They lie still, Bucky sprawled on his front, head turned to the side, an ankle crossed over Steve’s and his hair starting to itch at Steve’s shoulder. The rest of his day—before arriving home, at least—was even less eventful than his morning, so his story’s over before long. But he ends with as much enthusiasm as he brimmed with the whole time, saying, “Did you know there’s a public trash can right down the block? I never noticed it! That puts an end to my littering career.”

Steve says, “Yeah, I know. It’s painted?”

“It is. You could do that. Paint trash cans, if you wanted.”

It’s a few minutes before Steve realizes that he hasn’t answered. “Oh, yeah. I mean. I guess? But I think they’re all already painted.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Bucky studying him. Structure returning to his soft, sleepy face. Out of the rest of his eyes, he can see a wide spread of water damage staining the ceiling.

Bucky says, “You didn’t cut my hair how I thought you would.”

“No? I do it wrong?”

“Not wrong. I just figured you do it choppier, y’know? Less delicate.”

“What, and fuck it up?” Steve looks at him head-on. “You love your hair.”

He’s always loved his hair. First thing, when upset, he’s always touched his hair. Used it to ground himself. And he’s always loved being looked at like he’s something wonderfully made.

“I don’t know. I just—if you’d wanted to fuck it up, make it uneven and awful? I’d’ve let you.”

“You love your hair, Buck. Anyway, I liked how I did it. I like to—It’s nice, not overdoing it. Little things. Scratch you a little. Take a little of your hair.” And he likes that Bucky hadn't disappeared yet.

“Oh, yeah? Steve Rogers: King of Subtlety?”

“King of being delicate with you.”

“That’s dumb.”

“No, it’s not.”

“No. It’s not.” Soft and needy as an animal, he pushes himself into Steve’s arms.

“Hold up.” Steve rearranges to better accommodate him, slouching against the headboard, tipping a bit to one side. He ends up with his arm slung across Bucky’s back, Bucky’s head on his chest and one leg flung across both of Steve’s.

Bucky sighs, then goes heavy and still. Warm and real. Half-dried sweat clings to the curve of his neck, smelling of sweet milk and aluminum. Steve slides a hand under the wild mass of his loose hair, and flexes his fingers to comb through. He repeats the motion, hoping to soothe. He knows his heart must be fast and loud under Bucky’s body, so perceptible. Never permitting him to be a good liar.

On top of him, Bucky is making happy noises, small hums and sighs. His heartbeat is hard too, but he was aroused. That’s normal. Steve, on the other hand, was just having a body. A body that surged with blood even as his best friend was blinking in and out of existence under his hands. He wants to choke on something.

No, that’s stupid.

He wants to understand what’s going on. He’s never been content with not understanding things. Not when he knows that if you bang your head against a wall long enough, a crack’s gotta form somewhere. And he didn't lock Bucky in, or smack him in the face. He moved slowly. He was good.

“Hey, there, honey,” he says, and runs his thumb lightly up Bucky’s jaw. It must tickle, because he draws in his shoulders and smiles at the same time. Against all odds, he looks so small.

“Hey there, wildflower.”

Steve cough-laughs. “Can I—”

“No. It’s illegal.”

“Ask you a question?”

“All questions’ve been outlawed. You want me to pass the pasta sauce? Too fucking bad. That's sauceless pasta for you.” Steve doesn’t respond, watching the casual, sleepy droop of Bucky’s lips. Bucky lifts his head and bangs it back down on Steve’s sternum. “Ask me your question, Steve.”

“Thought it was illegal.”

“And here I forgot you were such a law-abiding goody two-shoes.”

“Shut up.” He sticks his fingers in Bucky’s hair again. It’s impossible to tell if Bucky has any idea that something is wrong. With either of them. “I wanted to know how the experiment was going.” He tries to say it how he’d ask how class went, or if they should order in tonight.

“You mean being raped or being a student?”

“The first one.”

“Oh, that one. I seem like I’m enjoying it, right?” He sneaks up and kisses Steve at the line where his skull joins the vulnerable flesh of his throat. Steve exhales a slow stream.

“Well. You are pursuing it with a certain amount of. Uh.”

Bucky scoots down to where he was before. “Yeah, of what? Glee? Delight? Entertainment?” He puts on a voice like he’s narrating a film trailer: “Stalin has the conductor raped. The train doesn’t move. Khrushchev tells the conductor it was rape. The train still doesn’t move.”

He cracks up at the unfinished joke. The sound is beautiful and makes Steve nauseous with the weight and warmth of Bucky on top of him, rolling back and forth with glee, delight, entertainment. He waits. When the sound and motion cut off, it’s abrupt. Like a hurricane downing a power line inside him.

Low-voiced, Bucky says, “I hate it, actually. It makes me feel sick. You said you don’t get anything out of it. But do you feel sick?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Not thinking about it. Saying it. Does saying the word make you feel sicker than thinking about it?”

“No. I guess not.” There’s always a moment, when he hears himself say it, when he wants to cringe, to stuff the word back in his mouth, too hard and flat and blunt to be allowed out into the world. But that’s called feeling responsible, not feeling sick.

“It didn’t feel like rape when it was happening. I don’t know why it should have to feel that way now. I’m sick of how many things I’m supposed to feel now, Steve.” And he does look sick, pale and starved. He climbs off of Steve, getting to his knees on the other side of the bed. He looks like the world’s deadliest prairie dog.

“Being the Winter Soldier or. Whatever you want to call that. It felt bad. I knew that it felt bad. Other stuff—Everyone has to find something to like, right? I liked having sex. I don’t care if you think I shouldn’t have.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Except—”

“Oh my fucking god.”

“I don’t want to tell you how to feel. But do you think maybe—”

“Also tired of having to think so many things—”

“You do feel bad? I think you do feel like it wasn’t. Good. Buck. On some level.”

Bucky sits back on his heels, spreading his legs as he does. His dick still hangs limply out of his pants, and his left hand tremors. “You don’t want to tell me how to feel. You just want to tell me how I already feel like I’m too stupid to know. Thanks. It's much appreciated.”

“Not stupid, just, maybe. When we have sex—Your face is wrong. Sometimes.”

“That’s not a real phrase. You were eavesdropping on me and Sam.”

“Can’t help it. You know you knew I could hear you.”

“I know. I knew.” He buries his face in the crook of his metal elbow, then slides it back up and out. His lower lip catches on a plate, but he doesn’t make a noise. A thin cut appears. That’s all. Gone soon. “Wrong in the same way yours is? Was.”

“I don’t know. How was mine? I don’t spend all day staring in the mirror, you know.”

“You better not. It’s my job to stare at you.”

Steve warms with distracting affection, but soldiers on. “I wouldn’t dream of competing. How was my face wrong?”

“It was brittle, I suppose. You looked too, uh. I don’t know. Awake. Dangerously awake.”

“Then no. Not the same way as me.” Bucky flicks his head to the right, then back, in a little prompting gesture, like if he took any longer to ask Steve to go on, he’d change his mind and stalk away instead. “You disappear. It was like you shrank in to yourself and then you were gone.”

Bucky’s shoulders drop. He’s smiling. A thin smile with a thin cut on one lip. “Yeah? That’s how sex works, babe. That’s how it’s always been. Means it’s good, right? So you get overwhelmed.”

“Yeah, you—No. You always got overwhelmed. You never did that.”

“Of course I did. What the hell are you talking about?”

“No, Buck. What the hell are you—” He makes himself breathe, to think about his lungs filling up, but he’s supposed to focus on the exhalation too and honestly, who has the time? So he goes right into, “Yes, you’d get overwhelmed. But it looked different. You’d get exhausted, or weepy.” He hates that, because he’s only ever called Bucky “weepy” in a sweetly mocking way, and now it’s tainted. “Or you’d cling to me and babble some bullshit. But you were always you.”

The moments before Bucky responds drag out, harsh as grinding teeth.

And then, “I’m still always me. You’ve told me I’m always me. You’ve told me that a fucking thousand times, Steve!” His speech takes a turn for the imitative, high and cruel. “You’re Bucky. You’re Bucky. Hi, Bucky. I love you, Bucky.” He spits his own name like the shell of a sunflower seed. It clatters to the floor. Wet and discarded.

And Steve shouldn't be hurt, not when Bucky's clearly hurt, but he feels, in an instant like lightning, like he has the flat of a knife at his back. “That’s not what I mean, fuckhead.”

“Fuckface. Get it? Because I just exist for you to fuck my fucking face while I’m not Bucky and not here.”

“What?” He can’t remember the last time he fucked Bucky’s face.

“Get off me.” Bucky uses his soft hand to stuff his soft dick back in his jeans.

“I’m not touching you.”

“Yeah? Well. I don’t want you to anyway.” He practically throws himself off the bed. “I have homework.”

“Which class?”

“Creative Nonfiction.”

“Have fun.”

“More fun than this.”

He’s out the door and in the hallway when he pauses, puts his metal hand on the doorway light as a moth and turns so Steve can see his face. Now he does look the way he described: brittle and dangerously awake. Teeth held visibly open between his slack, open lips; eyes wide, and the muscles around them making little leaps, little indications that he would pull his eyes even farther back into his head if he could.

Steve says, “Buck. Stay.”

“Sorry. No.” Bucky shakes his head and swallows. He told Steve, a while ago, about string theory; he said the vibrations of the strings are too subtle for people to consciously be aware of, and that’s how Steve thinks Bucky is right now: vibrating powerfully enough to change the whole world, even if he appears perfectly still.

“Bucky. You don't look good."

“I’m sorry. I really. I don’t want to upset you, but I shouldn’t stay here. I need away for a second.”

“A second?”

“An hour. Two hours. Outside. Text me if you need me. I don’t want you to—I don’t want to run off on you. I did that before, I guess. I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah. Just, uh, if you’re going outside—” He forces a breathy laugh as he tugs on the front of his own t-shirt.

“Oh. Yeah.” A grin appears on Bucky’s tight face, looking carved there, like on a jack-o-lantern. He steps into the room. “Wouldn’t want to be indecent.” And he opens the closet and grabs a tee and a flannel in a flash, pulling both on as he stands there.

There’s nothing Steve can do but watch his back. There’s a pink line flicked across his skin, high up on his hips, where Steve must have gotten him with the knife in his sudden surprise. It’s most of the way healed, but Steve’s got good eyes. Hasn’t he?

“Yeah,” Steve says mechanically, “this isn’t a firemen’s calendar. It’s a modest and respectable neighborhood.”

“Not really.”

Dressed, the flannel not pulled all the way up his metal arm but held there by its girth anyway, Bucky comes and stands less than a foot away, diagonal to Steve’s right. “Look.” He comes closer, holding his pale right hand out, then changes his mind, slipping it in his back pocket. When he’s almost pressed up against Steve’s still, patient body, he leans in like for a kiss.

But he doesn’t kiss Steve’s mouth. He presses his forehead to Steve’s shoulder, close to where it meets his neck. His inhalation is deep, but shaky. He moves to press his lips there instead, and leaves a couple of gentle kisses. Then his mouth jumps almost imperceptibly, and he makes an abbreviated, high noise. Holding in a sob.

He stands up. He says, “See ya, honey,” without looking at Steve’s face. And he leaves. Brisk and businesslike. Leaves Steve sitting on the edge of the bed, unable to escape the sensation that the room is very far away, and on the other side of bulletproof glass, and he’s just waiting to be allowed back in.