“I’m tired,” Bucky breathed, slumping into Steve instead of pulling away from the hug. “Can we go upstairs and take it easy for a little?”

Nodding rapidly, Steve said, “Yeah, of course. Whatever you want, Buck.” The elevator arrived without comment from JARVIS. Steve was grateful not to have any reminders that they were under surveillance. The AI was an ally, not an enemy, but it still grated.

Steve offered to get Bucky something to eat or drink, but the other supersoldier was already dropping his duffle bag by the door of the bedroom Steve had been using. Without hesitation, Bucky started to pull off his long-sleeved shirt. “I missed layin’ down with you.” He studied Steve’s uncertain hovering. “We don’ have to get naked or do anything else.”

It still felt like they were teetering on the top of a very slippery slope, but Steve couldn’t say no when Bucky was not only asking but also apparently willing to compromise. It had to be a good sign that he wasn’t so focused on fucking or fighting anymore. Maybe it was all pretend, but it was pretend for both their sakes, wasn’t it? Bucky wasn’t just trying to please Steve anymore.

They both stripped down to boxers and lay down on the bed.

“Y’know what else I want?” Bucky asked, rolling onto his side and bringing himself almost close enough to touch. There hadn’t been a repeat of the kiss.

That kiss. Steve had mixed emotions about that kiss. Very mixed.

“You not to talk for a bit, maybe,” Bucky answered himself. “Just nod or shake your head. I’ll take care of you, okay?”

Steve blinked at him in the semi-darkness and barely dared to breathe.

“Can I touch you, Steve?”

Last time Bucky had asked, Steve had got himself all worked up over an innocent gesture. This time, he nodded.

Bucky scooted closer until his legs and hip were pressed along Steve’s side. Then a hand, Bucky’s left, oh fuck, slid over Steve’s pelvis to cup Steve’s rapidly growing bulge through his boxers.

"Jesus, Bucky," Steve groaned, all attempts to stay quiet forgotten at once. Nothing innocent about that touch. He’d barely touched himself since their last HYDRA mission together. Still, this wasn’t right. “Wait, I’m not…”

”Shhhh," Bucky breathed, pale eyes intent and searching. "Anything, Steve. That's what you said. Whatever I want. Whatever I need to feel safe."

Chill metal cupped and held him. It felt like every single muscle in his fucking souped-up body tensed and relaxed. Gasping at the sensation, Steve nodded jerkily and tried not to break eye contact. He had said that. Anything.

"I need this," said Bucky, voice thick. "No one lets a weapon do this. It was different, with the drugs, with you, but I never got to choose it before.” His hand flexed and Steve’s whole body jerked in response. “Maybe I woulda, Stevie. If it was you asking.” The way his accent faded in and out lent an additional layer of unreality to what was happening.

“Buck, wait,” Steve gasped.

“I know you, Steve. When was the last time you let yourself feel pleasure? You said you wanted to be mine. Let me have you. Let yourself have this. Have me.”

“Bucky,” Steve said unsteadily.

“C’mon, pal. You know what I’ve been doing the last while. Really so unbelievable I want to do this instead now?”

Steve opened his mouth to explain his hesitation.

“Shut the fuck up, Captain Rogers,” Bucky snarled. The hand withdrew.

Captain Rogers shut the fuck up. Steve had almost forgotten how wrong that title was in Bucky’s mouth.

“You listen to me. You said. You said we’re not only friends. You said that. And if you try any bullshit about us being brothers, I swear, hand to God, Stevie.” Bucky fell abruptly silent and his expression made Steve intensely uncomfortable. What was left of his erection subsided completely.

When Bucky did nothing but stare down at him, face set, Steve tried prompting, “Yeah?”

In a low growl, Bucky repeated, “No talking. You said it. M’not gonna let you take it back,” but some of the confidence had gone out of him.

Steve made himself relax under Bucky’s sharp eyes. It was an act of will and he let the struggle show on his face while he kept his body easy and pliant.

“I love you, you goddamn fucking moron,” Bucky said, but he didn’t sound angry, or pleading, or even fond. He sounded tired. He sounded heartbroken. He stared into Steve’s eyes, looking for… something.

Steve couldn’t take it. He closed his.

Bucky grabbed him by both shoulders and shook him until he opened them again. “You don’t get it. You’re… you’re my one good person. You get that, right?” he demanded, expression twisted wretchedly. “I’d say my one good thing, but you’re not a thing.”

Neither are you. Steve put his tongue between his teeth and bit down to the edge of pain.

“We made it to the future. We’re together. Do you understand that? How amazing that is? It’s not just the future. It’s a future where we can be together,” Bucky said, a hard metal pointer finger emphasizing each word by poking him in the sternum hard enough to bruise even a supersoldier. “I want you. I want to be with you. To hell with the rest. We’ll fucking figure it out, got me?” He punctuated the question with another poke of his finger that was more like a stab.

Steve did his best to suppress the flinch, certain Bucky would misinterpret any negative reaction.

Bucky stared down at him for a while longer and then carefully pushed himself back up and removed his weight from Steve’s legs and chest.

Steve didn’t try to sit up, just turned his head to look at Bucky resettling next to him.

Bucky closed his eyes for a long moment and then scowled somewhere in the vicinity of Steve’s hip. “Now you can talk.”

“Okay,” Steve said immediately.

Bucky’s head jerked up in an untrusting glower.

“You’re right,” Steve said. “I’m yours. You can be mine if you want to. We can…” He stared at his feet. “We can pursue any kind of relationship you want. I just don't want to jump into anything you might regret or… feel… differently about.... later.”

The glower, which had been softening, returned with double intensity.

Hastily, Steve promised, “It’s not up to me to decide what that means for you. I just want you to know…” He hesitated of the wording for a long moment. “I don’t think I’m going to feel comfortable initiating anything between us for a long time, if ever. So, ah. Ball’s in your court, Buck. You’re in charge now. Just… please, Bucky, let’s take it slowly. Don’t let me not be good to you.”

Glare softening again a little, Bucky eyed him pensively until he gave a little nod to himself and his eyes darted away. “What if I don’t want to be in charge?” His eyes flicked back to Steve’s face and then skittered away to somewhere on Steve’s chest. “What if I’m the asset?”

Please no. Steve mentally stomped on his first response and made himself take a few long slow shaky breaths before answering.

“Your asset,” Bucky clarified, unnecessarily.

Your asset and your Bucky. Steve remembered. “I love you,” he said. “You’re the most important person in my life. I want you to be safe and happy. If…” He had to stop and take another few breaths. “If that’s what you want… some of the time or all of the time, even-” He tried not to let his voice break and failed. “Can you promise me you won’t let me hurt you again?”

“I don’t need to promise that. You won’t.”

“But I already have. What if-”

Bucky interrupted: “I’m going to kiss you,” and forcefully cut off what Steve was going to say. “HYDRA and SHIELD made us hurt each other,” he argued, almost against Steve’s lips as they broke the kiss. “That wasn’t us. We didn’t have the choices we have now.”

“No, I mean, yes! I mean. You shouldn’t be the one comforting me,” Steve protested. “Not after what I-”

“So. Goddamn. Stupid,” Bucky sighed, peppering Steve with kisses between words. He kissed Steve on the lips again. “Punk.” Their foreheads rested together. “You need a goddamn keeper, I swear.”

Job’s all yours. Steve was startled by the watery laugh escaping his own throat. “Bucky, asset, whatever you want to be, sweetheart, I-”

“Good thing I’m remembering how to handle you,” Bucky said dryly and flashed Steve a grin that looked almost genuine, stunning him into silence. “My other friend.”

“The one from DC who listened?” Steve asked.

Bucky nodded. “He said there are different kinds and levels of intimacy, and if you’re scared…” There was a goading edge to the question as otherwise gentle as it was. “We can do some exploring before-”

“I’m terrified,” Steve blurted. On another occasion, he’d have risen to the challenge, but this was a different sort of challenge.

Flattening his upper body over Steve, Bucky nosed his cheek. It was the sort of gesture Steve associated with the asset, but it didn’t make his heart clench up in dread the way he’d expected.

“You think I’m not, pal?”

Neither of them said much of anything after that, though their cuddling brought them closer and closer.

Steve woke an unknown length of time later. He must have been sleeping with his mouth open because it felt gross and tacky. His eyes felt gritty. He went to lift his right arm to rub at them and when he couldn’t move, he looked down to find Bucky with both arms wrapped around it and a leg hooked over his waist, trapping him. Steve settled back and closed his eyes again.

“Hey,” said Bucky, quietly, not moving.

“I didn’t know you were awake,” Steve replied.

“I woke up when you did.”

Of course he had.

“Want to go back to sleep?” Steve asked.

There was another long period of quiet. Just when Steve was beginning to drift off again, Bucky said, “...No. We should eat.”

Steve opened his eyes and looked down to see Bucky eying Steve’s midsection. He’d continued to lose weight and Bucky knew and was clearly unhappy about it.

“Can we go out to get something?” Bucky asked, a tentative note to the question that Steve really didn’t like.

Does he think he’s trapped here? Should he be? Steve wasn’t about to check with anyone who might confirm their lack of freedom. “Sure. It’s New York. Something will be open.”

The elevator came when Steve asked, so he figured that was good enough.

They ended up with burgers and bar snacks. Deep fried battered vegetables, five flavors of chicken wings, and little squares of pepperoni pizza.

It felt so good to watch Bucky eat that Steve didn’t notice his own burger going cold until Bucky was holding up a lump of battered something in front of his nose. “Open up?”

Automatically, Steve opened his mouth and let Bucky pop the thing into his mouth. He bit down and the juice of the mushroom nearly burned his tongue. Steve wasn’t a huge fan, but Bucky had fed it to him. As he chewed and swallowed, he considered the hunger in Bucky’s avid gaze. All he’d have to do was suggest they pack up their food and go back to the tower. It would be easy.

But he wasn’t about to start anything. Not yet, if ever. He wouldn’t take advantage.

“You haven’t touched me once since I got back,” Bucky accused, pursuing Steve into the bathroom.

Fighting the urge to groan, Steve hid a scowl behind a facecloth. He was still benched from anything except HYDRA missions, which had tapered off considerably, but no one was stopping him from helping in a non-combat role. The last week had seen him hauling trees and bits of buildings in an Ohio town that had been hit with some sort of man-made cyclone grown out of control.

Bucky, whose legal status could best be described as optimistically pending, wasn’t cleared for anything yet.

“I did say I wasn’t gonna start anything, Buck,” he reminded him.

“Can I start something, then?” Bucky demanded. “Wait, no, I’m not asking permission to want you. Take your fuckin’ bath alone.” He turned on his heel and stalked out.

Steve blinked after him, not exactly sure what was going on. When Bucky didn’t come back, he went back to hunting for tweezers. He thought they’d removed most of the splinters on-site, but he kept finding new ones being pushed out. The bathtub filled slowly.

A washcloth took off the worst of the grime before he stepped into the hot water. It had been a few weeks now since Steve had started taking baths instead of showers and he had to admit it helped. He actually felt clean when he finished a bath.

Bucky refused to do anything except shower unless they shared. Steve was not prepared to do that yet. The tub was big, but it wasn’t quite big enough to comfortably fit two supersoldiers without encouraging more wet naked canoodling than felt safe.

Slowly, Steve relaxed into the steaming water and reached for his shampoo. It something Bruce had cooked up for him that smelled like honey and milk and potassium hydroxide lye, and not at all like the products SHIELDRA had provided.

“Steve!” Bucky shouted.

Steve was out of the water and leaving a wet trail to the bedroom before the timbre of the cry registered.

Naked, hands and hair covered in foam, and dripping rapidly chilling water everywhere, all Steve could do was gulp and stare.

“Like what you see?” Bucky smirked at him, stretching his arms above his head so Steve had a clear view of the pearlescent strands and smears of come across his chest. His eyes went to Steve’s crotch, dilating even more than before. “Yeah, you do.”

Stiffly, Steve turned and fled.

Steve was in the middle of an intense workout when he became aware of Bucky’s presence near the elevator door. They were the only ones in the gym. Twenty-three days since Bucky had had any sort of violent episode, but the others were very careful about unexpected run-ins.

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky swore, focus glued to the sweat running down Steve’s neck and back. He licked his lips. “Mind if I go jerk off?”

Heat bloomed under Steve’s skin. He was certain his face was bright pink. How long had Bucky been watching him? “You, ah, yeah, go ahead.” He bit back the impulse to tell Bucky he didn’t need to ask. Buck would only look disappointed and tell him he was beating a dead horse. This was their compromise. “Anything I can do for you?” He wasn’t exactly unaffected by the knowledge Bucky was going to touch himself.

Bucky smiled. “Nothing you weren’t doin’ before. “

It was hard to go back to his workout when he had to keep adjusting himself in reaction to the faint sound and scent of Bucky’s pleasure.