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It don’t feel wrong, holding Steve like this. His tiny body fits in Bucky’s arms just right, better than any of the fast dames drenched in drugstore perfume he dances with when the lights are blaring and Brooklyn’s pressing its knees and elbows into every part of him. It’s quiet here. Well, mostly. The city never shuts its gob. Past midnight, and it’s still complaining to anybody who’ll listen. Bucky don’t listen. He don’t pay it any mind at all. He’s busy. He’s completely caught up in this tangle of legs and arms, some strapping, some skinny. They don’t feel no different from each other in the dark.
“My feet too cold, Buck?” Steve says, his voice hoarse and a bit wheezy, like his lungs are a pair of bellows with a hole or three punched in them. “I can move ’em. S’no problem.”
Bucky traps Steve’s ankles between his shins, pinning the smaller man’s feet with his own. “Nah. You’re good. You’re. They’re perfect, Stevie. You know I get too hot. You’re like an air-conditioning unit that don’t cost a dime.”
“I cost you plennya dimes.”
“Shut up, willya? You know I don’t like you talkin’ like that.”
Steve falls silent, stiffening. Bucky don’t need to see his face to know it’s come over stubborn, like a goat he saw once at the zoo. He didn’t never see nothing more stubborn than that stupid goat ’til that day in an alley behind the Jewish deli, the bitter-salt reek of full-sour pickles making his mouth water, not a red cent to his name. It was the first time out of hundreds Bucky watched scrawny little Steve Rogers get up from his skinned knees, surrounded on all sides by boys miles bigger’n him, blood streaming down his chin and dripping onto the wilted collar of his shirt. Plop. Plop. Bloom. His weak jaw was like iron. Before that day, Bucky didn’t know something could be two things at once like that. That’s the kind of stubborn comes over Steve when money-talk flares up. Bucky can feel it, rigid as a wall building itself brick by brick between them.
Bucky holds his breath, waiting for Steve to decide how sore he is. He don’t let go. Letting go is giving in. He tightens his arms, pulling his friend closer, tucking his sweet, small ass more firmly into the curve of his groin. Praying he don’t get a goddamn hard-on. Not until Steve’s at least fallen asleep, and won’t know no different. Steve sighs, relaxing, going boneless in Bucky’s arms. He presses himself back into Bucky’s damp chest. “You’re a furnace, Buck,” he says appreciatively, letting the tension drop like a penny down a well.
“I don’t cost you a dime, neither.” Bucky jokes, tickling Steve gently, his rough fingers slotting between his ribs like every part of him has a place to live somewhere on Steve’s body, no matter how big he is, compared. Steve’s like another part of him that got tore off by mistake. Made into a whole other person he cares about so much more than the rest of him. Steve got all the best parts of them both. That’s why he’s so small. Bucky didn’t have all that much to contribute.
“You don’t cost me a thing, Bucky.” Steve murmurs. His body droops, slackening into Bucky’s embrace. He drops off to sleep, his breath rumbling wet in his chest, like a brand-clean sheet snapping in the breeze. Steve’s pulse is an erratic flutter Bucky don’t like much. Bucky tracks it, his calloused fingers pressed into the soft inside of his friend’s wrist. It don’t feel so good. It don’t feel right. Nothing like the vigorous clamour of Bucky’s heart slamming into his ribs. It ain’t fair. But it’s the way it is. And it’s got to be good enough. It does the job, and that’s better than nothing by a long shot.
Bucky waits ’til he’s really gone deep before pressing his face into Steve’s hair. He smells so good, like dust and skin, a hint of cheap bar soap they take turns using to wash their hair in the sink once a week. Steve always smells so good, never mind they don’t have no place to bath proper. Bucky always smells like a goddamn armpit that’s spent the day chain-smoking, but Steve don’t mind. He don’t even seem to notice. Bucky tries to keep clean for him. For this. But it ain’t always easy. He works like a mule all day, sweating his guts out down on the docks, and the landlady’s so stingy with water you’d think there was a drought. Water’s the one thing they got plenty of. They should get to waste it like kings. They sure as shit don’t got nothing else to splurge. Nothing but moments like this one. The two of them clinging together in the dark away from where anybody can see them, talking ’til they can’t think of nothing more to say. But even their silence is comfortable. They don’t need no words. They don’t need nothing but each other, this bed, that skyline.
Bucky can feel the knobs of Steve’s spine against his mouth. The back of the guy’s neck is like an abacus. He presses his lips to each bead in turn, counting them as he goes. Counting all the delicate things inside of Steve he can only touch from the outside. And he’s grateful. So goddamn grateful. This is his. This moment. Brooklyn can go to hell. He’s got the best goddamn part of her right here in his arms. Brooklyn’s sweetest son, all for him. All for Bucky Barnes.
It don’t take long until he’s got a hard-on the size of a barge. He tries shifting it away from Steve, trapping it between his thighs or something, but the smaller man makes a sound like an anxious puppy, and presses back into him. Bucky clenches his eyes shut. Tries like hell not to move. His swollen cock nudges Steve’s sweet little ass like it’s fumbling with the handle of the door leading home. Bucky should move. He should turn over, turn away. Leave Steve alone. But then he’ll get cold. When he gets cold, he gets sick. Bucky can’t let that happen. Not on his watch. And besides. What’s a little hard-on between friends? He reaches around to arrange Steve more comfortably against him. The dumb kid loves to tie himself in knots in the night. Bucky accidentally brushes the heel of his palm over the front of Steve’s shorts. He startles back, and then a slow grin spreads across his face ’til it’s damn near split in two.
The crazy kid’s sporting wood, too. And he ain’t as small as he looks. Not by a long shot. His shorts are tented like Old Glory draped over a pole. Bucky settles back into his half of the pillow. Smiles himself into a sweeter sleep than any he can remember in his whole stupid life. If he never wakes up again, it’ll be too soon.
Down at the docks, the boys’re talking big about women, as if the heft and swing of the crates ain’t quite enough to force the breath from their lungs in the afternoon heat. Another day, another scorcher. Bucky’s sweating like a bastard, stripped down to his singlet. The sun flays the skin from his neck and shoulders. He’s gonna be as dark as Whitey by the end of the summer. He don’t mind. He kind of likes it. Dark skin looks so nice in the shimmering heat. White folks always look either parboiled or kinda sickly. Except for Steve. Even when he’s sick, Steve’s skin always looks gorgeous, all pink and gold. Bucky’s tan is legendary, on account of how one of his grandpas was from Sicily.
“I know you love the ladies and the ladies love you, Barnes,” Smitty says to him, his neck straining like a girder as he muscles a crate onto his shoulder. “But ain’t you got, like, a regular girl? A dame you don’t try to mess around with too much in case you might feel like marrying her good and proper someday?”
“Sure, I got a sweetheart,” Bucky says without thinking.
The men make cat-calls and wolf-whistles that wrestle together in the bright, stinking air. Bucky grins, ducking his head. Grabs another crate and passes it on down the line.
“What’s she like, this girl you got, Buck?” Whitey says, taking off his cap to swipe the back of his arm across his forehead. “She a white girl, or do you like ’em a little more exotic? Cos if it don’t work out, I got this sister. She’s real sweet. Needs a decent man around for once.”
“I appreciate that, Whitey. I really do. But me and my sweetheart, we’re for keeps. And yeah, she’s white, but I don’t give a goddamn. She could be purple for all I care.”
“Wow, imagine. A purple dame!” Frankie laughs. “I’d pay to see that. I sure would.”
“Shut it,” Whitey says. “Barnes was tellin’ us what his girl looks like. Go ahead Barnes. Paint us a pretty picture with that silver devil-tongue you got in that yap of yours.”
Bucky stops to lean against the stack of wooden boxes he’s working on, rivulets of sweat streaming down his neck. He stands still for long, he’ll drown, but he don’t much care. He needs a breather. He’s been smoking too much. Steve don’t like it, but Bucky only does it when he ain't around, or out on the fire escape and Steve's still inside. How can he explain to Steve how when they’re together he just needs something he can do with his mouth?
“Well, she’s small,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Real dainty, and real pretty. Blond hair, soft as sunshine that ain’t hot enough to burn. Skin like a peach—you know what I mean. Her eyes are like, Christ. I don’t know. Sapphires, or somethin’. Her smile could kill you dead, only she don’t use it much. It just about drives me crazy, sometimes, watchin’ her eat. The way she licks crumbs off her lips real delicate-like. She’s got a mouth like a goddamn rose, fellas, I’m tellin’ you.”
The men groan, rolling their eyes, as if they can picture every detail, and it’s driving them all crazy. Smitty busts out laughing, eyes darting back and forth between the other boys. Like he don’t quite know what to do with himself. “Listen to Barnes. Sounds like a poet. You a poet, Barnes? I thought only fairies’re poets. Ain’t that right, Walt?”
“Sure is.”
Whitey sucks his teeth, shaking his head. He spits. “Man, you fellas don’t know nothin’. It’s the poets get all the classy dames. Your girl classy, Barnes?”
Bucky don’t answer right away. Pretends to be exerting himself too hard to get his breath. He knows it’s wrong, talking about Steve like that, like he’s some sweet little skirt he’s chasing. But if he don’t talk about him to somebody, somehow, he’ll burst. He’ll just drop down dead with his heart spattered all over the inside of his ribs, one more dockworker croaking on the job like it’s the heat that done it and not the kind of love don’t nobody make movies out of.
“Yeah,” he says finally, grinning like he’s just won first prize at the raffle. It’s too late to quit now. He might as well enjoy himself. “My girl’s the classiest dame I ever knew. Always wanderin' around in museums, or sittin’ in the library with her nose in a book bigger’n she is. Draws pictures, too. Prettiest goddamn pictures you ever seen in your life. A regular Rembrandt. Scrappy, too. She'll clock you one, you get too fresh.”
“Who the hell’s Rembrandt?” Frankie says, digging a smoke out of his back pocket and straightening it out, losing half its guts in the process. He lights it anyway, sucking deep on nothing much.
Bucky shrugs. “Some old guy who used to go around drawin' all the time. My sweetheart read it in a book somewheres and told me about it.”
“She got a name, this girl of yours?” Smitty says, his face red and raw as a pork-chop.
“Sure. Sure she does. But I ain’t tellin’ you.”
The giant man looks crestfallen. “Aw, why not? Don’t be like that, Buck.”
“No way. I don’t want you sorry bunch’ve chumps gettin’ any bright ideas. My girl's only got eyes for me, and I don’t want nobody else eyein’ her up like she’s a Sunday roast with all trimmin's.”
Whitey laughs, his teeth like polished piano-keys. “White boy, look atchoo. You ain’t never had a Sunday roast with all the trimmin's in your life.”
“I don’t need to, see? I’ve got my girl. She’s all the trimmin's I’ll ever need.”
Frankie throws an arm over Bucky’s shoulder. “That your way of lettin' us know you’re givin’ her the time, pal?”
Bucky elbows him away. “Nah. She ain’t like that. She’s a good girl. The best. She don’t need me all over her like some kinda randy mutt, messin’ up her clothes and makin’ her uncomfortable. I told you: she’s classy.”
“Then what’s she doin’ with you, Barnes?” Whitey chimes in. “I mean, I know you’re a handsome bastard, but you’re dumb as a post. It don’t make no sense, you gettin’ a girl like that.”
“You got me, Whitey, but I ain’t complainin’, and I sure as shit ain’t askin’ any dumb questions might give her ideas. Hell, would you?”
The men laugh, shoving him as the whistle blows. They drop their crates where they stand. Chum around together as they go to grab their lunch-pails. Bread-heels and government cheese all round. Frankie has a wilted onion he shares around, each of them taking a bite ’til it’s gone. Bucky passes around his last cigarette. They smoke it down to nothing in no time. Even Steven.
In the bottom of his pail, Bucky finds a single, perfect cherry tomato. A gift from Steve, who always packs his lunch, making something out of the nothing in their cupboards. He holds it in the palm of his hand, hiding it from the other fellas for as long as he can before popping it, warm as summer skin, into his mouth. He cracks it in his teeth. The guts spurt over the back of his tongue and he swallows it without chewing. Swallows every drop and it makes him feel tipsy. Like as if happiness can be contained in something so perfect and small nobody else in the world can see it but him.
That night, he walks home over the bridge, the sweat cooling on him until he’s still sticky, but dry as he ever gets in August. When he turns down the alley behind their building, he looks up at the fire escape. A single light burns in their room. Steve’s leaning out of the window, a silhouette against the soft light that ain’t much more than a waver of brightness that gets swallowed up too easy by the surrounding gloom. Bucky stands there beneath him. Waits as long as it takes for Steve to look down and smile, waving Bucky up with one long, bony hand. If he had to, Bucky’d wait all goddamn night for that gesture. All goddamn year. But he never has to. He never has to wait long at all.
Nights they go out on the town, Bucky dances with all the dumb dames who don’t want Steve Rogers. Who want him instead. Dames with their heads screwed on backwards. He smiles at them, leaning in. Watches them lose their brains under soft dancehall light. Their painted-on lips ain’t half as pretty as Steve’s, bloodied and bitten. Soft and firm all at once. Split open against his teeth too many times to remember. Bucky pressing a cold rag against the swelling, the hiss and wince that makes Steve look prettier still. Not like a dame. Pretty like a man. The only real man Bucky’s ever known. He leans in. Kisses dame after dame. Pretends he’s kissing Steve—but they don’t taste right. They never taste right. They taste like cigarettes-and-candy when it’s spearmint-and-cream he’s craving, toothpaste and warm milk before bedtime.
He presses them up against a wall, one by one. Has their panties down before they know what hit ’em. Sinks into that terrifying wetness that don’t know the shape of him the way he wants it to. They moan against his neck as he pumps into them, snapping his hips. He don’t come. He don’t never come. It wouldn’t be right. He pulls out before it can take him down, the pleasure like a bomb going off in the base of his spine. It don’t belong to them. And it don’t belong to him, neither. Not now. He’s saving it. Saving it up for later. For when he’s alone, out on the fire escape, Steve curled up on the bare, stained mattress of their bed. It’s the only time he lets himself have this. The muffled cry, the ache in his wrist. The spurt of gleaming fluid arcing out over the alley. Spattering on the pavement below to mix in with the rest of the day’s animal leavings. Wasted on the ground and not in some dame who don’t know no better than to let a man like him use her body to pretend his life could ever be something different than this.
“Why don’t you ever go out with the same dame twice?” Steve asks, his face getting that pinched look, like when Bucky’s being a bastard again and Steve’s sick of trying to change him, but ain’t ready to give in.
Bucky shrugs. “Boredom, I guess. I like to leave ’em wantin’ more, and they always seem to want it more than I do.”
Steve blushes. Looking away. Steels himself and looks back. “What, you’re sayin’ girls like. It. More’n you do? I thought. I thought you loved it. What they let you do to them.”
Bucky stares at him, cigarette dangling, unlit, from the corner of his mouth that’s gone dry all of a sudden. Him and Steve, they don’t talk this way. They don’t talk about sex stuff. Even though it’s always there, unspoken between them. “I do. I do love it. Course I do, dummy. What’re you talkin’ about?”
Steve’s frown deepens into something else. Bucky can’t quite catch it. “Then why do you always look so sad, after?”
“Pal, you’re drunk.”
Steve shakes his head. “I’m not. And neither are you. And that’s why you ain’t got a girl on your arm tonight.”
Bucky’s heart drops into his stomach. He feels all over queasy, like he’s gonna barf. He clenches his eyes shut, and his teeth even tighter. “Steve. Just. Do me a favour, and shut up. Just. Shut up. Okay?”
“Sure,” Steve says, turning away. “Whatever you say, Buck.”
He walks away faster than he should. He’ll be wheezing by the time he rounds the corner. Bucky lets him go for a minute. Then another. He peels himself away from the wall he’s been leaning against and saunters after him. It won’t take long to catch him up, and when he does, Steve won’t be sore no more. He’ll just be glad as hell to see him. And Bucky’ll grin and make a joke, and everything’ll be just dandy. They’ll go home, get cleaned up, fall into bed. Steve’ll let Bucky hold him. And everything’ll be A-Okay.
Bucky ships out at dawn, and Steve ain’t talking to him much. Just a few monosyllables here and there, when he can’t avoid it the way he’s avoiding looking into Bucky’s eyes. It kills Bucky to see Steve like this, like all the light’s gone out of him and his windows are boarded up. Like nothing won't never live in him again. Bucky won’t apologize. He can’t. He’s only doing what Steve can’t. Just like always. It’s what he’s for. It’s the only thing he’s good at. Being whatever Steve needs to be but can’t. Like a champion in some old book about knights and kings.
He reaches out. Grabs Steve by the shoulders. Shakes him once, twice—none too gentle. Steve grits his teeth. Doesn’t resist. Clenches his eyes shut like fists. His mouth ain’t soft no more. It’s like a cut in his face that ain’t been stitched up right. “Steve,” Bucky says, getting right into his face so their breath mingles together hot and stale. “Quit it, willya? I’m goin’ away tomorrow. So far away I can’t hardly even feature it. I never wanted to leave New York and now I’ve gotta. I can’t go with you hatin’ the sight of me.”
Steve sighs, but he don’t open his eyes. His voice is strangled, his breath laboured. His hands are fists at his sides, the fingernails carving out bloody gashes. He’s going to serve himself up one hell of an attack if he ain’t careful. “It ain’t you I hate, Buck. It’s me. It’s me I hate. I know you’re only goin’ because I can’t. Don’t try to say it ain’t like that. You can’t lie to me, Bucky."
Oh, can’t I, pal? He gives Steve another shake. “Don’t say that. Don’t you never say that. You can’t say you hate yourself. Not to me. Not when I—” He bites off the words and swallows them down, his voice a strangled thing clawing to get out.
Steve’s eyes fly open, and he looks at Bucky for the first time in hours. His mouth softens, falls open, a shocked O. Bucky fastens his lips to that mouth. That perfect fucking mouth. It’s like a lock to a door he’s been too afraid to open. Finds out he had the key the whole damn time. Hell, maybe didn't even need one. “Steve,” he murmurs. “Steve.” He nuzzles closer, kissing the entire surface of Steve’s mouth, the gentle scrape of his whiskers sending a thrill down Bucky’s spine and straight to his cock.
Steve don’t fight him, but he don’t kiss back, neither. He’s too shocked to move. Bucky skims his hands over the modest curve of his ass, pulling him closer. Steve’s hands slide reflexively up the sleeves of Bucky’s uniform. Clasp him round the neck, knocking his hat askew. Bucky tears it off, tossing it away. “Steve,” he says, tilting his friend’s chin to force eye-contact. “Kiss me, pal. I need you to, please. Kiss me like I’m your best guy and you’re sendin’ me off to war.”
Steve’s face crumples then. He lets out a sob, digging his fingers into the back of Bucky’s neck and dragging his face down to his mouth. Bucky traces the seam of Steve’s lips with his tongue before licking into his mouth. Finally. Christ. Finally! He tastes just the way Bucky always knew he would. Like toothpaste and milk. Like warm summer skin. He knows he stinks of perfume, but he hopes Steve don’t notice. He didn’t so much as kiss either of those dames even on the cheek tonight, let alone give them the time. He knows cheap perfume’s the only stink they left on him. He wants Steve to erase it like only he can.
Steve finds his tongue, and it’s a slick heat burning its way into Bucky’s mouth. Bucky groans, sucking it in, chasing it with his own. This is kissing like he’d dreamed of before he’d ever done it, fifth grade under the risers with Sally McQueen. She tasted rancid like last week's bacon drippings. He don’t think about her. Steve’s everything right now. Bucky’s whole world pulls in. Him and Steve. The breath ragged between them, siphoned back and forth. Tongues slick and sliding, teeth clashing and scraping, the rasp of Bucky’s whiskers against the smoother skin of Steve’s chin. Skin like a peach. Bucky shrugs out of his jacket, lets it crumple to the floor, even though he’ll look like hell in the morning, reporting for duty. He don’t give a damn. There ain’t nothing now but this. There ain’t never been nothing else. Only him and Steve. Only Steve.
Bucky grabs Steve closer, maneuvers him over to the neatly made bed. Falls gently down on top of him, avoiding the busted springs and being careful not to crush him while he’s not getting much breath in. He slows down, giving Steve back his mouth. He turns his attention to Steve’s jaw, kissing along the bony ridge while Steve catches his breath. Bucky keeps one stealthy palm pressed against Steve’s chest so he can monitor his heart-rate. It’s fast, but it’s steady. Bucky ain’t killed him yet. He slows down even more, dragging his tongue from just under Steve’s earlobe to the base of his throat. Steve sighs, lets out a soft, low moan as he runs his fingers lightly over the back of Bucky’s freshly-shorn nape. Bucky grins, continuing to explore Steve’s slender, taut neck with his mouth. He can be patient. He can be real gentle. He’s waited more than half his life for this.
Bucky undoes Steve’s buttons one by one, just like he’s imagined a thousand times over, revealing a pale chest lightly dusted with darker hairs. Just like his brows and eyelashes. Bucky presses his lips against the prominent ribs, nuzzling his face against the skin he’s never touched except to make sure Steve’s breathing alright. He inhales. Nothing’s ever smelled so good. Steve’s sweating a little, and it only makes him smell better. Sharp, but not bitter. Clean, even when he ain’t, ever since they was kids. Bucky runs his callused thumbs over Steve’s nipples, and they pebble up so pretty he can’t help tasting them one after the other. Steve gasps, hitching his hips, and Bucky feels how hard he is. Like a flagpole. His own cock fills the rest of the way up, and it’s practically jacking him up off the bed. He kisses his way down Steve’s belly, smooth but in no way soft. He’s small, but he’s wiry. Nothing like a girl. Nothing like anybody, ever.
Bucky nudges his way between Steve’s knees, his mouth still exploring the skin he loves better than ice-cream at Dodger Stadium. He slips a hand under Steve to squeeze his ass like a fresh loaf of bread. It springs back the same way against his palm, only he’s never felt hunger like this. It burns in him. It hooks him, tooth and claw. It won’t never let him go and he don’t want it to. His other hand works at Steve’s buckle, unfastening it, the jangle of it near driving him crazy. He’s so hard it hurts. So hard he don’t know what soft means anymore. He noses at Steve’s crotch through his pants before unzipping him slowly. He presses his tongue through the opening, lapping at the exposed patch of white cotton. He can taste Steve’s dampness through his shorts, the salt of him, the flavour of what Bucky’s done to him like a morsel of saltwater taffy on his tongue.
He’s about to grip Steve by the waistband and shuck off his clothes when Steve all of a sudden seems to snap out of it, pushing at him as he tries to scramble back over the bed. “Bucky, don’t. Stop. Stop it.”
Bucky grabs him by the wrists, holds him still. He stares up at him in the dimness, his eyes dark, pupils dilated until all the blue is gone. “Steve, lemme make you feel good, can’tcha?” he pleads, his voice breaking. “I just wanna make you feel good as hell. Like you never felt before.”
Steve bites his lip, the little crease Bucky loves like crazy pinching his eyebrows together. “I always feel good when I’m with you.”
Bucky strokes his bare stomach with the backs of his fingers, and Steve shivers. “Not like this. This’ll be even better. Somethin’ to remember me by, when I’m gone.”
Steve stares down at him, mouth softening. He smiles uncertainly, the furrows in his brow still cutting deep. “You really want to? You’re not just being nice?”
Bucky pounds the mattress, exasperated. “Bein’ nice? Christ, Steve. I’ve wanted this since we was fourteen years old, dummy. I’ve wanted this like hell, every night you cling onto me like I won’t never have to let you go. But I’ve gotta. And I wanna take this with me when I go, or I ain’t goin’ nowhere. And I got to. I got to, now. I ain't got no choice.”
Steve loses his fighting face. He melts down into the mattress. Bucky can feel him trembling. His voice shakes when he says, “Okay. Okay, but. I dunno what to do. I’ve never. Done nothin’ like this before. You know that better than anybody.”
Bucky hushes him gently. “I know, Steve. I know. I want you to relax, pal,” he says, grabbing Steve by the backs of the knees and dragging him further down the mattress. Bucky settles to his knees between Steve’s splayed thighs. “I’m gonna take care of everything. Don’t I always take care of everything?”
Steve nods jerkily, his eyes squeezed shut, his hands shaking as they come to rest beside him on the bed. Bucky grips the waistband of Steve’s shabbiest pants and drags them down off of his slender hips, exposing him in a way he’s never seen before, no matter how many naked river swims they swam as kids, Steve clinging to him, being dragged along, but somehow always the captain at the helm of Bucky’s body. Now ain’t any different. It was all just practice, wasn’t it. Practice for right here. Right now. Showing Bucky what he was made for, even way back then.
Bucky nudges Steve’s knees further apart, gazing down at him. At his cock, fully erect, like an exclamation point on a cinema marquee. It curves upward, pointing straight towards Steve’s navel. He’s bigger than Bucky expected, as big as Bucky, only a bit longer and a bit slimmer. But the same general size. Which, for a little guy, is impressive. “Wow, Steve,” he breathes, grinning. “You’re a big sonuvabitch! I hope I can take you.”
Steve laughs, his breath shuddering, nerves dispelling easily the same way they always do, making more out of one of Bucky’s jokes than it really deserves. “Only one way to find out, pal,” he says, quirking the corner of his mouth into the saucy little smirk that always makes Bucky’s knees wobbly.
‘Hell, you don’t gotta tell me twice!” He shrugs himself under Steve’s knees until he’s got them hooked up over his shoulders. Steve presses his feet into Bucky’s ass, his toes kneading him through the thick fabric of his uniform. Bucky laces his fingers with Steve’s, basketing them together. He bends down, and sucks the tip of Steve’s cock into his mouth. Steve bucks his hips, his cock sliding in further, taking Bucky by surprise. He chokes, but only for a second, and he takes him in deep, grinning, sucking, swirling his tongue, bobbing up and down as he drags the ridges on the top of his mouth over the plump mushroom-cap of Steve’s penis. He darts his tongue delicately over the slit, scrapes his teeth gently, and swallows him again, to the back of his throat.
Turns out he can take him—every inch. Steve tastes so good. Bucky can’t get enough of him into his mouth. Steve drags his hands from Bucky's grip and shoves his fingers into the freshly clipped hair Bucky’d combed so careful with water and the last precious fingerful of Brilliantine he’d been hoarding. He’d wanted so much to look good for his best guy. Give him a sight worth remembering. It might be the last one he ever gets. But now, he thinks. This one’s even better. This is a sight of Bucky he for sure won’t never forget.
Bucky pulls his mouth away with a wet pop, breathing hard. Steve whines, a little whimper of displeasure, his hips pumping, his erection spit-slick and leaking pearly liquid. “Steve, look at me. I. Need you to look at me. I don’t never want you forgettin' this.”
Steve drags his eyes open, his eyelashes sticking together. He looks thoroughly ravished, the sort of ravished they ain’t never going show on the silver screen. “I won’t, Bucky. I wouldn’t anyway. You didn’t have to do this to make me remember you.”
“I know. I know, pal. But this is what I want you to remember, cos I'm sure as hell gonna think about it every minute I’m away. It might even be the last thing I ever think of, so I’m gonna make it good.”
Steve’s face crumples, but he keeps his eyes on Bucky’s face. Bucky slides back down. He grips Steve in his fist, pumping slowly up and down with a clever little twist at the end. “Look at me. Don’t stop lookin', even when you lose control.”
Steve nods, carding his hands through the mess he’s made of Bucky’s hair. Bucky holds onto him, lapping at the head of Steve’s penis with agonizing slowness, using his tongue, his teeth, the inside of his lip. Everything. Everything he has. He teases him ’til Steve starts to sob, his thighs jerking and quivering, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps. Bucky starts to get scared he’s gone too far, that he’s gonna bring on an asthma attack instead of an orgasm. He sucks Steve into his mouth as far as he can. He can feel him at the back of his throat, the throb of his pulse changing Bucky’s own until he knows they’re completely in sync. Bucky fumbles with his buckle, undoes himself, pulls his cock out into his hand and strips pleasure from himself in mad, arrhythmic strokes as he sucks Steve as hard and fast and dirty as he can.
“Oh, god, Bucky, I’m gonna—” Steve fists his hair, pulling so hard Bucky sees stars. Steve comes violently, hips jerking, the backs of his knees streaming sweat over Bucky’s shoulders, his bare toes digging into Bucky’s ass. The taste of him, thick and hot and spurting down the back of Bucky’s throat as he rides out his ejaculation ain’t like nothing he’s ever swallowed before. Bucky drinks every drop, salty like brine, sweet like ice-cream. A combination of everything he loves best and won’t never taste again. Steve fills him up with the part of himself no one else’s ever wanted or deserved. Bucky is so goddamn grateful he cries, no sobbing, just soundless tears leaking down to mingle with the sweat on his face. He lets go of himself without coming, still so hard it hurts, but it’ll go down soon. He don’t want to come. He just wants this. He wants to keep Steve in his mouth forever, hard, soft—any way he can have him. He wants this warmth inside of him, this fullness he feels with Steve’s come in his belly, like the Depression’s finally over and he’s been fed at last.
“C’mere,” Steve says hoarsely, yarding him up to lay beside him on the mattress. He strokes Bucky’s face, dragging his fingers through the sweaty hair flopping over his forehead. “Christ. I didn’t know I was ever gonna feel like that. I had no idea that you. Even wanted. That.”
Bucky kisses him softly. “There ain’t nothin’ I don’t want, with you.”
Steve smiles. “Good. Does that mean it’s my turn? I don’t know what I’m doin’, but you sure as hell gave me some good ideas, and I’ve always been a quick study.”
He reaches down between them, grinning when his hand closes around Bucky’s damp erection, still on the wrong side of his pants. Steve gives it a few lingering, awkward strokes, quickly growing more sure of himself as he finds his rhythm. Bucky grabs his wrist, stopping him mid-stroke. He bites his lip, sucking the sticky remains of Steve’s flavour into his mouth. “You don’t have to,” he says. “That ain't why I did it.”
Steve squeezes him none-too-gently. “And that’s you all over, pal. Never lettin’ me do anything for you. Always gotta be the big man, the only man. Well, I’ve got news for you: I ain’t your girl, Buck. If you want me, you’ve gotta want me as a man.”
Bucky clutches him closer, tears prickling his eyes again. He kisses him, and Steve stiffens slightly, his hand still clamped painfully onto Bucky’s cock, which shows no sign of going down. Bucky presses his mouth against Steve’s cheek, his jaw, the lobe of his ear. “I do. I do want you as a man, Steve. Christ, you don’t think I know you’re a man? You’re the only man in my life, the only man I want in my life. No dame’s ever held a candle to you and never will. You think I want a dame? I’ve never wanted a dame. I’ve only ever wanted you. You’re my fella. My best guy. And I want you so bad I can’t hardly breathe.”
Steve sighs, his mouth melting into Bucky’s. He rolls them over onto their sides, stronger than even Bucky gives Steve credit for. He kisses Bucky hard, nipping and sucking at his lips, making them even more swollen until he feels stung all over. He pushes Bucky down into the mattress, dragging his hands over his head, twisting Bucky's wrists together. Steve's hands always was plenty bigger than they should be. Like his feet. And his cock. He’s got the parts for a much bigger fella, and tonight, Bucky can feel the presence of that man, the man Steve Rogers wants so bad to be that he can’t see what he already is. To Bucky, he’s always been that man inside. Which is where it counts. The only place it counts. Steve Rogers is much bigger on the inside than most people'll ever be on the outside, no matter how tall they are, or how strong.
Steve drives his knee between Bucky’s, levering them open. A hot thread of want and need skewers Bucky through the groin. Steve unzips him further, peeling the rough wool of his uniform trousers down past his ass before spitting into his palm and taking Bucky’s erection into his fist. This time there ain't nothing awkward about it. Steve has him panting and swearing against his mouth in seconds. “That good?” he asks, breathing hot and heavy into Bucky’s ear. “You want more?”
“Christ, Steve, yeah. Don’t. Don’t give yourself a heart-attack, though. Jesus!”
“You let me worry about my own heart for goddamn once, Barnes. Just concentrate on your dick. You’ve always been great at that.”
Bucky chokes back a retort. He looks down at himself, watching as Steve tugs and twists and strokes him off with an intensity he usually reserves for lasting too long in a one-sided fist-fight. Bucky don’t have to struggle towards his orgasm the way he sometimes does when he’s alone. Usually all it takes is imagining this. Imagining Steve’s hands, his mouth, his ragged breath. Now there ain’t no need to imagine it. This is real. This is happening. And it’s gonna last him the rest of his sorry life.
“Steve, Steve,” he pants. “Christ, I’m gonna come all over you.”
“Yeah,” Steve says, his voice ragged. “I want you to. Please, Buck.”
Bucky lets out a long, desperate moan that turns into a growl halfway through. His orgasm sideswipes him, knocking him silly even though Bucky knew it was coming for miles. It’s so good it fucking hurts, just like the first time, when he didn’t hardly know what to expect or what’d happened to him. Like then, it’s something that ain't got a name, without no meaning beyond the feeling of being tore up and put slowly back together again, piece by piece. If this’s what getting blown to hell in a Normandy trench is like, it won’t be too bad. He’ll just see stars. He’ll see stars, and then he’ll be nothing, just like he was before he knew Steve Rogers, and his life came together like a jigsaw puzzle reunited with all the pieces that’d got lost or ruined along the way.
He comes for what feels like forever, more sticky fluid spurting out of him than he thought he could possibly hold inside his body without bursting. It spatters across his chest, Steve’s stomach. Hell, some even lands on Steve’s chin. They laugh, edging toward hysteria. Bucky reaches out a shaking hand and palms Steve’s face dry. “Sorry 'bout that. It ain’t good manners to come in a fella’s face, but I couldn’t do nothin' much about it at the time.”
Steve’s eyes darken, and he takes Bucky by the wrist. Brings his palm to his lips. Darts out a soft, pink tongue and laps him clean. “Mmm. Good.” he says. “You taste like Coney Island.”
Bucky huffs out an exhausted laugh, pulling Steve's head down to rest against his shoulder. "Christ, Steve. That was somethin' else. We shoulda been doin' that years ago."
"I'm just glad we did it at all," Steve says, yawning so wide his jaw pops. And he's right. It ain't any less because it's only gonna be the one time. One time's enough for so many things. Bucky gets Steve once, and then maybe he dies. One little death to pay for this moment don't seem like much to ask. Bucky plans on making it a good one. More than enough to cover his debt to whoever's keeping score.
They don't make no declarations that night. Nothing corny. Nothing soft. They just lie down together once last time, tangled as always. Sticky with sweat and other things. When Bucky crawls out of bed before dawn to keep his appointment with the troop ship waiting down in the Harbour, Steve pretends to be asleep, watching him only when Bucky pretends not to notice. Kisses him back without opening his eyes or stirring under the blankets. “Bye, pal. I’ll be seein’ you.” Steve don’t reply. He lets himself smile as if he’s having a real good dream. Bucky touches the back of his neck. Strokes it once. Twice. Three times. Then he goes. Leaving his scent behind him. Cigarettes and good, clean sweat. A whiff of wool and cologne. It lingers for days and then it’s gone.
Later. In France. The front so close he can smell it. Taste it. He’s so filthy those sticky nights in Brooklyn are a goddamn wet dream. Not just because of Steve. Not just because he was so close then, as close as he is far away, now. It’s the sharp cleanness of his own sweat from back then that Bucky misses. He used to think he reeked a lot of the time, but he didn't know what stinking was before now. Back then, sweat was just sweat. It didn’t smell like blood. It didn’t stink of death, of slick organ meat sliding from ragged holes that used to be stomachs ridged like washboards. Busted open chest that ain't full of laughter and crude jokes no more. Now he stinks of horses screaming in the night, drowning in the bog of No Man’s Land. He stinks of other people’s fear. It seeps into him like gas. He breathes it in and it’s part of him now. None of it his. He ain’t got nothing left to be scared of. Steve’s at home, in Brooklyn. The only thing scares Bucky is wondering if he’s warm enough at night. Bucky sure as hell ain’t. But he don’t mind. He can take it. He always could. He runs hot, anyway. Steve always said he was a furnace. It’s his heart, racing. That’s what does it. His heart like a bellows fanning the fire inside him. The fire that keeps Steve warm. Even from here, he hopes. Especially from here.
He sucks on his cigarette, filling his lungs with the blissful burn of the Russian brand he's grown to love, three times stronger than American cigarettes. He trades Russian soldiers for them when he can, handing over his chocolate ration with barely a backward glance. He blows out a plume into the night that disappears into the smoke that already covers everything. The stink of cordite is an evil flower opening itself. One star winks down at him like a distant blue eye, gleaming. “Hey, pal,” he says. “How’s tricks?” The star winks on and off. On and off. It’s a message. He knows it is. Don’t matter he don’t know what it’s saying. He never was too bright anyway. Traded it in on being strong. Strong enough for two. He can only put his head down, do his job, and pray like hell it’s enough. His life for Steve’s. A hell of a bargain.
Across the dug-out from him, Dum Dum Dugan’s still awake. The rest of the fellas are slumped along the trench-wall, looking like the dead but snoring like milk-drunk babies. Bucky leans across, passes Dum Dum his battle-crumpled pack of cigs. “Here ya go, Dummy. Fill yer boots. It ain’t like I’ll live long enough to finish ’em on my own.”
Dum Dum grins, nodding his thanks. Bucky likes him. Nothing complicated about Dum Dum. He’s like a friendly mutt who just happens to sport paws that could crush your skull in a minute flat. Bucky finds something comforting in that. They sit and smoke in companionable silence, cupping their hands to shield the burning cherries from enemy eyes.
They while away the night talking about what they miss.
Dum Dum.“Whiskey. The good stuff. Hell, the bad stuff.”
Bucky. “Pizza. The good stuff. Hell, the worst stuff.” What he means is Steve’s mouth, full of cheese, laughing so hard he chokes. Bucky’s thumb tracing the fullness of his lower lip, ridding it of a glob of sauce by putting it into his own mouth. “Aww, Bucky! Quit it.” “Finders keepers, Punk.”
Dum Dum. “Dames, with their powdered noses and painted fingernails and their perfume. Christ. Even the ugly ones.”
Bucky. “Yeah, dames.” What he means is Steve. Just Steve, in his ragged clothes and worn-out shoes, carting a rolled-up sketchbook in his back pocket to sit in the park. No powder. No perfume. Just a Brooklyn boy wilting in the heart of summer, waiting for another boy to come home from the docks, pay-packet in hand. Grin on his face that’d split heaven in two if there was such a place.
Dum Dum. “My maw.”
Bucky. “My best pal. Steve.”
Dum Dum smiles. “Yeah, I got pals, too. Most’ve them’re dead. But we ain’t, Sergeant. And that’s gotta count for somethin', right?”
“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Sure it does.”
“You got somebody back home, Barnes?” Dum Dum rumbles out. Everything in life, even in the war, comes back to this same question. It’s the only question that counts, even out here, in hell. “Somebody waitin’ for you under Brooklyn Bridge?”
Bucky laughs, cupping his hands around his last cigarette. He sucks in another burning cloud and holds it in. He nods. “Yeah. Sure I do. Sure, I got a sweetheart.” Dum Dum grins, settling down comfortable as he can, like a little kid getting ready to hear the same goddamn bedtime story he’s heard every night of his life since he was born. “Classy as hell,” Bucky continues, lacing his fingers behind his neck to make himself a pillow from his hands. “Smart as a whip. Scrappy don't even cover it. Gorgeous as anything. Skin like a peach. Mouth like a goddamn rose.”
“Yeah?” Dum Dum says. “Christ.”
“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Damn straight.”
Above them the stars burn out one by one. Bucky heard somewhere they’re already dead, anyway. Just like him, maybe. And it ain’t such a bad thing to think about. Just. Burning away. Leaving brightness behind, a night-light for some poor bastard somewhere. Somebody like him, just about to die. And maybe, far away, a skinny Brooklyn boy’ll lean out of a window over a fire escape, look up, and see the show. Smile his goodbye, and maybe draw a picture or two, remembering.