A/N: Yet another foray into the Captain America fandom. This one will be a collection of drabbles, all of them centered on Bucky trying to remember a persistently blank spot in his memories. I have a general idea of where to take this, but feel free to send in prompts if the mood strikes you!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything having to do with Marvel Comics or any of its creations. I can only appreciate the characters they've given us to work with.
On Each Other's Team
dancing 'round the lies we tell
dancing 'round big eyes as well
even the comatose, they don't dance and tell
"Are you sure we never… god damn… that we didn't… fucking hell… that we haven't met before?"
Where Barnes found the energy to speak around his panting breaths, much less the mental capacity to not only come up with words but string them together into complete sentences was beyond Natasha. The only thing she could concentrate on was the delicious friction of the sheets against her back, the metal fingers curled around the nape of her neck, and his relentless pace as he drove her into the mattress.
"Less talking and more fucking."
"I can do both… at the same time… in case you… haven't noticed."
She decided not to comment on the pauses where he greedily sucked in air. "Well, I can't." Actually, she could; she just preferred not to.
Barnes fell silent, seemingly dropping the subject, but it was unlikely the issue was gone for good. It wasn't the first time he'd asked – even if it was the first time he'd done so in the middle of them having sex – so she doubted it'd be the last. Most people couldn't recognize the signs, but Natasha understood better than most just how much the blank spots in his past bothered him. It was far more than he ever let on. So, really, she couldn't blame him for asking. Accepting that thirty years of memories were lost forever would be unimaginably difficult.
But then he was leaning back, angling himself to brush over just the right spot inside her, and when the fingers not tangled in her hair crept between them, she stopped thinking at all.
As he circled the bundle of nerves at her core, she breathed a sigh and willingly let her mind go blank. He was good at this, always had been. Even when he struggled with the after-effects of the Hydra programming, he was good at this. Even when the hand at her neck tightened a little too firmly and his eyes darkened with a hint of something other than lust, he was good at this.
Under his careful ministrations, her back arched. Barnes leaned forward just long enough to press a hot, open-mouthed kiss to the hollow at the base of her throat, and as her nails dragged down his back, he groaned into her neck, hips bucking a little more insistently.
"God, Nat… you feel so good… so fucking good…"
At his words, the familiar pressure building in her core tensed even more. A coil, a spring ready to snap… and Natasha heard the high-pitched sound of her imminent release fall from her lips in rhythm with his movements. Her eyes slipped closed. In the darkness, white spots danced and played, flickering with each of his thrusts, flaring brighter with every exhale that ghosted across her heated skin like a caress. But just as she was standing on the figurative cliff's edge, just as she was about to fall, he pulled back and out and stepped away.
"Roll over."
"What?" She frowned, leveling him with a mild glare. "I figured someone as experienced as you would know it's not nice to leave your partner…"
"On your hands and knees, Natalia."
There was no argument in his voice, only an authoritative tone that sent a chill skittering up her spine. It was a good chill, though, the kind that made her arch an eyebrow and offer a smirk over her shoulder as she followed the command.
Barnes might not know her very well – then again, who did? – but he'd been quick to discover how readily she responded to the use of her past name, the occasional phrase uttered in guttural Russian, and a firm hand in the bedroom. It was like a game, a play of power, a constant push and pull between them.
Reaching out, his hands curled around her hipbones as he pulled her back to the edge of the bed where he stood. Starting at her neck, he traced the length of her spine, dragging a finger down the lithe arc of her back, but as soon as he reached the base, he relocated to her hips once more and entered her in one, smooth motion.
"Is this what you wanted?" He pulled out almost completely before snapping his hips to hers. "Less talking and more fucking?"
Each word was articulated with a hard drive that had Natasha seeing stars. And she wanted to say yes and please and more and harder, but the only thing that came out was a low hiss of satisfaction as she rocked back, meeting him thrust for thrust.
The pressure was back, heightened by the hard press of the fingers on her hip and the ones that slid around to tease where she was most sensitive, most yearning. It was all so much… too much. She was struggling for air, and behind her, Barnes' breath came in harsh, shallow huffs. There was a fire in her that roared and grew and burned, and she blazed in return, bright and dark and…
Natasha shuddered under the rush of pleasure, body very nearly curling in on itself with the force of the sensations, and was barely aware of the way Barnes leaned over her. He mumbled, lips forming incomprehensible phrases against the back of her shoulder as he chased his own release that came not long after.
For a moment, she bore the full brunt of his weight as his hips continued to twitch in clipped, staccato movements, but then he was sliding out and falling onto the bed beside her. Flat on his back, he panted, chest heaving from their activities.
"Feel good?"
Barnes blinked, focus shifting from the ceiling to her face. "Like you have to ask…"
Gradually, Natasha's muscles went boneless in relaxation, and she settled onto her stomach, head pillowed on her crossed arms and eyes on Barnes' profile. After a few seconds, he rolled onto his side, one hand at his temple while the other traced invisible patterns down the expanse of her back.
"Are you sure we never met back then?"
She bit back the sigh but wasn't quick enough to hide the way her brows briefly knitted together. However, when his eyes flashed, she reached out and slid her hand around his bent elbow in an attempt to bring him back to her. More often than not, Barnes still had trouble dealing with people's frustration. It was like it triggered something in him, took him back to a world and a mindset he tried to forget.
Her thumb rubbed in repeated, soothing circles. "Why do you keep asking?"
"I don't know." One shoulder rose and fell in a half-hearted shrug. "I remember everything from before I fell… my parents dying, the orphanage, growing up with Steve, those first couple years of the war… and I remember pretty much everything from about the mid-seventies up to now…"
From the corner of her eye, she watched his eyes lose focus as he disappeared into a place inside his mind she couldn't follow. "But?" At her soft question, though, he was back.
"But all those years in between are blank. There are bits and pieces, flashes of things, but I can't make most of them out. Even when I can, they don't make any sense. It's all a jumbled mess." Barnes blew out a heavy breath. "I guess I just figured that since you grew up in the Red Room and I supposedly spent time there, we would've come across each other at some point."
The fingers on her back faltered, then stilled.
"Did we?"
Natasha stared up at him, into grey-blue eyes filled with a silent need for confirmation, rejection, anything that would shed light on the shadowed fragments of his past. Slowly, she raised her hand, fingertips sweeping over the arch of his cheekbone before lowering it to follow the seam where his skin knitted with metal.
"No, Barnes, we never met."
A strange combination of relief and disappointment flitted across his face before he finally settled on a more resigned expression. "Makes sense…" Then, the corner of his mouth quirked in a half-smile. "I don't think I could've forgotten you."
And as Barnes shifted more towards her and dusted feather-light kisses along the slope of her shoulder blades, Natasha hid a bitter laugh in the crook of her arm. Because, of all the lies she'd ever told in her long life of deception, that one was by far the hardest.
