[Sorry for the delay. The flu, ugh. Anyway, this turned out not quite what I had in mind despite also being way long, and not as dark or kinky or dialogue-heavy as it was originally intended, but my hope is that it doesn’t come off mechanical and flat and that there’s something in the way of characterization amidst all of the assplay. That’s the dream, right there: assplay with substance and feelings. And cumbersome trashpasts. Even though this is kind of Febreze-drenched trash with a pine tree air freshener hanging off of it.]
Sex these days comes with a lot of rules. Some of them are longstanding and obvious, some basic courtesies, some personal quirks that still apply after seventy years. The biggest change, honestly, really boils down to one rule, and it’s not as big a paradigm shift as it could be: Steve doesn’t touch Bucky unless Bucky says so, and Bucky rarely says so.
He’s always preferred to be in control, anyway, and he’s had Steve well trained in this since 1937. The first time Steve pulled Bucky’s hand to the back of his neck and curled his fingers down so hard that Bucky’s nails bit into Steve’s skin, pushed his head back in a show of backing off until Bucky took the hint and shoved his face down harder on his cock … well, that was an eye-opener. And they’ve worked well together since. But whereas that type of thing used to be a big part of their lives, it was by no means the only way they experienced each other, and maybe that’s the real change.
Now it’s the only way Bucky can manage to stay in the room without crawling out of his skin.
Still, he doesn’t let that stop him from enjoying himself. There are layers to this, always have been, and even back in the day he didn’t always get off, didn’t even always get very hard. It was something Steve needed more than Bucky, even though Bucky was happy to give it to him.
It’s not lost on him that Steve’s the one indulging him now. But Steve isn’t just a man of action, of doing and moving and influencing; he’s also an impish little shit who hates being told what he can and can’t do, and being acted upon in this way is a challenge he’ll rise to when Bucky needs it.
He skims his fingertips down the smooth line of Steve’s back, held rigid and upright by the heavy reminder tethered near his neck and seated in his ass. Bucky was skeptical of the hook initially, but he has to admit that Steve looks damn nice this way, ankles cuffed to one spreader bar, wrists cuffed to another behind his neck, and a simple rope running between the o-ring of the hook and the wrist bar. The metal gleams between his cheeks in stark contrast to the dark matte finish of the bars and the rope he picked up in a sex toy store (which he likes because it’s an absurd purple color that he probably wouldn’t have actually used in the commission of a crime unless he’d absolutely had to; none of this looks like the submission he remembers, none of it sterile and intimidating and familiar, but rather aesthetically pleasing and almost delicate-looking on such a strong man. It’s as far from the mag-cuffs as he can get short of the fuzzy pink handcuffs that Steve had given one look and promptly stuck in an out of the way drawer never to be seen again). Every time he so much as flexes his fingers in the cuffs, it tugs on the rope, which tugs on the hook, which forces him to shift his posture again.
All of this has the effect of keeping him incredibly still so that Bucky can do as he pleases to him. And he does.
Bucky drags his thumbnail down the side of Steve’s neck, narrowing his eyes in curiosity. “What does it feel like?”
“Pressure,” Steve says carefully, keeping his chest from raising more than it has to. “Like … a couple of fingers spread wide.”
“Good.” He likes making Steve tell him how he feels, make him articulate the ways and whims and needs of his body. It forces Steve to focus inward and project it back out; makes him forget that he can hear the couple down the hall laughing and the cars down on the street, people down in the alley and, most of all, the pesky cellphone that Bucky leaves in the bathroom every time they do this. It shorts out the mental calculations he’s always making. Steve needs to be fully immersed in a way that Bucky doesn’t allow himself; for Bucky, distance makes the heart grow fonder than any hand down his pants would.
They’re not exactly getting the same thing out of this, but the beauty of it is that they don’t need to. Steve doesn’t really need the toys, just wants to feel well-used, wants to be put in his place, sometimes wants to feel out of his skin and protected and loved regardless depending on the day, but Bucky needs compliance, and sometimes, no matter his trust in Steve, no matter his love for him, his word isn’t enough. In the heat of the moment, some nights, he needs the visual reminder: Steve’s hands stay where Bucky puts them, and in exchange Steve gets to beg and plead and run his mouth uninhibited. When Bucky’s not filling the silence for him, that is.
“You know, I could be touching myself right now,” Bucky says, standing behind Steve just close enough for Steve to feel his looming presence but not close enough to tell what he’s doing. Or not doing. Steve stays facing forward, eyes on the chest of drawers that holds their ever-expanding collection of gadgets and tools. “One hand pinching a nipple – know how you feel about those, sweetheart, and they’re tight for you – one hand cupping my balls.”
“Which hand?”
“Dealer’s choice.” Bucky grins and shakes his head, then blows down the sweat on the back of Steve’s neck to get him to jerk the rope a little and listen to him grunt. “I shaved ‘em yesterday just for the hell of it. Sam was right; everything does look bigger. You wanna see ‘em, lift one with your tongue and feel how nice and smooth they are?”
“Always,” Steve says, “want you any way. Want to touch every part of you, don’t care what. You could sleep in a muddy ditch an’ I’d suck you clean. Miss your smell.”
“You know you can’t have me, though, right? ‘Cause you try so hard to be good, don’t you, Steve, and you’re just never there.” Bucky exaggerates a sigh. His voice is soft; a pillow with the hard outline of a pistol tucked beneath. “You’ve gotta earn it back. I know you can do it, baby. Maybe by the time you get it right I’ll still be young enough to have a hard-on. I have hope. But there’s always room for improvement, right?”
Steve snorts.
Bucky tugs on the hair at his nape, drawing his head back slightly in one hard pull. “Next sound I hear outta you better be shaped like ‘please’, tough guy.”
Looking down at him, Steve’s eyes are closed, the corners of his mouth turned up in a grin but relaxing quickly into something anticipatory. “Then you better make me scream. I haven’t behaved all night, Buck. You gonna show me what to do? Get down here with me and make me beg? ‘Cause I want it, and I’ll do anything, Buck. I wanna suck the life out of you, stuff you down my throat ‘til I can’t breathe and forget I’m even supposed to, bite you in that spot you love, fucking taste you—”
Bucky’s other hand twists around to Steve’s neck so it’s circled all the way around in Bucky’s grip, and it’s loose, but a meaningful squeeze is all he needs. “I don’t even need my cock to take your breath away, baby. You’re easy.” He tucks back a loose hair that’s fallen over Steve’s forehead, stroking his face briefly with his thumb. Then he squeezes again. “But that’s another night. I think I’ll have your attention either way.”
One last squeeze before he shoves Steve’s head forward and lets go, as if pushing him away. Steve sucks in a tight breath; Bucky can see the hook stretching him open, forming a new, inviting shape from Bucky’s view, and a hard uncompromising pressure for Steve. He thinks about dropping down and blowing a little at Steve’s insides, but he hasn’t worked up to that yet tonight, and the hook has settled back into place besides. Steve is extra still now, catching his breath, but his chest is almost vibrating with the effort, little tremors and the occasional involuntary shudder that sets off a weak moan.
“I know you want me,” he says, back to playing the enticer, back to coaxing Steve in his direction for once, his full attention on Bucky’s siren call and not on a dozen other things that pull him away from Bucky all the time and keep Bucky running after him. This is Bucky’s night. And even if he can’t give Steve everything he wants, the guy has a damn fine imagination. Bucky doesn’t see the harm in the truth of it: Steve wants him bad.
Steve also likes games, and challenges, and proving himself. In 1937 Bucky bet Steve that he couldn’t stay on the edge of coming for a whole hour. Steve grit his teeth and clawed at the towel under him and bit his fingernails into his own face, heaved his damp chest and snarled at Bucky to not so much as smirk at him, but by God the skinny bastard had done it. And then come like a freight train almost as soon as the clock struck three in the morning and his hour was up.
“But that’s life, Steve,” he continues, yanking his zipper down just for the noise, just so Steve can flinch at the piercing sound in the quiet room and shift a little on his knees. He slides it back up almost immediately after, but slowly, softly, smothering the sound with his words. Steve probably hears it anyway, but the message is clear. “We can’t all get what we want.”
Steve’s not a settler – would reach for the stars if it interested him – and that one always gets his hackles up in such a pretty way. But he’s playing at being good, at behaving, at agreeing, so he doesn’t answer.
Bucky kisses the top of his head. Then he strips off his shirt and throws it aside. Steve is good and doesn’t look in the direction it falls.
“Got to work back to where I was before your disruption. I was almost half-hard, too,” he lies. He lays his palm against the front of his jeans (armor by any other name), not for the touch, but maybe to remember what it was like. He runs his finger down the seam of the fabric, flicking hard.
An unpleasant jolt rolls down his spine. He yanks his hand away and rests it over his abdomen instead. Safe territory.
“Maybe I’m palming my tits. You can suck those if you’re very, very good. Know you need your lips on something to feel satisfied. Want you to imagine that, about your mouth on my chest. You think about that, and I’ll just stay back here and play with ‘em myself.” He leans in closer, still not moving his hand from its standby position, and fake-moans a little in Steve’s ear.
Steve’s moan is real. He never fakes. He’s never theatrical in bed the way he puts up a front the rest of the time; here he’s stripped down, nothing but studs on which Bucky can hang just about anything.
He kisses Steve’s shoulder, tongues a wet line in toward his neck, but he can’t compete with the bar, so when he can’t go any further he drags his teeth back the other way. He leisurely takes a moment to admire the red lines that spring up across Steve’s skin, smiles, and does it again. Then he wets his fingertips and drags them down Steve’s side, unprotected and bared with his arms held up rigidly by his head. He draws them back up the same path nails-first this time. He’s downright ticklish, sometimes, when you wind him up right. Even his prodigious concentration can’t stop the full body shiver all of these light touches elicit; not from a body trained to expect hard blows. And the rope jerks again even harder.
Fill: Tightrope (Bucky is a stone-top) [1/5]
Sex these days comes with a lot of rules. Some of them are longstanding and obvious, some basic courtesies, some personal quirks that still apply after seventy years. The biggest change, honestly, really boils down to one rule, and it’s not as big a paradigm shift as it could be: Steve doesn’t touch Bucky unless Bucky says so, and Bucky rarely says so.
He’s always preferred to be in control, anyway, and he’s had Steve well trained in this since 1937. The first time Steve pulled Bucky’s hand to the back of his neck and curled his fingers down so hard that Bucky’s nails bit into Steve’s skin, pushed his head back in a show of backing off until Bucky took the hint and shoved his face down harder on his cock … well, that was an eye-opener. And they’ve worked well together since. But whereas that type of thing used to be a big part of their lives, it was by no means the only way they experienced each other, and maybe that’s the real change.
Now it’s the only way Bucky can manage to stay in the room without crawling out of his skin.
Still, he doesn’t let that stop him from enjoying himself. There are layers to this, always have been, and even back in the day he didn’t always get off, didn’t even always get very hard. It was something Steve needed more than Bucky, even though Bucky was happy to give it to him.
It’s not lost on him that Steve’s the one indulging him now. But Steve isn’t just a man of action, of doing and moving and influencing; he’s also an impish little shit who hates being told what he can and can’t do, and being acted upon in this way is a challenge he’ll rise to when Bucky needs it.
He skims his fingertips down the smooth line of Steve’s back, held rigid and upright by the heavy reminder tethered near his neck and seated in his ass. Bucky was skeptical of the hook initially, but he has to admit that Steve looks damn nice this way, ankles cuffed to one spreader bar, wrists cuffed to another behind his neck, and a simple rope running between the o-ring of the hook and the wrist bar. The metal gleams between his cheeks in stark contrast to the dark matte finish of the bars and the rope he picked up in a sex toy store (which he likes because it’s an absurd purple color that he probably wouldn’t have actually used in the commission of a crime unless he’d absolutely had to; none of this looks like the submission he remembers, none of it sterile and intimidating and familiar, but rather aesthetically pleasing and almost delicate-looking on such a strong man. It’s as far from the mag-cuffs as he can get short of the fuzzy pink handcuffs that Steve had given one look and promptly stuck in an out of the way drawer never to be seen again). Every time he so much as flexes his fingers in the cuffs, it tugs on the rope, which tugs on the hook, which forces him to shift his posture again.
All of this has the effect of keeping him incredibly still so that Bucky can do as he pleases to him. And he does.
Bucky drags his thumbnail down the side of Steve’s neck, narrowing his eyes in curiosity. “What does it feel like?”
“Pressure,” Steve says carefully, keeping his chest from raising more than it has to. “Like … a couple of fingers spread wide.”
“Good.” He likes making Steve tell him how he feels, make him articulate the ways and whims and needs of his body. It forces Steve to focus inward and project it back out; makes him forget that he can hear the couple down the hall laughing and the cars down on the street, people down in the alley and, most of all, the pesky cellphone that Bucky leaves in the bathroom every time they do this. It shorts out the mental calculations he’s always making. Steve needs to be fully immersed in a way that Bucky doesn’t allow himself; for Bucky, distance makes the heart grow fonder than any hand down his pants would.
They’re not exactly getting the same thing out of this, but the beauty of it is that they don’t need to. Steve doesn’t really need the toys, just wants to feel well-used, wants to be put in his place, sometimes wants to feel out of his skin and protected and loved regardless depending on the day, but Bucky needs compliance, and sometimes, no matter his trust in Steve, no matter his love for him, his word isn’t enough. In the heat of the moment, some nights, he needs the visual reminder: Steve’s hands stay where Bucky puts them, and in exchange Steve gets to beg and plead and run his mouth uninhibited. When Bucky’s not filling the silence for him, that is.
“You know, I could be touching myself right now,” Bucky says, standing behind Steve just close enough for Steve to feel his looming presence but not close enough to tell what he’s doing. Or not doing. Steve stays facing forward, eyes on the chest of drawers that holds their ever-expanding collection of gadgets and tools. “One hand pinching a nipple – know how you feel about those, sweetheart, and they’re tight for you – one hand cupping my balls.”
“Which hand?”
“Dealer’s choice.” Bucky grins and shakes his head, then blows down the sweat on the back of Steve’s neck to get him to jerk the rope a little and listen to him grunt. “I shaved ‘em yesterday just for the hell of it. Sam was right; everything does look bigger. You wanna see ‘em, lift one with your tongue and feel how nice and smooth they are?”
“Always,” Steve says, “want you any way. Want to touch every part of you, don’t care what. You could sleep in a muddy ditch an’ I’d suck you clean. Miss your smell.”
“You know you can’t have me, though, right? ‘Cause you try so hard to be good, don’t you, Steve, and you’re just never there.” Bucky exaggerates a sigh. His voice is soft; a pillow with the hard outline of a pistol tucked beneath. “You’ve gotta earn it back. I know you can do it, baby. Maybe by the time you get it right I’ll still be young enough to have a hard-on. I have hope. But there’s always room for improvement, right?”
Steve snorts.
Bucky tugs on the hair at his nape, drawing his head back slightly in one hard pull. “Next sound I hear outta you better be shaped like ‘please’, tough guy.”
Looking down at him, Steve’s eyes are closed, the corners of his mouth turned up in a grin but relaxing quickly into something anticipatory. “Then you better make me scream. I haven’t behaved all night, Buck. You gonna show me what to do? Get down here with me and make me beg? ‘Cause I want it, and I’ll do anything, Buck. I wanna suck the life out of you, stuff you down my throat ‘til I can’t breathe and forget I’m even supposed to, bite you in that spot you love, fucking taste you—”
Bucky’s other hand twists around to Steve’s neck so it’s circled all the way around in Bucky’s grip, and it’s loose, but a meaningful squeeze is all he needs. “I don’t even need my cock to take your breath away, baby. You’re easy.” He tucks back a loose hair that’s fallen over Steve’s forehead, stroking his face briefly with his thumb. Then he squeezes again. “But that’s another night. I think I’ll have your attention either way.”
One last squeeze before he shoves Steve’s head forward and lets go, as if pushing him away. Steve sucks in a tight breath; Bucky can see the hook stretching him open, forming a new, inviting shape from Bucky’s view, and a hard uncompromising pressure for Steve. He thinks about dropping down and blowing a little at Steve’s insides, but he hasn’t worked up to that yet tonight, and the hook has settled back into place besides. Steve is extra still now, catching his breath, but his chest is almost vibrating with the effort, little tremors and the occasional involuntary shudder that sets off a weak moan.
“I know you want me,” he says, back to playing the enticer, back to coaxing Steve in his direction for once, his full attention on Bucky’s siren call and not on a dozen other things that pull him away from Bucky all the time and keep Bucky running after him. This is Bucky’s night. And even if he can’t give Steve everything he wants, the guy has a damn fine imagination. Bucky doesn’t see the harm in the truth of it: Steve wants him bad.
Steve also likes games, and challenges, and proving himself. In 1937 Bucky bet Steve that he couldn’t stay on the edge of coming for a whole hour. Steve grit his teeth and clawed at the towel under him and bit his fingernails into his own face, heaved his damp chest and snarled at Bucky to not so much as smirk at him, but by God the skinny bastard had done it. And then come like a freight train almost as soon as the clock struck three in the morning and his hour was up.
“But that’s life, Steve,” he continues, yanking his zipper down just for the noise, just so Steve can flinch at the piercing sound in the quiet room and shift a little on his knees. He slides it back up almost immediately after, but slowly, softly, smothering the sound with his words. Steve probably hears it anyway, but the message is clear. “We can’t all get what we want.”
Steve’s not a settler – would reach for the stars if it interested him – and that one always gets his hackles up in such a pretty way. But he’s playing at being good, at behaving, at agreeing, so he doesn’t answer.
Bucky kisses the top of his head. Then he strips off his shirt and throws it aside. Steve is good and doesn’t look in the direction it falls.
“Got to work back to where I was before your disruption. I was almost half-hard, too,” he lies. He lays his palm against the front of his jeans (armor by any other name), not for the touch, but maybe to remember what it was like. He runs his finger down the seam of the fabric, flicking hard.
An unpleasant jolt rolls down his spine. He yanks his hand away and rests it over his abdomen instead. Safe territory.
“Maybe I’m palming my tits. You can suck those if you’re very, very good. Know you need your lips on something to feel satisfied. Want you to imagine that, about your mouth on my chest. You think about that, and I’ll just stay back here and play with ‘em myself.” He leans in closer, still not moving his hand from its standby position, and fake-moans a little in Steve’s ear.
Steve’s moan is real. He never fakes. He’s never theatrical in bed the way he puts up a front the rest of the time; here he’s stripped down, nothing but studs on which Bucky can hang just about anything.
He kisses Steve’s shoulder, tongues a wet line in toward his neck, but he can’t compete with the bar, so when he can’t go any further he drags his teeth back the other way. He leisurely takes a moment to admire the red lines that spring up across Steve’s skin, smiles, and does it again. Then he wets his fingertips and drags them down Steve’s side, unprotected and bared with his arms held up rigidly by his head. He draws them back up the same path nails-first this time. He’s downright ticklish, sometimes, when you wind him up right. Even his prodigious concentration can’t stop the full body shiver all of these light touches elicit; not from a body trained to expect hard blows. And the rope jerks again even harder.