AN:
All my gushy love to the mods of the Captain America Reverse Big Bang. They ran a top-notch bang, and I hope they got something other than our whinging out of it! Secondary thanks to the RBB Slack - the most amazing things happened there! I thank you all! 3
This fic is inspired by the gorgeous art created by the lovely Sula Safe Room.
Agent Coop and pqq both offered me invaluable advice while I was drafting this. Tisfan and drowningbydegrees were both good enough to beta. This would be just terrible without them, and for that, they have my thanks.
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Steve walks into the brownstone shaking snow from his hair and stamping it off of his boots. He's grateful to have survived the holidays in the nest of a home he's made with Bucky, but the cold still sets his teeth on edge. He thinks it's the same for Bucky, too. As he enters the living room, he sees the package next to the doorway and his step stutters, then stops. He shakes the snow from his hair and peers at it
Bucky peeks his head out from the kitchen. He's toweling a glass dry, wearing only sweats and a white t-shirt. If not for the messy bun at the top of his head and the shining metal arm, it could be 1942 all over again.
"Tony?" Steve asks, indicating the package.
Bucky shakes his head. "Nah, some goons. 'S From him though, Jarvis let me know they were coming."
Nodding, Steve eyes the box.
"Gonna open it?" Bucky sets the glass down and comes around to Steve's side. Steve feels the pad of Bucky's right thumb as Bucky presses it down Steve's spine, an affection from years ago, when it used to make Steve squirm. Now it just feels nice. Like comfort.
Like home.
"Yeah," Steve finds himself saying. "Yeah, okay."
Steve brings the box to the dining room table and Bucky leans forward, slicing through the tape with his metal pinky finger, one lock of his long hair laying against his cheek. Steve quirks a grin, suppresses a shiver. He loves Bucky's competence. Everything about the man is sexy.
Steve runs a hand over Bucky's back, a thank you in the same way that his squeezing Bucky's hip is a promise.
Steve had never heard the phrase touch starved until he'd started nuzzling into Sam at every opportunity, and Sam put two and two together. Sam pulled Steve into his arms and then he held him and held him and held him, and minutes into it, Steve felt something break inside of him and he'd ended up gasping out a sob, clinging to Sam and trembling.
Years later, Steve recognized that same need in Bucky, and resolved to try to be at least half the man that Sam was. The result is that Steve and Bucky are downright handsy with each other, communicating in touch the way most people do with words.
Bucky flicks the box open and Steve draws a sharp breath. The silver gleams in the clear afternoon light. Steve isn't prepared for this – for seeing the shield – his past…his future? He doesn't even know if he's Captain America anymore, if he even wants that. In the last year, something in him, that need to fight, to prove everyone wrong, to be righteous, has settled. He's not the same man who went into the ice, and he's not the same man who came out of it.
When he picks up the shield, his fingers catch on the slight rim, before he settles it against his left forearm. The handle bites into his palm, soft now from a year of disuse. He has different callouses now, ones that that match the crescents of paint under his short fingernails. He raises the shield, feeling the way his back muscles pull, the twitch in his triceps, the strain on his forearm.
Letting out a shaky breath, he puts it back in the box. Bucky's close enough for Steve to feel his body heat, and he turns into it, pressing his face into the crook of Bucky's neck.
Bucky's arms come around him, stroking up Steve's sides, pressing him closer. After a moment, he says, "Come on, I'm making sandwiches." Steve allows himself be led away.
.
After lunch, Steve goes to his studio to paint. He hadn't touched a paintbrush, a pencil, until one day when Bucky asked him what had happened to his art, and Steve only shrugged. It seemed silly, self-indulgent, wasting time making pictures when there was fighting to be done. A few days later, when Steve returned from the gym, he'd found their spare room had been converted to a studio – easels and paper, canvases, jars of gesso and drawers and drawers of paints, charcoals, pastels. Just the smell of it brought up memories, visceral feelings that Steve had locked down for so long that he'd all but forgotten they'd existed.
The memories hit him like that all the time – things he'd let go of, or denied since coming out of the ice. His role was Captain, Savior, and they all looked to him to lead them. Now he'd seen how they'd turned on him when he took them somewhere they didn't want to go. In the wake of the Accords, of getting Bucky back and helping him through his own mix of guilt and fear, Steve found himself retreating, time and again, to that certain, stoic place that got him this far. He could turn it all off, focus on the task at hand, until it was time to move on to the next task.
It was only when he and Bucky were alone, their bodies moving together, that Steve let himself feel anything other than the press of "what's next."
It surprised Steve, that Bucky saw him, saw how little of that old Steve Rogers was left. That Bucky had done something about it had nearly brought Steve to his knees. It's the simplest thing – just giving him space to be Steve, but he finds himself nearly in tears every time he thinks about it.
He's missed that about Bucky – how smart he is. Steve might have the convictions, might have had the guts, but Bucky, he was so smart. People look at Steve like he's some kind of genius because he has an eidetic memory and is good at strategy. Because he seems fearless.
Bucky was always the smart one though. He see's the bigger picture, he sees six steps past the outcome, and he can see every step to get where he wants to be. Steve counts on his strength and downright mulishness to gut it out and do what had to be done, but Bucky, you tell him the outcome you need and he'll get you there. Bucky sees the details.
Steve lets his hand wander, picking up the thick oils on his brush and using them to create texture on the canvas. He'd say it was mindless, but it isn't. It's a turning in on himself, twisting the world away to nothing, just him and his hands and the pigments, making the pictures from his head come to life under his hands, vivid and raw and everything that he can't let the rest of the world see.
When he emerges hours later, the box with the shield is nowhere to be seen.
"Closet," is all Bucky says, and Steve hooks an arm around Bucky's waist, reeling him in for a rough kiss to the side of his neck, breathing him in before letting him go.
Bucky looks down at his white shirt, now smeared with blues and greens, and cocks a brow at Steve. "Go wash up, punk. And quit ruinin' my shirts."
Steve smiles and presses a kiss to the corner of Bucky's mouth, then wipes his hands on Bucky's shirt before lifting it off of him entirely. Moving close, he kisses Bucky's mouth again, and follows with a soft sigh. He doesn't say I love you.
He doesn't have to.
.
That night in bed, Bucky wraps himself around Steve, making a cocoon of his body, holding Steve safe within it.
It makes him think back to when he was small, the way Bucky would curl around him in bed, force his heat into Steve's skin, letting Steve rest his icy toes between Bucky's calves. It was so much more than the heat of Bucky's skin that warmed him. It was the press of his friendship, knowing that Bucky would do whatever he had to do to keep Steve safe and warm and whole. Steve shivers, remembering those cold nights and Bucky holds him closer, tightens his body around Steve's big frame.
"Buck," he whispers, and presses himself back, further into Bucky's embrace.
It's the only asking he needs to do.
Pressing his mouth to Steve's neck, Bucky lets his hands wander, smoothing down Steve's arm, coming up his stomach and across his pecs. "Like tits," Bucky'd said once, and Steve blushed halfway down his chest. But later, alone in front of the mirror, he'd pressed the muscles together to create a furrow, and shocked himself with images of Bucky pushing against it, fucking against Steve's chest, coming all over him. He finally suggested it weeks later, with crimson cheeks and averted eyes, but Bucky's reaction, the way his breath hitched and his eyes darkened, made the momentary embarrassment worth it.
Now Bucky's stroking his fingers into that cleft, pressing in a way that tells Steve he remembers too, and as good as that is when it happens, it's not what Steve needs right now. Instead, he leans over to his nightstand, before turning on his back and pressing the bottle into Bucky's hands.
"Buck," is all he says, and he lets Bucky take him from there. Bucky sees something in his eyes, he must, because instead of the slow, easy fuck that Steve expects, he gets Bucky in a whole different way. The thick fingers that press into him don't give him quite enough time to adjust. They take, take up space, take Steve to the edge before they leave him, trembling, keening for more. Blunt nails scrape at Steve's skin and Bucky inflicts his wicked teeth and tongue, biting, then soothing, then biting again, until Steve is a mess of sensation, almost sobbing with the need to come.
"Please," he cries, like it's the only word he knows, but Bucky doesn't relent until tears wet the corners of Steve's eyes as he tosses his head back and forth. "I can't, Buck, I can't."
"You can, doll. You can, because I'm gonna make you."
And then Bucky presses into him, thick and hot and hard, and Steve shakes harder, desperate, so desperate to come.
"I need," he pants. "Buck, you have to-" His body bows, tightens, hands fisting the sheets, pulling them from their tucked in corners as Bucky fucks against his prostate.
He's holding on, and he doesn't know why he can't let go, but he can't. He presses the side of his face into the pillow, eyes clenched shut.
"Come on, Stevie," Bucky groans. "Come on doll, let go for me."
And Bucky brings a hand up to Steve's face, and Steve looks into his eyes and there's no place to hide.
"I've got you," Bucky says, and Steve shatters. Shatters looking into the eyes of his best friend. Shatters in the arms of the only man who's ever known him. Shatters into a thousand pieces, into something that can't be put back together and made to fight anymore, into something that might learn to be at peace.
Bucky follows just after, with a strangled groan and Steve's name on his lips.
After they clean up and remake the bed ("Animal," Bucky says, and Steve smirks), Bucky settles onto his back and Steve lays his head on Bucky's chest, listening to his heartbeat, and the oceanic sound of every drawn breath.
"Wanna talk about it?" Bucky offers.
"Maybe tomorrow."
The metal hand strokes through Steve's hair. "Alright, pal," he says. "But I'm holding you to it."
.
Steve feels a little lighter the next morning. Yes, there are things he still needs to work out, but maybe the shield isn't a specter. Maybe it's a path to the future. Whatever comes next, whatever he decides, he knows he has Bucky in his corner. He won't be alone.
He stops by Stella's Bakery on his way home from his run. Bucky prefers the treadmill, but Steve likes to get outside. He likes the fresh air and the smells and sounds of the city as it wakes up. Sometimes he runs at the high school track, but most often he likes to run the Promenade, catch the ocean air and the greenery. There's something hopeful about the early morning peace, something nostalgic in the way the air smells. Something rooted, like he's home.
Walking through the door with a box of Bucky's favorite jelly donuts, Steve's feeling lighter, freer. Which is why the sight of Bucky, leaned over their coffee table, talking in low tones with Tony Stark is the last thing Steve expects to see.
It always surprises Steve at how quickly Tony switches on the charm offensive. Whenever he's engaged with Tony, there's always been that shadow of doubt about how sincere he really is. At first, his glib lines reminded him of Bucky, how smooth Bucky could be with a dame, or when he was trying talk someone into something. But Bucky, there was never any real malice, real selfishness behind his charm. Sure, he'd talked plenty of girls into dates, but he'd never led any of them on. Never – to Steve's knowledge – pushed them to do anything they didn't want to do. It's the difference, Steve thinks, between being charming and smarmy. He knows that Bucky and Tony have been working toward a peace between them. Steve can't say he's done the same.
"Cap!" Tony rises, holding out his hand for a shake. Like it's that easy.
Steve holds tight to the box of donuts, then turns to deposit them in the kitchen. He is not giving Stark one of Stella's jelly donuts. No way.
When he turns to leave the kitchen, Tony is standing there, his face schooled to look blank, but Steve can see the tightness around his eyes.
He looks at Bucky, who gives a nod and then rises. "You good?" Bucky asks. Steve nods his assent and Bucky eases out of the room, back toward their bedroom. Steve knows that Tony and Bucky have been trying to make peace. He guesses from the looks of things that it's going well, but no matter how well it's going, Steve can't shake the image of Tony hacking off Bucky's arm. The pain he'd caused Bucky – how's Steve supposed to forgive that?
Tony must see something in Steve's face, because the slick smile fades as Tony steps forward. "I love what you haven't done with the place," Tony says, looking around.
"Really?" Steve says, because if this is Tony's idea of lightening the mood, he's failing. Steve knows what it looks like. When he'd bought the place on his return to the US, he'd asked the realtor to include the staging furnishings in the purchase price. It was fine, but bland. Steve had hoped that he and Bucky would settle and eventually could redecorate the place, make it their own. But since they've been back, everything's felt so...temporary.
"No, not really. But since this place is straight out of Pottery Barn, what do you say we burn it to the ground and start over, say, at the compound?" Tony's face softens. "C'mon Steve, your rooms are still there. I haven't changed anything."
"Tony," Steve says, because he knows, he knows what it means when Tony calls him Steve and not Cap. He knows an earnest Tony when he's confronted with one; he just doesn't know how to deal with him now.
"You got my special delivery?" Tony asks, knowing full well that Steve did.
Steve steps back, crosses his arms in front of his chest.
"We're going to need you, Cap. The team isn't the same without you. Everyone misses you."
"Really? Because I just saw Wanda and Clint last week. Nat and Sam came for brunch on Sunday, and the Parker kid called to ask if I'd speak at his next assembly. I told him I'd hung up the shield. You can explain the rest of it."
Tony rolls his eyes. "Come on, Cap. Look, the Accords – "
"The Accords were wrong from the beginning, but you pushed them anyway. Did you ever think about that Tony? About why you pushed so hard?"
"I was trying to keep the team together!"
"By doing the one thing that would tear us apart! Jesus, Tony, after everything we've been through, you still won't come clean!"
"And what is that supposed to mean?"
"You wanted the leash because you needed the leash! You lost Pepper, you created Ultron – you wanted those Accords because you can't trust yourself, and you damn well know it."
Tony takes a step back, and Steve feels a brief stab of victory before the feeling of loss sets in again. Tony and the Avengers might not be perfect, but they were his team, his home for the last few years. He doesn't know how to say goodbye.
He watches as Tony steels himself, forcing away the arrogant persona that he retreats into when questioned, making himself vulnerable to Steve, maybe for the first time.
"You're the only one I know who can carry that shield. When you're ready, we'll be waiting."
Steve watches Tony turn and leave, but doesn't move, and it isn't until Bucky's got his arms around Steve that he lets out the breath he's been holding, lets his mind rock with the choice he has before him.
That night, Steve dreams of burning buildings, alien invasions, and Bucky Barnes, falling, falling, falling. He wakes with a start.
"I'm fine," Steve says, when Bucky asks.
"You're not," he answers.
Steve doesn't disagree.