Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

April 2014

Context: The soldier—

Bucky—

Is kneeling in the dirt on a riverbank in DC, staring at the Alpha that smells like hot cider on a snowy day, that smells like cans of beans and the smoke of a furnace, like steel, and stale bread, and cold nights around a fire, like alcohol that burns, like muffled moans and arthritis and cigarette smoke and a thousand million other things that don’t make sense and shouldn’t be in a scent and that the soldier can’t understand.

He hopes the man wakes up. The one who calls him Bucky and says to him trigger words he didn’t know he had. End of the line, he said. With you to the end of the line, he said.

Where is the end of the line? He hopes it’s here, on this soft brown riverbank, next to this man that smells like heaven.

The soldier isn’t allowed to hope.

He wonders if Bucky is.

Bucky’s hair is drip, drip, dripping on the ground. The man’s hair is slathered against his forehead. Bucky reaches out and traces a strand.

He’s beautiful, Bucky thinks.

The man groans slightly, and Bucky watches him shift. The soldier, who has a mission, unsheathes a knife from his thigh.

“Bucky?” The man says, breathlessly. He’s watching the knife wearily but doesn’t quite move, looking like a man out of options.

Bucky gives him a watery smile.

“Mission failed,” the soldier says, and he plunges the knife into his own stomach.

The soldier wakes up on a bed in a white room made of mirrored glass. His hands, both metal and flesh, are cuffed heavily to two bedrails. His left arm is dead. Machines are beeping around him, and cords are attached to his body.

Nicholas J. Fury enters the room, and the soldier tries very hard to stab himself again, but the cuffs won’t give. Fury watches this behavior with a calculating look in his eye.

“What was that?” He asks, as the soldier finally stops straining against his bonds.

“Should the soldier fail a mission,” the soldier recites, “he is to stab himself in the stomach, and let himself bleed out, and no member of Hydra, or its affiliates, should attempt to help.”

Fury considers him for a moment, then says: “Well that’s fucked up.”

“Yeah.” Bucky agrees.

The soldier is interrogated by Fury. In terms of interrogations he has been part of in his life, it is remarkably tame. He asks where Hydra is, and he tells him. He asks who is Hydra, and he tells him.

“Alexander Pierce.” Fury says. “He was the leader of Hydra?”

“Yes.” Bucky likes Fury. He doesn’t ask stupid, redundant questions.

“And his motivations?”

“To rid the world of dangerous free thinkers in order to ensure that it is a better, more peaceful place.” The soldier recites.

“And you believe that?”

Bucky hesitates. He hasn’t believed in anything for a long time. “I don’t know.” He says.

“It’s a pretty simple question.”

Bucky realizes Insight would have killed Steve.

“No.” Bucky says.

“What else were his motivations?”

The soldier does not know; Pierce was not nearly as talkative as Tvorets. He tells Fury as such.

“Tvorets?”

The soldier hears a tinny, female voice. Someone was speaking to Fury using a communicator, likely in his ear. “It means creator, in Russian. Something akin to God. I’ve seen this technique before, it’s used to glorify the boss and make submission easier.”

“Who is Tvorets?” Fury asks.

The soldier is not allowed to say.

The tin voice cuts in again. “He probably can’t say.”

“Well. Alright then.” Fury says. “Send in Steve.”

Steve G. Rogers barrels in through a door on the far wall, looking the most out of sorts Bucky has ever seen in his life. He’s still wearing his waterlogged uniform, sans helmet.

“Stay back.” Fury orders, and Steve has to physically rein himself in in order to stop moving towards Bucky. He looks like he’s vibrating out of his skin, like he’s a being made purely of stress. Fury turns to Bucky with an eyebrow raised. “You’re not going try to stab him, right? Or yourself?”

“I have already stabbed myself. There is nothing in the rules to dictate I should do it again.” The soldier deduces.

“Plus stabbing hurts like a bitch, and it’d make Steve cry.” Bucky shrugs.

Steve can’t stand still after hearing that. He ignores the other man’s orders (typical), and runs towards Bucky, floundering when he reaches Bucky’s side, like he doesn’t quite know what to do or where to go from there.

“Alphas.” Fury mutters.

Bucky does what feels natural and holds out his flesh hand palm up, his wrist bone pressing sharply against the metal cuff. Steve grips Bucky’s hand in a bone crushing grasp, and inhales like he’s never breathed before in his entire life.

Bucky glares at him. “Could ya ease up there, pal?”

“Bucky.” Steve croaks. “Bucky.”

“Miss me, babe?” Bucky says weakly.

“More than you know.” Steve whispers.

Bucky looks at his face, and it’s so heart wrenchingly familiar that he loses his ability to speak. Steve’s eyes start to fill with tears.

Bucky’s expression turns gentle without his permission. “Don’t cry, Stevie.” Bucky soothes, but that just seems to make his tears worse.

“Anyways, you’re going to jail.” Fury cuts in.

Steve’s eyes snap to Fury’s eye. “No. He didn’t do anything! You saw what I saw, right?” Steve says forcefully.

“And so will a judge, and he’ll be alright. It’s only for a little while, Steve. Until he’s tried. Stark’s pulling some strings.”

“I’m not—”

“Who has ‘seen the technique before?’” Bucky cuts in, using subject changing as a method to avoid another bullheaded Steve level argument. “And why can’t I say Tvorets real name?”

“You could hear that?” Fury says, looking impressed.

“Yeah.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Well, go ahead. Introduce yourself.” Fury says.

“I am Natalia Romanova.”

“Nice to meet you.” Bucky says.

Natalia huffs into the line. “You could at least remember me.”

“I don’t remember a lot of things, it’s not personal.” He says.

Fury snorts. “Army’s here to read you your rights, because I don’t trust the IC right now, and I sure as hell don’t trust the police after what they did to my car.”

“Okay.” He responds. It’s nice not to have a choice.

Steve still looks put out, but they must have talked about this before because miraculously, he doesn’t argue. Bucky squeezes his hand, and Steve’s eyes turn back to Bucky’s. Bucky tries a smile, but he doesn’t think it works.

A couple of men in army uniforms enter the room and read him a bunch of things that he’s being charged with, as well as his rights. The soldier can’t remember the last time he had rights.

Steve holds his hand the whole time. Bucky likes that, the soldier thinks.

November

Steve carries both of Bucky’s bags to the armored car, one over each shoulder, even though Bucky is perfectly capable of doing it himself. Bucky doesn’t bring it up, distracted by the fact that he’s finally free.

Steve leads him through the hallways of the prison and out the back door and onto the asphalt, where there is nothing but desert and a single black Escalade. After he loads his bags in the car, he pats the soldier on the back once and says, “we’re going home, Bucky.”

The soldier wonders where home is.

Context: The soldier has been released from jail with a new mission: to “get better.” It was assigned by the United States Government, of whom had ruled him Not Guilty due to reason of Mental Instability, assigned him the ward of Steven G. Rogers, and sent him to live in house arrest at Avengers’ Tower until he is deemed No Longer a Threat to Society.

There is no mission deadline. It makes Bucky itchy.

Apparently this is not a typical ruling. Strings had to be pulled. Tony Stark pulled them. He doesn’t know why. The soldier killed his parents.

If Bucky were Tony, he would have let him rot in jail.

They enter the car, Steve behind the wheel. Inside is a non-assuming man who gives him a bland smile that shares absolutely nothing about himself, and the soldier finds himself liking him. This man goes with them on the whole trip—from the lone SUV, to a private plane on a dusty landing strip, to another SUV in a crowded city. The sun is rising by the time they pull up to the tower.

“Stark?” The man from the front seat says to Steve, his first words in hours. “You think that’s the best idea?”

“With SHIELD gone,” Steve says as he guides the car into a concrete tunnel, “It’s the only secure place that I could trust.”

“But he knows—”

“Yeah.”

“And he’s still letting him stay?”

“He even helped get him here.” Steve says as they enter an underground parking lot.

“Sounds like he’s going to kill him in his sleep.” The man says with a snort. “Keep your enemies close.”

“If he saw the videos and read the papers, then he’s probably just doing the decent thing.” Steve says tightly, and he stops the car.

There are men with guns here, standing in uniform and holding their weapons in a way that implies they could shoot at any moment.

One of them approaches the group, a briefcase in her hand. The soldier watches as she cracks it open on the ground a reveals a thick, woven black sleeve of sorts, embedded with a ring of green lights around the opening.

“Proximity monitor,” she explains. “It will inform the Army if you walk further than five feet from where you’re supposed to be. If you do that, there is no second chance, and you go straight to a high security mental institution. So I recommend that you don’t do that,” she says in a no nonsense tone. She motions for the soldier to reach out his right arm, and she rolls up his shirtsleeve and puts on the monitor. It stretches smoothly over his skin, the LEDS blinking silently.

“You’re not even gonna ask me which arm I want it on?” Bucky says.

Her eyes go to Bucky’s empty left sleeve. She gives him an unamused look.

They enter a door which leads to an elevator. To the soldier’s confusion, only Steve and the man follow him.

The soldier looks at Steve. “No armed escort? I could kill you both.”

“No, you couldn’t,” the man says, tired smile on his face.

Steve interjects as the elevator shoots upwards. “Bucky, this is Bruce Banner.”

For the first time since the soldier’s birth in 1945, the soldier feels fear. He backs into the corner of the elevator, arm raised in defense.

Banner snorts. “Good to know my reputation precedes me.”

“Bruce is here to keep us all safe,” Steve says.

It’s silent, yet tense on the rest of the elevator ride, up until they reach their destination, a hallway with a single door. Banner waits outside while he and Steve walk into what looks like an apartment, sparsely lived in with white walls and gray furniture. An empty looking kitchen is to their right, a simple living room to the left, and two doors are on the back wall. A hallway leads off to the side behind the kitchen.

Steve drops the bags to the ground on the middle of the floor with twin thuds. “This is my apartment, I guess.”

“You guess?” Bucky says with a quirk to his lips.

“Shut up.” Steve says, eyes softening, “I just moved in like a week ago.”

“For me, huh?”

“Yeah.” Steve says, and he lets his emotions bleed into his eyes, sadness and hope, exhaustion and carefulness.

Something that was missing snakes into place as Bucky watches Steve rub his neck like he does when he’s nervous. A sharp pang of nostalgia and longing shoots through Bucky, and he has the realization that he’s missed Steve, down to his core. Not just for the months he spent in jail, the only member of his own prison, but the years before that. That face is seared into his head like a brand, so solid that Bucky can’t believe he ever forgot about him in the first place. He wonders if he truly ever did.

Bucky remembers that face twisting in anger in the face of a bully, solidifying in determination as he strode into a recruiting center. He remembers it being pulled into pleasure under Bucky’s hands and ripped into pain during the war. But Bucky doesn’t remember a time when Steve was like this. Careful, cautious, unsure. Bucky didn’t even think he was capable of such things, and Bucky realizes this is what Steve had to become without him watching his back.

“So.” Steve drops his hand and gathers his nerve. “We are in my apartment. Because, we used to be… together. And even before we were together, we were best friends, and we lived together.”

Bucky steps closer, and Steve tracks his movement.

“Now, I don’t want to presume we’ll be anything near that again, hell, we don’t even have to be friends, if you don’t want to.” Those words look like they physically hurt Steve to say. “So just say the word and you’ll have your own floor, and your own space, and we can pretend like I never offered. We can be strangers, if that’s—if that’s what you need.”

Steve never stutters, either.

“Just let me… you’ll have to give me a little time to remember that you’re not him, if that’s what you need.” Steve’s face is trying not to be devastated, but Bucky’s always been able to see through him.

Bucky swallows. “I don’t remember much,” he says, then he kisses him so hard it hurts.

Bucky’s never been good with words, but this? This Bucky’s good at. Steve has to take a step back to hold up Bucky’s weight, but gets with the program immediately, meeting his kiss head on like he does with everything else.

It’s wet, and dirty, and someone introduces a tongue and the other one moans, and Bucky celebrates himself on being able to pull Steve’s passion out from wherever it was hiding. Fuck caution, this is Steve as he should be.

They separate at the same time, panting because they forgot to breathe, and they rest their foreheads together. Steve’s smile is worth a million and a half dollars, and Bucky strives to replicate even a piece of it.

“We’re finally the same size.” Bucky marvels. Steve used to look up to him, then Bucky to Steve, and now they were even.

Steve immediately takes it the wrong way, and he lowers his voice and his eyelids and says, “Not quite the same size,” before pressing their hips together in one smooth motion.

Bucky makes a small noise; he can feel Steve hardening in his pants. Steve’s dick, which had gone from small to average with the serum, was trying it’s best to reach for Bucky, straining against its prison.

Yet Bucky’s dick… wasn’t.

Confused, Bucky kisses Steve harder, deeper, pulling moan after moan from him as he grinds against Bucky’s leg, but Bucky doesn’t so much as twitch. It’s not like Bucky’s had trouble getting hard in jail, the soldier took care of himself with almost clinical precision. So why, here, is unable to bring himself to life?

Bucky desperately keeps trying to distract Steve with his mouth with some inane hope that he won’t notice, but it doesn’t take long for Steve to realize he’s grinding back against nothing.

“Buck,” Steve says between frantic kisses, “Bucky, stop.”

Reluctantly, Bucky pulls away completely, and Steve looks at him with worry and that fucking caution again, and Bucky internally berates himself. What’s wrong with him?

Steve takes a careful breath. “Bucky, you don’t have to anything for me that you don’t want—”

“That’s not it. I want this.” Bucky cuts him short. He knows he wants this, it’s Steve.

He hates himself for making Steve so insecure again. “It’s been a long day. Week. Month, hell, year.” Bucky says. “I think I’m just really tired, and I’m having trouble with…” Bucky sighs, and commits to a lie. “Ever since you found me, I’ve… been having trouble with… maintaining…” he makes a vague motion, referring to his genitalia.

“Of course.” Steve jumps on it. “Of course, Bucky, that’s not problem, okay? It happens, sometimes, and with what you’ve been through, from even the stuff I know—it’s fine. Not a big deal.”

“Yeah, I know its not.” Bucky says, annoyed for no real reason. “I’m not all obsessed with my dick like you Alpha’s are.”

Steve furrows his brow. “I’m not obsessed with my dick.”

Bucky sighs, and rubs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, sorry. You were always different,” Bucky says, and he’s suddenly had enough of talking. “Kiss me more?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, Stevie.” Bucky says, “it helps. You help.”

Steve smiles, then leans in again.

The mission to “get better” is very complicated, the soldier learns. Steve informs him that he has rules he has to follow, such as eating at least five thousand calories a day, maintaining personal hygiene, and never leaving his quarters without an escort from him or Bruce Banner.

He has meetings too, and the first one he goes to after kissing the soul out of Steve is with Dr. Jessica Brooks, who projects herself into Steve’s living room using a hologram. She has her legs crossed at the ankle, and is wearing high heels and a pencil skirt and a pink, frilly shirt.

 “James?” She says, her voice light, airy, and feminine.

The soldier turns his head from the door Steve walked out of earlier to face her.

“I’m Doctor Brooks, but you can call me Jessica.”

The soldier doesn’t say anything. Jessica continues on.

“I’m here to help you with anything you need.” She continues. “Is there a name you prefer to go by?”

The soldier thinks the soldier is a pretty bad name.

“Bucky.” He says.

Jessica proceeds to ask Bucky a series of questions. Both Bucky and the soldier respond. Jessica doesn’t seem to notice the difference.

“I’m going to start broad. How much do you remember about your past? Is there anything that stands out more than the rest?” Straight to the point. Bucky likes that. No bullshitting.

“The missions.” The soldier says. No other memory is as solid as the soldier’s missions. Bucky wonders how they made him forget everything else.

“How many missions did you have?”

“45.”

She isn’t writing anything down, which the soldier finds odd.      

“Did you ever fail a mission?”

The soldier tenses. “If the soldier ever fails a mission, he is to return to base and stab himself in the stomach.”

“Is that a no?” She presses on, completely unphased.

“Not until Steve.” Bucky sighs, thinking about the way Steve looked when he realized that Bucky was acting under someone else’s orders. “And then Fury,” the soldier adds.

“Do you feel the need to harm them now?”

“No.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know.” Bucky says truthfully.

“When you were with Hydra, were you ever physically struck or tortured?”

Bucky thinks back, then winces.

“Yes.” The soldier responds.

“Do you want to tell me about some of those times?”

“No.”

“Were you ever emotionally abused? Denied basic necessities such as food and water?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to tell me about that?”

“No.”

“Okay. Were you ever sexually assaulted while you were in captivity?” Jessica asks.

He thinks back.

‘More.’ The soldier had said. ‘I want it.’ The soldier had said.

“No.”

Jessica pauses imperceptibly. An unenhanced man wouldn’t have noticed.

“Did you have any sort of sexual contact at all during this time?”

“Yes.”

“Consensually?”

‘Would someone fucking knot me please?’ The soldier had shouted.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to tell me—”

“No.”

“Okay.” Jessica says, and she clicks her pen. “I’m looking forward to the next two hours, Bucky.” She says with a bright smile.

Bucky snorts.

The rest of his therapy sessions were to be one hour instead of two, which was good because Bucky doesn’t think he can handle that much time with Jessica again.

Steve gives Bucky a pitying look when he returns and orders lunch from a Chinese restaurant in the city, which is where Bucky learns, twelve minutes later when he’s throwing up over the toilet, that five thousand calories is a lot of food.

“I only had IV’s when I was with Hydra,” Bucky explains, washing his mouth with a glass of water Steve gave him into the sink. “And they didn’t really give me that much food in jail.” He threw a lot of that up, too.

“So you haven’t been eating enough food for months?” Steve says, his beautiful face marred by distress.

“Just like old times, huh?” Bucky tries for levity, but Steve’s frown just deepens, and Bucky has to turn away.

“Bucky, that’s not good. I’ll talk to someone, see if I can figure something else out, okay?”

“Okay.” The soldier says, staring at his reflection in the mirror. Something else is looking back.

“And I need you to tell me if something like this happens again.”

“Okay.”

“That’s all you gotta say? Okay?” Steve’s temper flares.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, turn sharply to meet Steve’s eyes. “It’s all I got to fucking say. You think this is easy?”

“No Bucky. I’m sorry. I’m just—”

“Frustrated you can’t do anything more to help?” Bucky deflates a little. “Kinda your MO there pal.”

Steve looks at Bucky for a moment, then huffs, running a hand through the strands of his hair, messing it up. “Yeah,” Steve says. “You’re right.”

That night, Bucky wakes up in that night from a nightmare he can’t remember, rock hard and crying.

Steve notices only the latter, and groggily wraps himself around Bucky, making soothing noises. The soldier allows it for a moment, before he shakes him off and head to the bathroom.

“Bucky?” Steve asks a lot of questions in that one word.

“I need a—a minute Steve. Alone. I’ll be okay.” Bucky shuts the door behind him, and hates himself for what he’s about to do.

The soldier stalks to the shower and starts it up. Stripping carefully from his sleep clothes, he folds them and leaves the on the toilet. He removes his boxers, wet with slick, and balls them up and tosses them in the corner of the room.

He steps into the shower hard as nails. He grasps himself and jerks roughly. Images flash to his mind as he works, half memories, half fantasies, going quicker than he can logically keep up.

The soldier’s small moan is swallowed by the sound of the shower as he thinks of himself on all fours, being pressed into both of his holes.  He quickens his pace as he thinks of Robbie Smithgall, the big dicked Alpha who he rode through his third heat, slicing him open as he called him a natural born whore. Lastly, and best, he thinks of hands, forming a makeshift knot deep inside of him, finally satisfying that deep old need to be filled—

The soldier comes with a cut off noise, and a few jerks of his hips, only partially satisfied by his orgasm, his asshole clenching around nothing.

It would have to do. The soldier watches his semen swirl down the drain, before grabbing a liberal amount of soap and cleaning off the oil slick of wetness that had collected between his ass cheeks and run down his thighs.

The soldier cleans up and slips back into his sleep clothes, tossing the soiled underwear before exiting the bathroom.

He slips into bed with Steve who pretends to wake up from a pretend sleep. Steve cuddles him closely, a little too tight to be born out of anything but concern.

Steve eventually loosens up as he drifts off.

But Bucky stares at the ceiling until the sun rises.

December

The soldier slowly learns that his mission is even harder than he thought it would be.

A routine helps. Out of bed at six to drink tea and eat toast and watch the sunrise with Steve. Then they take a trip to the gym, the soldier only being allowed to exercise if he’s consumed enough calories the previous day. Afterward, they make their way to a carefully constructed, very bland lunch that he takes care to keep down, with decent success. After is therapy, and after is free time, then a bland dinner, then another night of failing to have sex with Steve, jacking off in the shower, and staring at the ceiling until sunrise.

The hardest part of the day is free time. He doesn’t make decisions very well, but Jessica has been encouraging him to try. She says he needs hobbies.

So he tries to read, but the words bounce around his head, digging into the gray matter until he grows a headache.

He tries to watch TV, but sounds slip around his brain like an eel, in one ear and out the next, leaving behind a trail of buzzing that make him feel muddled.

Then he tries to draw, but he’s no Stevie, and he can’t hold the paper down with only one hand.

He ends up spending this time either following Steve around or wrapping himself in a blanket on the couch, falling into a fitful sleep.

He brings up his inability to do anything resembling a hobby with Jessica, who expertly manages to hide her glee that he’s spoken first for the first time since they started their sessions three weeks ago.

“Well, what do you want to do?” Jessica asks.

It’s any easy question, with no clear answer. “I don’t know,” Bucky responds.

“What do you like?” Jessica says. “Let’s start there.”

“I like Steve.” Bucky says.

“What else?”

“I like fucking,” the soldier says.

“Okay, what else?”

“Why can’t I have sex with Steve?” He blurts out suddenly, then immediately turns red. He continues anyways. “They are two things I like. So why not?”

Jessica doesn’t miss a beat. “Can’t? Or won’t?”

Bucky thinks about that, and Jessica gives him the time to do it.

“Whenever I’m with him, whenever I kiss him, I mean, I just can’t…respond.” Bucky says. “Fuck, this is embarrassing to talk about.”

“What do you find embarrassing?”

Bucky frowns, trying to guess her line of thinking. It seems obvious. “I can’t get it up for him. I can’t get…wet… for him either.” Bucky turns pink. “And my sex life isn’t usually something I like to bring up around strangers, doctor or no.”

“I understand it’s tough to talk about, and we can stop at any time, but I’m not here to judge you, only to help you understand what’s going on with yourself.”

“Yeah, I know.” Bucky mutters.

“So.” Jessica uncrosses her ankles and crosses them the other way, her eyes filled with intent. “Are you able to maintain an erection and properly lubricate at other times? Do you feel arousal?”

The use of so many clinical words, combined with Jessica’s no nonsense tone, makes Bucky’s embarrassment ratchet up much higher, and he feels the urge to run away.

“Yes.” The soldier says easily.

Jessica remain quiet for a long moment.

“And when is that?” Jessica asks.

“When I masturbate.”

“So you can masturbate, but when it comes to Steve, you can’t have sex?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think about when you masturbate?”

Bucky frowns. “That’s a little personal, don’tcha think?”

Jessica tilts her head, considering. “It’s not about Steve though, is it?”

“No,” the soldier responds. Jessica tilts her head back.

“Is it about the times you had sex at Hydra?”

“Yes.” The soldier says.

“And you enjoyed that?”

The soldier remembers the man in black.

“Mostly.”

“What parts didn’t you like?”

‘How long can you hold your breath?’

“I…”

‘How much?’

‘Five dollars for the mouth.’

‘Bit much, you’d better be good.’

 “Bucky?”

Muffled, panicked breathes through his nose.

Choking.

‘Almost…done...’

“Bucky!”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” The soldier says, eyes wide. “I don’t want to.”

“Okay, Bucky.” Jessica says, and he must look like he’s in real distress because her composure has broken, and she seems alarmed, her hand outstretched like she could reach through the hologram and comfort him.

“I don’t.” The solider says, shaking his head. “No more.”

“Okay, Bucky.”

He doesn’t speak for the rest of the session.

That night the soldier dreams of killing everyone on the entire planet. He’s alone, in Steve’s bathroom when he’s through, holding his gun to the man in the mirror. His doppelganger smiles, and blood flows from his mouth and drips from his teeth.

He wakes with a shout, sitting up sharply and breathing like he can’t get enough air.

“It’s okay, Bucky.” Steve is there, right by his side, a hand on his heaving chest. “It’s just a dream.”

The soldier feels tears begin to form at the corner of his eyes. He feels like he’s choking, but when he reaches for his throat, there’s nothing there. “There was so much blood.” He says, almost conversationally.

“Come here.” Steve says, and the soldier doesn’t have to obey, but does so anyway, and he slots himself into Steve’s arms, tucking his head against his chest.

“I had to.” The soldier says. He hiccups a sob. Hydra recommends that…

“I know.” Steve says.

“I did what I had to.” And this time, it was the soldier’s turn to cry.

“I had a nightmare last night.” Bucky says.

“What was it about?” Jessica asks.

“Murder.” Bucky says truthfully.

“How did you feel?”

Bucky shrugs.

“How did the soldier feel?”

Bucky blinks, then shifts uncomfortably in his seat. She’s good.

“It’s not like—we’re not like, different people. We’re both me.” Bucky struggles. “Sometimes there are things he does, and sometimes there are things I do. But we both feel the same things. It’s—we’re the same.”

“Which one is ‘he’, and which one is ‘I’?”

Bucky licks his lips. “I’m ‘I’, he’s ‘he’.”

Jessica blinks at him.

“Yeah, that didn’t really help, did it?” Bucky chuckles. “It probably makes sense that Bucky’s me, and the soldier’s the odd one out, right?”

“It might, but rarely are these things so cut and dry. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out together, okay?” Jessica offers with a kind smile.

“Do you think I’m one of those people that have voices in their head?” Bucky says with trepidation, “or like, two people in one body?” Bucky doesn’t know how much of that he could handle.

“What I think,” Jessica says, and she’s drumming her fingers on her knee, “and this is based on a few weeks, mind you, is that the soldier comes out when you are scared, or embarrassed, or hurt. I think you disassociate, and when that happens, the soldier allows you to maintain basic actions while you distance yourself from the world.”

“Disassociate?” Bucky frowns.

“It’s a self-defense technique your mind employs to protect yourself from some sort of reality. It could be how your personality was repressed when you were a victim of Hydra.” Jessica says. “It’s a method of survival. You’re mind is still trying to survive, not knowing it’s no longer in any danger.”

“Is that why I can’t do anything?” Bucky says in dismay, thinking about the pile of books he’s wanted to read and can’t, to the music that doesn’t stick in his head, or the movies that sound like white noise.

“There is something that your mind is trying to protect you from,” Jessica says.

“Well then how the hell do I tell my head to stop trying to protect me from me?” Bucky feels like a piece of wood, bent between another’s hands, tension building.

“I don’t have an answer for that. It’s up to you.”

Bucky snorts. “What the fuck does that even mean, up to me? I haven’t had anything up to me for seventy years. I haven’t made a decision other than when to piss in the past nine months. How can I ever make these kind of choices? Everyday I learn something more about how fucked up I am.” Bucky sighs.

Jessica uncrosses her legs. “Some people say recovery isn’t linear, but I don’t believe that.” The doctor says quietly. “Recovery is linear, but sometimes the path it takes us on makes it feel like we’re moving backwards instead of forwards. Sometimes it makes us go through some terrible shit to get to where we need to be.”

Bucky blinks at Jessica’s use of a swear, the absurdity of such a pretty, put together woman using a curse helping to stabilize him, in a way.

“It certainly feels like I’ve taken two steps backwards.” Bucky mutters.

“Really?” Jessica smiles. “Do you know that this the first time you’ve told me how you’ve ever felt? I’m proud of you, Bucky.” Jessica says. “And we’re gonna get you better.”

“Yeah okay.” Bucky says doubtfully.

February 2015

They start to give Bucky more privileges. He’s now allowed to go to the kitchen and the library on his own, and all he as to do is ask the apartment to let him. The soldier still sticks to his routine, and pretends like each day isn’t worse than the last.

Every third night or so, the soldier takes care of himself in the shower. He’s pretty sure Steve hasn’t caught on, but it’s started to make Bucky feel sick. It’s clinical and meaningless when it should be fun and gratifying, and each time it happens Bucky feels more and more like less and less of himself.

It’s made even worse when he wakes up with Steve spooned against his back, morning wood pressed against his thigh. He has to stay still on those mornings and wait for Steve to get up. They pretend that it’s okay, that’ Steve’s dick isn’t getting more persistent every day. The soldier offers to sleep on the couch once, but Steve shuts that down immediately, and kisses him until he feels better, which only works until Steve has to cut short suddenly and duck into the bathroom.

Bucky has offered to suck him off a hundred times, but when they finally tried, they couldn’t get past more than a few minutes before Steve started to deflate, mentally unable to keep himself interested when he could see that Bucky wasn’t. They tried hand jobs too, but Steve’s too generous a lover, and without being able to reciprocate, he couldn’t stay into it.

Bucky wonders if he could act more like the soldier does in the shower, get himself wet enough for Steve to press into him, but it seems almost criminal to bring out that side of him around someone like Steve. He can’t rationalize the image of Steve and the soldier having sex like the way he can rationalize the strangers back at Hydra, and each time he tries it leaves him twisted up and frustrated for hours, his brain refusing to put the two images together.

And so the soldier continues the routine, trying to survive, and Bucky, despite the progress he’s making on becoming more of a human, he still feels like part of himself is lost.

During free time one day, Bucky asks the apartment to let him go to the communal kitchen, because they were out of milk. He makes his way to the elevator, and when he arrives, he comes across Tony.

He’s leaning over a cup of hot chocolate of all things, and he’s not actually doing anything other than staring out of the window into the sunset.

He promised Jessica he’d try to interact with people more. Bucky takes a deep breath.

“Can I join you?” Bucky asks timidly. Speaking first is new, but he’s getting better at it. Tony shrugs a shoulder, seemingly dismissive, but Bucky doesn’t miss the way his eyes track him as he circles the counter.

Bucky sits down next to Tony, and Tony continues to look anywhere except for Bucky’s face, his body language tense like he’s halfway to running away.

“When I was 14, my parents tried to marry me to a 45 year old.” Bucky says quietly, reaching out to the Omega the best way he knew how.

Tony regards Bucky carefully.

Bucky shrugs. “They thought it was what they were supposed to do. Had to get me married before my second heat or else I was ruined goods. I don’t blame them.”

Tony relaxes so minutely it must have been involuntary. Bucky sees it anyways. There’s a lot of things that he can see now that he wasn’t able to see before.

Bucky continues. “They laid off when I said I was with Steve, and they realized he didn’t care about my status as a virgin. They could see what a strong Alpha he really was, polite too. We weren’t bonded, or even together, not for a while, but we pretended to be together to get society off my back. I went through a few heats with others before I realized the right one was staring me right in his face.” Bucky feels a smile ghost at his lips. “Even when he was half their weight, he had twice the heart of anyone out there.”

“Yeah, well, now he’s like three times his original weight, so that heart’s gotta be pretty fucking big.” Tony says. Bucky can’t quite catch his tone, but he thinks he’s found a hint of fondness behind his voice, a worn-out sort of fond, but fond, nonetheless.

“He treated me well. Encouraged me to join the army when I said I wanted to. Didn’t mate me so I could get in. Wasn’t upset that I made all the money, and still managed to treat me right.” Bucky says, distant smile still on his face.

“He’s a good Alpha.” Tony says. Tony seems to come to a decision about something, because he stands up quickly, causing Bucky to twitch.

“You want some hot chocolate?” He asks mildly. Bucky nods.

Minutes later Bucky has found himself with a cup of hot chocolate, marshmallows floating happily in the drink. Bucky takes a sip, and while it was grossly sweet, it did fill his chest with warmth as it went down.

Bucky takes another sip, and takes his time playing with the handle. “Listen. There’s something I want to talk to you about. But first, I’m sorry about—”

“Don’t.” Tony closes off. “Bring them up.”

Bucky nods, and stares at the wood work in the table.

The silence is pungent. Agonizing.

He hears Tony sigh heavily.

“I saw what they did to you,” Tony says, “They had videos. Pages of documents. It was… inhumane. I’ve been through some stuff, but that…”

“Don’t.” Bucky cuts him off, and Tony looks at him in the eye. “Bring it up.”

Tony nods, then stops and shakes his head. He takes a gulp of his drink.

“This cocoa suddenly needs more alcohol.” Tony mutters. “Listen. There’s a reason I brought you here Bucky.”

Bucky looks over in interest, noticing the tone change.

Tony continues. “I was angry, for a long time, until I read your ‘user manual,’ which is a fucked up in itself, but then I came across something that made me pause.”

“You know Russian?” Bucky says weakly. He feels like his voice is coming from a mile away.

“No but Jarv does.” Tony says. “They had a whole section on your heats. What to do, what not to do. How to help.” He gives him a look like he’s sharing a secret with Bucky.

“I didn’t show anyone, if you’re worried. Deleted it off the servers. Some people still judge Omegas on things that aren’t there fault.” Tony says. “What happened to you—that’s private. And it’s between you and your therapist. But when I realized you were an Omega, and you went through something like that too, I had to do something. Call it my bleeding heart.”

Bucky doesn’t quite understand. “I appreciate you helping out a fellow Omega, but what does that have to do with my—the manual, in regard to my heats?”

Tony stares at him.

“What do you think I ‘went through,’ as an Omega?” Bucky continues, hopelessly confused.

Tony’s face pinches, and he takes a long time to answer. “I hope your answer doesn’t mean what I think it means.”

“Could ya stop speaking in riddles, please?” Bucky says, mildly annoyed.

Tony shakes his head, then chugs his cocoa, his face hardening and softening all at once. “Bucky. Hydra used you during your heat.”

It clicks, and Bucky understands the miscommunication. He leans back and shakes his head. “I know what you’re thinking. I wasn’t raped.” Bucky starts, hand fiddling with the mug handle. “Assaulted, maybe, but not even that because nothing happened to me that I didn’t want. They never—”

Tony cuts Bucky off. “Bucky, I’m just going to be frank with you. I find it very, very hard to believe a group of mostly all Alphas didn’t have any sort of negative sexual contact with you in the seventy years you were imprisoned. Maybe they really did freeze you so often, I don’t know, but with the political climate today still just getting used to the idea of equal Omega rights, I highly doubt a group like Hydra would follow those same rules. They wrote it in the fucking manual, so of course it had to have happened.”

“It wasn’t as if there was no sex.” Bucky protests lively. “I asked for it during my heat, and they tried to give me what I wanted. No one ever succeeded, but I still let them try. Hell, they didn’t even get to third base.” Bucky snorts. “They just weren’t doing it well enough, so I killed them. Serves ‘em right, right?” Bucky smiles at Tony, but it doesn’t seem to alter his expression at all. If anything Tony grows more focused on Bucky, his expression unreadable.

“You’re going to walk through this with me. They had sex with you? During your heat? Without your express permission? Which given your history, I doubt you could have given, but humor me.”

Bucky protests. “I gave permission—”

“Before the heat?”

“No, I mean, during the heat I’d tell them if I wanted it or not, and then they had the rules—”

“That’s rape.” Tony says.

Bucky sits up fast. “No it’s not.”

“Did they touch you in a way you didn’t want sexually?” Tony implores.

“At the time, I—”

“I’m not talking about at the time, I’m talking about you, right the fuck now. If you, in your right mind, entered your heat around a bunch of Hydra agents, would you want them touching you?”

Affronted and offended, Bucky says: “No! Why the fuck would you even say that?”

“Because it confirms the fact that you, Bucky, were raped.” Tony says.

Bucky’s shaking his head as soon as Tony says that word. “Every memory I have of those nights Tony, are of me asking for it—”

“That’s what happens during a heat, you ask for it. Doesn’t mean people have the right to give to you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. I was literally asking for it!” Bucky exclaims.

“Nope. You weren’t. You were raped.” Tony says dismissively, and so matter of fact that Bucky gets angry.

“Shut up! What do you know?” And he shouldn’t have said that, because Omegas’ have their stories, but he’s riled up and pissed the fuck off. “God, Tony, you should have seen me! You should have heard the things I said, seen the way I acted, dropping to my knees on command, presenting to a room full of Alphas. I took it from both ends and I demanded more, I demanded bigger ones, and better ones, and when they didn’t give it to me I killed them, every last one, because I was so much of a slut that the eleven Alpha’s who were ready to run train on me weren’t enough, the crowd of Hydra and Nazi soldiers weren’t enough, no one was enough.” Bucky chest is heaving.

Tony hasn’t changed his expression. “It’s rape. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but that’s what it is.”

“I wanted it.” Bucky forces out. “I was so desperate for it, and I…and I… I couldn’t have been…” Bucky trails off, lost.

“When I was seventeen, I got my first heat.” Tony says quietly. Bucky looks over at him; he’s looking into the mug of his cocoa like it contains the answer to all of life’s questions.

“They had already pegged me as a Beta, which my father seemed okay with, but they didn’t think I’d be such a late bloomer. I had no idea what was happening. I only knew one thing, that I need something inside of me. My parents weren’t home, they never were, but my butler, an Alpha, found me, desperately humping my sheets.” Tony says.

“His plan was to stay with me outside my door, and phoned my father to inform him of the news. But I didn’t know that my father had called a family friend to check up on me, an Alpha who took one whiff of the place, knocked Jarvis out, and barged into my room.”

Bucky looks up into Tony’s face, but he’s lost now too, his eyes somewhere far away. Bucky tries to imagine what it would be like to be seventeen, unable to understand what’s happening, to have someone see him at his most vulnerable.

Tony’s eyes snap to Bucky’s. “The court ruled him not guilty. Called it a heat induced rut. Said the Alpha was ‘out of control,’ which is funny because Jarvis seemed okay. Either way, they told my father to keep a better eye on me and who he lets in the house. And Obadiah had the audacity to ask my father for an apology, for inviting him over to his house when no one but his heat induced son was over.”

“Shit.” Bucky breathes.

“And my father gave it.” Tony leans back and shrugs. “They were friends, they were business partners, and they made up just fine. But since that day, the way he looked at me was like I was meat. The way he treated me was like I was something to be broken. He never made a move on me again—my father had other plans for a marriage that never went through because I wasn’t a virgin, thank God—but I had to spend the several years of my life working next to and with my abuser who the world believed was the one who was wronged. No one asked me how I felt. No one asked me what it was like to be seventeen years old and beg a man over thirty years my senior for a knot, to get on my knees and choke on his dick like I knew what I was doing, to have him split me open and me beg for more, over and over and over.” Tony spits with vehemence.

“And it took years, and foundations, and Supreme Court decisions, and thousands upon thousands of battered Omegas before the law caught up with the morals, for the ‘heat induced rut’ defense to be no longer admissible in court, and I was up there, fighting every goddamn second for it.” Tony says. “I was there when it got signed. Fuck Iron Man, that is my greatest contribution to mankind.”

Tony rounds on Bucky, and the intensity in his gaze is enough to floor him. “So when I tell you, you were raped, you believe me. Do you understand? When you are in your heat, you cannot consent. You are not irresistible, and it is not your responsibility to make sure no Alpha can smell you. You could be ass naked, soaking wet, presenting yourself to an Alpha, and that Alpha should either try and leave the room or try and get you somewhere safe. And any Alpha that doesn’t should face jail time, though if it were me, I’d probably say they should face death.”

Tony finishes and it leaves Bucky stunned. He doesn’t know what to say, Tony’s impassioned speech seeming to permeate and lay in the air like an itchy blanket, making Bucky aware of things that he’s not quite ready to face.

“I don’t know if...” Bucky finally says, and he trails off as he notices that Tony’s hand is shaking on his mug.

“You’ll figure it out.” Tony says, and he drains his chocolate. “That’s enough sharing for one day, let’s not do this again.”

Bucky watches Tony leave.

Bucky walks to the elevator sometime later, thoughts circling around his head until he becomes dizzy with them.

 He remembers every time Hydra tried their luck with his heat, remembers voice in the back of his head that egged him on, the disappointment each time an Alpha failed him. He remembers realizing they weren’t ever going to be good enough mate, but maybe they could be decent fucks. Sure it was impersonal, but rape?

Bucky leans against the wall of the elevator, the soldier taking him to his apartment. Did he not want to have sex? That can’t be right, he asked to have it. The soldier wonders what would have happened if a member of Hydra tried to fuck him out of heat. Would he still have wanted it? Would it have mattered? Only two people were able to give him orders, and he almost killed on of them. The soldier loved fucking, but Bucky—

Bucky shakes his head. Jessica is encouraging Bucky to try and think of himself as one person instead of two, so he changes his thought process.

It’s true, that Bucky loves sex. He did growing up, and he was unashamed about it. It wasn’t until Steve when he realized that sex, though important to him, wasn’t everything. That the content of the character of the Alpha was more important than how he looked or how he fucked. And it took Bucky embarrassingly long to realize what was already in front of him, but when he did, he made a vow to treasure Steve until the end of the line, both physically and emotionally, and show him he was worth the whole world and more.

But Bucky doesn’t understand. If the soldier—if he loves sex so much, then how come what happened, with his full consent was rape? Even in a heat…

Bucky shakes his head, and strides out of the open elevator. It doesn’t make sense. He’s sorry about what happened to Tony, but he’s not a defenseless teenager—he knew what he was getting into.

And then Bucky enters the apartment and is assaulted with the spicy scent of rut.

“Fuck.” Bucky runs to their bedroom and throws open the door.

“Fuck, Stevie.” Bucky says and he inhales greedily. God, he smells so fucking good. He looks good too, out of control, hips fucking the sky as he strips his bright red cock, chest heaving, another hand teasing at a nipple, blonde head tossed backwards in pleasure as he comes into the air with a grunt.

Steve strokes himself through it, then sighs as he collapses into the sheets, cock resting against his belly, preparing for the next round.

“How long.” Bucky asks, crawling into bed with Steve, already taking off his shirt. Ruts end as soon as the Alpha knots, or after twelve hours. Bucky’s hoping to finish Steve’s rut in the next ten minutes, hoping that it’s enough to distract him from his earlier conversation, and that it’s enough to kickstart his dick.

Steve responds by burying his nose into Bucky’s neck, scenting over and over like a drug he can’t get enough of. He then licks the place where Bucky’s scent comes from, a reflex that he picked up to satisfy his craving to bite and bond him.

“Three hours.” Steve finally rasps into Bucky’s neck, his voice low and nearly unrecognizable. “God, Omega, you smell so good…”

Bucky moans, and Steve’s hips make their way forward to rub against Bucky’s jeans, starting a slow grind, his cock leaking.

Bucky scents Steve back, eager to join his lover in the fun. The smell comforts him, makes him loose and pliant, and prepares him mentally for a horny Alpha and a nice, long knotting session.

What the smell doesn’t do is get Bucky hard or wet.

Bucky swears.

“Bucky, I need you,” Steve says, before growling and reaching for Bucky’s ass, unceremoniously dipping his fingers under Bucky’s boxers. Bucky closes his eyes tightly.

Steve blinks. Bucky can feel his eyelashes on his cheek.

“You’re dry.” Steve says. It’s a statement of fact, and Bucky has no choice but to nod and agree to it.

“You don’t want me?” Steve says, and Bucky opens his eyes to see Steve’s, wide and hurt. Bucky winces.

“I want you more than anything in the whole world Alpha.” Bucky soothes. “But remember, I’m having trouble with this.”

Steve shakes his head and stills his hips, taking his hand from Bucky’s pants and forcibly pulling himself from his rut haze. “Fuck. I forgot. I’m sorry.”

“Steve…”

“I love you.” Steve says, blue eyes boring into Bucky’s. “But you need to leave.”

“You can use lube.” Bucky says, “just this once, for your rut, so you can knot me.”

“Lube doesn’t loosen you up!” Steve snaps, all hormones. “And I don’t have the patience to—”

“I can do it.” Bucky insists. “Just give me as second…” He rolls over to the nightstand, digging around for the bottle he knows Steve must have.

“With one hand?” Steve says disbelievingly.

Bucky winces.

“And there’s no condoms, and you’re not on birth control, so no, I’m not knotting you.” Steve grits out, then he rolls over and begins to fuck the mattress. “Not if you don’t want it. I need you to leave, baby. I love you, but you’re gonna drive me insane not being able to get to you.”

Bucky fingers the bottle in his hand, observing Steve’s desperation, feeling absolutely, overwhelmingly useless.

Bucky swallow hard. “You can use my mouth.”

Steve growls sharply. “Absolutely fucking not! You know I’ll knot it, and you know you can’t handle that, not after what happened to you.”

Bucky goes cold, briefly thinking that Steve knew what happened to him at Hydra, before he realizes that’s not the event he’s referring too.

“Stevie—"

“Leave, Omega. Now!” Steve bites out.

“Fine!” Bucky shouts, stepping up off the bed and striding from the room, the sting of rejection following behind close by.

He works his way to the kitchen, fuming. “God fucking dammit!” Bucky shouts, and he kicks the cabinets with his shoes, splintering the wood. He kicks and kicks until his anger dissipates and he’s left hollow and cold. He collapses back into the fridge and buries his face in his hand.

How this hell is this recovery Jessica? How the hell is he doing better? Huh? When he can’t even give his lover what he needs when he needs it?

Eight hours later, the soldier—Bucky— hears the shower running. He’s staring at the ceiling, lying on the floor in the living room, the night long since come.

The shower lasts for a few minutes before it switches off. Bucky hears the door open, and he closes his eyes.

Moments pass, then Bucky feels Steve’s hand rest on his shoulder, stroking up and down his arm and combing through his hair.

Bucky rolls away from him, onto his only arm, facing the couch.

Steve lies down next to him on the ground and spoons him, wrapping a hand around Bucky’s chest as he kisses his neck one, two, three times.

“I’m sorry baby.” Steve says, and Bucky chokes out a laugh.

“You’re sorry? I’m the one who can’t… who can’t…”

“And when I couldn’t provide for you during your heat, you’re the one who told me that I was all the Alpha you’d want and need. You’re the one who made it work.” Steve’s hand traces the curve of Bucky’s ribs, no left arm in his way. “But the opposite situation happens, and I kick you out like you were nothing. I didn’t even give you a chance.”

“It’s different.” Bucky says. “Alphas get aggressive during ruts, Omegas get docile during heats. You probably would have ripped me in half had I stayed in there. When I go into my heat, you don’t take my words at face value do you?”

Bucky realizes what he’s saying, and abruptly feels nauseated, the conversation from earlier echoing around his brain.

‘That’s what happens during a heat, you ask for it. Doesn’t mean people have the right to give to you.’

“It’s instincts.” Bucky breathes. “That’s all. Doesn’t mean anything.”

Steve kisses Bucky’s neck. “Just because its instincts doesn’t mean it’s not gonna hurt like a bitch, after. I might be guided by my instincts, but it’s still my responsibility to face what happened when I get my head back. And I hurt you, and I’m sorry.”

Bucky doesn’t want to think about this anymore. He reaches to his hip where Steve’s hand is playing with his side, and grabs it in his right hand. “I forgive you.” Bucky says. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Steve kisses his neck again. “Let’s go to bed baby, and I’ll make it up to you, okay?”

Bucky nods, and they clamor up off the floor.

“I broke the kitchen.” Bucky says lamely as they get ready for bed.

Steve shrugs. “Never liked those cabinets anyway.”

“So,” Jessica says the next day, “how are your efforts to get a hobby going?”

“Can Omegas consent during their heat?”

“No.” Jessica says, not even blinking.

She says it so matter of fact that Bucky feels silly asking the question. She probably thinks that he’s been raped, like Tony. Jessica tells him all the time that his feelings are valid, and he feels fine, but Tony said that he’s been raped, and now Jessica says that too.

Yet he hasn’t. He knows he hasn’t. Even after what Steve had said about instincts, and responsibility. Even after Bucky himself said Omegas say things they don’t mean during their heat.

He hasn’t. He can’t have been.

“I think I’d like to learn how to dance again.” Bucky says.

“That’s a good one.” Jessica says, smiling. “What kind of dance?”

Despite Bucky telling Steve that he’s okay, Steve still makes it up to him a few days later by offering him a walk in a park. It apparently was a nightmare to organize, but Tony seemed to feel bad about the way his conversation went with Bucky before, because he was the one who made the calls to make it happen.

Bruce was trailing behind them as they strolled, not a single other person was in the park, and Bucky counted no less than five snipers in view at a given time, but it’s worth it to smell the fresh air again.

It took him going outside to realize that it was still winter, the trees bare except for the evergreens, the weather cold enough for him to wear a hat over his hair, which had grown long enough to frizz around his shoulders. They are walking gloved hand in gloved hand.

Steve slows to a stop, and Bucky slows with him, and looks into his face, his eyes. He loves Steve, and that’s something that will never question, ever.

“I never wanted you to feel the way I felt, back when we first got together.” Steve says. “I never wanted you to think you were anything less that the perfect man for me. But I did make you feel that, and I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay Steve.” Bucky says with a sigh, “I already forgave you.”

“I haven’t forgiven myself.” Steve says. “And I want you to know that no matter what happens between us, no matter what perceived inadequacies we think we have, that I’ll always be there for you, and I’ll never, ever let you go.”

And then, in front of several snipers, Bruce Banner, and Bucky himself, Steve gets down on one knee.

His hand dips in his pocket and he pulls out a box. “Bucky Barnes. Will you marry me?”

“Holy shit.” Bucky breathes.

Steve looks up at him hopefully, as if there was a chance Bucky would ever say no.

“You know how fucked up I am, right?” Bucky says.

“Yep.” Steve pops the p.

Bucky breaks into surprised, open eyed laughter. “You’re not supposed to agree with me!”

“Oh, oops.” Steve grins.

“Shut the fuck up. Yes, you punk. A thousand times yes.” Bucky smiles, and for the first time, it’s not forced.

March

Bucky’s getting better.

He refers to himself as the soldier in brief moments of time, and he’s spending more time smiling like he thinks he used too. He’s rewarded by more privileges, and messy trip to see Peggy, which left him pensive and tired for days.

Over the next few weeks after that, Bucky ‘runs into’ various superheroes, in a way that implies they’ve been carefully placed along his scheduled routine so that he can interact with people other than Steve. He wonders if this is Jessica’s doing, or if they are all just doing Steve a favor.

His first ‘accidental’ meet up is with Bruce Banner himself, who seems marginally happier that he no longer has to follow Bucky around everywhere. He’s in the library, where Bucky has slowly started working his way through a book of Russian fairytales. Russian somehow makes its easier for him to read, and the fairytales are easy, and remarkably interesting.

They don’t actually talk in the beginning, Bruce spending his time muttering over a stack of papers that don’t make sense at the table in the corner, while Bucky is sprawled on the lounger nearby, halfway trying to read, and halfway wondering how Tony managed to get a fireplace in an apartment building.

Thirty pages into his book, Bucky is startled from his reading when Bruce stands up with a frustrated noise and heads to the electric kettle in the corner.

“Do you want some tea?” Bruce offers.

Making decisions is hard. Bucky stares at the pages of his book blankly.

The hot water boils, and he hears Bruce pouring himself a cup.

Bucky steels himself.

“Yes.” He says, much later than it was socially acceptable to respond; the tea had been made, for God’s sake. But Bruce merely smiles, and drops the mug off at the coffee table near Bucky, going to make another for himself.

“Thanks.” Bucky says.

The next encounter is with Sam, an easygoing guy that Steve had gotten close to in Bucky’s absence, and whose heat was the one that triggered Steve’s rut in the first place, if just by accident.

Bucky would be jealous of Sam and Steve if Steve wasn’t his fiancé and Sam wasn’t the chilliest Omega on the planet. He ribs Steve in a way that Bucky finds familiar, and despite the fact that Bucky feels a little territorial around him, he doesn’t seem to mind that Bucky’s glued to Steve’s side the whole time he comes by for lunch.

It also helps that Sam is a fantastic cook.

Context: The soldier is at the kitchen table in his and Steve’s apartment, slurping down the second bowl of the best goddamn chicken noodle soup of his life, Sam looking on with amusement, amazement, and a little bit of fear.

“We used to boil everything.” Bucky says as he tears off a piece of bread from the loaf Steve and he were splitting and using it to soak up the rest of the broth in his bowl. It was bursting with more flavor than he’s had since, well, ever, and is still gentle enough not to encourage any nausea.

“Dear God, I though Rogers was kidding.” Sam grins. He seems to always be smiling, despite his awestruck look at the amount of food they were putting away.

“Well Steve was the cook, and it was hard to find spices in the depression.” Bucky says. “And he did the best he could with what we got.” Bucky nudges Steve in the side, trying to be a little nice.

“Still tasted like shit.” Steve snorts.

“Sweet mother of Jesus, who taught you that kinda language?” Sam chides.

“Bucky mostly, but Fury taught me motherfucker.” Steve says, spoon clattering to his empty bowl.

“You want to do what to my mother?” Bucky says, aghast.

“I want more of this motherfucking soup, that’s what I want.” Steve says.

“I’m gonna have to start charging ya.” Sam says, heading over to the Dutch oven on the stove to serve Steve more. “Not even fair you can just put this all away with no consequences.”

“Steve’s gassy as shit.” Bucky says.

“I’m gassy as shit? What the was that you left in the bathroom last night?”

“That wasn’t gas, that went in the toilet where it belonged.”

Sam grimaces, from across the room. “Is this really the best lunch conversation?”

“You’re right,” Steve says with a sigh. “So, Bucky. Back to fucking your mother.”

Bucky laughs and swings a punch at his shoulder, which Steve catches easily. Bucky lets Steve twist his arm behind his back, and leans forward and kisses him. Steve pulls back on Bucky’s hand, and pushes himself closer to Bucky, and Bucky bites down on Steve’s lip, causing Steve to let out a heady noise.

Bucky’s got his tongue in Steve’s mouth, and Steve’s breaths were coming in pants, before Sam clatters the bowl against the counter, hard.

They pull back reluctantly, and Steve has the decency to blush. Bucky doesn’t. A little voice in his head says he’s mine, motherfucker.

“Since clearing my throat wasn’t working,” Sam said, but he still had a little smile on his face.

“Sorry.” Bucky says, not sorry. “Can I have more soup?”

Sam moans, and gets up from the table.

“Sometimes I still act like I did when I was the soldier.” Bucky phrases his words carefully, thinking of the way he occasionally scans the room, to give himself context. “Sometimes I still analyze everything and think of things like missions. Will that ever go away?”

“Somethings stay with us forever, Bucky.” Jessica says. “Sometimes things don’t go away, and we learn to live with them. You’re never going to be the same person you were before trauma, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make it work.

Bucky thinks about that for a long time.

“Do you think you’ll have to stay with me forever?” Bucky asks.

“I will be here as long as you need me,” Jessica says without pause.

Bucky laughs. “Good answer.”

Bucky’s in the gym with Steve, though he’s not sure why he insists on them going together, given that he makes a shitty spotter, when he come across Tony again. Tony’s speed walking on the treadmill on a severe incline, somehow keeping his breath as he speaks on a conference call. He’s an Omega of many hats, and Bucky can respect that.

Tony hangs up, then turns to Bucky, where he’s been working on one armed pushups.

“Hey. Can I build you an arm?” Tony asks. “I need another challenge, and I have moratorium on building more suits. Made a promise to Pepper.”

“Sure.” Bucky says.

“Great.” Tony says. “Any requests?”

“Uh. Make it a left one?”

“If you insist.”

Bucky’s dancing skills were rusty, but like riding a bike, he could pick up the steps fairly well.

“Not bad, Barnes.” Natasha says, as she spins him, leaning him back over her arm. Bucky’s amazed to find she’s classically trained, and can take him around the room with confidence, despite the heels she’s wearing out of necessity to make up the two inches between them, so she can pass her arm over his head.

Context: The soldier is re-learning dance in the community room of the tower. He was a little startled one evening, when Natalia (call me Natasha) showed up with a set of men’s dance shoes in her hand at his door during free time one day.

They started with the basics, a simple three step waltz, Bucky getting used to the rhythm of rhythm again. He quickly gets bored.

Bucky stops them, and tilts his head. “Do you know how to quickstep?”

Natasha, who seemed to be just going through the motions of the waltz too, grins.

The energy increases immensely, and they are spinning across the floor, Bucky grinning wildly as Natasha leads him through sharp turns and complicated footwork, Bucky only making a fool of himself twice before he manages to keep up.

They have to do some rather wild adjusting for Bucky to do everything with one arm, but somehow they make it work.

“That’s more like it!” Bucky gasps as the song ends, and Natasha looks delightfully mussed up, energy peaking as well.

“What else you got, Barnes?”

Bucky’s not one to back down from a challenge. “Play some swing,” he orders, then he takes the lead and appropriately swings Natasha around the room. She knows this one too, so he ups his ante, adding spins and crosses and rotating her every which way, but she doesn’t so much as blink, keeping up with him easily.

They continue like this for a while, challenge each other with different styles, and Bucky is immediately impressed by Natasha’s breath of knowledge. She must have either studied up, or purely loved dancing, because she could handle the Charleston as easily as she could a foxtrot.

Bucky’s breathless, and dare-he-say-it happy, as he collapses into the couch that’s been pushed to the side of the room, high on the feeling of reclaiming a piece of his past.

Bucky swallows, as he looks to Natasha, whose hair has been pulled from her ponytail. She leans over and offers him water from the glass she’s drinking from.

“Thank you.” Bucky says, hoarsely.

“It’s just water,” she says, but she knows that’s not what he meant.

Bucky nods and takes a step, and leans his head back on the couch, grateful for this chance to forget about his mission to get better, and to pretend for a brief moment that he wasn’t still trying to survive, that he was trying to live.

Steve is talking, but Bucky isn’t paying attention. It’s a new thing for him, being able to not pay attention, and he likes the ability to unfocus, likes the ability to trust the people milling about without feeling like he’s disassociating.

Context: The soldier was in the living room. Steve was hosting a small team dinner, and Bucky decided he was okay to come too. Bucky had spent most of the day on the couch, carving out a space for him to not be overwhelmed by the sudden influx of new people. It helps that his fiancé is wrapped around him like an octopus, touching him like he was trying to make up for all the lost years.

Natasha lies on the other couch with her legs in Clint’s lap. Tony was drinking a soda in the recliner. Sam was cooking in the kitchen, and Bruce was helping him. Clint had been kicked out after he almost set something on fire, and was sulking.

“Dinner’s up.” Sam’s voice pipes from the kitchen. Bucky marvels at the Omega’s ability to do Omega-coded behaviors without feeling judged.

Bucky perks up at the mention of food, and Steve rolls his eyes. “Only food gets you to pay attention, huh,” he says, as Natasha pulls her legs from Clint’s lap.

Bucky shrugs. “Don’t tell me you’re not hungry too, big guy.” He then leans over and kisses him.

After eighty years, Steve still gets delightfully pink in the cheeks whenever Bucky makes a move on him in public. He grins at Bucky like a doof, and Bucky fucking loves him.

“Get a room.” Tony says on his way to the table.

“This is my room,” he says. He likes owning things.

He and Steve follow closely behind him, and Bucky smiles as he sees Steve make faces at Tony’s back.

Sam claps his hands together when they reach the table. The lunch with Sam last week had turned into a team thing quickly, as everyone learned how well Sam could cook. Sam took this as a chance to flex his chef muscles, and also as a way to try and instill more culture and flavor in Steve and Bucky in particular.

“Today we’re taking a trip to Poland!” Sam smiles, and Bucky plays with Steve’s hand in his own. “Braised red cabbage, tastes better than it sounds. Horseradish, same thing. Potato pancakes, even better than they sound, a salad, which is a good as you make it, and the star of the dish: blood sausage.”

Bucky runs to the kitchen and vomits in the trash can.

He doesn’t stop heaving, even after he runs out of food, even as he runs out of liquid. He heaves until it hurts, heaves until he cries, until his abs clench tightly around his empty stomach.

When he finally stops, his face is streaked with tears, and he’s making hitching noises underneath his breath. He’s shaking, a piece of a memory lodging its way into his throat.

All he can taste is blood.

“Babe?” An Alpha’s voice says from above him. He reaches, gently, for the soldier’s shoulder.

The soldier flinches backwards, falling on his ass.

He tries to apologize, but it feels like he’s choking, and the words can’t quite come out.

“Bucky—”

The soldier, Bucky, crawls backwards. He doesn’t want—he can’t— “I don’t want to.” He begs.

“Steve. We are leaving, now.” Tony snaps.

Sam appears by Bucky’s side. Omega’s weren’t allowed in the military. But Sam—

He’s holding out a tall glass of water to the soldier.

Bucky takes the glass and swishes it in his mouth and spits it in the trash, but he still tastes it. He remembers choking, biting, a man in black—

“It’s okay, Bucky.” Sam says.

He remembers begging for it. Remembers it pushing down his throat. Remembers the man in black taking what he didn’t have a right to take.

He realizes he’s crying. He realizes he’s being held up by Sam, and that the room is empty.

“He wanted to knot my mouth.” Bucky gasps out finally as the memory slams into him. It’s clear, vivid, and real. “Said he was a bigger, and…and a better Alpha, and I—I begged for it, before, I wanted it, so bad, but then he…” Bucky trails off.

Sam was rubbing his back slowly.

“But I didn’t want him to, so I just bit down on it.”

Bucky cracks out a laugh. He turns to lean back against the kitchen cabinets, legs long across the kitchen floor. Blood motherfucking sausage.

“It should be so funny,” Bucky chokes out. “I should be laughing, ‘cause I completely destroyed it, I ripped it to pieces like a fucking animal. Alexander Pierce, a knotless Alpha. The number of jokes I used to make alone… But all I can think is how horrible it was, how it tasted, how horrible it felt to be choked by it. God.”

“Something like that is traumatic.” Sam say quietly.

“Yet I wanted it, Sam!” Bucky cries out, trying to get Sam to understand. “Every time. Every time. They wanted to… I begged them for it. I demanded it. I wanted more and more—I displayed myself like a whore, I judged them on their size, I—actual enemies, murderers, evil men, I didn’t care, if they had a knot I would try to find a way to get it! Nazis! Terrorists! I had no shame! How could I—How could that be me? It doesn’t even feel like me.”

Bucky runs out of steam, all at once, a truth gnawing at the side of his brain. He rests his head against the kitchen cabinets, tears still falling from his eyes.

After a moment, Sam speaks.

“You were in heat?” Sam says quietly.

Bucky realizes it was a question, so he nods.

“Then you’re right. That wasn’t you.” Sam continues.

“But…” Bucky looks at Sam, and his words trail off.

“I don’t know what happened, Bucky, I wasn’t there. But from what I see… from what I’ve seen, Bucky, this doesn’t look like someone who wanted any of it.” Sam says. His face is gentle and open, no pity, just understanding.

The truth stops nibbling, and takes a big, painful bite. “I didn’t… want it.” Bucky repeats to the sky, the words too significant for him to comprehend. “But I asked for it,” he protests weakly, “and I turned away the ones that weren’t good enough, so how…”

“You can’t consent Bucky.” Sam says firmly. “Not in heat. Before it, yes. But not during. It’s your instincts versus your logic, and during a heat the instincts win out, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt just as bad, afterwards.”

“I didn’t want it.” He says again, and realization cuts him deep.

‘It’s rape. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but that’s what it is.’

“I didn’t want any of it.” Bucky croaks, and he turns to the trash and heaves again.

The soldier picks himself up off the ground. He tells Sam to let the others back in, that he’s going to lie down in his room for a while.

Time passes. Things happen. They don’t entail, the soldier, so he doesn’t—

Except that’s not entirely true, now is it?

He does care. It does entail him, and it’s about time he faces the truth he so easily denies.

Bucky turns over in his bed.

He didn’t want it. He didn’t want it. And it didn’t make sense at first, because even outside of his heat, the soldier would have probably fucked anyone. He was stronger than them, and if they did something he did not want, he would have probably just killed them.

But what Bucky realized today is that there’s a difference between the soldier’s instincts versus Bucky’s. It was the soldier’s heats that drove him to mate, the soldiers calculating, sociopathic mind that tried to gain pleasure anyway he could, the soldier’s feral, animalistic nature that came out when the Alphas failed.

For Bucky, sex was beautiful, and fun, and easy, usually just a bat of an eyelash or a sway of the hips away. It’s part of him, the push and pull of a willing partner, the teasing and the games they could play as they physically expressed an appreciation for the other, even if they were just a brief passing in the night, or a few days of desperate heat or rut.

Sex was also love to Bucky. It was sensually slow or frighteningly deep or deliciously rough or satisfyingly hard. It was an equalizer of power between bodies, a matching of pulses and movements and an expression of emotion that words could only dream to describe. It’s an ability to create something from nothing, another piece of love to add to the pile.

Sex was important to Bucky, it still is, but Hydra turned it into something impersonal, something cold. Painfully, time and time again, pieces of himself were ripped from his head and stomped into dust, and this was one of them. He was turned into a man who wouldn’t mind taking the life of a good person because he didn’t care; he became a soldier. Sex, then, was a means to an end, an empty, meaningless movement, creating nothing and leaving nothing behind.

And that. That is rape, Bucky decides. It wasn’t just when they tried to push their fingers and their cocks inside of him, tried to use him, or own him, no. The rape started when he first woke up as the soldier, in that chair so long ago, and they took sex from him, took the joy it could cause, the love it could create, the connection it could form.

And everyday he can’t share that with Steve is another day Hydra takes it from him, again.

He wakes to a knock on the door.

“Just tell me to go, Bucky, no question, and I’ll sleep on the couch.” Steve’s voice comes through the ceiling speakers.

No AI is allowed in their quarters. He has issues with disembodied voices, apparently.

“Come in, Steve.” Bucky says tiredly, and he sits up on his bed and tries to pretend he has control over anything anymore.

Steve enters the room, trying desperately not to come across as worried and failing spectacularly, which is actually the most endearing thing in the world. Quickly, the scent of him in the bed was no longer enough.

“Come here?” He asks, and Steve walks towards him. Bucky stands up and wraps his arms around Steve’s back, his hands coming to rest between the muscles of his shoulders, their chests pressing together lightly. He tucks his head into the nook made from Steve’s shoulder and Steve’s neck. Carefully, he scents him, letting that inexplicable scent of everything wash over him. He feels himself sag into Steve’s body, trusting Steve to carry him.

“I gotta tell you something.” Bucky mumbles into his neck.

“Anything, Bucky.” Steve says.

He sits them down on the bed, next to each other. He links a hand into Steve’s and squeezes. Then he locks his eyes with Steve’s.

“I was raped.” Bucky says quietly. The words were no longer enormous, but were still a mouthful, like they would take a long time to chew before they were swallowed.

Steve’s face breaks apart.

“Several times.” He continues. “And I thought…I thought it was easier, because I was in control, but it still…” Bucky’s voice shakes. “I didn’t want it Stevie.”

Steve almost immediately starts vibrating with anger. He’s so mad Bucky can actually smell it, souring the air.

“Baby, please.” Bucky sniffs. “I can’t handle you angry, right now.” It’s probably pointless to protest. When Steve get’s an idea in his head, when he encounters injustice, it consumes him until it’s the only thing he can think about.

 “I’m sorry baby, I’m so, so sorry.” Steve says, but his hands are still squeezing Bucky’s too tightly, and his anger doesn’t dissipate, just continues to grow until it makes the room cloying, until Bucky is wincing with every breath.

“Steve.” He says sharply.

Steve gets up and slams out of the room.

Bucky watches him as he does, and his body goes numb.

Bucky tries to tell himself Steve was angry at Hydra. That’s what makes the most sense. Steve never cared about how much sex he’s had, and knows that rape isn’t the fault of an Omega.

But Steve’s not here, and the smell of his anger has permeated into the walls, and irrationally, emotionally, stupidly, he can’t help but think that Steve is mad at him.

It’s wrong, it’s not true, but maybe…maybe Steve could smell it. Smell the soldier, smell the men that the soldier let use him. Maybe he’s tainted, like the old wives tales used to say. Maybe he’s been desecrated, and that’s why Steve left.

It can’t be. Bucky thinks. It’s stupid. Steve wouldn’t do that. Not Steve, never Steve.

Bucky struggles for a moment, but caves and tries to take a whiff of his own scent—an impossibility, but he tries anyways. It’s smells sour, and soiled, like anger and sadness and fear, and suddenly Bucky was back at the docks, with a knot in his throat, trying desperately not to pass out so that he wouldn’t risk being mated by the Alpha who paid for his mouth.

He’s been doing this for a long time, he realizes. Having sex with Alphas freely. The soldier had to come from somewhere, right? Is he really so much of a whore, deep down, tossing aside the quality of the man so carelessly just for the chance to get a dick in his ass? Did the revelation that he’s been raped finally open Steve’s eyes to what everyone else saw all along? That he’s ruined?

Bucky can’t lose Steve. Even when he had nothing, he had Steve.

He has to get the smell off of him. He has to strip his sins from himself, and see if there is anything left. If there is, he has to give it to Steve. If not…

He walks into the bathroom. He flips on the shower and strips and steps inside. He takes the bar of soap off the ledge, and starts to clean.

“Baby, come out of the shower.”

He barely notices Steve. “What, will these hands never be clean?” He murmurs to himself, delirious. He’s rubbing his hand up and down his body, his nails lifting the blood to the outer layer of his skin, red lines tracing all over himself, soap bar long since gone.

“Bucky. I need you to come out.” Steve says.

“Out, damned spot.” He murmurs, the black sleeve squelching with each movement, soap embedded in the fibers. “Out, I say.”

The door to the shower opens, and Steve steps inside with him, getting his body wet as he wraps his arms around him and turns off the nozzle.

“Stevie, no, I have to get clean.” He says. “The smell, I have to get rid of the smell.”

“What smell, Bucky? What is it?”

“My scent. It’s sour, it’s…”How could Steve be near him, with the smell of Hydra all over?

“That wasn’t you babe, that was me, remember? I got angry, and I had to leave because I was making things worse, and I’m sorry I couldn’t control it, but it was my scent, not yours that was bad.” Steve sounds harried as he speaks.

“But you left me. I was raped, and you left me.” He says, words coming out of his mouth without his own volition.

“I know, and it’s shit and I’m sorry, but me being here and being mad would have only made things worse. I’m sorry I ran away. I’m sorry I can’t control my anger very well sometimes.” Steve says weakly. “But I love you, and I’ll never, ever leave you.”

Bucky comes back to himself. He’s naked in the shower, water running uselessly down his body. Steve is behind him, still in his jeans, arms wrapped around him tightly, and Bucky can hear him crying.

“Don’t cry, Stevie.” Bucky says automatically.

“You are so strong.” Steve says.

It’s the last thing Bucky expects to hear.

“You are so brave.” Steve whispers. “For telling me. For surviving. And I promise Bucky, I meant it when I said I’m with you to the end of the line. I’ll never leave you again. I’ll never get angry again.”

Bucky feels his lips curl upwards, the ghost of something that could have been a smile. “There you go, making promises you can’t keep. You couldn’t not be angry if you tried.”

“Never at you. You’ll never see that side of me.” Steve declares. “Nothing you could say or do could ever stop me from loving you. I’ll always, always find my way back to you, and I’ll take you in what ever way I can get. No matter what.”

“Do you mean that?” Bucky says quietly. He starts to shiver.

“Yes. Whatever you need.” Steve says. “Let’s get you warm, okay?”

Bucky nods, and they leave the shower.

“Hi Bucky.” Jessica says.

“Fuck you.”

Jessica doesn’t even blink. It had been a day since the incident, and Bucky spend most of it locked in his room, avoiding Steve, and avoiding the world.

“You knew. This whole fucking time, didn’t you? Yet you said nothing. You let me sit here and ramble on about my hobbies and shit, and you never bring up all the things that happened to me, never once bringing up the fact that I was raped.” Bucky spits. “Even when I told you it was consensual, you just—you just let me believe that?! Aren’t you supposed to be here to help?” Bucky yells so loud he feels it vibrate painfully in his throat. “Aren’t you supposed to tell me what’s wrong with me? Huh? Why would you leave me in the dark about this?!”

Jessica stays silent.

“Answer me!”

Jessica doesn’t.

Bucky feels tears prick at the corner of his eyes, feels his hand shake without his permission. “Fuck you. Just, fuck you, okay. It’s not Goddamn fair. It’s not fair that they took this from me, it’s not fair that I fell of a train, and they turned me into a machine, and made me kill and torture and maim for them, that they destroyed my ability to love the best way I know how.”

Bucky swallows down a lump in his throat, his voice losing volume, but not steam. “It’s not fair that getting turned on is a fucking chore now, that I don’t get to share any of it with Steve. It’s not okay that any of them took my personality and my emotions and my life from me, and turned me into something eager and willing to be used, with no qualms about any of his own wants, as long as it falls in line with Hydra’s vision.”

Bucky has tears streaming from his eyes, and he doesn’t even care that he’s not supposed to be crying. “I am a fucking person.” He finishes, voice cracked and desperate and strong, and he collapses back into the couch and full on cries. Cries with harsh, painful sobs and a red face, cried and cries and cries.

“I deserve more,” He hiccups into his hand, and suddenly, its all just too much.

Jessica looks on. “I’m sorry. Bucky.”

“Sorry isn’t enough.” Bucky snaps.

“I know.” Jessica says silently.

Bucky leaves.

April

“Bucky?”

Context: The soldier is in the library in the Avenger’s tower in New York, staring at the ceiling. His mission to get better is not going well. Over the past few days he hasn’t spoken to anyone. He’s been avoiding Steve completely, and he hasn’t read, he hasn’t danced, he hasn’t worked out. He’s just… drifted.

“Tony.” The soldier responds.

“You okay?”

The soldier tracks Tony with his eyes as he comes to the front of the soldier’s chair. “Yes.”

“You sure? Cuz you don’t look okay. You don’t look like anything, really. Kinda like a zombie, or Mr. Bayes during a board meeting. I mean the guy is like, ninety, it might be time for retirement? At least send a proxy, we don’t have to time to keep waking you up every day.”

The soldier blinks as Tony plops himself down on the table in front of him.

“Oh, I know, you look like me when I have to wait for my code to compile and I’m suddenly forced to stay still, which causes me to have another of my reoccurring existential crises where I become aware of how long I’ve been sitting in the same chair, or how bad I smell, or how much I don’t deserve to be lov—you know what? I’m getting off topic.”

The soldier frowns slightly.

“Hello? Bueller?” Tony waves a hand in front of the soldier’s face. “Well, anyways. I just wanted to say I’m sorry for what happened last week.”

“You didn’t do anything.” The soldier states.

“Doesn’t mean what happened didn’t suck. I mean that shit sticks with you forever, like herpes. Which I know nothing about. At all, like I just brought that up because of this Vegas joke—you know, usually a back and forth conversation helps stop me from rambling like an idiot. So if you could respond, maybe? It’s why I built JARVIS, because nobody could stand how much I talked.”

The soldier looks at the Omega blankly.

“Except maybe you… Oh, this is great, you’re like a real life rubber duck, I could just read all my problems to you and come up with my own solutions. You know, you should talk to Bruce about listening to people without falling asleep, he could learn something from you. Anyways, that’s not why I’m here. There’s two reasons why I’m here.”

“What are they.” The soldier says more than asks.

“One, your arm is done. Even made it a left one, like you asked. Not installing it yet though, because it’s ‘technically a weapon’ and ‘doesn’t qualify for someone who’s mentally unstable and on house arrest Tony, what were you thinking, Tony,’ so we are going to have to wait until I convince Ross you’ve actually gotten better.

“Getting better is hard.” He responds.

“Tell me about it, which leads me to the second reason I’m here: you can’t shut people out of your life. Not the important ones.”

The soldier blinks up at Tony.

“Yeah, I’m talking about Steve. Poor guy is moping like his nonexistent dog has just been put down. He’s doing this whole ‘stare off into space’ thing, where he’s probably having his own existential crisis.”

“I didn’t mean to—of course that asshole is taking everything to heart.” Bucky mutters, shifting in the chair for the first time in hours. “I’m not avoiding him. Well, not for what he thinks.”

“Poor guy has the worst case of ‘heart on the sleeve’ I’ve ever seen, so maybe try and reconnect? And I wouldn’t be saying that if I didn’t think it was the best thing for you. It’s taken me like, decades to realize I need other people.”

“It’s…hard.” The soldier says. “To be near him.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Oh God, are we ‘talking’ again?”

“If you want people to listen to you pal, you need to listen to them back.” Bucky snarks.

“That’s annoyingly fair. Shoot.”

“I haven’t been able to have sex with Steve since I’ve come back. But, at Hydra, I was a…more willing participant? That’s not the right phrase. I was… I could get it up.” Bucky sighs. “And I still can, when I think about what happened, but with Steve, I can’t. And I hate it.”

Tony taps his fingers against the mug in his hand. There’s no judgement on his face, only a slight twisting that could either be him trying to figure out a problem, or reacting to a bad smell. “You can be intimate without having sex, you know. Pepper taught me that.”

Bucky looks away. “We tried, but he can’t handle the fact that I’m soft when he’s—”

“Not like that. I mean being close to him.”

“We were literally next to each other for sixteen hours of the day.” Bucky rolls his eyes.

“Not physically,” Tony says slowly, “emotionally.”

“Like… a date?” Bucky says. “He’s my fiancé.”

“Doesn’t mean you should let the romance die! Listen, it doesn’t have to be a date. But if you’re like me and you like sex, but for some reason you can’t have it, you can still make up for it through good ol’ fashion love. And while sex is the best way to be intimate in my honest opinion, I mean it’s literally the reason why it’s called ‘being intimate,’ that doesn’t mean that you can’t be intimate in different ways. Pepper likes sex, but loves massages, so that’s what’s intimate to her. You know? So we can have sex all the which way, but when I give her a massage she loses her mind.”

“Yeah.” Bucky says, mind already churning with ideas, new energy filling his body. “I think I get it.”

“Great!” Tony stands up sharply. “Because as much as I hate talking, I hate sulking Steve more. I’m going to find Pepper and give her a foot massage.”

“Enjoy.” Bucky snorts as he stands. He thinks he still has time before Steve gets home.

Bucky wonders, as he strips the comforter off their bed, if “getting better” is something that he can actually achieve, or a mission that will never end.

Context: The soldier is building Steve a nest, except he’s being really fancy about it. He’s pressed the room’s two couches together so that it creates a pocket of cushions, and piled on the comforter and the pillows from bed. Next he drags the nightstand from the room—the coffee table had to be removed since Bucky’s outbursts kept breaking them—and positions it at the top of the makeshift nest, where he puts Steve’s book of choice, his sketching materials, a bottle of massage oil, and his laptop. The last thing he gets is two cups of hot chocolate, a la Tony Stark, which he’s currently transporting, one at a time, to the nightstand, right as Steve arrives home.

“Um.” Bucky begins eloquently. He used to be better at this.

“Bucky…” Steve says, surprised and pleased that Bucky’s talking to him again. He drops his shield to the floor below him and looks at the couch-nest with interest. “You did this?”

“Yeah.” Bucky says. “I uh, remember I used to do this when you were sick. Make you a nest with all the blankets and towels in your house, make you sleep in it with me. It’s kinda how my parents figured out I’d be an Omega.”  He puts the chocolate carefully on the nightstand, then steps over to Steve, who was looking at him with suspiciously watery eyes. Sap.

“I always thought that I would be able to suck the illness out of you, just through skin contact. It was dumb, but I was 8, and I thought somehow me being there could make it better.”

“You did make it better.” Steve murmurs, and his hand carefully come to stroke Bucky’s cheek. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

“Yeah, well, I also remember getting sick twice as often as anyone else, because apparently sleeping next to a sick person isn’t good for your health. Ma was so mad when she found out, but at the same time, thought it was the cutest thing.” Bucky snorts. “But that’s not the point. I was… I was wondering if maybe we could try to flip the script.” He looks down at the ground, embarrassed and shy. “Maybe if we did the same thing, you could help me get better this time.”

“Of course.” Steve says. “Yes baby. Let me—this looks perfect. Let me get dressed down, and we can spend the whole afternoon in here, doing whatever you want.”

Bucky smiles up at Steve.

“Can I kiss you?” Steve asks.

“Steve, you will never, ever, have to ask.” Bucky says, and he presses his lips to his.

They spend the whole afternoon in the nest, drinking hot chocolate and doing next to nothing. Bucky feels himself melting into his lover’s scent, his body buried underneath the covers, his face resting between his lovers legs where the scent is the strongest.

At first Steve simply lies there and strokes his hair until Bucky falls into a light doze, but then he ends up diving deep into his book. Bucky passes time by counting the page flips, and feeling the soft fabric of Steve’s sleep pants underneath his fingers.

After one hundred and forty page flips, Bucky speaks up. “Put the book down babe.”

Steve makes a questioning noise, still a little lost in the world of his story, but follows Bucky’s instructions anyways.

“Take off your shirt.”

“Why?” Steve starts pulling off his shirt, listening to Bucky before he even gives him a reason.

“I’m going to give you a back massage.” Bucky got the idea from Tony, admittedly, but he thinks it would be good for him to give pleasure, instead of to take it.

“Ooh. Ok.” They maneuver in the couch-nest so that Steve is lying on his stomach on the couch, and Bucky is straddling his thick thighs. “Can I ask what brought this on?”

“I want to feel close to you, and make you feel good, the best way I can.” Bucky murmurs. He pours the oil onto Steve’s back, and watches Steve shiver.

“Sorry babe.” He leans into the side of the couch for leverage so that he can push his right hand into the space between Steve’s shoulder blade and his spine. He’s not super experienced in giving massages, but he knows what feels good on himself, so he works on pressing his fingers into the muscle like a particularly tough dough.

Whatever he’s doing seems to work, because Steve moans into the pillow below him. Bucky smiles slightly, then starts to work his way around Steve’s muscles, noticing twin knots on his shoulder, probably from the weight of the shield on his back.

Speaking of his shield…

“Didn’t you drop your shield to the bottom of the river?” Bucky says, as he tries to add more technique to what feels like him just prodding Steve’s back.

“Stark fished it out, then ranted about me throwing important shit into lakes.” Steve murmurs into the pillow.

“Had to make a point, huh?” Bucky says, and he digs in hard onto the tight muscle underneath Steve’s shoulder. Steve lets out a small, constricted noise in response.

“Does that hurt?” Bucky asks, pressing his thumb into the knot.

“Don’t stop.” Steve grits, voice tight.

Bucky presses in further, then his thumb rolls over the knot, breaking it open.

“Mmfh. Do that again.”

Bucky sets up a rhythm, digging in knots and releasing the pressure from them. He must be doing something right, because Steve relaxes a little more after every release, and Bucky can feel the muscle contraction lessen each time he goes through.

Bucky’s satisfaction grows with each stroke. He feels like this isn’t the right way to give a massage, but he also realizes that no one other than Thor is probably strong enough to get into Steve’s back like this. No, this is something only Bucky can do for Steve.

“Christ.” Steve gasps, and Bucky realizes that Steve’s started pressing his hips into the couch cushions.

“From just a massage?” Bucky teases, but he has to admit that seeing Steve like this because of him is a power trip he never thought he’d have again.

“From a massage from you. Though this probably qualified as shiatzu, with how much you’re digging in.”

“You telling me you like a little pain with your pleasure, Stevie?” Bucky grins.

Steve turns his face to the side to make half-hearted eye contact with Bucky. “So do you.” He purrs, and Bucky shivers. “Roll over.”

They switch positions and Bucky hears Steve fish the bottle of oil from where it got embedded between the couch cushions.

“Leave me an inch or so berth from what’s left of my arm.” Bucky says, and Steve hums in response.

“My back feels fantastic.” Steve says, and Bucky can hear him crack his spine a bit. “Can’t believe you, single handedly, did all that.”

Bucky snorts at the wordplay. “Get to work, Stevie.”

“Yes, sir.” Steve says, and he presses both of his slick hands into Bucky’s back.

Steve is better at this than him, not just digging into knots but rather somehow getting them to melt away. The left side of Bucky’s back has more knots from holding up his arm, but Steve employs a kneading motion that makes Bucky feels like putty.

Bucky moans into the couch, enjoying the satisfaction of Steve being able to dig in deep into his muscles. Steve shifts, and Bucky briefly feels the hard length of Steve’s dick pressing onto his back.

Surprised, but certainly not upset, Bucky lifts his hips, and feels his ass come in contact with Steve’s cock, hard in his sleepers.

“I, uh…” Steve starts, hands stilling on his back.

“I don’t mind Stevie.” Bucky says. “You’re making me feel good, with your hands. You like making me feel good, right?” It was the piece that was lacking from their attempts at intimacy before, the ability for Steve to see and hear Bucky’s own pleasure, and Bucky realizes that this is the perfect solution.

“Yeah.” Steve breathes.

“So let me do the same.” Bucky says, then he lefts his hips again, pressing into Steve’s cock.

Steve moans, and it seems to be working for him, because he repositions and starts grinding into Bucky’s ass, slowly and carefully, like he’s taking something he’s not sure he’s allowed to take.

The new position digs the heels of Steve’s palms into Bucky’s back, which feels really good in itself, but Bucky dials up the moan that comes out, making it sound much more unabashedly pornographic than it should.

It works, and Steve starts to grind harder, moving in long, confident strokes against Bucky’s ass, his hands moving the same way, digging into the rock hard toughness of his back like it’s nothing.

Bucky moans again, starting a circular motion with his ass. “Fuck baby, that feels so good, your hands feel so good.”

“Oh Christ,” Steve’s hips start moving in short, quick jerks, and Bucky realizes Steve is very, very close.

“You like that?” Bucky says. “You like me talking about your hands? How good they feel massage my back? Or how about how good they feel inside me?”

“Motherfucker!” Steve cries and he comes in his pants, bucking uncontrollably over Bucky’s back. “God, Bucky…”

Bucky was kind of looking forward to feeling Steve’s hot come cover his back, but this was just as good, Bucky getting Steve to come in his pants in thirty seconds from his ass and his voice. Mind you, Steve probably had been a sexually pent up as Bucky, but Bucky’ll take what he can get.

“Motherfucker?” Bucky turns over onto his back as Steve collapses into the couch, trying to catches his breath.

“Shuddup.” He snorts. “You sure that this was okay?”

“Yeah, of course.” Bucky says, then at Steve’s face, still worried, he continues. “I like being able to make you feel good, you know? It’s…different from Hydra.” Steve rubs his hand over Bucky’s chest soothingly. “. I like being able to get you off, and not care about myself. It’s like the opposite of how I was back then. You know? And it’s my choice to be with you, and I can show you how much I care about you, because I’m shit with words.” Bucky ends his small speech in a soft tone.

Steve gazes at Bucky with a tender expression and an easy smile. Bucky feels himself turn pink, and he looks away.

“I love you.” Steve says.

“I love you too, asshole.” Bucky mutters. Steve laughs, and Bucky watches as Steve climbs out of the nest to strip from his pants.

The nest stays, though they have to disinfect it whenever people come over because it’s apparently rude to scent mark the furniture people are expected to sit in.

Bucky and Steve have been doing a trial and error of sorts when it comes to sex. Getting intimate. Whatever. The biggest thing they’ve found is that Steve can get off only when Bucky has his back to him, because something about looking into Bucky’s eyes and seeing his lack of arousal turns Steve off like a switch. They keep Bucky’s pants on too, to disguise the fact he’s not wet, but other than that, they’ve worked up a system.

Steve gives Bucky another massage later that day, and Bucky gets his dream of feeling Steve’s come stripe his back. The next successful thing they try involves Steve sucking Bucky’s neck as he ruts against his ass as Bucky describes what he wishes he was doing to Steve.

One glorious day, Bucky shows up in a pair of bright blue briefs and lube slathered between his thighs, and Steve slides his cock between his leg and ruts as Bucky whispers to Steve how much he loves him, how he’s so glad to be close to him again.

Bucky doesn’t shower at night either, sleeping peacefully gain with Steve.

Bucky hopes that they can work their way to anal sex again, but a more pressing matter makes itself known at Jessica’s next session.

“Have you thought about what you’re going to do about your heat?” Jessica asks.

Bucky sighs. “How did you know?”

Jessica looks pointedly at the makeshift nest behind the chair he’s sitting in.

Bucky squints. “How much of this room can you see?”

“It’s coming soon, isn’t it? When was the last one?”

“Last April.” Bucky says. “When I was supposed to be assassinating Fury. Ironically, it ended before I saw Steve.”

“That’s in a week, Bucky.” Jessica says. Bucky can’t believe he’s been in recovery for so long.

“How am I supposed to have a heat, when I can’t even…” Bucky makes a motion. “Is it even going to work?”

“A few things can happen.” Jessica says. “You can go into heat, and it could restart your system, and you can feel aroused.”

Bucky frowns. The soldier still can get aroused if he’s thinks about being raped by Hydra, so the idea of getting aroused during a heat around Steve is not a good one. He hasn’t had got off in the shower though, not with the new things he was trying with Steve, and he feels better because of it.

“What else?”

“You can go into heat mentally, but not be aroused physically, which is dangerous.” Jessica says. “Because it makes you want sex, and possibly exude the pheromones, but you’re body won’t be ready for it.”

“I trust Steve.” Bucky says. Somehow, this idea is easier to swallow than the last one. He knows Steve would never do anything to him that he can’t handle, and he’d be good with making sure Bucky wouldn’t hurt himself.

Some people would continue to try and tell Bucky their opinion, but the thing that Bucky likes about Jessica is that she trusts him to make his own decisions. Which is what he’s doing, now. Making his own decisions. He’s getting better.

“And the last one is that you skip a heat entirely. But since you’ve already built a nest, this may not be the case.”

“That would be weird.” Bucky says. “I’d probably panic and think I was pregnant.”

“I recommend you discuss this with Steve, and prepare for all three options.” Jessica says.

“Good thing I’m on birth control.” Bucky mutters.

“Good thing.” Jessica smiles.

“Listen.” Bucky says. “I never got to apologize for the way I spoke to you the time that I… I realized…”

“No more sorries.” Jessica says.

Bucky blinks. “What does that mean?”

“No more apologizing for recovery. Like I said, it brings us through shit, and it makes us lash out at the ones that are trying to help us. But at the end of they day, getting better is not your fault.” Jessica says. “No more sorries.”

Bucky nods, oddly touched. “No more sorries.”

Bucky has decided to have the conversation with Steve about his heat over breakfast, where he’s graduated from dry toast to eggs and yogurt.

“…and I don’t know what he’s thinking. A robot AI with access to weapons and endless power? Does he know how wrong that could go? Not that there’s anything wrong with JARVIS, but I really think the superhero-ing should be left to the people you know?”

“Is superhero-ing a word?” Bucky asks as he pours ketchup into his eggs. Steve looks on in horror.

“No. But still.” Steve sighs. “I know there’s more to it than that, but I think he’s just worried about how much responsibility we have as heroes now. He has to trust that he’s strong enough, that we’re strong enough, to handle the world’s problems ourselves.”

“He might be getting pressure from above.” Bucky says with a mouthful of eggs. “You know how much that changes things.”

Steve makes a noncommittal noise, finally worn out from his own argument. Thank God, it had been three days.

“Anyways, my heats coming soon.” Bucky says.

Steve chokes on his orange juice and starts coughing.

Bucky snorts, rubbing a napkin over his face. “It’s the 21^st Century pal, this stuff is commonplace.”

Steve glares at him mildly.

“I just want to say that I’ve thought about it. And I want to spend it with you.” Bucky says. “If you’ll still—”

“I will do anything you want.” Steve says.

“Great, because I’ve got this new thing about feet…” Bucky says teasingly.

“Okay.” Steve’s brows furrow. “It’s not my thing, but I think I can make it work. Should I get a pedicure?”

Bucky stares at Steve.

Steve blinks back. “Oh, you were kidding.”

“You weren’t.” Bucky says. “God I love you.”

Steve scratches his neck and blushes, the fucking sap.

“Listen.” Bucky says. “Jessica says there’s like a fifty-fifty shot that I’ll be wet and ready for this heat. If I’m wet, I need you to keep me on my back, and keep me in eyeline, okay? If I can see you, then I know it’s not… I know it’s you.”

Steve nods. “Anything else?”

“Just…be yourself.” Bucky mutters. Steve, naturally, is exactly the opposite of Hydra, so hopefully, hopefully, he won’t trigger any memories. “And stay away from my mouth.”

“Ok.”

“On the other hand, if I’m not wet, I need you to open me up and to stop me from hurting myself. Can you do that?”

Steve nods. “I got it.”

“I’ll probably be… asking for it a lot sooner than I can handle.” Bucky stumbles over those words, then collects himself. “You need to get at least four fingers in there before you knot me.” Bucky warns.

Steve blushes a bright red, and Bucky gives a startled grin as he catches on to his thinking. “Or five. In fact, that may be easier, to have five, huh? Remember the way I stretched around you when you were at your widest around your knuckles?”

“Fuck, Bucky.”

“Or is your favorite part the when you get your whole hand in my ass up to your wrist, while I get closer and closer, and at just the right moment you make the fist, stretching my—”

“Well I showed up at the wrong time.”

Steve and Bucky snap their eyes to Tony, who’s standing in the doorway, mildly shell shocked.

“Did not know you had it in you.” Tony continues as Steve turns an even more delightful shade of red. “And by had it in you, I mean had—”

“Stop.” Steve says.

“What’s up, Tony?” Bucky says, grinning wildly.

“I, uh, built you another arm. Less of a weapon, more of an…arm.” Tony says. “I need to install it. You can actually use it if you want, in case you’re looking for another hand to—"

“Nope.” Steve says. “I cannot have this conversation with you. I’m going to—to shower.”

“I’m sure you are.” Bucky snorts. “Think about what I said,” Bucky says to Steve, before he follows Tony out.

The process of getting a new arm involved a lot more drills than Bucky was expecting. Bucky passes the time by trying to solve one of the simpler math problems scrawled on a holographic whiteboard.

Installation takes an hour, but at the end he thinks he’s got the hang of the new appendage, as well as answer.

“28.454.” Bucky finally shouts, victoriously. He’s rusty, but it was just like riding a bike.

“What?” Tony says, distracted by pressure readings from Bucky’s new arm.

“The answer to that equation, over there.” Bucky says.

Tony blinks, then looks over at where he’s pointing with his shy new metal arm, now no longer considered a weapon.

“J, solve equation 39.”

“28.454.” JARVIS answers immediately.

“Did you really just do that in your head?” Tony says incredulously.

Bucky shrugs. “I was a computer growing up, it was my job to do math day in and day out. I learned a lot of tricks.”

“Still. Very impressive. I could put you to work once you’re no longer a massive threat to society. Anyways you’re all done, wiz kid.” Tony pats his arm, and Bucky flexes it, trying to get used to the movement.

“Thanks, Tony.” Bucky says, walking towards the elevator.

“Anytime.” Tony says.

Bucky pauses, and turns towards Tony, considering.

“I got my heat coming up.” Bucky says.

“Congratulations.” Tony says from where he’s drawing up a new equation on the board.

“…Think you can make it vibrate?”

Tony snorts. “It already does.”

Bucky grins. Steve’s gonna love that.

“Hey.” Natasha says a few days later afternoon during one of their dance lessons. “You ever do any Latin?”

Bucky shrugs. “I was brought up in a white middle class family, so not really, no.” He stands up with her, curious.

“JARVIS, play some Samba. Here’s the basic step.”

Natasha starts to move her hips provocatively, a tight, quick, barely decent sway from side to side. Bucky’s eyes go wide.

“That doesn’t look decent,” he says, but he tries to mimic her movements anyways. He ends up coming out stiff, and frowns as he tries to force himself to relax.

Natasha takes notice quickly. “You need to loosen up.”

“But it’s such a tight movement.”

“In some regards, but you need to move your hips, too.”

Bucky tries, and fails, again. “We weren’t really hip shakers back then,” he qualifies.

Natasha stops him. “Alright, let’s start with a simpler movement. Salsa.” The music changes. “Simple step.” She steps forward, cocking her hip, then steps forward and pauses for two beats, before repeating with the second leg, backwards.

The legs are easy, but Bucky still can’t figure out where to put his hips.

“You know, dancing is sometimes a euphemism for something else.” Natasha says with wink. “So think about what you do with Steve.”

Used to, Bucky thinks, but he shakes that off. Not the time. Bucky digs deep to times back in the war when Bucky would ride him, remembers rolling his hips over his body, the ways Steve looked at him with awe as he worked himself, moving his hips in a seductive, dirty circle over his…

“That’s it,” Natasha grins. “Keep going.”

Bucky does, and Natasha grabs his hand and blends her step with his seamlessly. Bucky feels warm, excited in a new way, thoughts of Steve rotating around his head as she works him through some basic spins and alternate steps, once again taking the lead.

One particular move has him take a step back and rotate his hips in a wide circle, and he has a brief, powerful flashback of doing this exact thing to Steve as he stood in a hotel room when they were on leave in the war, grinding back on his crotch and trapping him against the door. Steve was still getting used to his new body, and was scrabbling his hands against Bucky’s hips and grinding against Bucky’s ass, and had nearly come in his pants until he took control and pushed Bucky to the ground and took him right there on the floor—

Bucky falters in his step, and Natasha crashes into him.

Natasha blinks, then gives Bucky a playful look and says, teasingly, “you happy to see me soldier?”

“No.” Bucky gasps, and he realizes there’s more than just sweat on his thighs. “Fuck, oh fuck. I need to see Steve.”

He dashes from the room, tossing back a “sorry” and a “thank you,” over Natasha’s roaring laughter, and Bucky yells for the elevator.

Bucky paces the elevator, slick already coating his ass. He’s always been very wet, but this is different. The room is hot, and he feels a voice whispering in the back of his head, calling for Steve, Steve, Steve.

The elevator arrives, and Bucky strides into the hallway and slams the door open. He spots Steve, his mate, sitting at the table, playing cards with Sam.

“Stevie. I need you.” Bucky says.

“Fuck.” Steve says, standing up from the table. Bucky strides to him and claims his mouth for a brief, powerful second, then looks at the other Omega and growls, a low, dangerous thing that echoes within his chest.

“Omega in heat. Got it.” Sam starts backing away, his hands high. “Leaving.”

He fucking better be. “Steve’s mine.” Bucky snaps.

“He’s all yours.” Sam reaches the door. “Steve? You got this?”

“Of course my Alpha’s got it. You think he doesn’t?” Bucky snarls. How dare he think that Steve—

“I’ve got this, Sam.” Steve murmurs. “Bucky, tell me what you need.”

“I need you Stevie.” Bucky growls, and he presses against him, head to toe. Steve lets out a hitch of a breath, his face flushing pink. “Come on Alpha, give it to me.”

 “Are you su—”

“Fucking yes, and if you ask me again I’m going to tie you down and ride you through this whole thing.” Bucky snaps.

Steve blinks, his eyes darkening. “Is that meant to be a bad thing?” He purrs, and Bucky shivers in delight.

“I want you to fuck me so that the whole tower can hear.” Bucky commands. “I want you to pound me so hard it hurts for weeks.”

Steve grabs his face in his hand and kisses him in a way that will probably hurt later, no technique, just teeth and lips and tongue.

Bucky moans in satisfaction at the contact, and starts ripping the clothes from Steve’s body, actually ripping his shirt off.

“Nest.” Buck growls.

They make it there is one piece, clothes strewn across the floor, Bucky pressing Steve into the side arms of the couches, nearly bending him backwards.

“Fuck baby, are you wet?” Steve’s hands hover around Bucky’s lower back, almost too hesitant to confirm the truth.

Bucky grins. “Feel for yourself, Stevie.”

Steve moves his hands lower, and rubs his right one in between Bucky’s cheeks, letting out a wrecked noise when he realizes that Bucky’s soaked.

“You like that baby? Feeling how wet I am for you?” Bucky says.

Steve moans and nods, almost beyond words.

“Then get on your back and show me how much you like it.” Bucky says, and Steve jumps into the nest, scrambling to comply. Bucky follows at a slower pace, eyeing Steve like prey. A good Alpha, a voice whispers in his head.

“I bet you missed this more than I did, Stevie. After you knot me the first time, I’m going to sit on your face.” Bucky purrs, and Steve swears in response. Bucky climbs in and straddles Steve, taking care to keep him in his line of sight. “Isn’t that right?”

“Yeah, Bucky.” Steve’s voice says, hoarse, and his hands make his way to Bucky’s thighs again. “God. God you’re so beautiful, Omega. Fuck you are wet.” Steve blabbers like a lovesick fool. Fingers prod at his entrance, pushing in two without preamble. He knows better than to tease.

Bucky gasps at the sensations, the white hot heat curling hotter in his body. “Fuck Stevie, I need you in me. Need your knot baby.

 “Wait, wait, wait.” Steve says, and he pushes Bucky off of him.

“Alpha!” He calls as Steve jumps from the nest. “Come back!” Bucky demands.

“Aw hell… Fuck, hold on, okay, I promise it’s worth it.” Steve assures, before running into the bedroom.

Bucky feels a part of him roar in disapproval. How dare this Alpha leave him, when he’s spread out for him so nicely? He jumps from the nest and stalks towards Steve, looking to claim his lover. He finds Steve rifling through the closet, Alpha cock hard and bobbing between his legs.

“Steve.” Bucky barks. “What the fuck could you possibly be doing?”

“Listen, the serum made me average sized, no more no less.” Steve starts, voice only slightly muffled in the closet.

Bucky catches on to his meaning right away. “We made do in the war, didn’t we?” Bucky says.

“Yeah, but it really wasn’t that good, was it?” Steve says without an ounce of wounded pride. “And we can keep using my hands, but…” Steve continues, buried deep in the closet. “But what we have now is something we didn’t have.” Steve stands up from his closet clutching a box in his hand in victory.

“What?” Bucky growls.

“Online shopping!” Steve says with a grin. He then opens the box and pulls out a—

All of Bucky’s heat-rage melts off of him. “Oh fuck me.” Bucky breathes.

Steve grins. “That’s the idea.” He says, and he drops the box and starts working the strap around his waist.

“Oh my God.” Bucky continues. “Oh. My. God.” Bucky has never felt like this before.

“Just Steve is fine, but if you must.” He continues, and adjusts the harness so that his hard cock and soft knot pops through the hole in the middle.

“You bought me a strap on. Babe.” Bucky gasps. “You are the best fucking Alpha on the Goddamn planet. I love you so much.”

Steve blushes at that, of all things, then he digs in the box for what Bucky presumes is a dildo.

“So I actually got these because I thought they might be fun to use on you, and maybe on me, but for your heat, I was thinking…”

Steve pulls out something thick, and black, and the length of Bucky’s arm, with a knot that looks like it would inflate to the size of a baseball. Bucky feels the heat roar in satisfaction, a voice in his head screaming that he has the best mate in the whole world, and he’s about to get filled to the fucking brim.

“They called this one the ‘black stallion,’” Steve says as he struggles to slide his cock into the hollowed out center of the dildo.

It would be ridiculous if it wasn’t so hot, the black silicone monster sticking out from his body, wobbling as he walks back to where Bucky was standing. And Bucky—Bucky was in love, because Alphas were more obsessed with their own cocks than Omegas were, yet Steve manages to put all that bravado aside and take care of Bucky the way he wants, the way he needs.

This is much, much different than anything with Hydra. This is Steve asking permission, and doing things for him but only if he want him too. This is Steve holding himself back for Bucky, never giving him anything he doesn't want.

Most importantly, this is Bucky, not the soldier. This means something, even in his heat.

For the first time since the forties, Bucky was excited for his heat.

“Alpha.” Bucky breathes, and Steve’s eyes dilate at the word. “Fuck me, now.” Bucky turns and runs towards the nest.

Steve catches up with him and picks him up, before tossing him into the couch cushions. Bucky presents himself immediately.

“Motherfucking-fuck Omega.” Steve growls. “I love you like this, but I need you on your back.”

“Take me now!” Bucky shouts.

“On your back!” Steve commands. “Remember?”

Through the heat, Bucky vaguely remembers a conversation he had with Steve, only a few days ago. With great effort, he flips himself over, than turns on his side and grabs his right thigh with his right arm, exposing his hole to Steve. “Now will you fucking knot me?”

“Your wish is my command.” Steve all but growls, and he pounces.

Of course Steve doesn’t just slide in right away, because he’s just as much of a slut as Bucky is. No, Steve’s hungry, and he licks Bucky’s slick like he’s trying to finish an ice cream cone in 100 degree weather, chasing after each dripping line like he was trying to keep the bedspread clean.

And Bucky howls, and presses his ass into his face, blood boiling under his skin, heat spinning him higher, and higher. The voice in his head is roaring with pleasure, and the whines being punched from Bucky’s throat are a higher pitch than usual.

The voice in his head doesn’t demand Steve’s knot, it fucking begs for it, and that’s the difference between someone who gives you what they think you want versus someone who gives you what you actually want.

Steve finally has had enough, and he pushes in two fingers, then three, then four, in quick succession.

“Ready?”

“Stop asking and do it.”

Steve presses in, and Bucky feels himself expanding so, so, so wide. It doesn’t hurt, or if it does, the pain signals get lost in the heat somewhere, and Bucky makes a loud, ruined noise.

Steve works himself inside of Bucky. It could take minutes, it could take hours, Bucky doesn’t know. He loses his sense of time, the world falling away to the delicious stretch of that ridiculous dildo, and Steve’s face, straining in exertion.

“God they way you take all of this so easily…” Steve breathes.

‘What a fucking slut.’ They had said.

“…you’re so fucking gorgeous.” Steve says. “It’s like you were made…”

‘Fucking made for this, aren’t you, Omega?’

“…for me, the way you take me so beautifully.”

Bucky feels begin to form in the corner of his eyes.

“You are so beautiful, Bucky. You are…”

‘Desperate, eager, little whore.’

“… the most amazing, kind, caring Omega, and I can’t believe you’re mine.” Steve continues to babble.

Bucky feels tears falling from his eyes.

Steve frowns, slowing his pace. “Baby, am I hurting—”

“No, no, Stevie.” Bucky chokes out. He drops his thigh, and turns, carefully, until he’s fully on his back, dildo searing a line into his body where it’s finally fully seated inside of him. “Give me your hand, Stevie.” Bucky says.

Steve grabs Bucky’s hand in his. The fingers, though no longer delicate and knobby, were still gentle, still smooth, intricate, like hands that see and command detail every day, that can be attentive, and warm, and gentle, and firm, and Bucky loves those hands, would never forget those hands, even he was put back in that fucking chair and had his mind ripped from him over and over, he’d never forget those hands.

“Hey Stevie?”

“Yeah, Buck?”

Bucky grins up at him. “Fucking move,” he says.

Steve laughs and picks up his pace again.

The dildo is simply huge, and each thrust fills Bucky up until he’s crying out with pleasure with every thrust, his eyes rolling back into his head. It doesn’t take long before he’s demanding a knot, and the best part about it is that Steve can give it whenever he want to.

And he does, Bucky feeling the knot inflate inside of his hole, bigger and bigger, and Bucky swears at the top of his lungs. He can’t remember the last time he’s been this full, the pleasure of it all swarming together inside his body, the pressure building until he’s trying so hard to get it to burst out of him.

“Steve! I’m gonna—” Bucky ends in a shout, his body shaking as he comes all over himself, his asshole clenching around the dildo, around that huge knot locking him in place.

Bucky feels the heat explode out of him with the orgasm, turning back into a pleased, low level simmer, warm underneath his skin. Bucky’s haze clears slightly, and he’s left looking into Steve’s bright blue eyes, his mouth curled into a smile, slightly parted with amazement, his eyes crinkled in adoration.

“I never thought I’d see you again.” Bucky whispers hoarsely. “When I fell off that train, and they took me into Hydra, I always knew that you’d stop at nothing to get me. I held on to that hope forever.” This probably isn’t the time, but Bucky doesn’t care. “They told me about the plane, and that you were dead, and it broke me, and that’s when the soldier was born.”

Steve’s lip trembles slightly, and Bucky shakes his head. “No more sorries.” Bucky says. “No apologies for things that aren’t your fault. Because you are here, now. And I never thought I’d have this again. I never though I’d have you again. Hydra took so much, but they could never take you. And now I get to share this with you, and...and I’m just so happy.” Bucky finishes, and Steve kisses him with desperation.

“I’m so happy to have you back too, Bucky. I love you so, so much.”

Bucky gives him a contented smile “I love you too.”

And Bucky thinks, for the first time, that he’s going to be okay.