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Liberty Formula One Team takes pride in its all-American theming, thank you very much. Drivers James “Bucky” Barnes and Steve Rogers have always been friends—since they were teens living only a few blocks away from each other in Brooklyn Heights—and neither of them have let the competitive nature of Formula One destroy that relationship yet.
In fact, it’s very much the opposite. Their chemistry on-track is explosive, neither afraid to execute a nasty overtake on the other when the time calls. Without hard feelings, of course.
Pundits call it a masterclass. An example of how a perfect Formula One team should function—without unnecessary drama, without foul play.
And to the outside world—sure.
But two drivers, one shared garage, approximately half a brain cell collectively, and a metric ton of emotional constipation is how Sam Wilson, engineer, would describe the team. In layman's terms, at least.
He delivers this exact sentiment to Natasha Romanoff one Tuesday, while waiting for their drivers to finish a fitness test. Not that the test is necessary, since both men have the resting heart rate of Olympic swimmers and the stature of Greek gods.
“Specifically,” Sam says, watching through the gym’s glass as Bucky glares at Steve’s reflection in the mirror, chest heaving with exertion, sweat dripping from his temple, “I’m talking about your boy.”
“He’s not my boy,” Natasha grumbles. She runs her pen down the checklist on her clipboard. “Rogers is my driver—there is a distinction, and I’m tired of explaining it.”
“Sure. Tell that to Barnes.”
Natasha, for one, does not have to ask what that means. She’s been Steve Rogers’s race engineer for the better part of four years, and has since learned every single one of his mannerisms in every situation. When he’s in press conferences, he sets his shoulders back and speaks in confident, commanding tones. In debrief, he sits forward in his chair and drums his fingers against the table.
When Bucky Barnes walks into a room that Steve occupies, he goes soft and stupid and quiet. As if Bucky is a rare bird that might scatter the moment anyone speaks too harshly.
She’s ninety percent sure that Steve doesn't even realize he does it—the slight stumbling over his words as his eyes flit over to Bucky any time the man moves. In her humble, brutally honest opinion, it’s almost pathetic.
In the same vein, however, she has also spent four years watching Bucky watch Steve with an intensity that borders hers during a race.
The entire scenario would be considered funny, borderline hilarious, if it weren’t also the most exhausting thing she has ever witnessed in a sport that frequently includes literal car crashes.
“They’re helpless,” Sam fills in, stating the same words they’re both thinking. It is, possibly, the only word there is to describe whatever the two are going through.
Natasha sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose briefly, and checks something off on the clipboard. “Yup.”
Then, he turns, an ingenious expression on his face. “Hey, is there a betting pool yet?”
i. bahrain — pre-season testing.
It starts—if you trace it back far enough, past F2 and F3 and even F4, when they were both somewhat new to the racing scene with only each other to hold onto—on a karting track in New Jersey, the summer they were both sixteen. Bucky has had almost twenty years to trace back this particular thread, and the words Camp Lehigh Raceway are as familiar as the lines on his own palm.
Steve Rogers was a scrawny asthmatic kid with more stubbornness than sense back then, and a nose that tilted slightly off-kilter. Bucky soon learned why, exactly, the boy had a crooked nose; he picked (and lost) approximately three fights a month because of that same stubbornness, which also translated to an absolutely terrifying opponent on track.
Bucky remembers the exact moment he understood that he was going to be spending the rest of his life chasing circles around Steve Rogers: turn three, on a rented kart with a busted throttle pedal. Steve had dove around the inside, looking for a gap that didn’t exist, and somehow managed to find three more centimeters of asphalt that the universe had declined handing to anyone except for him. Bucky had spun out trying to defend. Steve had won by half a car’s length and then, instead of gloating about it—instead of doing literally anything a sixteen-year-old would normally do after beating their best friend in a race—he climbed out of the car, jogged over, hauled Bucky up by his arm, and spent his last six bucks on a milkshake to share.
I only won because you let me have the inside in lap two, Steve had said, bumping Bucky’s shoulder. It was a lie, of course, and an unconvincing one at that, but it was so kind, so quintessentially Steve that Bucky had been too floored to argue.
In fact, he had been so gone by the time the milkshake was finished that it took him another eight years to even admit to himself what the feeling was, and another eleven doing absolutely nothing about it. Eleven and counting. Some things you just have to carry, especially in a sport like Formula One.
Which is all to say: by the time Liberty signed them (four years ago now) in an eighteen-month window—Steve first, because Steve has always been fast, and Bucky a few months after because Steve kept bothering Stark until the man finally thought two birds, one all-American marketing campaign—Bucky already had a decade and a half of practice being quietly, hopelessly in love with his best friend.
He’s gotten very good at it in recent years. Sharing a garage means sharing a space means sharing a gym, and that was probably the hardest part: having to keep his damn hands to himself even when Steve looks like a glazed donut from the dripping sweat.
But he has a system, okay? The system mostly involves never being alone with Steve for more than an hour (and even that’s pushing it), drinking exactly enough at celebrations so that he doesn’t get loose-lips and spill his feelings, and channeling nineteen years of unrequited feeling into frustration he takes out on the track.
The system in its entirety works fine. He spends four years sharing a Formula One garage with Rogers, and the two of them rack up three championships combined, one for Bucky and two for Steve.
And then Bahrain, the beginning of what will be their fifth year racing beside each other, manages to burst all of that carefully-constructed cool.
It’s almost nothing. This is what bothers Bucky the most about it—that later, he can trace the whole stupid spiral to a hotel corridor at an unholy hour in the morning and the faint, melodic sound of laughter.
Pre-season testing in Bahrain is possibly the bane of Bucky’s entire existence. It’s hot, for one. So hot that he could probably crack an egg open on the asphalt and watch it sizzle into something almost-edible if you ignore the gravel in it. The debriefs run until midnight, and Tony Stark has lots to say about anything and everything.
By day three, Bucky’s inner clock has given up on trying to reconcile Brooklyn time with Bahrain time, and instead has opted to just… give up entirely. His body is running entirely on gas fumes and high-protein granola bars that taste like cardboard.
By day four, at one-fifty something in the morning, he is standing outside of his own hotel room, key card in hand but somehow unable to press it to the pad and unlock the door. Because somewhere down the hall, he can hear Steve laughing.
The thing is: Bucky knows Steve more than anybody else does—nineteen years of cataloging every little action usually results in that. He knows Steve’s media laugh, when another driver says something that is supposed to be funny but just falls flat. He knows the small huff of air that Steve gives reporters when they ask a question so dumb it’s amusing, like when they asked how it felt to be America’s number one driver. Bucky knows how Steve laughs when Bucky says something funny, the one that used to get them kicked out of libraries.
This is that laugh. Too loud, slightly horsey, the kind of laugh that makes your stomach turn with FOMO.
Bucky follows the sound without meaning to—feet pattering on the carpeted floors, legs moving before his brain understands why. He knows Steve’s hotel room number, and he has a key, since they exchange those kinds of things before retiring for the night every Thursday.
But it turns out he doesn’t even need the key. Steve’s door is cracked open just an inch, a wedge of warm light spilling out into the hallway. All Bucky does is push the door open a bit more, and he can see exactly enough to ruin his night.
Steve is sitting on the edge of the bed in a worn tee and gray sweatpants, hair still damp from when he showered after the session. God, Bucky thinks helplessly, swallowing hard at the sight of the other man looking perfectly candid. Paper printouts are fanned out on the duvet, and Bucky follows the trail like breadcrumbs, until—
Oh. Fuck.
Natasha Romanoff is sitting next to him. Not engineer-driver-relationship next to him, nor professional-distance next to him. She’s so close that her shoulder is pressed to Steve’s bicep, so close that he can probably smell her stupid perfume on her stupid red hair, which is down out of its usual ruthless bun. And to make it worse, she’s also exchanged her team polo for something casual. A hoodie that looks to be about three sizes too big and definitely not hers, because Bucky knows for a fact that it belongs to Steve because it says Auburndale Art School. Where he attended for a year before it became clear that he had no time for school in the Formula One world.
He has worn it every flight for the past three years. It’s even developed holes in the ribbing of the cuffs. The cuffs that are now rolled up to Natasha’s forearms.
She says something Bucky can’t hear, and whatever it is makes Steve’s head tip back in laughter—that same laugh that makes something ugly rear in Bucky’s chest. Natasha smiles back while Steve’s eyes are closed, soft and entirely unguarded. It’s nothing like the dry, clipped Natasha that barks orders over the radio during races.
Bucky stands in the hallway for another few seconds, watching the scene play out like a movie he doesn’t particularly enjoy, doing absolutely nothing useful with his face or hands. And then he turns around, walks numbly to his own room, and promptly collapses on top of the covers, still in his clothes, staring at the ceiling.
The air conditioning cycles off at four in the morning, a few hours later, and Bucky still hasn’t moved. It’s then he decides, with the clarity of someone who has not slept in far too long and has eaten significantly less than a man his size should, that this is fine, actually. This is great. Steve can do whatever he wants with whoever he wants, and the tightness behind Bucky’s sternum is definitely heat exhaustion and nothing else, because there is nothing else. There has never been an anything else. Bucky does not have feelings about this, Bucky has never had feelings about this, Bucky is a professional high-performance athlete with perfect cardiovascular health.
He breathes in, and then out, running the loop over again in his head: the laugh, the hoodie, the tickle of Natasha’s hair against Steve’s sculpted jawline. Bucky is a reasonable adult, okay? He can be objective.
Objectively: they work closely together. A driver and his race engineer are constantly talking into each other's ears, and proximity is a natural part of that. Hell, Sam has put his arm around Bucky’s shoulders plenty of times after a celebration. That’s natural.
Objectively: Steve is warm with people he trusts. Always has been, always will be. He claps men on the backs and squeezes shoulders and puts his hand on the napes of necks (this one is Bucky’s favorite, though he would rather die than admit that to Steve). It’s nothing specific to Natasha at all.
Objectively: Natasha Romanoff is probably the single most beautiful woman Bucky has ever seen. And, setting that aside, an extraordinarily capable race engineer with a quick wit that matches Steve’s, and a lithe frame that complements Steve’s, and a level of attractiveness that would lure any straight man in—
When Bucky finally releases the breath he didn’t know he was holding, it comes out shakily.
He does not sleep.
At breakfast, in the hospitality suite, Steve slides into the seat next to him with a plate of eggs, toast, and bacon. His expression is almost infuriatingly bright, and it’s clear he’s had an uninterrupted eight hours of rest, unlike Bucky. “You look like hell,” he says cheerily, pushing the plate to the middle space between them.
Bucky stares at it. “Thanks. Late night?”
“Yeah, actually.” Steve forks up eggs from the side facing him, and Bucky feels something like frustration bubble up inside of him at how normal Steve is being. “Nat and I were going through the brake balance stuff till like two. I think we finally cracked it though — turn ten's gonna be so much better."
Nat and I. Bucky works his jaw, chewing around nothing. His mouth tastes like ash, and he speaks with a tremendous amount of control. “Cool.”
“You okay?”
“Jet lag,” Bucky mumbles between gritted teeth. They both know it’s a lie—jet lag stopped being a believable excuse some time during their fifth year as friends, after they’d travelled enough to become basically immune to the thing. But Steve, who has the emotional radar of a brick but loves him anyway, just nods and pushes a glass of orange juice across the table.
Bucky drinks it, of course, though not without feeling inexplicably furious at the world. If Steve notices, he doesn’t say anything.
ii. jeddah — round six.
By Jeddah, he can almost convince himself it was a fluke. A one-time thing, something that could be fixed by virtue of being in a different country with different lighting and a slightly cooler atmosphere.
It does not fix things. In fact, it makes things considerably worse, because Jeddah is where Steve opens his mouth in a post-qualifying press conference and gives a perfectly reasonable, perfectly boring answer about sportsmanship and track limits. These kinds of answers are common: regurgitated PR bullshit that leaves more questions than it answers, made to be left alone as soon as the words leave his mouth.
But this answer in particular seems to detonate across three continents of motorsports media within the hour.
What Steve actually says—because Bucky miserably watches the interview more times than he should, reading between the lines despite his knowledge not to, like picking at a wound—is something defending a rookie from a rival team after his engineers practically hung him out to dry because of a first-lap incident. Steve, who, even when he was tiny and scrawny, has never been able to stand around and watch somebody get steamrolled, simply points out that the kid had nowhere to go and that to blame him rather than fixing the sightline at turn thirteen is a bit of a cop-out, honestly.
It is, by any measure, a mild and fair thing to say. It’s all subtext, not even the main point of his answer. But unfortunately for everybody involved, the rival team is sponsored by one of Liberty’s own secondary partners, and by the time Bucky returns to the hotel that night, Tony has already called an emergency meeting, used the word optics at least ten times, and stormed out of the hospitality unit once.
Bucky, for his part, gives a statement of his own to the FIA about a minor infringement for not following the race director’s instructions (whatever that means). He gets cleared, eats dinner alone because Steve is tied up with Pepper and Liberty’s legal team, and then retreats to his hotel room at a reasonable time. Like a person with his life together, who is not pining hopelessly over his best friend, the straightest man who has ever lived.
But he wakes up at one in the morning anyway, mouth dry, and decides to go raid the hospitality kitchen because he may be a millionaire, but 33 Saudi Riyal (the equivalent of nine whole US dollars) is an exorbitant amount of money to pay for water. He’s not that out of touch, okay?
The lights are still on in the main lounge. Through the glass partition, Bucky can see Steve at the long table, laptop open in front of him, looking absolutely wrecked—his posture is botched, his hair is a ruffled mess, and his expression is nothing short of dismal. Stress, probably. Bucky has never liked Legal either.
Beside Steve, of course, is Natasha. She looks significantly more put-together than Steve does as she reads whatever is on the laptop from over his shoulder. Her arms are crossed and her face is flat, taking in the information.
Bucky swallows. He should keep walking. He should really, really keep walking. Or better yet, leave—go back to his hotel room and pay nine bucks for Dasani instead of watching this clearly personal display like some kind of stalker.
Instead he stops, half hidden by the partition, because Natasha says something too low for him to make out and reaches out to set a hand flat at the back of Steve’s neck. And Steve, who has been wound tight enough to snap all evening, who Bucky watched flinch every time his phone buzzed with a notification, exhales like she’s let something out of him, and tips his head back into her palm.
It’s such a small thing. Steve is tired, obviously, and he would do that with anyone who put their hand on his neck right now. It’s nothing specific to Natasha. Bucky knows this, and he’s told himself this about fifty times between Bahrain and now. He’s sick of having to make this argument.
He does not get food or even a glass of water. He turns on his heel, goes back to his room, and stares at the ceiling. His mind races the entire time, heart beating faster than it should, working overtime to try and logic its way out of this feeling, as it has so many times before. But tonight, the logic doesn’t particularly work, because tonight he can still see it: the line of Steve’s throat, bared, trusting, into someone else’s hand.
But why? the anxious part of Bucky’s mind whispers. Why would he go to her—his engineer—instead of you when he’s stressed? It’s always been you; it’s never been her.
At breakfast the next morning, Steve pushes another plate of eggs and bacon between them, along with a roll of silverware and a glass of orange juice for Bucky. He looks wrung-out, of course, but relieved as he runs a hand through his hair, the apology statement evidently approved and some of the sponsor tensions dissolved. “I don’t know what I would’ve done last night without Nat,” he breathes, eyes crinkling with a grin. “She basically wrote the whole thing while I freaked out. I was useless.”
“She’s good at that,” Bucky says tightly. “For an engineer, I mean.”
“The best,” Steve agrees easily. When Natasha drops a coffee in front of him on her way back—black with two sugars, exactly how Steve likes it because of course she knows how he likes his coffee, of course—Steve catches her wrist for just a moment. “Thank you,” he murmurs to her. “Seriously.”
And Bucky doesn’t miss the way his thumb caresses the underside of her wrist absently, brushing over her pulse. How could he miss that?
“Don’t thank me. The bottle of wine you brought was plenty,” she says, and steals a piece of bacon. Bucky watches Steve let her wrist free, and then watches him watch her leave with a soft expression on Steve’s face.
Okay, he thinks with a lump in his throat, unable to tear his eyes away from Steve’s face. That’s that, then.
He runs through the objective facts again.
Objectively, gratitude is not romance.
Objectively, Steve thanks the catering staff with the same earnestness he thanked Natasha with. He once cried—actual tears, in front of cameras—thanking a marshal who pulled him out of the car after a nasty crash in F3.
Objectively, none of that explains the neck thing, or the hoodie, or the caress of his calloused hand on Natasha’s wrist, or the particular helpless tenderness with which Steve looks at people he loves.
Bucky swallows, ducks his head, and picks at the eggs with his fork.
iii. monaco — round thirteen.
Bucky likes Monaco about as much as anyone can like Monaco, okay? He does. He likes the track, how the walls close in on you so much that it becomes suffocating, your only options being to power through or to crash. Monaco is the kind of race that makes it obvious when it separates the good drivers from the worse ones.
But he can’t deny the weird things it does to his chest, which has nothing to do with the beautiful harbor views and the eye-watering price of a club sandwich. It’s the closeness of everything—multi-million-dollar yachts pressed up against the paddock, all full of faux-rich people trying to show off. And sure, he can appreciate a paddock visit or two from a celebrity, but it’s as if every person he runs into is famous and has no idea who Bucky is at all.
So, Bucky doesn’t like the off-track aspect of Monaco. He’s always been better at the on-track stuff anyway.
He takes pole on Saturday afternoon by a few tenths, because he has always been good at Monaco—better than Steve, at least, who takes P2 with an easy smile that makes Bucky want to kiss him and/or shake him. But Bucky just smiles back instead, his lips pulling upwards before he can even think about the motion.
In the post-race interviews, Steve stands beside Bucky and gives his spiel: I’m excited, for both the team and Buck here—and then he slings an arm around Bucky’s shoulders and the man stops listening, stops focusing on anything else besides staying as still as possible so Steve will keep the touch there a bit longer, maybe even forget he’s doing it. And then Bucky curses himself inwardly, shrugs the arm off, and pointedly ignores the little concerned glance that Steve gives him while also delivering a perfectly-crafted answer for the reporter. It’s all true, everything he’s saying about being happy and grateful and excited.
Bucky almost wishes it wasn’t. Wishes Steve was lying, so that maybe Bucky would have something solid—an actual reason to justify the quiet resentment growing in his chest.
The gala is that night—some charity function the team has sponsored for three years straight, with a string quartet and a black tie dress code that has Bucky scrambling to the closest shop (of which there are many) for a suit. He buys a navy one that he hopes matches Steve’s, and then sets off to the man’s hotel room. Bucky and Steve have a tradition of getting ready together before events like this, dating all the way back to their junior years. It usually consists of Steve’s fingers fixing Bucky’s tie and Bucky needling Steve about the amount of product he uses in his hair that he (in Bucky’s humble, subjective opinion) doesn’t need.
So he knocks on Steve’s door at six, half-dressed with a garment bag over his arm and his tie undone around his neck, expecting the usual chaos. Half-unbuttoned shirts, lost cufflinks, missing hair combs.
What he gets instead is music. It’s tinny, coming from a phone propped up on the edge of the bed. The door swings open easily under his knuckles—Steve hardly bothers to leave it properly latched, not when Bucky has his own key—and he freezes before it’s fully ajar.
Steve Rogers is attempting, with all the grace of a newborn giraffe, to waltz.
Natasha has one hand on his shoulder, the other laced in his at their side, counting under her breath. “—two, three, four. No, your other left, Rogers, and un-tense your shoulders.”
“I’m trying,” Steve grumbles. He’s already fully dressed, just missing a tie. His hair is artfully done, as usual, and the navy suit matches the cheeky American-flag tie he’s got on. His tongue is pressed against his cheek, how it is when he’s extremely concentrated on something.
However, that specific concentration-face is usually reserved for puzzling things like telemetry or brake bias stuff. Not dancing, and definitely not Natasha, no matter how much the thought makes Bucky feel sick.
“Try harder. Seriously, a hundred and eighty centimeters of leg and somehow none of the coordination,” Natasha huffs, but she’s smiling when she says it, fond and exasperated. She steps him through it again, slower, palm pressing gentle correction into the small of his back, and Steve adjusts—just like that, like his body has been specifically waiting for this kind of direction.
They turn, and for one unbearable second, Bucky can see it. They’re both beautiful, for one. The most visually stunning couple he’s possibly ever seen, and he’s not just saying that because of his massive crush on Steve Rogers. They just fit together so easily—like two halves of the same machine—that Bucky’s mouth goes instantly dry and his body staggers back slightly.
He doesn’t say anything, though. He’s gotten very good at that recently, the standing very still while his chest feels like it’s combusting thing. He watches Steve’s palm settle on Natasha’s back again as if it belongs there, watches them turn again as the brass swells from the phone’s small speaker, and thinks, I am never going to get to ask him to do that with me.
And then, as clear and blunt as a tank through fog: He would never do that with me.
It’s a stupid thing to be upset by in the grand scheme of things. A dance lesson between two fully-clothed, consenting adults in a hotel room that Bucky has no right being in anyway, doing something that happens at every gala that Bucky’s attended without a single thought spared for it. But maybe there’s something there in the way Steve lets Natasha move him without any of the deliberate distance he usually keeps from anyone except Bucky. And that something manages to lodge its way into the gap between his heart and his ribs, firm and immovable.
Bucky has spent nineteen years cataloging every version of Steve Rogers there is. He didn’t know there was one who danced, and he hates, on some petty and unreasonable level he’s not proud of, that someone else got to find that version first.
He takes one step back, and then another, until he’s walking the length of the hallway without registering a single step of it, and ends up at Sam’s door instead. He still needs help with his tie, after all.
Sam takes one look at him and sighs. “Tie or crisis?”
“Tie,” Bucky lies, presenting his collar as evidence, in all of its half-unbuttoned, undone glory.
Sam reaches out to fix it, and doesn’t push past the question. “You good?” he asks with a raised brow, glancing up.
“Objectively,” Bucky says in lieu of an answer. Sam, mercifully, does not ask him to turn it into one. His fingers only work a bit more on the tie, and then he steps back, hands spread out in a voila gesture. Around Bucky’s neck is a perfect half-windsor.
He spends the rest of the walk down the hall back to his room trying to compose himself the way he does before press conferences and interviews—shoulders back, jaw set, looking about as intimidating as possible so he gets asked the fewest amount of questions. From the outside, Bucky is certain he doesn’t look like a man rehearsing an entire imaginary future in his head, containing one Steve Rogers learning to waltz for someone else.
By the time he reaches his room, he’s almost convinced it’s worked.
interlude — monaco gala.
By the time the gala is in full swing—string lights above the marina, champagne towers, a charity auction for one of Bucky’s old helmets nobody is paying attention to, the sort of crowd that photographs beautifully but brings nothing of substance in real life—Bucky is already three drinks deep and doing a passable impression of a man who isn’t cataloging every inch of distance between Steve and Natasha.
The list isn’t long today. They’re laughing about something across the room, both holding champagne flutes. Her hand is braced on his forearm, and Bucky’s had to physically turn back toward the bartender to avoid the sight of it twice already, rationing his own suffering like he’s trying to make it last the entire season.
He motions for the bartender to get him another drink. If the bartender’s face is any metric, Bucky isn’t doing an entirely successful job at looking nonchalant. He’s halfway through reassuring himself that yes, he can be objective about this, when he feels the familiar warmth of someone beside him.
It’s Steve, leaning against the bar so close to Bucky that their shoulders are touching, like a planet finding its orbit. This is routine by now: wherever Bucky ends up in a room, the universe finds a way to push Steve closer, until they’re beside each other. Bucky’s stopped questioning it years ago, because questioning it tends to lead somewhere he’s not sure he can afford to go in public.
“You disappeared earlier,” Steve says with a subtle frown. He’s loosened his own tie and unbuttoned the collar, sleeves rolled to his forearms, a flush on his cheek that could be champagne or could also just be Steve, who’s always run warm in places like these.
Bucky almost curses under his breath. It’s unfair how good Steve looks in formal clothes like these, especially when it’s a bit unkempt.
“Tie emergency,” he says instead, looking away. “Sam fixed it.”
“Right.” Steve drums his fingers against the wood of the bar, restless energy obvious in his stance. He clears his throat and glances around before landing back on Bucky. “Hey. I wanted to ask you something.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s—” Steve’s ears go pink, which is something that’s always made Bucky’s chest stir up, along with that stupid nervous grin. “There’s this thing, at the end of the night, people usually—they dance, is the thing, and I thought maybe—”
“Mr. Rogers!” A booming voice, a bit tipsy and absolutely delighted, cuts through whatever Steve was working up to. Bucky turns to see one of the team’s sponsors, a short man with more money than he knows what to do with and various watches lining his arms, already steering Steve by the elbow. “There’s someone I absolutely have to introduce you to—”
“Right, of course,” Steve murmurs. He throws another glance over his shoulder that Bucky doesn’t know how to read—apologetic, unfinished—before the crowd swallows him up.
Bucky watches him go, and then turns the unfinished sentence over in his mind a few times. There’s this thing at the end of the night, people usually dance. The words turn smooth in his head until Bucky decides, firmly, that Steve was probably angling for help with a toast, or whether he should try to dance with Natasha properly now that he’s learned how.
At some point after that, a young lady—one of the sponsors’ daughters—slides into the seat next to Bucky and orders him a drink, and Bucky lets himself act interested in her just as she is acting interested in him.
He doesn’t think about Steve for the rest of the night. That’s something he’s gotten very good at, too.
Well—no, actually. Some honest part of him knows that’s not exactly true, because he spends the rest of the night watching Steve get passed from sponsor to sponsor like a party favor, even catching his eye from across the room during Tony’s toast and receiving a small, helpless smile in return. The kind of smile that used to mean something simple all those years ago.
Neither of them really does simple anymore.
By the time the band packs up and the harbor lights turn on, he’s gone through enough champagne to barely remember the walk back to his room (alone, because the lady got the hint after another mumbled, one-word answer while his eyes tracked a man across the room). He stumbles inside, locks the door, and falls asleep still in his dress clothes with the ghost of brassy, tinny music playing in his head.
He wakes up the next morning to a text from Steve that says: Sorry we didn’t get to talk much :/ good race tomorrow huh.
Bucky doesn’t respond for two hours. When he does, it’s simply: Yeah.
iv. spa — round twenty.
Bucky has never been good with storms.
He doesn’t exactly tell people this, mostly because it’s not good for his image—a six-foot-something Formula One driver who’s walked away from two-hundred kilometer crashes without flinching, reduced to something small and useless by a little crack of thunder. But it’s true. Ever since that hurricane came through Brooklyn and the power went out, and he’d found Steve in the dark hallway of their apartment building, taking ragged breaths and chanting inhaler, inhaler, my inhaler ran out.
Young Bucky had sat beside him, barely larger than the kid he was trying to take care of, and counted out loud for Steve to catch his breath while they waited for the ambulance. It was the most helpless Bucky has ever felt in his entire life—another fact that doesn’t quite make sense in the grand scheme of things.
Steve knows Bucky doesn’t like storms. But he doesn’t know why. For all Steve knows, Bucky just doesn’t like the loud boom of thunder hitting the ground nearby, and he finds comfort in Steve’s hotel room. They’ve had nineteen years of practice at this—Steve’s door is always open for Bucky during a storm, in the literal sense and otherwise.
Spa is doing its absolute worst tonight. FP2 was red-flagged twice due to the weather and ultimately cancelled after Bucky had only gotten a few laps in. Half the fanbase (most of the team included) is betting on whether Qualifying will take place tomorrow at all. Thunder rolls in low and constant over the hills, rattling the hotel window hard enough that Bucky can feel it in his molars. By eleven, he’s given up on the idea of sleep entirely, and especially given up on talking himself out of the one habit he’s never been able to break: Steve Rogers.
He pulls himself out of bed and fumbles for Steve’s keycard, which is sitting on the nightstand. With a huff, Bucky treks out of his room in an old tee from his F2 days and a pair of worn pyjama pants that he silently prays Steve doesn’t recognize. Bucky isn’t exactly sure when he stole the pyjama pants from Steve’s bedroom dresser, but it’s probably been long enough for Steve to have forgotten. Probably.
(And no, before you ask—the irony is not lost on him. Natasha wears Steve’s shirt, it’s clear evidence of a romantic or, at least, a sexual relationship, no matter how much Bucky loathes the idea of it. But when Bucky wears Steve’s pants, it’s just a friendly gesture. They’re friends. Steve is straight. These are facts.)
Steve’s room is dark when he lets himself in, lit by only a lamp, and quiet except for the storm outside, the shower running, and the soft noise of steady breathing. His eyes adjust slowly, and he knows it’s not Steve in that bed the moment he hears it.
Steve doesn’t breathe like that when he’s sleeping. Bucky knows from experience—Steve is louder, snores more, and is deeper.
He takes a step closer. There, Natasha is curled on her side beneath the duvet, red hair fanned out against the pillow. She’s dead asleep, her laptop open but forgotten beside where she lies. On the nightstand is a graveyard of crumbled papers that Bucky assumes is telemetry, next to an empty coffee mug.
Bucky stops, frozen in his tracks. The storm outside cracks loud enough to rattle the windows. Bucky would usually flinch at that, but it’s hardly anything but background noise as he stares at Natasha’s sleeping form. Every part of his brain has narrowed down to one specific fact:
Natasha Romanoff is asleep in Steve Rogers’s bed, and Bucky is standing near the doorway at eleven forty at night, holding a key to a room he clearly should not have the key to anymore.
He should leave. In fact, he’s halfway through the thought—turning, hand already finding the door handle—when the bathroom door opens and steam rolls out to reveal Steve. He has a towel slung low around his hips, water still beading off his collarbones, looking, Bucky thinks miserably, obscenely good. So much so that his mouth instantly goes dry at the sight, and he has to fight to keep his eyes up, dammit!
“Buck?” Steve blinks, surprised, towel-drying his hair with one hand. Then he catches sight of Bucky’s face—his expression is probably somewhere between dismay and slack-jawed amazement, but hopefully the former—and his entire posture shifts into something almost protective. “Shit, Buck, the storm. I totally forgot—are you okay?”
“Thunder,” Bucky manages, which is true and also the only word he thinks he can form without throwing up. His eyes flick, helpless, to the bed. “Didn’t realize you had company. Sorry. I’ll—”
“Wait.” Steve grabs Bucky’s wrist before he can turn around, thumb going back and forth comfortingly over Bucky’s pulse point. The touch is enough to simultaneously derail every sentence Bucky was about to construct and also spark another wave of subtle resentment in his mind. “She fell asleep going over, uh. Sunday’s setup. I didn’t want to wake her, she’s been running on empty all week.” He says it so simply, so easily, like it doesn’t even occur to him it could be taken any other way. Bucky hates how badly he wants to believe Steve. “C’mere, it’s a—a suite. The living room’s free, we can talk out there. I was planning on taking the couch anyway, but I bet it could fit two.”
“It’s fine,” Bucky says too quickly. “I shouldn’t have let myself in like that.”
“You always let yourself in like that.” Steve’s frowning now, a small furrow appearing between his brows that Bucky wants to rub away with his thumb. “Hey, c’mon. Talk to me. You’ve been weird since Monaco. Maybe since Bahrain, I don’t know, I can’t always tell with you anymore. But I know something’s up.”
Bucky’s chest twists. Out here, in the dim light of the room spilling from the open bathroom door, Steve standing in front of him wearing just a towel and an expression like he’s trying to solve a puzzle without half the pieces, it would be so easy. Three words. He’s said a hundred times that into a radio mic going two hundred kilometers per hour.
“I’m fine,” he says instead with a hard swallow because he’s a coward, he’s always been a damn coward when it comes to Steve. “Just the—storm. M’gonna head back. Try to sleep.”
“Buck—”
“I mean it, Steve. M’fine.” He manages something like a smile, and it only comes out slightly more fragile than the one he puts on during press obligations. “Go back to bed. Don’t want Nat waking up to an empty room, thinking you’ve abandoned her, right?”
Steve’s jaw works like he wants to argue, like he can feel the lie sitting between them, close enough to touch. But he doesn’t push—he never does, not when Bucky digs his heels in like this—and instead just says, low and steady: “Buck, I don’t—I don’t know what’s going on with you, but... We’re good, right? You and me—we’re alright?”
Bucky’s shoulders slump, and he runs a shaking hand through his hair. It nearly breaks him right there in the hallway. “Yeah, Steve,” he whispers. “We’re good.”
He knows he means it when Steve gives him a little sad smile, and then claps him on the back with a damp hand. Bucky turns to go back to his hotel room, and then lies in bed until the storm breaks at four in the morning, wishing, uselessly, that he was brave about anything other than just cars.
In the morning, the rain starts up again. Qualifying gets cancelled, and the grid is set based on their FP2 finish, setting Steve on pole. Bucky curses the universe one more time, just for good measure, for giving him so much free time to think about it. The one thing he’s trying not to do.
Natasha finds him in the gym before lunch, towelling sweat off the back of his neck after a workout that did nothing to calm his head. She drops onto the bench across from him, looking significantly more well-rested than she has any right to after dead-sleeping through a storm in somebody else’s five-star hotel room.
“Steve said you came by during the storm,” she says in that faux-conversational way. “He said you left fast.”
“Yeah,” Bucky grumbles, still a little breathless. His heart rate picks up again. “Didn’t want to interrupt.”
Something flickers across her face—amusement, maybe, if the downturned smile on her lips is anything to go off of. “He worries about you, you know. More than he cares to admit.”
“He worries about everybody. It’s a personality flaw.”
Natasha studies him for a long moment, the same look she gives a telemetry report, and Bucky has the sudden feeling of being read like data. “Sure,” she says eventually, the word slow and flat. Bucky chooses not to read into that. “Get some more sleep, Barnes. You look like—”
“—Hell, yeah, I got it.”
v. abu dhabi — round twenty-four.
Abu Dhabi is, for one, the final race of the season. It is also heartbreakingly, painstakingly beautiful—the sun is golden here, shimmering off skyscrapers, making everything look soft and hazy. Even the grandstands look forgiving in light like this, even the asphalt shimmers. It’s the kind of light that makes people say things they mean.
In the pre-race press conference, Bucky and Steve sit side-by-side on the red couch, shoulders touching. At some point, Steve covers Bucky’s foot with his own, earning a soft kick to the shin. If the moderator notices, all she does is smile warmly and move on to the next question.
“Rogers and Barnes,” she addresses, “what are your plans for celebrating after one of you wins the championship?
Steve grins. “Simple. If Bucky wins it, I’ll pay for dinner. If I win it, Buck pays.”
“You earn more than me,” Bucky grumbles. “You should pay every time.”
And then Steve settles further into his seat with a smile and a shrug, tossing an arm over Bucky’s shoulder to rest on the back of the couch. Bucky can’t suppress the smile on his face, either, and the moderator looks at them like she’s watching something private.
In the race, Bucky finishes second, both in the championship and the race.
He knows, from the moment Steve takes off the line and Sam delivers his tire delta over comms in a voice that is trying very hard to stay neutral, he isn’t going to catch him. The gap isn’t cruel, per se. 1.3 seconds is doable, on a different weekend, with different tires, with a different strategy from whatever he’s on now. But it’s enough to mean Steve crosses the line first, and Bucky crosses second. Steve has secured his third Formula One World Championship.
Bucky takes the cooldown lap in silence, then pulls into parc fermé. For a minute, it’s as if everything sort of narrows down, how it usually does after two hours of pushing as hard as he can. The radio crackles in his ear. “P2, Bucky. Hell of a drive, hell of a season.”
“Yeah,” Bucky says into the mic. His voice is rough, he decides, from exertion and nothing else. “Tell me about it.”
He climbs out of the car to the noise of celebration around him—not only has Liberty won the constructors’ championship, but they’ve gone 1-2 in the drivers’. There are cameras flashing in his face, a crowd pushing against the barriers, the distant sound of screaming. He pulls off his balaclava and runs a hand through his sweat-soaked hair, the golden heat still shimmering in the night.
Steve is there, too. Of course, Steve is there. Steve, who has won his third championship in five years and should probably be on a podium already, or giving interviews in a Pirelli first-place hat, is standing beside Bucky’s car with his helmet under his arm, looking at Bucky like he’s the only thing in the world.
(There are, if you haven’t noticed, a lot of things Bucky doesn’t allow himself to read into. For all he knows, this is friendly. The footsie under the table, the brush of Steve’s thumb over his pulse point, the way Steve looks at him—it’s all very friendly.)
“Hey,” Steve says. His voice is wrecked from the celebration and an emotion Bucky chooses not to name, but he’s grinning. Flushed and breathless, he reaches out to squeeze Bucky’s shoulder. “You drove an unbelievable race.”
“Steve. You just won the championship.”
“I know,” he says softly, dismissively, as if that’s secondary information. His eyes are impossibly blue in this light. “You drove an unbelievable race,” he repeats, and the directness of it, laden with sincerity, makes Bucky’s chest feel like it’s caving in. “I mean it. It should’ve been you on a different day.”
Bucky looks at him, and then at the ocean of a crowd around them. Somewhere, he knows there’s a camera pointed directly at both of their faces, making him profoundly aware of every micro-expression on his face. Neutral and mostly fond is what their dynamic must look like from the outside. Easy and affectionate and competitive and good, just peachy.
“Three championships,” he says instead, putting his own hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Stop making it about me.”
Something shifts in Steve’s expression—a barely-there flicker of something complicated—before he puts back on the version of smile meant for the cameras. His hand drops from Bucky’s shoulder. The team descends on them a moment later, effectively ending the moment. It’s how it always is: something almost becoming something else and then pulling back at the last second.
Bucky spends the next forty minutes doing the things you do after a championship race. Media pen, weighbridge, interviews where he says gracious, measured things about the car and the championship and Steve, which is harder than it sounds. It’s difficult to say anything about Steve nowadays, when all the words he has to describe the man are too intimate and private to tell an interviewer.
He’s walking back to the motorhome, ice pack on his neck, looking for somewhere quiet to decompress before team dinner, when he hears it.
Steve’s voice, steady, is coming through the partially-open door of the briefing room that connects to the hospitality suit. Bucky doesn’t mean to stop. His feet just do it—a recurring problem this season, apparently, that has gotten him into more trouble than he’d like.
“—been trying to say it for months,” Steve murmurs, sounding properly downtrodden and still too earnest for his own good. “And I keep—I keep losing my nerve, or something happens, and—...”
Bucky stands very still in the corner as Steve cuts himself off and sighs.
“Then say it now,” Natasha's voice responds. “What would you say, if you were going to?”
There’s a pause, and Bucky can imagine Steve’s jaw working, a hand running through his tangled locks. “I love you,” Steve says eventually, so quiet that Bucky has to strain his ears to hear. “I always have. It just—took me too long to understand what that meant, I think, or I did understand and was afraid of it, I don’t know. But it’s you. It’s always been you.”
The silence that follows is so long that Bucky almost thinks he’s been caught, that he’s about to get chewed out by Natasha for snooping. His own heartbeat is the loudest thing in his skull.
“Okay,” Natasha responds finally. There’s something hard-to-read in her tone. “I love you too.”
Bucky walks away. He doesn’t run, because he’s a professional and his legs don’t seem to be working entirely, and because there’s nowhere truly private to go in a Formula One motorhome on a day like today. He walks and walks until his legs take him to the service road behind the paddock, where he sinks to a sitting position in the dirt. He presses the ice pack against his face rather than his neck.
There it is, then. All of it, laid out like a deck of cards in front of him, finally confirmed with words instead of the quiet tenderness that Bucky has spent an entire season trying to explain away. The hoodie in Bahrain, the neck thing in Jeddah, the waltz in Monaco, the way Natasha looked when she was curled up in Steve’s bed, and now this. I love you, said plain and simple enough that there’s no other way to interpret it.
He’s going to be fine. He has, after all, been carrying this for nineteen years and hasn’t collapsed under the weight yet. Steve deserves this, anyway—someone beautiful and stubborn who knows his coffee order and calls exactly the right strategy to win him a championship. Bucky is, not for lack of trying, not this.
interlude — celebration dinner.
The celebration dinner is loud and expensive, as events hosted by Tony Stark tend to be, because the man has never considered the possibility of going home after a race. Bucky sits next to Sam, who leaves him to it other than refilling his drink every once in a while. Across the table, Steve is warm and bright and laughing beside Natasha, flushed in the dim lights. At some point she dryly says something that makes him cover his mouth to avoid a snort, and Bucky watches and thinks yeah. It was always going to be them, wasn’t it?
Steve deserves this.
Later, after Bucky has had more drinks than the system strictly allows (but fuck the system anyway, it doesn’t mean anything anymore), Tony goads Steve into delivering a toast. He hands him a microphone and a glass of champagne from a nearby tray, and then pushes him to stand at the front of the room. Steve allows all of this, sneaking a sheepish smile to Bucky and not saying much else.
The room settles into a hush that feels almost reverential, with Tony looking overly pleased from where he stands off to the side. Bucky traces the rim of his flute with his finger and stares somewhere into the distance.
“I want to start,” Steve begins with a grin, the cadence of someone who is, in fact, prepared for this, “by thanking the team. Every single person in this room, from the race engineers, Natasha and Sam, to the mechanics who were on the car at two in the morning in Melbourne—” a smattering of cheers from that corner, and Steve grins, “—you’re the reason any of this is possible.”
Bucky’s eyes move to him. They can’t not, not when he has his sleeves rolled up to show off his muscled forearms again, his shirt untucked artfully, his grin easy and natural on his face. His eyes are moving through the crowd, from person to person, really trying to include everyone.
They land on Bucky. The grin falters only a bit before it’s replaced with something softer. Bucky has the sinking feeling that it’s just for him, that quiet grin.
“And, uh.” Steve clears his throat. His jaw moves, working around the words before he’s even let them out. Something passes over his face—something Bucky chooses not to name, not when he knows, now. “I wanted to say something else. Something I’ve been meaning to say for a while.”
The whole room sits on the edge of their seat. Even Bucky’s breath shallows as Steve tears his eyes away, now looking down at his own feet. He knows what’s coming, logically. He heard it being rehearsed in the back of the motorhome—the big moment where he reveals his love for Natasha to the entire team. And then he’ll pull her by the hand from her seat to stand beside him, and they’ll kiss, and Bucky won’t be able to stay in his seat to hear it again. He won’t.
But Steve looks up at him again with an expression similar to that of a man who is about to jump from a high diving board, and then it’s gone. His face smooths. The door closes. Steve clears his throat again and puts back on the PR-specific grin.
“I just want to say,” he says instead, tone lighter now, “that this—right here—is the best group of people I’ve ever had the privilege of racing for. And that next year, we’re going to do it all again.” He raises his glass. “Liberty.”
“And justice for all,” the crowd chants back, and Bucky can’t suppress a wince at the cheesy slogan, even with everything going through his head.
Steve’s eyes find Bucky for a moment, and then move to Natasha, who is watching him with a small line between her brows and an unreadable expression. She tips her glass slightly in his direction. He turns back to Tony, who is already at his elbow, trying to convince him to take a shot of something amber and expensive.
Bucky downs his champagne in one gulp and sets the glass down, careful.
Sam is watching him from the periphery. “You good?”
“Objectively,” Bucky says again. As always, Sam lets it go. As always, Bucky’s eyes are watching Steve.
The next hour passes in a blur of Stark-orchestrated chaos. There’s more alcohol, because they’re celebrating, dammit. There’s a birthday cake for someone from the engineering team, and he blushes like a schoolgirl as everyone sings happy birthday to him. The crowd thins after that as drunken people in pairs of twos and threes peel off in the direction of the hotel. Bucky finds himself in the second-to-last wave of people, unhurried. More time in the noise means less time with his own brain.
He’s collecting his jacket from the back of a chair when he hears Steve’s footsteps—which he knows the sound of very well after nineteen years of proximity—and goes stock-still.
“Hey,” Steve comes around to face him, all casual-like with his jacket slung over one arm. “You’re heading up?”
“Yeah.” Bucky shrugs on his own jacket and runs a hand through his gelled hair. “Long day.”
“Yeah,” Steve repeats. He runs a hand over the back of his neck. “Hey, can I—”
“Congratulations,” Bucky says, because he means it. And because that’s his only standing defense mechanism: don’t let Steve finish, don’t let him make it all the more real. “Three championships, man. That’s—” he makes a sound that could pass as a laugh “—that’s insane. You know that, right?”
Steve looks at him for a long, quiet beat, brows slightly drawn together. “Sure.”
“You should be celebrating.”
“I am celebrating.”
“With the team.” Bucky jerks his thumb over his shoulder vaguely. “Nat, Sam, Tony—”
“Bucky.” Steve says his name quietly, and Bucky’s chest melts at the sound of it. He’s always liked the way the nickname sounded in Steve’s mouth. He’d listen to an audiobook of the dictionary as long as Steve was the one reading it. “I know something happened tonight. I can see it on your face.”
“It’s the last race,” Bucky dismisses with a wave of his hand. “I don’t sleep well after Abu Dhabi, you know that.”
Steve watches him even more, and Bucky has to look away, pretending to look for something in his pockets. He’s not sure he could handle one more moment of those blue eyes looking at him like he’s something worth worrying about. “Okay,” he says finally, softly. “Okay, that’s—fine. That’s fine. But you know I’m—when you want to—I’m here.”
“Yeah.” Bucky swallows hard. “I know, Steve. Thanks.”
vi. brooklyn — off-season.
Bucky has lived in Brooklyn all his life, and the scent of the city in the winter has never been anything but novel for him: salt, cold, and something underneath that he has never been able to name except home. He’s been back for eleven days, and he’s spoken to Steve exactly four times, all of them short, all of them over text. Bucky is doing his level best to keep brief.
It isn’t working, obviously. Nothing involving Steve Rogers has ever worked the way Bucky intends it to—the man is an enigma in the best way possible, while somehow still being the most predictable man Bucky has ever known.
So when his phone buzzes on a Thursday evening with come over? made too much pasta again, you know how it is—followed thirty minutes later by—also miss your ugly mug—Bucky stares at the ceiling of his own apartment for four minutes before he gives in. Besides racing, giving in to Steve Rogers is the most consistent thing he’s done in his entire life. Something about the blue eyes or the muscles or the whole handsomest man in America thing, who knows.
He tells himself it’s going to be a normal visit. Dinner, maybe they’ll watch the Giants game in the background and exist in the easy quiet they’ve had since they were sixteen and broke and sharing fries in a diner outside of Jersey. He tells himself this the entire walk over, hands shoved in his coat pockets, breath fogging in front of him as he pushes past the tourist crowds towards the apartment he’s always known the location of.
He is, of course, lying to himself. That’s another thing he’s gotten very good at.
Steve’s apartment looks lived-in rather than decorated. He’s owned the place for around eight years, when his biggest F2 paycheck came in, and he was finally able to get a bigger place than his previous modest apartment. There are a few framed photos on the brick walls, a couch that’s seen better days (Steve insists it holds sentimental value, though Bucky’s not so sure), and a ratty throw blanket from Auburndale draped over the armrest because he refuses to get rid of it. It’s home away from home to Bucky.
It smells like garlic and butter when Bucky lets himself in with the key Steve gave him eight years ago, and Steve’s head pops around the kitchen doorway, hair mussed, wearing an old gray tee that fits too tight over the shoulders. He looks so achingly normal, so domestic, that Bucky can’t help the way his heart rate skyrockets.
“Hey,” Steve says, grinning like it’s just any other Thursday and he doesn’t look like one of Bucky’s wet dreams. “Pasta’s almost done. Sit, relax, fix your hair. You look like you walked through a wind tunnel.”
Bucky doesn’t bring up the fact that Steve said the pasta was already done, said he made too much. He doesn’t bring that up, because inside, he’d been wanting to see Steve about as much as Steve had been wanting to see him.
“It’s New York in December,” he grumbles instead, but runs a hand through his hair. “Everyone looks like that.”
“Sure.” Steve disappears back into the kitchen and Bucky drops into the couch, hyperaware of every inch of the apartment that still has remnants of him. His jacket is draped over one of the kitchen chairs from some forgotten visit, his old game controller is sitting on the coffee table, his name scrawled in Steve’s terrible handwriting on a takeout menu stuck to the fridge under a magnet. “Turn on the game, will you?”
It’s so domestic it makes Bucky feel sick, but he does turn on the football game.
Eventually, Steve brings two bowls of pasta, looking like a guardian angel, and hands one to Bucky. Then he sits close enough to knock knees, even though the couch is lengthy and has enough space for both of them to stretch out horizontally, if they wanted.
For a while, it’s easy. Steve talks about a charity thing Tony’s roped him into for January, Bucky complains about his trainer’s new cardio regimen, they’ve both got a photoshoot for a watch company neither of them has ever heard of in February. It’s such an easy back-and-forth, conducted to the background noise of the New York Giants losing to an objectively worse team. Bucky almost forgets himself. Almost.
It’s Steve who brings up Natasha first, completely without malice, without knowing what he’s about to detonate. “Nat says she’s coming up next week, by the way. Christmas thing with her sister upstate, but she wants to swing by before.”
Bucky’s fork goes still over his plate. “Cool,” he says flatly.
Steve glances at him. “You okay?”
“Great.” Bucky stabs at a piece of penne with much more force than necessary. “Tell her I said hi. Or—don’t, actually. I’m sure you’ll see her plenty without my input.”
It comes out sharper than he hopes. It comes out, frankly, jealous, and the second the words are out of his mouth he wants to fold himself into the floorboards and disappear. The tips of his ears go blazing pink.
Steve sets down his own fork slowly. There’s a beat of silence that goes on for just a bit too long, Steve’s eyes narrowing like he’s working through a problem on the car. The same focus he gives data sheets and formal documents and now, apparently, Bucky.
“Wait,” he says slowly, hand absently reaching out to turn down the television. “Are you—” he stops. “Buck. Are you jealous of Nat?”
“No,” Bucky says, far too fast to be believable. He reaches out to turn the TV back up because there is absolutely no way in hell they’re doing this.
“Oh my God, you are.” Something shifts across Steve’s face—disbelief, at first, and then underneath it, something else entirely. It looks dangerously close to hope, but that makes no sense to Bucky at all. He turns the TV down again and hides the remote behind his back. “Why would you be jealous of Nat?”
“Drop it, Steve. It’s nothing.”
“I’m not gonna drop it.” Steve’s voice softens only a bit, an edge of steel running through it. Bucky always thought Steve’s stubborn nature was something admirable. Now, he’s not so sure. “Why.”
“Don’t make me say it,” Bucky whispers. It comes out cracked, more honest than he means it, and he hates himself for it immediately. Hates the way his hands have gone tight about the fork.
Steve goes very, very still. He sets the half-finished bowl of pasta on the coffee table and turns fully so that he’s facing Bucky. There’s something raw and unguarded in his expression that Bucky has spent almost twenty years trying not to read too much into.
“Please, Buck.” His voice is quiet now, almost wrecked. “I need to hear you say it. Properly.”
The television is still murmuring in the background—the Giants missed a field goal, apparently, which is something Steve would probably be upset about if his eyes weren’t searching Bucky’s like he’s looking for something specific in them. Bucky thinks, distantly, that if he just keeps staring at the screen, none of this will be real. Maybe he can time-travel back four minutes by sheer force of will, back before he ruined a perfectly good night with his own mouth.
But Steve is still watching him. He even reaches out to place a hand on Bucky’s knee, and then up to his chest, and then, finally, landing on the side of his neck. Just… there. Not even squeezing or staking a claim.
“Buck,” he whispers.
“It’s stupid,” Bucky says, voice rough. “It’s so stupid, Steve, just—drop it. Please.”
“I’m not going to just drop it.” Steve’s thumb brushes the thin skin of Bucky’s throat with a feather-light touch, like he’s testing the waters to see if Bucky will bolt. “I’ve watched you flinch every time I say her name for an entire season. I thought maybe you didn’t like working with her anymore, or there was something wrong with the car, maybe you saw something I didn’t, or—” He shakes his head, more to himself than to Bucky. “I didn’t let myself think it was this. Because if it was this, that would mean—”
“Steve.”
“That would mean I’ve been an idiot for a year,” Steve finishes, and there’s something in his voice, equal parts wrecked and hopeful. “So tell me. Please. I need you to say it so I know I’m not just making something up because I want it to be true.”
Bucky’s hands are shaking. He sets the pasta bowl down on the coffee table because of it, and because he doesn’t trust himself not to drop it, and wouldn’t that ruin the moment?
“I thought you and Natasha were together,” he says finally. The words come out small, almost childish. Nothing like the clipped, confident persona he puts on in the paddock or on the radio. “Since Bahrain. The hoodie, and the neck thing in Jeddah, and the—the dancing in Monaco, and then her asleep in your bed in Spa. Abu Dhabi—I heard you, Steve. I heard you tell her you loved her, and I just—” his voice cracks clean in half. Steve’s hand squeezes just enough, a silent I’m here, even when Bucky can’t bring himself to look at the man. “I’ve spent a whole season losing my mind, watching you fall for someone else right in front of me, and I didn’t say anything, because what was I supposed to say? Congratulations? Good for you? I’m happy for you, even though I’ve been in love with you since I was seventeen years old?”
Steve stares at him. For one terrible, horrible, no-good second, Bucky thinks he’s miscalculated everything—that this is the moment it falls apart, nineteen years of friendship self-destructing over a misunderstanding so stupid it would be funny if it wasn’t currently crushing him.
And then Steve laughs. It’s the same laugh Bucky heard in Bahrain, but with something wet at the edges of it, something that sounds suspiciously like relief bursting through the seams.
“Buck. Bucky, oh my God, Nat is married. She has been married this entire time. She has a husband named Clint who does aero for another team, which is incidentally why none of us are allowed to talk strategy around her on the phone. God, that’s—are you serious? You’re not—you’re not messing with me?”
Bucky blinks. “What.”
"The hoodie was because she spilled coffee all over her own shirt going over brake data and I had a spare. The thing in Jeddah—she put her hand on my neck because I was about to throw up from stress, not because we're sleeping together. She taught me to waltz in Monaco because I asked her to. Because I wanted—" Steve exhales hard, rubs a hand over his face, ears going as pink as Bucky’s are. “Because I wanted to ask you to dance, at the gala, and I am—was—the worst dancer alive, and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself in front of the guy I’ve loved since—... That’s what I was trying to ask you at the bar, before I got dragged away. I was trying to ask you to dance with me.”
Something in Bucky’s chest that has been clenched tight for the better part of a decade begins to come undone.
“And Spa,” Steve continues, quieter now, “she fell asleep in my bed because we were up till two going over Sunday’s setup and she’d been awake for nineteen hours already and the couch in my suite had a broken spring. I slept on the couch, I told you that.”
“I thought you were being kind. Covering for her.”
“Buck.” Steve’s voice goes impossibly soft. Bucky feels himself go pliant and stupid, as he always does when Steve gets like this—few and far between before. “And Abu Dhabi, the thing you heard.” He hesitates, and Bucky realizes then that Steve is nervous. “I was rehearsing for the toast. I’d been trying to tell you for months and I kept chickening out, so I made Nat run lines with me in the briefing room, because she’s the only other person who promised not to laugh too hard at how bad I was at it.”
“You said you loved her.”
“I said I loved you,” Steve corrects gently, and oh. There it is, plain, unadorned, without any PR polish on it. He didn’t know the words could come so easily, could sound so natural. “I was talking about you the whole time, Buck, I always have been. She said it back because she was playing you, and then she told me to go say it for real instead of practicing on her. And then I lost my nerve at the toast, and then again when I saw you afterwards. You probably noticed.”
Bucky noticed. Of course, he noticed. He’s spent his entire life noticing every single thing Steve does and choosing not to read into it for his own sake, for the sake of not getting his hopes up. He wanted to make sense of it, of Steve Rogers, and none of it ever did until right now, on Steve’s ratty couch in Steve’s ratty apartment with little bits of Bucky Barnes scattered around the space like evidence.
“I thought you weren’t interested,” Bucky breathes. “I thought you were straight. I thought you were in love with Nat—I spent an entire year being miserable about something that didn’t even exist.”
Steve’s other hand comes up to cup Bucky’s jaw, and woah, were they always this close together?
“I don’t know where you got any of those ideas,” Steve murmurs, “but I’m not. Straight, I mean. I’ve wanted to do this since the day they put us in the same garage as kids.” His thumb traces slow, careful arcs along Bucky’s skin. “Buck. Can I kiss you? I really, really want to kiss you right now.”
Bucky’s answer is yes, a million times yes before his brain even finishes processing the question. Obviously yes. Categorically, irrevocably, embarrassingly, all the -lys, yes. Yes in every language Steve knows, which is more than you’d think, yes going back twenty years, yes in every future he has ever privately let himself imagine on nights when he was too tired to bother fighting it.
What he actually says is: “Steve.”
“Yeah?”
“You have to stop looking at me like that or I’m going to—”
Steve makes a sound like something breaking loose in his chest as Bucky surges forward, and then they’re kissing, and it’s everything Bucky has ever wanted. It’s not careful at first — years and years of bitten-back want all crash into the same moment. Bucky gets his hands in the front of Steve’s stupid gray tee, pulling him impossibly closer until he makes a small, embarrassing noise into Steve’s mouth. He feels Steve exhale hard through his nose and then it deepens, slow and warm and too much, too much.
“Wait,” Bucky says against Steve’s mouth. His voice comes out thoroughly wrecked, which is both humiliating and obscenely hot. “I have to—give me a second, hold on.”
Steve pulls back just far enough to look at him, eyes searching Bucky’s face—sweating just slightly, eyes closed. “Okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m—” Bucky presses the heel of his hand into his crotch, adjusting. The motion makes Steve’s eyes follow, and he does a poor job of suppressing the glee he feels at the sight of the tent in Bucky’s jeans. “Don’t say anything,” Bucky groans through gritted teeth. “Just kiss me again.”
Steve doesn’t say anything more than that. He just groans, the noise low in his throat, and leans in to kiss Bucky again, deeper. They fall back into the couch cushions in a tangle—Bucky half on top of Steve, half falling off the small couch, all elbows and knees trying to find places to go. Steve’s hand slides up under the hem of Bucky’s henley, splayed wide and warm against his ribs, and Bucky arches into it without meaning to, like he’s been freezing for decades and the touch is the only heat he’s afforded.
Somewhere on the television behind them, buried under the sound of their ragged breathing and muffled groans, the noise spikes.
“Mm,” Steve huffs against his mouth, not pulling back more than a centimeter. “Touchdown, Giants. They’re coming back—”
“Don’t care,” Bucky growls in response, and tangles both hands in Steve’s blond hair to pull him back down. “Punk,” he accuses, for good measure, and the word earns a strangled noise from Steve.
Huh. That’s new.
As they kiss, Bucky snakes an arm between them at the junction of their bodies, just to feel—to confirm, with his own palm, that yes, Steve Rogers is exactly as affected by this as Bucky is—and Steve’s hips jerk forward into the touch with another helpless, strangled noise that goes straight to Bucky’s dick.
Bucky makes a surprised noise as he presses into the bulge he can feel through Steve’s jeans, and the man’s hips jerk forward again, a helpless little stutter. The sound he makes—somewhere between a groan and a whimper—is swallowed up by Bucky’s mouth before it can fully escape. Mercy.
“Buck,” Steve breathes, pulling away to press his forehead to the other man’s. “Buck, wait, I—”
Bucky doesn’t wait. He doesn't think it’s physically possible for him to wait right now, after he’s got Steve Rogers beneath him already hard. He drags his mouth down to the corner of Steve’s jaw, and then lower, scraping teeth against the crook of his shoulder. Steve’s head tips back against the armrest, and Jesus, does he have to look good all the time?
Bucky wants to tattoo this version of Steve on the inside of his eyelids so he can see it every time he blinks—that’s how good he looks.
“You’re gonna kill me,” Steve manages, voice cracking on the last word. His hands, still splayed against Bucky’s abdomen, squeeze slightly like the touch is the only thing anchoring him to the world. “Twenty years, and you’re finally going to take me out with a make-out session on a Thursday night. This isn’t fair.”
That earns a grin from Bucky, who pushes his face further into the crook of his neck. “You made pasta,” he murmurs. “That’s the most romantic food—haven’t you ever seen Lady and the Tramp?”
Steve laughs, breathless, and the sound of it vibrates through Bucky’s chest where they’re pressed together. He doesn’t have a response to that, other than to put one hand on Bucky’s nape, the way he likes, and tilt his own head further back to give Bucky more real estate on his throat.
“Field goal,” Steve murmurs between airy gasps. His eyes are half-lidded and dazed, but they both know that look has nothing to do with the Giants’ historic comeback-in-progress.
“You suck,” Bucky groans, faux-frustrated when he still has a stupid grin on his face.
He lifts himself off of Steve, ignoring the small noise the man makes, and then hauls Steve up for another kiss, this time less careful. Their teeth clink together, and neither of them can suppress a laugh at it.
“Easy,” Steve mumbles. His palms slide further up the henley, mapping the muscled landscape of his back with a reverence bordering on religious. His touch is so careful, so gentle, like he’s not entirely sure he’s earned the ability to touch Bucky yet.
Bucky bites at his bottom lip. “You don’t have to be gentle with me, Rogers. I’m not gonna break.”
“But I—” Steve’s breath stutters and Bucky rolls his hips in a slow grind that presses their erections together through denim. “I want to. I want to be—I don’t want to mess this up, not after everything.”
“You’re not going to mess anything up.” Bucky pulls back to look at him. A flush creeps down past his collar, his pupils blown wide enough to almost completely swallow that pretty blue, his hands trembling only slightly. For a moment, he looks just like the nervous, stubborn boy from New Jersey. “Steve. I’ve been wanting this for literally half my life. If you don’t touch me properly some time in the next thirty seconds, I think I’m gonna lose my mind.”
Steve manages a small, reassuring grin. “Let me know if I—if I go too far, or something. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Bucky murmurs, and then Steve’s touch broadens, fingers going so far as to dig into the meat of his ass through his jeans, and Bucky makes a sound he is definitely going to be embarrassed by later. Now, though, he can’t bring himself to feel any shame.
“Jesus,” Steve mutters against his throat, flipping the roles easily. “The noises you make.”
“Shut up.”
“No, I’m serious.” He mouths at Bucky’s neck, just like what was done to him only a few moments ago. “I’ve thought about this for—for longer than I probably should’ve. About you, what you’d sound like. It’s—mm.” He breaks off to press a gentle kiss to Bucky’s shoulder. “Better than I imagined. Way better.”
Bucky blinks. “You’ve imagined this?”
“Buck.” The look on his face is almost offended. “I’ve been wanting to do this since I was seventeen. What do you think?”
“I think you’re an idiot.”
“And I think you’re hard from just kissing,” Steve grins, looking just wicked enough that Bucky is not sure he’ll ever be able to recover from this moment—seriously. He’s beginning to feel light-headed. “Thought you were supposed to be a professional athlete. Where’s that stamina now?”
“Screw you.” But there’s a laugh bubbling from Bucky’s chest, giddy and disbelieving. This moment seems too good to be true. “You’re one to talk. I can feel you, Steve, through two layers of denim. You’re not exactly keeping it together over there, bud.”
Steve’s ears go pink again, suddenly looking very embarrassed. “It’s been a long time since I’ve—I mean, I haven’t, with anyone, really, not since before the season started, and—”
“Steve. Are you telling me you’ve been celibate the whole time you were pining for me?”
“What about you?” Steve fires back defensively, but his voice is soft. “You said you’ve loved me for as long as I’ve loved you. Have you been—”
“Yeah,” Bucky murmurs, the admission coming easier than he expected. “Yeah, I have. I dated a little, back then, but nothing ever stuck. I just—... I just wanted you.”
They’re silent for a long moment, besides the sound of the commentator, much more excited than he should be. Then, Steve laughs.
“We’re both idiots,” he says finally.
“Yeah.”
“Seriously. The stupidest people in Formula One.”
“Pretty sure that’s still Wilson.”
Steve barks out a laugh, and then he’s on Bucky again like an animal. This time, there’s no hesitation at all as he goes in for another kiss. His hands, suddenly, are everywhere—sliding up Buck’s sides, dragging the henley with them until Bucky has to break the kiss long enough to yank it over his head and toss it somewhere toward the kitchen. Steve follows the movement with his eyes, and the way his gaze goes soft and still hungry at the sight of Bucky’s bare chest makes him feel like he’s standing on a podium, champagne spraying everywhere, a crowd screaming his name.
“God,” Steve murmurs, reverent. His fingers trace Bucky’s collarbone, down the center of his chest and over his abs, stopping at the smattering of hair just above the waistband of his jeans. “You’re—how do you even exist?”
“Genetics. Brooklyn tap water. A lot of cardio. You?”
“Shut up,” Steve grumbles, but he’s smiling as he says it. His fingers are still on Bucky’s skin like a magnet when he sits up, swinging his legs off the couch. “Bedroom,” he murmurs. “We’re going to break something.”
“Bedroom,” Bucky repeats, the word coming out like a prayer. “You sure?”
“I’m sure I don’t want to have a Bucky-shaped crater in my couch, yes.”
Bucky chuckles, and then Steve is gripping Bucky’s wrist and hauling him upwards with that stupid superhuman grip strength he’s been practically fantasizing about. Bucky sways into him immediately, hands finding the hem of Steve’s shirt and tugging upward until Steve gets the message and pulls it over his head.
“Happy?” Steve asks, but his voice cracks on the second syllable because Bucky’s mouth is dangerously close to his nipple, a sensation that makes Steve’s hips jerk forward inconveniently.
“Getting there.”
They stumble toward the stairs. Steve’s bedroom is up one narrow flight, and Bucky has navigated it in practically every state of being—drunk, half-awake, crying, but never with his mouth on Steve’s warm skin. Never with Steve’s palm flat against his waist, guiding him upward while Bucky walks backward, refusing to break the kiss for something as trivial as not tripping and cracking his skull open.
“Step,” Steve mumbles through a shiver as Bucky drags his lips back up to meet Steve’s.
“I know where the step is, Rogers, I’ve been here before—”
“You’re gonna miss it and die, and then I’ll have to explain to Tony why his second driver is dead in my stairwell shirtless.”
“Tony can mind his own damn business for once,” Bucky grumbles, but steps up anyway. Steve follows, crowding him against the wall at the landing. The framed photo beside Bucky’s head is crooked now, probably—it’s the one from their first Liberty podium together, both of them drenched in champagne and grinning like idiots. Bucky doesn’t care. Steve’s hands try to span the entire circumference of Bucky’s waist at once as he takes his turn mouthing at Bucky’s chest.
“Bedroom,” Bucky repeats with a laugh, shoving gently at Steve’s shoulder. “You’re the one who wanted to do this properly. Can’t do it properly in a hallway.”
“Since when do you care about what’s proper? I’m pretty sure all of Liberty would have a fit if they saw us like this.”
“Since you said you wanted to be gentle,” Bucky murmurs. “So be gentle. But do it in a bed, Stevie, I’m begging you. My back is begging you.”
The nickname breaks Steve’s hungry expression clean in two, revealing something softer. His eyes go impossibly tender. “Yeah,” he breathes. “Yeah, okay. C’mere.”
They make it to the bedroom, just barely. Bucky’s jeans catch on the doorway (a reminder of how unnecessary the garment is) and Steve has to steady him with both hands on his hips, and then they’re tumbling onto the mattress like how they used to when they were two dumb boys wrestling in a shitty motel room. Steve’s comforter is navy blue, soft from years of washing, and it smells like him—laundry detergent and something woodsy. Bucky has to fight to not inhale until it’s the only thing he can smell.
“God,” he mutters, pulling Steve down on top of him. This is the part his fantasies never seemed to capture—the weight of him, solid and warm against Bucky. “You’re heavy.”
“Are you complaining?”
“Hell no.” Bucky hooks a leg around Steve’s hip and rolls, another move vaguely reminiscent of their wrestling days in boyhood, reversing their positions in one practiced motion. Now Steve is the one pinned beneath him, blond hair mussed against the pillow, chest rising and falling in quick stutters. Bucky braces himself with two hands on Steve’s abdomen. “There. All better.”
Steve stares up at him with an expression that can only simply be described as wonder. “You’re—Bucky, you’re beautiful. You know that?”
“You’ve mentioned it, yeah.”
“I mean it,” Steve insists. His hands find Bucky’s hips again, thumbs tracing small circles into the skin just above the waistband of his jeans. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to say that. Every time you got out of the car, every time—fuck, Buck, stop that, give me a second.”
Bucky stops his subtle grinding, a sheepish look on his face. “Shit, sorry. You alright?”
“I’m—yeah, just. Just a bit quick on the draw, ‘s all. I’ve never really done this before.”
“Done what? Had sex?”
“Of course, I’ve had sex, I’m thirty-five. I mean, with a man—I haven’t had sex with a man.” The admission comes out quiet, almost shy. “I mean, I’ve—I know how it works, theoretically, I just… haven’t.”
“Steve.” Bucky waits until Steve opens his eyes. Steve didn’t even realize he closed them. “That’s fine. I don’t care about that. We don’t have to do everything tonight, yeah? We can go slow—won’t do nothing you’re not ready for.”
“I’m ready,” Steve rushes to get out. “I’m ready, I want—Buck, I want everything. I just don’t want to screw it up.”
“You’re not going to screw it up. We’ve got time now, Steve. All the time in the world, all for this.”
“All for this,” Steve echoes quietly, like he still doesn’t quite believe the words, and then he pulls Bucky down to kiss again. It’s less desperate this time, Bucky’s words seemingly having paid off in the way Steve takes his time now. His tongue slides against Bucky’s lower lip, asking permission, and Bucky grants it with a soft noise. Steve’s hands, meanwhile, linger at the waistband of Bucky’s jeans, thumb brushing over the cold metal button.
“Can I?”
“Please.”
It’s a bit awkward with their position, but Steve manages to single-handedly pop the button open, and then pull on the waistband just enough for the zipper to go down. He pulls the jeans as far down as they’ll go without Bucky having to get up, and then lets his knuckles brush the straining fabric of the man’s boxers. Bucky’s hips jerk again, chasing the contact.
“Easy,” Steve murmurs, echoing Bucky’s words from earlier. “Lift your hips?” Bucky does, allowing Steve to work the jeans down his hips, his thighs, his calves until they come all the way off, and he throws them to the floor with a soft thump. “Shit, Bucky, look at you.”
Bucky sits up now, suddenly self-conscious. He’s down to his boxers now, the dark cotton doing nothing to hide how turned-on he is just by the sight of Steve, shirtless and flushed underneath him, looking at him like he was worth the wait.
“Your turn,” he manages, swinging a leg over and off of Steve as he reaches for the man’s belt at the same time. “Fair’s fair.”
Between the two of them, they manage to get Steve’s jeans off without anyone falling off the bed, which is to be considered a minor miracle. Steve shucks his boxers at the same time, and Bucky feels his mouth go dry at the sight of Steve’s stiff cock springing out of the fabric, smearing pre over his stomach.
“You’re staring,” Steve says, sounding overly pleased.
“You’re worth staring at,” Bucky shoots back. “I’m just—wow. Okay. This is—wow.”
“Wow? That’s all you’ve got? Wow?”
“I’m an athlete, Steve, not a poet. This is the best I’ve got.” Bucky reaches out, lets his palm flatten against Steve’s stomach. The muscles jump under his touch, and Bucky swallows hard. “Can I—I want to touch you. Properly.”
Steve’s breath catches. “Yeah. Yeah, Bucky, please.”
Fuck, he likes the sound of that—the please. Bucky shuffles closer on his knees, the mattress dipping under his weight, and lets his hand drift lower until his fingers brush the base of Steve’s cock. It’s hot and silky-soft, because of course Steve keeps himself shaved, of course he does. Steve makes a gasping sound like all of the air has been punched out of him at once.
“This okay?”
“Mm.” Steve’s head presses hard back into the pillow. His jaw is clenched tight, his eyes closed, long lashes casting shadows over the pale skin. “More than okay. Just—been a while since anyone touched me there. Since anyone touched me anywhere, really. I told you that already, didn’t I?”
“You did.” Bucky wraps his calloused fingers around Steve’s shaft, just holding him, getting familiar with the weight of it in his palm. The head of Steve’s cock is already slick, smearing against Bucky’s palm when Steve’s hips twitch upward. “Jesus, Steve, you’re—”
“Don’t say wow again.”
“Wasn’t going to.” Bucky’s thumb sweeps over the crown, gathering the wetness that has accumulated there, and Steve’s whole body shudders. Noted. “I was going to say you’re perfect. So fuckin’ perfect.”
Steve’s eyes blink open, something startled in his expression, like Bucky reached past his ribs and took his heart in his hand. “Nobody’s called me perfect before,” he breathes.
Bucky raises a brow. “Then everyone you’ve slept with is an idiot.” He gives one slow stroke, base to tip, and watches Steve’s mouth fall open. “Including you, apparently, since you didn’t say anything for twenty years about how much you wanted this.”
“Are you gonna lecture me or are you gonna keep doing that?”
“Both.” Another stroke, this one with a tighter grip. Steve’s hips buck properly this time, and his hand flies to Bucky’s wrist, seeking something real to hold onto. “I’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for. Pretty sure I’m entitled to a little lecturing.”
Steve laughs, but the sound cracks in the middle when Bucky twists his wrist on the upstroke. “God, your hands—”
“What about ‘em?”
“You know what, jerk.” His fingers tighten around Bucky’s skin. “You’ve got racer's hands, all—all steady and quick. I’ve watched you downshift for years, hold a steering wheel, grab a microphone, and I never thought—shit, Buck. Never thought it’d be this good.”
Bucky’s rhythm stutters. Something about the confession—quiet and sincere and so quintessentially Steve in every way he likes—makes his chest feel too full. He leans down, still stroking Steve slow and deliberately, and presses his mouth to the hinge of Steve’s jaw.
“Sweetheart,” he murmurs against the skin there. “You could’ve asked me any time. Any time at all, and I would’a given it to you.”
Steve goes rigid beneath him, breath catching audibly.
Bucky freezes. His hand stills around Steve’s cock, lips still pressed to the corner of Steve’s jaw. The word, spoken so naturally, hands in the air like smoke. Impossible to miss, impossible to take back.
“Shit,” Bucky breathes, pulling back just enough to search Steve’s face for any sign of discomfort. “I didn’t mean—that just slipped out, I wasn’t—”
“Say it again.” Steve’s voice is rough, almost demanding. “Buck. Please.”
Bucky swallows. He’s so hard it almost hurts, still trapped in his boxers, and the hungry look in Steve’s eyes, like he’s just discovered a new element on the periodic table, isn’t helping his problem.
“Sweetheart,” he says again, slower this time.
In response, Steve makes a noise Bucky has never heard from him before. It’s not a groan or a gasp of any of the other sounds he’s made in the last half-hour, aroused and needy. It’s closer to a whimper, high-pitched and desperate.
“Okay,” Bucky says about three seconds later, processing the information. “Okay, you really like that, huh?”
“Don’t—” Steve’s face is flushing down to his collarbones now, the pink creeping down in splotches. “Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not making fun.” Bucky starts moving his hand again, picking up on the rhythm he’d abandoned, and Steve’s eyes flutter half-shut. “I’m taking notes. This is valuable information, you know. Steve Rogers, three-time Formula One Champion, gets off on being called sweetheart.” He grins slyly. “Sweetheart, darling, baby, love, punk, jerk, dick—any of those do anything?”
“I don’t—it’s not—” he breaks off in a strangled sound when Bucky’s thumb sweeps across the frenulum. “It’s just you. If it was anyone else, I’d probably hate it.”
“Just me, huh?”
“It’s always been just you. How many times do I have to say it?”
Bucky kisses him instead of answering, and then he pulls back and sits up, reaching for the waistband of his own boxers while Steve watches intently.
“Off,” he mumbles. “I need to—can we—”
“Yes. Whatever you’re thinking, yes.”
Bucky shoves his boxers off with less grace than he was aiming for—Steve deserves a show, after all—and kicks them off somewhere near the foot of the bed. His own cock springs free, flushed dark and leaking against his stomach. It’s not as big of Steve’s (because Steve’s is just unnatural, honestly), but if the way Steve’s eyes track it like he’s trying to memorize the shape of it is anything to go by, he doesn’t care.
“You’re staring,” Bucky smirks.
“Hypocrite. You stared first, I’m just returning the favor. Wow, right?”
“Fair.” Bucky settles back against Steve’s thighs, close enough now that their cocks are nearly touching, and the prospect of that suddenly seems too appealing to ignore. The heat coming off Steve’s body is incredible—like when you’ve been cold for so long that even the slightest warmth feels burning. “I want to—can we—”
“Use your words, Bucky.” Steve’s voice is strained, clearly not taking the loss of contact well, but teasing as his hands find Bucky’s skin again. “You’re supposed to be the experienced one here.”
“I want to—together. That’s— fuck.” Bucky feels his ears go pink. “I don’t know.”
“Show me.”
Bucky doesn’t need to be told twice. He wraps one precum-slick hand around both of their cocks before Steve can say another word. The heat of it punches a sound out of Steve’s chest—completely guttural, an instinctual reaction. His hips jerk into the grip, and Bucky grins lopsidedly.
“Show me, I said,” Steve manages, breathless. “Not—not try to kill me.”
“You’re a three-time world champion.” Bucky tightens his fingers experimentally, as if trying to see how close his fingers can get to his thumb, watching Steve’s face go slack. “Pretty sure you can handle a handjob.”
The drag is dry and friction-heavy at first, so much so that it borders on painful, but by the second stroke, Steve is leaking enough to ease most of it. Still, Bucky spits into his palm without ceremony (because they are well past the concept of ceremony at this point) and then returns to his ministrations. Steve’s head falls back against the pillow, and his throat works around a noise before it’s swallowed as he bites his lip.
“Don’t do that,” Bucky murmurs.
“Do what?”
“Try to be quiet. You got to hear me, so I get to hear you. Fair’s fair. Besides, I spent way too long fantasizing about this for you to cheat me out of those pretty noises now.”
Steve’s laugh comes out strangled. “You’re an ass.”
“Your ass, though.”
At the words, Steve’s mouth twists into a fond grin, tinged with desire. “Yeah,” he whispers. “My ass.”
Bucky leans down to press a kiss to the corner of Steve’s mouth, and oh, that feels better. He didn’t even know it could get better than this, but when they’re chest-to-chest, dick-to-dick, the warmth is multiplied. Steve must think so too, because his hands come up to wrap around Bucky’s sides to rest on his shoulder blades, holding him close in that position.
The position makes it almost awkward, Bucky’s hand sandwiched between them, but he makes it work. Steve’s hips keep canting upward, chasing the pressure Bucky is so willing to provide, and Bucky groans at the friction.
It’s not enough. It’s too much. It’s everything he could’ve ever imagined and more. Steve’s pretty lips are red and slightly swollen from kissing, his chest is flushed pink, and the expression on his face—you’d think Bucky had just hung the moon and every star in the Brooklyn sky. Not to mention the small desperate sounds spilling from Steve’s throat like he physically can’t hold them back anymore. Bucky wants to bottle those sounds, save them for every night he’s jerking off alone in his bed, thinking about Steve.
“You’re so—” Steve lets out a jagged breath. “You’re so good at this, Buck. So fucking good, I can’t even—...”
“Praise kink too, huh, sweetheart? You’re just full of surprises.”
Steve doesn’t respond, already groaning again as Bucky picks up the pace, grinding harder, one hand braced on the back of Steve’s head and the other stroking diligently. The bedframe creaks. Steve’s hips are meeting Bucky’s thrust for thrust now, finding the matching rhythm, babbling between moans. Bucky’s hand works them both in steady strokes, hips rolling in counterpoint to Steve’s increasingly erratic thrusts.
“Buck—” Steve’s voice cracks, his hips stuttering, fingers digging into the meat of Bucky’s back like he’s holding onto the edge of a cliff. “I’m— I’m not gonna last much longer, I—”
“Then don’t,” Bucky murmurs. His lips brush the shell of Steve’s ear, breath hot. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. You can let go.”
The endearment seems to work, short-circuiting something in Steve’s brain. His whole body goes rigid beneath Bucky, muscles locking up, and then he’s coming with a sound that lies somewhere between a sob and a moan. If Bucky thought all of his other sounds were good, this one is a million times better. Like the best song he’s ever heard, straight from Steve’s mouth—pure ecstacy.
Hot come pulses across Bucky’s knuckles, streaking both of their stomachs, Steve’s hips jerking in helpless little aftershocks as Bucky slows his strokes, gently leading him through it like it’s a cooldown lap and not an orgasm.
“There you go,” Bucky murmurs. “There you go, I’ve got you. Just breathe.”
Steve’s chest heaves, lashes dark and damp against his flushed cheeks, and his hands have gone slack on Bucky's shoulders. Bucky eases his grip, letting Steve’s softening cock slip free.
Then he looks down at his filthy hand and thinks fuck it. He brings the digits to his mouth, licking the seed off his fingers like it’s the most delectable meal he’s ever had. For the most part, it is—bitter, sure, but in a good way. Meanwhile, he presses his clean hand against Steve’s racing heart, feeling the thumping beneath his palm.
“Hey,” he murmurs after both hands are clean (as clean as possible, at least). Steve’s eyes flutter open, glassy. “You with me, Rogers?”
Steve blinks. His voice, when he speaks, is quiet and just slightly raspy. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m—” He looks down at the mess between them, at Bucky’s spit-slick hand, then at Bucky’s still-aching erection pressed against his hip, and his brow furrows. “You didn’t—”
“S’fine.” Bucky starts to pull back, already mentally preparing to take care of himself in the bathroom like a considerate houseguest. “Don’t worry about it.”
“What? No.” Steve’s hand shoots out, wrapping around Bucky’s wrist with surprising coordination for a man who just came hard enough to probably see God. “No, I want—” He pauses, tongue darting out to wet his bottom lip. “Can I— I want to try something.”
Bucky’s cock twitches traitorously. “Steve. You don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t have to.” Steve’s jaw sets, and there it is, there’s that stubborn kid Bucky fell in love with. He knows that look better than his own reflection. “I want to. Unless you don’t want me to, which is fine, obviously, but—”
“What are you asking, Steve?”
Steve meets his eyes. “Let me blow you.”
The words hang in the air between them. Bucky stares at Steve, and then blinks a few times like he’s imagining it. Steve’s face doesn’t change—he’s still breathless, still flushed, but with a determined look on his face.
“Have you ever—”
“No. But how hard could it be?” Steve adds, with a small, nervous grin.
Bucky laughs, the sound sharp and punched out of him before he can stop it. “You’re something else, you know that? I can’t believe I’m in love with you.”
“Is that a yes?”
“That’s a—” Bucky swallows hard. “Yeah. Yes. But if it’s not good for you, you stop. Immediately. I don’t care if I’m about to—you stop. Deal?”
“Deal.” Steve is already shuffling down the bed before the words even fully leave his mouth, rearranging their position with single-minded focus.
Bucky ends up on his back, propped up against the pillows, and the sight of a naked Steve Rogers settling between his thighs is almost enough to make him come untouched.
Steve looks up at him through those unfairly long lashes, through those stupidly blue eyes. “Tell me what to do.”
Oh, fuck. This is really about to happen.
“Okay,” Bucky manages, voice slightly strangled. “Okay. Um. Start with—just—your hand first, to, um. To get used to it.”
Steve’s fingers wrap around the base of Bucky’s cock, tentative at first, then more confident when Bucky sucks in a breath between his gritted teeth. Steve’s grip is slightly too loose, his rhythm unsure, but it’s Steve’s hand and that alone makes it the best thing Bucky has ever felt in his entire life. He never wants to leave this bed.
"Tighter," Bucky breathes. "Yeah, like that. Now—your mouth. Just the tip at first. Watch the teeth."
Steve leans in, and the first brush of his lips against the head of Bucky's cock makes them both groan simultaneously—Bucky because holy shit, it's actually happening, and Steve because, well. Bucky doesn't really let himself speculate on that one.
The wet heat of Steve's mouth is almost too much. Steve takes just the first inch or so, his tongue moving experimentally, and Bucky's hand flies to the back of Steve's head. His blond hair is damp with sweat. Bucky is careful not to push him down, despite his brain yelling at him to do so.
"Fuck," Bucky gasps. "Yeah, that's—you're doing so good, sweetheart."
Steve makes a noise around him, muffled but distinctly pleased, and the vibration sends a jolt straight up Bucky's spine. His hips buck before he can stop them, and Steve pulls back with a cough, eyes watering slightly.
"Sorry," Bucky says immediately. "Shit, sorry, I didn't mean—"
"Buck." Steve's voice is hoarse. "Stop apologizing. I'm fine." He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, a gesture so obscene that Bucky has to close his eyes for a moment to collect himself. Jesus fucking Christ, this man. "What else? Tell me what else."
“Take more. As much as you can—as much as you’re comfortable with.” Bucky’s other hand comes up to stroke the line of Steve’s jaw. “Keep your tongue flat and breathe through your nose, yeah?”
Steve nods, brows set, and lowers himself again.
This time he does take Bucky deeper. Not all the way, not even close—and Bucky doesn’t expect him to either, especially since Steve has never given a blowjob before. But he feels the head of his cock nudge against the soft palate of Steve’s mouth. The man’s swollen lips stretch around him, and Bucky has to pull away from Steve’s jaw to dig a hand into the mattress to keep himself from thrusting upward.
“Just like that,” he grits out. “Christ, Steve, yeah. Just like that. Fuck, you’re a natural, baby.”
Steve's tongue swirls at the base, and Bucky's vision whites out at the edges.
His tempo is sloppy but enthusiastic. His head bobs in uneven strokes, using his hand on what he can’t fit in his mouth. He's not particularly skilled, and he gags twice when he gets overeager, but none of that matters because it's Steve. It's Steve looking up at Bucky through watery blue eyes, Steve making desperate little sounds around his cock, Steve's free hand gripping Bucky's thigh hard enough to bruise.
“You close?” Steve pulls off to ask, lips slick and swollen while his hands stroke Bucky. He looks utterly debauched, and Bucky wants to frame this moment. It’s museum-worthy, for sure.
"Yeah. Keep going, just—just like that, I'm—"
Steve dives back down, and this time he takes Bucky as deep as he can manage. His throat works around the intrusion, and the tight heat of it combined with the obscene wet sounds filling the room pushes Bucky over the edge.
“Steve—” It’s the only warning he manages, besides a desperate hand trying to pull Steve off his cock (which proves useless, because he is, apparently, determined to swallow), before he comes, spilling down the other man’s throat in pulsing waves. Steve makes a surprised noise but refuses to pull back, swallowing instantly, and Bucky’s hand can’t help but tighten in his hair.
It feels like it goes on for an eternity. When Bucky finally comes back to himself, vision returning after a screen of white-hot pleasure, Steve is pulling off with a wet pop, chin glistening, looking tremendously pleased with himself.
“Okay,” Steve grins. "Okay, that was—I get it now. Why people like doing that."
Bucky stares at him for a long moment, chest still heaving, and then starts laughing—helpless, giddy laughter that bubbles up from his chest involuntarily. Steve gives him an odd look, and then he’s laughing too, and they’re both lying there in the mess they’ve made, giggling like the sixteen-year-old boys they once were.
“Oh my God,” Bucky says once the laughing has mostly subsided. “Oh my God, I’m in love with you. So in love with you, Steve Rogers.”
Steve shuffles up to lie on top of the other man and then leans down to kiss him, hands braced on Bucky’s pecs, just like how he did earlier. The moment feels so far away now, like it’s been years since it happened.
“I love you too, punk,” he murmurs against Bucky’s lips. They’re both smiling as Steve pushes himself off, taking up the space next to Bucky. “We should clean up.”
Bucky groans dramatically, throwing an arm over Steve’s side and pulling him closer. “Shuddup. We’ll clean up in the morning. I don’t even think my legs work right now.”
“Buck. We’ll get crusty.”
“Romantic.”
“Gross.”
LIBERTY RACING GROUP CHAT (WORK PURPOSES ONLY!!!) (shut up tony)
Steve, 7:38am: [Attachment: 1 Image. A man, face partly concealed by dark hair, has his head resting on another man’s pale chest. The dark-haired man appears to be sleeping. The other man’s face is not in frame.]
Natasha, 7:39am: Finally.
Sam, 7:39am: HOLY SHIT
Sam, 7:39am: FUCK YEAH
Sam, 7:40am: PAY UP MOTHERFUCKERS I WON