CATWS Fic: Try to Take a Shot, 1/? (asexual!Bucky/demisexual!Steve)
So months and months ago I wanted to write a story where Bucky comes to Steve and confesses that he has always been in love with Steve, and Steve is totally blindsided because he never thought of Bucky that way, but he wants to try a relationship--and then there's a whole uncertain process of trying and figuring things out en route to them both being happy in their new romantic relationship.
I figured that the logical way to have Steve go from "never thought of you that way" to "aw yisssss" regarding someone he's known since before puberty was to make Steve demisexual. I then decided to make Bucky (post-Hydra-traumatically) asexual because... I... like making life difficult for myself? Anyway. This story is extra-specially dear to my heart for a lot of reasons but hard to write for nearly all the same reasons, so it stalled out about a chapter and a half in, but I've never been able to stop going back to it and poking at it and thinking "well, I could probably write just a little more..."
This morning I posted a snippet of it in response to a tumblr ask and once again found myself wishing I had somewhere to post fic that isn't really finished, or sure to ever be finished, but is too substantial for me to feel comfortable just casting it upon the waters of Tumblr. Somewhere less formal and permanent than the AO3, but with commenting capabilities, like a kinkmeme where I could post five thousand words in one go...
Oh hey, I said to myself, I HAVE A DREAMWIDTH AND A LIVEJOURNAL. RIGHT.
So! Posting an unbeta'd WIP on the journals like it's 2008. I don't know when or if I will continue writing this! I just wanted to share what I've got. It ends in a pretty nice place, though.
Title: Try to Take a Shot
Chapter: 1/?
Pairing: Bucky/Steve
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 5,575
Notes: Bucky is now asexual (pursuant to general post-HYDRA depersonalization) but was bisexual previously; Steve is and always has been demisexual/biromantic
Summary: "I want to date you, Buck. I want to try--it'd be a hell of a shame not to. So what's different if we're dating? We already live together, we eat together and watch movies together, anything we feel like talking about we talk about with each other. What else?"
Chapter 1
Bucky always did like to choose his words when he had something important to say. He used to be quicker at it, and Steve used to have a better chance of predicting what was going to come out of Bucky's mouth at the end of his deliberation, but it was still one of the things about Bucky afterward that reminded Steve of Bucky as he used to be before. Bucky still got the same look on his face, but now he wore it for hours or days instead of a few seconds, chewing over a question or an observation before cautiously offering it to Steve.
Steve had stopped trying to guess what it was going to be after the time Bucky concluded six hours of thought by sitting down across from him at the kitchen table and saying, "Did you turn all red once?"
Steve blinked, trying to make sense of the question, and then said, "I had scarlet fever when we were kids. It made my skin turn bright red. You--"
Steve cut himself off from telling Bucky the part he hadn't asked directly and made it a question instead. "Do you remember seeing me like that?"
"Through the window," Bucky said tentatively. "I was on the fire escape. You weren't allowed to even sit up, but you waved."
"Yeah," Steve said. "That's right. You came as often as you could--it was the best thing that happened the whole time I was in quarantine, getting to see you for a few minutes and yell through the glass."
Bucky nodded slowly and then said, "Did you ever, uh," Bucky glanced at Steve's face and away, again and again, and then he said, "Did you--" he shook his head sharply and muttered, "You didn't."
"You can ask, Buck," Steve said gently. "It's all right."
Bucky huffed and rolled his eyes and said flatly, "Did you peel your face off and show me where it was all red underneath?"
He made a brief expressive gesture as if to say, See, that was a stupid question.
"Oh," Steve said. He could see how that set of faulty connections had happened almost at once. "No, that wasn't me, and it was later. That was Schmidt--the Red Skull, the head of HYDRA back during the war."
Bucky stared at him.
"It was right after I rescued you from Zola," Steve explained. "Schmidt had had the serum treatment--he was Erskine's first try, actually, but he went wrong. His face, the literal red skull under the mask he wore, that was... a side effect. You asked me if that had happened to me, and I told you it hadn't. But I know I had a few bad dreams about finding that under my skin. I wouldn't be surprised if you did, too."
Bucky frowned, but accepted the explanation.
Steve tried not to be surprised by anything Bucky decided to ask or tell him after that.
Still, nothing prepared him for the day, two months after Bucky came in for good, when Bucky wandered into Steve's room at the end of the day. He glanced over Steve's sleep clothes--soft pants and a faded t-shirt, nearly identical to what Bucky was wearing except that Bucky still had socks on, and asked, "You going to sleep right now?"
"No hurry."
Bucky heard the invitation in Steve's words and came further inside, sitting down on the end of the bed. Steve sat down beside him, and Bucky scooted over slightly to make room.
He'd had the searching-for-words look on his face for the better part of a week, so Steve knew it was going to be something important. He also knew that Bucky's real question might not be obvious from whatever he chose as a starting point, so he wasn't unduly alarmed when Bucky asked, "Do you still believe in God?"
"Yeah," Steve said, looking down at his hands. "I do. I've seen too many miracles not to."
He felt a little bad about giving Bucky the glib version of his personal creed that he'd repeated in a dozen interviews and to countless strangers, but he had a feeling Bucky didn't actually want to discuss theology.
Bucky frowned and nodded, taking the answer in stride. He confirmed Steve's suspicion when his next question was, "Do you think it's a sin for men to have sex with men? Do you think they go to hell?"
"No," Steve said immediately, maybe too sharply. "No, Buck. I don't think it is, in itself, and I don't think we do."
Bucky turned his head to look directly at Steve, taking in that admission without visible surprise. Steve had been half certain that Bucky knew what Steve had gotten up to a time or two, back before the war. Half certain had still left plenty of room for doubt, and there was no telling what Bucky remembered or thought he remembered now, either.
"Me too," Bucky said finally. "I mean--I'm one, too. I don't know about God or hell or anything."
Steve stared. He'd never suspected that Bucky had had those inclinations; he'd never said a word to hint it to Steve, and he'd always been appreciative of women. Not that that meant anything, Steve reminded himself. Bucky could be bisexual. Plenty of people were; Steve was himself, as much as he was anything.
"So if it's not a sin and you've done it before," Bucky said, looking down again and frowning in concentration. "Would you--would you date a man? Marry one?"
Steve thought immediately of Sam. He'd been leaning pretty heavily in that direction--dating, not marriage, since he'd only known Sam for days at the time--when everything blew up with Project Insight and HYDRA and Bucky.
In the first hours of his friendship with Sam, Steve had felt that rare, exciting flare of attraction; he'd remembered that there were people he could light up like that for, who made him want to--made him want. What he felt for Peggy was so familiar by now that he hardly noticed it anymore; in the years since he was brought out of the ice he'd gotten used to nurturing whatever tiny sparks of interest he could summon up for perfectly nice people who seemed to like him.
Sam had made him remember that sometimes it was easy. Sometimes he could want a person without even trying.
But then there was Bucky, and nothing else--no one else--could compete with Bucky for Steve's attention. It wouldn't have been fair to offer Sam what scraps of him were left over when he was giving his all to his best friend; during the search that followed Steve had tamped down the desire and focused on being Sam's friend.
He told himself there would be time, later. There would be other people. There had been Peggy and Sam, and a handful of others through the years who had stirred up at least a hint of those feelings in him. He would find someone when Bucky didn't need him so much anymore. When the war was really over for both of them.
"I guess I would, yeah," Steve said finally. "If the right one came along. But you don't have to worry--"
"I love you, Steve." Bucky said, cutting across Steve's words. "I love you like that."
Steve could see how Bucky had chosen this path to that statement, but he still couldn't quite grasp it. Bucky sat very still beside him, looking down at his hands. He didn't try to follow up the statement with a kiss, or even a touch or a look.
"Buck," Steve said slowly. "That's... you know I love you more than anything, but I just want to be clear. What do you mean by like that?"
"What do you mean, what do I mean," Bucky snapped, and Steve winced at Bucky's exasperated tone. Steve was usually the one person who didn't treat Bucky like his difficulty choosing words meant he didn't understand them.
"I mean I love you, Steve. I mean I'm in love with you. I have been for a long time, and I--" Bucky's voice lost its frustrated momentum, becoming uncertain again. "I want that with you. But I guess you would've just said so if you felt the same."
"I never thought of it one way or the other," Steve said. "I never thought of you like that. I had no idea you--"
Bucky started to get up, and Steve caught his arm and pulled him back down, because the question Steve needed to ask had just come clear in his head. Back before the war, and even during, Steve would have believed that Bucky--or anyone--might have been harboring an attraction to him that Steve had been totally unaware of. He'd gotten better at spotting it in the last few years, though. The 21st century had given him a lot of practice.
And even if Bucky had stayed as guarded as he'd ever been for the last two months, Steve couldn't see any evidence of it now, when Bucky had finally decided to confess. The words were there, but nothing else backed them up.
"You love me," Steve said, forcing himself not to hesitate over the words. He could think about what that meant later. "I'm reading you loud and clear. Where I'm confused, Buck, is where I don't get the feeling that you want me."
Steve had experienced a lifetime's worth of the depressing importance of that distinction; he'd never known Bucky to get through a week without finding someone to fall head over heels--or other body parts--for. Not before. Lately, though, Steve wouldn't have thought Bucky looked twice at anybody.
To be fair, he hadn't gotten many chances. Bucky's social life wasn't anything like it used to be.
"You haven't met a lot of other people since you came in," Steve added carefully. "Do you think you--maybe you're just--"
"This isn't new, Stevie," Bucky said, his shoulders slumping. "I always wanted you, practically since I knew what it meant to want anybody. You were always everything I--I mean, a little less after you got all--" Bucky waved a hand at Steve, and Steve realized with distant, fond amusement, that Bucky meant he'd found Steve more attractive before the serum than after.
"But I'd been in love with you a long time by then, I wasn't gonna stop wanting you just because you put on a few pounds."
Steve smiled like Bucky meant him to, but didn't let himself be distracted. "That's still--Buck, just because you wanted me then--"
Bucky made a wild, frustrated gesture, grimacing as he did, like they'd been having this argument for days--or, Steve realized, like Bucky had been having this argument with himself for days--and Steve was repeating an argument Bucky had already shot down a hundred times.
"Explain it to me," Steve said. "Just--one time, just tell me what's really going on here. Help me understand what you're asking me for."
"I'm not asking for anything if you're not interested," Bucky insisted. "If you don't--I don't want your pity, or--or--"
"Nobody said anything about pity," Steve said. "All I said was I never thought of you like that before. You know how slow I can be about these things, you gotta give me a chance to get my head around it. But first I need to know that I'm really what you want."
"I don't..." Bucky shook his head and stood, walking over to Steve's bedroom window to look out, then pacing back across the width of the room. Steve held his place on the bed and watched, letting Bucky patrol.
"I do want you to be the person I have sex with," Bucky said finally.
Steve raised his eyebrows. That was a very precise phrasing, and it could only mean that Bucky didn't mean anything he could say more simply. It must also mean he was trying not to lie, which Steve appreciated even as his heart ached. Bucky didn't really want him; whatever this declaration meant, it wasn't what it would have been if Bucky had come out with it seventy years ago.
Bucky saw something on Steve's face that made him fold his arms defensively and look away as he went on.
"I don't--what you're asking--I don't see that when I look at people now, not even you. I see--targets. Or assets. I see how likely somebody is to be able to kill me and how easily I could kill them. I can see blond hair, blue eyes, a pretty smile, I can see that you're just as gorgeous as you ever were, but it doesn't connect up anymore. It doesn't mean anything."
That sounded... oddly familiar, actually, except that Steve had never managed to stop being attracted to the rare people who did flip his switch. Even as changed and frail as she was, he'd never managed to stop feeling that pull toward Peggy. He was a little afraid that he'd never stop being aware of the way he wanted Sam, no matter how much time they spent apart.
If he ever learned to feel that way about Bucky, he didn't see how he could turn around and learn not to.
"I still love you as much as I ever did," Bucky said quietly. "I still--I remember that I used to like having sex. I wanted to do that with you, I remember that, and now you're the only person I can even halfway imagine doing that stuff with. So I do want you, as much as I know how to want anybody, but I don't--I don't know whether that adds up to much of anything anymore. But I figured you'd be patient with me if you wanted me like that and I couldn't."
And instead they'd landed here, with neither of them wanting the other, for all the love between them. For a moment it seemed like that miserable story where the woman sold her hair and the man sold his watch, and then Steve felt the whole strategic picture flip inside out in his head.
"Okay," Steve said, starting to smile as the plan came clear. "So I don't know if I want to have sex with you, and you don't know if you want to have sex with me. That means we're even, aren't we?"
Bucky looked up at him and frowned. "I don't think it works like that, Stevie."
"It works how we say it works," Steve said decidedly. "If we decide we don't want to have sex with each other--so what? I've managed this far in my life without marrying anybody--"
"I didn't say anything about getting married," Bucky interposed. "Steve, this might not work at all, I might not--"
"If you think I haven't already promised you in sickness and health--" Steve put in.
"But not forsaking all others," Bucky interrupted right back, coming back toward the bed to argue properly. "If you don't--Steve, there's bound to be some other guy out there for you who's not a mess like me, who you actually want. You can't tie yourself down to me--"
"I already did," Steve insisted, and he realized it was true as he said it.
It was a kind of relief to think that the choice was already made, and that he hadn't had to think about it. Bucky had been his first--his only--priority when he'd thought of Bucky simply as his best friend. If Bucky was more, if he could choose Bucky and then stand pat...
"Why did you ask, anyway?" Steve asked abruptly.
Bucky got a sour look on his face at that, and Steve stood and closed the distance, taking Bucky's right hand in his.
"I'm glad you asked," Steve said. "I just wonder what you wanted. You said yourself, you're not sure you're actually ready to try having sex. So--if I'd said, yes, Buck, I want just what you want, but of course I'll give you all the time you need--what did you want to happen next? What was going to be different?"
"Optimist," Bucky said, shaking his head a little, but he said it fondly. "Why would you think I thought anything good was going to happen? I just needed to know."
Steve shook his head. "You're a romantic, Bucky Barnes. I know you are. Even if you didn't think it would happen, what would you want to be different? If we're--"
"We're not getting married," Bucky insisted.
"Dating," Steve said, offering a smile and squeezing Bucky's hand in his. "I want to date you, Buck. I want to try--it'd be a hell of a shame not to. So what's different if we're dating? We already live together, we eat together and watch movies together, anything we feel like talking about we talk about with each other. What else?"
Bucky sighed and towed Steve back over to the bed to sit beside him. Bucky didn't let go of his hand, and Steve felt a tiny hopeful thrill, that that might mean Bucky was willing to go along with him in the madness of redefining everything they were to each other, just because they both wanted to.
"I want," Bucky said, frowning down at Steve's hand. "I want to sleep where you sleep, and live where you live. And not just until I'm better, or until you find someone else. I want people to know that you help me because I'm yours, and if you need me I'll help you because you're mine. Not friends being kind, just... the way things should be. A unit. I want..."
Bucky trailed off and looked away altogether.
"Buck," Steve said softly, tugging Bucky's hand into his lap where he could wrap his other hand around it.
"I want to be your first choice," Bucky said quietly. "You would be mine, if you let me choose you. Not just for a while. Not just friends. Always."
"Till the end of the line," Steve said softly, and Bucky tried to tug away from him, but Steve tightened his grip. "I'm saying--I did already choose that, Bucky. I forsook a hell of a lot for you this year--"
Bucky flinched and Steve shook his head and barreled on.
"I didn't think twice about it, and I'm not thinking twice about it now. It wouldn't be fair for me to try to be with anyone else, because you're always going to be my first choice. I don't need sex for that. I just need you."
"I want to be enough," Bucky said, turning abruptly to look him in the eye, his expression challenging now. "I don't want you to want anyone else. I want half of whatever life I make here to be yours, and half your life to be mine."
"Then that's what we'll do," Steve said firmly. "Buck, I really--"
Bucky made a last frustrated noise and leaned in sharply, enough to make Steve stop talking, enough for his intention to be entirely clear, but not enough to bring their mouths together.
"I want to kiss you," Bucky said, his voice strangled into quiet.
"Try it, then," Steve said softly.
Bucky snorted, hearing the dare in Steve's utterly sincere invitation, but he leaned in the rest of the way, pressing his mouth gently to Steve's.
Steve tensed a little, waiting for the part of the kiss where it turned weird and he became overwhelmingly conscious of how strange it was to mash your mouth against someone else's--which was his experience of most kisses he'd shared with people other than Peggy--but Bucky didn't push. It was just a brush of lips, dry and gentle, and Steve found himself conscious instead of how intimate it was to be so close. It was strange that after all these years he'd never been close to Bucky in just this way.
Steve reached out with the hand not holding Bucky's hand and caught his shoulder, holding him there, and Bucky leaned into his grip. Steve tilted his head into the kiss, adding his own little motion, just to feel Bucky's lips sliding against his.
Bucky pulled back just when Steve was getting curious about pushing the kiss a little further, and Steve let him go. Bucky met his eyes and Steve looked back, waiting for Bucky to declare a verdict.
"That wasn't disgusting, was it?" Bucky asked finally.
Steve was startled into a laugh, but he shook his head. "No. Not disgusting."
"Some people, if they grow up together, it's disgusting to them," Bucky said, and Steve could tell by the particular halting intonation that this was something Bucky was parroting--probably from Colin, his therapist. Colin must have gone over the possibilities with Bucky, and Steve thanked God for Colin once again.
"No," Steve repeated, feeling a rush of relief as he said it. It wasn't impossible. Not easy, not instinctive, but not impossible. He could have Bucky, and Bucky could have him. They could be all right. "It wasn't disgusting. It wasn't even really weird. Just... new."
"New," Bucky said, frowning a little, like he was trying to place that word among some list of options he'd laid out. "Okay. New."
"Was it disgusting for you?" Steve prodded, though he was pretty sure that wasn't a possibility Bucky had been concerned about.
"It was good," Bucky said, looking away as he said it, expression guarded. "I liked it. I like it."
"So how are we doing?" Steve asked, because it wasn't fair to either of them to ask if it measured up to what Bucky had wanted before. "You wanted to kiss, and it looks like kissing is okay. Do you believe that I'm choosing you yet?"
"I don't--" Bucky said, obviously biting off words, and then he shook his head a little and said more definitely, "I don't. Steve, it can't be about you being stubborn. It has to be about you being happy."
Steve scooted off the bed at that, kneeling at Bucky's feet. Bucky made an abortive gesture like he wanted to push Steve away or escape off the bed and did neither, hands hovering indecisively in midair.
Steve reached up to hold Bucky's face between his palms, keeping Bucky looking straight at him. "Bucky. I'm not gonna be happy a hundred percent of the time when I'm with you, but I always want to be with you. Always. Everything after that we can negotiate. If we want to be in love with each other, that's what we'll do, and it's nobody's business but ours what exactly that looks like when we're alone together."
"You can't," Bucky said, and when Steve opened his mouth to argue Bucky darted in to kiss him. Steve jerked back a little from the sudden movement. The touch of their mouths was uncoordinated and definitely weird this time, a strange brief collision of wide-open lips and wet tongues.
"You can, fine," Bucky said, obviously determined to head off more arguing. "You just can't say forever yet, okay? We're only dating. If it doesn't work out, we go back to being friends. We're just trying. We have to--we have to just be trying it out for a while. Okay? Please."
"Okay," Steve agreed, heart twisting with the knowledge that all of Bucky's ambivalence was for Steve's protection, not his own. He didn't feel any more in need of Bucky's protection now than he ever had, but he would accept it anyway. He knew how much love there was behind it. "So we're just trying it out. Is it settled? We're dating now?"
Bucky nodded jerkily and then it seemed suddenly to dawn on him that he was getting what he wanted; he started to smile, meeting Steve's eyes without wariness. "Yeah. Are we? We are?"
"Yeah," Steve said, his heart cracking open all over again for this man, this one person he would always choose over all others. "Yeah, Buck. We are."
Bucky leaned in, his smile almost shy. Steve thought it would be another kiss, but Bucky's arms went around him in a fierce hug, and Steve returned it gladly, pressing his face into Bucky's bicep while Bucky's cheek pressed tight against Steve's hair.
After a while Steve was conscious of the hardness of the floor under his knees, and the fact that Bucky was bent double to hang on to him while sitting on the bed, and he said, "Come on, it's bedtime. You want to sleep in here, or in your room?"
Bucky slid down from the bed to hold Steve tighter, and muttered, "With you."
"I know that," Steve said, smiling into Bucky's shoulder, closing his arms tighter around Bucky's body. "You said that--you want to sleep where I sleep, I got that. Your bed or mine, though?"
"Yours," Bucky said unhesitatingly. "I like your sheets."
"I'd've let you have them," Steve said, trying to think of what was different about his sheets. They were older, he thought. Washed more times, softer in that way.
"They're yours," Bucky said, as though that settled it. "We'll sleep here."
"Good, then we can both get off the floor." Steve gave Bucky a little push, and Bucky stood up, pulling Steve along. Steve let him, leaning into him even when they were both on their feet, and he darted in for a little kiss, just a close-mouthed peck, just because he could. Because Bucky was his--his best guy, even more than he always had been.
Bucky smiled again as Steve stepped back from the kiss, startled and pleased and present in a way that made Steve feel like everything was going to be all right somehow. Bucky was here. That was all he'd ever needed.
"You get the lights," Bucky said, giving him a little push, and threw himself down on the bed. Steve switched the lights off and came back, getting in on the right side of the bed. Bucky was already lying facedown on the left, his left arm at the outside of the bed. Steve lay down on his side, settling into his usual sleeping position, but his eyes wouldn't close. He stared across the little space between him and Bucky.
They'd shared beds before, once in a while; they'd slept a hell of a lot closer than this when space was limited or the nights were cold. But they'd never gone to bed together because they both belonged in the same bed, and while they'd never been shy of touching each other when there was some reason to, there had never been an invitation between them. Bucky had never been Steve's to touch, not in the way Steve was pretty sure he was now.
Steve reached out and settled his hand on Bucky's shoulder.
Bucky sighed and picked his head up, shaking his hair back, and said, "Come here, then."
Steve scooted closer as Bucky raised his arm, and he rolled onto his back as Bucky draped himself halfway over Steve's chest, Bucky's right leg resting along his left.
"Okay?" Bucky's breath puffed against Steve's throat.
Steve nodded happily. "Okay."
Bucky kissed Steve's cheek and then put his head down again, burrowing his face into the pillow. Steve closed his eyes and let himself feel every inch of his body where Bucky's body pressed against it.
This was good. This could be good. No one ever touched him much, and he spent so much attention on how little he usually wanted sex that he forgot that he might want to be touched in any other way until a moment like this arrived, when he was unexpectedly getting what he wanted, the way he wanted it. He turned his head, letting his cheek brush against Bucky's hair, and smiled.
Ten minutes later he was still wide awake, still pinned under Bucky's sleep-heavy body, and actively suppressing the urge to squirm. He didn't want to disturb Bucky, but he also hated trying to sleep on his back. He could lie like this all night, but he wasn't going to sleep if he did, and he was tired. He wanted to sleep.
He caught himself bracing to just lie still for as long as it took if Bucky didn't move, and he closed his eyes, breath catching on a silent laugh. Bucky had just told him fifteen minutes ago that he didn't want Steve being stubborn and neglecting his own happiness, and here he was.
"Buck," Steve muttered. "Move a little bit?"
Bucky hmphed into the pillow but shifted his weight off of Steve, enough for Steve to roll onto his side, putting his back to Bucky. He didn't have time to second-guess that choice before Bucky scooted in behind him, spooning up against his back, his warm right arm thrown over Steve's waist. Steve laid his own arm over Bucky's and let out a long breath, settling in to sleep.
***
Sleep never came in more than little snatches. Steve woke up every time Bucky moved--and every time he moved himself and Bucky moved to accommodate him--and when they were both managing to be still he would open his eyes and find himself marveling at the whole idea of being in bed with Bucky, because Bucky was his to go to bed with now.
Steve had had sex before enough times to know his way around it, but he'd never slept through the night--or not slept through the night, as it was turning out--with anyone he had sex with. He'd never had the chance to go to bed with someone he loved that way. For all the times he'd seen Bucky sleep, or slept close to him, for all the ways he and Bucky had been closer than Steve had ever been with anyone else, there had always been a little separateness between them.
That, Steve realized, was what just friends meant. Not that there had ever been anything small about that love; he would have given his life for Bucky any time since he was ten years old and thought it a fair trade.
But there had been a boundary they didn't cross, an intimacy they didn't deliberately intrude on. Bucky was asking to knock down that last barrier between them, starting with kissing and sleeping in the same bed with the understanding of touch between them, and ending... who knew where.
The two shall become one flesh. But it wasn't just about the way bodies joined in sex. It was about being a unit, like Bucky had said. About having nothing left to separate them.
Steve said a silent inarticulate prayer of gratitude--for Bucky, for getting to know this about Bucky, getting to try this with Bucky. He suddenly couldn't imagine daring this with anyone else--and wasn't that what Bucky had said? Steve was the only one he could imagine it with? Bucky had been talking about sex, but Steve thought this was a part of it too.
He looked over at the clock--nearly four in the morning, which potentially said something about the quality of any important insights he was having right now--and then felt a gentle touch on the back of his head. He went still, making himself go limp instead of freezing up, and Bucky's fingers combed through his hair for a while. He wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep, he thought, and when Bucky's hand stilled Steve turned his head to look.
Bucky shifted his hand as Steve moved, resting it lightly on Steve's cheek, and it occurred to Steve suddenly what it meant that Bucky had felt the same way all along. Bucky had always been wanting this.
"Does it feel different now?" He asked before he could think better of the words.
Bucky moved his hand back to Steve's hair, fingertips ruffling through it again. "Shorter, but it looks good."
Steve snorted. "No, I--I was just thinking--this is different from any other time we've shared a bed, isn't it?"
"You usually sleep better," Bucky allowed.
"Did you, though?" Steve asked. "Did you--was it--you always loved me, you said. Was it like this for you every time?"
Bucky frowned, his fingers moving idly in Steve's hair as he considered the question--more specifically factual than Steve had meant to be.
"I don't remember," Bucky inevitably reported after a moment. "I think--sometimes it was... I would lie awake. Watching you. Being glad to be so close. But also scared of you knowing. Scared you would go away. Like you weren't..."
"Like I wasn't really that close," Steve said softly, recognizing his own thoughts in Bucky's, a glimpse of the way they used to always understand each other without having to explain. "Close enough to touch but not yours to touch."
Bucky's hand tightened, gripping the back of his head for a moment, then relaxed, resuming the slight petting motion. "Something like that. I think."
"I'm yours now," Steve said, reaching out to run his fingers through Bucky's hair. "And you're mine."
"And I still will be in the morning," Bucky said, tightening his grip and miming at shaking Steve by it. "So go to sleep."
***
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I figured that the logical way to have Steve go from "never thought of you that way" to "aw yisssss" regarding someone he's known since before puberty was to make Steve demisexual. I then decided to make Bucky (post-Hydra-traumatically) asexual because... I... like making life difficult for myself? Anyway. This story is extra-specially dear to my heart for a lot of reasons but hard to write for nearly all the same reasons, so it stalled out about a chapter and a half in, but I've never been able to stop going back to it and poking at it and thinking "well, I could probably write just a little more..."
This morning I posted a snippet of it in response to a tumblr ask and once again found myself wishing I had somewhere to post fic that isn't really finished, or sure to ever be finished, but is too substantial for me to feel comfortable just casting it upon the waters of Tumblr. Somewhere less formal and permanent than the AO3, but with commenting capabilities, like a kinkmeme where I could post five thousand words in one go...
Oh hey, I said to myself, I HAVE A DREAMWIDTH AND A LIVEJOURNAL. RIGHT.
So! Posting an unbeta'd WIP on the journals like it's 2008. I don't know when or if I will continue writing this! I just wanted to share what I've got. It ends in a pretty nice place, though.
Title: Try to Take a Shot
Chapter: 1/?
Pairing: Bucky/Steve
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 5,575
Notes: Bucky is now asexual (pursuant to general post-HYDRA depersonalization) but was bisexual previously; Steve is and always has been demisexual/biromantic
Summary: "I want to date you, Buck. I want to try--it'd be a hell of a shame not to. So what's different if we're dating? We already live together, we eat together and watch movies together, anything we feel like talking about we talk about with each other. What else?"
Chapter 1
Bucky always did like to choose his words when he had something important to say. He used to be quicker at it, and Steve used to have a better chance of predicting what was going to come out of Bucky's mouth at the end of his deliberation, but it was still one of the things about Bucky afterward that reminded Steve of Bucky as he used to be before. Bucky still got the same look on his face, but now he wore it for hours or days instead of a few seconds, chewing over a question or an observation before cautiously offering it to Steve.
Steve had stopped trying to guess what it was going to be after the time Bucky concluded six hours of thought by sitting down across from him at the kitchen table and saying, "Did you turn all red once?"
Steve blinked, trying to make sense of the question, and then said, "I had scarlet fever when we were kids. It made my skin turn bright red. You--"
Steve cut himself off from telling Bucky the part he hadn't asked directly and made it a question instead. "Do you remember seeing me like that?"
"Through the window," Bucky said tentatively. "I was on the fire escape. You weren't allowed to even sit up, but you waved."
"Yeah," Steve said. "That's right. You came as often as you could--it was the best thing that happened the whole time I was in quarantine, getting to see you for a few minutes and yell through the glass."
Bucky nodded slowly and then said, "Did you ever, uh," Bucky glanced at Steve's face and away, again and again, and then he said, "Did you--" he shook his head sharply and muttered, "You didn't."
"You can ask, Buck," Steve said gently. "It's all right."
Bucky huffed and rolled his eyes and said flatly, "Did you peel your face off and show me where it was all red underneath?"
He made a brief expressive gesture as if to say, See, that was a stupid question.
"Oh," Steve said. He could see how that set of faulty connections had happened almost at once. "No, that wasn't me, and it was later. That was Schmidt--the Red Skull, the head of HYDRA back during the war."
Bucky stared at him.
"It was right after I rescued you from Zola," Steve explained. "Schmidt had had the serum treatment--he was Erskine's first try, actually, but he went wrong. His face, the literal red skull under the mask he wore, that was... a side effect. You asked me if that had happened to me, and I told you it hadn't. But I know I had a few bad dreams about finding that under my skin. I wouldn't be surprised if you did, too."
Bucky frowned, but accepted the explanation.
Steve tried not to be surprised by anything Bucky decided to ask or tell him after that.
Still, nothing prepared him for the day, two months after Bucky came in for good, when Bucky wandered into Steve's room at the end of the day. He glanced over Steve's sleep clothes--soft pants and a faded t-shirt, nearly identical to what Bucky was wearing except that Bucky still had socks on, and asked, "You going to sleep right now?"
"No hurry."
Bucky heard the invitation in Steve's words and came further inside, sitting down on the end of the bed. Steve sat down beside him, and Bucky scooted over slightly to make room.
He'd had the searching-for-words look on his face for the better part of a week, so Steve knew it was going to be something important. He also knew that Bucky's real question might not be obvious from whatever he chose as a starting point, so he wasn't unduly alarmed when Bucky asked, "Do you still believe in God?"
"Yeah," Steve said, looking down at his hands. "I do. I've seen too many miracles not to."
He felt a little bad about giving Bucky the glib version of his personal creed that he'd repeated in a dozen interviews and to countless strangers, but he had a feeling Bucky didn't actually want to discuss theology.
Bucky frowned and nodded, taking the answer in stride. He confirmed Steve's suspicion when his next question was, "Do you think it's a sin for men to have sex with men? Do you think they go to hell?"
"No," Steve said immediately, maybe too sharply. "No, Buck. I don't think it is, in itself, and I don't think we do."
Bucky turned his head to look directly at Steve, taking in that admission without visible surprise. Steve had been half certain that Bucky knew what Steve had gotten up to a time or two, back before the war. Half certain had still left plenty of room for doubt, and there was no telling what Bucky remembered or thought he remembered now, either.
"Me too," Bucky said finally. "I mean--I'm one, too. I don't know about God or hell or anything."
Steve stared. He'd never suspected that Bucky had had those inclinations; he'd never said a word to hint it to Steve, and he'd always been appreciative of women. Not that that meant anything, Steve reminded himself. Bucky could be bisexual. Plenty of people were; Steve was himself, as much as he was anything.
"So if it's not a sin and you've done it before," Bucky said, looking down again and frowning in concentration. "Would you--would you date a man? Marry one?"
Steve thought immediately of Sam. He'd been leaning pretty heavily in that direction--dating, not marriage, since he'd only known Sam for days at the time--when everything blew up with Project Insight and HYDRA and Bucky.
In the first hours of his friendship with Sam, Steve had felt that rare, exciting flare of attraction; he'd remembered that there were people he could light up like that for, who made him want to--made him want. What he felt for Peggy was so familiar by now that he hardly noticed it anymore; in the years since he was brought out of the ice he'd gotten used to nurturing whatever tiny sparks of interest he could summon up for perfectly nice people who seemed to like him.
Sam had made him remember that sometimes it was easy. Sometimes he could want a person without even trying.
But then there was Bucky, and nothing else--no one else--could compete with Bucky for Steve's attention. It wouldn't have been fair to offer Sam what scraps of him were left over when he was giving his all to his best friend; during the search that followed Steve had tamped down the desire and focused on being Sam's friend.
He told himself there would be time, later. There would be other people. There had been Peggy and Sam, and a handful of others through the years who had stirred up at least a hint of those feelings in him. He would find someone when Bucky didn't need him so much anymore. When the war was really over for both of them.
"I guess I would, yeah," Steve said finally. "If the right one came along. But you don't have to worry--"
"I love you, Steve." Bucky said, cutting across Steve's words. "I love you like that."
Steve could see how Bucky had chosen this path to that statement, but he still couldn't quite grasp it. Bucky sat very still beside him, looking down at his hands. He didn't try to follow up the statement with a kiss, or even a touch or a look.
"Buck," Steve said slowly. "That's... you know I love you more than anything, but I just want to be clear. What do you mean by like that?"
"What do you mean, what do I mean," Bucky snapped, and Steve winced at Bucky's exasperated tone. Steve was usually the one person who didn't treat Bucky like his difficulty choosing words meant he didn't understand them.
"I mean I love you, Steve. I mean I'm in love with you. I have been for a long time, and I--" Bucky's voice lost its frustrated momentum, becoming uncertain again. "I want that with you. But I guess you would've just said so if you felt the same."
"I never thought of it one way or the other," Steve said. "I never thought of you like that. I had no idea you--"
Bucky started to get up, and Steve caught his arm and pulled him back down, because the question Steve needed to ask had just come clear in his head. Back before the war, and even during, Steve would have believed that Bucky--or anyone--might have been harboring an attraction to him that Steve had been totally unaware of. He'd gotten better at spotting it in the last few years, though. The 21st century had given him a lot of practice.
And even if Bucky had stayed as guarded as he'd ever been for the last two months, Steve couldn't see any evidence of it now, when Bucky had finally decided to confess. The words were there, but nothing else backed them up.
"You love me," Steve said, forcing himself not to hesitate over the words. He could think about what that meant later. "I'm reading you loud and clear. Where I'm confused, Buck, is where I don't get the feeling that you want me."
Steve had experienced a lifetime's worth of the depressing importance of that distinction; he'd never known Bucky to get through a week without finding someone to fall head over heels--or other body parts--for. Not before. Lately, though, Steve wouldn't have thought Bucky looked twice at anybody.
To be fair, he hadn't gotten many chances. Bucky's social life wasn't anything like it used to be.
"You haven't met a lot of other people since you came in," Steve added carefully. "Do you think you--maybe you're just--"
"This isn't new, Stevie," Bucky said, his shoulders slumping. "I always wanted you, practically since I knew what it meant to want anybody. You were always everything I--I mean, a little less after you got all--" Bucky waved a hand at Steve, and Steve realized with distant, fond amusement, that Bucky meant he'd found Steve more attractive before the serum than after.
"But I'd been in love with you a long time by then, I wasn't gonna stop wanting you just because you put on a few pounds."
Steve smiled like Bucky meant him to, but didn't let himself be distracted. "That's still--Buck, just because you wanted me then--"
Bucky made a wild, frustrated gesture, grimacing as he did, like they'd been having this argument for days--or, Steve realized, like Bucky had been having this argument with himself for days--and Steve was repeating an argument Bucky had already shot down a hundred times.
"Explain it to me," Steve said. "Just--one time, just tell me what's really going on here. Help me understand what you're asking me for."
"I'm not asking for anything if you're not interested," Bucky insisted. "If you don't--I don't want your pity, or--or--"
"Nobody said anything about pity," Steve said. "All I said was I never thought of you like that before. You know how slow I can be about these things, you gotta give me a chance to get my head around it. But first I need to know that I'm really what you want."
"I don't..." Bucky shook his head and stood, walking over to Steve's bedroom window to look out, then pacing back across the width of the room. Steve held his place on the bed and watched, letting Bucky patrol.
"I do want you to be the person I have sex with," Bucky said finally.
Steve raised his eyebrows. That was a very precise phrasing, and it could only mean that Bucky didn't mean anything he could say more simply. It must also mean he was trying not to lie, which Steve appreciated even as his heart ached. Bucky didn't really want him; whatever this declaration meant, it wasn't what it would have been if Bucky had come out with it seventy years ago.
Bucky saw something on Steve's face that made him fold his arms defensively and look away as he went on.
"I don't--what you're asking--I don't see that when I look at people now, not even you. I see--targets. Or assets. I see how likely somebody is to be able to kill me and how easily I could kill them. I can see blond hair, blue eyes, a pretty smile, I can see that you're just as gorgeous as you ever were, but it doesn't connect up anymore. It doesn't mean anything."
That sounded... oddly familiar, actually, except that Steve had never managed to stop being attracted to the rare people who did flip his switch. Even as changed and frail as she was, he'd never managed to stop feeling that pull toward Peggy. He was a little afraid that he'd never stop being aware of the way he wanted Sam, no matter how much time they spent apart.
If he ever learned to feel that way about Bucky, he didn't see how he could turn around and learn not to.
"I still love you as much as I ever did," Bucky said quietly. "I still--I remember that I used to like having sex. I wanted to do that with you, I remember that, and now you're the only person I can even halfway imagine doing that stuff with. So I do want you, as much as I know how to want anybody, but I don't--I don't know whether that adds up to much of anything anymore. But I figured you'd be patient with me if you wanted me like that and I couldn't."
And instead they'd landed here, with neither of them wanting the other, for all the love between them. For a moment it seemed like that miserable story where the woman sold her hair and the man sold his watch, and then Steve felt the whole strategic picture flip inside out in his head.
"Okay," Steve said, starting to smile as the plan came clear. "So I don't know if I want to have sex with you, and you don't know if you want to have sex with me. That means we're even, aren't we?"
Bucky looked up at him and frowned. "I don't think it works like that, Stevie."
"It works how we say it works," Steve said decidedly. "If we decide we don't want to have sex with each other--so what? I've managed this far in my life without marrying anybody--"
"I didn't say anything about getting married," Bucky interposed. "Steve, this might not work at all, I might not--"
"If you think I haven't already promised you in sickness and health--" Steve put in.
"But not forsaking all others," Bucky interrupted right back, coming back toward the bed to argue properly. "If you don't--Steve, there's bound to be some other guy out there for you who's not a mess like me, who you actually want. You can't tie yourself down to me--"
"I already did," Steve insisted, and he realized it was true as he said it.
It was a kind of relief to think that the choice was already made, and that he hadn't had to think about it. Bucky had been his first--his only--priority when he'd thought of Bucky simply as his best friend. If Bucky was more, if he could choose Bucky and then stand pat...
"Why did you ask, anyway?" Steve asked abruptly.
Bucky got a sour look on his face at that, and Steve stood and closed the distance, taking Bucky's right hand in his.
"I'm glad you asked," Steve said. "I just wonder what you wanted. You said yourself, you're not sure you're actually ready to try having sex. So--if I'd said, yes, Buck, I want just what you want, but of course I'll give you all the time you need--what did you want to happen next? What was going to be different?"
"Optimist," Bucky said, shaking his head a little, but he said it fondly. "Why would you think I thought anything good was going to happen? I just needed to know."
Steve shook his head. "You're a romantic, Bucky Barnes. I know you are. Even if you didn't think it would happen, what would you want to be different? If we're--"
"We're not getting married," Bucky insisted.
"Dating," Steve said, offering a smile and squeezing Bucky's hand in his. "I want to date you, Buck. I want to try--it'd be a hell of a shame not to. So what's different if we're dating? We already live together, we eat together and watch movies together, anything we feel like talking about we talk about with each other. What else?"
Bucky sighed and towed Steve back over to the bed to sit beside him. Bucky didn't let go of his hand, and Steve felt a tiny hopeful thrill, that that might mean Bucky was willing to go along with him in the madness of redefining everything they were to each other, just because they both wanted to.
"I want," Bucky said, frowning down at Steve's hand. "I want to sleep where you sleep, and live where you live. And not just until I'm better, or until you find someone else. I want people to know that you help me because I'm yours, and if you need me I'll help you because you're mine. Not friends being kind, just... the way things should be. A unit. I want..."
Bucky trailed off and looked away altogether.
"Buck," Steve said softly, tugging Bucky's hand into his lap where he could wrap his other hand around it.
"I want to be your first choice," Bucky said quietly. "You would be mine, if you let me choose you. Not just for a while. Not just friends. Always."
"Till the end of the line," Steve said softly, and Bucky tried to tug away from him, but Steve tightened his grip. "I'm saying--I did already choose that, Bucky. I forsook a hell of a lot for you this year--"
Bucky flinched and Steve shook his head and barreled on.
"I didn't think twice about it, and I'm not thinking twice about it now. It wouldn't be fair for me to try to be with anyone else, because you're always going to be my first choice. I don't need sex for that. I just need you."
"I want to be enough," Bucky said, turning abruptly to look him in the eye, his expression challenging now. "I don't want you to want anyone else. I want half of whatever life I make here to be yours, and half your life to be mine."
"Then that's what we'll do," Steve said firmly. "Buck, I really--"
Bucky made a last frustrated noise and leaned in sharply, enough to make Steve stop talking, enough for his intention to be entirely clear, but not enough to bring their mouths together.
"I want to kiss you," Bucky said, his voice strangled into quiet.
"Try it, then," Steve said softly.
Bucky snorted, hearing the dare in Steve's utterly sincere invitation, but he leaned in the rest of the way, pressing his mouth gently to Steve's.
Steve tensed a little, waiting for the part of the kiss where it turned weird and he became overwhelmingly conscious of how strange it was to mash your mouth against someone else's--which was his experience of most kisses he'd shared with people other than Peggy--but Bucky didn't push. It was just a brush of lips, dry and gentle, and Steve found himself conscious instead of how intimate it was to be so close. It was strange that after all these years he'd never been close to Bucky in just this way.
Steve reached out with the hand not holding Bucky's hand and caught his shoulder, holding him there, and Bucky leaned into his grip. Steve tilted his head into the kiss, adding his own little motion, just to feel Bucky's lips sliding against his.
Bucky pulled back just when Steve was getting curious about pushing the kiss a little further, and Steve let him go. Bucky met his eyes and Steve looked back, waiting for Bucky to declare a verdict.
"That wasn't disgusting, was it?" Bucky asked finally.
Steve was startled into a laugh, but he shook his head. "No. Not disgusting."
"Some people, if they grow up together, it's disgusting to them," Bucky said, and Steve could tell by the particular halting intonation that this was something Bucky was parroting--probably from Colin, his therapist. Colin must have gone over the possibilities with Bucky, and Steve thanked God for Colin once again.
"No," Steve repeated, feeling a rush of relief as he said it. It wasn't impossible. Not easy, not instinctive, but not impossible. He could have Bucky, and Bucky could have him. They could be all right. "It wasn't disgusting. It wasn't even really weird. Just... new."
"New," Bucky said, frowning a little, like he was trying to place that word among some list of options he'd laid out. "Okay. New."
"Was it disgusting for you?" Steve prodded, though he was pretty sure that wasn't a possibility Bucky had been concerned about.
"It was good," Bucky said, looking away as he said it, expression guarded. "I liked it. I like it."
"So how are we doing?" Steve asked, because it wasn't fair to either of them to ask if it measured up to what Bucky had wanted before. "You wanted to kiss, and it looks like kissing is okay. Do you believe that I'm choosing you yet?"
"I don't--" Bucky said, obviously biting off words, and then he shook his head a little and said more definitely, "I don't. Steve, it can't be about you being stubborn. It has to be about you being happy."
Steve scooted off the bed at that, kneeling at Bucky's feet. Bucky made an abortive gesture like he wanted to push Steve away or escape off the bed and did neither, hands hovering indecisively in midair.
Steve reached up to hold Bucky's face between his palms, keeping Bucky looking straight at him. "Bucky. I'm not gonna be happy a hundred percent of the time when I'm with you, but I always want to be with you. Always. Everything after that we can negotiate. If we want to be in love with each other, that's what we'll do, and it's nobody's business but ours what exactly that looks like when we're alone together."
"You can't," Bucky said, and when Steve opened his mouth to argue Bucky darted in to kiss him. Steve jerked back a little from the sudden movement. The touch of their mouths was uncoordinated and definitely weird this time, a strange brief collision of wide-open lips and wet tongues.
"You can, fine," Bucky said, obviously determined to head off more arguing. "You just can't say forever yet, okay? We're only dating. If it doesn't work out, we go back to being friends. We're just trying. We have to--we have to just be trying it out for a while. Okay? Please."
"Okay," Steve agreed, heart twisting with the knowledge that all of Bucky's ambivalence was for Steve's protection, not his own. He didn't feel any more in need of Bucky's protection now than he ever had, but he would accept it anyway. He knew how much love there was behind it. "So we're just trying it out. Is it settled? We're dating now?"
Bucky nodded jerkily and then it seemed suddenly to dawn on him that he was getting what he wanted; he started to smile, meeting Steve's eyes without wariness. "Yeah. Are we? We are?"
"Yeah," Steve said, his heart cracking open all over again for this man, this one person he would always choose over all others. "Yeah, Buck. We are."
Bucky leaned in, his smile almost shy. Steve thought it would be another kiss, but Bucky's arms went around him in a fierce hug, and Steve returned it gladly, pressing his face into Bucky's bicep while Bucky's cheek pressed tight against Steve's hair.
After a while Steve was conscious of the hardness of the floor under his knees, and the fact that Bucky was bent double to hang on to him while sitting on the bed, and he said, "Come on, it's bedtime. You want to sleep in here, or in your room?"
Bucky slid down from the bed to hold Steve tighter, and muttered, "With you."
"I know that," Steve said, smiling into Bucky's shoulder, closing his arms tighter around Bucky's body. "You said that--you want to sleep where I sleep, I got that. Your bed or mine, though?"
"Yours," Bucky said unhesitatingly. "I like your sheets."
"I'd've let you have them," Steve said, trying to think of what was different about his sheets. They were older, he thought. Washed more times, softer in that way.
"They're yours," Bucky said, as though that settled it. "We'll sleep here."
"Good, then we can both get off the floor." Steve gave Bucky a little push, and Bucky stood up, pulling Steve along. Steve let him, leaning into him even when they were both on their feet, and he darted in for a little kiss, just a close-mouthed peck, just because he could. Because Bucky was his--his best guy, even more than he always had been.
Bucky smiled again as Steve stepped back from the kiss, startled and pleased and present in a way that made Steve feel like everything was going to be all right somehow. Bucky was here. That was all he'd ever needed.
"You get the lights," Bucky said, giving him a little push, and threw himself down on the bed. Steve switched the lights off and came back, getting in on the right side of the bed. Bucky was already lying facedown on the left, his left arm at the outside of the bed. Steve lay down on his side, settling into his usual sleeping position, but his eyes wouldn't close. He stared across the little space between him and Bucky.
They'd shared beds before, once in a while; they'd slept a hell of a lot closer than this when space was limited or the nights were cold. But they'd never gone to bed together because they both belonged in the same bed, and while they'd never been shy of touching each other when there was some reason to, there had never been an invitation between them. Bucky had never been Steve's to touch, not in the way Steve was pretty sure he was now.
Steve reached out and settled his hand on Bucky's shoulder.
Bucky sighed and picked his head up, shaking his hair back, and said, "Come here, then."
Steve scooted closer as Bucky raised his arm, and he rolled onto his back as Bucky draped himself halfway over Steve's chest, Bucky's right leg resting along his left.
"Okay?" Bucky's breath puffed against Steve's throat.
Steve nodded happily. "Okay."
Bucky kissed Steve's cheek and then put his head down again, burrowing his face into the pillow. Steve closed his eyes and let himself feel every inch of his body where Bucky's body pressed against it.
This was good. This could be good. No one ever touched him much, and he spent so much attention on how little he usually wanted sex that he forgot that he might want to be touched in any other way until a moment like this arrived, when he was unexpectedly getting what he wanted, the way he wanted it. He turned his head, letting his cheek brush against Bucky's hair, and smiled.
Ten minutes later he was still wide awake, still pinned under Bucky's sleep-heavy body, and actively suppressing the urge to squirm. He didn't want to disturb Bucky, but he also hated trying to sleep on his back. He could lie like this all night, but he wasn't going to sleep if he did, and he was tired. He wanted to sleep.
He caught himself bracing to just lie still for as long as it took if Bucky didn't move, and he closed his eyes, breath catching on a silent laugh. Bucky had just told him fifteen minutes ago that he didn't want Steve being stubborn and neglecting his own happiness, and here he was.
"Buck," Steve muttered. "Move a little bit?"
Bucky hmphed into the pillow but shifted his weight off of Steve, enough for Steve to roll onto his side, putting his back to Bucky. He didn't have time to second-guess that choice before Bucky scooted in behind him, spooning up against his back, his warm right arm thrown over Steve's waist. Steve laid his own arm over Bucky's and let out a long breath, settling in to sleep.
***
Sleep never came in more than little snatches. Steve woke up every time Bucky moved--and every time he moved himself and Bucky moved to accommodate him--and when they were both managing to be still he would open his eyes and find himself marveling at the whole idea of being in bed with Bucky, because Bucky was his to go to bed with now.
Steve had had sex before enough times to know his way around it, but he'd never slept through the night--or not slept through the night, as it was turning out--with anyone he had sex with. He'd never had the chance to go to bed with someone he loved that way. For all the times he'd seen Bucky sleep, or slept close to him, for all the ways he and Bucky had been closer than Steve had ever been with anyone else, there had always been a little separateness between them.
That, Steve realized, was what just friends meant. Not that there had ever been anything small about that love; he would have given his life for Bucky any time since he was ten years old and thought it a fair trade.
But there had been a boundary they didn't cross, an intimacy they didn't deliberately intrude on. Bucky was asking to knock down that last barrier between them, starting with kissing and sleeping in the same bed with the understanding of touch between them, and ending... who knew where.
The two shall become one flesh. But it wasn't just about the way bodies joined in sex. It was about being a unit, like Bucky had said. About having nothing left to separate them.
Steve said a silent inarticulate prayer of gratitude--for Bucky, for getting to know this about Bucky, getting to try this with Bucky. He suddenly couldn't imagine daring this with anyone else--and wasn't that what Bucky had said? Steve was the only one he could imagine it with? Bucky had been talking about sex, but Steve thought this was a part of it too.
He looked over at the clock--nearly four in the morning, which potentially said something about the quality of any important insights he was having right now--and then felt a gentle touch on the back of his head. He went still, making himself go limp instead of freezing up, and Bucky's fingers combed through his hair for a while. He wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep, he thought, and when Bucky's hand stilled Steve turned his head to look.
Bucky shifted his hand as Steve moved, resting it lightly on Steve's cheek, and it occurred to Steve suddenly what it meant that Bucky had felt the same way all along. Bucky had always been wanting this.
"Does it feel different now?" He asked before he could think better of the words.
Bucky moved his hand back to Steve's hair, fingertips ruffling through it again. "Shorter, but it looks good."
Steve snorted. "No, I--I was just thinking--this is different from any other time we've shared a bed, isn't it?"
"You usually sleep better," Bucky allowed.
"Did you, though?" Steve asked. "Did you--was it--you always loved me, you said. Was it like this for you every time?"
Bucky frowned, his fingers moving idly in Steve's hair as he considered the question--more specifically factual than Steve had meant to be.
"I don't remember," Bucky inevitably reported after a moment. "I think--sometimes it was... I would lie awake. Watching you. Being glad to be so close. But also scared of you knowing. Scared you would go away. Like you weren't..."
"Like I wasn't really that close," Steve said softly, recognizing his own thoughts in Bucky's, a glimpse of the way they used to always understand each other without having to explain. "Close enough to touch but not yours to touch."
Bucky's hand tightened, gripping the back of his head for a moment, then relaxed, resuming the slight petting motion. "Something like that. I think."
"I'm yours now," Steve said, reaching out to run his fingers through Bucky's hair. "And you're mine."
"And I still will be in the morning," Bucky said, tightening his grip and miming at shaking Steve by it. "So go to sleep."
***
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