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The white light was trying to stab his brain through his eyeholes.Bucky groaned and rolled over, wriggling out of the blanket he didn’t remember wrapping himself in. His head felt like it was being gently squeezed in a vice and his mouth tasted like he’d swallowed a sock. The shirt collar dug into his neck. A half-unbuttoned dress shirt and slacks were not what he usually chose to sleep in.A couple of muttered curses escaped him before he finally managed to get out of the blanket’s snare. He kicked the offending piece of fluffy fabric to the floor. The effort caused the couch to sway from side to side before stabilizing.Bucky lifted his head and was met by an amused face surrounded by twinkling fairy lights.“You okay there, Buck?”Steve was leaning against the doorway to the kitchen, looking Steve-like in a red-and-blue plaid hipster shirt and black-rimmed glasses, and way too bright for—Bucky poked his phone lying face-up on the coffee table—10:39 in the morning.The screen also told him he had 14 unread notifications. He swept them away and focused back on Steve and the amused tilt of his lips that had grown approximately 33 percent in the last minute.Steve swept back the bangs that were always threatening to fall into his eyes. He was holding a mug of something steaming.“That for me?” Bucky asked hopefully—or croaked more like it.“Does this look like a hotel to you, Barnes?” Steve lifted the mug and took a long, demonstrative sip from it. “Ahh, that’s good.”"A hotel would have better beds," Bucky grumbled and kneaded the knot in his neck. He switched tactics and hit Steve with the kicked-puppy look he’d perfected in tenth grade. Judging by his current state it probably looked more pathetic than anything.Steve tutted but failed to hide his smile behind the rim of the mug. “There’s more coffee in the kitchen. You can get it yourself.”“Some host you are.”Bucky got up to sit. His brain sloshed around in his skull and he had to grab onto the armrest. It took him a few moments to regain equilibrium. He rubbed the inside of his elbow where the skin pinched.He didn’t usually sleep with his prosthesis on either. The brace wasn’t super comfortable and he was still kind of scared that he’d mess up the delicate joints in the fingers.“You know, a ‘thank you for letting me stay here and not complaining when I arrive home at all hours of the night and drool on your couch, Steve’ would be nice.”“Pretty sure that counted as complaining.” Punk, Bucky added under his breath, out of sheer habit.He pushed up the sleeve of his shirt and undid the velcro straps and put the prosthesis on the table next to the half-full glass of water he had no memory of getting last night. The skin around the stump was a bit red, but not badly chafed.He was peripherally aware of Steve looking at him while he checked over the arm, but it didn’t faze him. Steve had seen him with braces and a bowl-cut, and during his high school goth phase, and that time when he got two of his wisdom teeth removed, and the first time he got really drunk and threw up in Mrs. Talbots gardenias. (And those weeks in the hospital when he’d been drugged out of his mind, delirious with pain and fear.)When he looked back up Steve was leaning his elbows on the deep window sill and staring out at the lights and snow falling in soft, cotton candy chunks.And there was a lot of snow. A metric fuckton, if you wanted to get scientific about it. The pharmacy and deli across the street sported feet-deep blankets of it and looked like they could belong on a postcard from the North Pole.“Whoa, when did that happen?”Bucky got up and crossed the precarious distance to the window. He leaned his hip to the wall in a very casual way.“Started snowing around the time you got back,” Steve said.Bucky had a vague memory of that—wetness on his cheeks, standing with his face tilted up to the sky in the middle of downtown Manhattan, sticking out his tongue to catch the flakes while Shuri laughed at him.He really should send Shuri a text and thank her for getting him on the train. He must have been even drunker than he thought.“Weren’t you asleep?”Steve gave a dismissive shrug and kept looking down at the street where some poor sod was trying to free his car from where it had been boxed in by the snowplows.“Good party last night?”Bucky snort-chuckled. “It was an SI Christmas party at Stark Tower, what do you think?”Swanky holiday decor, weird finger food, kissing ass to please filthy rich donors—added to the imminent threat of running into your eccentric hopefully-future-boss—wasn't exactly how Bucky would define a good party. At some point he and Shuri and Peter, the other Robotics intern, had snuck away with a bottle from the open bar and hidden out in the labs.“I don’t know. You got in pretty late.” Steve looked down at his ink-smudged fingers. His hair fell over his eyes and Bucky’s hands itched to reach out and smooth it back. “And, I mean, I know you like the people you work with.”“Sure,” Bucky agreed lightly. He took a mindful breath and reined in the stupid, dangerous impulse.Steve backed away from the window and stepped through the fairy light portal into his closet-sized kitchen. “I’ll get you that coffee before the coffee maker shuts off.”“Thank you.” Bucky pressed his palms together and bowed his head.Steve waggled his eyebrows at him and got up on his toes to reach for the mugs on the shelf.Now that there was a safe amount of space between them, Bucky let himself look him up and down. “Why are you so—” he gestured to encompass all five foot four inches of him “—on a Sunday morning?”Steve put a mug on the counter and grabbed the pot. “I’ve been up working since eight. This is my second pot of coffee.”“Why you workin’ on a Sunday for, you heathen?” Bucky covered his mouth like he was personally affronted by the thought.“‘Cause I’ve got commissions to finish before the end of the year and someone guilt-tripped me into promising I wouldn’t work over the holidays.”“Hey, don’t put this on me! I got no dog in your Christmas fight, that was all Sarah.” Bullheadedness was a known Rogers family trait. “Besides, I thought you’d want to spend some time with me before I go back to Massachusetts?”Given that he’d been sleeping on Steve’s pull-out couch (usually with it made up into a proper bed) all of the four months of his internship, they hadn’t actually seen all that much of each other.“‘course I do.” Steve looked up at him through the hopeless bangs. “I miss you when you’re over there. Sorry it’s been so busy this fall,” he said, earnest in the way only Steve Rogers, the world’s prickliest person, could be.He held out the full mug of coffee and Bucky hurried to take it and inhale a tongue-scalding sip before he could do something very stupid like ruffle his hair or kiss his forehead.It was infuriating, really. Aim any sort of affection and care at Steve and he turned into the human equivalent of a cactus. But then he’d switch it back around at you and you were supposed to just take it and not want to kiss that soft smile off his lips. Bucky sucked on his burned tongue. Fucking unfair, was what it was.“But hey,” Steve said and tapped Bucky’s shoulder with his knuckles, “it’s your last semester and then we’ll have you back in New York, right? SI can’t not hire you on full time. I bet they’ll have some competition too. And you know you can stay here with me.” He paused and scratched the back of his neck. “While you’re looking for your own place, I mean.”Bucky hummed non-committally and stared down into his coffee.He missed Steve too—obviously. Not being in Brooklyn full-time remained strange after spending his first twenty-six years of life here. Not being around Steve, as he’d been for twenty-something of those years, was even stranger. After living in each others pockets for so long, it had been hard to learn how to get by on only texts and shared memes and video calls and holiday visits.But in a way, these last four years had been easier.Being around Steve in the same physical space meant—well, it meant having Steve in the same physical space. It meant seeing him and touching him and always, always trying not to look at him too much or touch him for too long.Living on Steve’s couch for four months? That had been low grade torture. And Bucky wouldn’t change it for the world.“Well, I gotta get back to work.” Steve grabbed his own mug from the counter and turned his shoulder to slide past him through the narrow doorway.Bucky instinctively held his breath as he passed.“Can I see?” he asked when Steve was halfway across the living room. “What you’re workin’ on?”Steve turned on his heel. “Sure …” he said, rolling his lower lip between his teeth. “Yeah, of course,” he amended when Bucky smiled at him, and offered a small smile back.*A magical underwater landscape spread out before him. The colors were soft-edged and layered like watercolor, vivid but not garish, blues and greens and purples with splashes of gold that seemed to shimmer behind the glass of the drawing tablet.“It’s not finished,” Steve said, standing beside him with his hands showed in his jeans pockets.The longer Bucky looked at the painting the more detail he noticed: the dark outline of a shipwreck in the background, an octopus arm peeking out from under a rock, an opal necklace half-buried in the sand.“This for the kids’ book?”“Middle grade, technically. But yeah. I think you’d really like the story, lots of magic and sword-fighting and oaths of loyalty.”“Who you calling a nerd?” Bucky countered, without any energy behind it.He kept looking at the scene. It was mesmerizing in a way he couldn’t pinpoint and he felt a warm pride growing in his chest. He’d always admired Steve’s hard work and talent, since they were kids. Not that he could tell him—Steve would never accept the praise, to start.“It’s great,” was all he said as he handed the tablet back.Even that made Steve’s nose scrunch up in discomfort. He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know if I got the color palette right. But I have to send in a final draft by the twenty-third.”It’s already incredible. They’re gonna love it. Bucky bit his tongue. He knew better than to argue with Steve about his perfectionist tendencies.Steve sat down at his desk and reached for his stylus and the two-fingered glove he used when drawing.Bucky blocked a yawn with the back of his hand. “’orry. I’mma go take shower, maybe I’ll wake up.”“Uhu,” Steve responded with his eyes on the tablet, already tuning out the world around him.Bucky slipped out of the room and grabbed some things from the bottom shelves of the bookcase that acted as his makeshift dresser.The hot water felt heavenly on his skin, rinsing off the stale sweat and smell of hangover seeping from his pores. He turned his face up to the spray and opened his mouth like it could cleanse him from the inside too.When he stepped out of the shower his head was still a bit tender, but after brushing his teeth and gulping down a few mouthfuls of cold water he felt almost fully human. He dried his hair roughly and dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie and walked back into the living room.The blinking light on his phone urged him to pick it up. He checked the notifications. There was a string of messages from Shuri, starting at 8:42 am.
so what happened?
did you do it???
i need details barnes
as your mentor you are obliged to tell me
call me later!!
Bucky had no idea what she’s talking about.None at all.No clue.…He was afraid he knew exactly what she was talking about.A memory had dislodged from the dark recesses of his mind and was staring him right in the face: Shuri sitting cross-legged on the tiled labs floor in her emerald green dress and her gravity-defying braids and her chin in her hand, listening to his slurred speech extolling the virtues of a pair of cornflower blue eyes or some other sappy shit.Bucky vowed to never drink tequila again. Getting drunk with your colleague-slash-supervisor was one thing. Getting drunk and spilling your guts about your decade-long crush on your best friend was another.His head started pounding again. He thanked his luck that he hadn’t actually done whatever Shuri and his liquid courage had tried to persuade him to do last night. Probably some insane shit like telling Steve. He dug his fingers into his eye sockets and considered blocking her number, but realized the futility of that course of action. He’d have to see her tomorrow anyway. There could be no escape, only a short reprieve.He muted the chat, swallowed two painkillers, chugged the rest of the glass of water, and opened the other unread messages where his mother was trying to set up a holiday celebration with her five children spread out between three states.By the time he’d finished responding—and arguing with Becca and Alice about the fact that no, he couldn’t just give them a tour of Stark Tower whenever—and they’d agreed on a time for video call to light the first candle later that night, it was already half past noon.He dug around in the kitchen and pulled together some stuff to make a stack of sandwiches. He loaded a tray with plates and two cans of store-brand diet soda and carried it to Steve’s room.Steve didn’t look like he had moved an inch since he left him there. Bucky put down the tray on his desk and slid a plate in front of him.“I swear I don’t know how you survive when I’m not around to feed you.”Steve blinked owlishly at him. “Time is it?” He grabbed a sandwich and bit into it, brushing a stray crumb from his bottom lip with the back of his hand.Not that Bucky was looking, of course.“Almost one. You gonna be at this all day?” He sat down on the edge of Steve’s mattress, plucked a sandwich from his own plate, and took a bite.“I ’adn’t planned to,” Steve said through a mouthful of bread, the savage. He chewed twice and swallowed. “I just got caught up in this.” He pushed the tablet away with his elbow and frowned at it. “Something about it’s still bugging me.”Bucky hummed in commiseration.They ate in silence for a bit.A timid ray of winter sunlight peeked through the clouds and painted streaks across the desk. The snow had stopped falling.“You wanna …?” Steve nodded to the window. “I guess I need a break anyway.”Bucky nodded. “Sure, yeah.”He hadn’t brought any proper snow gear with him down to New York, so he made do with a pair of workout tights and basketball short layered under his sweatpants and pulled on the thick wool socks Sarah had gifted him last Christmas.Steve was crouched down by the door lacing his winter boots. He looked up when Bucky started digging around on top of the coat rack, searching for his hat and scarf.“Um, aren’t you forgetting something?”“What?” Bucky asked nonchalantly and folded up the sleeve of his hoodie. “You think I need two hands to beat your skinny ass?”*“Truce, truce,” he panted forty minutes later, holding up his right arm to shield himself against the handfuls of fluffy snow Steve was holding over his face.Steve was straddled across his chest, pinning his shoulders down. And that little punk was heavier than he looked. He was also wearing a face-splitting grin.“Are you givin’ up? You gonna take it back?”“I forgot you fight dirty,” Bucky muttered.“No you didn’t.” Steve tapped his heel on his flank.“Fine. Yes.” Bucky let his arms drop beside his head. “I give up. Victory is yours.”Steve cackled and tossed the snow into the air, showering both of them in white, ice-cold glitter. Bucky pinched his eyes shut and sputtered when a piece of it landed in his mouth.Steve’s laugh was bright and jubilant. His pink cheeks and the sparkling blue of his eyes were the only spots of color in a washed-out world. Bucky found it hard to breathe for reasons that didn’t have so much to do with the weight over his chest.“Geroff me, you lump,” he wheezed.Steve rolled off his chest and laid down next to him in the snow. He waved his limbs around making a rather lackluster snow angel. Snow crystals were melting in his eyelashes.Bucky turned his face to the sky. Everything was white. The trees were white and the field around them was covered in white and even the sky was an off-white gray.It was pretty, in an alien way.And almost quiet, the snow and trees dulling the sound of traffic coming from the streets surrounding the ball fields.Bucky had looked up at this very sky from this very spot many times before. The fence around the field was easy enough to scale, if you knew where to do it. This time no one had yet come to chase them away.Beside him Steve had stopped moving around. His outstretched arm was just barely touching Bucky’s shoulder through two layers of winter clothing. It was impossible to ignore, like his entire nervous system extended out from that single point of pressure.Their breaths fogged and mingled in the air.“Wish I could paint this,” Steve said, voice hushed like he was sharing a secret.“Why can’t you?”A pause. Bucky turned his head to look at him. There was a small furrow between his brows—different somehow, than the one he got when he was focused on a painting.Steve shrugged. “No reason, I guess.”Bucky was loosing feeling in his ass. Not fast enough to escape the feeling of the snow underneath him melting and soaking through his non-snow pants. He sat up and pulled his legs under himself and got on his feet.“Let’s go.” He held out his hand. “I’m freezing my ass off and Sarah will kill me if I let you catch pneumonia again.”“She wouldn’t. She loves you,” Steve said, but took his arm and let Bucky lever him up from the ground.*“That’s enough activity for me today,” Bucky said and planted himself face down on the couch in suitably dramatic fashion. He’d hung up his clothes instead of leaving them in a soggy pile on the bathroom floor and that was really all that could be expected of him.“Scoot over.” Steve prodded his back with a bony finger. “You’re hogging the whole couch.”“Floor’s free,” Bucky mumbled into the pillow. He kicked one of the decorative cushions to the floor, because he was considerate like that.“It’s my couch,” Steve complained.“Fine.” Bucky lifted his head. “Gimme a minute.”He slid off the seat and pulled on the strap for the mechanism that allowed the couch to fold out to double its width. He picked up the bundle of bedding from the footstool and tossed it at Steve.“You make the bed, I only got one arm.”“Excuses.” Steve shook his head and hid a grin inside the armful of blankets.It wasn’t until Steve had tucked in the corners of the sheet and Bucky was grabbing his pillow and crawling under the duvet that he fully realized what an acutely terrible idea this was.Steve put his glasses down on the coffee table and pulled his sweater over his head. His t-shirt stuck to it, exposing half his torso—slim waist and soft skin and shadows of ribs underneath because he was perpetually on the side of too skinny. He tossed the sweatshirt on the stool and lay down beside Bucky on the not-quite-queen-sized mattress and tucked the duvet up to his chin.Bucky had forgotten at what rate your were normally supposed to breath.
You really didn’t think this one through, Barnes.
They were basically sharing a bed. Something they hadn’t done since Bucky was thirteen.(About the time he started figuring out that maybe he liked boys in the way most guys seemed to like girls. Not that those two things were related. They’d just grown out of it, was all. Sharing a bed with your best friend during sleepovers was a thing you only did when you were kids, like playing superheroes or collecting Pokémon cards. Not that adults couldn’t collect Pokémon cards. Of course they could, otherwise there wouldn’t be those rare edition ones worth like a hundred grand ...)Great. His brain was already setting into overdrive. It was fine. This was fine. Nothing he couldn’t handle.Steve was just very close and very, very Steve. (Bucky had been nineteen when he realized that his thing for guys also was a thing for Steve, specifically. And like, being gay was fine, but crushing on your best friend was—he was pretty sure—a shitty thing to do.)Bucky pressed himself as far back into the cushions as was physically possible and did the calm breathing thing Dr Banner had tried to teach him during a lunch break. Instead of making him calmer, it just made him sort of dizzy.“Wanna watch a movie?” He fished out his phone to scroll through Netflix.“Sure—” Steve yawned “—you pick one. ‘m just gonna close my eyes for a bit …” He adjusted the pillow under his head.Bucky watched his eyelids flicker and his jaw go slack and the rise and fall of his chest even out.A sleeping Steve Rogers was a study in contradictions. There was a serenity over him you would never have expected to find while he was awake. The gold hair and and full lips and pale, rosy cheeks gave him an angelic look. A timeless perfection only fractured by the slight bump in a once-broken nose and the white line of a scar that cut through his eyebrow.Bucky would only have to lift his hand and he’d be able to trace it, to draw the line of his brow and the sharp edge of his cheekbones and the angle of his cupid’s bow.Would his lips be dry or soft?A hot ball of shame rose in his throat. He felt like a creep, watching Steve sleep, thinking those thoughts.He screwed his own eyes shut and tried to breathe slow and even. He didn’t expect to fall asleep. Not with Steve breathing a less than a foot away. But he could keep his mind blank and keep still and wait until it was safe to leave. When Bucky woke up the living room was lit only by the arch of fairy lights and Steve was gone.~⁕~“Okay losers, shut up and let my amazing, gorgeous, wonderful fiancée talk!”Clint was standing on his chair with a full rubber reindeer head balancing on his head. This wasn’t really out of the ordinary. The fiancée part was new, which was probably why he’d felt the need to mention it in conversation at least five times in the last hour.The amazing fiancée in question was giving him a look of fond exasperation. She stood from her own chair at the head of the table and smiled down at them all, eyes twinkling in the candlelight.“What Clint is trying to say is—thank you all for coming. If we have to grow old and boring, we want to do it with you.” Natasha raised her glass. “Now let’s drink and forget we aren’t eighteen anymore.”Bucky cheered and laughed with the others. He raised his beer and clinked the neck against Yelena’s bottle.Christmas Eve-Eve was a storied tradition that had evolved and changed over the years, but never died out. By this point it wasn’t so much a holiday dinner as an eclectic mix of traditions and inside jokes that no one quite remembered the origin of. The last few holidays they’d been hosted by Nat and Clint, on account of them having the largest apartment and the most complete set of festive tableware—two things no one who knew them in high school could have predicted.But here they all were, twelve years later. A bunch of art and theater kids, and the two token jocks who’d been allowed to join their ranks by virtue of also being a drama queen (Sam) and an incorrigible science nerd (Bucky).It was hard not to get a bit nostalgic about it. Especially since there’d been a time when Bucky didn’t think he’d ever be back here. He folded his left hand in his lap and took a long drag from his beer and let his eyes travel over the familiar faces of all his oldest friends.He’d been seated at the far corner of the table from Steve, which suited him well tonight. There had been this weird kind of tension in the air all week, ever since they fell asleep on Steve’s couch. Probably it was all in Bucky’s head—or maybe it was that Shuri had been giving him not-so-subtle hints about his drunken confession every time they’d had a break together.Anyway, a bit of distance would do him good.The laughter and conversation flowed over him, like the blast of warm air when you step into a shop on a freezing winter day, and Bucky leaned back in his chair and let it thaw the somber thoughts.On the other side of the table, Sam clinked his fork to his glass and rose from his seat. He cleared his throat and waited for everybody’s eyes to turn to him.“First of all—since he’s clearly fishing for it—congratulations again to Clint for getting snagged by the scariest girl in our grade—”Pietro wolf-whistled, then clutched his ribs when his sister elbowed him.“—and to Natasha for not listening to everyone who said she was trading down. And when you’re in need of marriage advice, you know who to turn to.”Next to him Riley rolled his eyes so hard you could hear it. The look on Sam’s face said he was most certainly doing it on purpose.“Secondly, thank you for another excellent Christmas Eve-Eve. To another year of getting older but never wiser!”*The playlist of weird indie holiday songs was on its third play-through. Bucky was on his third or fourth beer, sitting in one of the armchairs in the living room and listening to Wanda regale Clint and Yelena with a story of her latest disaster of a date—something about a catfishing AI that wasn’t actually catfishing or an AI, Bucky admitted he hadn’t fully been paying attention. Yelena’s nose was scrunched up in a way that said ‘you are all crazy for subjecting yourselves to this madness’.Bucky kind of had to agree. Not that he’d had a lot of disaster dates in his life. Mostly ones that went okay and led to a second date and a third and a decent fuck—and then sort of fizzled out because he could never muster enough effort to try to make it work, because it was never the right time.(Or the right person.)On the other side of the room, Sam and Riley had occupied the couch and were currently holding hands and being generally cute and disgusting. Bucky couldn’t look at them without feeling a bit like he was going to throw up pink confetti and rainbows.Though it was still preferable to looking in the other direction. At the cleared dinner table Steve was also looking very cozy, deep in conversation with the new addition to their holiday tradition—Sharon’s British cousin, a pretty brunette with an old-fashioned name.Steve was talking with his hands, like he did when he got onto a topic that he was either really passionate or really mad about, and constantly sweeping his hair out of his eyes in the way that annoyed Bucky to no end. Sharon’s cousin was smiling and laughing and offering replies that made Steve focus his eyes on her red-painted lips and nod eagerly in agreement.Everybody was having a good time. Good for them.Bucky tore off a corner of the bottle label. He was barely tipsy and already falling into sad drunk-mode. He had no idea why he couldn’t just snap out of it. It didn’t use to be this hard. He blamed the stress of the final weeks of his internship, and Shuri for not being able to stop smirking at him, and he blamed Steve for always being right there and not letting his stupid heart take the hint.He watched Steve beaming at the charming British dimples and his brain kept spinning scenarios of Steve with other people—dates, partners, a spouse.Steve didn’t date much. (There’d been a couple guys in college and one girl from the movie theater he used to work weekends at and Rowan from the hipster café on 9th—not that Bucky had been keeping count.) But Bucky knew someday soon Steve would find that someone who could see what a catch he was. And then Bucky would no longer be the first person Steve turned to. No longer the person he stayed up for hours talking on the phone to. No longer the one person allowed to pester him with reminders to take care of himself.It was a selfish thought, and it made him angry with himself that he’d even think to begrudge Steve any form of happiness. That wasn’t how you were supposed to love someone.But he couldn’t help the tightness in his chest.He drained his beer and brought it to the kitchen.Natasha was loading their dinner plates into the dishwasher. She looked up when he entered.“Hi, so”—Bucky put his empty bottle among the others on the counter. He wiped his palms on his jeans—“I’m think I’m gonna go. ‘m sorry for bailing on you, but I’m completely wiped. Early morning.” It was only a half-lie. He hadn’t slept, but it had mostly nothing to do with his work schedule. “Thank you for the lovely dinner.”Natasha studied him with her piercing gaze.“All right,” she said. “On one condition—” she turned to the fridge “—you have to take some ponchiki with you.”Bucky breathed out. He felt like he’d passed some sort of test. He took the plastic container she handed him. “Okay. Merry Christmas. Tell Clint not to eat all the leftovers at once.”Natasha looked meaningfully at the container in his hand, then glanced over his shoulder into the living room.“Take care of yourself, Barnes,” she said and got up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. Her warm hand lingered on his back for a moment longer than necessary before she stepped away.So maybe she did know more than she let on. You could never tell with Natasha.In the living room Sharon and Pietro had joined the trio in the group of armchairs. Bucky waved at Clint to get his attention and when the reindeer head perked up from where its wearer was perched on an armrest, he signed home and sleep. Clint pouted at him in the way only Clint could, but then nodded and gave him a double thumbs up.Bucky aimed a little wave at the others and walked away before they could come over. He wasn’t in a mood for enthusiastic hugs and see-you-laters.“Hey”—he tapped Steve’s shoulder—“I’m gonna head out.”“Now?” Steve frowned for a second, but then it cleared and he offered Bucky a small smile. “Okay, sure. Just give me a minute to say goodnight.”“No, no”—Bucky held up his hands—“I meant, I’m leaving. You stay.”Steve’s eyes narrowed. You might think he’d learned that look from Natasha, but that was all Rogers.“Everything okay?” he asked with the full authority of a police interrogator.Bucky let out a laugh that he really hoped didn’t sound as nervous as it felt. “Yeah. I’m just fucking tired. Not tryna ruin the party for the rest of you.”Steve bit his cheek, still not looking quite convinced. “I mean, if you’re sure it’s all right?”“’Course.” Bucky tapped his shoulder with a light fist. “I got your key. And I’m just gonna go straight to bed anyway.”He nodded to Steve’s new friend, who was watching their exchange with well concealed curiosity. “Nice to meet you.”“You too,” she said with a smile. “And happy Hanukkah.”*The subway was almost deserted. He’d hit a twilight zone, a gap in time between the crowds out on their last-minute errands and the ones that wouldn’t be stumbling home from their Friday night pursuits for another few hours.On Steve’s street the magical cover of snow had long since been trampled to a gray slush.Bucky unlocked the apartment door and hung the keys on their hook on the wall. The jingling sound echoed in the empty apartment.He switched on the lights, hung up his coat and undid his boots, more careless than he normally would at this hour—a futile effort to bleed some life and light into the cold, lifeless space.He carried the container of donut holes to the kitchen and then returned to his corner of the living room, where he kicked out of his too-tight jeans and pulled his shirt over his head without bothering to unbutton it. He undid the velcro straps and tossed his prosthesis none too gently onto the coffee table. The t-shirt he’d been sleeping in last night was draped over the armrest. He pulled it on and sat down on the couch.Bucky ran his hand over his face. The tiredness that had been little more than an easy excuse was hitting him with vengeance. He felt it in his bones.At least he’d had the foresight to make the bed before they left.He should probably go brush his teeth.He got up and turned off the overhead lights.Darkness fell over the room.Except, not quite. The door to Steve’s room stood ajar, and a strip of light fell across the carpet.Bucky went to the door. He stood on the threshold and peered inside.The lamp on Steve’s desk was lit. Probably left on by mistake while they were rushing to get ready earlier.He walked over to the desk to turn it off.In the center of the yellow circle of light lay—not the drawing tablet Steve used for work, but a large block of watercolor paper.Bucky’s hand hovered over the light switch.He probably shouldn’t be looking. Not without Steve’s permission. He knew how protective Steve was when it came to his art.But it was too late, he’d already been captured by it.The painting.It was a bird’s-eye view of a ball field—surrounded by trees, surrounded by streets, surrounded by houses, in ever expanding ovals and rectangles. Everything was in white, which was really shades of gray and blue and pink.The perspective was warped, like you were looking at it through a snow globe.In the middle of the white field were two small figures, lying side by side in the snow. They rose up from the paper, two person-shaped dots in all that white.They looked … lonely.No, that wasn’t right.They were alone. There were no other signs of human life in the city. In their little snow globe universe. But they were together.Bucky switched off the lamp.The picture disappeared into the shadows.He lay down on Steve’s bed.Bucky didn’t know why he’d done that. He should get up and go brush his teeth and go to bed and forget this week ever happened.He took a deep breath, breathing in the scent of Steve’s clean cotton laundry detergent and spicy apple body wash. It made his eyes sting.
Fucking pathetic.
Bucky sniffed angrily and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He wasn’t crying. That would be ridiculous. Here he was, an almost 30-year-old man, moping and pining like a teenager over his best friend.He turned on his side and hugged his arm around Steve’s pillow.This was it, he decided. This was rock bottom. He’d allow himself this moment of self-pity and then he’d pick himself up and pull it together.Just this moment.*“Hey. Buck?”A weight rocked his shoulder.The surface underneath him shifted.A cool hand brushed his forehead.“Are you all right?”Bucky lifted his head and rubbed at his numb, blotchy face.The room bathed in the soft, yellow light from the desk lamp.Steve was sitting on the bed next to him, lines of confusion and worry creasing his face.“Shit.” Bucky fumbled his limbs, hurrying to sit up. “Fuck. Sorry.”He’d fallen asleep in Steve’s bed. He’d fallen asleep not-crying into Steve’s pillow. And Steve had caught him. Bucky’s cheeks burned with humiliation. Who did shit like this? He kept his eyes on his lap.“What’re you sorry for?” Steve asked, voice careful.Bucky waved him away. “Nothing.” He forced himself to look up, to meet Steve’s eyes and smile. “It’s fine. I’m, uh—I must have been sleep-walking or something.”It was a terrible, transparent lie.Steve didn’t buy it.“No. This is not fine.” Steve gestured to his face. “Did something happen? Are you sick? It’s not the …?” he didn’t finish the question, but his eyes flickered down to Bucky’s arm and his pink, cold-nipped cheeks turned a shade paler.“No, no,” Bucky shook his head. His jaw hurt from smiling and clenching his teeth. “Nothing like that, I swear.”“Then what?”It hit him like a wall.Like training camp when your lungs are burning and your muscles turn to marshmallow goo and you know you can’t possibly push another yard or lift the bar for another rep.The final drop of willpower ran out of Bucky’s body.There was no point to hiding it. It hurt just as much this way.He drew a breath and watched with detached interest as his grasping fingertips gave in and slipped the final millimeters on the rock ledge.“I’m in love with you.”The words rang in his own ears.Steve went completely rigid and silent.Bucky, in free fall, watched the ground getting closer and closer and braced for impact.“Is this some kind of joke?” Steve finally asked, voice clipped.Bucky’s heart hit the floor with a sickening thud and oozed down between the floor boards.“No.” He shook his head and raised his voice to overpower the blaring sirens in his head. “No, it’s ... Shit.” Looking at Steve’s face, he wanted to punch himself in the nose. “Steve, I’m so sorry, I won’t—I’ll go.”He got up to run.A vice gripped his wrist. “Wait.”He halted. The sirens stopped. He sat back down.“Did you mean it?” Steve’s voice was hard and his eyes were burning holes in Bucky’s retinas.“Yeah.” Bucky let out a defeated laugh, like the cornered suspect finally confessing his crimes. “Yes. Since forever.”Something strange happened then.Steve seemed to crumple and grow at the same time. “Oh my god. You—oh my god.” He put his face in his hands, elbows resting on his knees.His shoulders started shaking. He didn’t let out a sound.“Steve …” Bucky was afraid to touch him.Steve looked up, red-faced but eyes dry, and looked straight at him. “You’re serious.”“Steve, I’m—”Steve clamped a hand over his mouth. “Shut up. I’m gonna kiss you now.”“Wha—”Steve kissed him.Steve was kissing him.Bucky’s nerve endings registered the gentle pressure of lips on his own. His brain was filled with a screeching whine, like the feedback noise from broken speakers. His body was a useless clump of meat, marshmallow goo in his spine and limbs.Then it was gone.He knew Steve was staring at him. Probably because he looked like he’d been hit over the head with a shovel.Steve pulled back further, biting his lip. “Was that … okay?”“I … don’t know,” Bucky said, blinking out of the daze. Steve just kissed him. “I think I might have to try it again.”“Jerk.” Steve punched him in the chest. He was grinning now, bright and blinding. “You absolute idiot.”“Can we?” Bucky asked breathlessly, hopeless to do anything else. “Try it again?”Steve’s smile softened. “Yeah,” he whispered.The second kiss was different.Steve framed his face with both hands and tilted his head to the side and brought their lips to touch, fitting them perfectly together.Bucky leaned into it, chasing after him—the gentle, soft heat of him, the taste of mulled wine and sugar cookies.He had a hand too, he realized, stupidly. He could touch Steve, run his fingers up his back, feel his heart beating underneath his ribs.Steve smiled into the kiss.They broke away but stayed close, foreheads leaning together.“So,” Bucky said, “do you—”Steve let out a low groan. “Yes. Obviously, yes.”“I didn’t even ask a que—”Steve pinched his side.“Yes, you’re a pain in the ass. And I love you too.”Bucky breathed out. He thought about that for a second. It was big. Hard to hold onto all at once.“That’s … wow. Okay.”“A lot?” He heard the smile in Steve’s voice.Bucky sucked in air through his teeth. “Yup.”Steve sat back. “It’s late. We should go to sleep.” He rubbed his bottom lip. It was red and full. “Talk more tomorrow?”Bucky nodded. He grabbed Steve’s wrist and pulled it to his lap, playing idly with his fingers, braiding them together with his own. “That’s … reasonable. Are you gonna get all mature and responsible on me now?”“Never.” Steve flashed a cheeky grin.Bucky needed to taste it. For science.So he did.Steve licked his lips and tapped Bucky’s forehead.“Sleep,” he reminded.“Yeah, okay.”Bucky attempted to get some response from his chemical-doped brain. If this was what kissing Steve was like—and if he’d get to keep doing it—he didn’t know how he’d ever have a single lucid thought again. He probably wouldn’t get the degree he’d fought to go back to university for.But that seemed all right, all things considered.Steve was looking expectantly at him.“Um … You mean, here?”“This is a bed, so—yes.”“No, but, I meant, do you want me to …” Bucky bit his tongue. He felt he was probably blushing like a sixteen-year-old virgin.“Stay.”Duh, Steve’s eyebrows said. But his knuckles brushing over Bucky’s cheek said, please.*The room was dark. A warm, full kind of darkness.Steve’s ribs rose and fell under his arm. Calm, even. His heart beat steady. His head fit perfectly in the dip between Bucky’s chest and shoulder.It was everything he’d ever dreamed about. (He’d even pinched himself just to check that he wasn’t now.)And still.Bucky couldn’t sleep.He shifted his restless legs and let out a sigh.“What is it?” Steve asked, warm breath ghosting over his skin.Bucky counted to ten and screwed his eyes shut.“Aren’t you scared?” he whispered into Steve’s hair.Steve craned his neck to look up at him. “Of what?”Bucky swallowed around the dry lump in his throat. “This. Us. Not working out. Crashing and burning.”“No,” Steve said simply. The brave idiot.Bucky ran his fingers down the knots of his spine. His own thoughts were spiraling. Because having Steve close all fall and longing for more had been fucking hard. But if they did this and he messed it up … Losing Steve as a friend would be—it was unthinkable.“How can you not be?”Steve lifted his hand and cupped his jaw. “Because I’ve loved you all my life.” He touched his thumb to Bucky’s lips. “This doesn’t change that.”Bucky couldn’t not kiss him.He couldn’t not use that kiss as an attempt to say everything he’d been too scared to for too long.And he couldn’t not let Steve slide his hand around the back of his neck and pull him closer.
Later.
“Wait. What are we gonna tell Sarah tonight?”“Um … we could not say anything and let her figure it out?”“Punk. She’s your ma.”“Well, I mean … I think she already knows …?”“Steven Grant Rogers, are you going to tell your mother you have a boyfriend, or am I gonna have to do it for you?”“… do I?”“What?”“Have a boyfriend?”“You’re even dumber than you look.”“Hey!”“…”“Hey.”“Hi.”“Do that again?”“This?”“…”“Uhu, yeah, that. Wait, let me—”
“Steve.”
“Buck. Please.”“We—we’re gonna be late.”“Don’t care.”“Punk.”“You love me.”“Ahh … yes—yes, I do. Steve, fuck.”“Mmm, maybe later. Now kiss me again.”