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The depths of the Brighton Dam are dingy and loud, but clean enough. There must be some employees that work here, cleaning the damn breakroom and bathroom and keeping tabs of the water audibly rushing through the culvert somewhere to Steve’s 5-o’clock, when they’re not being evicted so that Fury can have his spinal column un-lacerated or whatever. Or maybe the tube lights, grimy with bugs that have crawled inside and died, are too dim to show up any filth on the surfaces, and the smell of fake-citrusy bleach, and the acrid smoke clinging to Steve’s hair, is overpowering anything else.
Hell, it’s not like he hasn’t washed up in worse places. It’s not like he hasn’t searched for Bucky in worse places. Fuck. He rips his shirt over his head and imagines he’s drowning it, as he sloshes it in the steel sink, shoving it under the surface again and again, and distantly reminding himself that he’ll rip it, if he wrings it out too hard - that he doesn’t know his own strength. He releases his clenching hands with difficulty, stinging with the exertion, and pulls off his socks, too, and tells himself to breathe. Breathe. Feel the cold floor under your bare feet. Do not look at your face in the mirror. You will not like what you see.
Do not look at Bucky’s dogtags, hanging limply around your neck - the one object liberated from the Smithsonian - cold metal against your skin.
It’s no wonder that Bucky didn’t recognise him, isn’t it? He hardly recognises himself. His hands are too big, gripping the sides of the sink, his veins almost greenish under the harsh light. And if anyone was an expert on his hands, it’d be Bucky - who’d sit and watch him draw when he’d had nothing better to do, or sew, or chop limp vegetables, or trace his hands over Bucky’s shoulders, his chest, through the hair on his thighs- would watch Steve grasp at him, and laugh at his desperation, and guide Steve’s hands downwards, down-
“Fuck,” he breathes into the echoey breezeblock room. The extractor fan keeps up its stumbling rhythm, uncaring. Bucky’s absence had been a hollow in his chest, but now it’s filled with anger, righteous and burning. He should’ve recognised him sooner - how they fought in lockstep, how Bucky knew exactly where to bear down on him with that knife, how Steve would roll away and how to pin him - goddamnit, he realises with a swoop, all the fear has washed away and now his perverted body has responded by getting hard, only imagining the knife played fluidly in Bucky’s- no, the Soldier’s- hand, how he stalked down the avenue in those stomping boots with blazing eyes - how he knocked Steve onto his knees-
Steve keens against the sink with a wounded noise, blood rushing in his ears. Fuck, fuck. His body doesn’t know whether to cry or to pitch stiffer, maybe both, and it’s the right time for neither, with how Wilson’s gonna want a turn in here after him - he unclenches a hand from the sink and grabs at his cock, just to squeeze it, just to tell it, fucking stop, you’re a freak and an invert, and it makes him sob but not with the desire to let go. He thinks, distantly, that the best way out is always through, that he’ll come faster than he can calm himself down - that at least he could feel something good, something that grounds him, amongst all the bad. That, hell, he’ll need any help he can get, if he wants to get any sleep later.
So he resolves to grit his teeth and do it, to pull his belt open with a clink against the steel basin and push down his fly enough to grab at his cock, and pretend that the tears welling in his eyes are from the roughness of his hand and nothing else - to think about beautiful women as he works himself harder, about Peggy, and about Natasha, and how steadily they handle their guns, and how their thighs would feel around his head- how they could choke- how the Soldier’s metal fingers were cold and clammy wrapped around his windpipe- no, how- how Peggy looked in that red dress, wrapped up like a present, the promise of her waist and hips- how the Soldier was pulled taut with straps and holsters and pockets, standing tall wearing that uniform like a corset, keeping him upright and proud, and how long it would take to unstrap him from it all, if he wasn’t too busy trying to rip Steve apart, trying to get his hands on Steve’s neck, trying to pin him down with all his weight, the weight of the arm, too, whirring with power and flexing like muscle but far more deadly, all his focus on Steve, Steve-
Steve jostles the dogtags from their cold spot against his chest and shoves them into his mouth, tonguing at the taste of metal and sweat - is that what the Arm would taste like, if the Soldier pressed down at his tongue? If Steve fell to his knees at Bucky’s feet, and begged for forgiveness, and Bucky laughed, and tested his fealty, pressed his fingers into Steve’s mouth and pushed down his tongue until his jaw lolled open, and Bucky saw how pliant Steve could be for him, saw Steve’s devotion - this is how Bucky smelled, metal and sweat, how his fingers tasted even when they were flesh and blood, when they were behind enemy lines and Bucky could field strip his Garand in a second - how it smelled when its barrel overheated and he had to wait for it to cool so he could shoot a Nazi right between the eyes - Steve has to remind himself not to clench his jaw, not to bite down on the metal in his mouth, because his teeth would go right through, bend them or tear them - he could ruin them so, so easily.
He presses his forehead against the cold, broken mirror, painfully reminded of his own body. He has to slow down how he’s stripping his cock, wrist aching, because he’s not going to be able to force an orgasm out of himself like this, dry but somehow too much when he thumbs at the underside of his head. He needs more, he needs- he remembers the lump in his pants pocket, the crumpled pack of Camels whose cardboard is now limp from Steve’s sweat - a purchase made with half-forgotten instincts (the cashier had been surprised to see Captain America buy tobacco - Steve even more so, when he realised he’d asked). He fishes them out furtively, like he’ll get caught, as if this is more embarrassing than the hardness of his cock jutting out of his fly, against the bite of his zipper - a couple of them are broken, but he finds one that’s good enough, and spits the metal from his mouth to replace it with a smoke between his lips.
He sinks down against the wall, next to the choppy extractor fan he hopes’ll be sufficient, and lights the smoke with his matchbook. Fuck, that smell - forget the smell of metal, this was the real smell of Bucky, or close enough - after they fucked, Bucky liked to clamber onto the fire escape to light up, an indulgence on top of an indulgence, enough away from Steve to not upset his lungs but close enough that Steve could watch his shoulders expand through his shirt as he breathed, and it was such a habit that it conditioned Bucky to get randy whenever he smoked, half the time making him climb back inside, still with half a stub, to get his hands back on Steve’s thighs - if Steve didn’t beat him to it, climbing onto that rusting metal to wile away the time in company, asthma be damned, and smell the smoke clinging to Bucky’s skin.
Well, there’s no asthma to contend with now, even if his chest is tight, his breaths hitching and unsteady. He lets spit dribble into his palm after he exhales, and then brings the smoke back up to dangle from his lips, both his hands now free to shove his pants away further, to bring his right hand back to his dick and his left hand further, pushing up his balls with the heel of his palm to get at his hole - the wetness of spit is hardly good lube, but, hell, he breathes through the rough stretch anyway, his bare toes writhing against the cold floor, and he squeezes at the head of his cock. He pushes himself further down the wall, trying to rearrange himself to be comfy with the crick in his neck from trying to breathe his plumes of smoke towards the fan, shimmying his sweaty skin against the lumpy paint of the wall and trying not to kick out the pipes under the sink with an errant wriggle- his finger pushes deeper inside himself by accident, and he swears, and-
Fuck, he’s fucking burning himself, he’s dropped the motherfucking smoke on his chest, oh fuck, his stomach swoops, the pain transfiguring into desperation - the Soldier would put his cigarette out on him, he thinks (he pushes his dry finger deeper, and pulls at his cock) - the Soldier would see Steve curled up, jacking off just imagining him, and be disgusted, disgusted that Steve thinks he has any right to Bucky’s body any more, any right to defile him in his imagination, and he’d put his cigarette out on him - fuck, the pain is sharp- the burn- the ash-
The dam breaks, and it breaks violently, Steve wresting his eyes open to watch, half amazed, half nauseated, as he blows his load all over his fingers, as his hole clenches down on himself - he tries not to breathe too deeply into the sharp burn on his chest, so the stub doesn’t fall out the divot of his sternum, where it still lazily trails smoke and singes into his skin.
Motherfuck. He pulls his hands away from himself, fucking degenerate, and picks up the stub. There’s no ashtray - why would there be? - so he grinds it out on the side of the sink and watches as a flicker of ash falls into the basin with his wet clothes - spends too long watching that, and lets the jism drip off his hand too.
He forgets not to look into the mirror. The burn is round, red and blistering, right in the centre of his chest, where his white star should go. Oh yeah, white star - purity and innocence. High ideals. Fucking hell. The pain in his chest is half burn, half the gaping wound of his heart, but the burn’s the only part he can see, the only part he can touch, already itchy with healing - he presses his fingers against the blister, and it’s sharp, but real. He can control this part. He can’t touch the pain beneath.
When he’s finished running his shirt, socks and briefs under the juddering handdryer, the burn is already gone, and he’s long overdue a talk on strategy for tomorrow.