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Bucky wondered if the clock on the wall was as loud to everyone else, or if the way the ticking was setting his teeth on edge was just another little gift from the serum. The rustling of paper in the files was also getting to him, so it might have had more to do with the briefing in general. On his left, Zemo was wearing a hard smile that was devoid of humour. That was actually his version of being cooperative in meetings like this. When he started engaging and asking questions and poking holes in what the brass was saying, that was him being uncooperative.
The agreement that had put Zemo in this room was pretty dubious and Bucky suspected that America hadn’t actually secured international cooperation. Bucky was nominally in charge. The men in the suits (out of uniform) across the table from him were the ones who were actually in charge, but they refused to act like it. Off the books, covert ops, conditional on good behaviour. Wouldn’t it be better for the whole world if something was done? If something came along and fixed this little problem? Bucky should be grateful that the target was HYDRA and that the government was willing to throw resources at stopping them. This time. There was a whole strike team set up to raid the office-front of a major HYDRA cell. The only issue was that the leader of this particular head would start destroying all the useful intel the moment he got a whiff of trouble, rather than taking the opportunity to flee. But if the problem he posed just went away…
Bucky’s stood up too sharply and his chair rattled as it collided with the wall behind him. He hated how flimsy these fucking spiny-chairs were and how they always seemed to turn up in rooms like this one with men like these and the unmarked files without a single clear order written down anywhere. He muttered something about needing some air, though he wasn’t sure how coherent his words were or if they were even in English.
It didn’t take him long to find a set of stairs going up (secure higher ground) and the door to the roof wasn’t even locked. Fortunate, because in his current mood he probably would have just broken it down otherwise.
The roof of the building was deserted and the high curling ducts felt like cover and at this height the wind whipped away the claustrophobic feeling that had crept up on Bucky in the briefing room. He walked over to the edge of the building and put both hands down on the concrete ledge, feeling the rough texture beneath skin and vibranium. It was grounding, solid, good. He breathed. He also traced lines of sight between the buildings and the ground, sniper trajectories, but that was also kind of grounding, despite everything.
Of course it was Zemo who followed him up. Whatever else Bucky could say about the man, Zemo had never acted afraid of him. Self-destructive asshole would probably be happy if Bucky snapped and proved him right about super-soldiers.
He came and stood beside Bucky, at his right shoulder, and gave every indication that he was simply enjoying the view.
Bucky was the one to break the silence. “They’re acting like the answer isn’t obvious,” he said bitterly.
Zemo let out an amused huff of breath. “Plausible deniability. They aren’t stupid. All evidence to the contrary,” he added wryly.
Bucky grunted. “Fine. We review all that surveillance intel and find the opening. I’ll be the one making the shot, so it doesn’t have to be a humanly possible opening,” the words came out more venously than he intended. If Zemo felt any twist of disgust at the reminder of Bucky’s unnatural abilities, he kept it off his face.
“They can send in their strike team while HYDRA’s reeling from the loss of command and the target won’t be around to start destroying files.” Bucky was always at his most talkative around missions and he wasn’t even worried about accidentally slipping into Russian. Long experience had honed his tactical thinking, but he’d never planned missions as the Winter Soldier. Doing so might have risked disagreeing with a handler, and the very concept still filled him with dread, even though he didn’t even have handlers any more. He just wished that making plans felt more like choosing for himself. Instead it just felt the same as it always did: getting his hands dirty doing what needed to be done.
“You’ll be with me. I’m not letting you have that much free rein where HYDRA’s involved,” Bucky added, wincing internally at his own hypocrisy. Neither of them were capable of anything like objectivity where HYDRA was concerned. “And – ” here Bucky hesitated, keeping his vibranium hand on the ledge, but turning to face Zemo more fully. But the point of having him out of the Raft was being able to use his resources. Even though just asking felt… “And I’ll need you to get me the piece. From what they said, they’re not going to want to supply me themselves, and I don’t like modern sniper rifles anyway,” he muttered.
Zemo tilted his head. The faint smile on his face was belied by the look of intense hunger in his eyes. That was part of the problem. It was clear how much Zemo liked being asked. The other part of the problem was how much Bucky liked how easy Zemo made it to ask.
“World War Two era, or Soviet era?” Zemo asked mildly, like Bucky’s answer would be no more revealing than how he liked to take his coffee.
“Soviet era,” Bucky admitted with a grimace, and rattled off the make and model that he worked best with.
Zemo didn’t write it down, just nodded, like he understood. It wouldn’t even be him hunting down Bucky’s uncomfortable request, not directly. This was literally the sort of thing he kept Oeznik on hand for. But still, all Bucky had to do was say the word.
“And I am, of course, more than happy to accompany you. I did some sniper work myself, back in my black ops days. I know how to stay out of your way while you take the shot.” Bucky gave Zemo a long look, which only earned him a deepening of that factitious smile. “Does it surprise you that I have sniper experience?”
“Does it surprise you that I do?” Bucky shot back reflexively, then immediately cursed himself because of what he’d just revealed.
Zemo’s eyes widened and the hunger in his gaze sharpened, because of course he caught the implication in Bucky’s words. “Ah, you mean before HYDRA,” he said slowly. “Yes, that does surprise me, Sergeant Barnes.”
The only thing worse than constantly hearing the weirdly-formal, weirdly-over-familiar use of his Christian name from Zemo was hearing his old rank in a context like this one.
Instinct made Bucky turn away, his vibranium side facing Zemo, like the threat he posed was physical, instead of something else entirely. “After I was a POW,” Bucky said defensively. Back when he was in Steve’s team, firmly off the books. Steve hadn’t needed someone physically stronger than him by then, but even after the serum, he was as vulnerable to a bullet in the head as anyone else. So Bucky had protected him in a new way. Fuck if he was going to explain any of that to Zemo and give him more ammunition for his mind-games. “I’m not surprised about you,” he said instead, as accusingly as he knew how.
Zemo flashed his teeth in a hard smile without a hint of self-consciousness. “As flattering as it would be to imagine that you were referring to my skill with a rifle, I assume you’re referring to the psychological aspects. Yes, I was prepared to kill impersonally at a distance, without the direct threat of death to myself or to my men to make it easier. As you would have been.”
Bucky had been earmarked in basic training for having an “aptitude” for sniping. At the time, he’d been secretly pleased to have something about him recognised as special and worthwhile, but things had changed on the battlefield and then HYDRA had clawed their way into his mind and honed all those skills into something nightmarish.
“The threat of death is still there. If you’re thinking strategically,” Bucky snapped. Or if you were watching Steve run headlong into danger again and again and again.
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“We’re nothing alike,” Bucky growled. Zemo laughed and vibranium whirred as Bucky’s fists clenched.
Zemo waved a hand placatingly in Bucky’s direction. “Apologies, I am laughing at myself. How only months ago I would have agreed with you with an identical level of ire.” The amusement faded from Zemo’s face and he stepped inside Bucky’s aggressive radius of personal space, almost close enough to touch. Bucky could feel his own heart start beating harder, which hardly seemed fair when Zemo looked so utterly calm. “I don’t think there is anyone quite like you, James, but if you caught a glimpse of any part of yourself reflected in me, I would consider it an honour, but I understand why you would find such a notion distasteful.”
That was the root of how dangerously effective Zemo’s manipulation could be. He could sound utterly sincere, whether he was telling the truth or lying. And if he actually believed what he was saying, then Bucky couldn’t let a statement like that stand unchallenged. “What was made of me is ‘distasteful’,” he spat.
“By HYDRA or by your government?”
“Watch it.” Bucky’s fingers twitched by his side. Now he was thinking about the draft. He didn’t want to think about the draft that had taken him away from Steve, even with how proud Steve had been that Bucky had “joined up”, and how happy he’d been to join up too. And he was thinking about the mealy-mouthed officers in that meeting, all talking around the obvious solution to the problem, like that would mean their hands stayed clean, while Bucky –
“What happened to you goes beyond ‘distasteful’. You don’t need me to tell you that HYDRA did monstrous things to you. But the man who made it through that experience? Through a century and a world war? No, what you are isn’t distasteful at all.”
Bucky scowled and closed the remaining distance between them, leaning in far enough that he could feel Zemo’s steady breaths against his skin. “I’m a super-soldier. So, does that mean you’re lying to my face or selling out your principles?” This wasn’t just deciding they wouldn’t kill each other in front of the Sokovian memorial. The fact that Zemo was more useful out of the Raft than in was just pragmatism and not actively seeking Bucky’s death wasn’t the same as Zemo being able to look at a super-soldier with anything other than disgust.
It felt like a minor victory when Zemo flinched away from the accusation. His lips twisted up on one side, like he was tasting something sour. “Perhaps it is a betrayal of my principles.”
Bucky’s eyebrows shot up. He hadn’t expected to hear anything like that from Zemo, not from someone so single-minded and ruthless. The only way to do the sort of shit he did was by believing in it absolutely. Strong convictions had always been something Bucky noticed (and gravitated toward).
Zemo caught Bucky’s gaze, holding it, this time. “A man might admire the raw force of a blizzard and find it captivating, even knowing that it’s hostile to human life. Seeing that in you would not be a betrayal of my principles, but that is not what I see in you.”
What do you see in me? The words were tangled up in Bucky’s vocal cords. English, Russian, any of the other languages that had been drilled into him under HYDRA, none of them seemed to be able to find their way out of his mouth just then. The only way to win in Zemo’s games was to refuse to play. Bucky walked away and wrenched the door to the roof open with his vibranium arm. It clanged satisfyingly against the opposite wall and he didn’t bother lightening his footfalls as he made his way back down the stairs into the guts of the building, towards the plausible-deniability briefing room.
-
Whatever else Bucky had to say about the guys in the suits, the new brass, their surveillance was air-tight. Going through the photos and recordings and reports had built a shockingly clear picture of the target’s movements and habits. Zemo had said something dry about how most people operated on fairly predictable schedules, even HYDRA leaders.
Finding the best place to take the shot wasn’t difficult and Bucky and Zemo had ended up in an abandoned office building about ten floors up. The business districts of most big American cities had never fully recovered from the Blip and its aftermath. Plenty of places like this existed, technically owned, falling apart, with hopeful “for rent” advertising peeling off their walls.
Their target was in the building across the road. There had been information in the brief about the company he was working in and how much HYDRA had infiltrated it and the strategic value in the technically-legal-work they were doing. Zemo had pored over those pages, but Bucky had been focusing on the information he’d actually needed. How the target had set himself up as the only point of entry to HYDRA’s systems in that building, either out of ego or paranoia, and the route he took through the building when he left his office. Even the sort of people who knew enough to keep away from windows in their office tended not to think about sniper trajectories when they went on their morning coffee break.
Bucky dragged an old dusty desk across the room and out of the way. He paced slowly back and forth in front of the window when it was clear, gauging distance, lines of sight, getting the whole picture. Only then did he go back over to the case that Zemo had laid out on a hip-high filing cabinet. The case felt good and well-made under Bucky’s hands, and the rifle itself…
He’d taken it apart before the mission. And not a field strip either – he’d fully disassembled it, just because he could, and to see the familiar pieces all fit together again. It had been decades since he’d had a weapon as old and familiar in his hands. Zemo’d probably paid some gun-nut collector far too much for what amounted to an antique, but it made this ugly mission feel just that little bit better. How fucked up was it that an old Soviet era sniper rifle was a comfort to him? Probably about as fucked up that Zemo’s presence was equally soothing to him. He’d sniped alone during the war, happy that no one in Steve’s team had seen him kill like that. But far more often than not, he’d been accompanied on missions like this under HYDRA. Not being alone felt far more natural, now.
Bucky lifted the rifle up gently and ran through the checks one more time. Fitting it against his shoulder and sighting down the scope settled him. His eyes were good, too good, but at these distances that meant nothing and he’d need the same tools as any human to make the shot. He glanced up to find Zemo watching him handling the weapon. There was nothing detached about his expression, but what was surprising was how… satisfied… he looked. It made something inside Bucky shiver pleasantly. He hadn’t even made the shot, but he’d already won approval from – fuck. His jaw clenched as he ground his teeth and he set the rifle on its tripod, deliberately turning his back on Zemo and the weird feelings from his past that were threatening to crash over him. He focused on the view out the window.
While serum-enhanced senses didn’t count for much in this context, there were other things that made this job easier for him. His muscles didn’t get tired in the same way, so he could hold positions without it wearing on him. He also didn’t lose focus, but whether that was the serum or HYDRA’s conditioning or something he’d had before either of those things was anyone’s guess. The target would stay out of Bucky’s sights until he left his desk, which could be any time in the next two hours, with the highest likelihood being at around eleven hundred hours, if his patterns held.
The only thing left was to slip into the right headspace. Bucky felt too wired. Talking about sniping with Zemo had probably been a mistake. This was one of the few things that he could trace right back through HYDRA directly to his time with Steve. There was a mindset to sniping, a calm, centred, focused place you had to reach to make a shot. And it was the same as when he was Bucky as when he’d been Зимний Солдат. Even HYDRA couldn’t change that reality, though they had tended to wipe him harder after sustained sniping missions.
Sam looked at killing and saw an end and was rightly horrified by it. Bucky saw a means. Killing innocents was horrifying. Killing the guy about to shoot Steve? Killing the leader of a HYDRA cell? Well. He’d been a sniper because the Howling Commandos, because Steve, had needed a sniper and Bucky had understood that. He knew how ugly it could be, killing up close. This wasn’t better, but it wasn’t really worse, either. Whatever barbs he’d traded with Zemo, whatever it had said in Bucky’s own file about his “aptitude” back in the war, it was all still just killing and what mattered was who was on the other end of his scope. Though it had felt better killing for Steve than killing for his country.
Bucky’s hands were shaking. Not because he couldn’t stop them, but because he knew he could. That calm place existed inside him and always had. And as much as he hated the thought, there was someone else in this room who probably understood it. Maybe Zemo had buried that too, with his family and his country, but Bucky didn’t think so. You needed that place to squeeze a trigger calmly in the field, and he’d seen Zemo kill dispassionately.
Bucky took a deep breath and let his eyes slip closed. He listened to his own heartbeat, not to try and slow it down, but just to be aware of it. His hands stilled on the rifle. He spoke, with his eyes still closed. “Hey, talk to me.” It was probably as soft as his own voice got these days.
Zemo matched his tone, even the cadence of Bucky’s words. I know how to stay out of your way while you take the shot. “What do you want me to say?” Zemo asked.
What Bucky really wanted to hear was “good soldier” when he’d killed the target (when, not if. The Winter Soldier didn’t miss. Bucky didn’t miss.), but that was fucked up. “I don’t like this,” Bucky muttered.
“Killing?” Zemo asked neutrally.
“When I’m not killing for something.”
“When your target is HYDRA - ” Zemo began.
“Yeah, I know. Worst of the worst. Believe me, I know. But –” Conviction. He missed knowing that he was fighting for iron-clad, certain conviction. It was what made it so easy in the Howling Commandos and with Steve. It had brought the Winter Soldier satisfaction and pride, back when he’d believed what HYDRA had believed. These days, he didn’t trust the new brass. Not when SHIELD had been infiltrated by HYDRA once before and not when they couldn’t even give him a clear order and would rather just imply what would be a good outcome and wash their hands of Bucky and their other sort-of-paroled terrorist on a leash.
Zemo was silent for a moment. Bucky had opened his eyes to keep his sights on the target’s office. “You’re not doing this for your government,” Zemo finally said. Bucky snorted. “What about for yourself? Do you find it distasteful to see this as revenge against HYDRA, for what they did to you?”
Bucky blinked. The idea that this could be revenge had… honestly not occurred to him. HYDRA was bad, categorically. They needed to be stopped. But what they’d done to him, in specific – “Not everyone is driven by revenge, like you,” Bucky growled.
“Evidently not,” Zemo agreed placidly, sounding more thoughtful than anything.
Then it didn’t matter because the target pushed himself up from his desk and everything else fell away. Bucky breathed in, breathed out, and then simply stopped breathing altogether. He could hold his breath for minutes, and if the surveillance footage held up, the target would be in full view in thirty six seconds, when he entered the corridor. Bucky could take his time lining up the shot.
Staying utterly still was nothing to him and the only thing he was paying attention to in himself was his heartbeat. The office door opened. The target stepped out. Bucky’s heart was a steady thud in his chest. He tracked the target with the muzzle of his rifle, through the scope, heartbeat to footstep. He squeezed the trigger between heartbeats. His target’s left foot hit the floor. The shot was good. Clean. Bucky could feel it, even before he saw the result. Shattered glass. Headshot. Blood. The corpse dropping. Bystander panic. The strike team would be charging in.
A hand dropped onto the back of Bucky’s neck and squeezed. “Well done, Soldier.” English, not Russian. Accented voice. The words hit Bucky hard. Instant warmth spread from his core to the tips of his fingers. Even the satisfaction of taking out the target and completing the mission was nothing compared to this. He made a guttural noise, low in his throat, arching a little to bare more of his neck, to push into the warm, calloused hand. A thumb stroked a gentle line along the vertebrae in his neck and he had to lock his knees to keep from sliding to the floor. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“You’re not my handler,” Bucky managed to grind out. The way he made no move to throw Zemo off might have undercut the message.
“I know. You’re a free man now, able to choose which orders you follow.” There was a wry, almost playful note in Zemo’s voice. The cruel implication in his words wasn’t even wrong – that all Bucky had done with his freedom was pick someone new to obey. If Sam had kept the shield initially, Bucky was nearly sure that he’d have fallen into line purely out of habit. But Sam wasn’t a CO, wasn’t brass, and he didn’t want control of Bucky or the remnant bits of the Soldier that they both pretended wasn’t still there, somewhere inside him. No, Sam was a good person. So Bucky had ended up military again. Sort of military. The sort where there were briefings in office buildings, by brass who didn’t wear uniforms, and who handed over unmarked files and made vague statements about how good this looked for the ongoing situation with his pardon. Bucky was nearly sure Zemo enjoyed those briefings, or at least that he found them satisfying, in that they proved something about how he saw the world.
“Orders like yours?” Bucky rasped.
“If you like. I can tell how much you dislike your current situation. Our current situation.”
Bucky’s eyes squeezed shut. Then with a nearly inhuman effort, he wrapped his vibranium hand around Zemo’s wrist and pulled his hand off the back of his neck. He straightened up from the rifle and turned around. He could have crushed Zemo’s wrist, but if the smirk on Zemo’s face was anything to go by, they both knew he wouldn’t.
Zemo’s eyes looked darker than usual as he caught and held Bucky’s gaze. “I meant it, James. That was a spectacular shot. Even just watching you handle that rifle… you treat it like an extension of yourself.”
Bucky’s mouth went dry. “I – that shot didn’t need a super-soldier. Any good sniper could have made it.”
“Perhaps, though not as elegantly and precisely as you made it. But I concede that your unique talents are wasted on a mission like this one.” Zemo sighed. “We could do so much more in taking the fight to HYDRA directly, without your government’s clumsy, heavy hand directing us.”
Bucky’s hand was still around Zemo’s wrist and his very human heat was seeping into the vibranium, awakening delicate sensors. “There’s no us. What do you think I’m going to do? Burn down the life I’ve been trying to build here to go on the run with you? I might have a ‘pardon’ to your ‘parole’, but I’m not an idiot. I know how conditional it is, and what they’d do if I tried to leave the States.”
“You can tell they’re afraid of you, can’t you? That they’re worried you’ll fall into the hands of some other government or enemy organisation. It’s foolish of them. You can’t be controlled like that anymore. I tried, and if I couldn’t do it, then there’s no one else left alive who could.”
“What.” The word came out of Bucky in a low, flat growl, more accusation than question.
Zemo didn’t seem the least bit intimidated and took a step closer. “What was the first thing I tried when you came to me in Berlin? And then there was the mission in Madripoor. The mission was genuine, and nearly successful, but I was also using it to test you. I wanted to see if the trappings of the Winter Soldier could bring you fully back to that.”
Bucky’s breaths were coming shallow and unsteady. His grip had tightened on Zemo’s wrist. Bizarrely, his impulse was to move in closer rather than step away, even after hearing Zemo casually admit to something that fucked up. “And what would you have done if it had worked? If your little tests had pulled me back under?”
Zemo’s smile was as cold and unforgiving as ice. “If I were a better man, I would have found a way to kill you. That’s what I told myself I’d do. That a lethally effective super-soldier who could be completely controlled was too dangerous to live. But I am not a better man, where you are concerned. You were right to accuse me of betraying my principles. I know that if I had succeeded in putting you under again, I would have kept you.”
Bucky’s breath caught in his chest and his fingers went slack around Zemo’s wrist. His pulse was rushing in his ears. Zemo’s confession should have horrified him. He should have called him sick or lashed out. Instead, warmth flowed down his spine and curled through his guts. “Kept me?” he repeated, his voice cracking on the words.
“A soldier like you understands that there’s always another battle. There could be no more exquisite a weapon as the one standing before me. Hunting down HYDRA and burning it down to the root would be rather poetic, don’t you think?”
Bucky took a step back and wrapped his right arm around himself, flesh palm pressed flat against his scarred shoulder, through his gear. “I can’t be controlled like that anymore. You said it yourself. You’ll never have that. You’ll never get what you really want from me.” His voice was thick and his heart was hammering in his chest. There were too many layers to his emotions, and he knew he shouldn’t be feeling even half of them. His shrink would have a fit if she knew what was going through his head right now.
Zemo’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. On anyone else the gesture would have looked nervous, but it just made him look hungry. “What I really want from you? I don’t want the Winter Soldier, James. I’m glad I couldn’t put you under again. If I could take control of you, then so could another. No, I want you to choose me yourself, with that hard-won freedom of yours.”
Bucky stalked forward, slowly, measured, until he was close enough to be sharing breath with Zemo. “When you touched me before, after I made the shot. When you said – was that another test? Were you still – ”
Zemo reached out, laying his palm against Bucky’s jaw, and instantly silencing him with that simple touch. “No. I did that because I wanted to. And because you wanted it.”
The air hissed out of Bucky’s nose in a harsh exhale. He did. And he wanted to hear those words again, purred in a warm accented voice. With a low frustrated growl building in the back of his throat, Bucky surged forward. His lips met Zemo’s in a harsh kiss that was more teeth than anything else. Zemo’s free hand raked through Bucky’s hair in an attempt to change the angle. Bucky let him. Heat flared inside him at how easy is it was to let his head be tilted, for the kiss to deepen. He walked them back blindly until Zemo hit the wall of the office, the impact hard enough for Bucky to feel it in his own body. All it got him was a grunt from Zemo and those dangerous hands dragging down his chest, over his clothes.
Zemo might have been the one with his back to the wall, but he insinuated a thigh between Bucky’s legs and ground it up against the hard line of Bucky’s cock. Vibranium whirred as Bucky’s clenched fist slammed into the wall beside Zemo’s head, cracking the plaster. Zemo grinned at him, a wild look in his eyes. “Oh, you like that.” Like it wasn’t obvious, like he couldn’t read Bucky like a fucking book.
But Zemo hadn’t flinched at the blatant display of inhuman strength. In fact – Bucky captured Zemo’s wrist again, skin against skin this time, and pinned it up against the wall by his head. Zemo pulled against the hold reflexively and then shivered when he couldn’t break the grip. Bucky’s flesh and blood hand was as unforgiving as vibranium to an ordinary human. “So do you.” A need beyond the throb of his cock writhed inside Bucky. “You’re supposed to hate super-soldiers, but you like what I can do.”
“It’s difficult to be objective about you.” Zemo’s voice was steady, despite his pulse racing beneath Bucky’s fingertips.
The way Bucky responded to praise was inextricable from HYDRA, from the conditioning. Maybe he was like this before they’d sunk their claws into him, but reaching that far back for every detail of the sort of person he’d been was impossible. But what Zemo was admitting, here and now, fed something inside Bucky that lay even deeper than the Winter Soldier. Zemo’s convictions were strong enough to make him kill, to destroy the lives of those he felt had wronged him, but that iron certainty bent for Bucky – made him an exception. Even the serum running through his veins, that should have made him everything that Zemo hated, was twisted up in desire.
Bucky swayed forward, like falling, his lips dragging against Zemo’s again. The grip he had around Zemo’s wrist became less a pin and more a means of bracing himself against the wall. Zemo caught Bucky’s lower lip between his teeth, but only bit hard enough to send a jolt down Bucky’s spine. Bucky’s hips stuttered forward, his cock grinding against the leg still shoved between his own.
“Let go of me and I’ll figure out something else you might like,” Zemo panted when Bucky let him up for air.
Bucky loosened his grip before he’d made the conscious decision to do so and Zemo slid to his knees. He made it look good, like he’d done this before, and his hands were quick and efficient in unfastening Bucky’s tac gear and shoving his pants halfway down his thighs. Cold air hit Bucky’s erection and he gritted his teeth against a sound that wasn’t strictly a complaint. Zemo paused to brush the back of his knuckles down Bucky’s cock and he mouthed teasingly at the crease between Bucky’s leg and torso. He wasn’t far from the femoral artery and probably knew that as well as Bucky did. A super-soldier wasn’t the same kind of vulnerable as anyone else, but it still felt dangerous to let Zemo this close and let him map out these sensitive places.
Zemo wrapped a hand around Bucky’s cock and guided it into his mouth. Bucky cursed at the sudden wet warmth as Zemo slid down until his lips met his hand. It took everything Bucky had not to jerk forward and try and bury himself deeper. His hands clenched into fists against the wall and a muscle in his thigh jumped as he tensed up to keep himself still. His head hung down between his shoulders, which gave him the clearest possible view of Zemo staring right back at him. Heat and hunger flashed in Zemo’s eyes, like he wasn’t choking himself on Bucky’s cock.
This kind of pleasure was practically alien to Bucky. The right words in the wrong state could fill his head with static and make him feel halfway drunk, but this was his body. He was used to sensitive nerves burning with pain, not this raw flood of sensation that was almost too good, almost too much. He could run miles without so much as panting, but here he was gasping for air like he was drowning.
Only Zemo could look so smug blowing another guy. His eyes were dark with arousal, something halfway between challenge and satisfaction alight in his expression. His fingers dug into the backs of Bucky’s legs hard enough to paint short-lived bruises. The faint edge of pain helped ground Bucky and soothe the jittery feeling of too much, too good, too fast. He almost, almost wished that Zemo’s mouth was free, even for a moment, so he could murmur approval and praise in that calm, authoritative voice. And maybe something showed on Bucky’s face, because the death-grip Zemo had on his right thigh eased enough for him to stroke his fingers across Bucky’s skin and pet him reassuringly. Fuck. Fuck. Bucky was gone. The orgasm tore through him fierce and sudden. He gave a hoarse shout, his legs nearly buckling with the force of it.
His fingers had gouged into the wall and plaster dust sprinkled down as he gingerly pulled free. In front of him, Zemo rose back to his feet, brushing dust off one shoulder. His lips were wet and red and Bucky could barely tear his eyes way. “I’m glad you found that… satisfactory,” Zemo said, his voice a little rough in a way that made Bucky’s dick give a valiant twitch. He quickly tucked himself away and zipped himself back up. Zemo was about to step away when Bucky stopped him with a vibranium hand planted against his chest.
“We’re not done,” said Bucky.
Zemo patted his hand condescendingly. “You’re not obliged to return the favour.”
Bucky pushed Zemo back a step until he was up against the wall again. More plaster dust sprinkled down. “I want to. So tell me if you don’t want me to.”
Zemo’s smile was dark and amused. “I think I’ve made it clear that there isn’t any way I don’t want you, James. But perhaps you should think carefully about what you really want to give me.”
Bucky fitted his mouth to Zemo’s and gave a satisfied hum when Zemo opened up and he could taste himself in their kiss. He was clumsier in getting Zemo’s tac gear out of the way and felt a weird surge of triumph when he wrapped his flesh and blood hand around Zemo’s hard cock. He pulled back from the kiss so he could watch the flushed head slipping through his fist. It was deeply important, in a way he was struggling to articulate, that Zemo be affected too. From the feel of it he had been, just from getting on his knees and sucking Bucky’s cock.
Zemo’s breaths had gone unsteady and his hands were braced flat on the wall behind him. His head tilted to one side, cheek pressed against the wall, and while it bared the length of his throat, it meant he was turning away. Bucky seized his chin in his vibranium hand and turned him back. “No, look at me,” he demanded. Zemo groaned low in his throat and did what he was told, for once in his life. Bucky needed to see him lose it, see something raw and honest, and his hunger for it surprised him. “Maybe you should be the one thinking about what you really want. You know exactly what I am and you’re letting me stroke you off.”
Zemo pulled his chin out of Bucky’s hand and the crazy son of a bitch actually bit down against two pure vibranium fingers. Bucky cursed and kept that hand absolutely still so he didn’t accidently break Zemo’s teeth.
“I think you might be actually insane,” Bucky hissed. He tightened his grip around Zemo’s cock, the barest amount, and he thumbed at the slit. Zemo’s head thudded back against the wall, but he obediently kept his eyes on Bucky as he came, pulsing in Bucky’s hand. Bucky lifted his hand to stare at the come on his fingers, feeling a return of the strange warmth from earlier. Zemo was watching him intently and silently passed him a handkerchief. Trust him to bring something that ridiculous along to a sniper mission.
Bucky cleaned off his hand and passed it back. “I’m still not going to run away and become an international fugitive for you,” he said steadily. The “again” was left unsaid.
Zemo chuckled, though there was mocking edge to the sound that went beyond his own amusement. “Not now, perhaps. But I can be patient. We both know you’re unhappy here.”
“But I’m trying. And I’m going to keep trying.”
Zemo’s expression softened fractionally. “I suppose I should expect no less from you. My offer will stand as long as it needs to, but in the meantime I can at least work on our handlers and subtly direct them to more appropriate targets that better use your skills and ultimately do more damage to HYDRA.”
“They’re not my handlers,” Bucky said sharply. Zemo smirked at him. “And neither are you,” he added. “But thanks. If you can pull that off, it might make things better.”
“I’m used to dealing with military personal and covert ops. I know how they think,” Zemo said with a shrug.
“From back in your military days,” Bucky said neutrally. The topic of Sokovia and Zemo’s past was perpetually unstable conversational ground, but it wasn’t like Zemo didn’t constantly pick at Bucky’s own past. And present. And future.
“Yes. My family’s sense of military tradition meant that I was always destined to enlist. But my time in EKO Scorpion, specifically, was a form of rebellion. Heading a kill squad is not exactly glamorous work, as I’m sure you’re aware. It wasn’t at all the sort of position my father had envisioned for me,” Zemo said, his mouth twisting into a bitter smile.
Bucky swallowed. “Yeah.” Unglamorous work. The sort of work that got done on a battlefield so that heroes and symbols could stay pristine. He wasn’t convinced that putting himself into Zemo’s hands would be any better than what he was currently doing for his government. But there was strange comfort in working beside someone who really understood the nature of the work.
Bucky glanced back toward the window. “We should get going. I’m going to pack up.”
“The rifle is yours. You’ll get the best use out of it, I’m sure,” Zemo said casually.
“I’m not keeping an unregistered sniper rifle in my apartment,” Bucky said flatly.
“Ah, of course. I’ll hold it in safe-keeping for you, then. For the next mission.”
The hairs along the back of Bucky’s neck prickled. If he pressed the issue, Zemo would simply say he meant the next mission the two of them would get sent on. But it was all too easy for Bucky to imagine Zemo sliding a well-prepared dossier across a table with the best weapons for him already itemised on page ten. Well done, Soldier. Bucky shivered. “Thanks,” he muttered. Zemo smiled serenely.