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Bucky rises from the depths of sleep, slow and languid and warm. Warm all but for the very tip of his nose. The apartment’s chill nips at his exposed skin but he can feel the weak fall sunlight licking at his cheeks through the curtainless window.
His dream lingers--hazy at the edges of his mind. Like sand through an hourglass, the details are slipping away, leaving only a feeling.
But what a feeling it is.
It’s expansive and yawning, an entire universe, yet somehow it’s also small and close and intimate. It’s warm too. It smoulders low in his belly but sparks like 4th of July fireworks. It’s everything and more, and Bucky doesn’t know how to process it. He thinks his body might split at its seams if he tried to hold this feeling in, what with the way it’s pressing against his edges and making his chest ache like he’s been holding his breath for too long.
He lies very still, eyes closed, scared that if he moves the feeling will evaporate with the morning dew. In his arms, Steve snuffles but doesn’t wake as Bucky tightens his hold around his thin frame and buries his nose into Steve’s neck. The smell of turpentine lingers on his skin and Bucky feels himself smile, inhaling long and deep. He smells like sleep and rumpled sheets too and it might just be Bucky’s favourite smell in the whole world.
Pressing a sleepy kiss to the knobbly bit at the top of Steve’s crooked spine, Bucky lets his hand wander across his partner’s bed warmed skin. His fingers trail down Steve’s side to his bony hip, covering it with his palm and pressing his fingertips into the hollows. There’s a sigh, a shiver, as Steve settles into his touch. There’s little thought. It’s too early for that. Bucky’s hand moves instinctually. It follows all his favourite paths across Steve’s skin; down the length of his thigh, over the concave expanse of his belly, up the smooth, puckered line of scar over his sternum to come to a rest over his heart.
It beats out a slow, steady rhythm under his palm and Bucky wonders if they could just stay here all day. Neither has work. And Steve could sketch from bed if he really wanted. They could. They could stay here, skin to skin, so deliciously warm, and listen to the city sounds. Or something. Yeah, or something, he thinks with a smile and brushes his lips to the nape of Steve’s neck. His body aches from all of last nights ‘or somethings’ .
A humming comes from the man in his arms and he turns. Bucky cracks an eyelid but Steve’s face is already buried in the crook of his neck, lips pressed to his collarbone. Bucky allows himself a smile, a sigh, as he feels Steve’s breath melting across his chest.
There’s a garbled, “mornin’” from somewhere in the vicinity of Bucky’s shoulder.
It’s the sound of his voice that does it--as sleep muddled as it is. It brings Bucky’s dream rushing back--just a single image, mind, but he sees it clear as day: Steve sprawled on their stoop, head thrown back in a cackling laugh and lit up like an honest to god angel by the setting sun.
“Sleep well?” Steve asks, pulling back slightly. Even dopey from sleep, blue eyes hazy and unfocussed, he’s still the most beautiful thing Bucky has ever seen.
“I dreamed of you,” he murmurs, squeezing the dip in Steve’s narrow waist.
“Oh yeah? An’ what was I doin’?” He’s smiling. It’s a bit crooked, only held up by one corner, but it reaches his eyes alright and Bucky’s pretty sure his heart stutters.
“Nothin’,” he says, because it’s at least sorta true. “Jus’ laughin’--doin’ enough to make me love you.”
Steve whose eyes had started to drift shut again, cracks a slit in one eye and wets his lips. They’re rosebud pink and all Bucky wants to do is kiss them. . . and maybe just keep on kissing them till he can’t breathe anymore. All things considered, it’d be a fine way to go.
“Hmm.” Steve smiles again, a proper one this time, and trails a finger along the curve of Bucky’s jaw, leaving a burning trail in its wake. “Sounds like a good dream.”
He gets his kiss after that. It’s a cosy, unhurried thing that leaves his bones molten and skin flushed hot. All told, it’s a damn good way to wake up, and, in their heated little bubble, in a twist of sheets and limbs and fingers in hair, the chill of their pokey tenement doesn’t bother Bucky in the slightest.