Steve's plan was accepted unanimously and relayed to Rumlow and officers from the Hydra with great flourish. Rumlow, who was not a complete asshole after all, was quick to apologize and rush off to prepare but they had been getting ready for days by then so there wasn't that much to do. They were to sail tomorrow. Steve was passed along from one table to another like a tipsy little mascot, everyone wanted to drink his health or shake his hand or just chat for a bit. He smiled, nodded and after a while started to drink water from an ale mug. He kept breaking into cold sweat thinking he might have made a mistake somewhere, somehow, but then Gabe returned from a little reconnaissance and confirmed Steve's words. It made him feel a bit better.

What didn't feel good at all, however, was that Bucky was busy the whole rest of the day and even now, with all the preparations for tomorrow completed, when the crews were carefully celebrating, taking care not to overindulge, Captain Barnes was nowhere to be seen.

Natasha took pity on Steve eventually, noticing, like she noticed everything, him desperately looking for someone in the joyous crowd and beckoned him to the stairs. "He is still working on the plan," she said, "or rather working himself into a pointless frenzy going over it again and again. That's what he always does. He could use a distraction. Go." Steve went pale then blushed deeply but dragged his feet upstairs. It was still his dream, right? So nothing bad could happen? And tomorrow Bucky would be gone, so it was now or never, right?

He paused in front of the door and listened to his own heart, really listened. It's been more than a year since Peggy but he had to be absolutely sure. Be it a dream or reality, neither Bucky nor he himself deserved the shallowness of a rebound fuck. Steve listened to his heart and he got his answer, loud and clear.

He knocked too many times at once because his hand was shaking but there was no answer. He knocked again, then plucked up his courage and pushed the door open. Bucky was sitting at the table, his head in his hands. He didn't look asleep and he didn't ask Steve to leave. So Steve closed the door behind him, then looked at it carefully and pushed the bolt closed too. Metal screeched across metal loudly and Bucky raised his head.

"What are you doing?" he asked bleakly when Steve came closer and pushed at his shoulder insistently, making him move away from the table together with the chair. The legs of the chair scraped the floor heavily as Bucky obeyed, but he was still looking dazed, uncomprehending.

"You can't go on like that, you will get yourself killed," Steve blurted, "you need to relax. Just let me…"

He dropped on his knees so fast he winced from the impact. His hands were sliding up Bucky's muscular thighs with intent, his eyes pleading. Bucky sat still, a perfect marble statue of an ancient god and worshipping at his feet Steve felt inadequate and insecure. So he hedged, "You can close your eyes if you don't want me but you need the release, just let me, please let me make you feel good."

The silvery blue of Bucky's eyes flooded with black. "Why would you say I don't want you?" he asked hoarsely, "How could I not want you?" He bent forward and his lips met Steve's, hot and insistent. When Steve felt Bucky's wet tongue inch its way inside his mouth for the first time he almost came on the spot. Their lips moved together, crashing and meeting like waves, scalding like branding irons. This was when Steve knew, dream or not, he belonged to Bucky. This night was all they were going to have but Steve would make his damn best to make it count. He made himself move from Bucky's lips down over his sharp jaw to the long column of his neck but he couldn't stay away from his lips that long and had to go back. Bucky moaned, one hand deep in Steve's tousled strands, the other wandering across his skinny back, unmoored, searching. He found what he was looking for by grabbing the hem of Steve's borrowed shirt and tugging it off. They had to stop kissing for the shirt to go off and both groaned in dismay, a discordant duet, it was unacceptable, they should never have their lips apart, not even for a second, not anymore.

But then Steve's hand, doing some wandering of its own, found the scorching hot hard line of Bucky's cock and Bucky gasped and Steve had to move. Apparently the only thing better than kissing Bucky was having Bucky in his mouth, right now, this very minute. He pushed Bucky up into his chair and crawled closer, slotting himself between his knees, unlacing his breeches with shaking hands, impatient, hungry. When the swollen dusky pink cock was finally in his palm Steve moaned just from feeling the voluptuous heavy length slide through the loose circle of his fingers. Bucky looked wild above him, hair blown in all directions from where he dragged his own shirt off, muscles straining under his skin as he tried to keep his palms on his thighs, just letting himself feel, visibly drinking in the sight of Steve on his knees with his wet lips opening to swallow down the already slick flared head of his cock. Steve felt wanton and unbearably hot under that intense gaze, with the most intimate taste of Bucky's precome rich and salty on his tongue. He couldn't get enough, licking under the ridge, dipping the end of his tongue into the slit, rolling his lips over the head again and again. Bucky lost his control completely when Steve's mouth slid down his shaft almost to the base, he jerked and buried his hands deep in Steve's hair but managed not to grab hard, just cupped his head gently. Steve moaned at the feeling and could tell by the muscles in front of him getting taut like strings that the sound reverberated in the deepest core of Bucky's body, dragging him to the very edge of bliss.

"Wait," Bucky panted, guiding Steve's head off his cock, "I have to feel you. All of you." Steve looked up, his lips feeling swollen and wet, and Bucky moved to kiss him again, but the determination on his face let Steve know he was on a mission now and he wouldn't let them stall. Moreover in order to move he didn't have to stop kissing Steve, it seemed. Steve went easily, first up, off his knees, then to the farther end of the room where he hadn't noticed a discreet screen from a thick fabric hiding a doorway to another, even smaller room, more of a converted closet, which was basically just walls around a giant bed.

"Is it…" Steve mumbled without letting go of Bucky's lips, "should we really…"

"Yes, it's Nat's room," Bucky rasped, trying to pull off Steve's breeches all the way while still kissing him. With a growl he had to let go and pushed Steve down, then in a fluid movement managed to pull the rest of Steve's clothes off and get rid of his own breeches likewise. He paused for a second then, glorious, lean and strong, with thick white ropes of scars all over his left shoulder, but standing unashamed in front of Steve and looking at him with the hunger that to Steve looked like an exact mirror image of his own. "But if she didn't want us to use the bed she wouldn't have sent you up here."

"Oh," was all that Steve managed before his whole body was covered with scorching pure joy that was the naked Bucky. He spread his thighs apart, wrapping his legs around the chiselled waist and arching up to make sure there was not an inch of him that was not touching Bucky. He wanted to absorb Bucky through his pores and overflow with him. Bucky moved his hips carefully until their cocks aligned, and both gasped happily into each other's mouths. Steve searched blindly for Bucky's hand and brought it up to his mouth. When it was thoroughly wet with his spit, he pushed it down and guided it till it was wrapped tightly around both their lengths. And then there were just slow overwhelming thrusts for as long as they could stand it, and kisses that were more gusts of shared air mixed with moans floating between their lips, the lips that wandered to necks and shoulders but always, always came back to press together again.

"Buck," Steve groaned when the sweetest torture of slow was too much and not enough finally, "Bucky, I have to…"

"I've got you, Stevie," Bucky whispered, his hand and hips both starting to move faster, bringing them both closer to the edge, "let go."

And they both fell, and they flew, and Steve maybe sobbed a little but Bucky's lips made sure his eyelashes ended up dry, and it lasted forever and one single moment, until all that was left were just the two of them, pressed close together, under a cool sheet.

"That's why I went to sea, you know," Bucky's voice was so low Steve could barely catch the words. "What was that, Buck?"

"This," Bucky gestured wearily between them and Steve suddenly understood. Bucky sighed, "My dad is very rich and I was the sole male heir. He said he didn't care who I loved as long as I married and produced a new heir in due time. But I didn't want to make some poor girl unhappy." He moved his fingertips across Steve's cheekbone, barely there, like a dandelion seed tossed at his skin by the wind.

"So I ran away, the ship got captured, I was sold into slavery, then ran away again, this time with my guys. And the Brotherhood of the Seas is where I found the freedom I was looking for. Because they say, you love who you love; and the sea loves all its children. We helped each other out sometimes, me and Monty, sometimes Morita too. But it was never like it is with you, Stevie. With you it feels like this is where I belong."

He sighed again and moved Steve closer, wrapping around him like an overly hot blanket. "I've got to get my guys out, you know that, Stevie, don't you? And it's just not safe for you to come with us now, when it all still might end up in a bloodbath."

"I know, Buck," Steve murmured, somehow managing to squeeze the words out despite the lump in his throat, "I know. But you have to know, I feel like I belong with you too. If I could I would stay with you till the end of the line."

"Till the end of the line," Bucky pressed his lips to Steve's nape and stayed there, slow breaths soaking into his skin, waking up the butterflies in Steve's belly and sending the flocks of goosebumps careening down his limbs. Steve's eyes were shut carefully but the pillow got wet anyway. He felt so tired all of a sudden, the past two days catching up with his mind and his body all at once, and sleep claimed him effortlessly there, in the secure circle of Bucky's arms. And maybe, since it was his own dream, after all, he let himself believe he did really hear Bucky add very quietly, "I will find a way back to you."

Steve woke up alone the next morning, when the sun was already high. He dressed himself somehow, dragged his fingers through his hair, managed not to cry and not to fall over on the way downstairs. Natasha greeted him with a cup of strong coffee and an almost sympathetic look which made everything so much worse.

"They are right in the middle of it," was all she said, and Steve dragged himself to the waterfront to look at the tiny set of shining white sails being taken in farther away, where the islands crossed the way out to the sea. He didn't need binoculars to know what was going on. He knew both ships and both sloops went out to the passage, each ship with three large canoes towed astern. They cast anchor close enough that the Spaniards could see them, but just out of the range of their cannons. And then the canoes went to the shore one by one, full of armed men, reaching the island at a carefully selected bay that curved inwards in a way to hide the landing site from the eyes of the people in the fort. The canoes left the bay and went back empty. They went to the shore again, full of men. The Spaniards laughed, they knew the pirates had fewer men and weapons so the attack on the fort from the side of the island didn't scare them. At first.

As time went on, more and more people went to the island. And yet more. The Spaniards started worrying, then they started arguing. Then they were terrified. There were at least twice as many pirates on the island than they though Captain Barnes even had under his command.

So in the last hours before the sunset, the Spaniards did exactly what Steve had told Bucky they would do – they started to move their people and cannons from the side of the fort facing the passage to the open sea to the other side, facing the land. They cursed and sweated and managed to move all the cannons and people just as the darkness fell on Maracaybo.

Steve went and stole a bottle of rum from a shelf behind Natasha's bar. He was pretty sure she noticed but he didn't have any strength left to care. His dream was ending, he was absolutely sure of it. There were absolutely no pirates or weapons on the island, in fact. Zero. When the canoes went to the island people were sitting and standing in them. When the canoes went back, the same people were lying down on the bottoms of the boats.

So as Steve was drinking his rum on the sandy beach in the darkness, Captain Barnes's fleet weighed anchor. The sails spread were the bare minimum to allow them to steer, and even those were painted black. Steve could hear the horrible explosion of defeated fury as the Spaniards realized the pirates were sailing past the fort. The Winter, as the ebb tide carried her past the fort, emptied her guns into it, like a nasty farewell. They got away. Steve was happy for them. Very happy.

As he finished the bottle nothing hurt anymore. The cool sand looked very attractive. He would just lie down for a moment there. And tomorrow he would wake up from his amazing but sadly not everlasting dream and tell Sam all about it on the phone.

Steve woke up to the blinding sun and gentle hands cradling his head.

"Natasha told me you were on the beach," Bucky put a wet cloth across Steve's forehead and let some drops of water fall between his hot cracked lips. Steve coughed a little, then grabbed the flask and poured water down his parched throat. Then he realized the sand below him was moving. Then he realized it wasn't sand. A blond guy paddling the canoe waved at Steve cheerfully.

"A friend of Nat's, knows how to go through the shallow straits between the islands at the mouth of the lake so that the canoe can not be seen from the fort. The ships are waiting for us in a safe place, should get there in a couple of hours," Bucky explained, taking the empty flask from Steve and pushing another, full one, into his hands. "You should consider drinking a bit less, pal."

"How?" Steve croaked, staring up at Bucky with pure adoration he didn't even bother hiding. Bucky shrugged and looked down with the exact same expression, "Told you I would find a way back to you."