steve (notaboutheroes) wrote in xibalba, @ 2015-12-07 21:41:00 |
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They march during the night, seeking out dank recesses and empty caverns to hide from the oppression of the sun. The heat is stifling, filling all in their small outfit with dreams of ice and dark, air conditioned rooms. But the two from Brooklyn - the two time forgot, the two who never knew ice except what clinked in the glasses in the hospital waiting rooms - are not stymied. Whether it's their long sight or their engineered physiology, they take the watch (one high, one low). And it's all right. Sleep isn't as precious and when they speak in glances, when the others notice and don't notice, it underscores the different space they inhabit.
When the sun is at its zenith and they can see the long stretch of runway that will take them back to the States, Rogers looses the shackles of that 70-years-on-ice cool as soon as Barnes jumps to the ground. The sweat-slick hollow of his throat is ripe for exploration, for that same boyish curiosity that got him picking at scabs when they were twelve. And his fingertips finally make way for his lips, sealing this impromptu exchange with a hot hiss against the ear:
"I'll commandeer the turboprop."
He's not unused to people taking liberties, but when Steve does it, it's an age-old question finally getting its answer, and he reacts. The heads of the snake, in their dark uniforms and crisp ambitions, would receive the far-off gaze of a dead man and an equally leaden body, but under the alkalinity of this commander's touch, he is no longer a nameless entity, but a man slamming hard into his body, his name, his want.
Barnes hasn't wanted since his time as a man with a name that felt real, though, on reflection, his moments since dragging Rogers out of the cold embrace of the Potomac have been coloured by a sort of desire. To live; to learn; to know. And isn't this a sort of knowing? That the man at his neck was a dumb punk too stupid and full of heart to say no when it could have saved his skinny neck; that he is a different thing now, though imbued with that selfsame spirit that blinds him when he looks head-on.
It's the only sort of blindness he wants. And knowing that is both terrifying and not.
"No." His hand, heavy and hot against the other's nape, belies his words. "I will. They'll follow you."
"They'll follow you." Rogers stakes Captain America on being followed, on leading his enemies on a merry chase with a bouncing target painted in broad swaths upon his back. But this brings him flush against his own desire. To incorporate James Barnes into his life, to cull out a space in which he can simply be, has cost much. And every time his pulse fires against his index finger, he understands he's prepared to pay more. Again and again.
Stilling the other with a palm against the jaw, he takes a hard step in and exhales, fanning breath along the dark locks lying lank upon his brother's brow. As his lips find a temple, his belt buckle clangs softly against the metal arm and he inserts his palm to quickly muffle it. He is taking risks. This man begets a different kind of rule book. "Shoot to kill."
Steve was at least satisfied he'd be taken alive. He smirked. "And anyway, if we don't get these hothouse flowers home, they'll expire."
Something to examine later: whether or not he cared about said hothouse flowers. Barnes insinuated a hand -- metal, shades cooler than skin -- in the narrow space between the captain's own and his waist, and gave a push to force Steve back; to demand whatever sliver of distance was necessary for him to swing the rifle round from across his back without scraping its muzzle against the body of the other man.
"Get them on the plane. I'll cover you and board when everyone's on." His eyes, narrowed in the sunlight, made a sweep of the runway, calculating distance with windspeed (the branches high above undulating gently in this swelling heat). They swing back to Rogers, dark catching out blue.
"Shield." Not a request.
"Here. Do it."
The shield clicked out of its casing and though Steve lived in misgiving regarding giving Bucky this objective, he was obedient. However, the space would not do. Not in this moment.
Drawn magnetically to Bucky, unable to quench that hard knot of desire all the lean years wrought, he took a long step in and slid his fingers beneath the thick strap of his belt.
"No unnecessary risks, Buck. We are all going home.”
“Only necessary ones,” he returned, tone of his voice spelling out rich, coming from you, the sudden and unsubtle angulation of his hips serving a twinned purpose: balance maintained as he swung the shield over his back, interest and an unspoken promise made in response to that show of disregard for space.
“I think you oughta make for the plane now,” came after a long moment, his voice a shade rougher than before. “I told you, I’ll board when you’re all on.”
Steve's hand, skimming along the belt to the small of the other's back, dipped until he grasped at the pistol he knew would be secreted there. With the metal still warm from the places it pressed against Bucky's skin coating the inside of his palm, Steve cocked the pistol and gave a single nod.
Then, stepping back, he went to the woods to rouse their company and prep them for departure.
It was quick work. This team, well-versed in the Captain's quirks, slept ready.
Later -- many hours and further miles later -- with the aircraft landed with minor surface damage from wayward ballistics, and a team -- burdened by a modest array of mosquito bites and the usual collection of scratches, contusions, and nothing more severe than a shattered ankle from a poorly aimed leap from a height -- discharged to medical and the warmth of the canteen, Bucky moved into the edges of the flurry of activity their return had elicited. Normal procedure required him to offload his weaponry, but with the shield still strapped to his back, anyone other than Steve escorting him to the weapons lockup would raise questions (and likely guns).
Anyway, he only wanted Steve, as was made quite clear by his stock-still stance under the shadow of the plane’s wing, waiting for his captain’s attention.
With every member of the team bundled off to their respective locales, and with Steve's own signature on the return documentation, he could then address the shade sheltering in the plane's wing.
"C'mon, Buck." Striding out of the hangar, he moved with the easy grace of someone who was sure he'd be followed. A few raised chins as he passed, acknowledging the captain's presence before melting back against the wall. He nodded in return.
Then, in the armory, he turned to the door.
"Come in and shut it."
This sort of obedience was always easier -- raised barely a brow from those who populated the halls, and temporarily settled some of the harsh hum of his nerves -- a push with his booted foot enough to bring the door to a scraping, heavy shut, a sound which contrasted with the ringing peal of the shield as he swung it from his shoulders and set it carefully against the wall.
The gun Steve had cocked earlier was pulled out from its holster. “This was an unnecessary risk.”
"Buck."
As soon as the door shut, Steve sagged upon a bench. Those shoulders which held their punishingly erect posture collapsed forward and with a glance toward Bucky, his brow rose. "Why say that?"
An artlessly easy gesture saw the clip dropping out into Bucky’s outstretched palm. “You know.” Three steps brought him directly in front of Steve, and with the creak of kevlar and leather, he leaned down to set the piece on the bench beside the other man. When he straightened, his fingers brushed across his nape, what little skin peeking out from the collar of his uniform warm against his own. They ran hot, the both of them. Ironic.
“Good mission.”
Another HYDRA stronghold destroyed, another shadowy place disturbed so the terrifying rats could no longer hold themselves in power against them. But he still had more questions than answers.
From the seam (obscured) which fused flesh and metal to the obsidian flecks in a pale and unblemished iris, Steve wanted to route his way along the map of Bucky's body. He wanted a story for every unfamiliar landmark; a why which could satisfactorily let them move forward.
But instead, he had the melting firewall of his own curious desire. Glancing up through his lashes, his hand landed heavy on Bucky's waist and he pulled him close to levy himself upon unbuckling the many straps of his suit.
"Objective achieved."
Permissive, every inch of him as he shuffled that half-step forward; maddeningly slow, as though he’d been drugged, his limbs heavy as he registered that the slow burn that coiled deep within his spine was something else now, something urgent and vital and unfamiliar for all that he’d always carried it with him.
His hand twitched against Steve’s neck. “Why are you doing this?” Why now. Why here. Why me.
"Do you want me to stop?"
Steve's hands stilled on the back of Bucky's trousers, warm and full of promise along the flesh. For a wealth of years between them in which he was his own man, it was significant that he likewise obtain Bucky's consent.
"Tell me."
And that was the question, wasn’t it? Do you want -- the weight of such a thing, to be offered a choice and to know that this person, this one boy the streets had tried time and time again to consume, would listen. To be able to say no -- “No,” quietly -- instead of begging for this to stop.
His hand stilled, only for his fingers to catch the closely shorn ends of the golden hair. “No.”
“All right.” Rolling his fist along the stiff fabric, gathering a handful, he pulled it down over his hip to hang somewhere between his thigh and his backside. Steve didn’t have the presence of mind or the restraint to make this beautiful. He didn’t know how. What he knew, with his fingertips scouring into richly pale flesh, was his want. And that want would drive him.
His free hand disengaged the zipper and, pulling against the grip in his hair, he engulfed Bucky with his mouth, and finally felt the pinprick of hope; the surety he’d demanded of himself for so long that body and mind, they could both be their own. For once and for all.
This… he didn’t know how to process this. The desires of the body had for so long been limited to the most basic of urges. Sleep. Survive. Obey. Always, always obey -- his last, though not only, transgression had taught him that desire well. And once he’d been made to forget (the blue eyes, the red hair, Brooklyn), it was easy.
This was not easy. This was the sudden weakness in the back of his knees and the blood roaring in his ears even as it pooled elsewhere. If Steve lacked restraint, Bucky lacked direction, hand faltering and going limp in that first long, hot moment where the entirety of his focus narrowed down to that point of contact.
The moment which indicated to Steve that Bucky’s balance - physically, emotionally - had been momentarily lost, meant that he provided instant stability. For inasmuch as the weight of him across his thighs and in his mouth meant all those unnameable and unknowable things he’d repressed for years upon years, this was Buck. This was his man. And his desire took a back seat.
He rose up, supporting his weight with a broad expanse of shoulder.
“Too fast, I’m sorry. Sit down.”
The moment he caught his breath, Bucky lost it again in a sharp exhale. His body was his again, and as control rushed back in, he thought -- no, too much distance, too much, no more.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” was a half-swallowed mutter, mouth half open in a lost pant as he realised he’d not lost his direction at all. It’d always been there. Steve was his direction. And the thought was barely recognised for what it was before his arm, cold and gleaming and impossibly sure, swung out, fingers curling around Steve’s collar to drag him close.
“Don’t you ever be sorry.”
That pressure - the twinned juxtaposition of flesh and metal - levied with the consonant note in Bucky’s voice, drew a growl from him. And he turned, forcing Bucky on the bench so that he could kneel between his legs.
“Buck --” he began, but instead shut up. He could yammer on and on. Or he could do what they both wanted. His hand, wrapping around a knee, was precursor to a slow and languorous trail from his thigh until he took him once again in his mouth.
“Jesus, that’s --” But his voice died in his throat, the abrupt silence in concert with the creak of the bench as his fingers curled tight. There was a helplessness to this which involved utter and absolute trust, and it was Steve’s, it’d always been Steve’s, Steve who he’d stand in front of a moving train for --
His fingers found his head again, scraping down the just-shy-of-military grade shear of the honey-blonde hair, then dipping back to catch his jaw and pull, pull him up so he could visit a kiss on him, the dirt and sweat of their last mission filling him with heady alkalinity.
Steve had often wondered what kind of man could express himself in the violence of love. What kind of purity could make him drunk enough to let go of himself to be subsumed in another.
The truth was, men went to war over loves like this. They burnt the sky and scorched the earth. He could feel the reason rising high. He could feel the reason of Menelaus, of Paris. But Steve, though. Steve just wanted to possess this heart in the stolen moments he still had. He was satisfied in the curl of muscle over him, the click of their joints when he pawed up to make his grip on Bucky’s nape leverage while he bruised himself against his mouth.
In the grey chill of England, in the weeks leading up to deployment on the Continent, he’d dream of that tremulous heart battering against all odds, against that bony sternum, the way it sent its unsteady pulsewaves into the skinny wrist Bucky often fell asleep holding. And though it’d never been less than faithful, was steady now -- or, at least, steadier, for he could feel the hard pulse in Steve’s neck beneath the crush of his hand. For this moment, at least, it was his.
“What do you want?” came slow against Steve’s mouth, his eyes open and staring. “Tell me. I’ll do it.”
“Buck,” this was his prayer. “I want to make you …” His teeth raked hard over the generous bow of his lip, the ferrous taste of blood flooding over his tongue. How to utter what had lain waiting for ninety years? How to give language to a need that honed them both into weapons and made them long to be men once more?
“I want to sweat. I want to feel you inside me. I want to fuck.”
The sting of teeth was a passing sharpness, a passing sweetness when held against the words that followed. I want -- I want -- I want. It was dizzying, it was electric, it was goddamn fucking terrifying to feel his body tense in immediate response to the words he’d requested from Steve. To realise -- to know with a full and ready heart -- that they’d been edging around this since. Since.
A buckle on Steve’s shoulder, part of the harness that kept the shield in place, was snapped open before he could reply; a second snap followed, and the contraption slithered to the floor. “Okay,” he breathed against his mouth as he pulled them both to their feet, knowing his teeth to be stained crimson from the blood, knowing that this excited Steve. He began on the belt, pulling it free. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
Thus freed from the constriction of waiting to see what was and what could be, Steve wouldn’t let the lack of experience stand in his way. Whatever fumbling there was now at Bucky’s chest was felled by the thickly pumping muscle in his breast. He pushed the thick fabric, the kevlar and the straps, from his shoulders, dropping his lips upon the exposed skin.
When the seam between metal and skin was exposed, he exhaled a hot breath across the skin and tasted it in the entirety. Then, with surety, he stepped back to strip off his own shirt and let his trousers pool around his ankles.
Bucky didn’t know if it was ever going to be okay, the things he’d been too weak to stop them from doing to his body. But if Steve could look at him like that -- if he could stand to touch him like that -- perhaps there was a measure of redemption there. Perhaps he could let himself stand to hope.
-- and then the rest of Steve’s uniform was on the floor, to be kicked away with his heavy, mud-caked boot as he strode forward. He supposed he knew this body better than Steve knew his: the twisting keloid merge of flesh and metal was new to him, but the unblemished physique of the serum had been in his watchful crosshairs since they fought through the winter of Europe. A metallic flex, and Steve was hoisted up and slammed against the door of the lockup, the ceiling-to-floor cage within which their weaponry was stored shaking from the force of it.
Every line of James Buchanan Barnes was precious to Steve. Every inch of pale skin, every stitch of whirring metal. It was Buck. And it was all that had ever stood between him and calumny.
Now Steve could feel the blood pool in his belly, chasing the electricity that rattled his teeth (between the metal, between the heat of their bodies) and he reached down, cupping a hard length and drawing it between his fingers. Breath was hard now, rattling in his chest until he could force himself to turn, to press his chest to the door and wait for Bucky to take his hint.
There was time still for tenderness, if not finesse, even if the drive to meet Steve’s needs -- I want -- I want -- I want -- was a dull, relentless howl in his bones. His forehead met the hard line of Steve’s spine right where the skin dimpled between the shoulder blades, a slow exhale fanning out against the flush that spread beneath the creamy skin.
There was time, drawn out in seconds, because this would hurt and he was scared. Even as his knee edged up against the solid bulk of a thigh to push his legs apart, Bucky knew that the scratchy tightness in the back of his throat and the heavy tightness in his cock had something to do with fear. And he wanted him to have that moment, that sliver of space to say something -- but no. Steve had turned and this was what he wanted.
The quality of his breathing changed, went shallow as he looked down at himself, looked down at him, his hands momentarily loose and still. Was there a beauty to this? Not likely. Finesse? No. Spit hit his palm, hit his skin, and then the metal digits dug into Steve’s hipbone and he was sinking inch by staggered inch.
As one knee quaked against the door, as the other foot sought purchase in the floor, Steve’s hand flung backward to twist up in Bucky’s long dark locks to anchor him to the earth. That fire from earlier, the one that built with promise, now consumed him. And with an oath against the hard metal, he found himself relishing that same hyphenated existence (heat and cold, pleasure and pain) which had come to characterize him.
His free hand scrabbled to push against the door, to spit himself even further on Bucky’s cock and twist knife-like upon it. He now knew what it was to give himself over to one so fully, to place trust and safety in the hands of another. But Steve had been doing this with Bucky since he was a boy. Whether it was fistfights in the alley or bombs in the Ardennes, his trust was complete.
And he pulled the knot of hair in his fingertips, forcing skin to come in contact with his lips and with his teeth. “Good,” he rasped. “Harder.”
“Good?” was a low burr of a question, voice caught somewhere between an inhale and a gasp as he, fully submerged, found himself wondering at the sensation of Steve’s spine, sinuous and long down the press of his body. His belt buckle, the sagging waistband of his trousers, caught between two sets of thighs; the miracle that they should sweat at all. I want to sweat. He could taste it on the soft skin that dipped above Steve’s upper lip.
With a whirr of mechanised movement as it found purchase, Bucky’s left hand gripped Steve’s jaw, forcing his head to straighten before it clamped around the base of his nape, pushing as he did as commanded. Harder. Harder. All he could see was a constellation of pale freckles, the pounding of his pulse. Every thrust with greater intensity, the room shuddering around them as the air went thin in Bucky’s lungs.
This called for blood. Biting into his own lip to quell the rising need to cry out, he growled out a crimson-streaked oath to Bucky (a sigh of pleasure, a prayer of thanks). And while the metal hand pressed against him, while the whoosh of the gears exhaled against his jaw, he blindly scrabbled for the blunt fingertips which had traversed his body.
He held them still once, he ran them across his lips and then pushed them down on his own length, the pressure of which seemed to roar in his eardrums. Take me. Take me. I am. Take me.
Alloy on skin. It was a repulsive thought. It was what yanked a moan from him now, half strangled as he clamped his teeth into Steve’s shoulder as his hand did as commanded. How can you want this? he would ask him later. How do you want this? -- harder. Harder.
He was losing himself, but it was okay, because this was a different sort of sublimation. Steve was a terrain long-loved and much missed. His pace was slowing, deepening in intensity. He could lose himself in him. He had.
It seemed as if the one touch - the sublimation of Captain, of Steve - was all that was needed. He breathed out against the door, delighted in the slick humidity between their bodies. Delighted in their fusing, in tired limbs and spent pleasure.
All the movies ended with a proclamation of love, a cigarette, and then a cut directly to the day’s next activities. He assumed most people ended up with fear driving their anxieties. He assumed most people fell asleep in each other or just rolled over and walked away.
But Bucky … he grinned crookedly, cocking one eyebrow backward.
“Heya, Buck. No more double dates.”
A long pause before Bucky answered, stretched out over seconds out of a disinclination to trust his own voice rather than fear. The fine muscles in the small of his back and in his right hand, splayed out now against Steve’s chest, still shook. He was smiling. He could hear it in Steve’s voice.
“Is that what we’ve been doing?”
“I think what we’ve been doing is going steady.” He trusted quavering thighs only long enough to turn, to envelop Bucky within arms draped loose around him. Steve could gorge himself on this; could lack the good sense to get out of bed in the morning if it meant this rigor.
“One more time and you’ve bought the farm.”
Both statements issued on their own would have been enough to drag this bark of laughter out of Bucky. Going steady for ninety-odd years, even though they hadn’t known it at the time. And then: one more time.
(It wasn’t like they couldn’t. It wasn’t like their bodies weren’t ready, weren’t faster. The constant hunger translated into so many things.)
And yet -- “Are you…?” Okay? he meant to ask, his hand slipping down to ghost across the unforgivingly hard slope of his backside.
“ … Yeah.” Steve couldn’t name the twin engines; couldn’t give voice to the pain and pleasure of each swift stroke that drove him hard against the door. But he knew he was good. He knew he wanted it again, wanted Bucky any way he could get him. He’d starved without him too long.
“Might wanna take it to my room, though.”
“Might.” If his gaze narrowed, it was because he was used to this sort of behaviour from Steve -- battered and bloodied, he was still self-declaring as being okay. Bucky’d never known him to say otherwise.
“All right,” he tacked on after a moment, and the smile came swiftly, lifting the corner of his lips as he stepped back with a hard tug on his trousers, bringing them back up to his hips. Stepping around Steve’s discarded uniform, he leaned down to retrieve the firearms he’d come to stow away. “Hurry up.”