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stele3So I was thinking more about this and that developed into this whole thing that I spent the day unraveling. (Cut for shades of domestic violence and inadvisable sexual behavior.)
Bucky has been brought in from the cold and deprogrammed, mostly. Maybe 90% deprogrammed. The remaining 10% is liable to lunge for Steve’s throat without any warning–and even the 90% is primarily comprised of PTSD and raw nerves.
It’s a good thing that Steve’s got that healing factor, is the point.
Steve, he bears it up pretty well. Probably a lot better than he should. It makes Bucky want to be a better friend–or at least one that doesn’t punch Steve or attempt to strangle him at least twice a week–and this is why he hates Sam Wilson. Perfect fucking Sam Wilson, who apparently helped Steve take on a rogue spy organization on the basis of two conversations and a cup of coffee, who keeps dropping by with albums and homemade cupcakes and therapy books. Bucky hates Sam Wilson, even if the cupcakes are really fucking good and the books are actually very helpful.
He’s trying to be a good friend to Steve, though, so he limits himself to settling in the furthest corner of whatever room Sam and Steve are in and giving Sam what Stark has dubbed “the Murdereyes.” The effect is somewhat muted by the cupcake in his hand that rapidly disappears.
Steve seems more bothered by the Murdereyes than Sam; he clearly wants the two of them to get along. That’s a bridge too far, though: Bucky doesn’t remember much, but he knows that he was here first, dammit, and that counts for something, he doesn’t care that Sam Wilson farts rainbows. (Steve is all he has.) Sam visits usually result in Bucky stomping off to his room, slamming the door, in order to lie in bed feeling sorry for himself and maybe having a panic attack halfway through the book he takes with him. He’s pretty sure no one hears him. (He’s getting better. That’s what they say. He doesn’t want to give Steve any reason to doubt that.)
This goes on for a while, though eventually Sam’s kindness wears down even the Murdereyes and he winds up teaching Bucky how to make cupcakes. (Bucky asks. Steve likes the cupcakes, and Bucky broke Steve’s nose last night. He thinks maybe he doesn’t have very many more chances to get this right.) Bucky doesn’t like that Sam has taken that place next to Steve but his therapist has been nudging him to ask for help when he needs it, and Sam is good at being friends with people. It’s not really his fault that one of those people happens to be Steve.
The Murdereyes turns into Bucky following Sam around everywhere, either openly or covertly. He needs to learn how to be a good friend again. Steve has been looking tired, worn down, so Bucky tries to spend a little more time with Sam, who doesn’t have a healing factor and that means Bucky has to be twice as careful with the 10%. It’s exhausting and his secret panic attacks swell in size and number but he’s being a good friend. Or, well, he’s getting better at it.
Things appear to even out enough that Sam and Steve even decide to leave Bucky on his own one night. Bucky knows it’s a test, that he’s supposed to be okay on his own. He would be, he totally would, but he wants to see Sam be Steve’s friend when they don’t know that Bucky’s around. So he follows them, watching as Sam leads Steve with one hand on the small of his back into a nice restaurant and they sit drinking wine and eating and laughing. Steve looks more relaxed than he has since Bucky came to live with him and Bucky’s stomach twists.
Then they’re leaving the restaurant for a long walk down to the park, Bucky trailing carefully behind. This is one arena in which he still feels a smug superiority to Sam: he has no idea that Bucky is here, that Bucky’s right at Steve’s back.
That Bucky is right there when Sam leans in and gently, carefully kisses Steve.
Bucky’s brain shorts out the way it used to when someone asked him how he felt about something. He watches, blank and numb, as Steve leans and kisses back, the sweet little smile on his lips visible even where they’re pressed against Sam’s. Only when they part does he jerk back to life, slipping away and sprinting flat out for home.
Once there Bucky paces his bedroom, his mind racing. Sam’s queer! Steve is…Steve’s…he kissed back. Steve is queer? Why didn’t he–? Bucky’s pretty sure that Steve never, back then, that he hadn’t been–or maybe he had and he’d just never told Bucky about it.
The thought makes Bucky scowl and kick over the stack of clean clothes that Steve carefully placed on the chest at the foot of Bucky’s bed. That’s a low-down, mean thing to do, hiding a thing like that. Bucky might be a lousy friend now, but he knows that once they’d been closer than brothers. How could Steve have hidden that from him? Had he been sneaking around with someone the whole time that he and Bucky had been living together? Had he kissed some other person, let them know that part of him, while Bucky was none the wiser?
Dammit, they were supposed to be best friends, and Steve had never even asked Bucky if he wanted to be queer together! Well, Bucky was going to change that: he was gonna get Steve to be queer with him or die trying.
He’s supposed to ask for help when he doesn’t know what to do, but he can’t ask Steve or Sam for obvious reasons. Sam can no longer be trusted. Bucky tries asking Dr. Banner how two men have sex during a checkup; Dr. Banner leaves half-convinced that Bucky was hitting on him. Bucky reluctantly asks Stark while getting a new synthetic skin for his arm; Stark stares, mumbles “too many—too many things to say, can’t pick,” followed by “you could just sign up for grindr,” then “oh god no, no, that’s a terrible idea.”
So of course Bucky joins grindr.
It actually goes a lot better than you’d expect. There’s a certain simplicity to the encounters he has: they’re a bit like missions in which Bucky tracks little dots on his phone through the city, except instead of murder the objective is orgasms. The mechanics are tricky at first but HYDRA did something to his brain that heightened his muscle memory and pretty soon Bucky is sucking cock like a champ. Not as good as Sam fucking Wilson, if the sounds that Steve makes while Bucky lurks outside Sam’s bedroom window are any indication. But Bucky is nothing if not dedicated. He’s going to be the best goddamned secret queer in the goddamned world, he thinks viciously as he joins four dots in an open-air orgy. He studies every angle, compiles the techniques of each guy sucking and fucking his body, sucks and fucks when it’s his turn and catalogues success in the amount of semen stuck in his hair at the end of the night.
The longer Steve spends out at night (at Sam’s, with Sam), the longer Bucky spends out, too. If the way they touch him, these anonymous men who barely speak to him, reminds Bucky of anything, he doesn’t let himself think about it for long.
Eventually, of course, Bucky comes back from therapy one morning to find Steve and Sam at the kitchen table wearing identical expressions of concern. The phone bill, Steve explains. Overage charges. He’d gone to Sam for help understanding it all and Sam, well, perfect Sam fucking Wilson had understood all too well.
Things go downhill fast, with Sam trying to gently talk about risk-taking behavior and Steve asking with this wounded expression why Bucky would go around having empty sex?
“What,” Bucky snaps, “like you two don’t?”
Sam immediately looks cautious, but Steve flushes and says, “That’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re in love!”
And Bucky, Bucky shuts his mouth and feels something in him split right down the middle. Because that’s what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? He hadn’t realized it until just now, hadn’t even known the words, but he’d wanted for Steve to be in love with him. Steve is Bucky’s entire world and if that’s not in love then Bucky doesn’t know what is.
But Steve isn’t in love with him at all. Suddenly all the practice that Bucky had put himself through, endured, seems sick and stupid and pathetic.
It must show in his face because Sam says, “shit” and Steve starts to get up, his own expression stricken. Bucky runs for it, going out a window.
He’s not dumb enough to run again, so instead he goes to Stark Tower and hides as best he can. It’s a big tower.
Blah blah blah AND THEN THEY TRACK HIM DOWN AND SAM TALKS TO BUCKY ABOUT ASEXUALITY AND STEVE GIVES BUCKY SMILING KISSES AND THERE ARE CUDDLES AND LOVE.
Bucky has been brought in from the cold and deprogrammed, mostly. Maybe 90% deprogrammed. The remaining 10% is liable to lunge for Steve’s throat without any warning–and even the 90% is primarily comprised of PTSD and raw nerves.
It’s a good thing that Steve’s got that healing factor, is the point.
Steve, he bears it up pretty well. Probably a lot better than he should. It makes Bucky want to be a better friend–or at least one that doesn’t punch Steve or attempt to strangle him at least twice a week–and this is why he hates Sam Wilson. Perfect fucking Sam Wilson, who apparently helped Steve take on a rogue spy organization on the basis of two conversations and a cup of coffee, who keeps dropping by with albums and homemade cupcakes and therapy books. Bucky hates Sam Wilson, even if the cupcakes are really fucking good and the books are actually very helpful.
He’s trying to be a good friend to Steve, though, so he limits himself to settling in the furthest corner of whatever room Sam and Steve are in and giving Sam what Stark has dubbed “the Murdereyes.” The effect is somewhat muted by the cupcake in his hand that rapidly disappears.
Steve seems more bothered by the Murdereyes than Sam; he clearly wants the two of them to get along. That’s a bridge too far, though: Bucky doesn’t remember much, but he knows that he was here first, dammit, and that counts for something, he doesn’t care that Sam Wilson farts rainbows. (Steve is all he has.) Sam visits usually result in Bucky stomping off to his room, slamming the door, in order to lie in bed feeling sorry for himself and maybe having a panic attack halfway through the book he takes with him. He’s pretty sure no one hears him. (He’s getting better. That’s what they say. He doesn’t want to give Steve any reason to doubt that.)
This goes on for a while, though eventually Sam’s kindness wears down even the Murdereyes and he winds up teaching Bucky how to make cupcakes. (Bucky asks. Steve likes the cupcakes, and Bucky broke Steve’s nose last night. He thinks maybe he doesn’t have very many more chances to get this right.) Bucky doesn’t like that Sam has taken that place next to Steve but his therapist has been nudging him to ask for help when he needs it, and Sam is good at being friends with people. It’s not really his fault that one of those people happens to be Steve.
The Murdereyes turns into Bucky following Sam around everywhere, either openly or covertly. He needs to learn how to be a good friend again. Steve has been looking tired, worn down, so Bucky tries to spend a little more time with Sam, who doesn’t have a healing factor and that means Bucky has to be twice as careful with the 10%. It’s exhausting and his secret panic attacks swell in size and number but he’s being a good friend. Or, well, he’s getting better at it.
Things appear to even out enough that Sam and Steve even decide to leave Bucky on his own one night. Bucky knows it’s a test, that he’s supposed to be okay on his own. He would be, he totally would, but he wants to see Sam be Steve’s friend when they don’t know that Bucky’s around. So he follows them, watching as Sam leads Steve with one hand on the small of his back into a nice restaurant and they sit drinking wine and eating and laughing. Steve looks more relaxed than he has since Bucky came to live with him and Bucky’s stomach twists.
Then they’re leaving the restaurant for a long walk down to the park, Bucky trailing carefully behind. This is one arena in which he still feels a smug superiority to Sam: he has no idea that Bucky is here, that Bucky’s right at Steve’s back.
That Bucky is right there when Sam leans in and gently, carefully kisses Steve.
Bucky’s brain shorts out the way it used to when someone asked him how he felt about something. He watches, blank and numb, as Steve leans and kisses back, the sweet little smile on his lips visible even where they’re pressed against Sam’s. Only when they part does he jerk back to life, slipping away and sprinting flat out for home.
Once there Bucky paces his bedroom, his mind racing. Sam’s queer! Steve is…Steve’s…he kissed back. Steve is queer? Why didn’t he–? Bucky’s pretty sure that Steve never, back then, that he hadn’t been–or maybe he had and he’d just never told Bucky about it.
The thought makes Bucky scowl and kick over the stack of clean clothes that Steve carefully placed on the chest at the foot of Bucky’s bed. That’s a low-down, mean thing to do, hiding a thing like that. Bucky might be a lousy friend now, but he knows that once they’d been closer than brothers. How could Steve have hidden that from him? Had he been sneaking around with someone the whole time that he and Bucky had been living together? Had he kissed some other person, let them know that part of him, while Bucky was none the wiser?
Dammit, they were supposed to be best friends, and Steve had never even asked Bucky if he wanted to be queer together! Well, Bucky was going to change that: he was gonna get Steve to be queer with him or die trying.
He’s supposed to ask for help when he doesn’t know what to do, but he can’t ask Steve or Sam for obvious reasons. Sam can no longer be trusted. Bucky tries asking Dr. Banner how two men have sex during a checkup; Dr. Banner leaves half-convinced that Bucky was hitting on him. Bucky reluctantly asks Stark while getting a new synthetic skin for his arm; Stark stares, mumbles “too many—too many things to say, can’t pick,” followed by “you could just sign up for grindr,” then “oh god no, no, that’s a terrible idea.”
So of course Bucky joins grindr.
It actually goes a lot better than you’d expect. There’s a certain simplicity to the encounters he has: they’re a bit like missions in which Bucky tracks little dots on his phone through the city, except instead of murder the objective is orgasms. The mechanics are tricky at first but HYDRA did something to his brain that heightened his muscle memory and pretty soon Bucky is sucking cock like a champ. Not as good as Sam fucking Wilson, if the sounds that Steve makes while Bucky lurks outside Sam’s bedroom window are any indication. But Bucky is nothing if not dedicated. He’s going to be the best goddamned secret queer in the goddamned world, he thinks viciously as he joins four dots in an open-air orgy. He studies every angle, compiles the techniques of each guy sucking and fucking his body, sucks and fucks when it’s his turn and catalogues success in the amount of semen stuck in his hair at the end of the night.
The longer Steve spends out at night (at Sam’s, with Sam), the longer Bucky spends out, too. If the way they touch him, these anonymous men who barely speak to him, reminds Bucky of anything, he doesn’t let himself think about it for long.
Eventually, of course, Bucky comes back from therapy one morning to find Steve and Sam at the kitchen table wearing identical expressions of concern. The phone bill, Steve explains. Overage charges. He’d gone to Sam for help understanding it all and Sam, well, perfect Sam fucking Wilson had understood all too well.
Things go downhill fast, with Sam trying to gently talk about risk-taking behavior and Steve asking with this wounded expression why Bucky would go around having empty sex?
“What,” Bucky snaps, “like you two don’t?”
Sam immediately looks cautious, but Steve flushes and says, “That’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re in love!”
And Bucky, Bucky shuts his mouth and feels something in him split right down the middle. Because that’s what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? He hadn’t realized it until just now, hadn’t even known the words, but he’d wanted for Steve to be in love with him. Steve is Bucky’s entire world and if that’s not in love then Bucky doesn’t know what is.
But Steve isn’t in love with him at all. Suddenly all the practice that Bucky had put himself through, endured, seems sick and stupid and pathetic.
It must show in his face because Sam says, “shit” and Steve starts to get up, his own expression stricken. Bucky runs for it, going out a window.
He’s not dumb enough to run again, so instead he goes to Stark Tower and hides as best he can. It’s a big tower.
Blah blah blah AND THEN THEY TRACK HIM DOWN AND SAM TALKS TO BUCKY ABOUT ASEXUALITY AND STEVE GIVES BUCKY SMILING KISSES AND THERE ARE CUDDLES AND LOVE.
