Chapter Text
They’d spent a lot of time in the Wakandan wilderness, but this? This place would take the cake.
It was the late afternoon of an early spring day, so the sky was bathed in brilliant, bright yellow light—and for miles and miles across the way, the horizon was untouched by mankind, inhabited only by beautiful blooming flowers that pepper the grasslands with flecks of white and yellow. Bucky and Steve were crossing a clearing, and with the rainy season upon them, it was the thickest, greenest grass he thinks he’s ever seen. But it’s Steve’s hand suddenly smacking into Bucky’s torso that catches his attention.
See, he’d been fixated on the sky, looking to it, at the plumes of white clouds being painted gold by the waning sunlight; so much so that he’d completely missed the cliff he’d almost walked clear off of.
It wasn’t that far of a drop—maybe sixty feet or so—and at the bottom there was a river, gently rolling along. The water was the most charming shade of blue—well, almost the most charming.
“It’ll take too long to circle back—it’ll get dark too soon. Should we camp here tonight?”
Bucky glances over at his oldest friend. He wasn’t looking back, he was already setting down his bag and fetching his sleeping roll.
Steve’s hair did this thing now—now that he’d let it grow out well past its normal length—where it flopped over in his face, and never having had long locs, the blond seemed to loathe it. He reaches a hand up to swat the hair from his brow, tucking it back—but the resilient strand just slides forward again. It puts a little smile on Bucky’s face. Even Steve’s hair refuses to listen.
“Bucky? Did you want to keep going?”
Bucky lets his eyes slide from the blond’s hair to his eyes, which were now trained on him. Something shifts in those giant baby-blues, but Bucky was used to curbing it by now—he quickly cleared his throat and nods, “No, you’re right. It’ll get dark soon.”
They rolled out their mats on the dense grass, the sheer mass of it providing such a cushion between them and the earth below, that they hardly even needed their blankets. The sky had begun fading now. The golden tint that was there before had grown warmer and warmer until it became a flurry of orange and pink.
“This place is paradise.” Steve whispers, eyes fixed on the sky.
Bucky, again, found himself staring at the blond. At the curve of his jaw, at the tiniest of bumps on the bridge of his nose where it’d been broken one too many times, at the flutter of blonde eyelashes as he blinked. He wonders just why he continued to torture himself like this. There were things he wanted, things they both wanted from each other, but Bucky wasn’t willing to hear anything of it.
How could he relinquish the control he had over the space he’d put between them? The space he'd so carefully cultivated to keep himself in check—and more importantly, to keep Steve from getting hurt?
He couldn’t.
But, damn, did he think about it sometimes.
On evenings like this, on their cross-country trek, when the orange sunset illuminated Stevie’s barely-there freckles, and the pink glow in the skies made his lips look soft and sweet, Bucky thought about it.
When they were this far away from the cities that you could count every single star in the night sky, the sky itself wasn’t black anymore, but rather an endless blanket of midnight blue. Another shade of blue he’d adored. But just then, he was adoring the steel-blue of Steve’s eyes. He’d seen those eyes a hundred years now and they still took his breath away.
And when Steve tilts his head and meets his eyes again, that’s exactly what happens.
His lungs felt spent, like he needed to gasp for air, but all he could manage was a little blink.
In an instant, Steve shuffles closer. He’d managed to shimmy onto Bucky’s mat, even though two men—least of all men their size—shouldn’t fit on one. His hand, Steve’s warm, soft hand, slides into the hair at the nape of Bucky’s neck. His breath hitches in his throat.
“Are you okay?”
Bucky manages a nod.
“Y’sure, Buck?”
He loved hearing his name shortened on Steve’s lips like that. So much so, that he couldn't supply a response, just a little nod.
Steve takes advantage of the moment, dipping his lips forward and pressing a soft, barely-there kiss to his jawline. Scruff meets scruff, and Bucky inhales sharply at the contact—but Steve doesn’t stop. His hand slides further into Bucky’s hair, and more kisses pepper his jaw. Bucky knew what he was doing—damn him, Steve would try and try, wouldn’t he? He tried his hardest to break Bucky’s resolve. Bucky is certain it’s just the way his Stevie thought about things; he probably thought Bucky was afraid to touch him, just in case he got triggered and hurt him.
Which, in part, was true.
But the whole truth was a bit more selfish on Barnes’ behalf. He knew himself—and he knew that he was never going to be good enough for Steve. No part of him, a broken, barely-functioning, shell of a man, deserved America’s golden boy; and he wouldn’t even let himself entertain the thought of it.
Steve’s lips press against Bucky’s now that he’d sufficiently kissed his jawline and cheek. It's a soft, gentle kiss—at first. After a moment, his hand fists in Bucky’s hair tighter, and he’s almost on top of him, too. Their lips crash together like the tide on the riverbank below them, and Bucky finds himself shifting the blond onto his lap, and yanking their bodies together. Heat grew between them, a whirl of it, and the empty night was filled with the sounds of their breaths, hot and needy, and the ruffle of clothes.
When Steve’s hips roll forward on Bucky’s lap, things come to an unfortunate halt. Bucky’s hands snap to Steve’s hips, pinning him still, even though he’d tried to wiggle out of the grasp. Their lips separated too, and Bucky grumbles.
“No, Stevie,”
“Yeah, I know.” Steve huffs, allowing Bucky to shift him off of his lap. “You can’t.”
Bucky bites his lip and stares up at the sky. It was faded completely now—whirls of orange to the west, but mostly that deep midnight blue, peppered with shiny stars. “M’sorry, Stevie.”
“Why?” Steve snaps, his voice harsher than Bucky’d expected.
“Why what?”
“Why everything? If you don’t want me, then why all this? Why let me wander around out here behind you, at all? Why make eyes at me? Why kiss me just to stop and tell me you can’t?”
“Oh, Stevie,” He groans—and he’d tried to say it gently, even though just looking at Steve made it difficult to speak evenly. “Sometimes I want you more than you’d even understand.”
“Then do somethin’ about it,”
Bucky’s eyes snap to his again. There was a hint of a challenge in his voice, but his eyes were deathly serious. The tilt of his eyelashes, spiked up into the air, the plane of his cheek, paling in the night light, the full curve of his bottom lip—it all stirred something primal in Bucky’s gut, offering direct physical manifestation just a bit lower. He knew how this ended—he’d grow silent, offer a patronizingly little kiss, and roll over for the night. They would lay awake in silence for hours, or at least until Steve huffed onto his side and forced himself to sleep. Then, they’d wake up tomorrow refreshed and ready for the day’s adventures, and hopefully it wouldn’t end the same way again.
So Bucky leans forward, brushing that blond hair out of his Stevie’s face, and dips down. It’s supposed to be a small kiss—a little peck, just to tide him over—but Steve simply refused to go out like that. He wouldn’t roll over, not tonight.
He lurches forward, engulfing Bucky in a hot, wet, kiss; and well, Bucky couldn’t help but grab at Steve’s body, yanking them close again. They separate with a loud pop sound, and Steve almost growls, “I said do somethin’ about it, Buck.”
The clasps on the side of Steve’s stealth suit unclip under his hands, and Bucky is suddenly staring out at a war-torn plane of chest, striped with the marks of blades old and young, at skin once pierced through with now marred over bullet holes. He wants the lave his tongue over each and every one, to tell his Stevie he was perfect—but a nagging voice in the back of his head is yelling at him to stop. Stop everything, all of it, to set Stevie down on his mat and call it a night.
“Stevie—”
“No,” He snaps, “Don’t ’Stevie’ me. ’Stevie’ means we’re going to stop, and I don’t want to stop, Buck.”
“But Steve—"
“No,” He repeats, with a quick nip at Bucky’s lips. “I want this—look, you want this too.”
Steve’s hand had trailed between their laps, and settled on the tent currently growing in Bucky’s pants, which makes his lips click open and a soft, aroused sound tumble out. Steve quickly He seizes opportunity to start a new, less-carnal kiss. One that begged for Bucky’s hands where he wanted them, that spun the both further down the rabbit hole than they even thought possible.
“Okay, look, Stevie,” Bucky huffs between kisses, “You don’t want to do this, not really,”
Steve sighs, shifting himself forward against Bucky’s lap again. “Clearly, I do.”
A sound Bucky can’t prevent slips through his lips, “No, no—listen, we should wait,”
“Wait for what? What on earth should we possibly be waiting on?”
I don’t know, Bucky almost says. He racked his already-dishevelled brain for an answer, but it was more clouded than usual, what with Steve’s erection straining against his own. He can only think of one thing to get him out of this, so he pulls out his trump card, “We should wait until Shuri’s sure I won’t hurt you.”
That makes Steve still, and concern well up in his eyes—but just for a moment, before it’s replaced by something Bucky doesn’t recognize. That innocent blue seemed to tint itself darker. “Bucky, they pumped me full of liquid steel—If you hurt me, I’m sure I could take it.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Bucky tries to see through it, regardless of how much the cocksure glint in Steve's eyes made him want to throw the blond down on his mat and prove his point. “Do you know what it would do to me if I hurt you?”
Steve soften again, and he tilts his face down, a little ashamed of his own selfishness—but Steve wasn’t capable of selfishness, Bucky knows. He’d just been in this situation—a mean, trying one in which he’s shown unreciprocated love for far too long; and it’d come to a head now, all of it manifesting in heated flesh and tense air.
“It’s not your fault, Steve.” Bucky mumbles, grumbling about it in that way he knows Steve finds endearing. He laces his metal fingers in that too-long blond hair, and the way those golden locks thread through them in the moonlight makes him antsy. “I just can’t bear the thought of hurting you.”
“I know.” Steve whispers, “Fuck, I’m sorry, Buck. For pushing you. I just—I don’t know, something just gets into me sometimes.”
You get horny, Bucky finds himself almost blurting out . The fact that Steve didn’t even understand his own arousal yet was proof enough that they shouldn’t be doing this; but looking down at his body, Bucky couldn’t help but wonder what it would taste like.
“Listen to me real carefully, okay, Stevie?” Bucky whispers, guiding the blond back to his position straddling his thighs. He could still feel the heft of Steve’s erection, and well, it lit a fire behind Bucky’s eyes. “I’m going to try something, alright? But if I even come close to hurting you, you gotta tell me, okay?”
Slowly, Steve nods.
“I mean it,” Bucky whispers, placing a soft kiss on his lips, “If there’s anything I’m doing that you don’t like, y’gotta tell me. And—well, if I don’t stop, you’ve gotta get me off of you, at all costs, okay?”
There was a look in Steve’s eyes that Bucky read as ‘I absolutely won’t’, but he ignored it—against his better judgement—and that probably because the blood that should be in his head was heading south.
Slowly, he runs his hand—his metal hand, much to Steve’s pleasure—up Steve’s smooth, pale throat. He dips his face forward, doing something he’d dreamt of doing for weeks now: opening his mouth against Steve’s pale skin, and tasting it. There was the subtle scent of sweat on his skin—the serum prevented them from sweating for the most part, but an all-day hike in the Wakandan sun was no match for either of them. The twinge of it mixed with something Bucky didn’t know how to explain. It was something so quintessentially Steve, something that reminded him of summer days at Coney Island and winter nights huddled close in their Brooklyn brownstone.
And Steve lets out the softest sound Bucky thinks he's ever heard. The sort of sound that comes out without any warning—that said exactly what Bucky needed to hear. Keep doing exactly what you're doing.
"Fucking hell, Steve. You just don't know—you just don't know." He murmurs against that smooth, warm throat, tightening his fingers at the base of it, which milks that sound right out of Steve again.
His fingers tense in Bucky's hair, and whether he realized it or not, he's shifted to real words now—and it takes a whopping dose of Bucky's self-control to make them out, "Your—your beads,"
Bucky glances down, and sure enough, his Kimoyo beads are pulsing with a soft blue light.
"Don't answer it." Steve breathes, "We both know what it is."
"It—it could be Shuri. It could be Natasha." Bucky furrows his eyes at it.
"It's an extraction call." Steve whispers, his features looking deliciously annoyed.
"Something bad could be happening out there." Bucky gestures up—they couldn't see it, but they both knew the giant dome covering the country could protect it from the world, but if it did come knocking, T'Challa and Shuri would always let them know.
"Something good is happening right here."
"Stevie," Bucky whimpers, looking up at him.
Rationality slowly slipped its way across the blond's face, making his face fall and a soft sigh slip out. Bucky could flop over and thank the heavens that they'd made Stevie a patron saint before they sent him down to earth. Even if he was hard and wet and horny, the fate of the greater world always came first. He sat back on his heels, his fingers hesitant to leave Bucky's body, stay bunched up in the hem of his shirt. He didn't move—he wouldn't move. Bucky realized, too, that he didn't want him to.
With the most difficult little shimmy of his wrist, Bucky takes the call. "Sergeant Barnes."