Author's Note: For tracionn, who runs a great Tumblr stucky blog. Excessive Army references/Airforce jokes are included in an attempt to make Dogtagsandsmut smile (because I need a battle buddy in this fandom). I have no idea where I'm going with this or how long it will be. Bucky accidentally telling Steve to call him by his nickname is definitely an AU headcanon I picked up after reading Break or Broke by grayangel over on AO3. Warnings for this fic include lots of explicit language, dirty thoughts, mutual pining, and dumb Brooklyn boys being dumb.
EDIT: I've made some minor changes to this fic since its original posting after someone on Tumblr pointed out that it's kind of a dick move for writers to give Bucky a sleeve tattoo in AUs instead of a prosthetic; it hadn't occurred to me before, but yeah, it totally is, and I'm sorry it had to be explicitly brought to my attention for me to realize that.
Chapter 1.
The first time it happens, it is an honest-to-God accident.
"Fuuuuuuck," the word drags out of his mouth as he watches his phone slip and start the long drop towards the tiled floor as if in slow-motion. He should have spent the extra money on a better case, he thinks, as it hits and the screen cracks like the fragile thing that it is. Clint had sworn up and down that his Otterbox case had stopped a bullet during their last deployment, which Natasha said was bullshit, but conceded that it did save the phone when they drove over it with an up-armored LMTV once.
But that was then, and this is now. And now, James Barnes is picking up a $600 phone that was one single fucking day over its warranty and he doesn't have insurance that would have covered this anyway. Because of course it wouldn't. This is his life.
"Ooooo, that sucks, man," Natasha's friend informs him, as if James somehow doesn't already know it. He makes a face at the man — tall, attractive, black, too bad he was former Airforce; what was his name? Fuck it, his phone is way more important right now — and cradles the phone to his chest. Maybe he can give it CPR or something. Hook it up to a car battery and shock it until it crackles back to life à la Frankenstein. James taps the home button, and frowns when the screen lights up. Everything looks distorted, and there are two black blotches of pixels he's concerned about. It doesn't register his finger when he tries to touch any of the barely visible app icons.
"My baby," he whispers to the phone, heart-broken. He totally cannot afford a new phone right now. James isn't living in total squalor these days — his apartment lacks bugs and gross smells, which had been his only requirements when looking for a place to rent after leaving the Army — but the phone had been his back-Stateside present to himself and he wasn't making hazard pay at his new job. Which, now that he thinks about it, is total bullshit; he has stopped more attempted stabbings outside of the bar he's been working at for the last four months than he had during his first three deployments combined. "My poor, sweet baby. . ."
"You think it's broken?" Natasha's friend asks. James nods but doesn't look up. If Natasha had actually been there instead of ditching like the heartless icebitch she's always been, this wouldn't have happened. She would have caught his phone with her ninja ballerina skills or something. Or maybe she should have never called them both out to coffee on a crappy wet Tuesday morning. It is infinitely easier to blame Natasha's poor matchmaking skills than to admit that James hasn't been able to not klutz his way through a date since 2004.
He was an actual Ranger, damnit, why is he on a coffee date with some dude who used to be in the Chairforce?
James groans and puts his face on the small table between them. Holy fuck. He has become 'That Friend.' 'That Fucked Up Former Army Friend.' He used to be all high-speed, low-drag, squared-the-fuck-away. Now he is a soup sandwich. A soup sandwich with a busted phone. This is his life.
"Fuuuuuuuck," James repeats. "I'm dying. This is it. I'm not gonna make it. Tell my sister that I love her, and that Clint still owes me thirty dollars and a bottle of whiskey. Leave me here to my misery."
"That's a little dramatic, don't you think, James?"
"You don't understand this kind of loss."
"I am literally a grief counselor at the VA."
"You shouldn't judge how people grieve, then; everyone is different," he parrots back the bullshit lines he's been hearing since his squad came back from downrange. And it is bullshit, at least to James. He didn't need shrinks and tearful group sobfests when he came back. He took his honorable discharge, got a great big ol' tattoo to cover up the skin grafts and scars all up and down his left side and shoulder, and went home to New York. James had gotten a phone, a prosthetic arm, and then an apartment, in that order.
Natasha's friend laughs, shakes his head — and man, he is super cute with those big eyes and bigger smiles, it's a shame that their first date is totally tarnished with the whole phone breaking thing — and points down the street. "There is an Apple Store on the corner. You could get a new one."
He has had this phone for three hundred and sixty-six days. The only thing he has owned longer than this phone right now are his fucking dogtags. He glares at his date, who is suddenly not as cute as he was five seconds ago. "You can't replace a loved one when they die. You're fuckin' heartless, man. 'Grief counselor,' my ass. I'm grieving. You're not counseling."
"It is an iPhone, not a child or something you personally crafted in your garage out of salvaged computer parts."
"Still not comforting me in my time of need."
Flyboy sighs, and yes, he has been demoted to 'flyboy' instead of 'Natasha's friend' because for real? Fuck this, man. Fuck this whole day. James is going home to cry and have Clint call up all their old Army buddies to set up a funeral for his phone. Thor would probably help him build one of those Viking funeral boats that he can set on fire. Thor is a good guy like that; he understands that sometimes the only way to get over something is to drink a lot and burn everything to the ground. Way better guy than Flyboy.
"So get it repaired."
James looks up with a pout, and damn, is he good at pouting. Like, he hasn't pouted at anybody since he was trying to convince Becky to send him a Penthouse magazine and some Lucky Strikes with his next care package, and that had been through a grainy stalling Skype call, but he can tell that he totally hasn't lost his touch. Flyboy groans, rolling his head back to look up at the ceiling beseechingly, and hey. Hey, now. James Barnes might be a living 'Infantry What The Fuck Moment' right now, but that doesn't mean anybody needs to be calling on the Big Man Upstairs for strength.
"You got a pen?" Flyboy asks, and James finally sits back with a scowl, shaking his head as he takes a long drink from his coffee. They should have gotten to-go cups. His date mutters something which sounds suspiciously like 'of course not,' and gets up to bother one of the baristas at the counter for a pen. He returns with a napkin, which has an address — that he will need to take the subway to get to — and what James assumes is the name of a business — 'S.H.I.E.L.D. Repairs' — on it, in neat blue lettering, all caps. "Here: I have a buddy who's good with his hands. Ask for Steve, tell him I sent you, and he'll probably give you a discount on the repairs."
James heads to S.H.I.E.L.D. Repairs as soon as they've finished their drinks, and as he pushes the door to the little shop open, he realizes he probably should have asked Flyboy what his name was so he could get that discount. Normally he would have just asked Natasha, but he can't send a snarky text with no phone. So, whatever it costs, he'll just have to suck it up and whine about it later.
The skinny guy at the counter has his head down, a sketchbook laid open in front of him as he goes over pencil lines with a black ink pen. He's doing something artsy with the shadows that makes James think of the comic books he used to read when he was kid, and doesn't seem to have noticed anyone come in. James makes it all the way up to the counter before the guy looks up.
And just ruins James's entire life. Like, fucks him up bad and leaves him breathless and his heart pounding in his chest like he's coming under fire, pinned down without backup or exit strategy. This punk, he thinks, this fucking punk. He has no damn business working at a cell phone repair store.
This guy is fucking gorgeous. James's brain kind of. . . fizzles, shorts out, catching on details while he tries to think of something to say. Strong jaw so pronounced that it just makes James want to scrape his teeth across it and lick back to the guy's ear to see if he's sensitive. A slightly crooked nose like he broke it one too many times and it never quite healed right. Pinkest, softest looking mouth he's ever seen on a guy outside of a porno, lips parted a little like he's about to say something but just hasn't thought it through quite yet. James hadn't believed that people could look like they were made to be in porn, but this guy's fucking mouth is like a revelation. That mouth is made to suck cock. Like, it should be an actual crime that this guy does not have a dick in his mouth right now.
He lets his own gaze crawl further up the guy's face to where big blue eyes are wide behind thick black hipster glasses, trying hard not to let it show that he is thinking about blowjobs. It is a losing battle. The guy is looking up at him because he's quite a bit shorter than James and he's leaning on the counter still. James is close enough to see that the guy has these ridiculous fucking eye lashes, and the only way he can think about something other than this guy looking up at him from a kneeling position with his mouth full is to think about bending him over the counter and fingering his ass. He hasn't even seen this guy's ass but it's probably slim and pretty like the rest of him.
Well, fuck.
It occurs to him kind of belatedly that they are just staring at each other, and James is probably gaping like the absolute loser that he is. It is not his fault, he tells himself. He was not prepared for hot blond guys to be working at the repair shop. The cell phone repair shop. That he came into because his phone is busted. Yeah, man, he needs to get his phone to work again.
He's on a mission here. Focus. Jesus Christ, he used to be a fucking sniper, he can focus long enough to get his phone fixed.
"Uh. . . I'm lookin' fer Steve?" he says, coughs a little to clear his throat and tries not to be awkward. The guy isn't wearing a name tag, but he glances down at his faded shirt — Fall Out Boy concert tee, probably from like, six years ago or something; shit, James doesn't know, he hasn't been following tour schedules since he enlisted — like he expects to find one there. James uses this moment as an excuse to let his eyes crawl over the guy's narrow chest.
"Okay," the guy says, and his voice is a lot deeper than James was expecting and it goes straight to his crotch. Fuuuuck. He brushes blond hair off his forehead, smoothing it off to one side as he straightens up. His hands seem big compared to the small, compactness of the rest of him. Compact is a good, descriptive term, James thinks, since it would be pretty easy for him to pick this guy up.
And his brain immediately goes to wall sex, to lifting this guy up by the thighs and pinning him as he pounds up into his ass. Of course it does. His dick twitches gamely in his jeans and James shifts a little, hoping that he's not being an obvious creep.
"That would be me," the guy clarifies after another second of them awkwardly staring at each other. Of course it would be him. Fuck his life, his whole life, right now. When his phone is working again, James is going to call Natasha and tell her she's the worst human being on the planet and that he hates her.
Oh, that's right. His phone is busted. He's here about a phone, not to eye-fuck the guy working the counter.
"I broke it," James says quickly and takes the device out of his pocket to set it on the counter between them as proof. "Heard you were good with your hands."
It sounds like an innuendo. He is aware of that the moment the words leave his mouth, and when he thinks about how it must seem when he's been gawking this whole time, it just makes him want to crawl under a rock and die. Steve flushes pink, dropping his chin towards his collarbone as he picks up the phone to examine the damage like it is the most fascinating thing in the world. His ears are red and that blush paints his neck and disappears under his collar. James wants to chase it with his tongue and see how far it goes.
Smooth. Real smooth. James closes his eyes and waits for the ground to open up and swallow him, which it, sadly, does not do.
"Ye-yeah, I can fix it. Looks like it's just a busted screen," Steve says after a moment. "What's your name?"
"Bucky," James replies, and then immediately feels like a dumbass. Why did he say that? Christ, he hasn't been called 'Bucky' since the eighth grade, when he punched his friend Tim Dugan in the face for calling him that in front of his crush. He doesn't even remember who he'd had a crush on at the time, but the fighting had sort of become a thing after that, because if he was willing to punch Tim over it then he had to punch everybody over it.
Steve looks up and smiles at him. "Okay. Bucky." Fuuuuuuuck. James doesn't know what it says about him that hearing his childhood nickname in this guy's unfuckingbelievable voice, rolling out of his pornstar mouth, gets him half-hard. "It shouldn't take too long."
Steve ducks down behind the counter for a second and pulls out some tools so he can take the phone apart and put on a replacement screen. The blond works fast and James is still unintentionally looming, trying to come up with something to say as he watches Steve's fingers move. His mouth is dry and his mind is blank. Or rather, it's not emblank/em, it's just way too explicit for friendly conversation. And then Steve is twisting the tiny screws that hold the back and front plate together back on, and ringing him up for repairs and James still hasn't moved or said anything. Opportunity wasted.
"Need anything else? We have covers, if you need one."
James shakes his head and forces a smile, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket. He has already decided that he needs to come back and try again. So, nope, no, he does not need a protective case for his cell phone. He is going to go home, back everything up on his Cloud and Google drives, wait a couple of days, and jack up his phone again.
"Thanks for stopping in. Try to be more careful with it in the future, Bucky."
This is his life. Of course it is.
