The mission was going fine until one of the guys in the back spotted Bucky and started saying something in Russian. Bucky didn't catch what it was. He was too busy dodging a bullet, shooting a guy who was about to clock Sam, shooting another one who was thinking about shooting Natasha, and looking for Steve to see what kind of trouble he'd gotten into. By the time he made it to the back, the guy who'd said the words was lying on the ground. His foamy lips weren't smiling, but Bucky felt like they were.
Whatever it was he'd said, whatever he'd been telling Bucky to do, Bucky didn't know. The part of him that would have hadn't been listening; the part of him that would have responded might not have heard it, either.
For the first couple hours, Bucky waited to feel different, but didn't. By the time he and Steve got back to their apartment, he decided it must have been an obsolete set of words—one of the series he'd remembered enough of to tell people about, that had been neutralized more than a year ago. It must not have worked, so there was no reason to worry Steve, or set himself up for any more poking or prodding.
Steve went to take a shower. Bucky went to make a snack. He'd just grabbed the jar of peanut butter from the cabinet when he found himself standing in front of the bathroom door. He could still taste the sandwich, the one he hadn't even made yet.
"What the fuck," he said, and opened the door.
Steve's shower was still going. When he heard Bucky come in, he peeked around the curtain. "What's up?"
"I don't feel good," Bucky said. In the moment he said it, it became true. The inside of his head was...itchy. It was starting to spread from there. He felt fuzzy, too, like he'd been drugged. And there was something else, something he couldn't put his finger on, maybe because of the fuzziness, maybe because of the itch. "I feel...pretty bad, actually."
Steve turned the water off. "Okay. I'll clear out."
Steve stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around his waist, and left, closing the door behind him. Bucky stared at the door for a minute, which was about how much time it took for him to figure out Steve thought he was sick, maybe had to throw up.
It made sense. That kind of sick was usually the only reason either of them would have to walk into the bathroom while the other was using it.
Bucky didn't have to throw up. There was something else he needed. He just didn't know what it was. He stared at the door as the fuzzy, itchy feeling grew.
Then, without knowing how he'd gotten there, he was in the living room, looking at the back of Steve's head. Steve's hair was still wet, a trickle of water making its way down the side of his neck.
Bucky might have watched that for a while, too, but Steve turned around and said, "Feeling better?"
"No," Bucky said. "Something's wrong. I need...something."
"What?" Steve asked, getting up. "What do you need?"
He came around the couch, looking Bucky up and down, stopped. It took Bucky a second to realize Steve had noticed something, another second to look down and realize his right hand was down his pants. He was hard, and his hand was down his pants, and he was jerking himself. Didn't know when it had started, but when he considered maybe he should take his hand back out of his pants for at least as long as he was talking to Steve, he couldn't make himself do it. Literally couldn't. Wanted his hand out of his pants, but it wouldn't go.
"Something's wrong," Bucky said again. "There was a Hydra agent...I think. At the facility. He...he said something to me."
"What did he say?"
"I don't know," Bucky said.
And then Steve was right next to him, saying something about going to the hospital, where they could run tests. His phone was in his hand, where it had been on the counter before. He reached for Bucky's arm, to make him be still, or pull his hand back out of his pants, or guide him out of the room...something like that, probably.
When their skin touched, the third feeling suddenly outgrew both the fuzziness and the itch. Bucky heard someone groan, and would only later realize that had been him. "Steve," he said. "I need...I need..."
"What?" Steve asked, still holding onto his arm, a grip Bucky could feel everywhere.
Bucky looked down. In addition to a thin white T-shirt, Steve was wearing black short shorts. They didn't do much to hide Steve's sculpted thighs at the best of times. At the moment, they weren't doing anything to hide the tent Steve was sporting, either.
The itch abruptly moved from the back of Bucky's head to a couple other locations.
"I need to...I need to suck you," he said. "Or...I might need you to fuck me. I'm...I'm not really sure which. Both, maybe."
Steve moved his hand away. "We're not going to do that. I told you, we're going to go have some tests run, fix whatever's going on with you."
"I don't think you can...that it can be fixed like that," Bucky said. "I think you have...you have to. To make it stop."
He heard himself say it, but it was like someone else was doing the talking. He hadn't been the one who decided to say it. He wasn't even sure it was true. In fact, he was pretty sure it wasn't. There were plenty of reasons it wouldn't be, but when he tried to say so, or even remember what those reasons were, he just stood there, quiet, staring at Steve's erection with his own hands down his pants.
"Steve, please," he said. "Please let me. I...I want to."
He didn't choose to say that, either, but at least it was true this time. He did want to. The itching in his mouth was starting to burn. And...he thought he might have wanted to before this, too. He wasn't sure, but he thought maybe he had, at some point along the way. It had always been hardest to separate things when there was a little truth mixed in with them.
Steve said something. Bucky didn't catch it. "Please," he said. "Please. Steve..."
Bucky lost more time after that. Now he was sure that was what was happening, just as he was sure that the Soldier or some part of him was here too. All the work Bucky had done, to get his triggers out of his head, so no one could make him do anything anymore—all that work, and time, all those doctors and equipment, and they'd not only missed this, but they'd fixed him just enough, or he'd changed just enough on his own for him to be able to blink in a little. For him to know what was happening while it was happening, instead of only ever remembering after it was over.
One second, Steve had been standing there. In the next second, he still was, but now he was red-faced and sweating, obviously struggling, the tent in his shorts even bigger than it had been before.
Bucky's mouth was still moving. Still asking, still begging, his hand still pulling on his own dick even though there was no way he was going to be able to get off without Steve letting him...
'Don't do it,' Bucky wanted to tell him, now that he had figured it out, now that there was enough of him awake and thinking to know what was going on here. 'Don't give in. I can't do more than this unless someone tells me to. That's part of the point. Just, don't...'
Whatever Bucky's mouth had said while he was out, it must have convinced Steve there was no other way. Must have convinced him he needed to sacrifice himself, just like always. Because Bucky had gotten no far than to think all that when Steve got that look on his face—the stubborn one, the one that said he didn't care if anybody else wasn't okay what happened next, because he'd decided it was the right thing to do—and said, "Okay. Come over here."
Then Bucky was on his knees in front of Steve, helping Steve push his short shorts out of the way. Then Steve's dick was out, right in front of his face, and the itch in Bucky's mouth meant he didn't take any time to look before he was swallowing it down. He took it all in, the whole thing, until it brushed the back of his throat and he gagged on it and kept going. It was the only thing that would keep the itch away, the only thing that had a chance...
One second, Steve was standing stock-still. The next, his hands were in Bucky's hair, and his hips were moving, hesitantly, and he was saying, "I don't know if I should...stop me if you don't want..."
Bucky didn't want any of this. But there was no way to say that, and no room for anything other than taking in all of Steve, and keeping on taking it, as he started fucking Bucky's mouth in a rhythm that was just a little faster, just a little harder, muttering stuff under his breath that could have been anything from an apology to Bucky's name.
Finally, Steve stopped muttering and went still. His dick jerked around in Bucky's mouth as he came, a bitter flood Bucky half-choked on and half-dribbled out of his mouth.
Then Steve's dick was gone from Bucky's mouth. The itch that had been there was gone, too. Steve was on his knees in front of him, saying, "Do you—do you need any more help?"
Bucky's hand was still down his pants, still wrapped around his own dick. Still getting nowhere.
"Yeah," Bucky said, then, when Steve undid the front of his pants, and slid his own hand inside: "No. Not your hand. I need...you need to fuck me."
The part of him that was just listening waited for Steve to say no again, and for a second he looked like he would. Then, clenched his jaw for a second, he said, "We're not going to do that here."
*
They ended up in Steve's bedroom. One second, Bucky was walking in, Steve right behind him; the next second, he was on his back on the bed, naked, and Steve, who still had on his shirt and shorts, was on top of him, his thigh pressing between Bucky's legs. They were kissing, and who knew how long that had been going on. Steve was pressed against Bucky's thigh, too, not hard again yet, but not quite soft, either.
Bucky's hands were up Steve's shirt, and in-between sloppy-mouthed kisses, he heard himself saying, "Please...I need it. Please, please..."
"I'm getting there," Steve said, his breath hot against Bucky's neck and ear. "I just...give me a minute, okay?"
"Please," Bucky said, and he must have lost time again, because then his legs were wrapped around Steve's waist, and his hands were down the back of Steve's shorts, squeezing Steve's ass. Steve was rubbing rock hard against Bucky's own hardness, groaning against Bucky's neck even as Bucky said, "Please, Steve, please..."
His own voice sounded strange. Only later would he realize he was crying, the itch inside his ass even more unbearable than when half of it had been in his mouth.
"Okay," Steve said. "Okay."
He pulled away from Bucky just long enough to pull his shorts far enough down to get his dick back out. He spat into his hand, slicked himself up with it.
"You ready?" he asked, and Bucky said please again, and Steve got himself into position. It took a minute, the itch inside growing even worse, until Bucky would have screamed if he could have done anything besides beg, and then Steve pushed in, slow but unstoppable. (Had he wanted to stop it? Bucky couldn't remember anymore, or remember which part of him had wanted it and which part hadn't.)
"You all right?" Steve asked when he was fully sheathed inside Bucky.
"Fuck me," Bucky said. "Please...please."
And Steve did. At first, he went slow, and the itch kept growing; then, when Bucky kept begging him, he got rougher, and rougher yet, until he was fucking Bucky brutally. At first the pain was barely noticeable under the itch—but the longer it went on, the more the itch receded, until all that was left was the pain, and maybe a little bit of the fuzziness.
Then, at the very end, right as Steve groaned and pushed deep inside and went still, the fuzziness left, too. The only things in the room now were Steve, and Bucky, and Steve finishing inside him with a few low grunts.
Steve, usually observant enough to notice anything that was off with Bucky within seconds unless Bucky had done a really stellar job of holding it back, apparently wasn't as observant when he'd just gotten off. He lay on top for a minute, getting his breath back before he pulled out. When he did, that must have been when he finally noticed that Bucky wasn't begging him anymore. Wasn't groaning, wasn't clutching at him. That must have been when he noticed that Bucky had sagged back against the mattress, waiting for it to be over.
"Bucky?" Steve said, cautiously. "Do you want me to—"
"No," Bucky said, and shoved Steve off, suddenly unable to stand having any part of Steve touching him.
"What—?"
"That's not the way this works," Bucky said, remembering even as he jumped out of the bed and reached for his clothes on the floor to cover himself, his memories of the mechanics of this whole thing now just as clear as the reality of right now. "I'm supposed to want it so badly I'll beg anyone to do anything—but I don't get to get off myself. That's why it wears off the way it does."
"I'm so sorry, Buck," Steve said. He looked miserable. Bucky had always hated to see him like that before, but now he felt like it wasn't enough.
"Did you think you had to do it?" Bucky asked. "Is that what you told yourself? Well, how about this one: Do you really think Hydra was going to do anything to me that would mean they couldn't use me anymore? They set that one to only last a few hours, just in case I ended up somewhere they couldn't get to me."
Now Steve looked more than miserable. He looked stricken.
"Yeah," Bucky said. "Yeah."
He took one more look at Steve, with his thin white shirt rucked up, his short shorts pushed down, and his flaccid, wet dick curled against his thigh. Then he turned around, went into the bathroom and locked it from the inside.
He didn't miss any time this time. He didn't get to skip a single second of it. He grabbed his toothbrush, brushed until his gums bled, gargled mouthwash until his mouth burned. Then he went over to the tub, turned on the hot water and stepped into the shower. He scrubbed himself once, twice, three times, more, until it was hard to tell if his skin was as red as it was because of that, or because he'd been standing under scalding water for an hour.
When he was done, he toweled off and put his clothes back on, then stepped from the misty bathroom into the cold, clear air of the hallway.
Steve was still in his bedroom, now dressed in jeans and a sweater, sitting on a stripped mattress. His head was in his hands. Down the hall, Bucky could hear the washer going.
When Bucky got to the doorway, Steve looked up, with eyes almost as red as where Bucky had been scrubbing.
"Do you want me to leave?" he asked.
"Don't be stupid," Bucky said. It came out of his mouth before he was even sure what he was going to say, but it wasn't like before; once it was out of his mouth, he knew it was the same thing he'd have said if he'd taken the time to think about it.
"Okay," Steve said. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
"Okay." Steve was quiet for a minute, long enough for Bucky to cross the room and sit down next to him. An hour ago, he couldn't have imagined being in the same room with Steve again, much less close enough to touch; but this was Steve. Whatever else had happened, Bucky knew Steve wasn't going to hurt him. Not on purpose. Not unless he really, truly thought that something even worse would happen if he didn't. Then, once they were sitting side-by-side, Steve swallowed hard and said, "I liked it. Once we started. I didn't want to do it, but I liked it."
"Yeah, I figured you liked it a little. Seeing as you shot your load twice and all," Bucky said. "Guess I should have asked if you wanted to talk about it, huh?"
Steve winced, but all he said, in a quiet voice, was, "I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault," Bucky said, the same thing Steve had tried to tell him, so many times. "You did what you thought you had to. I know that."
He hadn't known he was going to say that, either. Knew it was true; wasn't sure how much he really believed it, deep inside. About as much as he believed it wasn't his own fault, probably. All he really did know for sure, now that he was here, now that it was later, was that there was no way he was going to let Hydra take Steve away from him again. Not over something like this.
That, and it could have been a whole lot worse. He could have killed someone. He could have killed a lot of people. He could have put Steve into a position where Steve would have had to decide between killing him, and letting other people die. Hydra had programmed lots of things along those lines into him. Maybe the doctors had gotten them all, after all, when they went looking for things to neutralize inside his head. Maybe this had been the only thing that was left.
After a couple more minutes of the two of them just sitting there, it occurred to Bucky that this was pretty much the opposite of where they'd been when this thing had started. This time, it was Steve who couldn't or wouldn't move until Bucky told him he could. Maybe that was why he said it: "You know, I used to have kind of a thing for you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Before. I was still getting over it when I fell. And after that, when you showed up here," here meaning this century, the one where Steve's arrival to it had meant the end of Bucky's career as Hydra's best weapon, "well, I didn't think about it. I didn't even really remember it until now."
"I'm sorry," Steve said again.
"Sorry I had a thing for you, or sorry I only remembered it because of today?"
"The second one," Steve said. "The first one doesn't bother me."
"Okay," Bucky said.
He thought about asking if Steve'd ever had a thing for him. Thought about asking if Steve had had a thing for him recently. In the end, though, he didn't.
Maybe he'd ask later, or maybe he wouldn't. Maybe, in a few weeks or months or years, he'd kiss Steve, just because he could. Maybe, if he did, both the kissing and anything else that happened would be something they both wanted, both chose. Or maybe none of that would happen. Maybe Steve wouldn't be interested. Maybe Bucky wouldn't want to try after all this. There was no way to know how it would go, or what would happen unless it did.
Bucky guessed he'd find out which way it was going to go at some point. For now, he sat there next to Steve, waiting for the next thing to happen. Eventually it did. When the washer stopped, Steve got up to move the laundry over. Bucky grabbed his jacket and went for a walk. It was a long one; by the time he got home, it was dark out, and Steve had remade his bed and started on dinner.
The weirdest thing about all of it was how weird it wasn't. It was just like yesterday, the day before, the day before that—all the days before anything had happened. The only difference was that this was after. It felt like what had happened should have made more of a difference, should have colored every part of his life that Steve was in.
In the end, maybe it was because nothing was as weird as it should have been. Maybe it was because Bucky didn't feel like waiting to find out how it would go between them, not when he could do something about it right now. Maybe it was just because he could do something, and this was a way to take back his own body and mind, the same way he did every time he went on a mission with Steve and the others. Or maybe it was because he just plain wanted to.
Whatever it was, Bucky said, "Come here a second."
"Sure," Steve said, and came over.
"I just want you to know this is one-hundred percent my own idea," Bucky said, and kissed him.
For a second, Steve tensed, then leaned into it—slowly, cautiously, taking every cue from Bucky. It wasn't too far off from the way Bucky had imagined Steve might kiss, when Steve was a little guy with a chip on his shoulder and Bucky had known just enough about how sex between two guys worked to be able to imagine it (and to be pretty sure he had enough experience to be better at it than Steve, who'd had none). It wasn't too far off from that, despite the fact that it had never actually been a very realistic fantasy. More importantly, it wasn't anything like earlier today. This time, Bucky could decide: when to deepen the kiss; when to pull Steve flush against him; when to take Steve's hand and put it where he wanted it, urging him on until Bucky was coming all over Steve's fingers, one hand bracing on Steve's shoulder and the other gripping the counter hard enough to leave a crack.
This time, he could decide; and by the time they'd finished with that, eaten dinner, and gone to bed in their own separate rooms, Bucky had decided he could live with it.