Work Text:
Here are things that are true:
Your heart does beat, although it tends to skip.
Your lungs work, but that’s only helpful if you actually remember to breathe.
You have reflection and a shadow on your heels.
These things were necessary for when a doctor leaned in with a stethoscope and a slight frown, or for when a dame stepped in close for a twirl; for when your best pal folded over you in concern when you couldn’t get out of bed for not having had a chance to hunt in too long. He didn’t know that bit, of course, so he’d press his hand to your face, to your throat, checking your temperature — always cold, too cold for his liking, and there’s nothing you could do to convince him not to spend money on medicine except to tell him the truth, which — no. And then you would remember: oh, shit, have to make those things in your chest expand, breathe, you fuck — and Bucky might know already, he might have a clue that on top of your crooked spine and on top of your deaf ear and on top of your unfortunate fainting habit —
He might already know that on top of all of these things, you still ain’t human.
In the stories you’ve read, people have always been turned into what you are, but you don’t remember ever being human. You’re not sure you ever were. Mam taught you how to bleed an animal before your sixth birthday — you suppose you’d have had to be self-sufficient when stuck home alone for nights on end while she was at the hospital. No one else would be willing to go kill a pigeon for you and watch you stuff it in your mouth still warm. You remember making a plan about how you would tell the kids that lived a few doors down; it seemed like a neat, adventurous story that might make you some friends. You don’t remember what made you change your mind, but you’re grateful for it now.
You do recall that one time she brought you a bag of blood from the hospital instead of some bird. It hadn’t been stored right and they were going to have to dispose of it anyways. You never asked how she managed to sneak it out, that hadn’t mattered. What did matter, thinking back on it, was that it was the first time she turned her face away while you tipped the bag into your mouth. She had never been bothered before by your meals, but maybe the difference was that it was human blood.
It was not what you expected: the blood was thick and it stuck to your throat and it tasted sour and like how the tenement basement smelled. You’d thought hard about the etiquette lessons that’d been drilled into you — as though the repeated drone of always say thank you, Steven in your head would drown out the godawful taste — and drank the whole bag. You think that perhaps she thought it would be good for you, or some kind of treat. Honestly you thought it would be, too. But the way it made your eyes water and closed your throat was enough to convince her to never bring any home again.
♦
You wonder if she believes the Devil is in you, although you know that she loves you unconditionally. Her little boy, the one that goes to school and gets in fights with bullies and is never brought to church, although she goes every week herself. Neighbours ask, and she dismisses’em as best as she can, but there ain’t much you can do about neighbours. They’ll talk regardless. Mam always says to ignore them and she tells you she loves you every morning and every night, but you suppose that even though you can walk in sunlight and cast a shadow same as everyone else, stepping foot in a holy place might turn your bones to dust. Her little boy, her little monster.
No matter how many times you ask, because Mam must know, she remains tight lipped. She never tells you how it is you came to be. You think that she was just grateful that you still are, that you walk and talk and think and laugh; you might not be alive but you smiled and drew her pictures and, eventually, you made friends with Bucky Barnes. Still, her reluctance to tell you feeds into fantasies: one day, once upon a time, she simply found you on the front steps, swaddled and crying and dead, and decided to keep you. But you know that’s not the truth when you look in the mirror: you recognise the colour of her eyes and the shape of her chin looking back at you. When you draw and notice the shape of your hands, they might as well be exact copies of hers. Small and surprising reminders of your connections to humanity.
♦♦♦
The first time you taste fresh human blood, you’re fourteen and it’s Mam’s wrist at your mouth, her voice begging you to drink. Your head is stuffed full of cotton and you hurt down to your fucking cells and you don’t know why — there’s nothing in your body that’s actually turned on and open for business: Being a Fucking Human Being — so go figure you’re just as prone to infection as any other schmuck on the street.
“Drink, Steven, please —” There’s part of you that doesn’t want to, that even in the haze of illness you know this isn’t a line you’ve crossed before, and it’s been years since that one awful bag of old blood. You’ve read every book you could get your hands on, you’ve heard the stories, and you’ve seen the other kids at school make fangs and jump at the girls and make’em scream —
Only monsters drink human blood. Right, Mam? Right?
It’s a thought you have in your smallest, loneliest moments, even though you try not to believe it.
She moves away for a moment and you can hear her breathing change, you can hear her heart beating faster and then you smell it. The smell — it’s not like you haven’t smelled it before, what with all of the fights you get in, but right now it’s like a window opening in your dank, miserable prison, it’s pulling you up to your knees and you’re crawling towards it, knowing that if you can just have a small taste of it — fresh air and warm light and everything else that is fucking good. She comes back and when she presses her wrist to your mouth again it’s warm and slick with blood. You can’t put up a fight; you sink your teeth in and drink.
The taste is…is. You almost cannot believe that the blood you had all those years ago had been the same.
You recover quickly after that, and while you rest you think about pigeons and rats and bags of old blood. You think about how you haven’t ever felt so alive for being dead.
You think Bucky would think that’s funny, with his love of monsters and Martians and all things science fiction. But you can’t tell him the truth, so you just let him read you stories from his magazines while you sit in bed and privately marvel at feeling warmth in your fingertips for the very first time.
♦♦♦
And it changes something in you in the way it hasn’t changed anything at all: the feeling, the taste — you don’t crave it, you’re not obsessing about when to get your next fix. You haven’t been driven into a monstrous rage, you haven’t been frothing at the fucking mouth, it’s just — one night you hadn’t ever tasted fresh blood, and the next night you had. You feel good, and even a week later you feel not quite alive but almost like you could be and maybe this is just what you need in order to be fucking comfortable. Wouldn’t it be something to be fucking comfortable in your twisted up and feeble body.
And if… if the one thing that’s always been said to compel you into a monstrous obsession doesn’t give you a fit and if the sun doesn’t set you on fire and if you can see yourself in the mirror — how else are you limiting yourself, you wonder, based on words written half a century ago or more?
On a night you know Bucky’s gone out with a girl and Mam is working late, you take the subway down to Park Slope — better digs than you and your Mam could ever afford, so you aren’t worried about anyone recognizing you here. The night is cool and walking with purpose makes sure that no one looks at you twice. You reach St. Augustine and stop abruptly on the steps, letting others walk past you and into the church.
The building is large and grey and the windows are tall and full of colour; it’s a nice church. You’ve seen picture books of the inside of churches in Italy, places where Da Vinci and Michelangelo have walked, but you don’t know if this will be anything like it. You feel eyes on you as parishioners brush past you, and brace yourself for whatever might happen when you step inside. You briefly worry about what the people here might think if you do suddenly burst into flames, but you brush it aside. Won’t be able to do anything about it at that point — there’s no question of whether or not you’re human: you’re not. Right now the question is are you a monster?, and this might be the place where you get your answer.
You square your shoulders and step in behind a family, following them into the church; you don't breathe as you cross the threshold.
Nothing happens.
In a daze you find a seat in a pew, in the row second from the back. Your hands are shaking — here you are, in God’s house, and you’re fine. There is a burning sensation in your throat but it’s just — tears. You can’t stop them once they start, and you try not to make a sound so as to not draw any attention to yourself.
You sit there for the entire service, let the unfamiliar language sweep over you as you look at the stained glass windows and watch the candles burn low over the course of an hour. Your tears slow but they don’t stop, not completely.
When you leave the church, you feel light. There’s been a weight lifted from your shoulders that you hadn’t even realised was there — and the horizon seems broader, now, in your mind’s eye. If you can walk into a holy place and not be smote, then how else are you hiding yourself away, needlessly? If you were truly a monster, then surely —
You’re not a monster; you’re just a vampire. Just Steve Rogers the fucking vampire. You laugh right there in the middle of the street, ignoring the looks you get from straggling parishioners. You’re buzzing with energy and you’re giddy with relief; on the fly you decide to walk home and skip the subway; it’ll take you a while but you don’t really care. And maybe you’ll cut through the park and find yourself some dinner.
♦♦♦
The first time you set out with the intention to drink human blood, you’re sixteen. You’ve made up a plan you think will work; you’ve spent weeks walking neighbourhoods and watching crowds and thinking up the best way to step in unnoticed. The last thing you need are headlines in the paper about a lone fella or dame crying monster, attacked in alleys — and you don’t want to attack anyone, truly. Plus Mam will know immediately, and that ain’t something you really want to deal with. You just want a taste, something to keep you going for a little while longer: you can’t explain to anyone the difference between them, between the bag brought home from a late night shift at the hospital or thin blood of animals off the street, and fresh blood. It’s not like people could truly understand the feeling of being alive when they’ve had nothing else to compare it to, unlike you.
So although you’ve done all of this planning and scouting, you come full circle and figure the best thing to do is to follow the regular routine, with a slight change: accept Buck’s invite to the dance hall instead of turning it down.
“You’re not gonna just stick to the wall, are ya? Look,” Buck says, catching your eye in the reflection while he fixes his hair. “Charlotte Duffy is going, and her cousin’s in town — you should talk to her.” Charlotte Duffy is a girl in your year, with dark red curls and legs longer than anything you’ve ever seen, and Bucky hasn’t stopped talking about her since he’d seen her doing the Lindy Hop two weeks prior.
“Sure, Buck,” you answer, but there must be something in your voice because Bucky rolls his eyes while he puts his comb away in his front pocket. He straightens his jacket and squints at the pimples on his chin, grumbling; always so vain, although you can’t help the rush of fondness you feel for him in that moment. You take a minute when he steps aside to swipe your fringe out of your eyes and quickly look yourself over: you look human, same as you always do. You feel human, too, mostly — but maybe after tonight that will change.
When you both arrive, the dance hall is dark and the air inside is heavy; the noise is almost unbearable to your sensitive hearing. The band is in the corner, loud and brassy and underneath that is a chorus of laughter and shouting and heels hitting wood flooring. You’ve arrived late enough that most everyone who’s planned on being here is already here, but still left with plenty of hours of the night to enjoy. Bucky is already craning his neck, scanning the crowd for a head of red curls. “Oh hey, there she is — wait here a second, Steve, we’re in luck. They ain’t dancing yet.”
He’s gone before you can say anything, but it’s for the best; he comes back with Charlotte and a girl who you are assuming is her cousin: not quite as tall as Charlotte, but you can see the resemblance. Freckles and a permanent pout to their lips, heart shaped. Buck is already working his charm on Charlotte, crooked grin and leaning in and laughing, while the new girl steps closer to you, smiling. You school your expression because that in itself is a novel experience — she really must be from out of town. She introduces herself as Marie, visiting from Chicago, and she loves New York and wishes she could visit more often. She’s got long fingers and she talks with her hands and some of her curls are about to fall loose with the way she’s talking excitedly about the sights she’s seen so far.
You begin to doubt — it’s quite the thing, isn’t it, to listen to her talk and hear her laugh and want to touch her hair but also want to drink her blood. You can’t come out and ask, and Mam has it drilled into your head you always ask, Steven, even if you’ve never felt inclined to ask anyone anyhow — but this ain’t — it can’t be like that. You have to make a choice. And you think about it, and watch her, and you deliberate some more, and — you still want it. Mam had been alright, after, if a little tired; but she’s always tired. And maybe Marie won’t notice because she’ll just think, oh, I just spent the night dancing, that’s all. Nothing wrong with being a little tired. You won’t take much. Only enough.
The dance floor is still crowded full of people when you are pulled into the middle of it, laughing and thrilled in spite of what you are planning on doing. It really is the first time you’ve been taken to dance and it’s — no wonder Bucky likes it so much. It’s heady and although you’ve never been interested in sex the way others have; curious but never wanting — you think you could get caught in this wave, in the energy and the intimacy. You dance with her for a couple of quick songs, try to follow the steps as best as you can, but you’re grateful when the band slows down for a piece and you pull her close. When you’re in the middle of the floor surrounded by other couples, you take a minute to remember to breathe and Marie laughs; she really is lovely — and before you know it, you lean in and sink your teeth into her throat.
For a moment — nothing moves, nothing makes a sound over the rushing in your ears. But Marie doesn’t flinch, doesn’t make a sound; she continues to sway with the music and there’s nothing odd about how you’re tucked in under her jaw, not when everyone else is busy with their own partners.
And it’s just as good as you remember: warm and rich and almost spicy. It feels like waking up in the morning and it feels like that one time you were able to actually soak in a hot bath, it feels, it tastes —
By the time the song is done, you’ve taken enough and you’ve kissed on her and the marks on her neck are hardly noticeable at all. You make your excuses and head off the dance floor, alive.
♦
Despite Bucky’s earlier complaints, you still end up leaning against the wall with your hands stuffed in your pockets. Marie is off with another guy, but you don’t mind — there’s a buzzing under your skin and you’re even warmer than that first time so you’re sinking into the feeling and trying to enjoy it. Not for the first time you wonder about the science of it, or if it’s even science at all; can someone explain why it is you feed on blood and not fruit? Is it something right in the core of you, some twisted bit like how you’d like to dance with Bucky just as much as Marie.
As you’ve gotten older you also wonder about the fact of your ageing: stories tell tales of beings unchanged for centuries, mad and tall and dark and cruel. Grown men and women, not children. But maybe that was the difference. Maybe that’s what matters; what’s the point of being immortal and being stuck in the body of a child? All of this would have been impossible — the dancing, the touching, the sexual underpainting of the whole scene — and there’s no getting around that, although it’s something you’ll have to think on a bit more — As you get older, you think back on it in horror: would your mind have also been stuck? Would you have been trapped, forever, in a vulnerable body with a vulnerable mind, unable to ever grow and understand the world around you? Again it makes you wonder if it would be worth trying to get an answer from Mam, but you doubt that after sixteen years she’ll give it up just because you’ve asked one more time.
You watch the people in the dance hall around you, smell the sweat and the perfume and you take a moment to be grateful that whatever has made you what you are works the way it does. You spot Bucky in the crowd, smiling and laughing and flushed, swaying in time with a girl who isn’t Charlotte. You smile to yourself and settle in to watch him move, watch him dance; there are few things you love watching more.
♦♦♦
When you are eighteen, Mam dies coughing up blood in a sanatorium by the ocean. It’s just you who doesn’t need working lungs to live.
Although you know that you can step inside a church, you can’t bring yourself to do it. Bucky makes the arrangements for you.
♦♦♦
You haven’t hunted in over a week and it shows. It starts in your joints, and then your head begins to pound and then of all things your chest becomes tight and taking in air becomes difficult and painful. You’re too weak to fight off the infection in your lungs before it settles in. Again: lucky you for having things in your body that you don’t technically need but will fuck you over anyways. Bucky paces and frets and you can see something on his face, but — what is it, Buck, what’s wrong? Are you — and you’re too tired to get up, too tired to figure out why Buck bleeds white when he lays his hand on your chest. He gapes a little, blinking down at you while you try and figure out if he’s hurting, too — he can’t be hurt, he’s still the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, and you are so tired but so grateful that he’s here —
Something in his face changes, expression clearing, and then determination sets in. “I’ll be back, Stevie. Just — I’ll be back in a bit. Don’t — “
Don’t what, Bucky? Don’t do what —?
You sink into oblivion for — a few hours. You blink and the window is dark; you’ve been shoved back into consciousness by the slamming of the front door, shaking the walls of your small apartment. And then you smell it: blood.
And you realize what’s happened, that in your pain and exhaustion you’d forgotten to fucking pretend, you’d forgotten to breathe and that Bucky was right there, he was there the whole time with his hand on your chest.
But he came back. He’s back, and he brought you blood.
Your fangs slip out before you realise what’s happening, a noise scraping out of your throat like a man dying of thirst, relief flooding your system before you even taste your meal, because — because —
He brought you blood. He’s scared, you can tell, but he’s scared for you, even though now he knows that you aren’t human.
“Shhh, shh — Stevie, it’s okay. I hope — God, I hope this will be alright. I didn’t know what else to get —”
You feel something cool and wet pressed to your lips: it’s a piece of raw meat and it’s fresh — what, did he just go to the butcher and — your thoughts are cut off when you sink your teeth in and suck. You moan again out of relief and you try to grab hold of Bucky, just to feel him, but your fingers are still stiff and it will take a while yet for them to warm up, and you can’t believe that it’s been so long, you were so stupid to wait —
Buck leans down and presses his forehead to your temple and whispers thanks into your skin.
♦♦♦
Things change, as they must.
You confess that you don’t ever remember a time where you weren’t what you are; Bucky confesses that before she passed, your Mam had told him that you had to be careful, that sometimes — you might forget to take care of yourself, and in that case, that Bucky would need to go to the butcher’s.
He’d suspected for a while that something was different, but in the grand scheme of things it never really mattered. Once you’ve recovered enough to sit up in bed, Bucky throws himself into the space next to you, grabbing The Hobbit off the stack of books next to his bed, announcing that he’ll just have to make a stop at the butcher’s every other week from now on. He flips open the novel and wiggles a little, getting comfortable. He clears his throat and starts to read, and his voice doesn’t falter even when you lean your head on his shoulder and tuck your arm under his, seeking a little bit more warmth.
There’s no one on Earth that you love more than him.
♦♦♦
And things change again, in the early Fall of 1939. The heat drags on and you sit on the fire escape, avoiding the stuffiness of your cramped apartment. Bucky sits across from you, cigarette on his lips and eyes half-lidded, watching you with a flush high on his cheeks. You’ve been passing a bottle between you, and it’s not blood but you feel the burn of it anyways. The night before you both had gone to the dance hall, and Bucky watched you when you danced with a dame and tucked in close, watched as you breathed her in, dragged your lips up her throat. In the heat of the dance floor, in the crush of bodies and hidden between the curtains of twirling skirts it was easy to just — nick the skin. And she didn’t notice because she’d been laughing and breathless — your hand slid from her back around her ribs, your thumb traced a line under her breast, and you were daring. And when she tilted her head back just a little, you took your chance and gave her throat a kiss, right over the broken skin. You met Bucky’s eye across the hall, and he hadn’t looked away.
And now you wonder: is he wondering, too? You’ve been pressed skin to skin before, in the dead of winter when your body can’t hold on to warmth for anything, no matter how much of it you steal from others. But this isn’t need, no, this is want. You want to touch him, to see him in the throes of pleasure, to be the one to bring him there. This feeling is new and unknown, but you welcome it as you do all things Bucky Barnes brings into your life.
Bucky puts out his cigarette on the railing of the fire escape. “You ever think about it?”
You tilt your head, staring at him. If there were ever a time your heart would pound…“What?”
Bucky holds your gaze, and he’s so brave, so good, so — “How my blood might taste,” he says, and you’ve never turned down a dare, even one so indirect as that.
♦♦♦
The draft notice is left forgotten on the kitchen table; you have tomorrow and the day after and probably the rest of your short, miserable life to think about it, but right now you focus on Bucky, and only on him: lying back on the sheets, pupils dark and cheeks flushed, mouth red and wet and open on a moan.
You’re so grateful that he lets you know him like this, that he trusts you and believes you when you say that this is something you want with him.
You run your hands over his skin — you’ll never get over how warm he runs, and on the precipice of change you’re both teetering on, you feel like you’re noticing things about him and his body you hadn’t ever noticed before: the tones of his skin shift, to see the warm shift to neutral shift to cool, to see the blood that comes to the surface and colours his skin pink. He moans when you drag your fingers down his stomach and you breathe just because your breath on his skin makes it change again, gives him goosebumps and makes him shiver. You haven’t kissed him yet, not on the mouth — you want to wait. You’re in the mood to taste him first.
“Steve,” he says, breathless, and he pulls his legs apart and drags you closer. “Steve, honey, please —” and you fall into the space he’s made, smile when he flinches at the coldness of your skin but then immediately goes limp, and you know how much he likes the contrasting sensations: the pull of hot and cold, the way your skin is soft, inhumanly so, but then your teeth —
“Please, come on — “
He’s worked up; he rolls his hips although you’ve leaned away, taking away the pressure. He whines and you feel heat rush through you. Bucky is sweating and flushed and he’s hard when you take him in hand, hot enough to feel like a burn against your heatless skin — and when you pull his breath leaves him in a rush, and you keep moving, squeezing and tightening your fist as he makes noise, listening and watching to know, to memorise him in this light. With your other hand you reach for the soft skin behind his balls and rub, press down with your thumb while you tease him with your fingers — his thighs shake and he gasps and you press a little harder, feeling thrilled and a little mean and you ask, “What do you want, Buck? What’re you so desperate for? Tell me, sweetheart,” and he shudders under you, jerking his hips.
“Bite me, asshole,” he hisses, and you tighten the hand on his cock, warning. Bucky chokes off a moan, and you lean forward as he falls back onto the pillows. You have to pull his hips up, roll him tighter so you can tuck your face into the warm space under his jaw. You hear his heart stall, then pick up the pace, it’s racing, the blood is rushing, right there, and —
“That’s what you want, Buck?” Your fangs have slipped out, and you know he can feel the tip of them against his skin, moving as you speak. You take your hand away from the heat between his legs and put it on his thigh, gentle, soothing, it’s me, it’s Steve, listen to me for one second — “Tell me again what you want, Buck. I wanna know how much you actually want it,” you say, you beg, you need to know that this is what he wants, every time you get here you still need to check, because you can try to hide it but you are shaking, you are trembling and you want, you desire, you feel that edge of desperation —
“Yes,” he whispers, “yes, Steve — do it — “
You don’t wait for him to finish, you sink your teeth into his skin and you taste him and it’s still like nothing you have ever tasted before. You drink and you revel in it, in him. When you let go you don’t go far: you drag your tongue on his skin, chasing after the taste with a moan. You think how can this be, how is it that I am so lucky, and you shake and shake and shake and Bucky is running his hands through your hair and down your neck, voice low and words incomprehensible.
You push forward again, forcing his body to fold even tighter and you look him in the eye; he is pink and glassy-eyed and you adore him, and with a hand on his cock and his blood in your mouth you finally lean down and kiss him and he falls apart in your arms, overcome.
♦
Later, when you’re both curled up facing one another and sharing the same pillow, you reach over and touch his throat; he tilts his head back slightly, baring the skin to you, and sighs. The spot on his throat has thickened, a little — you wonder if it’s possible that he’s been changed by it, that his body’s just decided to accommodate this monthly disturbance. When he leaves for war he’ll have palms thickened by rifles and feet rough from walking, but here’s a mark he’ll carry from you.
“I’ll come back, you know,” he whispers, reaching up to hold your hand at his throat. He rubs his thumb into your palm, massaging it in small circles, encouraging blood to flow. You feel loose and warm.
“‘Course you will,” you tell him, twisting your shoulders to be more comfortable. You shove a leg between his and close your eyes. “No matter what, when or how. You’ll make it back home, sweetheart.”
♦♦♦
So — here are things that are true:
Bucky Barnes is the beginning and the end of your world.
The army won’t take someone whose heart doesn’t beat with a reliable rhythm. In the end you only need to convince one man that it doesn’t matter.
Your heart beats, your lungs breathe air, you have a shadow and a reflection. You no longer have a crooked spine, and you can lift a thousand pounds. You are still a vampire.
There’s more than one type of monster.
And — you wake up.
You. Wake. Up.