Chapter Text
In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
And where you invest your love, you invest your life
— “Awake My Soul” by Mumford & Sons
At the last possible moment, a metal arm grabs Steve by the front of his uniform, preventing him from falling back. A fall like that would have been fatal even for a super soldier. Still, the jump had been worth it. The edge of the building bites into the soles of his boots. Steve doesn’t look down, only forward.
They’ve been playing this game for weeks now. The Winter Soldier would attempt to kill Fury, and Captain America would be there to either chase him off or hunt him down, preventing the attack altogether. It’s exhausting, is what it is, but Steve can’t help the joy of seeing Bucky alive flooding his system every time. This insane, misguided hope he holds onto that the Winter Soldier will inevitably remember him.
Some might find it unhealthy. Some at SHIELD actually do find it unhealthy, and very vocally so. But Fury indulges him for no other reason than the fact that Steve saved his life that first time. Or, perhaps, Fury just knows that Steve can’t focus on anything else now that he knows who the Winter Soldier is. If you can’t suppress the rebellion, lead it, as they say. So, this is Steve’s sole assignment for the foreseeable future.
He gives it his maximum effort. If there’s anyone who knows how to be relentless, it’s Steve. God, he’d leaped across the street—a jump that’d been barely possible even for someone like him. His only thought had been that he couldn’t let the Winter Soldier get away once more.
That, and the excitement of being so close to him. It fills Steve with a dangerous thrill, propelling him forward again and again. Stupidly, carelessly.
The metal arm fisting the front of his uniform is the only thing between him and death.
This shouldn’t make him feel so alive.
“Buck, please,” he whispers, still out of breath.
The Winter Soldier doesn’t recognize him—he never does. At first. It might be wishful thinking; it’s hard to judge with dark tactical goggles and a mask covering two-thirds of his face. Steve knows that he of all people can’t be trusted with this, but he’s adamant that by the end of each encounter, there’s a bit more Bucky in the Winter Soldier than vice versa.
So he waits. After all, the Winter Soldier has saved him from a lethal fall. It isn’t a mistake, or chance, or wishful thinking this time. No, this is very real, because Steve can feel certain death breathing down his neck as the sounds of the street roll up the side of the building. His shield hangs heavily from his arm, his fingers still holding onto the straps.
The Winter Soldier turns his head a fraction toward the shield, clearly assessing the threat. By now he should know not to underestimate it. However, Steve never attacks first, he only ever retaliates. And he certainly isn’t stupid or crazy enough to attack while in a position like this. He licks his lips, breathes out, and does his best to look as non-threatening as possible.
The Winter Soldier tilts his head just a bit.
A part of Steve, the very responsible and sane part, wishes that it didn’t excite him so much. The Winter Soldier’s eyes are impossible to read behind his tactical goggles. However, this behavior looks like something not entirely hostile but simply curious. Still holding Steve over the edge as if he weighs nothing, the Winter Soldier drops his sniper rifle to the side. It lands right next to its case, clattering. No sharpshooter in their right mind would do that without a good reason.
And then the Winter Soldier does something that he's never done before, and if Steve told someone about it, nobody would believe him.
He reaches out and brushes Steve’s bottom lip with his thumb in a slow and gentle caress.
Steve is afraid to breathe. Everything in him screams to grab the Winter Soldier's other, metal arm and pull himself onto the roof. This urge is drowned by the cascade of shivers that run all over his body. Bucky’s touch is electrifying, the same as it had been all those years ago.
Steve lets his mouth go slack. He’s not exactly inviting anything to happen, but he isn’t going to resist either. He’d very much like to stop being suspended over feet upon feet of nothing but air, but hey. If this is what it takes to help Bucky remember, he can do this for as long as needed.
The slow drag of the Winter Soldier’s thumb across his lips makes Steve’s mind short-circuit.
The mask and tactical goggles are dispassionate. It’s torture, not knowing whether this does anything for the Winter Soldier. Especially when this little gesture undoes Steve so completely. He forces himself to stay calm and collected. To breathe evenly, inhale on one-two-three, then exhale on one-two-three. As if this is nothing out of the ordinary. Completely normal. He does it every night.
He used to. Not every night, but a lot. Let Bucky slide his fingers into his mouth, agonizingly slow. Swirl his tongue around them, licking, tasting. It’s like a reflex when the Winter Soldier does it now. Steve wraps his lips around his thumb and laps at its pad with his tongue. It’s amazing how well he controls the rest of his body and how impossible it is to control his mouth right now. This is the last thing he should be doing.
Yet neither one of them pulls away.
The Winter Soldier slowly tilts his head to the other shoulder, as if mesmerized by his finger rhythmically sliding in and out of Steve’s mouth. And Steve is, well, a bit hazy on what his mission is supposed to be at this point, really. Does it matter? He closes his eyes, grasping at the remains of his lucidity, but it easily evades him. There isn’t a single coherent thought in his mind. Only the sensation of the Winter Soldier’s thumb pushing past his lips.
Steve hasn’t done anything like this for a long time, and his body just responds, whether he wants it or not. It lights up, the heat steadily rising, engulfing him. His cock is hot and heavy, straining against the fabric of his uniform. And from what? A finger moving in his mouth?
Bucky used to have this effect on him. Still does, apparently.
Writing a report about this encounter is going to be a headache.
The Winter Soldier drags his thumb out of Steve’s mouth, over his bottom lip, over his chin. Steve blinks, alarmed at the sensation of a warm palm pressed against his neck, but it’s not strangling him. It's just laying there, feeling his frantic pulse beating beneath the skin. Steve pants. Oh, what he wouldn’t give to see the Winter Soldier’s face right about now.
“Aren’t you tired of holding me like this?” Steve rasps, not entirely sure what the response might be.
Metal arms don’t get tired, do they?
The Winter Soldier doesn’t grace him with an answer, although he pulls him a tiny bit closer. His silence unsettles Steve. He desperately wants to hear Bucky’s voice again and he’s willing to go far for it. Willing to beg if it comes to that. Wouldn’t it be great to hear something that doesn’t break his heart? Something that isn’t “who’s Bucky?”—the most devastating question known to humanity.
“Come on, talk to me,” Steve tries again.
Wrapping your hand around a soldier’s throat is a very bad idea, and it takes everything within Steve to stay still. To not fight back. This isn’t why he’s here, not to fight, not really. He licks his lips again, a slow deliberate gesture that used to drive Bucky crazy. Perhaps it still does. At least, the Winter Soldier’s chest visibly rises when he sucks in a silent breath. That’s good. That’s something. Maybe it’s not words that he should use, then.
Okay. Steve can work with that.
“Or don’t talk to me. You can just touch me. Whatever you like,” he offers, and a part of him is pretty sure this is the most insane, unhealthy, downright dumb idea he has ever had in his life. The kind of dumb that gets you killed. “Wherever. Would you like that?”
The Winter Soldier makes no move to pull him onto the roof. In fact, he doesn’t move at all, and Steve should say thanks to whoever designed his suit, because it holds up just fine.
For a moment he thinks it was a wild miscalculation on his part, something he’s been warned about multiple times by multiple people, including Natasha. “Do not think for a second that he’ll abandon his mission for you,” she'd said. “You’re a nobody to him.” So, this is the moment of truth.
Is he a nobody to the Winter Soldier?
It would be easy to kill Steve with either hand now. If the Winter Soldier let go of his uniform, Steve would fall to his death. If the Winter Soldier choked him, he’d die from lack of air. But if the Winter Soldier didn’t do either of these things—well, Steve doesn’t even know what he’d do then. Hope he’s not dreaming, perhaps.
His heart flutters in his chest as one moment passes after another. The Winter Soldier takes time to consider what to do. His head moves almost imperceptibly as his gaze rakes over Steve’s body. Normally, he does it to check for weapons or to judge his opponent’s fighting prowess. It’s either calculating or threatening.
Who knows what is going through his head right now.
The Winter Soldier moves his fingers down the column of Steve’s throat. He splays his palm over Steve’s collarbones, but doesn’t stop there. His hand continues traveling lower and lower, although he doesn’t look down. He must be looking right into Steve’s eyes, if the angle is of any indication. It’s almost as if he’s more interested in his reaction than in anything else.
The fabric of the uniform is too thick for Steve to feel the light touch, but the sheer thought of the Winter Soldier opting for touching out of all the available choices is enough. Steve swallows hard, not even trying to chase the dirty images from his head. Neither does he try to hide the way his body reacts. No, the Winter Soldier has to see it all. Words lie. Bodies never do.
The Winter Soldier’s hand stops just shy of touching Steve’s cock through his uniform. Steve inhales sharply and forgets to exhale, waiting and desperately wishing not to be mistaken about this. God, please, let it be something. Some muscle memory, or body memory, or whatever memory the Winter Soldier has left in him, because all of this is so confusing for Steve, and he needs some hope to hold on to.
A sudden jolt of pleasure ripples through him. He hates how his body arches into the touch, hates his head tilting back, hates his eyes closing. A tingling feeling of danger from hanging over the street mixes with the heat rising from where the Winter Soldier strokes him through the fabric, pressing down with his entire palm. Strongly. Perfectly.
Bucky doesn’t remember his own name, but he remembers this.
Steve hates it so much.
His mind is too blurry to register the motion, and when it does, it’s too late. The metal arm has finally jerked him forward onto the roof. One step from the edge of it. Two steps. Steve stops flush against the Winter Soldier’s body, the metal arm pressing them together tightly. The other one takes the godforsaken mask off his face.
It’s the type of kiss that should’ve been a punch, but Steve’ll take it.
When they’re pressed against each other like this, he’ll take anything. The kiss burns on his lips. The Winter Soldier is hard too, Steve can feel it. It must be a dream, a memory violently resurfacing to wound him. His shield drops to the roof with a loud clank. He lifts his hands to grab at Bucky, to feel him in his arms. Solid. Alive.
The Winter Soldier allows it, and Steve hugs him for the first time in ages. It’s a loose, careful hug that quickly dissolves into Steve’s hands on the Winter Soldier’s hips. Steve doesn’t want it to look like he’s trying to do something funny. Like disarming the Winter Soldier. He knows there’s at least one knife hidden on his body.
Also, this way he can pull them closer together, and thank God he’s not hallucinating. There’s an unmistakable curve of Bucky’s hard cock beneath the fabric of his dark pants. Steve shamelessly grinds against it, and every move makes his body thrum with forgotten pleasure. He can only hope it does something similar to the Winter Soldier.
They keep kissing for what feels like an eternity and isn’t nearly enough. The Winter Soldier’s memory lacks many things, but apparently not his kissing skills. When they part, Steve is panting, his lips on fire, and his cock feels really uncomfortable in a suit that wasn’t designed for such activities. The Winter Soldier has a familiar hint of a smile on his face before he puts the mask back on.
He’s… pleased with himself?
“Jerk,” Steve says automatically, the many times when Bucky would leave him wanting like this for an entire day flashing before his eyes.
In one swift movement, the Winter Soldier punches him in the solar plexus with such force that Steve’s vision fills with white dots and darkens around the edges. He coughs, folding in half and pressing a palm against his stomach. Too early for that, then. Fair enough.
He’s half expecting the fight to continue and is already calculating the most efficient way to pick up his shield, but the next blow never comes. When Steve straightens and his vision clears, there’s no one else on the roof. The Winter Soldier has vanished like a ghost.
However, no ghost has ever left Steve with a boner and a desperate wish for more, so he’s sure this was all real. He picks up his shield and looks down at his pants, wondering what to do with himself now. The sounds of the DC nightlife filter in. The spring wind gently rustling the young leaves. The cars lazily moving on the street below. Someone walking in high heels.
Would it count as indecent exposure if he climbed off this building like this?
And even if it did, is there a police officer brave enough to tell him that?
Not that he expects people to inspect his crotch. But then again, modern culture is way less prudish than it used to be in his time. People discuss him on the Internet as it is, and some of those discussions would make the likes of Tony blush.
Steve huffs a short laugh and shakes his head. Jesus Christ, his life is a mess if these are the questions he has to consider. He adjusts himself in his pants, trying to find the least unpleasant and the most decent position for his unruly cock, and decides it’s late enough to risk it. People would be more concerned with Captain America suddenly dropping from the side of the building in front of them than with anything else. Or so he hopes.
It takes him a while to get to his apartment. It’s way past midnight at this point, and all the lust has already perished. What’s left is the tingling sensation between his lungs every time Steve thinks that it worked. It actually worked. For some time the Winter Soldier had been more interested in touching and kissing than in fighting him or killing Fury. While it’s not something Steve can or should include in his report, it’s a huge win. One he fully intends to build upon.