Before he woke to the muted cawing of tropical sunbirds which had taken residence on their rooftop and were currently chirping away happily to greet the new day (with no regard for the human schedule whatsoever), Steve had been dreaming about Europe.
It had been a very nice dream, indeed. He came out it feeling so relaxed that - instead of facing Bucky and the complete mess they were currently in - he decided to keep his eyes closed for a little while longer. Steve had always been known for his special talent to sleep in any position, anywhere, no matter what time of day (even with a war going on around him). The red-ish glow of the morning sun which filtered in through the curtains couldn’t stop him from pretending to be back there either.
The dream hadn’t started with the fun part right away. Steve’s subconscious had modeled the deceptively detailed events after a real mission Bucky and him had been on with the Howlies during the harsh Winter of ’43.
They had stormed a medieval castle, a remote Hydra fortress in every sense of the word after 3 weeks of freezing their asses off in the cold. By then, every team member on their own had discovered that war wasn’t all that glamorous, but this particular mission had been a real test of endurance.
Their meticulous planning and tireless surveillance work had been worth it in the end. After only 20 minutes of silent infiltration followed by not-so-silent heavy artillery fire, victory was in their grasp. The few remaining Hydra soldiers either surrendered or killed themselves by biting on hidden Cyanide capsules implanted in their teeth. Or so they thought.
Knowing what Bucky had suffered at Azzano, Steve couldn’t bring himself to care. A dead Nazi was a dead Nazi after all.
The Howling Commandos’ efficient capture of such an important enemy stronghold would have counted as an all-around success by the books, too, if Bucky hadn’t been shot in the leg by the last entrenched enemy sniper on their way out.
Of course, it was hardly Bucky’s fault that he got shot (not that anyone would have breathed a word about it and lived to tell the tale) but his resulting foul mood turned out in Steve’s favor nonetheless.
The dream had skipped right passed the initial panic he had felt over Bucky’s bleeding wound in the field and brought Steve back to his own personal highlight of the tour:
He had never gotten to fully appreciate the beautiful countryside of France until the whole team was stuck in that charming little bed and breakfast hotel with the chipped green doors that locked from the inside so Bucky could recover.
Somehow, after three sheer endless days of bed rest in his separated room with fluffed pillows and proper heating, Bucky had gotten it into his head that fucking Steve on every available surface was the only sure way to take out his frustration. Not that he minded. No, sir. After all, Steve had gotten spectacularly laid that week.
In fact, he was so distracted by his countless orgasms that he didn’t even notice Bucky’s leg wound healing much faster than normal. A ridiculous oversight in retrospect that could have spared them so much pain if he’d just paid a little more attention...
Steve tried to get back to that wonderful, relaxed feeling from the dream instead of getting riled up about his past mistakes again but it was hard not to come crashing back into the present.
It took him several minutes and intense concentration to get back on track. The first thing Steve did, once he was fully immersed in the dream-memory of the lovely room with the green door again, was to focus on his senses.
His eidetic memory conjured the smell of cigarette smoke in the air that would cling to their clothes like a third lover without doing anything to hide the stink of sex and sweat. They had to take turns, sneaking out into the hall and down to the bathroom.
The Howlies probably suspected there was something going on between the two of them that went beyond brotherly affection long before they dared to show their faces downstairs, two nights and days later, looking hopelessly besotted, but it hardly mattered on a grand scale when every day could be their last.
Neither Steve nor Bucky would have risked getting blue carded out of the army lightly, especially since Steve had become some sort of national icon of American pride and virtue, but they’d decided to make the most of the time they had left.
What came after the war - if there was an after as Bucky constantly stressed - was uncertain. As long as they weren’t neglecting their duties to be together and stayed discreet, they could count on their team to keep the secret.
Steve hadn’t expected to wish himself back to a time in which they were constantly in danger, so the tranquility of the dream caught him off guard. Hell, he wasn’t even sure they’d win the war most days. Why did his mind consider that a good time now? Just because of the spectacular sex they were having? It spoke volumes about where his mind was at.
After everything Bucky had been through, how could Steve lie beside him in bed at night, fantasizing about getting his dick wet with his younger self in some forgotten place half a century ago, wallowing in self-pity instead of helping him pick up the pieces?
Steve wasn’t the fucking victim here just because their bedroom activities were currently on hold. Bucky was.
Comforting him first and then reminiscing about the things they used to have all night wasn’t right.
Of course, he had meant it when he told Bucky that he’d love him either way, but the simple fact was: It wasn’t always easy. Steve missed being together without the constant reminder of trauma hanging over their heads but of course, that didn’t let him off the hook. If his enhanced libido was giving him an especially hard time, so what? He just had to suck it up and deal with it in private like every other red-blooded American until Bucky was ready.
The waiting was familiar. In the beginning, after he had been a nameless assassin without agency for so long, Bucky’s relationship with sex had been a little rocky, to say the least. They’d tortured him in the most twisted ways, used his body against him, made him associate pain and humiliation with pleasure and affection until he wanted nothing to do with it anymore. Steve had seen the files and made himself skim through all the horribly detailed reports no matter how vile because he had to know.
There was a total of three-hundred and seventy-six individual folders of what they had done to him (and what they had forced him to do to others) from his time with the Soviets alone. Steve told himself that he wasn’t going to turn this into an endless guilt-trip, that he was doing it was to formulate a game plan, so he knew how to help. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for Bucky to live through these things first hand only to be spit out into the world again, too scared to confide in others and unable to depend on anyone but himself to fix the problem.
Facing that, Steve had realized that if he ever wanted them to be together in that way again, he could not screw up when it came to Bucky, couldn’t ever let himself blur the lines of consent even a little bit.
Steve had been there for all the steps of Bucky’s arduous recovery. Especially the unpleasant ones. There was the total incomprehension of want and consent in the early days. The shame and extreme touch aversion which evolved into a chilling indifference and on to a desperate craving for violent, unsafe sex (Bucky had wanted Steve - or anyone really - to hurt and punish him at that time). When it got better eventually, Bucky started looking at sex like a hobby, something he was mildly curious about exploring - first with himself and then with Steve - and it was fun but it wasn’t all it could be. Finally, after about a year and a half (not that Steve was keeping track or anything), Bucky got what it meant to make love to another person.
It was beautiful. Steve was surprised by his own needs then, his own passion, that he had suppressed for so long to give Bucky enough room to breathe and to heal all parts of himself without pressure. He was unprepared for how good it could be when they were both in it for the same reason - for love.
Steve knew he could count himself lucky that Bucky had chosen him for that. That he had learned to trust him again after everything, to share his life with him, to touch and be touched without holding back.
The horrid gang rape hadn’t brought them all the way back to square one, and in a way, Steve was thankful for that, too, but it was still a huge setback. What had happened with the guard felt like something a different, an earlier, less recovered version of Bucky would do. The one that had wanted to feel all that pain and do something about it.
Steve hadn’t made the mistake to delude himself into believing that Bucky was ok by any means, but he was still shocked by how fast the situation had gotten out of control. It was frustrating. They had come so far, only to have a huge part of their progress destroyed by Hydra again. Bucky had been so happy here, so carefree. They’d both been so happy with their lives and Steve just wanted to get back to that, to share their home and their feelings for each other without Hydra casting a dark shadow over it. It wasn’t just the sex he missed, it was the intimacy that came with being together.
Sometimes, Steve wondered if he was being too careful. Maybe Bucky needed him to take charge, to be strong and assertive, to push back against whatever it was that had almost made him fuck that guard even if it was—
Bucky made a sudden, strangled noise in his sleep, distressed.
Another nightmare…
Steve opened his eyes and sighed. He rolled onto his side slowly, watching the back of Bucky’s head, a mop of dark unkempt hair, buried in a pillow. It was the only thing visible to Steve in the half-light.
“Hey, Buck? Hey there...”
Steve gently put his hand on his boyfriend’s stump under the blanket to nudge him awake, mindful not to grab the other man too hard. He’d made that mistake enough times not to want a repeat.
“Mmm... Wha—?” Bucky mumbled, voice rough like gravel, twisting and pulling away from Steve’s grip subconsciously.
“It’s alright, Buck. You were having a bad dream.”
Bucky stopped fighting. He turned around and blinked at him groggily, eyelashes sticking together.
“No... I...”
Steve could see the exact moment he remembered when and where he was and that what had happened with Mandlakhe the other day was real. It was in his eyes: The shame, and the guilt, a painful flash of complicated emotion before he shut down completely, eyes dropping away from Steve’s, throat working hard.
“Fuck...”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Steve said. “Not right now. Let’s just take it easy for a while. I could start by making breakfast for us and you could… I don’t know… Don’t you have to get up soon?”
Bucky rolled over with a low groan, put his back to Steve again, and pulled the sheets all the way over his head.
Fill: The Quiet Game (16/?)
Before he woke to the muted cawing of tropical sunbirds which had taken residence on their rooftop and were currently chirping away happily to greet the new day (with no regard for the human schedule whatsoever), Steve had been dreaming about Europe.
It had been a very nice dream, indeed. He came out it feeling so relaxed that - instead of facing Bucky and the complete mess they were currently in - he decided to keep his eyes closed for a little while longer. Steve had always been known for his special talent to sleep in any position, anywhere, no matter what time of day (even with a war going on around him). The red-ish glow of the morning sun which filtered in through the curtains couldn’t stop him from pretending to be back there either.
The dream hadn’t started with the fun part right away. Steve’s subconscious had modeled the deceptively detailed events after a real mission Bucky and him had been on with the Howlies during the harsh Winter of ’43.
They had stormed a medieval castle, a remote Hydra fortress in every sense of the word after 3 weeks of freezing their asses off in the cold. By then, every team member on their own had discovered that war wasn’t all that glamorous, but this particular mission had been a real test of endurance.
Their meticulous planning and tireless surveillance work had been worth it in the end. After only 20 minutes of silent infiltration followed by not-so-silent heavy artillery fire, victory was in their grasp. The few remaining Hydra soldiers either surrendered or killed themselves by biting on hidden Cyanide capsules implanted in their teeth. Or so they thought.
Knowing what Bucky had suffered at Azzano, Steve couldn’t bring himself to care. A dead Nazi was a dead Nazi after all.
The Howling Commandos’ efficient capture of such an important enemy stronghold would have counted as an all-around success by the books, too, if Bucky hadn’t been shot in the leg by the last entrenched enemy sniper on their way out.
Of course, it was hardly Bucky’s fault that he got shot (not that anyone would have breathed a word about it and lived to tell the tale) but his resulting foul mood turned out in Steve’s favor nonetheless.
The dream had skipped right passed the initial panic he had felt over Bucky’s bleeding wound in the field and brought Steve back to his own personal highlight of the tour:
He had never gotten to fully appreciate the beautiful countryside of France until the whole team was stuck in that charming little bed and breakfast hotel with the chipped green doors that locked from the inside so Bucky could recover.
Somehow, after three sheer endless days of bed rest in his separated room with fluffed pillows and proper heating, Bucky had gotten it into his head that fucking Steve on every available surface was the only sure way to take out his frustration. Not that he minded. No, sir. After all, Steve had gotten spectacularly laid that week.
In fact, he was so distracted by his countless orgasms that he didn’t even notice Bucky’s leg wound healing much faster than normal. A ridiculous oversight in retrospect that could have spared them so much pain if he’d just paid a little more attention...
Steve tried to get back to that wonderful, relaxed feeling from the dream instead of getting riled up about his past mistakes again but it was hard not to come crashing back into the present.
It took him several minutes and intense concentration to get back on track. The first thing Steve did, once he was fully immersed in the dream-memory of the lovely room with the green door again, was to focus on his senses.
His eidetic memory conjured the smell of cigarette smoke in the air that would cling to their clothes like a third lover without doing anything to hide the stink of sex and sweat. They had to take turns, sneaking out into the hall and down to the bathroom.
The Howlies probably suspected there was something going on between the two of them that went beyond brotherly affection long before they dared to show their faces downstairs, two nights and days later, looking hopelessly besotted, but it hardly mattered on a grand scale when every day could be their last.
Neither Steve nor Bucky would have risked getting blue carded out of the army lightly, especially since Steve had become some sort of national icon of American pride and virtue, but they’d decided to make the most of the time they had left.
What came after the war - if there was an after as Bucky constantly stressed - was uncertain. As long as they weren’t neglecting their duties to be together and stayed discreet, they could count on their team to keep the secret.
Steve hadn’t expected to wish himself back to a time in which they were constantly in danger, so the tranquility of the dream caught him off guard. Hell, he wasn’t even sure they’d win the war most days. Why did his mind consider that a good time now? Just because of the spectacular sex they were having? It spoke volumes about where his mind was at.
After everything Bucky had been through, how could Steve lie beside him in bed at night, fantasizing about getting his dick wet with his younger self in some forgotten place half a century ago, wallowing in self-pity instead of helping him pick up the pieces?
Steve wasn’t the fucking victim here just because their bedroom activities were currently on hold. Bucky was.
Comforting him first and then reminiscing about the things they used to have all night wasn’t right.
Of course, he had meant it when he told Bucky that he’d love him either way, but the simple fact was: It wasn’t always easy. Steve missed being together without the constant reminder of trauma hanging over their heads but of course, that didn’t let him off the hook. If his enhanced libido was giving him an especially hard time, so what? He just had to suck it up and deal with it in private like every other red-blooded American until Bucky was ready.
The waiting was familiar. In the beginning, after he had been a nameless assassin without agency for so long, Bucky’s relationship with sex had been a little rocky, to say the least. They’d tortured him in the most twisted ways, used his body against him, made him associate pain and humiliation with pleasure and affection until he wanted nothing to do with it anymore. Steve had seen the files and made himself skim through all the horribly detailed reports no matter how vile because he had to know.
There was a total of three-hundred and seventy-six individual folders of what they had done to him (and what they had forced him to do to others) from his time with the Soviets alone. Steve told himself that he wasn’t going to turn this into an endless guilt-trip, that he was doing it was to formulate a game plan, so he knew how to help. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for Bucky to live through these things first hand only to be spit out into the world again, too scared to confide in others and unable to depend on anyone but himself to fix the problem.
Facing that, Steve had realized that if he ever wanted them to be together in that way again, he could not screw up when it came to Bucky, couldn’t ever let himself blur the lines of consent even a little bit.
Steve had been there for all the steps of Bucky’s arduous recovery. Especially the unpleasant ones. There was the total incomprehension of want and consent in the early days. The shame and extreme touch aversion which evolved into a chilling indifference and on to a desperate craving for violent, unsafe sex (Bucky had wanted Steve - or anyone really - to hurt and punish him at that time). When it got better eventually, Bucky started looking at sex like a hobby, something he was mildly curious about exploring - first with himself and then with Steve - and it was fun but it wasn’t all it could be. Finally, after about a year and a half (not that Steve was keeping track or anything), Bucky got what it meant to make love to another person.
It was beautiful. Steve was surprised by his own needs then, his own passion, that he had suppressed for so long to give Bucky enough room to breathe and to heal all parts of himself without pressure. He was unprepared for how good it could be when they were both in it for the same reason - for love.
Steve knew he could count himself lucky that Bucky had chosen him for that. That he had learned to trust him again after everything, to share his life with him, to touch and be touched without holding back.
The horrid gang rape hadn’t brought them all the way back to square one, and in a way, Steve was thankful for that, too, but it was still a huge setback. What had happened with the guard felt like something a different, an earlier, less recovered version of Bucky would do. The one that had wanted to feel all that pain and do something about it.
Steve hadn’t made the mistake to delude himself into believing that Bucky was ok by any means, but he was still shocked by how fast the situation had gotten out of control. It was frustrating. They had come so far, only to have a huge part of their progress destroyed by Hydra again. Bucky had been so happy here, so carefree. They’d both been so happy with their lives and Steve just wanted to get back to that, to share their home and their feelings for each other without Hydra casting a dark shadow over it. It wasn’t just the sex he missed, it was the intimacy that came with being together.
Sometimes, Steve wondered if he was being too careful. Maybe Bucky needed him to take charge, to be strong and assertive, to push back against whatever it was that had almost made him fuck that guard even if it was—
Bucky made a sudden, strangled noise in his sleep, distressed.
Another nightmare…
Steve opened his eyes and sighed. He rolled onto his side slowly, watching the back of Bucky’s head, a mop of dark unkempt hair, buried in a pillow. It was the only thing visible to Steve in the half-light.
“Hey, Buck? Hey there...”
Steve gently put his hand on his boyfriend’s stump under the blanket to nudge him awake, mindful not to grab the other man too hard. He’d made that mistake enough times not to want a repeat.
“Mmm... Wha—?” Bucky mumbled, voice rough like gravel, twisting and pulling away from Steve’s grip subconsciously.
“It’s alright, Buck. You were having a bad dream.”
Bucky stopped fighting. He turned around and blinked at him groggily, eyelashes sticking together.
“No... I...”
Steve could see the exact moment he remembered when and where he was and that what had happened with Mandlakhe the other day was real. It was in his eyes: The shame, and the guilt, a painful flash of complicated emotion before he shut down completely, eyes dropping away from Steve’s, throat working hard.
“Fuck...”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Steve said. “Not right now. Let’s just take it easy for a while. I could start by making breakfast for us and you could… I don’t know… Don’t you have to get up soon?”
Bucky rolled over with a low groan, put his back to Steve again, and pulled the sheets all the way over his head.
“...No.”