Chapter Text
Sam knows he's in trouble the first time he catches a blank stare from Bucky and thinks, dude, if you're that tired take a goddamn nap.
Because that's where he's at now, apparently. Reading the mopey merc's inscrutable expressions like he's fluent in asshole.
There's the 'I wanna murder that guy' stare, notable for the vein that swells between Bucky's bushy eyebrow and his swept up hair.
There's the 'I haven't eaten in three days because I'm a human disaster that feels no pain or discomfort short of lethal damage' look. That one's mostly in the eyes, because even though he doesn't feel hungry, Bucky has trouble focusing when he's running on fumes.
Next there's the ever-popular 'I'm so tired I'm gonna pass out,' characterized by redness around the eyes and an unusual amount of blinking. Probably Sam's least favorite, since getting Bucky to sleep is like getting a wild boar to take a bath.
When exactly Bucky's needs became Sam's problem, he's not sure. All he knows is that they are his problem, because if he doesn't look after the bastard nobody else will. Not Bucky, not his probation officer, and certainly not his callous bitch of a therapist that by all accounts makes Bucky less well every time he sees her.
All of that to say, Sam pays attention. He notices things and tries solutions until one of them works, and then he writes it all down in a mental notebook called 'The Ever Dwindling Personal Boundaries Between Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes.'
Today they're on a stake out. Crowded side by side in the rafters of a dingy warehouse in Prague. They've been there since dawn, and the night club next door just opened up.
Harsh, guttural beats assault the old brick walls and send rhythmic vibrations through the beams under their backs. Sam thinks he'll have a headache by the time the bad guys show up, which doesn't bode well for his compadre. Bucky hates modern music, particularly electro swing, which he regards as both an enigma and a violation of his generation's perfectly respectable tunes.
Sam lays his cheek on the rough wood rafter to tease the guy about their mutual misfortune, and catches a new kind of stare. A weirdly sketchy one midway between hungry and tired, plus some extra lip action that Sam has zero methods of interpreting.
"What are you lookin' at?" Sam mutters.
Bucky gets a pinched line between his eyebrows, and rolls his eyes.
"Nothing."
"Don't look like nothing."
"I'm bored," Bucky grumbles. His bulky form shifts along Sam's side and for a second he thinks the super soldier might just push him off, but he doesn't.
"No shit, we've been here all day. What to you expect me to do about it?"
"I don't know, something."
"Something," Sam nods sarcastically. "Yeah, okay, I'll get right on that. Pencil it in between being stuck in a musty ass ceiling and getting my ass kicked by a bunch of super teens cosplaying freedom fighters."
Bucky shrugs, the motion sprinkled with some of the dry humor Sam has started to notice on rare occasions. He's not sure if it was always there under the surface, or if Bucky's just evolving to a slightly less dour version of himself.
"Well you're unnaturally obsessed with all my other problems, so I thought it was worth a shot."
"Oh hold on now, that's just backwards," Sam sits up on his elbow and shoots Bucky an annoyed frown. "I'd love to mind my own business and let you do you, but if I don't keep my eyes peeled then the next thing I know you're kicking up sparks on the driveshaft of a moving truck."
"I got kicked off, geez are you ever gonna let that one go?"
"No, I will not," Sam snorts. "I didn't even ask you to come, and there I was saving your ass."
Bucky groans. "Okay, okay, forget I said anything."
The merc shifts his weight again, and that's about when the situation turns on its head. Because the movement draws Sam's eyes further down than he normally goes, and he sees pretty clearly why Barnes needs a distraction.
Dude's got a freakin' hard on in the middle of a mission, and in the cramped yet exposed space of the warehouse ceiling he's got nowhere to go.
"Oh no, you have got to be kidding me," Sam flops on his back and covers his eyes with his hand. "Now, dude? Really? What the hell is wrong with you?"
"It's not my fault. The vibrations," Bucky growls, and shifts again, which Sam now realizes is him trying to ease the pressure on his stiffy.
"The what now?"
Bucky sighs, like Sam's being really unfair about this, which is just wild.
"The music next door, I can feel it-" he clears his throat. "Enhanced senses, I can't help it. And the arm, well, vibranium. It's kinda amplifying it and... "
Bucky makes a vague hand gesture at the tent in his pants.
"Do you mind if I?"
"What?!" Sam sputters. "Do I mind if you jack it while I'm sitting right here? Yes, I goddamn mind! What are you, crazy?"
Bucky gives him the murder stare, followed shortly by the newly-identified 'I haven't had a good lay since 1943' stare.
"What? It happens. You know how it is in the service. Sometimes a guy's gotta blow one. Don't make it weird."
"It is weird, you already done made it weird!"
"Well it's not going away so long as that garbage-" Bucky jerks his head at the club wall, where faint cheers and female vocals could be heard. "Keeps shaking the roof. So unless you want me walking around like the Tin Man when these goons show up, I need to deal with this."
Sam blows air out his nose and works his jaw. Then he throws himself on his side with his back to Bucky.
"Fine. Be quick about it."
"Yeah, 'cause I really wanna drag this out," Bucky grumbles.
Sam would retort but he hears the telltale brrrrip of a zipper going down, and decides it's high time to shut the hell up. Fabric shuffles, and the other guy lets out a near-silent sigh that Sam wishes he hadn't heard.
Crossing his arms, he locks his eyes on a far away structural truss, and tries to ignore the sound of Bucky pulling a glove off with his teeth and spitting, presumably on his metal palm, because his right arm isn't moving from its spot along Sam's back.
Bucky has the decency to keep quiet, but he can't very well stop breathing, and Sam is close enough to hear every accelerating huff. The rafter is too narrow for him to get any further away, and so he just has to sit there and pretend he can't feel the miniscule, needy movements of Bucky's hips.
A wet, dirty squelching sound fills the air, and Sam's mind conjures unwanted images of Bucky's normally unexpressive face relaxing and contorting in bliss.
A stifled hiss sends a frisson of arousal to Sam's dick, and suddenly throwing himself off the beam didn't seem like such a bad plan.
The wet sliding slaps get faster, and with a frustrated grunt Bucky switches his left hand for his right.
Fuck, fuck, now he feels every stroke through the leather of his flight suit.
"Woah, woah, go back. I don't want to feel you jerkin' it-"
"Can't-" Bucky groans, low and breathless. "Right handed."
"Bullshit, you use your left hand all the time. You can fuckin-"
"Shut up-"
Bucky's hips twitch on every thrust, the movement along Sam's back making it impossible not to picture every fast, sharp stroke.
Sam's body tenses from head to toe, heat and pressure pooling uncomfortably in his groin. He doesn't want to acknowledge the hardness there, or the heavy thumping of his heart in his chest, but it's becoming nearly painful to ignore.
Honestly, he can't blame his body for reacting. He's only a man, and Bucky's choked back groans sound sexy as hell.
His face burns from embarrassment when he realizes he's now in the same predicament. As usual, Bucky has found a way to foist his problems onto him. Typical.
Seeing no other way forward, he cups his own hardness through his flight suit and presses his palm to the sensitive head. His hips rock into the pressure, and it does feel pretty good, not in spite of the inappropriate timing but because of it. If Bucky notices he'll never let Sam live it down, but that's a risk he'll have to take.
Unclipping the latch on his right gauntlet, he shucks off the device and tucks it under his head, wary of dropping it and watching it fall to an untimely demise. Opening the fly of his pants, he works down the band of his under armor and tries not to think too much.
Just his luck that Bucky notices immediately, his movements stilling and the pressure of his gaze itching at Sam's shoulder blades.
"Are you-" Bucky trails off.
"Shut up."
Bucky snickers, a rumbling, on and off chuckle that Sam hasn't heard from him before.
The arm along his back returns to its furious stroking, and Sam has to concede that Bucky's endurance is pretty impressive.
Now they're two of a kind. Bucky seems to think silencing himself is no longer necessary, because he's moaning with every pull and mumbling unintelligible things that for some reason send shivers down Sam's spine.
Circling his shaft, Sam rubs at the underside of his tip and soaks up the headrush. His chest heaves with labored, panting gasps as his length somehow gets even harder and precum drips from the head.
Behind him, Bucky is unabashedly attending a party for one. As Sam starts jerking with intention, Bucky's previously soft moans escalate into hungry, loud gasps and he bends one leg to give himself leverage to fuck his fist. The discordant, overlapping rhythms of their strokes lights a fire in Sam's core and soon his speed is quickening to match Bucky's.
The idea that the criminals might walk in at any time and catch them jerking it like teenagers shouldn't be erotic, but with the scent of Bucky's arousal in his nose and the filthy noises of their synchronizing pleasure, the thought coaxes him rapidly toward his peak.
Fleeting fantasies of skin and sweat and sex flash through Sam's mind as he draws close to the edge, and suddenly Bucky's machine gun thrusts stutter and stop as his back bends in an ecstatic arch. With a harsh, hi-pitched whine, his hips pound into his fist, once, twice, three times, and he shoots a sloppy mess with all the drama of a telenovela.
Sam loses it to the sheer, unabashed indulgence of that orgasm. For such a stoic guy, Bucky makes coming look like art, and the feel of him writhing and kicking is enough to push Sam over with a whited-out moment of dizzy relief.
Collapsing onto the beam, he senses Bucky do the same behind him, and enjoys a nice airy feeling that he decides doesn't need to be examined.
Aside from rudimentary shower jobs, he hasn't had much time for sex since the blip. It feels... nice. Even if it isn't really sex, it is nice to share the moment with someone, to feel a flicker of that connectedness that came with intercourse.
Not that he's about share that tidbit with Bucky, but he can be forgiven for waxing a little poetic in the privacy of his own mind.
All in all he feels pretty damn good, putting aside the minor grossness of wiping cum on the side of his pants.
Sitting up, he cleans what remains on his hand with his tongue and wrinkles his nose at the taste, shooting Bucky a raised eyebrow.
The dude's basking, full stop, laying loose and sated with one leg hanging off the side of the beam and cum splattered liberally on his bad-boy jacket.
When he feels Sam looking, his eyes slide narrowly open, and Sam adds yet another type of staring to his list.
Mouth hung open, pupils blown wide, lips flushed red from biting back moans.
The 'fuck, I feel good' stare.
Sam supposes it won't kill him to make Bucky use that one a little more often.
He's already monitoring all the other needs the moron can't seem to keep track of. What's one more?
The fact that it also fulfills a need of his own too? Neither here nor there.