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His first mistake—because surely, if this is anyone’s cross to bear, it’s Steve’s—is leaving the door unlocked.
Almost nothing in his life is a secret anymore. He’s had his face plastered on billboards in enough detail to perfectly replicate it, right down to the pores in his skin and the faint mark of almost-freckles that dot his nose. He gets sent photos of people who dress up as him for halloween, or even just for fun, that Steve could actually mistake for himself if he didn’t know any better, recreating not only his suit but his civilian clothes to a startlingly accurate tee.
There’s a whole host of body language experts or lip reading professionals who post videos scrutinizing his every public move, fight analysts who claim that the way Steve throws a punch is directly correlated to his psyche. Which, yeah, it might be. But Steve doesn’t want to know about it.
Point is, there’s very little that is just for Steve. Two things, to be precise about it.
The first is that Steve once had a pair of women’s lingerie erroneously delivered to his apartment, kept it, discovered that the feel of lace against his skin activated some sort of acute, unbridled sleeper agent and subsequently developed a little bit of a complex about it.
And the second, of course, is his feelings for—
“Bucky,” Steve exhales exasperatedly, shoving his hands down to cover himself as the bathroom door swings open and bangs against the stopper.
Ever since Bucky’s come back and has moved in, Steve’s two things have become progressively more difficult to conceal. The feelings are easy enough, because Steve’s been hiding those for decades now.
But the lace stretched across Steve’s ass and hips speaks for itself.
Bucky blinks at his face, then drops his gaze to Steve’s cupped hands, then, mortifyingly, tilts his head as if to contemplate the whole scene for a minute.
The words are right on the tip of his tongue: get out, Bucky, this is private, for fuck’s sake. But he can’t make himself say them—not to Bucky, who’s only just now begun to trust him. It was a steep and long uphill and then a gaping drop into sudden, boundary-less certitude, but Steve would gladly take it.
Wishing desperately, though, that Bucky had walked in a minute earlier when he still had his pants on, Steve takes a steadying breath, ignores the way his face is burning, and clears his throat.
“Buck,” he says carefully. “You—why didn’t you knock?”
Bucky shrugs, still staring at his crotch. “Never knocked before.”
Well. He has a point there, unfortunately.
It’s just that Steve didn’t have anything to hide before.
Bucky doesn’t offer to start doing it from now on either. He doubles down instead, stomping his way right up to where Steve’s shifting on his feet and reaching out to touch the lace at his hip with two curious flesh fingers.
“This new?”
“Um. Sort of?” Steve says, because Bucky’s not just asking about the pair he’s currently wearing, is he? “It’s not—I don’t do it all the time, I just—”
Steve abruptly cuts himself off when Bucky’s fingers press in a little more, the others joining in until the flats of them all are rubbing against the lace right over where it meets Steve’s bare skin on his thigh.
As if the confusing knot of guilt in his stomach could get worse, Steve feels his cock twitch behind his hands at the gentle touch, at the intensity of Bucky’s appraisal. His body cares nothing about the things Steve knows or would prefer, only recognizes just how long he’s wanted this and is urging him to get with the program.
Bucky’s eyes flick up to his face again, inches away at this point, like he can see Steve’s thoughts broadcasted above his forehead. He stares then too, and it takes all of Steve’s steely Captain America doggedness not to back down or run.
“I like ‘em,” Bucky decides suddenly, and that’s the end of it.
He steps back and Steve’s chest expands with the space it puts between them, as if Bucky’s gentle fingers at his hip had been a foot pressed to his throat instead. He nods once, terse, and wets his lips.
“Thanks, Bucky.”
He mirrors Steve’s nod, then turns around and walks out. The door stays wide open behind him, and Steve stares at the space he’d left for a full minute afterward, half anticipating Bucky to randomly reappear.
He doesn’t though, so Steve very gingerly removes his hands from his dick and steps forward to nudge the door closed again, then makes himself go through the motions of showering as he’d first intended. He cleans himself methodically, clinically, like it’s still a part of the mission.
It’s the only way he can do it that doesn’t end with him rutting into his own fist until he comes, and that’s off limits until he can figure out a way to Bucky-proof his private spaces a little better.
But even then, Steve glances at the lace sitting on top of his dirty clothes and thinks, even if he were ever able to find a way to hide from Bucky, he’s not sure he’d want to.
+
The back of the quinjet is cramped and humid, Steve’s fingers and gloved palm stretched over his head to hold onto the ceiling rail. He’s let the others take the benches despite how badly he’d like to sit down at the moment, his injuries stitching themselves back together but his manners taking stubborn precedence.
Bucky’d been the last one on the jet, tailing the rest of them—tailing Steve, more specifically—at the rear. He hadn’t stopped even once the door had sealed shut, trailing behind him all the way to the back with the same silent, sniper-like concentration from the mission.
They’re face to face now, chests touching a bit each time the jet trembles with turbulence, and Steve wishes that his helmet didn’t still leave him so exposed.
He can hear the hum of the engine to the left of them, the other agents talking on the right. Bucky’s chest is rising and falling slow and even, and for once Steve can’t tell if it’s just a practiced veneer or genuine calm.
The jet tilts a little again, and Steve stumbles on his feet. Bucky’s hand locks firm over his hip to steady him.
And doesn’t let go.
His thumb presses there, right between two buckles on Steve’s suit where there’s only a single layer of fabric separating skin from skin, his breath falling hot over Steve’s cheek when his lips part.
“You wearin’ ‘em?”
Steve freezes, feeling x-ray transparent.
It’s hardly practical. Not even that comfortable. In the event of an emergency where they’d need to get him out of the suit, he’d have died of embarrassment surely, serum be damned.
But ever since Bucky first walked into that bathroom, he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about them. His occasionally has steadily increased to nearly all the time, the sometimes rough, sometimes featherlight whisper of lace against his skin almost as exhilarating as that hot press of fingers to his hip that Steve’s been chasing ever since.
He stares hard at the broad curve of Bucky’s shoulder and exhales slow, controlled.
“Yes.”
Bucky nods, sharp and approving, and takes his hand off Steve’s hip.
It follows him like a brand all the way back to the apartment, and he only barely waits until he hears Bucky’s bedroom door shut down the hall to shove a hand between his legs and replace the guilt with a few fleeting moments of pleasure instead.
+
Bucky’s had a long week.
Steve knows because he’s been there each time a boot stomps or a door slams, not in the usual way but in the on purpose sort of way, when Bucky is stressed or upset about something but doesn’t know how else to express it.
The most likely culprit is the rigorous testing they’ve had him doing lately. The mission he’d gone on with them before, which had gone nearly perfectly, was a test in and of itself which Bucky had passed with flying colors. But that only gave way to a litany of other sorts of assessments, appointments with specialists who wanted to poke and prod at Bucky’s arm, sit him on a couch and analyze his thought patterns, observe him the same way they’d observed Steve when he first came out of the ice. And if Steve hated it, he can only assume it’s about a thousand times worse for Bucky.
So he’s given Bucky everything he knows how; space, time, opportunities to talk if he wants to, or to spar out some of the tension by inviting him along for runs or workouts. He’d even made a secret trip to visit the therapist they’ve got Bucky seeing to ask if there’s anything he can do for support, but they’d informed him, quite clinically, that Steve wasn’t the issue. Which admittedly makes him a little relieved, but doesn’t ultimately solve the issue here.
By the time one Saturday loops around to the other, the apartment still eerily silent and still, Steve is willing to give Bucky anything to get back the closeness they’d had in a short, bright burst.
For example: he’s lying awake in bed when he hears Bucky’s door creak open, the thud of determined footfalls on the wood. He’s halfway up when a shadow falls over the thin strip of light from the hall, already on his feet when Bucky twists the knob so hard the lock breaks and Steve’s bedroom door floats open to reveal his silhouette.
He doesn’t step inside, and his eyes aren’t as wild as Steve has sometimes seen them when he’s having a flashback or a nightmare. In fact, if anything, the dark circles underneath Bucky’s eyes suggest that he’s been losing as much sleep as Steve has—that he hasn’t slept at all.
“Bucky?” he tries, quietly assessing him for anything that might be wrong.
Bucky does move forward then, slow and measured and in control of himself, like he’s answering Steve’s question with his body. When he speaks it’s low and gruff, frayed at the edges the way it is when he’s been thinking about saying it for too long before he actually ever does.
“You got ‘em on?”
Sucking in a breath, Steve takes quick stock of himself this time. His bare feet on the hardwood, equally bare chest and shoulders, the sweatpants stretched low across his hips from tossing and turning.
The strip of dark lace peeking out from underneath that Bucky’s been eyeing since he came in the room.
“I—” Steve starts, raspy and redundant. “Yeah.”
Bucky grunts. “Lemme see.”
It feels more intense this way, when it’s not by random happenstance, when there’s not people around keeping things polite.
“Why?” Steve asks.
Bucky glances at him like Steve has said something fantastically dull. “‘Cause I wanna see ‘em.”
Fair enough, Steve figures.
He steps around Bucky to close the door again, broken lock and all, aching to make this more private somehow even if they’re the only two in the apartment. Then he returns to the mattress to stand idly beside it, slipping a thumb into the band of his sweatpants.
He hesitates for a second before shoving them down his legs. They pool at his ankles with a rustle of fabric and then complete silence, and Steve’s breath hitches as he presses a knee to the edge of the mattress, providing himself some way to conceal the visible line of his cock, and waits.
“How d’you want…?” Steve whispers.
“On the bed,” Bucky says.
Steve stumbles to comply, shuffling forward onto the crumpled sheets to plant himself in the middle of them. It’s still warm from where he’d been lying, and he shivers even though he’s not really cold at feeling Bucky’s gaze heavy on his back.
Carefully, so that Bucky can stop him if it’s not right, Steve presses a hand to his pillow and lowers his body flat against the mattress on his stomach. He keeps himself up on his elbows, enjoying the rush of unfamiliarity for a moment before he risks a glance over his shoulder.
“Bucky,” Steve gasps, eyes immediately falling to where Bucky’s planted himself standing at the foot of the bed, a flesh palm pressed unabashedly between his legs.
“S’okay,” Bucky says with a sigh. He tilts his head back a little, eyeing Steve’s body through moonlit slits while his hips rub lazily against his palm. “Just wanna look at you for a while, Stevie.”
Shock burns hot through Steve’s system, his own cock fattening up against the sheets. He’s endlessly grateful he’d laid on his stomach—not that he’s under the impression he could hide much of anything from Bucky if he wanted to find it.
“Y’let me, right?” Bucky goes on behind him as his breathing gets heavier. “Lemme look at you?”
Steve nods against the linens. “Whatever you want, Buck.”
“Good. S’good,” Bucky exhales. “Stay just like that.”
Turning his face into the pillow, Steve takes the cotton between his teeth and focuses on breathing, staying still. He wants to turn over, wants to run greedy eyes over Bucky’s face, his hands, his dick, wants to get a hand around his own and join him.
But if this is how Bucky wants his stress relief after the week he’s had, Steve’ll be damned if he manages to fuck it up somehow before he gets it.
He closes his eyes and listens instead, unable to tune it out. The subtle creak of wood as Bucky’s weight shifts on his feet, the snap of boxers being moved out of the way and the spit-slick slide of his fist around his cock, the raw little noises he keeps making as he gets closer.
Steve tries desperately to cling to something rational, something he knows. Bucky had given him orders—stay just like that. Steve can do that. He’d do anything Bucky asked of him.
So he grits his teeth and doesn’t move, even when Bucky’s breathing stutters, his fist coming to a abrupt stop as the wet noise of his release echoes throughout Steve’s bedroom. He wonders if it’s only on Bucky’s hands, or if maybe it’s on the sheets too, if maybe some of it got on Steve—
There’s a long, drawn out sigh, like Bucky had needed that more desperately than he’d let on. There’s a few indulgent passes of his wet hand and then a hiss as it undoubtedly crosses from pleasant to hyper sensitive, and then Bucky’s feet turning and heading for the door.
The second that he’s verifiably gone, Steve releases the pillow from between his teeth and ruts down frantically against the mattress, spreading his thighs and grinding the leaking head of his cock and his aching balls wherever he can to get some relief. It’s quick and filthy and not entirely even all that pleasurable, like he’s purging something out of him.
When he finally comes, he stifles his noise into the spit-wet pillowcase and shudders, fisting the linens, thoughts on a loop of nothing but BuckyBuckyBuckyBucky.
The wood creaks again at his left, and Steve jerks his head up and over to find the man himself standing there, much closer than he’d been before. Unexplained tears sting the backs of Steve’s eyes as excuses spring to his tongue, but Bucky’s mouth tilts into a vague smirk before any apologies can be uttered.
He nods toward the glass of water he’d set down on the nightstand beside Steve’s head, then offers him a hand towel he’d brought from the bathroom. Steve glances down to find Bucky’s pants all done up again, no evidence left behind. He must’ve left to clean off, then come right back.
“Thanks,” Steve croaks, face tilted away as he raises a shaking hand to accept the offering. He squeezes it in his palm for a second, unsure of what to do. He’s got come all over himself and the bed and the skimpy lingerie, and Bucky’s looking at him expectantly like he has no plans to give him privacy while he cleans up. “Um.”
He grunts for Steve to move over, then sits down by his knee with a little shove so Steve’ll turn over onto his back.
Bucky eyes the mess of Steve’s abdomen, thighs, and dick, then raises his eyes to Steve like well?
Dipping the edge of the towel into the cup of water, Steve leans back against the headboard and, in the most unexpected twist of the night he could ever have predicted, starts moving the soiled lace away from his cock to clean up his mess under Bucky’s ever watchful gaze.
The lingerie stretches to its limit across the bulge of his upper thighs as Steve strokes the wet towel over his stomach, through his pubes, around the sensitive shape of his dick and down over his balls. He and Bucky have showered together plenty, he figures.
There were decidedly less orgasms involved, though.
When he finishes up, Steve sits there for a second, unsure of what to do with himself. It’s Bucky who gets him moving again, who takes the towel and tosses it onto the nightstand and stands, stretching his arms over his head, rolling his shoulders.
His gaze drops back down to Steve when he’s relaxed again, his face and then to the material still stretched out below his soft dick.
“Y’got more?”
“A few, yeah,” Steve admits. He hardly recognizes the sound of his own voice.
Bucky drags his knuckles over the panties, then pointedly slips two of them inside and tugs.
“Take these off.”
Steve complies with that order too, face hot as he bends his knees and peels them down his legs. He’d wiped everything that he could, but his own come is still clinging to the lace, obscuring the elegant designs with the ivory smears of his spend.
He trembles a little as he holds them out for Bucky, who takes them easily, wrapping them around his flesh fist and stroking a thumb over the material. They’re both enhanced enough that the inhale he takes surely gets him a lungful of Steve’s thick scent without even having to lift it to his nose, and Steve watches in naked awe as Bucky’s eyes flutter shut.
They open again a moment later, Bucky’s entire disposition more settled than it’s been all week. He flashes Steve a crooked, closed-mouth smile, something reminiscent of a century ago.
“Night, Stevie.”
He doesn’t manage to catch his breath enough to respond until Bucky’s back down the hall, and Steve stares at the broken lock and says belatedly, helplessly, “Night.”
+
They’re at the compound for the weekend, strategizing and planning for the next inevitable chaos. It’s Steve that’s strung up this time, irritated from arguing about attack angles and chain of command, about having to sit through a day full of useless meetings only for them to ultimately decide that Steve’s initial plan had been the best option in the first place.
He doesn’t have any of his regular vices here. His running path or his punching bag, the proper gear to go spar or blow off steam in the gym. He wouldn’t even trust himself in there right now regardless, too worked up not to run himself into the ground without stopping.
But the calming walk he’s doing—i.e. his frantic pacing in the only empty corridor he could find—isn’t helping all that much.
He’s just keyed up enough that he rears back to throw a punch when somebody knocks into his shoulder, even though it’s Bucky.
But his fist crumples and drops to his side anyway, and he clings to Bucky’s shoulders as he’s shoved backwards, sideways, and into a supply closet. The breath is knocked from him as his shoulder blades hit the wall, Bucky’s firm press a clear instruction to stay still while he examines the closet for cameras, mics, and bugs. It’s a tight squeeze, only enough room for Bucky’s boots in between Steve’s forced apart ankles, and Steve brings a hand up to rub at his aching temples when it starts to feel a little too cramped.
His eyes pop back open when Bucky starts undoing his belt.
“What are you doing?” Steve asks, with the same lingering force he’d used in the conference room.
Bucky raises a brow as if to imply that Steve could simply shove him off if he weren’t interested, his fingers continuing to undo the latch on Steve’s pants and shove them down his legs. He bends as well as he can to yank them off over Steve’s shoes, then he reaches for his own back pocket, pulls out a pair of Steve’s mysteriously missing panties, and shoves them at his chest.
“Put ‘em on.”
Steve’s not wearing them today, his regular boxers situated over his hips and thighs. He’s all for the rush of possibility when they’re home, but not so much when they’re in a building full of their coworkers and subordinates.
He grabs the lace from Bucky and holds them against his chest, but doesn’t move to put them on.
“Bucky, we should—”
“Just for a minute,” Bucky interjects, worrying his lip. “Just—Steve. Please.”
He moves quick. Efficient. Shoves the boxers down with Bucky’s help and steps into the panties, pulls them up until they’re flush against his ass and then carefully lets them pop into place over his dick.
Bucky’s fingers are immediate to follow, knuckles tracing over the thick length of him from root to the tip that’s threatening to poke out the top hem against his hip. Steve hisses a breath, head dropping forward, and Bucky pushes him back hard against the wall so that his view remains unimpeded.
“Bucky,” Steve shudders, subtly pushing into the light pressure.
“Good?” Bucky rasps, and when Steve furrows a brow at the unnecessary question and looks at him, he realizes that Bucky’s hesitating. His own dick isn’t even out this time.
It hits Steve all at once: this is for him this time, not for Bucky. Bucky’d noticed he was stressed, and had tried to help in one of the only ways they’ve managed to make successful.
Steve flushes hot with shame. He should put a stop to this. It was one thing when it was helping Bucky, but when it’s him it feels—wrong. Like he shouldn’t get to have it.
“You don’t have to,” Steve tells him.
Bucky makes a noise. “Not in the habit of doin’ things I don’t like anymore, pal.”
And then he raises his palm to spit into it and shoves it inside Steve’s panties, and Steve forgets every other excuse he had to give.
His head tips back against the wall, his own knuckles tucked between his lips to stifle a groan as his hips press themselves greedily into Bucky’s fist. It’s different than the way Steve touches himself, a little looser around the base, a little rougher when he thumbs over the tip, and the newness of it sends Steve careening toward an orgasm far faster than he’d have otherwise preferred.
But he’s still a little angry, still buzzing with leftover adrenaline that has nowhere to go, so he doesn’t fight it when Bucky leans in and hovers, sharing air but not kissing him, stripping Steve’s cock with brutal, aching efficiency as if he’s been doing it for years.
Steve grunts when he comes, his throat spasming around a silent mouthing of Bucky’s name. His chin tips down to look at the mess, one hand holding his shirt up and the other clutching limply at Bucky’s forearm. It takes all of ten seconds where neither of them move or breathe before Steve is frantically getting Bucky out of his pants too, and Bucky’s shoving his hand, slick with Steve’s come, around himself to catch up with him.
He curses as he fucks his fist, less elegant and a hell of a lot quicker than he’d been with Steve. His metal hand peels back the sticky cling of Steve’s panties and holds it there, and Steve’s knees nearly buckle when Bucky shoves his cock inside, nudging right up alongside Steve’s in the wet tangle of material.
“Oh, fuck,” Steve chokes, watching raptly as Bucky fucks in and out in the hot space right between his thighs. The head of his dick is shoving against Steve’s balls, firm and relentless, nothing more than a hand splayed around the base of it to make sure it doesn’t slip out as he goes.
“Fuck, Stevie,” he agrees breathily, and when Steve glances up, their mouths are less than a centimeter apart.
Steve swallows, opens for whatever Bucky might want to take from him, and angles his hips up just enough that Bucky can fuck against him proper without having to hold back. His lips graze Steve’s with frantic whispers of his name and other expletives, and Steve slips a hand around the back of his head just as Bucky’s hips stutter and he groans, spilling hot and wet inside of Steve’s panties and up against his cock.
Then he slips out, steps away, wipes his hand off on his boxers. He nods toward the lace.
“Keep those on.”
Steve spends the rest of the meetings unable to think about anything but what’s between his thighs, far too satisfied to be anything other than content.
+
When Bucky finally fucks him, after Steve’s admitted to the only other remaining private thing that was left to confess, he does it with aching certainty and rough lace filling Steve’s mouth, metal fingers curved over his bottom teeth to keep it there. Right where Steve asked him to.
“G’na get you a matching top,” Bucky mutters, right up against his ear with an arm splayed over his chest, keeping him close. “Something for these pretty tits, huh?”
Steve moans into the makeshift gag, eyes fluttering shut against the deep shove of Bucky’s cock and the image rapidly unfolding inside of his head. If he were to try it with anyone, he figures…
Everyone else might have their fractures and handfuls, but he was always Bucky’s first.