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When Steve steps out of the elevator into his Tower apartment, all the lights are off.
At least, all the electric lights.
He hangs up his coat and lingers in the doorway. The whole space is aglow in the steady amber heartbeat of candlelight, refracting in every glass windowpane and tabletop, glittering on the cool slate tile like a sunset over the water.
His breath catches. He’d been thinking about it all day, but he didn’t want to get his hopes up, didn’t want to force it, didn’t want to make Bucky feel guilty, and when duty called that morning—
Bucky steps out from the kitchen nook, summoned by the elevator’s synthesizer chime. “Steve?”
Steve desperately hopes nobody ever finds out how just hearing Bucky say his name is probably his greatest weakness. “Yeah, Bucky? …Did you do all this?”
“Uh huh.” Bucky’s face splits into a grin as wide as it is rare. “I remembered.”
Steve takes a fraction of a second to check that, yes, Bucky isn’t holding anything, and then he breaks into a sprint, skips right up off the floor, and tackles Bucky with a rib-crushing bear-hug, laughing harder than he has in weeks. He takes a deep breath from where he’s burying his face into the crewneck collar of Bucky’s favorite sleep-shirt. He recognizes the bright, powdery smell of the bar soap they both still like using, which used to be out of necessity, back when almost every brand of soap would give Steve hives or a sneezing fit or some other obnoxious symptom, and they went through a whole drugstore’s inventory until they found one that he could tolerate. The brand must have changed their formula a little, but not by much; the fragrance is still intact enough to bring back memories of a leaky faucet and a busted water heater and the way Bucky would always beeline to wash off after work no matter what was wrong with the pipes.
“Babydoll…” Bucky strokes Steve’s broad back. “You have a good day?”
“Who cares? I’m having the best day ever now.” Steve can’t bear to loosen their hug long enough to kiss his darling. “I’m so sorry I left. Or I’m sorry I didn’t take you with me. If I knew you knew—”
“Hey, hey, shh, it’s okay. Worked out great. Gave me time to do all this. Hey. C’mere.” Bucky breaks up the hug for them— only by a little bit— so it can give Steve a brief, deep kiss.
Steve could cry at how delicate the sound is when their lips part. “Buck… do you remember why today’s our anniversary?”
“Yeah.” Bucky gives Steve a little squeeze around the chest. “Hit me a little after you left this morning. Saw the date on the calendar and all of a sudden it was like I was there.”
“Tell me about it.” Steve swallows a sudden lump in his throat. “Please.”
“I remember it wasn’t even my idea. You’d been lookin’ at me funny all afternoon. You kissed me on the ferris wheel and said you’d been wanting to do that forever, and I kissed you back, and next thing I remember is you draggin’ me under the pier and hitchin’ your skirt up. And then we spent more time just tryin’ to get all the sand off each other afterwards than we actually spent foolin’ around.” Bucky pauses. “You were sixteen. You were wearin’ your hair in pigtails with big stupid ribbons on the ends.” It hesitates, letting the memory lead into another. “…You had me cut them off you a year later.”
“You said I was so wild you didn’t want me to get rid of the reins.”
“Good thing you started wearin’ those suspenders right after, huh?” Bucky palms at the space between Steve’s shoulderblades, right where his suspenders would cross over each other. “Even easier to grab in a hurry.”
Steve dips his head for another, more drawn-out kiss. He feels like he just can’t get close enough, even with Bucky’s hands on his backside and tongue in his mouth, and he still can’t believe he’s the taller one now; his head’s been swimming with flashbacks all day, and almost every single one has him standing on his tiptoes, looping his skinny arms around Bucky’s neck, saying something-or-other about Bucky being either the most irresistible man or stupidest pack-mule in New York. There’s memories of the war, too, but those are a little darker, a little patchier, with all the goriest parts boxed up and stowed away where he doesn’t have to look at them. The moments he’d had with Bucky then were brief and always bookended by gunfire. He utters some accidental little noise of fear, suddenly wildly possessive, even though he knows he has the whole night ahead of him. The surge dissolves just as fast when he looks down at Bucky’s face again.
It’s smiling at him, just like it always used to, framed by Steve’s warm hands on either blushing, stubbly cheek. “Remind me how you like your steak done. I’ll handle the rest.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t throw rose petals onto the bed, Buck.”
“Didn’t want to stain the sheets.”
“They wouldn’t stain anything just by touching.”
“Well, we’d be grindin’ ‘em in…”
Steve blushes rose-red. “Yeah. We would.”
Bucky grins and steps close Steve to help him disrobe as they meander over to the bed— it’s just a breezy, clean change of day-clothes, something loose and comfortable to slip back into after a day spent in the tricolor uniform. There’s not a scratch on the Captain’s skin, and Bucky shows its appreciation by kissing all the vulnerable pulse points it’s especially glad to see unscathed.
Steve lies back onto the bed dizzily happy once he’s stripped bare. “I don’t have that kind of patience, so you better get those pajamas off before I rip them off.”
“Always with the attitude, huh, baby?” Bucky reaches behind its head to pull its shirt over and down, then flings the flimsy thing aside. With a shake of its hair, it sheds everything below the waist fluidly as it crawls into bed. “I’m never gonna get used to this body of yours.”
Steve bites his pouty lip. “I was so sure you’d hate it back when I first had all that done.”
“Never in a million years. It’s still you, so I love it.” Bucky crawls up close to Steve, settling between his thighs, letting its right hand roam wide across miraculously unscarred skin.
“And you keep arguing when I say the same thing about you.”
“Just hard to believe you’re all mine.” It loves the feeling of Steve’s touch in its hair as it bows its head to bestow delicate kisses across his broad body. It can’t believe it ever had its hair cut short— giving Steve plenty to play with and pull is so much more fun. But, then again, letting Steve mess up its gelled coif had a certain thrill, too. It smiles at the shudder of Steve’s abs under its lips as it lets its kisses fall lower and lower…
Steve’s grip suddenly tightens on its hair. “Don’t. Not yet.”
“Why not? You know I love spoilin’ you…”
“I just…” Steve’s smile seems awkwardly snagged between a few other hard-to-name moods. “I want you to keep talking.” He switches back to his affectionate petting. “Please.”
Bucky’s grin surges back bigger than ever. “Whatever my baby wants, he gets.”
Steve sighs dreamily. “Exactly like that.” He’s sorely missed the way Bucky always used to sweet-talk him. Bucky is so quiet these days, and even when it does speak, it still sometimes sounds stilted and mechanical and dry, railroaded to strictly practical words with no room left over for pet-names and sweet-nothings. The nostalgia of their anniversary must be bringing all this back.
Bucky inches up Steve’s body, pressing close, chest-to-chest, leaning onto its left arm so its right can nestle in between Steve’s legs. After giving a teasingly slow stroke, it whistles. “You’re this worked up already?”
Steve chuckles. “Have been for a while.”
“How long?”
“Since you kissed me in front of the elevator…”
“You should’ve told me, baby.” It easily dips two fingers inside Steve and draws them back out slowly to slicken its firm touch. “Poor thing, hard as a rock all through dinner, and I didn’t even know.”
Steve’s bashful laugh switches to a moan halfway through, and he pushes his hips up a little to press back against Bucky’s warm hand. “…What do you wanna do tonight, Buck?”
“Anything. You just ask for it.”
“Hey, it’s your anniversary, too.”
“I wanna know I can still make my babydoll feel good.” After everything else I did to him. Bucky clicks its tongue a few times, laying its head on Steve’s chest, savoring the racing heartbeat under its ear that matches the one it feels pulsing against its hand. “If you’re happy, I’m happy.”
“Hah… ahh, yeah, I’m already feeling pretty good…”
“Mmmm. Missed you so much when you were out today. Were you thinkin’ of me?”
“God, yes, all day, couldn’t even focus—”
“What were you thinkin’ about? This?”
“Yeah…” Steve shuts his eyes and whines, tilting his head back. “Thinkin’ about… when I’d be laid up in bed with a fever, and you didn’t wanna catch it, but you wanted to touch me… You remember that, Buck? What we’d do?”
“Tell me what we did, baby.” Bucky’s found that to be a nicer answer than I don’t remember, which it always hates having to admit. The amnesia comes and goes and seems to strike arbitrarily. Even as lucid as it is now, it’s still feeling around through wide-open gaps in its own memory.
“You’d get a chair and… sit on the other side of the room… I’d touch myself… I’d show you, if I wasn’t too cold… A-and you’d do the same thing, over on your side, and talk me through it…” Steve gasps and shudders. “God, Bucky, you’d— you’d work me right back up once I was done, just by talking to me…”
“What all’d I say to you, Stevie?”
“Tell me I’m cute, tell me I’m handsome… tell me how crazy it was driving you, not being able to give it to me…”
“You’re still cute, baby; you’re still handsome…”
“And do I still— ohh, fuck, yes, like that—”
“Stevie, I swear to god, you make me feel like I’m losin’ my mind all over again.” Bucky spreads more and more of Steve’s wetness upward to let it stroke faster and faster. “I know we both got places to be, but I wanna keep you here forever.”
“Yes, yes, yes, please, Bucky, please—”
“I want you so bad. It’s never enough.”
“Don’t stop, Buck, oh, god, please, don’t stop—”
“I got you, baby, c’mon, I’m right here, just let go, Stevie, I got you…”
Steve claws at Bucky’s back in desperation as he comes, dead-silent at first, until his voice cracks and shatters into a throaty yowl, shoving his hips up into Bucky’s hand in jagged, uncoordinated thrusts, until he finally collapses, arms slipping down and hitting the bed soft.
While it waits for Steve to recover, Bucky loudly licks its hand completely clean, humming happily.
“Ugh. Jerk.”
“Mmm?”
“It’s so embarrassing when you do that.”
“Stop tastin’ so good, and I’ll quit.” It smirks. “Mm-mm. It’s like— oh, wait, hey, d’you remember that really good alfredo we had in that bombed-out old—”
Steve bonks Bucky in the side of the head with the heel of his palm. “Nasty.”
“You swallow, too, baby; don’t be gettin’ all high and mighty on me.”
“Can’t let me just enjoy anything, can you? Always gotta mess with me somehow.”
“Who else is gonna?” Bucky wipes its hand dry on Steve’s chest hair just to make him shriek. “You’re so spoiled; always have been.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Mine. All mine.” Bucky adjusts their bodies to find a comfortable angle, and it rubs the head of its thick shaft against Steve’s soaked entrance, bumping up against his hardness, still so sensitive and swollen.
On reflex, Steve spreads his legs and arches his back.
“This really all it takes to get you to settle down?”
“Sh-shut up…”
“Yeah, that’s right, baby, let’s get you nice and hard again, huh?” Bucky rocks its hips, enjoying the lazy, warm grind as they slot together and slide past each other with soft, slick sounds. “And you thought I was gonna hate your new body. Just more of you to love, Stevie.”
Anybody else making this much of a fuss about Steve’s body would be firmly ordered to fuck off. When Bucky’s the one saying it, though, things are different. Bucky was there for him when he was suffering under a completely different type of insecurity— eaten alive by such a profound guilt and shame that he had to hastily turn it all outward into a ferocious anger before it burned a hole right through him. Bucky saw past the body that made Steve feel both burdensome and invisible, and now Bucky still sees that same body past this new one that has the whole world’s attention at all times.
He just hopes he can do the same for Bucky in turn.
He must be doing something right, because Bucky seems like it’s in no rush to escalate any further, perfectly content to languidly spread Steve’s wetness between them without ever quite pushing inside.
The sear of Bucky just rubbing on him while he’s still not yet done coming down from his first high makes him feel like butter pressed under the flat side of a hot knife. He forgets he should probably be saying something to encourage it; instead, he’s mostly just lying there twitching and sighing.
“You’re not getting bored, are you, dollface?”
“Ooooh… oh, Buck, I…” Steve writhes under the sensation. “Little harder…”
“Yeah? Like this?” Bucky presses its good hand down over the both of them, tightening the friction of each slide back and forth. “Needy thing. You feel all this, doll? You feel how much I got for you?”
Steve nods, sighing through a small, helpless noise. He does feel it. Bucky’s version of the serum had some unexpected upsides. He’d still rather none of that ever have happened to his Buckybear, but there’s also something to be said for making the most of a bad situation…
Bucky draws back a little too far, presses a little too hard on the upstroke, and slips inside.
Steve melts, cooing. “Oh, Buck— ohh…” He squirms. “Y-you did that on purpose…”
Bucky tries to catch its breath so it doesn’t immediately collapse into animalistic rutting. “…You were tryin’ to pull me right in, baby, not my fault you want it so bad…”
“Guilty.” Steve combs his fingers through its hair. “Want you as close as you can get.”
Bucky groans, takes a deep breath, and then growls. “Stevie, fuck, you feel like a dream. Always do.” It presses in as far as it can while it kisses all across his collarbone. “How’d I ever get so lucky?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same thing…” Steve pets all up and down Bucky’s back, skirting delicately around the scarred seam around the metal prosthesis shielding its left shoulderblade. “And asking how the hell you even fit.” He breathes quick and shallow.
“You want me to wait a minute?”
“Definitely not.” Steve grins.
“Yeah, there’s my babydoll, always ready for me…” Bucky starts to roll its hips, slowly, smoothly, like he has all the time in the world. “And I’m never gonna say no to you. Isn’t that right? You just bat those big eyelashes at me and I’m gonna do whatever you want, and you know it, huh?”
Steve sighs in utter bliss, lifting his legs to cross his ankles behind Bucky’s back and make sure it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. He’s already known how completely and conveniently Bucky will answer his beck and call— he’s known that since the days when Bucky would be alternating between working double shifts to keep him fed and taking entire days off to keep him alive— but hearing it say so out loud is absolutely perfect.
“Love you, Stevie. Love the way you wear me the hell out just tryin’ to keep up.” Bucky snuggles closer, trying to fold Steve practically in half, holding him securely around the waist, nuzzling up against his neck. “You didn’t work too hard today, did you? Think you wanna go all night?”
“You really need to ask…?”
Bucky’s laugh is airy with exertion. “My baby’s never happy unless he gets five rounds minimum.”
“I know, what a chore, right?”
“No way. Just a full-time job, is all…” It gives Steve’s earlobe a playful little bite. “You gonna let me kiss you, dollface? I know you want me to keep talkin’, but, god, I just want a little taste…”
“Mmmm…” Steve rolls his shoulders and then tilts his head back and away from Bucky. “Alright. You give me a kiss, and then you tell me how much you love me right after— deal?”
“Deal.”
When Bucky starts kissing his neck, Steve just luxuriates in each little detail of the feeling, even if he does miss that purring voice almost immediately. Its scruff is coarse but its lips are hot and silky, mouthing at him, sucking bruises into the skin that will vanish before the night is over, and its tongue lavishes each mark as if to help them heal. He wishes he could bruise for days, not just hours, flaunting Bucky’s utter devotion to all and sundry, wearing blue just to bring out the cool rich color of it.
His daydreaming is pierced by a dagger-sharp bite to the muscle of his shoulder; Bucky’s teeth are sunk in and feel almost like they’re about to break skin.
“Bucky!” Steve thumps him on the metal arm. “Okay, fuck, ow, that’s enough!”
No response.
He grabs its hair and tries to pull it off of him. “That’s not funny, you fuckin’ jerk, Jesus Christ, cut it out!”
Bucky takes its mouth away, jaw still hanging open, a thick thread of spit still joining his lips to the deep, deep emboss of his front teeth and canines into Steve’s red-blushed trapezius. He doesn’t say anything. He’s gone motionless all-over.
“Sorry for freaking out— wow, that really hurt. I thought you were gonna bite a hole right through me, Buck.”
No response.
“Sweetheart?” Steve squeezes Bucky’s waist with his broad thighs. “Buck? You okay? …Bucky?”
Bucky pulls itself upright so Steve can see its face, but the Winter Soldier is the one staring back at him— an unoccupied stare, lights left on in an empty room. Its body is stock-still.
With a gasp, Steve shivers all over, and that gets a reaction; the Winter Soldier huffs at the sudden squeeze around it, but doesn’t start moving again. Steve decides to push: “Bucky, c’mon, come back to me, snap out of it—”
That isn’t the right move. The Winter Soldier’s voice is low and forced out through its teeth. “Shut up.”
“Please, Bucky, don’t do this…” Steve reaches up to smooth back the Winter Soldier’s hair, pulling wavy strands away from its face, whispering despite his nerves. “You remember why you’re here, Buck?”
“Shut the fuck up and hold still. Hands above your head.”
When Steve ignores the order, trying to touch its neck and back with another gentle plea, the Winter Soldier slams its hips in.
In that split second of disorienting white-hot pleasure, it gets Steve pinned quick and easy: his wrists are locked above his head in its cool metal grip, and his neck is at the mercy of its good hand, Adam’s-apple bobbing against its rough-skinned palm.
“B-Bucky—” Steve is struggling to breathe steady; the Winter Soldier isn’t being careful about which hand it’s putting its body weight on. The bite on his shoulder still burns.
“Keep your mouth shut or I’ll fuckin’ strangle you, whore.” It starts thrusting again, rough, efficient, like an engine, pushing and pulling Steve into each bruising impact by the grip on his neck. Its only signs of satisfaction are hoarse grunts; its face is entirely blank, staring down at Steve, watching for signs of resistance to punish.
Without much space to speak, Steve tries to reach the Winter Soldier through the eyes, holding its gaze, wishing only to ask it to stop, to breathe, to remember.
It doesn’t hesitate; it just keeps pounding. “So you can follow orders. Good.”
Steve still has his legs wrapped around its waist, but now, he’s just trying to hold on, bracing himself, knowing full well he’s not going to be allowed to escape— or do much of anything, really— until the Winter Soldier says so.
He’s starting to lose his focus. He wants to fret over Bucky, worry it back to consciousness, run through the list of everything he could say until something sticks, but… dammit, he used to beg and plead and cry for Bucky to get this rough with him ever since they first started fooling around.
Bucky never wanted to— or if it did, it still never gave into the urge. It talked a big game, but there’s no telling how much of that was genuine and how much was just indulging Steve as much as possible to keep him turned on against the odds of his own health. Steve couldn’t even ride it without getting so starved for air that his legs would burn and give out, and Bucky never wanted to take any chances. Bucky never so much as spanked him, never dared pull his hair, never wanted to leave a single hickey, even while Steve would be wailing for more and shredding its arms and back with feisty kitten claw-marks.
It was so sensual, what Bucky would do to him. Steve never liked the kid gloves from anyone else, but from Bucky, the caution felt like reverence, like Steve wasn’t some ugly little paper scrap but rather a priceless teacup, a flawless pearl… something that inspired the delicate touch, rather than demanding it; something admired for the daintiness and not in spite of it. A rarity, not an abnormality. He never once felt unloved.
But once he cut his hair short and gave up the skirts and ribbons, the nagging dissatisfaction only grew. A broad gets the door held open for her, gets her chair pulled out for her, gets a coat laid across rainwater on the sidewalk for her so she won’t have to dirty her high-heels. You don’t swear in front of her; you don’t let her lead when you dance.
And you’re never supposed to hit a lady.
Apparently, though, Bucky was sick of always dragging Steve out of those street fights that made him feel like a big man, and it decided it didn’t want to add to seemingly infinite count of bruises all over his body. Bucky only ever wanted to be a source of comfort.
And that was the kind of comfort Bucky wanted overseas, when it couldn’t quite match Steve’s zeal-bordering-on-bloodlust and needed a warm, welcoming body to hold onto through the long, strange nights. Bucky would press itself flush to Steve, scattering the softest kisses across Steve’s face and body and hands while they made love, and Steve would pretend, for both of their sakes, that he couldn’t feel it cry.
Bucky’s return has been more of the same. After decades of nothing but deprivation and punishment, all it wants is a soft, tender heat it can savor like chicken soup as it feels itself tingling with reanimation.
When it’s at its most lucid, it’s terrified of its own relapses.
Now, with Bucky’s conscious mind somewhere miles away, there’s no finesse, no technique, just the mindless bang, bang, bang of purely automatic programming.
It’s noticing how the fight is ebbing out of Steve’s muscles. “Wish I knew you were such an easy whore in D.C.. We could’ve had a lot more fun. Bet you wouldn’t fight back if I stuck that knife handle up this pussy. Bend you over a car, see what else fits.”
Steve nods as well as he’s able with the hand still clamped around his throat. What else can he do?
“Yeah, that’s it, you know what you’re good for. Should’ve known you’d let me do whatever the fuck I want to you. Just show you my face and watch you give up. You can look at my face all you want. See whoever you wanna see. Doesn’t matter. Not gonna change anything.”
He feels tears welling up in his eyes, and the force of the Winter Soldier’s thrusts threaten to shake them loose.
“You gonna cry? Huh? Gonna cry for Bucky? Do it. Cry those big blue eyes out, he ain’t comin’ back. Just me and you now.”
Steve can’t get enough breath in to really sob. This is all so, so wrong. This wasn’t how tonight was supposed to go. Bucky is completely out of its mind— and Steve feels sick to his stomach with how desperately aroused he’s feeling, how deeply his body is betraying him, and how obvious that betrayal is to Bucky. He knows Bucky is picking up on every little signal. It’s only a matter of time before his brain catches up with the rest of himself, and he desperately hopes Bucky gets its own brain back before that happens.
The Winter Soldier hilts itself without warning, its head dropping with a long, long moan. It grinds in deeply and shamelessly.
Steve resists the need to match the moan, dazed by the sudden extra stretch. Pulses of come start to leak out.
“That’s it, that’s it— unh, take it all, got so much for you…” Its grip falters, just a little, still coming, until, at last, it’s spent. It huffs.
Steve gets his hopes up to see kind, familiar, glittering eyes when it looks back up, but he’s not so lucky, and his blood runs cold again at the sight of that icy stare.
It doesn’t say anything; it just leans back and takes its hands away, still buried deep inside.
“Bucky—”
With its right hand, the Winter Soldier backhands him across the face. “Quit fuckin’ sayin’ that.”
Steve tries to blink away the whiplash. “I— I…”
Another slap, this time with a loud crack of its palm against his cheekbone. “You what? You like gettin’ hit? Because that’s what it looks like. If you didn’t, you’d have learned already.”
Steve’s ears ring a little, and before he opens his eyes, the Winter Soldier is crouching over him and fucking him again, its hair swaying with the steady motion.
“Fuckin’ whore, can’t stop throwin’ yourself at me and makin’ me wanna hurt you.” Its right hand gives Steve’s throat another squeeze as a warning— or a promise— then grips his jaw hard enough to sting, pushing his lips out into a humiliating pout. “You know what this smart mouth is good for? Suckin’ cock. Nothin’ else.”
Steve doesn’t try to say anything; he just whines.
“That’s right.” The Winter Soldier lets go of his face with a sharp jerk to his left. “Maybe when I get bored of this hole, I’ll fuck that one next. Can’t waste your breath yappin’ about Bucky-this-Bucky-that with my cock down your throat. You think it’ll all fit? Huh? I’ll make it fit, make you gag on it.”
Steve is keenly aware of the come dripping out of him with every sharp smack of the Winter Soldier's solid hips against his own. His eyelids drop while his eyes roll back in his head.
“All that come in you makin’ you stupid? The fuck are you thinkin’ about with that face? …Answer me, whore.”
“Y-you…”
“Damn right. Finally shut you up about Bucky. All it took was puttin’ a load in you. How about I give you another one? You want that?”
“Yes, yes, please—”
“Yeah? Still want more? Fuck, that’s good. I should just keep you full of it twenty-four-seven, huh? Make sure you don’t get any dumb ideas about bein’ a hero. So goddamn annoying how you think you’re better than that. Gettin’ in my way and whinin’ at me. Askin’ me nicely. Fuck you. I don’t do ‘nice.’ Should’a fucked you right there by the river. Got you all soft and quiet, would’a been easy, the way you were lookin’ at me and beggin’ me to kill you. Spank your ass right where I shot you. Pound that pretty face into the mud.”
Steve has to live with the knowledge that Bucky could kill him if it wanted to, and just thinking about that again makes him lightheaded. He can’t help it; he loves picking fights, even— no, especially if he doesn't have a chance in hell of winning, because that’s what makes it so fun to fight back. He loves being live bait.
The closest he ever got with the old Bucky was when he'd get dragged inside by his shirt collar and quickly made love to while he was still sucking blood from his split lip and bit tongue. Bucky never hurt him, never even wanted to, and mostly just wanted to say you're breakin' my heart when you act like this, but the bruised bones still hurt like hell when Bucky would press on them without knowing, and Steve would moan like an idiot fantasizing about Bucky really truly taking out all that anger on him instead of always getting so sappy and weepy on him.
“Haah—” Steve has trouble getting his voice to work— “You really… like me that much?” He sounds wobbly from the way he's being jostled back and forth.
“I don’t like you. I like the way you take cock.”
“A-anything for you, sweetheart…”
“Damn right, anything for me. Body like this, you oughta be a pet. Wanna blast a guy’s head off, come back to base, fuck my big dumb pet and make ‘im cry on it. Livestock, that’s what you fuckin’ are. Show you how it feels bein’ an animal. See how you like it. I know what they do to livestock. Learned all the fun toys. Wanna show you. Strap you down. Shock you. Brand you. Stick a tag on your ear so everyone knows who owns you.”
In this moment, Steve decides that he hates himself, because he can feel the way his brain-boiling arousal is completely eating away at the horrible guilt he knows he should be feeling instead. Bucky doesn’t want to be doing this. Bucky isn’t even at the wheel right now. Bucky would never, ever, ever want to slap him around and fuck him like it hates him. But it’s happening, and it’s everything Steve’s ever wanted from the guy who’s been driving him crazy his whole life, so he reaches down to stroke himself frantically, tipping his head back while his eyes fall shut.
He scarcely even falters when he gets struck across the face again.
“Fuck, love the way you get tighter when I hit you.” The Winter Soldier goes for a backhand leading into another slap and huffs through its nose like a boar. Its eyes flick downward, checking what else it can hurt from this angle.
Steve arches his back when his pecs get squeezed, letting broad mismatched fingertips dig deep into the muscle, biting his lip when he feels them start to pinch and twist and pull instead. “Harder, Buck, god, yes, please, more—” He cuts himself off with a squeal at a particularly cruel tweak.
“’Course you want more— get that fuckin’ hand out of the way and I’ll give you more.” It rips his hand away so it can jerk him brutally, making him scream, trying to slam his legs closed but helpless to defend against it. “Give it up, Captain.” It sneers down at him with a look of utter revulsion. “Admit defeat to the Winter Soldier.”
Steve feels his legs start to tense up with tremors— the riptide of it gives him vertigo right before the wave breaks— and he’s coming, hard, spasming from the inside-out all up and down the Winter Soldier’s full length as he’s pounded ruthlessly through his orgasm.
It really likes the way he feels when he’s coming, and the way it moans hasn’t changed in decades.
Almost panicking at the intensity, he cries out with each successive pulse of pleasure until he’s left shaking from the shock. His wetness is trickling out, mixed with the Winter Soldier’s seed.
The quaky, woozy feeling hasn’t quite faded before the Winter Soldier is coming again, too, leaning back, holding him by the hips, lifting him up off the bed, forcing itself inside down to the base, shutting its eyes, relishing the way Steve is still squeezing and fluttering around him.
Hypersensitive, Steve can feel each throb of it in his core. He shivers, panting, his heart still racing.
Bucky didn’t want this.
Bucky didn’t want any of this.
Bucky wanted a romantic night in. It wanted the scented candles, and the slow jams on crackling vinyl, and the deep sapphire silk sheets that cost more than months’ worth of rent for their old apartment. It wanted to cook a steak dinner and see Steve happily clean his plate and ask for seconds, instead of watching him pull a face halfway through and say it’s good, Buck, really, I’m just not feeling too hot, and then helping him into bed early so he could try and sleep off whatever he started coming down with. It wanted to spoil Steve until they could both forget they’d ever fought.
Bucky blinks.
Steve is lying limp below it, defeated, breathing deep, eyes shut. He flinches a little when he feels Bucky pull out and back away, brow taut, jaw clenched.
Only moments ago— how long?— Steve was holding it close, squirming in delight, absolutely over the moon just to hear it talk to him.
Now he’s… like this. And Bucky did that to him.
It doesn’t know what to do now. It doesn’t even remember what it was saying to make him light up the way he did.
It looks around the room, trying to stay grounded, to remember where it is and why. This is its room it shares with Steve; this is their California-king bed, but these are nicer sheets than usual. Bucky remembers seeing them in a linen closet more than once, so there must be a reason they’re here now. The overhead light is off, but the room has a comforting glow to it— there’s candles all over, some tall and skinny on antique silver stands, some in stout glass jars with images of cinnamon sticks or log cabins on the labels. On a bookshelf, at about chest-height, sits their portable record player, which is set to a pleasantly low volume. Bucky parses the lyrics it’s been a long, long time.
Steve has calmed down a little, looking looser, more… exhausted. His voice is shaky. “Bucky?”
Bucky looks back down with pure fear in its wide eyes.
“Oh, Bucky, you’re back…” Steve breathes deep. He looks like he’s trying to smile. “Come here.” He holds out his hands. “Let me hold you. You’re okay.”
Bucky wants to leave the room entirely, find a dark and quiet corner somewhere, and curl up to sleep, but it knows Steve knows it wants to do that— it can see the recognition in his face as soon as the thought crosses its mind— and it knows Steve really, really wants to hold it, and it also still knows that Steve gets whatever he wants. It crawls close again, slowly settling down, laying on top of him, framed by his spread legs, just like they were before… something happened.
Steve's voice is almost perfectly steady now… Almost. “There’s my best guy. Only one like it in the whole world.”
Bucky doesn’t have the guts to look at Steve’s face anymore— not since it noticed the bright red marks where it must have struck him— so it presses its sweat-damp forehead to Steve’s neck, just under his ear, and, after another pause, offers an apologetic little kiss to the pulse in his throat.
“You’re okay, sweetheart. I’m fine. You didn’t hurt me.”
It doesn’t believe that. It doesn’t trust itself. It knows it hurts Steve every time this happens. Something’s wrong with it; something takes over. It wants to ask what happened, why they’re here, why they lit so many candles and put on this nice music and everything, but it can only repeat the questions in its head while its mouth feels wired firmly shut.
“You done for the night, Buck?”
Bucky nods against Steve’s skin. It can barely even remember what they were doing, but it knows that whatever that was, it’s done.
“I need to get up and put out all the candles.”
Bucky squeezes him tighter.
“Okay, okay, I’ll wait a minute first.”
It waits another couple seconds before easing back up— and then it feels a blanket being drawn up over them both, sealing the heat in. Gradually, cell by cell, the warmth bleeds through down to Bucky’s bones. Soaking up the feeling, it thinks of a million things it wants to say to Steve: promises, apologies, thanks, praises, and anything else that might get a smile and a laugh out of him. It dutifully files each one away in its mind to tell him tomorrow.
“You wanna have some fun in the morning, maybe? No pressure. Could be nice.”
Bucky shakes its head.
“…Pancakes for breakfast?”
A pause, then a nod.
“Alright. Pancakes for breakfast, and you can keep your pajamas on. I’ll bring you breakfast in bed. You just gotta let me blow out these candles, okay?”
Bucky lets Steve slide out from under its body and watches, patiently, like a dog by the front door, as he makes his way around the room, precisely blowing out each taper and jar with one breath after another, until everything goes dark.
Then Steve comes back, and Bucky dreams of Brooklyn.