Chapter Text
When Bucky is eight and Steve is seven, Steve gets a fever that refuses to break for twelve whole days. Every day after school Bucky brings him his homework, and the two of them sit in Steve’s bed and play ‘Go Fish’ and listen to the radio programs while Steve drifts in and out of consciousness. Bucky stays even when his friend is sleeping beside him, reading a book or finishing the assignments that Steve didn’t manage.
One day Steve is barely able to wake up at all, and Ms. Sarah won’t let him in the room while a priest comes in and performs the last rites. Bucky is not scared. These grown-ups don’t know how strong Steve is. He sits in the Rogers’ sitting room making up a story to tell Steve later when he wakes up, about an alien invasion from outer space, where the aliens come to Earth and they all look like Eddie Johnson, the big sixth grader who tried to beat up Steve last month.
Ms. Sarah comes in after a while, her eyes all red and tells him that Steve is probably not going to wake up tonight, so he doesn’t have to stay, though she will tell Steve he stopped by.
“I don’t mind sitting with him while he sleeps, ma’am.” Bucky tells her. “I can do my homework. It’s quieter here anyway.” Bucky has three little sisters, the youngest, Rebecca, only two months old. “You can rest a bit and he won’t get lonely.” Bucky has heard his own mother clucking about how hard it has been for Steve’s Ma.
Sarah Rogers eyes get all watery and she smiles as she ruffles his hair. “My son is very lucky to have a friend like you.”
“He’s my best friend, ma’am,” Bucky says like it’s self-explanatory. To him, at least, it is.
“I know sweetheart,” she says. “Here—you can take this into his room when you go sit with him.” She hands him a photo album, small with a black cover. “He was asking to see it a bit earlier.”
Bucky opens to the first page and sees a picture of a tall man in a military uniform, with his arm around a lady wearing a nurse’s outfit. Both of them are smiling and in the second one, the man is holding the nurse’s hand and kissing her cheek while she laughs. “Who’s this?” he asks.
Sarah smiles. “That’s Steve’s daddy and me just a few months before he was born.”
Bucky stares at the woman in the photo, and yes, she does look a bit like Sarah Rogers, but young and happy in a way that he has never seen her. He turns his attention to the man again, and he can sort of see the way that he has Steve’s big nose and ears. Weird.
“He was my best friend,” Sarah says quietly, and Bucky doesn’t quite know what to say to that, so he nods and runs upstairs to Steve’s room with the book in hand and throws himself into the bed next to Steve.
The bounce of the mattress jolts Steve awake and he looks around, bleary-eyed before his gaze lands on Bucky. “M’sleepin y’jerk,” he mumbles.
“Well wake up punk,” Bucky retorts, “I brought’cha something.”
“’f it’s more homework, you can keep it.” Steve grumbles. His eyes are heavy lidded and his face sweaty.
“Nah, I already did it for you.” Bucky tips the album into Steve’s lap. “Your Ma said you wanted this earlier.”
“Oh,” said Steve, trying to sit up a little, “Yeah. I wanted to show you something.” He opens the album, flipping past the photos of his parents, until he got to one of his father standing in front of an airplane, his arm slung casually over the shoulder of another man. “Lookit’, this is the one, the plane I’m gonna’ draw over there,” he pointed to the wall across from his bed.
“She said yes to the mural?” asked Bucky, astounded. He knew Steve’s mom was cool, but he never imagined she would agree to Steve’s increasingly elaborate plans for a full-size mural all across his bedroom walls.
“Well…no. Not yet. But I’m going to practice, ya know? If I can show her how good I can make it then she’ll definitely let me. Just—” Steve broke off into a yawn. “—Just once I feel better.”
Privately, Bucky didn’t think it was very likely, but he didn’t want to discourage his friend. “Sounds great Stevie,” he said, as Steve’s eyelids began to droop, his short burst of energy already fading. “Maybe you should draw an alien spaceship over there by the window.” He points. “You can make it look like the aliens are climbing in the window.”
“Dunno what an alien looks like Buck.”
Bucky grins. “Like Eddie Johnson, only uglier.”
“S’not possible,” Steve replies, his eyes already closed. It earns him a laugh.
Bucky starts to tell his story about the alien Eddies as Steve falls asleep with the album on his chest and his head pillowed against Bucky’s stomach. He talks until his voice is hoarse and his throat dry, and he is certain that Steve is completely asleep. At some point his fingers find their way to intertwine with Steve’s and he can feel his palm getting sweaty from the heat of Steve’s fevered skin.
The streetlights are on and the sky dark when Sarah comes into the room and sees her son fast asleep with his friend next to him. “It’s getting pretty late, love, your mother probably wants you home.”
“Can I come back tomorrow?” Bucky asks.
“If your parents are okay with it, of course. Are you okay to walk home in the dark, or would you like me to walk with you?”
“I’m okay ma’am.” Bucky slides off the bed, reluctantly releasing Steve’s hand. The younger boy makes a sleepy grumble of complaint but does not wake. Hesitantly, he leans over and brushes a light kiss to Steve’s flushed cheek. “Bye Stevie.”
Sarah Rogers watches him with a raised eyebrow, but she doesn’t say anything as Bucky leaves their apartment to begin the slow walk back home.
* * *
The first time someone calls Bucky a homo, he is eleven, and it’s Steve’s tenth birthday. Bucky has been saving his money from his paper route for the last month, and he has been given two whole dollars by Steve’s Ma to treat him for his birthday. They spend the day at Coney Island, riding every single ride that Steve is tall enough to get onto (less than half of them) and stuffing their faces with cotton candy and ice cream cones.
The heat is oppressive, driving them to the cold water of the pier, where Bucky shucks his shirt and trousers and jumps into the frigid water, whooping like a wild animal. “You gotta get in here Stevie,” he hollers as he splashes around, spraying water in every direction.
Steve is sitting on the end of the pier with his pants rolled up and his feet dangling in the water. He grins turning the page of his sketchbook. “And head home lookin' like a drowned rat? No thanks!”
Bucky spits a stream of water out of his mouth in Steve’s direction, which—yuck, even then he realizes how gross the water is—but it gets him a look of disgust from his friend, making him grin in spite of himself. Bucky dives back below the surface of the water with the mind to see how long he can hold his breath for.
When he surfaces, he sees the group of boys closing in on Steve. Aw hell.
There’s four of them—big and mean-looking. Steve’s back is as straight as the scoliosis will allow it to be, and even without being able to hear what he’s saying from the distance, Bucky can tell that he’s probably lecturing them. Typical.
Swimming back to the pier as fast as he can, he hauls himself up the ladder just in time to see one of the boys shove Steve to the ground. “Hey!” he shouts, “Leave him alone!”
The boys ignore him as they circle around Steve, laughing and jeering, and blocking Bucky’s view of his friend.
Up close he can hear the things they’re saying.
“Pansy!” One of the boys delivers a sharp kick to the lump on the ground that is Steve.
“Wimp!”
“You gonna’ get up again you damn sissy?”
Like wolves they circle their prey, so intent on the hunt that they nearly miss Bucky until he’s already upon them, tackling the boy that had kicked Steve with such ferocity that they both crash to the wooden planks of the boardwalk, nearly tumbling over the edge into the water. Within seconds, Bucky is sitting on his chest, pounding his fist into the other boy’s face.
Scrabbling fingers scratch at his arms and shoulders as the other boys try to drag him off their friend, but Bucky is still dripping wet from the Lower Bay waters and his skin is slippery. Steve (the idiot) has jumped on one of their backs and is hanging off the kid’s neck like a limpet, hollering something fierce in his ear while the bigger boy tries to throw them off.
“Hey—HEY! Enough already!” Some men walking nearby have spotted the fight and they pull the boys apart, dragging Bucky off of the other kid, and separating them all.
Within minutes they are all panting and restrained by the men, who seem as amused as anything by the scene in front of them. “Take it easy guys,” one of them is admonishing the bigger boys. Bucky is pleased to see the boy that he had tackled is now sporting a bloody nose and a fat lip. His eye is all red and will probably turn black and blue by the end of the night.
Steve is panting so hard that Bucky fears he might have an asthma attack. He’s bleeding from a cut above his eye and his tiny chest is straining. He himself probably doesn’t look much better, sweaty and scratched up, standing in just his shorts.
The men who broke up the fight start pushing the bigger boys away down the pier, telling them to, “Beat it.”
One of the boys looks back over his shoulder, and spits at them, “’Buncha dirty goddamn homos!” before following his friends away.
“You okay Stevie?” Bucky asks quietly, when they’ve been left to themselves again.
“’Course,” Steve gasps, “Had ‘em on the ropes.”
“I know ya’ did. What happened though?”
Steve points over the edge of the boardwalk and when Bucky looks he sees the sketchbook and pencil set that Steve had been drawing with lying in the sand below the boardwalk, the pages crumpled, and the fragmented pieces of the pencils scattered around it.
“Aw jeez,” says Bucky as he climbs down to pick up the pieces. “Are these the new ones from your Ma?”
Steve nods, his face arranged in the careful mask that he makes when something really upsets him, and he is trying not to show it.
The damage isn’t as extensive as it might have been, but it still makes Bucky burn. He rescues the snapped pencils and the book. The worst damage is to the paper, some of which got wet in the water. “We can sharpen these when we get back to my place,” Bucky tells Steve of the pencils. “Then you just have two smaller pencils. And maybe we can dry the book.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Steve says. “The drawings weren’t any good anyway.”
“Don’t be stupid, of course they were. And if they weren't you can just draw me 'n there…that’ll make any sketch book a good one!” He nudges his friend who has a little smile on his face now.
“More like anything else’ll look good next to your ugly mug.”
“Jerk.”
“Punk.”
Both of them are smiling now. Bucky gets dressed and the pair of them leave, Steve’s breathing back under control, and the corner of Bucky’s sleeve bright red with the blood that he has wiped away from the cut over Steve’s eye.
Later that evening they sit out on the fire escape watching the fireworks in the distance, while Bucky uses his pocketknife to sharpen the broken pencils. They have a bowl of popcorn and the metal grate is covered in pieces, because they have been trying to catch the kernels in their mouths. Neither of them is very good at it.
Bucky watches the fireworks out of the corner of his eye, but he really finds himself staring at his friend, whose eyes light up in wonder every time the explosions light up the sky in the distance. Then he thinks of the fight of the pier and the older boys calling them a bunch of homos and looks away, his face burning.
Bucky knows what a homo is, or at least he thinks he does. He’s heard about the sodomites at church and how God damned them and punished them. He knows that it’s a sin.
Anyway, it’s not like he and Steve are like that. Obviously, that would just be gross. The boys are just being jerks to Steve because he’s small, and likes to draw, and is prettier than a lot of the girls in their—Bucky shakes his head hard, interrupting that thought before it can reach its conclusion. He doesn’t know why he just thought that.
“Thanks for today,” Steve breaks the silence between them.
“’Course,” Bucky flicks a piece of popcorn at Steve. It bounces off his nose back into the bowl between them causing them both to snigger. “Happy birthday Stevie.”
* * *
The winter before Bucky’s fifteenth birthday he gets an invitation to Martha O’Connell’s Christmas party. Really, it’s her parents’ party. Her folks, Richard and Irene, have it every year and the whole of upper middle-class New York seems to turn up for it. It’s a fancy affair, all the men in suits, and the ladies in evening dresses and wearing gloves. Bucky’s parents have never been invited, but Martha is in Bucky’s class, and everyone knows she is sweet on him. So here is, dressed in his best church suit, packed into the basement of the social hall with her and around a dozen other teenagers, sweating through their fancy clothes and sneaking sips from the flask that Mark Hansen had snuck in in the inner pocket of his jacket. It tastes like poison, Bucky thinks, but the girls keep taking little sips, becoming progressively gigglier as the evening goes on.
It’s a bit of a surprise that Martha has let him bring Steve. Martha is one of the popular girls in school—a group that has historically mixed with Steve about as much as oil and water—but she’d agreed readily enough when Bucky had asked. Maybe she thought he wouldn’t have come otherwise.
Bucky almost regrets bringing him here though. Steve does not fit in with the group at all, and after a few aborted attempts at conversing with some of the others, has retreated to a corner of the room and buried himself in an old book that he found in some storage box in a corner of the basement. Bucky feels guilty every time he passes by him, which he tries to do as often as he can in between chatting with the other guests, but he worries that Steve thinks he has abandoned him. The problem is that Bucky is, and has always been, a people-person. And truth be told, it’s fun to mix with the most popular kids in his school—to have their attention and feel like he’s part of the group. He likes to be liked…to belong to something more than just his outsider best friend.
It’s all going well. Then somebody suggests that they play spin the bottle.
Bucky doesn’t remember actually agreeing to play, but before he knows it, he is sitting in the circle of people clustered around the empty soda bottle. He’s even more surprised when Steve drops into the place beside him. “You’re gonna play too?” he asks, surprised.
Steve shrugs as a way of answer.
Martha’s friend, Jean Hanson, is explaining the rules to them all, as though the game were not universally known to every American teenager. “So, like, you spin the bottle, and then, um, whoever it’s pointing at, or like, closest to…then you have to kiss them. And then it’s your turn to spin it.”
Bucky thinks it’s kind of a stupid game, but the others seem to be into it, so he doesn’t say anything.
Martha spins the bottle first, the teenagers watching as it goes around and around before coming to a stop exactly on Bucky, like a compass pointing to magnetic north.
All the girls erupt into giggles, and Martha herself flushes bright red as she looks at him, her eyes not quite able to meet his. Bucky grins, shrugs, and moves on his hands and knees across the circle, kissing her lightly on her red lip-sticked mouth. Martha blushes to the roots of her brown, curly hair while their friends wolf-whistle and tease them in the background. It’s not particularly memorable as kisses go, and Bucky settles back into his spot, feeling one of the guys around him clapping him on the shoulder in congratulations.
Then it’s his turn. The bottle spins and lands on Dorothy Miller, who is going steady with Joe Warner, so he only gives her a chaste peck on the cheek before handing the bottle over. The game continues on, and fairly soon Bucky is beginning to get a bit bored. He gets kissed a few times more and is considering going to get himself another glass of punch when Jean takes her turn, spinning the bottle with enthusiasm, which then slows and stops just to his left to point directly at Steve.
The group erupts into laughter.
Steve crawls into the middle of the circle towards her, a determined expression on his face, and Bucky feels a twist of jealousy—no, not jealousy, he corrects himself, concern. He pushes it away.
Jean has not moved an inch towards Steve, and her face seems to have frozen in a mask of thinly concealed horror. The other guests seem to find this hilarious, but Bucky feels as though his veins have been filled with ice water. Steve stops in front of her, looking hesitantly at her face. Bucky knows that Steve has never kissed anyone before, and his heart is pounding.
Before Steve even has a chance to lean in for a kiss, Jean suddenly cracks and jerks away from him. “No. No, I’m—I just…I can’t do it. Not him. Ugh.” She shudders dramatically and pretend-retches.
The other kids find this hilarious. The group erupts with raucous laughter as Jean gets up and walks out of the circle, away from Steve who is still kneeling awkwardly in the middle of it all, his face bright red, and wearing a carefully neutral face that hides his humiliation.
Bucky is livid. “C’mon Steve,” he mutters. “This party is stupid.”
Steve doesn’t argue, and that, if anything makes Bucky even angrier.
“That was a nasty fucking thing to do,” he spits at Jean as they pass her on the way to the door.
"Buck-"
“Hey! Watch your mouth Barnes,” one of the older guys snaps at him.
“Yeah, well you can shut yours Patterson!” Bucky retorts. He grabs his jacket from where he hung it on the back of a folding chair. He storms up the stairs to the ground level of the dance hall, with Steve following in his wake.
“Buck—” Steve is half jogging behind him, and Bucky automatically slows his pace to a more comfortable one. “Buck it’s ok, we don’t have to leave.”
“Sure we do Stevie,” says Bucky. “I’m not going to just sit there while they treat you like…like there’s something wrong with you or something. That’s bullshit.”
Steve is quiet when they walk up the street, his hands stuffed in his pockets to keep warm against the cold December night.
In the chilly air, some of the anger that had boiled in his stomach back at the party starts to cool, to be replaced by a sense of guilt and shame. “I’m sorry I talked you into coming with me. They…they’re a bunch of idiots. I don’t know why I even wanted them to—” he breaks off. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I won’t bother with them again.”
“It’s alright,” Steve replies. “Y’wanna come back to my place? My Ma’s on the night shift, and she left a casserole. I think we might even have some of Mrs. Anderson’s Christmas cake left.”
“Yeah, sure.”
They take the subway back to their area and walk the remaining distance to the tenement that Steve and his mother share. As soon as the door opens Bucky feels himself relax, the familiar scent of Steve’s place washing over him. In many ways it’s more like home than his own family’s apartment.
“Who’s been decorating?” he asks. There are small bushels of holly and mistletoe scattered throughout the tiny sitting room, and an old stocking, carefully embroidered with the name “Steven Joseph” tacked to the wall by the stove.
“My Ma mostly,” Steve replies. He goes into the tiny kitchen and opens a cupboard, pulling down a plate of crumbly-looking Christmas cake. “You want tea or coffee?”
“Tea.”
Steve busies himself with the kettle and stove. He turns on the radio, scrolling through the stations before finding one playing a version of “Winter Wonderland” that they both like. Then he flops down on the sofa. He is graceless, his skinny limbs sprawled all over.
Bucky snorts. “Shove over,” he says, and Steve raises an eyebrow at him before lifting his legs up. Bucky sits down and lets Steve’s gangly legs rest in his lap.
“Sorry if I ruined things with Martha for you,” Steve says unexpectedly.
Bucky shakes his head. “Nothing to ruin,” he says. “’Sides…she was a lousy kisser.”
Both of them snicker, before lapsing into companionable silence. Bucky rubs Steve’s calf absently, his mind drifting to all the other times he’s been in this living room. Very little has changed over the years—a new picture here or there, or a new drawing of Steve’s displayed up on the wall. There’s still the same knit afghan that has always sat on the couch, the same lace doilies underneath the same knick-knacks.
“How do you know?” asks Steve, breaking into Bucky’s train of thought.
“Huh?”
“With Martha…how do you know if someone’s a good kisser or a bad one?”
Bucky frowns, “I dunno Stevie, I mean, you just know I guess.”
Steve’s face betrays his dissatisfaction with that answer. “What’s it like though?”
“Kissin’?”
“Yeah.”
“Why, you worried you’re bad at it?” Bucky means it as a joke, but the way Steve finches when he says it cuts a little too close.
“I mean…maybe…” Steve looks away as he says it, and Bucky remembers Jean’s reaction when he had come near her. He doesn’t understand how the girls could always look down on Steve, when every time Bucky looked at him all he could see was the way he lit up everything.
“You wouldn’t be…bad at it, I mean,” Bucky says. His chest aches a little as he says it.
“How would you know?” Steve grumbles.
Bucky doesn’t have an answer to that. “Hey,” he tells Steve. “You want me to prove it?”
Steve looks perplexed.
“Look,” he pushes Steve’s legs off his lap. “Sit up.”
Steve obeys.
Bucky hesitates for just a moment before sliding closer to Steve on the couch. He puts his arm across the back of the couch, letting it rest just behind Steve. “You really wanna know?” he asks.
Steve’s face is just a few inches away now, his eyes wide as dinner plates. He swallows hard and then nods.
“Ok well, um…just relax a bit,” Bucky says. The advice feels like it could be as much for him as for Steve. “And maybe close your eyes…you can pretend I’m a dame or something.”
Steve closes his eyes, but his body remains tense and uncertain.
Bucky hesitates for a moment. Is he really going to do this? His heart is beating hard in his chest. He brings his hands up to Steve’s cheeks and lets his palms rest very lightly on the sides of his neck, gently cradling Steve’s face in his hand. On an impulse, he brushes the pad of his thumb across Steve’s full lower lip, which makes the other boy’s eyes flutter briefly open, before Bucky closes the gap between them, capturing those lips with his own.
For a long moment, Steve is completely frozen, barely breathing and unmoving. Bucky’s brain starts sending ‘Abort! Abort!’ signals, and he is just about to let go and back away when the other boy lets out the tiniest gasp and then he’s clutching at Bucky’s shirt front, drawing him in closer, and softening into the kiss.
Bucky’s heart is hammering in his chest as his lips part slightly with a sigh that Steve catches. Bucky can’t resist tangling his fingers up in that blond hair, which Steve seems to like quite a bit, judging from the whimper that escapes him as he slides his palms over Bucky’s chest, and wrap them around his waist.
Someone in another apartment on their floor slams a door and the pair of them jump apart, suddenly aware of where they were and what they were doing.
Oh god, thinks Bucky. He is breathing hard and flushed and his pants are tight. OhgodOhgodOhgod…
Steve looks disheveled, his hair sticking up funny and his mouth red and kiss swollen.
Bucky swallows hard and takes a shuddering breath. “Um…so yeah. That’s what it’s like.” He nods and looks away from his friend.
“Oh,” comments Steve. “It was…different than I expected.”
Bucky would dearly love to ask how, but he doesn’t think he could handle the answer. He’s trying to remember the batting average of every player on the Dodgers and not pay attention to the way that Steve is blushing to the roots of his blonde hair, untidy now from where Bucky’s fingers had been running through it.
The whistle of the kettle shrills from the kitchen.
“So, uh…tea?” Bucky asks. He can’t bring himself to quite look Steve in the eye.
“Oh! Right…one sec.” Steve goes to the tiny kitchen and Bucky takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. This has to stop, he thinks. He can’t blur the lines of their friendship like this. It's wrong. He knows--has known for some time now--that on some level he…wanted things from Steve that he couldn’t have. But he couldn’t do that to him. His best friend deserved better.
“Here,” Steve says, interrupting his reverie, plonking a mug down on the table in front of Bucky. “Loaded up with about a pound of sugar, just for you.”
“Only a pound?” Bucky grins, “Cheapskate.”
Just like that, the tension is broken, whatever had passed between them dissipating into the evening air. They drink their tea while Silent Night plays on the radio. They make jokes at the expense of Jean Hanson and Martha O’Connell, and Bucky thinks that those girls must be blind if they can look at Steve and miss the ways that he shines like the star that called the wise men to the birth of Jesus.
* * *
Sometime around the time that Bucky is seventeen, his parents stop being quite as welcoming towards Steve.
“It’s just…you spend so much time with him,” his mother admonishes. “It’s not healthy to only have one friend James.” She is the only person who still insists on calling him by his proper name.
“I have lots of other friends,” Bucky insists, and it’s not untrue exactly. He just prefers to spend the bulk of his time with Steve.
“He’s just so…dependent on you. He’s always so fixated on being around you. It’s a bit unusual.”
“We’ve been friends a long time, Mom.”
His father is more direct. “It’s about damn time you started taking some girls out,” he says in his gruff voice. “Most boys your age have girlfriends—it’s natural.”
“Steve doesn’t have a girlfriend,” says Ruthie, who is fifteen and eavesdropping from the other side of their sitting room.
“I know.” Mr. Barnes has a dark look on his face when he says it, and Bucky knows without asking what he means.
There’s a certain irony in that, Bucky thinks. He almost wants to laugh. What his parents were implying—that was a ridiculous idea. If anything, they were seeing what was reflected in his eyes and putting that on to Steve. Steve was a good, upright Catholic who certainly had a place in heaven waiting for him on the other end. Bucky was the one with all the dark secrets, no matter how badly he wants that not to be true.
So, Bucky starts stepping out with girls, taking them dancing, and buying them milkshakes at the diners around the neighborhood. He even tries to get them to set Steve up with their friends, though most of the time those nights end early after Bucky gets tired of watching the girl ignore his friend.
Seventeen is the year that he loses his virginity to Claire Thompson in the car she borrowed from her parents. Claire is a year older than him. Bucky likes her, or more honestly, he likes fucking her—the way she makes little gasping noises as he thrusts into the silky, slick, heat between her legs, and wraps her calves around his hips as she comes. He doesn’t last very long, but she is kind to him anyway, teaching him how to do it better the handful of times they step out together. It ends amicably—neither of them under the impression that it was ever a serious thing.
He dates a lot of girls, though none of them ever really seriously. He hopes that his father will notice, and lay off of Steve a bit, but he doesn’t. He’s not the only one making the comments either. Bucky gets fired from a job in a factory out in Hell’s Kitchen when one of the other workers makes a comment about Bucky’s “little fairy” who waits for him outside the gate at the end of his shifts. Bucky gives the guy a black eye, and the factory shows him the door.
The problem is not just that Steve is small and delicate-looking. It’s not just that Steve is an artist. It’s not even that Steve manages to piss off most everyone he disagrees with. The problem is that Steve, for all that he’ll happily take on the world to spite a bully who is rude to a dame, or steals candy from a kid, he won’t say a word to outright deny it when someone calls him a queer or a homo. But he’s not, Bucky knows, because Steve is the most upright, brave, and fundamentally good person that he knows. So he can’t be a queer.
But sometimes he wonders.
Sometimes, when he’s lying in his bed at night, Bucky wonders what it would mean if Steve was a…invert, homo, queer…whatever you want to call it. He imagines Steve, all dolled up like a dame, the way that some of the men supposedly do in The Village. He can’t picture it—Steve, for all his lack of machismo, doesn’t seem feminine to Bucky in any way. But he imagines strong arms wrapped around his friend, a flat, masculine chest. He pictures Steve’s pink lips, red as they were that night of Martha’s party—the night that they do not talk about—or on his knees with that mouth wrapped around a—
Fuck what is he doing? Bucky rolls over onto his side, realizing to his shame, that he is hard. What kind of friend is he, thinking of Steve doing those…those things? What’s wrong with him that he would even…
He’s a terrible friend. And now he has a problem tenting his shorts, and wasn’t that just all kinds of fucked up, for him to be lying in his bed thinking of Stevie like that when he’d sworn to Father Michaels that he would stop…
He tries to push it from his mind. He thinks of Rita Fleming, with her curly brown hair and big round breasts, who he took out dancing last week, and who had sucked him off at the end of the night with hardly any prompting. He slides his hand under his waistband and begins to stroke himself thinking of blue eyes and pink lips around his cock. He groans quietly into his pillow, muffling it so his family doesn’t hear in another room, and imagines the wet heat of her mouth on him, and short blonde hair all in disarray, and—oh fuck he’s thinking of Steve again, but it’s too late to stop himself, he’s too close to—
“Ah!” He gasps into the pillow, his hand pumping as he comes in spurts over the sheets and his fist, and it is ecstasy and shame all mixed together.
He rolls onto his back and lies there for a moment, breathing hard, and staring at the ceiling while the tears roll silently down his cheeks.
* * *
Bucky is nineteen when Steve’s mother dies. She dies on a Wednesday morning, and Bucky doesn’t find out until he comes home from work, and hears it from Ruthie, while she sits at the kitchen table with a cup of tea that has gone cold. He doesn’t even stop to change his clothes but turns on his heel, and heads immediately over to the Rogers’s apartment. He lets himself in the door with the extra key that he’s had on his key ring since Steve got locked out all night after losing his in a fight when he was fourteen.
The lights are all off, except for a single candle burning low on the kitchen table, and Steve is sitting and staring at the wall, an open bottle of cheap whisky on the table in front of him. His face is a mask, expressionless and unaware, so much so that he doesn’t even look up when Bucky comes in—doesn’t seem to notice at all until Bucky puts a gentle hand on his boney shoulder. He flinches, blinking a few times.
“Hey Stevie,” Bucky whispers.
Steve doesn’t say anything, just swallows hard and touches Bucky’s hand on his shoulder as though to convince himself it’s real.
“Have you eaten yet?”
A shake of the head.
Bucky needs to do something, needs to feel useful in some way, so he turns on the kitchen light and busies himself with trying to find something for his friend to eat. There aren’t many options in the bare icebox, but he finds some eggs and some bread that he can toast and fixes them into a kind of scrambled egg sandwich.
Steve eats robotically. He doesn’t cry—doesn’t display any kind of emotion at all. He barely speaks, and it’s just so…un-Steve, that Bucky wants to reach across the table and shake him. He barely speaks, and Bucky has never felt so completely helpless in his whole life. He has known Steve since he was six years old. He knows his friend angry, frustrated, joyful, bitter, sad and everything in between—knows how to handle all of the versions of him at their best and worst—but he has never seen Steve like this.
They sit and they drink in near silence, and it isn’t until almost ten-thirty that Steve finally stands up and mutters about going to bed.
“Come spend the night at my place,” Bucky offers.
“Not tonight Buck.” Steve takes another deep swig from the bottle, wincing at the burn.
“Fine. I’ll stay here then.”
“You really don’t have to—”
“I want to. Come on, we can pull the couch cushions off…make a fort like when we were kids.” He feels stupid even saying it, expecting Steve to refuse.
To his surprise, Steve seems to consider it, before shaking his head. “You don’t have to do that for me. I can handle this on my own.”
“I know you can. But you don’t have to.”
They don’t end up making the fort in the end, but they do undress down to their shorts and undershirts and climb into Steve’s bed, the way that they have done a thousand times since childhood. Bucky can feel the warm heat of where Steve’s shoulder brushes against his, a familiar lifeline in the heavy darkness.
The minutes tick by, and Bucky is starting to doze when Steve suddenly breaks the silence. “I miss her,” he whispers, and Bucky’s heart shatters at the smallness of his voice in the cavernous silence.
“I know.” He thinks of Sarah Rogers and her kind heart, and indomitable spirit, and he feels an ache in his chest. “I miss her too.”
“I’m alone now.” Steve whispers, his voice thick. Bucky feels, more than he hears, the long shuddering breath that accompanies it.
“No, you’re not,” he says. Unable to stop himself, he rolls on to his side and pulls Steve close to his chest, wrapping his bare arms around Steve’s body. He tucks Steve’s head under his chin, rubbing soothing circles on his back. “You’ve got me still. To the end of the line pal.”
There are alarm bells going off in his head now, warning him that he is crossing a line. He is about to drop his hold on Steve and roll over and away, but then something seems to break in Steve, and his whole body just shudders and relaxes, and then curls up in such a way that it pushes him even closer to Bucky. Then his shoulders shudder and Bucky knows, even before he feels the dampness of the other man’s tears on his neck, that Steve is crying.
Bucky holds him, unable to push him away, yet ashamed of the lion in his chest that is roaring yes, good, finally, and right at him. I can do this, he tells himself. He can be there for Steve while keeping his darker urges in-check. He can hold Steve in his arms and pretend like it’s nothing more to him than offering the normal intimacy of a best friend.
It takes a long time before Steve’s breathing evens out, the thin shoulders no longer shaking against his arms, and he has cried himself to sleep. The whole time Bucky hardly moves, even when his arm begins to go numb. He focuses on the sweet smell of Steve’s mint-scented shampoo, and the softness of his skin beneath Bucky’s callused hands. Steve starts to snore softly, and Bucky buries his face in the mess of blond hair, his chest so tight that it’s almost painful, and whispers, “I love you,” into Steve’s ear. Then he whispers it two more times, “I love you Stevie, I love you so fucking much.”
* * *
Two months after Steve’s mom dies, Bucky and Steve move in together.
Their apartment is nothing special. It’s a one-bedroom in one of the cheaper tenements in a lousy part of town, with a tiny kitchenette, a bathroom that they share with the rest of the floor, and two twin beds squeezed into the bedroom. The walls are thin, their neighbors loud, and Bucky loves every square inch of it. He tells himself that it’s because he no longer has to share a living space with three teenage girls, or deal with his father’s black moods when he gets a little too far into a bottle of bourbon, but that’s only partly true. He loves the place because it’s also Steve’s place, and coming home to him every day feels like…well…coming home, in a way that he hasn’t felt in his parents’ house in a long time.
The rent is low, which Bucky tells Steve will help them both to establish some savings for themselves. In reality, Bucky’s savings are for the weeks when Steve is too sick to work, or when he needs expensive medications. Bucky doesn’t mind. Taking care of Steve is second nature at this point, though he could never say that to him.
His parents aren’t thrilled about the arrangement, but they are appeased somewhat when he tells them about the savings plan. He knows they think he’s serious about Penny Goldstein, the girl he’s been seeing for almost four months now. They think it’s a positive sign that he’s thinking about the future.
Bucky’s hopeful too. He really likes Penny. She’s funny, and a great dancer, and gets along reasonably well with Steve the handful of times that she’s met him. Turns out the two of them kind of know each other from attending the same socialist meetings, somewhere out near the art school. Bucky even starts to envision a future for them, him and Penny married with a couple of kids, with Steve as…what? A cherished family friend that comes for dinner every week? He tells himself that it would be enough. It has to be.
It doesn’t matter in the end though, because Penny dumps him for an ex-boyfriend that moves back to the city after they’ve been together for seven months.
“Bucky, you’re sweet. But we both know it’s not me that you really want to be with,” she tells him. She gives him one last kiss on the cheek before leaving him standing outside the diner that they were supposed to have dinner at. His stomach growls, but he can’t quite make himself go in now.
He wants to argue, or be hurt, but he can’t. She’s not exactly wrong after all.
He ends up at a bar a few streets over, drowning his sorrows in glass after glass of pale beer. The combination of it and his empty stomach have him reeling after only a few drinks, and the bartender cuts him off before it’s even eleven o’clock. He half-staggers home, puking in the gutter once, and nearly getting hit by a cab when he trips over a curb and falls into the street.
“Watch where ya goin’ asshole!”
Bucky sticks his middle finger up at the taillights of the car as it speeds away down the street.
He’s tired and dirty by the time he makes it back to the apartment. Steve must’ve been watching for him out the window, or else he’s louder than he even realizes, because he’s barely opened the building’s door before his friend is standing in front of him.
“What the hell Buck?” Steve says, “I thought you were supposed to have dinner with Penny?”
“Sh’dumped me.” Bucky staggers inside, leaning heavily on the wall. He feels out of breath, and the sight of Steve standing in his socks in the foyer of their dirty building strikes him as so funny for some reason that he breaks into a broad grin. “Some old boyfriend moved back fr’m outta state, so she dumped me.”
“Aw hell Buck, I’m really sorry.” Steve’s face is sympathetic. He tucks himself under one of Bucky’s arms to try and help him up the stairs.
The problem is, of course, that Steve is far too small to actually support Bucky’s weight. He’s obviously trying, huffing loudly out his nose, and Bucky’s laughing so hard he’s nearly crying, because Steve’s serious face is so goddamn funny right now. They nearly fall twice before they’ve even made it to the second floor, and thankfully they don’t have to climb any higher, because Bucky’s pretty sure he would just end up sleeping on the floor in the stairwell.
When at last they fall through the door of their apartment, Bucky pours himself onto their single, threadbare armchair. Steve is disheveled and sweaty from the ordeal of dragging his friend up the stairs and he pours each of them a glass of water from the sink and drinks it down.
“Here,” Steve says, tossing Bucky the paper bag with the last of their loaf of bread in it. “Eat something—you look like hell.”
Bucky does, and his stomach feels a little less like he’s on a boat at sea in the middle of a storm. “Thanks Stevie,” he mutters.
“So…what happened?” Steve asks.
“Like I said,” Bucky bites off another piece of the slightly stale bread. “Sh’dumped me. Her old boyfriend moved back from…Illinois or somethin’ so I was out. Said she didn’ think I even wanted her anyway.”
“What?” Steve looks aghast, “But that makes no sense! You were goin’ steady with her for months.”
“Yeah well…she’s not all wrong,” he mutters darkly.
“What do you mean? Were you…Buck you weren’t seeing someone on the side were you?” Steve looks mad now. “’Cause in that case you—”
“—No…hell Stevie, no I wasn’t stepping out on the side. Jeez, you think I’d do that?”
“Well what do you mean then?”
Bucky’s already said more than he meant to. “Nothin’ Stevie. Forget it.”
“Are you sweet on someone else?”
Bucky’s face crumples, and he can’t look at Steve’s earnest expression anymore. Because that’s always been the problem with him, the reason he can’t just be with any girl. He can’t love any of them because his stupid sick heart has been stuck on wanting the same person for almost ten goddamn years.
“Are you?” Steve presses.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He shoves himself out of the chair and over to the coat stand in the corner of the room, trying several times to undo the buttons with his clumsy fingers before he’s able to get it off.
But Steve is like a dog with a bone now, following him as he walks, invading his personal space. “This could be good for you then, Buck. If you want to take someone else out, now you can.”
“No, I can’t.” Bucky tries to step around Steve, but there’s furniture in his path and there’s no real way past him without touching him, which Bucky doesn’t think he can handle right now.
“Why not?”
“I just can’t, Steve. Will you get outta the way?”
“Why are you being so weird about this? Who’s the dame?” Steve’s got his jaw set in that stubborn way he does when he’s not going to drop something.
It’s so unfair. Bucky feels tears starting to sting behind his eyes, and he blinks hard, trying to force them down, because he will not turn into a blubbering mess over this, not now, not in front of—
“What’s wrong?” Steve asks, and Bucky can’t look at him.
He sucks a sharp, wet breath in, his eyes focused on the refrigerator on the opposite side of the room.
“Buck—” Steve’s hand reaches up and touches the side of Bucky’s face, trying to draw his gaze back to him.
Something breaks in Bucky when he meets those blue eyes, so full of concern for him, and before he knows it, he has closed the gap between them, and he’s kissing Steve for all that he’s worth.
When they break apart Bucky is breathing hard, and the tears are rolling unchecked down his face. Steve is frozen in place, his eyes wide with shock.
“That’s why,” he chokes, before pushing past Steve and fleeing to the bedroom.
Alone, he begins to panic. This would almost certainly be the end of his and Steve’s friendship. What had he done? Where would he go? He should apologize, throw himself at Steve’s feet and beg for forgiveness. He didn’t think that Steve was likely to turn him into the police, but there was no way he wouldn’t—
“Bucky?” The bedroom door opens and Steve steps into the room.
“Steve…I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—I mean…don’t worry, I’ll pack my stuff and be out of here in—”
“Bucky you don’t have to leave.” Steve’s frowning now.
“What do you—of course I gotta leave. I won’t—” Bucky’s fished a battered old suitcase out from under his bed, and he starts towards their wardrobe to grab whatever clothes are in there.
“Bucky stop, just—”
“What?” Bucky nearly shouts at him. “What Steve? I’m sorry, okay? Do you…do you want to hit me? You can if you want, I deserve it.” His heart is pounding in his chest. “Just please, don’t get them to arrest—”
“Bucky will you shut the hell up already!” Steve blurts.
Bucky falls silent.
“Just…sit down for a second, okay?” Steve says.
Bucky sinks silently down onto his twin bed, his hands clasped between his knees.
Steve sits down on his own bed, mirroring Bucky’s position. He’s quiet for a moment before he asks, “Did you mean it?”
Bucky looks down at his lap. Briefly he considers lying—maybe he can play it off like a drunken misunderstanding? A joke? The thought vanishes as quickly as it comes. He knows he can’t. Steve deserves the truth after all these years. “Yes,” he whispers.
“How long have you—” Steve breaks off, choosing his words carefully. “I mean, when did you first start…feeling that way?”
“Since we were kids.”
Steve looks floored. “I never knew…I always thought—I mean with the girls…”
“I tried,” Bucky says, “I know it doesn’t count for much. But I tried really hard not to—you’re my best friend Steve.” His voice cracks. “I wanted to be...but I can’t. I’m sorry—I’m so sorry Steve.” He’s blubbering like a baby now.
“Oh Buck,” suddenly Steve is beside him, wrapping his arms around him, and Bucky is confused. Shouldn’t this be the part where he gets thrown out of their apartment? Shouldn’t Steve be angry? But it feels so good to just lean on his best friend, and have Steve rub his back.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Steve murmurs. “It’s not just you.”
Bucky’s head shoots up from where it was resting on Steve’s shoulder so fast that he nearly headbutts him. “What did you just say?”
Steve looks him dead in the eye and smiles at him, brushing a teardrop away with his thumb. “I said it’s not just you who feels that way. Hell, I thought it was obvious.”
Bucky blinks. “What?”
Steve sighs, and now he’s tearing up. “Buck, I’ve been in love with you for years.”
Bucky feels like he’s been struck dumb. “You…what?”
Steve laughs with an edge of hysteria. “You gone deaf on me all of a sudden Barnes?”
Bucky chokes out a laugh and shakes his head. He’s confused. Steve doesn’t seem the type to play some elaborate trick on him like this, but he can’t process what he’s hearing as true yet either.
Beside him Steve is looking at him very carefully. “Can I…can I kiss you now?”
“Yeah.” This isn’t happening. Any second now Steve’s going to announce that he’s joking, and kick Bucky out of the apartment, or—
Steve is kissing him. It’s light and hesitant, his lips just a ghost on Bucky’s, one hand on his shoulder, the other on the side of his face. Bucky’s frozen in place, disbelieving.
Steve pulls back. “Should I stop?” he asks, uncertainly.
Something clicks back into place in Bucky’s brain, and he shakes his head hard. “Don’t you dare,” he gasps, pulling Steve back to him, and bringing their mouths together again.
They move fast, the kiss deepening quickly. Before he knows it, Steve’s straddling his lap, both of his hands tangled in Bucky’s hair. Bucky has one hand on the back of Steve’s neck, and the other moving up and down over his back while their lips move together.
Steve’s tongue teases Bucky’s lower lip, eliciting a helpless groan. Bucky pulls Steve’s shirt free of the line of his trousers and slips his hand underneath it, shuddering at the feel of the other man’s skin.
Steve breaks the kiss for a second, sliding off of Bucky’s lap and pulling at Bucky’s sweater. “Take this off.”
Bucky does what he’s told, removing it along with the collared shirt underneath, and his thin undershirt.
In front of him Steve does the same, pulling off layers of clothing until he’s down to his bare chest. Bucky stares in amazement.
Steve looks down self-consciously. The difference between their bodies couldn’t be more apparent, with Steve’s skinny chest and crooked back, and Bucky’s well-defined muscles from working at the docks.
Bucky can see the hesitation blooming in the other man’s face. He reaches out to him. “Stevie, you are so beautiful,” he murmurs, pulling the other man close to him again.
The feel of skin on skin is incredible, the space between them almost non-existent. The temperature of the room seems warmer than usual. Bucky allows himself to fall back against the pillows of the bed, pulling Steve with him so that they are pressed together, Steve laying on top of him and their legs slotted together. Steve kisses his way down Bucky’s neck, nipping and soothing his sensitive skin until he reaches his chest.
Steve pauses there for a moment, looking back up at Bucky. His hands trail over the fine hair that runs from Bucky’s navel down to the button of his trousers. “Can I?” he whispers.
Bucky nods, his heart feeling like it’s going to burst through his chest.
Steve continues kissing his way down Bucky’s body while he unbuttons the trousers. Bucky lifts his hips when prompted, and Steve tugs the pants and underwear off together, tossing them to the floor.
Bucky’s as hard as he’s ever been in his life, already leaking precum. Steve removes the rest of his own clothing and returns to the bed, kissing Bucky once more as they settle back into their kiss.
Bucky is on fire, burning up with the feeling of it all. He can feel Steve’s cock pressing into his stomach as he chases his tongue into his mouth. He rolls them carefully so that they’re both on their sides facing each other, sliding his hand over the goosebumps on Steve’s flank before taking them both in hand.
Steve lets out a choked off sound, his hips jerking involuntarily into Bucky’s hand.
Bucky continues to stroke them together, pausing only briefly to spit messily into his hand and resume the friction. He’s kissing Steve’s neck and chest while his friend pants heavily into his ear and tangles his hands in Bucky’s hair pulling hard enough to be just on the right side of pain and pleasure. There’s an urgency pooling in his gut already and he feels Steve’s entire body beginning to tense up.
“F-fuck Bucky…’m not gonna last.”
“God me neither,” Bucky pants. “C’mon Stevie, I know you’re close.”
“Oh god, so close.”
Bucky twists his hand a little and his vision nearly whites out. But no, he wants Steve to come first, he has to wait until—”
With a whimper and a few hard thrusts into his hand, Steve spills himself all over Bucky’s hand and between their bellies. With the little extra lubrication it provides, it takes all of fifteen more seconds for Bucky to follow him, biting down on the muscle of Steve’s shoulder to stifle the sounds he wants to make. Steve cradles him through the last few shaky gasps of his orgasm, murmuring sweet nothings into his ear and stroking his hair as he comes down from the paroxysms of pleasure that wrack his body.
When it’s over, Bucky presses a long final kiss to Steve’s lips. He curls his arm around him and buries his face in Steve’s mussed up hair. Neither are particularly motivated to move, despite the necessity of cleaning up their mess.
Eventually Steve extracts himself from their (increasingly sticky) cuddle and heads to the kitchenette. Bucky hears the sound of the tap running and then Steve returns with a damp flannel that he throws from the doorway of their room. It lands with a damp smack on Bucky’s stomach. He snorts a laugh. “Gee thanks.”
“Anytime.” Steve is giving him the same shit-eating grin that he has a million times as he heads back into the kitchen, and Bucky is relieved that whatever has just happened between them doesn’t seem to have changed that much between them.
Bucky runs the flannel over his skin, wiping away the evidence of their previous activities. He hears Steve whistling in the next room, and it makes him grin like an idiot as he pulls a clean pair of underwear and a t-shirt from his clothing pile.
As the clothes settle on his skin, so does the reality of what they’ve just done. Steve returns, the skin on his belly and chest a little red from scrubbing and with two glasses of water. He sees Bucky’s expression and his face falls. “Oh Buck…that’s got to be some kind of a record. You’re regretting it already?”
“What are we thinking Stevie?” Bucky whispers.
Steve crosses the room and sits down beside Bucky on the bed. “I don’t know about you, but I was thinking that I love you, and you love me. I figure there’s not much else that matters ‘sides that, unless you are telling me now that you didn’t mean it.”
Bucky’s face is agonized. “Of course I meant it Steve, but…god, we shouldn’t have done that.”
Steve’s jaw is set. “I don’t see why the hell not.”
“Because it’s a sin, Steve! Not to mention illegal.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
“It is though.” Bucky runs his fingers through his hair. “Hell…I’m so s—”
“—If you apologize to me right now, I swear to God Buck, I will punch you in the mouth.”
Bucky shuts his mouth with a miserable snap.
Steve looks angry. He stands up and pulls on pyjama pants and a t-shirt, the lines of his shoulders tense and restrained. “So what do you want, Buck?” he says finally. “We pretend that didn’t just happen. Go back to the way things were and never talk about it again?”
Bucky doesn’t want that. He wants to pull Steve close to him and kiss away the frown lines on his forehead. Wants to fall asleep with him in his arms. But he shouldn’t want that. “We shouldn’t…I mean, people won’t—”
“Well fuck those people!” Steve bursts out. “I mean god damn it Bucky, why do they get to decide?”
Bucky doesn’t know what to say.
Steve takes Bucky’s hands in his and kneels down in front of him. “We could be happy, you know? You and me. Who cares what the law, or the people at church say? We don’t need to tell ‘em. It’s none of their business. We aren’t hurting anybody.”
Bucky wants to believe him so badly, wants to step back in time to the moment where he was holding Steve in his arms and didn’t have a care in the world.
“Look, the way I see it…if you want to pretend this didn’t happen that’s your choice.” Steve’s voice breaks. “But I can’t do that Buck. I meant it when I said I love you, and I’ll always mean it. I don’t think God would have made me that way if he wasn’t okay with it, and I don’t think He would’ve put us in each other’s lives the way he did. And if I’m wrong, well then I guess I’d rather go to hell with you than go to heaven alone, because to me there’d be no difference.”
Bucky sighs, clutching Steve’s hands tighter. “You’re right,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”
Steve grins. “I should’a had a recorder for that.”
Bucky laughs, swatting his hands away. “Ass.”
“No seriously, tell me that one more time…say ‘Steve, you’re right.’” Steve is grinning, the heaviness lifted from the air.
“Alright ya punk,” Bucky says rolling his eyes. “Rub it in a little more why doncha’.”
Steve laughs. “Come to bed Buck,” he offers, extending his hand. “S’late.”
Bucky takes it, and curls up behind Steve, slipping beneath the covers. He falls asleep to the steady sound of Steve’s breathing and the feeling of their hearts beating steadily in time together.
* * *
Whether he wants to admit it to himself or not, it becomes something of a routine. When Bucky returns from the docks at seven, Steve’s usually already in the kitchen, standing over whatever he has thrown together from the paltry groceries that they’ve managed to buy. He’s been working the till at the grocer around the corner, and Mr. Solomon, the owner, likes him, usually lets him take some of tins that are too old or banged up to sell to proper customers for a fraction of the price.
Steve greets him with his usual “Look what the cat dragged in,” (which was not even that funny the first time, but Bucky can’t help but still find endearing). By the time Bucky washes the grime of work off, they’ll have their meal at their tiny table, while they listen to the radio. Bucky does the washing up, and they’ll settle in for the evening, reading, sometimes playing cards, appearing for all the world to be two normal friends that just happen to share an apartment.
But at some point, one of them will say or do something—maybe it’s Bucky reaching up to stretch his stiff back and shoulders out, or the way he’ll absently trail his fingers over the bare skin of Steve’s shoulder while he’s sitting next to him on their tiny sofa—and something in the atmosphere of the tiny apartment will change, the air suddenly buzzing with an electricity that hadn’t existed before. Then suddenly Bucky will have a lap full of delicate blond artist, the pair of them hard as rocks in their pants as they pull each other out of their clothes and press their mouths together and fall into bed.
It’s intoxicating, the taste of Steve’s skin on his tongue, the way that Bucky can elicit these soft little whimpers from the other man’s mouth as he noses his way down the line of his jaw, kissing and nipping at the skin around Steve’s throat. He loves the way that Steve’s eyes go big as dinner saucers, the pupils huge and black when he props himself up on his elbows and watches Bucky kiss his way down to the waistband of his pants, pausing only briefly to palm himself through his trousers, before he is pulling Steve out of his pants and sucking him down with a moan.
“Oh god Buck,” Steve whimpers in a broken voice. His head tilts back exposing the vulnerable line of his throat before he can make himself look back down at the dark-haired man between his legs. “Oh f—ah!” He can’t help the way his hips jerk forward a little, wanting to push even deeper into the wet heat of Bucky’s mouth.
Bucky grabs Steve’s hips, his fingers pressing into his skin as he pushes him down into the mattress, taking him as deep into his mouth as he can without choking.
Steve gasps, his head hitting the pillow behind him hard, one hand clamped firmly over his own mouth to muffle the noises that he is making as he falls apart under Bucky’s touch. The other is tangled in Bucky’s hair, just on the edge of too tight, causing him to moan, the vibrations travelling through Steve and bringing him even closer to the edge.
Steve can feel the pressure building in himself and he moans. “Oh god Buck—ah! I’m gonna—”
Bucky pulls off of him and quickly replaces his mouth with his hand as Steve drags him up to press a bruising kiss to his mouth. Within a few short strokes he is spilling all over Bucky’s hand and their bellies with a shout that is muffled by the other man’s lips.
Bucky wishes he could save those moments deep within his memory, engrave every detail of them into his mind. He would store up the feeling of wholeness that lives in his chest when he’s lying next to Steve at night, build a reserve supply of contentment, of happiness, to draw on in the future. From the moment Bucky gets home in the evening, to the moment he wakes up each morning he is happier than he’s ever been in his life. If he could live in these months forever he would.
It’s the only bit of heaven that Bucky thinks he’ll ever see.
* * *
Bucky is twenty-four and his life is as close to perfect as he can remember it ever being.
They’re still living in the same apartment, the beds permanently shoved together now, though the door to the bedroom is always closed. Steve’s still working at Solomon’s Grocery. He’s been promoted to cashier. He’s been relatively healthy, with only one frightening bout of pneumonia in the nearly five years since they first started…whatever it was that they were doing.
It’s not easy. They have to be so careful—so aware. It would be all too easy to let their casual touches slip through in public. Bucky takes girls out nearly every weekend. It’s like he’s back in high school, only now there’s never any hope of him wanting to call them again after more than a few dates. They’re camouflage.
It’s all worth it though for moments like these.
It’s a bright and sunny Sunday afternoon and the light filters through the thin sheet that Bucky has pulled over his and Steve’s heads. They slept late, both of them having been out on a double date with a pair of dames that Bucky’s already forgotten the names of, then staying in bed even longer as Bucky slowly unwrapped Steve from his fancy flannel pyjamas, a gift from last Christmas. He’d kissed his way down Steve’s chest, leaving little marks in places that could be easily hidden on his hips and upper thighs. He’d had Steve almost ready to go off in his mouth when he suddenly backed off and reached for the tin of slick that they kept in the bedside table and had slowly pressed one finger, and then another inside of him, crooking his finger just so until Steve was whimpering like he was dying, so desperate to come.
Then Bucky had slipped a third finger in, stretching Steve until he was ready for the moment that Bucky slicked his own cock up and—with a shaky gasp—slid into the hot, impossibly tight space that he’d left behind.
“F-fuck Stevie, you’re so tight,” he groans as he slides inch by agonizing inch into the smaller man’s body. “You feel so goddamn perfect.”
Steve whimpers a little, his fingernails dragging down Bucky’s back and the feeling is bliss, just on the edge of pain and pleasure.
Bucky slowly begins to move his hips, looking down at the place that their bodies meet. It’s the hottest fucking thing he’s ever seen—the sight of his length as it moves in and out of Steve. It’s all he can do to hold back from thrusting in as hard and deep as he can—the urge to claim his lover, to possess him, warring with his absolute horror of doing anything that might hurt Steve.
“You’re not gonna break me you know,” Steve interrupts his thoughts.
Bucky nearly laughs at that, but then Steve wraps his legs around Bucky’s hips and pulls him in closer, and suddenly Bucky is flush against Steve’s body, and then he can’t help but start to thrust in and out a little harder, a little faster, the quiet slap of their bodies on each other awakening something primal in him that has his feet bracing at the foot of the bed so that he can fuck into Steve more forcefully.
Steve, for his part, is letting out little breathy gasps and whimpers of pleasure, and Bucky is talking—babbling really—a steady stream of praises as he feels himself getting closer and closer to the edge.
“Gettin’ close Buck,” Steve grunts, and Bucky already knows—can feel Steve’s body tightening and the insistent hardness between their stomachs.
“C’mon Stevie,” he groans, “I want to feel you—need you to come for me.” He shifts his weight to free his hand, wrapping it around Steve’s shaft and thumbing the leaking head. “God baby, you look so—”
He hardly has to stroke twice before Steve is coming all over their chests. Bucky nearly screams as he feels the muscles tightening around his cock, the sensation almost painful before he is tumbling over the edge himself, thrusting hard and deep into Steve’s body as he comes.
When it’s over, his arms are shaky and weak. He very carefully withdraws from Steve’s body, and half-falls to the side, pulling Steve into his arms. Their sweaty skin is sticky and hot, but Bucky tucks his face into the crook of Steve’s neck, pressing a lazy, open-mouthed kiss to the flushed skin. He reaches around under the blankets until he finds Steve’s flannel pyjama top where it’s been pushed down at the bottom of the bed. He uses it to wipe the cum off his stomach before passing it to Steve, who makes a face.
“Ugh, those are my good pyjamas jackass!”
“You were going to do laundry today anyway.” Bucky grins against a skinny shoulder.
“Yeah well…see if I do any of yours now.” Steve grouses as he wipes himself clean. He throws the shirt in question across the room, settling back against Bucky’s skin, letting the sleepiness take hold of him.
“Mm…love you too Stevie.” Bucky mumbles against a skinny collarbone.
It isn’t until an hour and a half later, when they are properly out of bed and Bucky has gone to the corner shop for some eggs, that Steve turns on the radio and hears the news.
“...panese have attacked Pearl Harbour from the air, and all naval and military activities on the island of O-ha-u, the principal American base in the Hawaiian Islands. That was—"
The door to the apartment flies open with a bang. “Steve turn on the radio!” Bucky bursts through the door, his expression frantic. “We’ve been attacked!”
“It’s on, it’s on, shh.” Steve waves at Bucky to be quiet, and the two of them stand dumbly in their kitchen listening to the broadcaster outline the horrifying news. Neither can speak, even as the broadcast ends and coverage of a concert by the New York Philharmonic resumes.
“We’re going to war,” Steve says finally.
“We-we might not,” Bucky whispers. His face is pale and he’s still standing in the kitchen wearing his hat and coat.
“We have to,” Steve says. “They attacked us Buck. There’s no way we won’t now.”
Bucky doesn’t say anything. He looks at Steve, seeing the way his jaw is set, and he’s reminded of the little boy he met in that alley all those years ago.
Steve is right of course.
The next day the United States declares war on Japan and the Nazis. Within weeks the recruiting stations start to pop up everywhere. He passes one on his way to work every morning.
“I’m joining,” Steve declares over breakfast one morning.
“Like hell you are.” It’s the wrong thing to say.
“What, you think I can’t handle it?” Steve’s face is flushing red. “I’m not a coward, Buck.”
“I know you’re not Stevie.” It’s the truth, but it doesn’t matter. Steve is on a mission.
When he comes home with the 4-F card, Steve is angry. “They wouldn’t even give me a chance.”
Bucky listens without comment. Later, he lets Steve work the frustration out, fucking him under the cover of night, holding on while he asserts his power.
The second time Steve gets rejected, and the third, they don’t talk about it, but Bucky can tell anyway. Sometimes he sees Steve praying when he’s returning late from one of his fake dates. When Steve’s already asleep, Bucky prays just as hard that the next recruiter that Steve goes to isn’t the one that will be uncaring enough—desperate enough—to accept him.
I’ll do whatever you want, he promises, on his knees while Steve slumbers on the bed behind him. I’ll never lay a hand on him again, I’ll trade my soul, but please keep him safe.
They fight exactly once about Bucky’s decision not to enlist. They avoid each other for three days before they make up, Steve murmuring apologies into the hollow of Bucky’s throat as they stroke each other off. It’s a subject they don’t talk about, even as the first batches of soldiers are sent off to Europe.
They spend New Year’s Eve out with some girls that Bucky has met at one of the dance halls. Bucky kisses his date at midnight and by two in the morning is home in his own bed making love to Steve. He thinks, as he’s laying in bed afterwards, Steve’s steady breath whispering against his skin, that this is as good as it’s possible for life to be.
* * *
He should have known it couldn’t last.
Seated on their couch with his pants down and his shirt open, Steve straddling him as he grinds their cocks together, he hears it.
“B-Bucky?” The voice is barely louder than a whisper and yet it cuts through the pair of them like a knife. Bucky jerks backwards, his head already swiveling towards the door—JesusfuckingChrist hadn’t they locked it?—dropping his hands from where they were beneath Steve’s unbuttoned shirt and he sees Becca, her blue eyes huge and shocked as she takes in the debauched scene. The brass key falls from her hand to the floor.
“Oh god, Becca!” He half pushes Steve off his lap as the pair of them scramble to button up trousers and cover themselves.
His sister’s eyes dart back and forth between the pair of them, as they fill with tears. “Bucky...what are you doing?” Her voice cracks as she takes in the obvious marks on her brother’s neck and upper chest, his red mouth, and disheveled clothing.
“It’s not—it’s not what you think Becs! We were just...” his voice dies in his throat, unable to finish the sentence. “I mean it’s not—“He takes a step towards her, which she retreats from just as quickly. Bucky freezes, feeling sick to his stomach in horror.
His sister stares back at him, her eyes welling up.
“That key was only supposed to be for an emergency.” He can barely breathe.
Tears begin to roll down his sister’s cheeks. Her face is ripping Bucky’s heart into pieces. She doesn’t say a word.
“Becca please...” he whispers. “You can’t—don’t tell Ma and Pop...please Becca.”
She doesn’t say a word. She turns and runs out of the apartment.
“Oh fuck.” Bucky groans and runs his fingers through his hair. “Oh god...”
Beside him Steve is white as a sheet. He looks small and disheveled, and scared in a way that Bucky has never seen him before, not even when he’s been getting his teeth knocked in by men twice his size. “Buck—“
“No! Shit—I gotta—where’s my jacket?” Bucky is moving now, trying to gather his things, get dressed.
“Bucky—”
“—If I catch up to her now…I can explain—”
“Explain what Bucky? There’s nothing you can—”
“—I can fix this!” He’s got two different socks on his feet, and his shirt buttoned up wrong, but he shoves his feet into his shoes and throws a jacket on over top. “I can fix this, I can.”
Steve looks very small where he sits on the sofa. “Ok Buck,” he whispers.
Bucky runs down the stairs and out the front door trying to guess which way his sister went. Where would she go? But the problem is he doesn’t really know. Becca’s twelve, still a child herself. What was she doing out here on her own anyway? It’s late and she should have school tomorrow.
Bucky roams up and down the main roads looking for any sign of her. It starts to rain, and his jacket doesn’t repel the water or insulate him from the chill that sets in with the damp. He’s shivering when he spots her, sitting in the window of a diner a few blocks from his apartment. It’s an old favourite of his and Steve’s, called Jeanne’s, though the owner is a woman called Shirley.
When he steps into the glowing warmth of the restaurant the hostess gives him a wary once-over. For the first time Bucky realizes what he must look like, half-crazed and mismatched, and soaked to the skin. “I’m uh…meeting my sister,” he says by way of explanation. “Is it alright if I just…use the bathroom for a minute before?”
“It’s just over there,” the hostess replies, nodding her head in the right direction.
“Thank you ma’am.”
Inside the bathroom Bucky re-buttons and tucks in his shirt and finger-combs his hair back from his face. He splashes a little water on his face, not because it isn’t wet enough already, but something in the routine makes him feel steadier. He uses the sleeve of his coat to dry his skin. It’s a small improvement.
He leaves the bathroom, walking to where Becca sits at her booth. Her back is to him, but she doesn’t react with any indication of surprise when he slides into the booth across from her—just glances up at him, purses her lips, and continues perusing the menu in front of her.
The waitress arrives at their table a few moments later. “Hey there, how are you folks doin’ today?” She is around the same age as Bucky and Becca’s mother, a few streaks of grey in her brown curls.
“Fine, thanks. I want a cheeseburger with fries and a strawberry milkshake.” It’s the first words that Becca has spoken since he sat down. She still isn’t looking at Bucky.
“You got it, hon.” The woman scribbles a few lines on her notepad. “And for you?” She turns her attention to Bucky.
“Um…just coffee for me please.”
“You got it. I’ll be right back with your drinks.” She waltzes back towards the kitchen and Bucky turns his attention back to his sister, who is staring out the window still refusing to look at him.
“Becca—”
“—Daddy’s in the hospital.”
“—I…he what?”
“He fell off a ladder trying to clear the gutters. They took him to Methodist Episcopal.”
For a moment Bucky forgets why he chased his sister to this diner. “What was he thinking—I told him I’d take care of it!”
“Yeah, weeks ago. Then you were too busy with—you were too busy, and he got tired of waiting.” Bucky doesn’t need her to fill in the rest of her original sentence—you were too busy with Steve. She was right too…he was supposed to have gone to his parents’ last Sunday, only Steve had been coughing, and they’d spent the whole day curled up in bed, sharing the warmth…
“Coffee and a strawberry milkshake!” The waitress plonks the two drinks down in front of them. “Your burger should be out shortly hon. Sure I can’t get you anything to eat, young man?”
Bucky shakes his head. He’s never wanted to eat less in his life. He takes a sip of the hot black coffee, feeling it burn down his throat.
As soon as the waitress is gone they fall back into silence.
“I’m sorry Bec,” Bucky whispers.
For the first time that evening, Becca looks right at him. Her eyes are shining with tears.
“Please Becca,” he continues, his throat thick. “Please don’t tell them about…about—”
“—About the real reason that you don’t come with us to church anymore?” Her voice is cold in a way he’s never heard his baby sister speak before, much too old for her twelve years.
This time it’s Bucky who can’t meet her eye, staring into the blackness of his mug. “I’m…Becca I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.” He blinks hard against the tears that are burning behind his eyes.
“I mean, it’s a sin Bucky,” she whispers, leaning in towards him. “What-what you two are doing.”
Bucky buries his face in his hands. “I know. I know. I should never have—I’ve been so stupid Becca.” He lifts his head up and meets her eyes, sees their redness and the furrowed brow above them. How could he ever hope to explain it to her? How could he explain this dark thing, curled up inside his heart and mind?
“—Here you go! One cheeseburger with an order of French fries.” Their waitress is back with Becca’s meal, which she lays down in front of the young girl with an exaggerated flourish. “Bon Appetit!”
Becca looks away and picks up the bottle of ketchup from the centre of the table. She unscrews the lid and shakes the glass bottle. She smacks at the end of it and shakes it violently. The ketchup will not come out.
“Here,” Bucky says, “Let me.” He takes the bottle and hits neck a few times, and the sauce trickles out onto Becca’s plate. “Is that enough?”
Becca nods. Then the tears well up from her eyes and come pouring down her cheeks, and suddenly she's six years old again and crying while Bucky bandages her knee because she fell off the swings.
“Hey…hey hey hey, no…please don’t cry…” Bucky stands and slides into the booth seat beside her, tucking her under his arm and pulling her close. She gives a little gasp, then sags against him, burying her face in his sleeve, shaking with her silent sobs.
“I don’t want you to go to hell.”
Bucky closes his eyes and cradles her close, his nose buried in her hair. She smells like home, the shampoo that his mom has always used, and his father’s cigar smoke clinging to her clothes. He whispers apologies and assurances into her hair, promises that he’s going to stop. He promises himself that he will be a better son. That he’ll be the man his family needs him to be.
Bucky never knew that you could actually feel your own heart breaking in your chest, but there it is. He feels a real, physical pain beneath his ribcage, like a hole opening up inside of him that just bleeds and bleeds, and never scabs over.
When they leave the diner they go their separate ways, parting with a hug. Tomorrow Bucky will go to the hospital with her to visit his father, to begin his penance. He will sleep at his parents’ house for the next few days, be the dutiful son. He will tell Steve that this…this thing that existed between them is over and pretend that there is anything left of his heart after he watches the other man’s being ripped to pieces, and that is own soul isn’t dying alongside the happiness in Steve’s eyes.
* * *
Bucky is almost twenty-five when he walks into one of the recruitment offices and enlists in the military. His father’s injury has made him unable to continue working, and Bucky’s job doesn’t pay enough to support the family. The army is the obvious answer, with the added benefit of taking him far away; where he won’t have to sit across the kitchen table from Steve every morning, making stilted small talk as they both pretend like his eyes don’t linger on the curve of his shoulder, the steadiness of the artist’s hands, that his lips have never known the taste of Steve’s skin on his tongue.
Training is four weeks at Camp Lehigh and Bucky finds that he likes the army. There’s no room for forbidden longings when your muscles are on fire, an endless ache from push-ups, sit-ups, running, shooting, crawling in the dirt, and marching. He demonstrates an aptitude on the gun range, and is selected for additional training, gets promoted to the rank of sergeant. They train him as a sniper, and Bucky feels something like joy when he watches target after target fall down through the scope of his rifle. He almost never misses, and his superiors heap praise on him for his ability to hide in plain sight during their drills and exercises, to blend into the background until the moment that his targets fall down, never knowing what hit them. Bucky thinks it’s funny, but of course they don’t know that he’s been hiding in plain sight for years.
He’s sent home for three weeks before they ship him out to Europe. For three weeks he and Steve dance around each other while Bucky spends time with his family and a string of girls who love his uniform and let him fuck them without any expectation of a future.
The night before he leaves, he takes two of them out with him and Steve to the Stark Expo. Bucky has loved science fiction for most of his life, and he lets fantasies of flying cars and the world of tomorrow carry him through the night, ignoring the nerves that have settled into his stomach, the knowledge that tomorrow he will leave and maybe never come back.
Steve disappears at some point, so Bucky takes the girls home early with the excuse that he has to be up early tomorrow to ship out. Steve comes home late, and the pair of them climb into their beds—pushed back to opposite sides of the room—and Bucky tries to sleep even as the fear of what lies ahead creeps to the forefront of his mind.
He’s been lying there in silence for nearly forty minutes when there’s a rustling of his sheets and a familiar skinny body slides into the bed, pressing his bare chest against Bucky’s back.
“Bucky—” Thin arms wrap around him.
Bucky rolls over so that he is facing Steve. “—Steve we shouldn’t—”
“Buck please, just…one last night in case—” In case you don’t come back.
He should say no. He should send Steve back to his own bed, roll over, and pretend that this never happened. He knows Steve wouldn’t fight him on it.
With a strained sigh, Bucky wraps his arms around Steve and pulls him closer. Their lips find each other’s in the darkness the way that they have so many times before, and their bodies slot together like puzzle pieces, their legs slotted together, breaking contact only for brief moments to allow Bucky to pull off his undershirt and both of them to remove their underwear.
They make love without urgency, savoring the feeling of the other. Bucky tries to commit every detail of this to memory, to remember the exact colour of Steve’s eyes in the moonlight, the softness of his hair and skin. He opens Steve up with his slick fingers, crooking them in just the right way to make his lover’s entire body jerk with the sensation, eliciting the little gasps and moans that have always driven Bucky absolutely crazy with want. When at last he slides inside Steve’s body, the other man’s name is on his lips like a prayer. Steve jerks himself off while Bucky loses himself in the sheer pleasure of his body, riding through the contractions and shocks of Steve’s orgasm before following him over that edge.
When it’s over, they lie on their sides face-to-face, Steve cradling Bucky’s face between his hands, and Bucky running his fingers absently over Steve’s delicate cheekbone, over his shoulders, across the planes of his body and back again. They kiss intermittently, neither of them wanting to fall asleep.
“You have to be careful over there,” Steve whispers against his lips, their foreheads pressed together. “I need you to stay safe.”
“Bit rich coming from you,” Bucky mutters, but there’s no heat in it. “I’ll do everything I can. I promise.”
“I love you,” Steve says it like it’s a confession. “Even if that’s…even if that’s not what you want to hear. Even if I shouldn’t.”
“I love you too Stevie,” Bucky says. “To the end of the line, remember? Couldn’t stop if I tried.”
He leaves the next morning when Steve is still asleep in bedsheets that smell like the two of them. He can’t face the prospect of actually saying goodbye.
As he climbs into a cab he forces himself to shut the door on everything to do with Steve. He feels that hole open up in his heart again, lets its emptiness numb everything else. He is a soldier now, Sergeant James B. Barnes, 32557038. He repeats it to himself in his mind, a calming mantra as he joins his fellow soldiers on the ship headed for England.
Sergeant James B. Barnes, 32557038.
Sergeant James B. Barnes, 32557038.
Sergeant James B. Barnes…