or all the rest of the crew hasn’t seen already on other sites, but they know that at least their days aren’t counted. This project is going to take time. Bucky isn’t that pressed to get out now. He even tells Steve so one morning as the sun rises slowly over the site, rays slowly brushing strokes of golden orange on the sandy soil that has been just flattened over some of the pipes and fundations.
“You know I used to cut and run, all the time?”
Steve hums, drinks his coffee from his thermos, plumes of condensation smoke flying off his drink.
“Girls, work, responsibilities, can’t be arsed.”
“Should have taken a page outta that book.” Steve mumbles. Sometimes he thinks he would have been better off if he had been less… If he had been less intense with Sharon. More involved? Less trying to tick all the boxes on a fucking list? He doesn't even know. Maybe he should have cut his losses earlier. With work, with her. He doesn’t know, so he discards the thought and sips his black coffee in silence.
“I think I might stay, find another construction job here after this one. Or check around for mechanics, repair shops, something like this.”
Bucky sure was chatty today.
“Staying for the charms of the city?”
Bucky shrugs. Because he doesn’t really know why he’s saying this, why he’s telling Steve. And doesn’t really want to know why either.
“Starting to feel like home, I guess.”
Steve chuckles, Bucky smirks.
And that’s that. There isn’t much to say, anyway. They don’t need words, really and they need to get a move on, the whole early day shift. They are wasting good fresh morning time, soon it’ll get crazy hot and uncomfortable, burning and blinding.
Today they stop early in the afternoon and go back to Steve’s. They shower, each takes a turn. They share a meal, and the easy domesticity is calming, a balm. Steve sighs on the sofa, as they watch some dumbass TV show the guys on the site were talking about. Neither of them understand the hype. Steve hums at one of the plot reveals, not really impressed, and Bucky hugs him to his side, and keeps eating. It’s… good. Good. It’s okay.
So they hug, whenever they need to, whenever they can, and they go to each other’s places. This doesn’t have a name, and it seems like it doesn’t need to. There’s this guy on the site, whose daughter gives him grief, because he’s all backwards and an asshole. And he keeps ranting about her and her labels. Steve thinks that, had he been twenty years younger, he would have tried to define himself and fit in and find a label for who he was and what he was doing — what they both were doing — but he’s twenty years too late so he looks at his friendship with Bucky, at their late night hugs and the quiet discussions they have over coffee. He looks at the midday sun hitting the back of their necks and the line of tanned skin and pale white where Bucky’s t-shirt rode up when he heaved a cement bag onto his shoulder. He looks and looks and has no name for anything he’s feeling.
Two shifts later and Steve is putting together some steaks and grilled cheese, and brings them to the sofa where Bucky is already nursing his second beer in front of some trucking show. Steve sits real close and Bucky says “thanks for the grub” in a grumble. Steve doesn’t say anything, he settles down, and the lines of tanned and untanned skin of their arms align and they watch the show until they’ve finished their second pack of beers.
Steve doesn’t have the labels young people do, he doesn’t wish for them, but he thinks they are something, him and Bucky. Something, for sure.
It’s late in the afternoon, the sun’s still a way from going down, it’s hot like Satan’s ass on the work site, and the guys are all vying for the spots in the two big trenches they’re digging, just so they can get a respite from the sun and some freshness from the dug up soil. Perspiration has been pearling on Steve’s top lip for hours, he’s drinking his own gritty sweat every time he licks his lips and then…
Bucky clambers down from the excavator cab, and it must be stinking hot in there even with the door open wide. Bucky’s shirt is stuck to his body, like a mold, damp and dirty, and Steve stares for a while, because he’s waiting for the next group of guys to climb back up from the dig. Bucky takes his hard hat off, and shakes his head. He spots Steve, and Steve doesn’t move, leaning on the stack of I-beams just under the shade of a tarp they’d hastily pulled this morning, so the crew could take some breaks.
There isn’t many words in Steve’s vocabulary to describe what he feels, but there’s something in the air, like a wire-strainer so taut it’s gonna rupture any second; Bucky’s walking towards him, all drenched in sweat and when he’s close enough, Steve throws him a water bottle. Bucky catches it, but he doesn’t stop staring and Steve doesn’t either. He licks his top lip, again, catching sweat and dust, and Bucky drinks from his bottle, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down with the great big thirsty gulps he’s swallowing like a man dying.
He sprays the rest of the bottle on his head and puts his hard hat back on.
They didn’t share a word, but the heaviness of their gazes felt like an essay and a half.
And Steve… Steve isn’t ignorant. He might be numb to the world, closed himself to life, but he’s not completely stupid.
He didn’t expect to have a midlife crisis. MIdlife crises are for… rich guys. Or maybe middle class assholes who think that because they didn’t get a certain set of experience before a set date, now they have the right to fuck up their families or something. Midlife crises are… big cars you can’t afford. Huge TV sets. Dressing fifteen years younger than you should. Divorces — been there done that. Quitting your job. Doing… bungee jumping and drugs, maybe.
Steve’s still thinking about crises hours later at home, listening to the dim white noise of the shower under the mindless drone of some shit show on TV.
He shakes his head to clear his thoughts, and gulps back the rest of his beer. Now that he’s clean and doesn’t have to lick his own sweat, the coolness feels like a boon. As Steve puts the empty bottle on the counter, Bucky gets out of the shower, toweling his hair, half-naked; his torso is powerful, packed muscles with the fat of someone who doesn’t care that much about his diet but can still heave up those thirty-five kilos cement bags on his shoulders with no problem.
When Bucky stops drying his hair, holding the towel in his hand, Steve sees those fucking tan lines right in the middle of his biceps, the strip of slightly darker skin around his middle where his shirt keeps riding up.
This moment feels like all these unspoken moments where one of them needs a hug and the other approaches and just gives gives gives, except—
Except Steve takes a step forward and Bucky too, Steve takes his shirt off and Bucky throws the towel blindly in the direction of the living room. It’s less than a second and then their skin is touching, all along their chest, their hands groping at necks and at the fat on the side of the belly, hands grabbing right under the arm, next to the shoulder blades, calluses scratching on their skin.
Their lips touch, and they don’t waste time with any lovey dovey shit, no grazing of lips and delicate kisses. It’s filthy, and hot, like Bucky’s still drinking from that fucking bottle, and Steve’s still sucking on his first beer of the night. They push and pull, hands roving everywhere, because this is new, this is unexpected (or is it?), this isn’t planned, they don’t really know what to do but touch and touch.
They both are quite heavy, big slabs of men who don’t really care for their bodies, so there is no attempts at bridal carries, no acrobatics, no wall sex, no erotic stripping. They wouldn’t know how to proceed, both having gone too long in their dry spell, both having been only with women before, and they wouldn’t care anyway.
They push and pull and stumble through the short hallway into Steve’s bedroom. There’s no doubt about where this is going, but there’s no second thoughts to have. You can shy away, tie yourself in knots at twenty, second guess yourself at thirty, but they have enough life experience to know how to adapt, when to let go. Shit happens and all that.
They both kind of fall sideways on the bed. It creaks under their combined weights. Steve grabs at Bucky, gets blanketed by him, he’s never been with someone just as muscular and heavy as he is. They kiss and bite and suck and they both go for their zippers. Everything is kind of fuzzy, Steve hasn’t been so aroused in a fucking long time, they are damp with sweat and still licking and biting each other, breathing hard, groaning and moaning in each other’s ears, tangled up as they are on the bed, not even lying on it the right way.
It’s Steve who gets his hand on both their erections, and Bucky plants his elbows on the bed, each side of Steve’s head. They move together, in synch, out of it (mostly out of it) and Steve jerks them off, a bit dry, and bit harsh, calluses and all, and Bucky’s groaning right above Steve, so Steve bites on Bucky’s shoulder. It’s all hot, damp, clumsy, so fucking mind-blowing after years going with just his hand and no real desire for anything. Steve gasps, loud, loud, because he’s—
“Close, close!”
That’s the first thing he’s said in all that time.
Bucky doesn’t say anything, he just gasps and moans and his dick hardens just that little bit more in Steve’s hand, and jerks and sputters some come on them, drops of white drooling on their bellies. Steve clenches his other hand on Bucky’s ass, grinding him on Steve and he comes between them both, hand still gripping their dicks, breathing fast and hard like he’s sprinted for miles.
A shower, two beer cans each and a shitty movie later, Steve says “you going back at yours?”
Like it’s a question, but isn’t.
Bucky shrugs, puts the cans in the trash as Steve wipes the coffee table clean of the stain from the chinese takeout they ate.
“Don’t have a change here.”
Fair.
“See you tomorrow.” Bucky says and he’s out the door in less than a minute.
That night, Steve dreams, hazy dreams that don’t really make sense and flow like water between his fingers. He doesn’t remember them, but over the course of the next days, they become more distinct, distinct enough for him to realise that he hasn’t had a fucking wet dream in years. Nothing fancy, nothing raunchy, not like he has a particular person in mind, just waking up hot, hard, slightly confused.
It’s been a fucking while.
If he were the poetic sort he might think of his body waking up after a long slumber, a winter that lasted too long, maybe he’d find some metaphors about hibernating, and not surviving anymore. He doesn’t though, because he isn’t poetic. Any art he ever picked up was visual, and even that has died with the younger him.
They don’t talk about it the next day, nor the day after.
Steve’s waving at the truck to shift gears and swerve onto the worksite, so it can discharge its cargo of rebar. It’s been a fucking long day, because stuff went okay, so he didn’t see a reason not to push the team a little, just enough that they could gain a little time, but not so much that the crew would get exhausted. It’s a delicate balance.
The crew filters out of the site slowly, trickling out and Steve says goodbye to everyone. Bucky’s the last one out, work gloves shoved in his cargo pants pocket, his formless grey shirt yellowed by dust.
“Burgers?”
Steve hums, sounds good. “Your place?”
He closes down, locks the heavy padlock and Bucky helps shove some of the heavy grates closed. They walk in silence because there’s nothing they are pressed to say, and nothing he feels like pressing Bucky to tell.
They pick up the burgers at their usual place, a diner joint that wouldn’t hold up under the weight of a single page out of the Health Code. Then they start talking about Dugan, one of the guys on the worksite. The man has done some serious work on several big projects, steelwork. Bucky opens up about doing some steelwork himself, and how he started out as a mechanic in his hometown before he fled the pressure of expectations.
“Worst thing about being the golden child is when you stop being it. all of a sudden nobody wants to know what you’re doing with your life.” They climb up the steps to Bucky’s apartment, he’s got the burgers and Steve has the beers. “I coulda been dead it’d be the same, so I just packed up and left.”
He opens the door to his shitty one bedroom flat. It’s neat but it looks like a shithole all the same.
Maybe it’s Bucky’s family being the unexpected topic du jour. Maybe it’s just because the floodgates have opened. Or maybe it’s natural progressions, or Steve’s hazy dreams that have yet to coalesce into anything concrete, but two beers in — which ain’t that much, considering their daily consumption, and maybe they should cut back? — Bucky sighs and nods at Steve, who encircles Bucky in his arms. They hug, he gets Bucky’s big frame all tucked tight, the burly man that he is, held close against Steve’s chest.
No words get exchanged. Steve drinks from his beer, one arm still tight around Bucky, reclining on the couch, and Bucky takes the beer from Steve’s hands, drinks from the same bottle.
There’s some beer on Bucky’s top lip — Steve thinks of stinking hot sun and licking his own sweat off his lips — so Steve licks the beer off Bucky’s mouth. They drink, kiss, drink more, kiss again, sucking the taste of beer off each other, until they end up right where they were three days — two days? a week? was it a minute ago or an eternity? — grinding on each other, this time Steve in Bucky’s lap.
They don’t even get to take their clothes off, they’ve been riling the other up with this whole beer thing, Steve thinks, Bucky’s lips around that damn bottle neck, like sucking… sucking something…
Steve sucks on Bucky’s lips as he comes, and Bucky groans loud.
They make a mess of their jeans and when Bucky gives Steve some sweats, they are a little loose on the waist, a little tight in the upper thighs and the calves. Steve thinks of the differences in the way their bodies are built all the way back to his own little house in the outskirts of the city.
Of the way he doesn’t really know Bucky’s body, but the fit of his pants is like a hint of it, a taste. An exploration.
He opens the door to his small house, tiny, dingy, but it’s his, and he stays in the entrance, door wide open.
What the fuck is he doing.? What are they doing? He’s a grown man, he’s forty-five, he’s done the girlfriend, wife, shitty marriage, broken heart, numb heart thing. What is he doing? Where is this going? He should pull the plug on this.
They should stop. He’s lonely, that’s why. He’s been lonely for a long time, they are confused. Maybe Bucky is gay — he never said so, he’s talked about past flings, all women — they are both lonely, their wires got crossed it’s fine. It’s fine, they just have to stay friends, put a stop to this.
Steve eats alone in his kitchen and goes to sleep after having convinced himself that it’s alright.
Next time, they’ll stop. Hug and go no further. Share beers, go home without… all the rest. Once is a fluke, twice is coincidence, thrice is a pattern, he just needs to stop before the third time happens. Tomorrow is scheduled to have some part of the foundations poured, Bucky will be working overtime and Steve will be busy, it’s okay.
It’s okay. He’ll be able to go back to his numb life and numb heart and numb body, life rolling over him like a sedimentary strata. He sleeps wishing to be fossilized so that he never gets to feel again, never gets to experience joy for fear of one day experiencing pain again.
It doesn’t really work that way, though, does it? Bucky cuts his hair, Steve notices when he takes his hard hat off some days later. Bucky rumbles a laugh, half mocking but not without fondness, when Steve forgets to put some sunscreen and gets his nose sunburnt. It’s itchy and red for a week and when they share a beer after their afternoon shift, in yet another unsanitary bar selling beer cut with water it’s so thin, Bucky pokes his nose.
Steve’s heart stops and starts. He should say something, but he doesn’t. Bucky seems to work on some of his words.
But neither say anything out of the ordinary. They end up talking shop, joking about Steve’s sunburn and the glove Bucky lost in the cement as it was poured for the first layer of foundations.
A week later, Steve is still wishing for life to envelop him back into numbness. Bucky is out with some part of the crew, because he’s been socialising more, Steve noticed. Sometimes, Steve will drink his coffee in the morning as people trickle in through the big gate, and Bucky will be there, amidst the others. He used to come alone, go alone, barely grunt to anybody, go through the day.
Steve used to do that too.
So it’s a week later and Steve isn’t panicking, but he is lost in the sea of his own thoughts, big roiling waves of a tempest of his own making. He entered a random bar, didn’t want to go home alone, but didn’t want to intrude on the guys’ night out.
He’s alone at the bar until he’s not. Steve isn’t sure what goes on, but the man next to him — black, beefy, on the younger side of thirty, there a bit of a tattoo peeking from under his tight T-shirt — ends up sharing a beer with Steve. They order at the same time, both sounding dead tired, and that makes the bartender laugh at them, so Sam and Steve exchange names, shoot the shit for a short while.
Sam has been in the military. He’s a therapist at the VA now. Steve nods at all appropriate times. Sam is here because he needed a drink after a harrowing day. Steve doesn’t know why he’s here.
He’s lonely.
“I’m lonely.”
It’s not a confession, although it’s an admission. He is lonely after all, he’s got Bucky, and not much else to look forward to.
As the night goes on, however, the conversation flows right, it flows okay. Sam doesn’t have a problem sharing that he was in the shitter after coming back from his tours. Steve is more closed off, he has less to share, and isn’t that a sad thing, really? His life, empty besides Bucky and work?
But Sam stays and they talk and it’s nice and maybe Steve still has some social skills. Sam gives him his number, says he was cool to hang out with.
“Even though I’m about fifteen years older than you?”
“You can be my token elderly friend,” Sam jokes. “Let me give you my number.”
“You want to give me your number? Why?” Steve frowns, as he pays for his beers, not tipsy, but affected by the drink, mellow.
Sam shrugs. “You look like you need someone to talk to, and even therapists need someone to talk to.”
And that’s that.
Steve stands outside the bar as Sam walks away, whistling. The night has fallen completely the dark outside stained by light pollution. Steve breathes in the city air, and thinks that…
Thinks that he’s just spent a whole night with another person and it felt good, it felt… good. He’s spent so much time with Bucky he forgot that first time they shared coffee and how it had felt like unthawing. The prickly discomfort of having to struggle for words, of interacting. The strange warmth of having someone caring enough about what you said to answer to you. Steve looks at his phone. He has one more number in there. Suddenly it’s not just Bucky (good) and Sharon (bad). The balance has tipped, and if it’s as easy as this, maybe he could…
Maybe he should…
Maybe he can live. Not just exist. Allow himself to feel, perhaps, perhaps.
Perhaps it’s time Steve stops questioning what’s going on. He didn’t at first and it felt great. He started questioning himself and it felt like shit. He should stop. He thumbs the keys of his phone wakes the screen up and taps on Bucky’s name. He feels a little bubbly, maybe it’s the beers, or it’s Sam, or it’s his resolution.
Hope you had a good night out.
They don’t text.
It was great. Dugan is a lightweight.
No more questions. No more questions during the days, when they share smiles, and they say hi, and they talk. No more questions as Steve closes up or calls for shift changes, as they store their hard hats, gloves, as they go to a bar, a diner or at Bucky’s flat, or at Steve’s house. No more questions, as they share space.
It’s already settled without talking about it that tonight, Steve is going to sleep over. They are preparing dinner and they’ve drunk a little (less than usual) so Steve won’t take his car home tonight. Bucky is preparing some stuff, Steve suggested they get fancy and they added vegetables to their usual greasy meal. He’s finished preparing his greens, but Bucky is still poking at his grilled cheeses and his bacon.
It’s domestic.
Steve’s leaning against the counter in Bucky’s tiny kitchen, watching Bucky as Bucky grumbles about auto repair shops in the area — he’s scoping for his next job once the construction of the low rises is over.
No more questions.
Steve tentatively steps behind Bucky and hugs him from behind. Bucky falters in his rant, stops nudging the sandwiches in the pan, but only for a second, before he pokes them again, and starts on a different line of thinking.
“Gabe’s brother has a garage, it’s further away though…”
And it’s new. This simple closeness that isn’t a hug for comfort. That isn’t an “accident”. Steve sought Bucky, for no other reason than to feel the bulk of his body against his. He thinks of what his younger self would have done, what he used to do, when dating was still a thing on his radar.
He shoves his hands in Bucky’s pockets. Bucky chuckles.
After they eat, they fall into bed, like it’s natural and not the third time they fumble with each other, not the third time they touch another man, as if this wasn’t still new, still strange, still uncanny. At some point, as they kiss open-mouthed and hungry, Steve brushes his hand all over Bucky’s chest, and plays “spot the difference” between touching a man and touching a woman. Bucky takes his hand, pulls him in so they lay one on another, and Steve forgets about it.
This isn’t about… spotting the difference. About what he thought he was, who he thought he was. This was about how good the moment felt. Fuck the differences and the slightly jarring sensation of a hairy chest against his, of a hard cock digging into the crease of his thigh and hip (he still wasn’t used to it, what if he got used to it?). Steve gasps as Bucky grips his asscheeks and starts grinding hard, like he means it, like he was to meld them together, forge them both into something new.
“Buck—y”
“Come on, Steve, come on…” Brucky grunts.
They come, blinded by pleasure, and by the intensity of it all. It’s like the other times, same position, same grinding, but it’s all been more powerful, the moment sharper, the air crystallized around this instant.
It’s different because Steve stays on top of Bucky, nose in his neck and plays with his hair, the new cut, the soft waves on top, longer bangs sliding between his fingers.
And Bucky slides his hands down Steve’s back, smoothing them down his skin, warm palms settling down, way down his back.
They sigh and breathe, ignoring for the time being that they very much should clean up. Steve’s trying not to think, and is quite successful. This was good. He liked it. Likes this. He shouldn’t question this.
“I’m not gay,” Bucky says.
Maybe he isn’t the only one who’s full of questions and barely has an answer.
“I’m not either.”
Steve unglues himself from Bucky and wipes them cursorily clean with the corner of the bedsheet. Time to talk, and he can’t deal with a Talk, on top of the vulnerability of that moment, lying together. He fishes for his underwear that’s been left on the floor, and flings Bucky’s boxer at his face.
At first it seems like neither of them will break the silence. They’re both only barely covered by their underwear, and minutes from having moaned each other’s name, dicks trapped between their sweaty bodies…
“We can’t just ignore the… all the… stuff we do.” Steve finally blurts out. He’s never done skydiving, but the way his stomach flops and sweat breaks out in fear, it feels like it. “Thrice is a pattern and—”
“So what? You wanna stop?” Bucky sounds gruff, and he hunches over himself.
It’s a no brainer.
“No.” Damn it. “No. Fuck. You’ve been a friend when life was just shit. And now it feels like more, but I don’t know how. And we keep… doing this.”
Steve can’t say it. Can’t say sex. But they both know. What a weird hang up to have as they’re still mostly naked and not even showered. Bucky’s bedroom smells like the sex they’ve just had.
“So you wanna continue. This.” Bucky’s voice is still a rumble. Guarded. His eyes peeking from behind the bangs that stuck to his forehead with sweat, and curl a little…
And it’s been years since Steve has had the courage to do anything. He thought the gumption of his youth, the protests, the anger, the courage, the desire to fight to be happy, he’d thought it had all gone. With the years. With his dreams.
Steve brings his hand to Bucky’s cheek, grabs him gently to pull him into a kiss.
There’s no mistaking what this is, what this could be. Maybe they aren’t gay, and Steve would be hard pressed to name what they were, but this is a romantic gesture, he’s sure of it. And if Bucky, brick shithouse Bucky, gruff and guarded Bucky, goes pliant and kisses him back, a hand on Steve’s arm to stay stable, if they lean into each other even after the kiss breaks, then perhaps it’s not gay, but it really fucking is close to it.
“So what’s this, then?” Bucky asks, his eyes closed, they aren’t looking at each other, just feeling.
“I don’t know, it’s been a while since I’ve dated someone.”
They are confused. Dating. It sounds like highschool stuff, that’s what Bucky says, and they snort, laugh a little, although it’s true. Dating feels new, feels childish, feels raw, and dangerous because they haven’t tried for a while. It’s the prickling sensation of trepidation: will this work, will it crash and burn?
Dating, it’s ridiculous, they joke about it.
“Imagine me, asking you to get a beer at a bar…” Bucky says, smirking, but there’s something in his eyes.
“Oh yeah, true romance in that shitty diner, right…” And Steve means it, partly.
Romance.
They joke some more, take a shower, and then all discussions of dating are swept under the rug. The vulnerability has been washed off in Bucky’s small cramped bathroom.
Steve’s making his mind up at the very probable fact that this will never progress, never go somewhere. It’s fine. It’s not fine, but it’ll be fine. If he can hold on to Bucky as a friend it’ll be good. Maybe sometimes they’ll fuck around too and that can be enough, right? Steve sucks in a breath of hot air, and checks that the next truck to evacuate rubble is coming. The guy is late, and it’s hot as Satan’s ass today.
It’s all (going to be) okay.
The truck’s here and the driver is so young Steve wants to card him. He spills out of his seat and says sorry and then something that must mean something to the younger generation but only makes Steve nod and then text Sam during his next break.
Steve’s taking a breather in the empty first floor, escaping the heat here amidst the bare cement walls and open empty spaces. Last time Steve saw Bucky, he was upstairs on the third and last floor, laying I-beams. There’s a thin draft of air ruffling Steve’s hair as he finishes quizzing Sam about the vocabulary of the next generation.
His texting is interrupted by a coffee appearing in his field of vision.
Bucky.
Steve smiles, he can’t not. And Bucky does too. Because he smiles now, so often. He’s still grumpy and a little brusque, but he looks at Steve and he smiles at Steve. And now he’s leaning in a future doorway, takes his gloves off, rakes his hand in his hair, like he’s a superstar.
Steve sips at his coffee, Bucky gives him a rakish grin, goes all “fancy meeting you here” and “what’s a handsome guy like you doing in a place like this” and it’s so obnoxiously exagerated that Steve laughs and volleys back his own stupid flirty lines, bad lines, lines that would get him nowhere—
And then Bucky takes a step closer, that little something he’d had in his eyes after they’d had sex yesterday, it’s back in his eyes. He says he’s sorry, it’s been a while since he’s tried to land a date with a cutie. A cutie.
A cutie.
It’s ridiculous, but Steve only chuckles, short, short chuckle. “A cutie?” Like he’s a cutie, with his rough hands and his sweaty shirts and his work clothes and the cement that’s caked on his left elbow from this morning.
“You fishing for compliments, babe?” Bucky asks and oh, he must know that’s going to make Steve flustered, he must, right?
Steve flounders. He thought this was a joke. Is this a joke? He blurts “you wanna get coffee after…?” like they haven’t done that regularly, like he doesn’t have a cup of joe in his hands, like he’s fifteen, twenty, again.
And Bucky laughs. And says “Sure, babe.” Like Steve’s a babe. Steve. Babe.
They settled on a place, and five hours later, Steve is waiting for Bucky at a bar. They picked a different one, just for this, which makes it all entirely different. This isn’t a dive. Steve actually took a shower, picked an outfit, ironed a shirt. He’d checked the time, he’d unearthed an old bottle of cologne from under his bathroom sink and it didn’t smell half bad. He’s spent five more minutes than usual in the bathroom just for this, and he’s even put some water on his cowlick so his hair would lay flat.
Bucky isn’t late, but Steve…
Steve is drawing on his beer coaster. He had a ballpoint pen in pocket, because he always has a ballpoint pen somewhere on his person. He isn’t stressed, no, he’s just—
Steve is drawing for the first time in years, a quick sketch, scratching at the cheap cardboard of his coaster. He’s already blocked in the shapes and is crosshatching like mad before Steve thinks that damn, this looks like Bucky in the hazy sun at—
“Hey.”
Steve looks up.
“Hey.”
His throat is dry. He’s not stressed, he can’t be stressed, he’s forty-five, right? It’s not his first ride, why is he like this?
Bucky dressed up, he’s smiling, he’s doing his best, they both are. They both spent a little bit more time, just for the sake of the other.
Steve stands up, nervous, blushes, sits back down when Bucky chuckles. They flag down the bartender.
Steve is nervous but he knows that life is already looking to be much less mediocre. Bucky bumps his shoulder against his and winks, and Steve smiles wide and clinks his glass against Bucky’s.
He’s stopped existing, he’s living again.
Spring is slowly turning into summer, it’s starting to get hot, hot like last year. Steve’s driving home, and he passes in front of the low rises he and Bucky worked on last year. Today was a good day, a good day as any, no major problems on the current building project, foundations were poured on a major part of it…
Bucky is on his day off from the garage. The job isn’t much but it pays the bills and Bucky enjoys it, says he prefers to tinker with mechanics than do the heavy steelwork stuff. Steve hums along with the radio as he parks the car.
A curse and a bang welcome him home. He snorts, takes his bag from the car.
Bucky’s here, his permanent filthy rag stuck in his back pocket, Steve isn’t sure if it’s the same as the one from the garage, or another, or if there’s a secret stash of rags somewhere that Bucky brought with him when he moved in. Bucky’s trying to fix the porch or something. Bucky curses again, turns, says something derogatory abut the porch before Steve kisses him hello.
Life is all he hoped it could be.