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“You know, it’s a sin for someone as pretty as you to look so sad.”
Bucky scoffs, regarding the speaker skeptically. It’s a man, someone he knows, a man leaning over the bar, a dreamy quality in the air around them. He knows the man’s smirking, even if he doesn’t have a face. “Mr Stark, sir, I do believe you’re drunk.”
“Au contraire, I’ve not had a drop. Miserable affair, I’d give my left arm for a nice smooth vermouth right about now but I’m under strict orders from up top. How about you? You’re lookin’ mighty sober, Sergeant, and mighty fine if I may be so bold.”
Bucky feels a glass in his hand, the amber liquid his second of the night. Despite always being something of a lightweight, he doesn’t feel any buzz. It’s odd, but maybe his tolerance has gotten better. Across the bar he hears Steve’s laughter; when he looks all he sees is Steve and Peggy in her red dress, tucked in close, sharing a secret.
Howard Stark’s mouth flashes across his vision, the bristle of his mustache moving as he speaks. No face. No face. “Miserable, right? Think I might have a solution to both our problems, my dreadful clarity and your…Hm. Sore heart.”
His cheeks feel hot. He looks down, shame curdling in his stomach. “It’s not like that.”
“ – Oh hey, you’re back.”
Bucky looks up from his feet, suddenly no longer in a bar in 1944. Instead he’s standing at the end of the hallway down from Yori’s apartment, the details fuzzy and vague. Loitering by one of the apartment doors fiddling with his keys is the neighbor with the absurd name…Unique. Like Monique but with a U for whatever the fuck. He only looks up as high as Unique’s throat, settling on a shark tooth and feather necklace sitting against his jutting collarbone. The agonizing emptiness and grief in his chest twists, becomes an ache, and the next thing he knows he’s somewhere new again, a living room with the same floor plan as Yori’s but the decor is a mess, a mess he’s not paying any attention to.
“Yes, yes, yes! Ah, holy fuck –”
Oh yeah, he remembers this now.
Unique is loud, annoyingly loud, so loud all Bucky can think about is whether or not Yori’s hearing is bad enough to not have his grief intruded on. He’s not even sure this feels good, the heavy, empty darkness is still in his chest, hollowing him out, but it feels like something. And something is better than nothing. Doing this is better than putting the gun he’s not supposed to own against his head; he thinks, at least.
“Holy shit you’re good at this. Damn honey, anybody ever told you are a sex g-o-d!?” Unique laughs breathlessly. “No one is ever gonna believe me that the Winter fucking Soldier ate me out, oh my go-o-o-d–d–”
‘Thanks, the Red Room taught me well,’ comes a dead thought, blank, inflectionless. ‘Graduated with honors.’
The dream gets fuzzy with the details then, overlapping between one position to the next, a dissociated haze; a jumbled up collection of eidetic puzzle pieces that don’t quite all match up where they should. It flickers to him on his knees by the couch, legs over his shoulders– but then he’s standing, his hands fixed around Unique’s waist while the man trembles, knees on the couch and bent over holding onto the backrest for dear life. Unique doesn’t have a face, not ever, not when Bucky’s going down on him and not now either, his back to Bucky. No face. Never any faces.
None of them ever have faces.
The crisp labels of Stark’s pin-stripe shirt and the bob of his Adam’s apple fill Bucky’s head.
“Could we try it looking at each other?” he hears his own voice ask. Timid. Quiet. Shy. He’s not in Unique’s apartment anymore, the colors are darker, more green and gray and murky. An office? He knows this place. “You know how they do with girls?”
A warm hand touches his chin, a thumb stroking his cheek. Hands. Always with the hands.
And no face.
“Baby, as much as I’d love to gaze into those pretty, pretty blues, it’s better this way. Trust me.”
Unique’s back is soft underneath his shirt, pushed up so Bucky can smooth a gloved hand up it, tracing the curve of his spine as he fucks into the man. No face.
The wall is grainy and dull, covered in a too-thick layer of off-white paint and the edge of the desk digging onto Bucky’s gut is cold and sharp. He watches his shadow moving across that wall, cast large and faint from the overhead lamp but Howard’s shadow is larger, more opaque. Encompassing. It hurts, burns like a motherfucker, but it’s good somehow too; thrilling, exhilarating.
One suspender snaps up, then the next. They’re redressing. It’s after now, the after.
“So what now? Do we…uh, I mean to say…can I take you out? A friend’a mine knows this place near, he says it ain’t been bombed yet and guys like us are safe t–”
“Listen here, Barnes, you shut your goddamn trap. There’s no ‘guys like us’; there’s only guys like you. This? This never happened. You ever tell anyone, you ever try to talk to me about this again, and I’ll have your invert, son of a bitch, queer ass in front of a firing squad faster than you can say court-martial.”
He’s a big guy, bigger than Howard Stark, but like their shadows, Stark casts larger.
No, no, no. Wake up. Please.
“You can’t…that ain’t how it works, Stark.” Bucky hears his voice cut off. “I’d only do time. Might not even do that, they’re…things’re different right now, you ain’t been out there. They look the other way, ‘specially for good soldiers–”
It’s true. He knows it is. He’s met other soldiers. In the trenches. In the field. They’ve told him their superiors looked the other way. One squad called their queer a lucky charm.
“I am Howard Stark. I made Project Rebirth happen, I’m the millionaire philanthropist funding all this, these G.I grunts eat out of my palm. There ain’t nothin’ I can’t do.”
Stop. Stop it. Wake up.
He sees the back of Unique’s head, his hands holding onto his couch cushions. He sees the back of his own head, hands gripping onto the edges of Howard Stark’s desk. They overlap, chop and change between one another. He’s kneeling on Unique’s couch, holding onto the backrest with his dog tags clinking with each slap of skin on skin and Unique’s in Stark’s office. The hands on his waist are Howard’s, then, disturbingly, they’re his own gloves.
He grips tighter. Gloves creaking.
“James–” A new voice, his voice, moans.
That’s Peter’s voice. No.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no–
“James– B-Bucky– Please, Ja–”
No! Please no! Peter’s there now, Peter’s face down on the table, on the couch, fingers bruising his hips. Peter’s too good. Too perfect. He shouldn’t be here. His face is gone—
“James!”
Bucky’s eyes snap open, awareness flooding in, a tsunami, as he feels his equilibrium spin and leap. There’s a crash, lots of crashing, objects toppling over; wood snapping like dry twigs. His hands wrench from crushing around something in front of him to being held down above his head, forced into place, pinned against something thick and soft, woven. He fights instinctively but neither budges.
For a second he panics, it’s HYDRA, he’s back in the chair, he’s back in the cryo-chamber – only the manacles are soft, cool but not cold. They’re stroking circles against the tender underside of his wrists, soothing the racing pulse under the skin.
The squeezing weight over his waist isn’t cutting into him; it isn't a thick band of metal. It’s gray but it’s also fuzzy, warm, a pair of his own pants sitting saggy, too big, over vice strong thighs.
Bony shins are digging into his own.
“J-James…” a rasping, wheezing voice cracks through the fog.
He blinks rapidly, the blue and pale peach ceiling coming into focus.
Wait–? No, no, the ceiling is white. That’s not the ceiling. The blue is one of his shirts hanging three sizes too big off Peter’s shoulders, draping down like a bed canopy above him, and the peach is Peter’s skin. His chest is half exposed by the gape of the shirt’s large neckline; the lines of his throat, up to his jaw, his mouth, his… his face.
Peter has a face.
He has a face.
It’s so pretty. It’s an angel’s face. Large, soulful brown eyes looking down at Bucky, glistening with tears, red-rimmed; his lips parted, gasping. He’s pictured it like that so many times, but this is wrong. They’re not kiss-swollen and glossy, they’re not lips caught in a moan, they’re blue, blue, and flecked with spittle. They’re heaving for breath, each inhale and exhale tainted by a faint wheeze.
The brutal cold sting of reality comes back to him, dousing him in ice water. His eyes, wide and frantic, flick wildly across Peter’s face above his; the red watery eyes, the blotchy cheeks, his blue lips, and finally drop down to rest on his neck again.
Oh god, his neck —
Peter’s slender neck is red raw even in the low evening light, pale bands, distinctively hand shaped, score through the red and are rapidly fading, blossoming into bruising, dark, dark, dark purple and black bruising mottled and ugly. It’s coming out so quickly from the force, the sheer crushing force used, and how fast Peter’s healing gets to work. Turning from blood drained yellow stripes in the shape of his fingers to gruesome bruising right before his very eyes, and there’s an awful, keening, grief-stricken sound filling the room, loud and painful on Bucky’s ears.
A pair of gentle hands release his wrists, they drop to his face instead, cupping his cheeks and swiping a burning wetness Bucky realizes is his own tears. The horrible siren, the whine, is coming from him. Heaving with grief and emotion so intense the sound feels like a physical weight leaving his throat, dragging over his chin; it feels thrown out, rejected.
Underneath it his ears catch hushing, murmuring, a light rasp cracking – no, hauling itself over broken glass to whisper reassurances to him, the smell of strawberry toothpaste close to his face as Peter presses their foreheads together.
“ –s’okay, s’okay, James, shh, shh, it’s okay, it’s all okay. I got you, I got you, shh –”
“No,” Bucky shakes his head, feeling how his hair is plastered to his face from cold sweat and tears. “No, no, Peter, no.”
“I’m here. You’re okay, I promise, it was just a dream, James. Just a dream.”
A sob cracks out from behind his gritted teeth.
“No, no, no, no, get… get off, get off, off me please, wait no, no–”
Peter breathes in sharply and is suddenly gone before Bucky’s even done talking, before the second ‘get off’ even leaves his lips, and that’s much, much worse, Bucky panics. It’s so much worse, and his arms reach out to yank Peter back the moment that weight is gone.
“ – no come ba’, Pete… Pete–”
He throws himself up right, sitting like a baby on the floor, grasping blindly for Peter and lets out a relieved wrenching, heaving sob once he’s able to clamp his right arm around a familiar small yet sturdy frame.
There’s no arms holding him back though, it’s just him, metal and flesh, hanging off Peter.
Peter’s arms are suspended up in the air, spread out either side, and he’s squatting awkwardly over Bucky’s legs on his very tip toes, there and close but not touching.
Why isn’t he hugging back? Is he angry? Is he mad at Bucky–
“No, James, shh, I’m not mad, I’m not angry, shh, I got you,” Peter’s voice sounds wrong, it sounds strained, like every pass of breath hurts him. “You’re okay, you’re okay. I just…I don’t know what you want; what you need right now. Talk to me, do you need me to hug you or do you need me to not touch you right now? James, James, come on, touch or no touch?”
“Touch.”
“Okay,” Peter sighs softly, letting himself be tipped forward by Bucky’s tugging hands at last. His knees hit the floor again, dropping back down on top of Bucky’s thighs, and he wraps his arms around the hysterical man.
One hand rubs broad strokes up and down Bucky’s back and the other brushes gently through messy, sweat-damp locks. He lets Bucky move him wherever Bucky wants him, which ends up being firmly in the man’s lap, crushed against his chest by a metal arm around the small of his back and his other arm lined up pressed to Peter’s spine, hand holding the back of his head.
Bucky feels the jut of Peter’s chin on the crook of his neck. Grounding. He feels every sigh from the younger man. Every breath. In and out. Wheezing less with each pass.
“Is this still okay?” Peter asks after a few seconds.
His crying easing off, quietening slowly, Bucky can only bring himself to nod. He turns his face into Peter’s neck, pressing his nose against the cool flesh there, and inhales deeply. Blue orchid. Oud. Vetiver. Strawberry toothpaste and the gun oil and smoke scent Bucky knows to be his own fill his senses, calming the rattle in his chest.
He might kiss Peter’s skin, a dry press of his lips, but he can’t be sure.
Peter doesn’t seem to mind.
“Still okay?”
It’s only been a minute, Bucky knows because he’s started to count the seconds, steady and level with his breathing. It should be annoying being asked the same question again, he already answered twice, but it’s not. Just two words uncoils the tension in his body, eases a pain digging its nails into his flesh from the inside out.
“Yeah,” Bucky’s voice comes out wet and weak. “What…What, um, what…?”
Peter starts to talk, not needing Bucky to figure out how the fuck to speak yet.
“We’re in your living room, I got soaked by the rain on the way here so I took a shower and you gave me something to wear while my clothes were in the wash and dry. We put a movie on and we must’ve fallen asleep on your couch. Alpine ran into your bedroom, she’s safe.”
There’s shuffling, he feels Peter’s head turn, and then his body jump as he huffs. “We’ve completely fucked your coffee table up.”
The moment Peter says it, Bucky notices how many brittle things are digging into him, into his legs and back and, one in particular, jabbing into his ass cheek. It’s broken wood and splinters, he realizes. Damn. He liked that table.
Bucky moves his hand from the back of Peter’s head to the side of his neck, thumb stroking just across the throbbing pulse point, trying to lean back and see the damage he’s done. But Peter doesn’t let him, doesn’t let him pull away enough to look down at the mess of bruising painted all around his neck.
“You had a nightmare.”
“I was strangling you,” Bucky states, haunted. “I was fucking choking the life out of you, Pete–”
He tries to push Peter back and this time Peter moves, but only far enough to rest their foreheads together again. He presses his head hard against Bucky’s brow, holding Bucky’s head up, stopping any attempt to look down any further.
“You had a nightmare. I fell asleep on you and your nightmare lashed out. It’s okay.”
It’s not.
“It is,” Peter hums, surprising Bucky. He hadn't meant to say that out loud. “It’s not your fault.”
“It is my fault, fuck Peter; I was strangling you. I could’ve killed you.”
“No, it’s actually my fault, if we’re pointing fingers,” he counters, voice wry.
Bucky recoils against that claim, or tries to, and Peter chuckles, the sound vibrating pleasantly against Bucky’s ribcage. “I waited too long to pull you off; thought I could wake you up quicker than I did. I didn’t want to have to manhandle you, really, super duper didn’t want to.”
He shifts, letting Bucky lean back enough that their eyes can meet, the tips of their noses only an inch away. His hand cups Bucky’s face, the heel of it under his jaw, a gentle reminder not to try looking down. His voice is almost back to its usual smooth dulcet now, that spider healing’s a thing of pure beauty.
“James, I’m so serious right now. Please, please, please, believe me, you were never a threat. You couldn’t have killed me.”
“I could’ve, I was–” Bucky starts to argue. He cuts off when Peter chuckles, more puffs of air than a sound. “Peter, this is serious.”
“I know, I know it is, it’s just real cute that you think you could’a killed me just then.”
There’s a certainty there that takes Bucky off guard. There’s not an ounce of arrogance in Peter, he’s completely relaxed against Bucky, nonchalant, and the tickle of amusement in his voice doesn’t carry a hint of mocking or dare.
It’s not a claim, it’s not an opinion. It’s a fact.
An unbiased statement of plain facts that knocks Bucky out of the last of his panic completely. It blind sides him because the more he thinks about it, the more Peter’s words settle into his skin like sunlight, the more he knows it’s true.
Peter isn’t the clumsy kid in the airport anymore, he’s not the fumbling Spider-Man Bucky glimpsed across the battlefield juggling with the Infinity Gauntlet. Peter is a man who’s been trained by Iron Man’s tech, by the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, the Iron Fist and the Daughter of the Dragon. Peter regularly lays most Avengers out flat on the training mats, including Bucky.
Bucky could still kill Peter, the Winter Soldier is designed to figure out how to kill anyone, but it would have to be premeditated. It would have to be carefully planned out and prepared for, with more weapons and variables put in place than he has available to him right now. Even if he’d tried to snap Peter’s neck just then, instead of strangling him, he wouldn’t have the strength to even turn Peter’s head an inch unless Peter let him.
He threw a knife right at Peter’s head and Peter moved away as if it were nothing. He’s seen Peter dodge machine gun fire.
The Winter Soldier may be the deadliest Avenger, but he’s far from the strongest or the most formidable. In a spontaneous fight, mid-impromptu slumber party, he has no chance against Peter.
It’s…it’s oddly the most comforting thought Bucky’s ever had.
Peter only has bruises because he didn’t want to restrain Bucky, he hadn’t been lying about that. Somehow Peter knew restraint would’ve made him panic and the fucking dumbass let himself get throttled a bit because he wanted to avoid doing that.
Oh my god, Bucky thinks, Peter’s such a moron.
He tells Peter so, and finds himself grinning when Peter laughs, bubbly and quiet, like a secret.
“I could totally take you.”
Peter hums in agreement. “Yeah. With prep time, sure. And at least one gun-knife combo. You’d probably need a net with electricity running through it, a big one, and like…six turrets to distract me. Maybe a couple helpless civilians in need of saving simultaneously.”
Bucky hears chuckling before he even realizes it's him making it.
Fuck, their sense of humor is so dark. He knows why his is dark, but how did Peter’s get so morbid?
“Brat.”
The thought of pushing Peter off begins to creep under his skin. Truly noticing for the first time how overly familiar this is.
This isn't what they do.
He's not used to allowing vulnerability like this, not since Steve – and even then, he and Steve were never the same after the Winter Soldier as they had been prior to his fall. They never did go back to the old days of long hugs and falling asleep on each other's shoulders, never had the chance – and the more lucid he becomes the less Bucky knows what to do with himself.
He's pretty sure if he did shove Peter away now and brush it all off as nothing, the guy wouldn't even mind. Sure, Bucky's seen Peter be a pissy little asshole with a viper tongue, but he feels certain that there would be no lashing out if Bucky did cut this off here.
And he should. He should cut this off. He should stop this now, because as he wakes up and feels his panic evaporate into nothing, something else inside him is waking up too.
Pete’s in his lap. Forehead to forehead. Nose to nose. Chest to chest. Arms looped. Both of them murmuring as if being any louder will break bones.
Friends don't sit together like this, wrapped up in the darkness. Cat sitters and their employers certainly don't either. If by chance they do end up this way it isn't for long; they don't linger as minutes tick by, as the excuse of a nightmare drifts further away.
It's all too – intimate.
Old seduction protocols start offering suggestions.
Press his lips against Peter's pulse, pliant and gentle. Lap lightly against soft, thrumming skin and blow softly across the wet mark left behind; feel the target shiver. Brush his fingertips up that slender neck, along the jaw– watch those pupils dilate as he strokes the target's small, pink mouth with the warm pad of his thumb. Trace down to grip his chin between thumb and finger, keep that mouth agape. Kiss him, feel his warm breath, hear the target shake and whimper and moan…
No – not a target, this is Peter. He's not going to do any of that.
Bucky feels a poke to the shoulder and blinks rapidly, shoving away those friendship ruining instincts.
“You still with me?”
Peter doesn't know how he sounds, voice low and so very affectionate.
Now Bucky really wants to shove him away. Send him rolling backwards across his living room, maybe tell him to get he fuck out of his apartment while he's at it.
He's not blubbering like a baby anymore, his head’s clear and his body is too awake . It's humiliating. Or it ought to be, it'll get humiliating any second now.
Peter strokes Bucky's hair, his other palm moving back up to his cheek. “James?”
He fights a tremor.
This, how they're sitting, is too much. Lovers kiss like this, lovers rock into each other like this; slow or fast, against or inside. He's been taught positions just like this, both giving and receiving, with women and with men. That fact alone should make him feel sick, but it doesn't.
He…likes it.
It would be so easy, too easy, to follow that instinct and lick into Peter's mouth; have him gasping. Easy to reach down and feel how quickly he can get Peter's body to respond, if it hasn't already… he's smelled Peter's arousal during spars before, he knows what he does to Pete.
His nightmare is long gone now. Peter has a face and god he wants to know what it looks like soft with ecstasy.
Yeah, he likes this a lot. Likes it too much.
Nope. No. Not after he just throttled Peter in his damn sleep. Not when he can't tell if the urges are his own or Red Room whispers.
Sourness coats his mouth like venom.
“We should uh–” Bucky clears his throat, trying a grumbling, angrier tone when his voice sounds far too soft. “Get off me, Parker.”
Peter blanches, flinching away. The look on his face neatly makes Bucky back down; rush out a mess of apologies, but he can't do that.
This, what's happening here, can't happen. It's not going to.
He's always known who he is, what he is, in every way those words could be interpreted, and he's not dragging another well meaning friend into it. Bucky warped his friendship with Steve into something it wasn't all those years ago and got lucky that Steve was an understanding guy. He can't let himself warp this one into more of the same.
Even the teasing with Sam had his head muddled for a minute, thrilled him too much, gave him too many silly, childish ideas.
Bucky's not…he's not doing that with Peter. Stupid crushes on any guy who shows him kindness need to stop happening entirely.
“Oh, yeah, let me just,” Peter moves to stand, that initial flash of surprise and hurt gone. Gone so quick Bucky's not sure if he imagined it or not.
Peter's hands are up and off him, and he starts to stand, only stopping when Bucky's own treacherous arms won't let go. He pulls back, grunts, and then waits.
“Hm…James? Do you…” Does he what? Bucky stares at a spot by Peter's ear, face burning. “Do you need me to pull you off?”
He thinks about that. Hears the double entendre Peter hadn't meant to make.
His brain says hell yes, get away from me. His body has completely different ideas, like it usually does. Bucky's not had this problem in a while but it still arises every now and then. Times when he's just a passenger in whatever his body does.
It's probably a PTSD thing, it usually is, nightmares and intense emotions. His body being an entity too used to following other people's commands rather than his. All those doozies.
“Probably best.”
Peter's eyes narrow, his lips pulling into a pout, as he regards Bucky. Deciding whether or not to take that seriously.
“I'm gonna move your arms,” he tells him, and Bucky is still waiting for humiliation. It's taking its sweet time. This should be mortifying.
Peter does just as he said, no touch unnecessary, he uses full economy of movement. One moment Bucky can't get his hug to relax, the next his hands… His hands. Peter takes hold of his hands, not his wrists. Not his arms. His hands. Like he's leading a dance. Not yanking him around a puppet. When he lets go, those hands drop.
Peter stands, stepping back with so much grace the guy might as well be dancing.
No longer touching, nothing is any clearer.
Bucky follows the line of Peter's body, from toes poking out from under rolled up sweatpants, up to a draw string twice as long as he's ever seen it from how much Peter's had to pull to make it fit. Then the shirt, Bucky’s shirt, more of a mini-dress on him, that's gotten bunched up around the pants' drawstring and Peter's waist.
He wants to touch that waist–
Stop it. A voice hisses in his ear, yanking at his earlobe to force his head down. Go away. Shut up. Stand down, Asset.
Peter hesitates. Then he's crouching in front of him, face fraught with worry Bucky knows he doesn't deserve.
“James? Bucky? You okay? You look like…like you're drifting.”
Hm. Yeah. That's a fair assessment.
Drifting. Unique described his work life like that, not that Bucky ever asked. He'd also said his friends would never believe him without a selfie, if that's “cool” with Bucky.
Would Peter want to take a selfie after getting railed? To prove to his friends that he really did bang a living relic?
He doesn't think about it. Nope.
Is it getting lighter? His mouth tastes like metal. Rusty metal. And plastic.
“ – you probably want me to leave, and I will! I will, I promise, just as soon as we've gotten you to bed,” Peter's talking again.
“You don't like to be touched I know, but when I ask you just stare at me and it's scaring me, and you can't keep sitting on your broken table, James. I'm really sorry, unless you say something I'm going to have to touch you and move you, because you can't stay there.”
Peter is pacing, worked up and ranting. The room’s definitely lighter. How long has it been? Has he lost time? He doesn’t feel like he has.
Cool hands slip into Bucky's again. Nice. Strong. Gentle.
“Upsie daisy,” Peter pulls him to his feet, gingerly leading his body away from broken shards of wood.
Shit. He's shut down. When did he do that?
Rusted metal and plastic in his mouth.
Peter has a face though. Eyes. Nose. Mouth . Peter's mouth smells like strawberry toothpaste.
Strawberries are much nicer than rust and metal.
Peter's eyes go wide, and those careful hands hold Bucky back by the shoulders. “Oop, nope, as much as I'd like that – not that I… ugh, fuck it, you're not going to remember this, probably, hopefully–”
Locked inside his body, Bucky panics. Wait, what? No. No. Not Peter. He's not really going to –
“You can kiss me and do all of that some other time, I'm totally down, like so down it's not even fair. But you're not you, this,” Peter looks up and down Bucky's body helplessly. “This is totally something else. That is so not happening right now. It's not that I don't like you, or that I hate you, or anything else you might be thinking, okay? Relax. Breathe. Uhh, think of something nice? It's just…oh damn, now I get why this used to scare May so much, this is– this is intense.”
Peter stares off to the side.
“Maybe I should call the Captain for you? He'd know what to do ri…” Peter's eyes snap back over to Bucky, searching his face. “Or not. Yes? No? Ask the audience? You reacted to that.”
A palm pushes him back. His body had started to lean in again.
“Nope! No! Bad, that's bad. Well, it's not bad, the circumstances are bad. You're not bad, kissing isn't bad, it's just bad timing. Okay? If I call Mr Wilson, are you gonna…ah shit, think Parker, think. This is what you get for sitting on him, seriously, who sits on someone?”
Peter pulls a funny face.
A face. Peter has a face. Nice face. Real.
Peter looks like a biophysicist in a cafe. One that liked to doodle and write stories about cute animals.
He wonders if he looks like a Black Widow.
Peter's brown eyes are damp, still red, but he's talking just fine, his voice smooth again, so it's not because of the bruises around his neck.
“Huh? A bio… Bucky, what are you talking about?” Before Bucky can repeat himself, Peter waves a hand. “Wait, no, ignore that. That isn’t what’s important right now. Come with me?” He beckons Bucky, shuffling backwards towards the bedroom, and sighs in what looks like relief when Bucky feels his legs move. “Awesome, great. Totally not super dark that you’re this obedient when you’re dissociating. Totally not awful in so many ways.”
Peter doesn’t touch him again, which kind of sucks. The entire way to Bucky’s bedroom, all the shorter man does is look back to check Bucky’s still following him and make wide, sweeping gestures towards the bed; a sit, stay, good, implication to how they move that would make Bucky either scowl or smile, he isn’t sure, if he could actually move his face right now.
He comes and he goes, bringing a glass of water the first time, and then a fluffy noodle of a cat the second time.
It’s strangely comforting, as distressing as being locked inside himself is, watching Peter mill around muttering to himself– his state of dress changing with each check in. During one peek in, Peter has a phone pressed between his cheek and his shoulder, and a protein bar in hand that he leaves next to the glass of water on Bucky’s bedside, both of which he points at with raised eyebrows; a universal sign of ‘you’re gonna fuckin’ drink that water and eat that bar, mister.’
Eventually Alpine’s incessant headbutting gets through to whatever psychological reflex does this to him, and he finds himself petting her in long, slow, monotonous strokes.
He feels less like a freak, less insane for this, when Peter shuffles back in again, fiddling with a pair of socks, notices and grins like Bucky’s done something great. He even goes as far as firing off two thumbs up at him before pointing yet again at the protein bar.
Bucky sits there, on his bed, and pets Alpine.
The final time Peter enters his room, he’s completely dressed in his own clothes again, and he’s checking his watch.
“Okay, so it’s almost 7am now and I kinda gotta leave now to get to this lady’s house on time. I’ve canceled everything else for today, but I- I can’t with her? She has little kids and it’s just her and their boiler broke in the night, and well the–”
Peter points to the window helplessly, where there’s violent waves of sleet rain pelting the glass. Bucky considers it progress that he’s able to turn his head to look too. God, he feels like the Tin Man as he moves, joints locked up from sitting still for so long, maybe even over an hour, his only movements the petting of his cat.
“You know, you saw– anyway, sorry. Rambling. I will be back later. Ten, at the latest. And I’m borrowing one of your coats, get over it. Are you…” Peter pauses to study Bucky, sitting cross legged in his bed, nuzzling with Alpine. Then he smiles. “You’re looking more like you again. So, don’t kill me, but I did call Mr Wilson and he’s here. I just buzzed him up.”
Bucky stops petting Alpine.
Peter winces.
“Sorry, I know you said he's not your babysitter...” he draws the word out. “He seemed worried? He’s probably not that mad about the… 6am call…and the… rain…Shit.”
The doorbell buzzes and Peter jumps to answer it, but just as he steps out of the room, Bucky finds his voice.
“Peter,” he calls out, cracked and quiet.
The younger man almost bends in half backwards, spinning himself back around to lean against Bucky’s door frame. He looks both pleased and apprehensive, like he’s happy Bucky’s talking and responsive again, but would rather crawl up and die than hear what he has to say. “Yeah?”
“You thought of your alibi?”
Peter blinks at him, brow furrowing, and Bucky clears his throat.
“Sam’s number. You thought of what you’re gonna tell him to explain why you have it? He’s gonna ask. Surprised he didn't already.”
The doorbell buzzes again, longer this second time. Obnoxiously long. Yeah, Sam’s pissed. Worried but pissed.
“W-w-hu-huh? Why would I need…” Peter’s eyes glaze over, staring off into the middle-distance. He purses his lips, and nods to himself. “Oh right. Yeah. Instincts bad, instincts were bad there. You uh, you have a phone diary. I found it…” Bucky starts to shake his head. “You left your phone unlocked…” More shaking. “Alpine’s emergency– Shit.”
If there’s one thing Bucky’s learned in his years, it’s that the most intelligent people on Earth are often the biggest morons. And god, he wants to stand up and hold Peter’s face right now, maybe shake him, the dumbass little brat.
“Let him in before he kicks the door down,” Bucky says instead, starting to pet Alpine again, enjoying the little ‘brrrpphh!’ she trills. “Tell him I gave it to you and he can gimme another lecture about phone number etiquette later. Go. I’ll see you later. And uh…thanks. For all of this.”
Peter smiles, brighter than the sunrise outside, and Bucky has the insane image of Peter leaning down to give him a quick peck, a kiss goodbye like he’s off to work and Bucky’s some 50s housewife.
He’s left alone with that image as Peter lets Sam in, voice high with nerves as he greets him as “Captain Ameri-Sam– Wilson, sir” and the request to say hey to Misty for him, before he’s gone. His scent getting weaker as he runs off to work.
It takes Sam Wilson four steps to reach Bucky’s bedroom, arms crossed and his raincoat dripping all over Bucky’s floor.
That lecture Bucky told Peter he’d get never comes. What ends up happening is worse, way worse.
Sam doesn’t ask about the number thing, doesn’t get mad about the lie of Bucky sharing his number with random people the way he expects and had prepared for, doesn’t comment on Bucky’s nightmare or his dissociative episode– the worst one in months– he doesn’t say anything about any of that. He just takes off his coat, drops it on Bucky’s bedsheets to soak the bed through, and plucks Alpine out of his lap with a sly smirk that has Bucky narrowing his eyes.
“So Pete stayed over, huh?” Sam starts off with, scritching Alpine under the chin and bouncing her like a baby. She’s over the moon with it. Fucking cat loves other people more than she loves him, he swears.
He thinks that’ll be it, but it isn’t. Sam’s just getting warmed up.
As it turns out, Peter didn’t text or call Sam. He video called him, because that’s what the cool kids are doing these days.
“You get me now, right? How it’s real cute when they wear your oversized shirt, when it falls off the shoulder like that? It’s adorable. My favorite shirt’s the best thing I’ve ever seen Misty in, I swear to God. Bet seein’ that made that robo-brain of yours do a factory reset– wait, maybe that’s what happened, weren’t an episode, you just blue screened over a twink in a henley…”
Nah, Bucky would’ve preferred a lecture over three hours of this.