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fannishlisstitle: "Wise Men Wonder"
author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fannishliss
pairing: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes
rating: Mature
warnings: none; post Captain America: The Winter Soldier
length: 2120
summary: The pull is too hard for him to resist.
(title is from the song "So Cold" by Breaking Benjamin, always one of my favorite post-apoc songs and thematically appropriate to the Winter Soldier, so...)
>>>>>>
Washington, DC, is a gray-white city, the alabaster buildings blending in with the asphalt and the concrete in a monotony of toneless monuments. A breath of pink floats like a cloud around the tidal basin for a few days in spring, then falls back into green against the gray of the Potomac.
Now giant spars of steel mar the smooth surface of the river, churning it back into rapids as crews in dark gear try to clear it all away. The colossal wreckage writes SHIELD’s downfall stark on the blank page of the nation’s capital. For lives lost, candle flames float along the shore in the twilight near the ruins of the Triskelion.
The city pulls back from chaos. Trees bud, flower and give over into green. Street people breathe a little easier, but one of them does not yield up his wariness. A double handful of days untaken is a lifetime. So much has been recovered, so much of his conditioning shed, so many memories reclaimed, and so many horrors unveiled.
He wears dirty clothes and goes unshaven, unwashed, becomes one of the invisible. He stares at his own clean shaven face and remembers, flickering like a newsreel, who he used to be.
He remembers who he’s been. His hands are so dirty. How could he even begin to wash them clean?
Days are spent shuffling, begging, hanging his head under a tattered ballcap, hair hanging lank around his ears. The best hiding place is in plain sight. Nights, he buries himself down the deepest holes he can find, where his screams will echo in his ears alone, as horror after horror replays before his unblinking mind’s eye. It hurts to know how many times he’s been wielded as a weapon, unwilling; how many lives he’s taken at HYDRA’s behest. He’s been a soldier in a war they never even bothered to explain, and as much as he tried to buck their control, he’s never managed it until now.
He’s already gone to the bank, dispatched the technicians, and pounded the equipment into twisted scraps of metal. That, at least, he’s accomplished. HYDRA’s puppet has cut his own strings, and so far, their best kept secret has not been remembered. So far, no one has found him — not even the one man he hopes might succeed.
Every morning just as the sun rises Steve emerges from his apartment to run around the city, around the basin and the monuments. Steve passes by, and he’s a bundle of rags in a doorway, a heap of trash down an alley, a shadow under overhanging shrubbery.
Every time he sees Steve, though, he feels something pull a little harder. He remembers, he thinks he can remember that pull, the gold in Steve shining so bright that nothing could keep him from reaching out to touch, to feel that warmth and catch a little of the gleam.
The pull is becoming too hard to resist. Every night, he suffers through kills, conditioning, tortures of fire and ice, but sometimes, sleep brings sweeter memories, laughter and Steve and the feel of that sweet yearning, a smile and the feeling that he’d never get enough of Steve, or never be able to give enough of himself to Steve to make the balance come even.
This morning, Steve runs down the steps and away into the dim sunlight. He’d lain on this very roof to put three slugs in the man who ran to Steve, the same man he’d met in the cemetery yesterday, when the Widow gave Steve the file with his picture inside.
From roof to roof and down, he’s soon inside Steve’s apartment. The file is right there, on Steve’s dining table. He flips it open, shuts it again when he sees himself in the tube. It makes him sick to think of Steve seeing that, of Steve learning all that Hydra has done to him, of all that he has done. He’d told himself he was after the file, but it wasn’t true. Maybe the file could tell him something, but he was really here just to breathe the air Steve had breathed, to touch things Steve had touched, to fully convince himself that he hadn’t killed Steve despite being wiped and prepped to kill him — twice — that despite his bullets and his fists, Steve was still alive, that he might hear his friend say his name one more time, even though he brought his metal fist crashing down onto that perfect face again and again and again —
“Bucky?”
He’d gone down, drowning in the horror of remembering, but now the door is open and Steve is right there, golden and glowing even though his apartment is dim and shadowy, and slowly he surfaces.
He takes two steps backward but can’t make himself run. He’s fought so many wars for so many years, always on the wrong side — but now, with Steve so near, he can’t fight any more. He’s frozen, staring, hoping, wanting, drinking in Steve’s glory with his eyes, yearning for him.
And Steve steps forward, once, twice, and reaches out and pulls him in.
Time stops and all he can feel is his heart pounding against Steve, and Steve’s arms around him, so strong, and he fell all those years ago, never stopped falling, the nightmare never ending, but Steve has him now. The gray and the cold gives way to gold, and he hugs Steve back.
“I gotcha, I gotcha,” Steve says, and Bucky believes.
—
Steve’s apartment is simple, unadorned, maybe even a little depressing, but to Bucky, it’s heaven.
Of course Steve’s friends would tighten the security at the apartment when Steve insisted he’d still be living there. It feels safe enough, anyway, to let his guard down, to wash himself clean in Steve’s hot shower, to put on fresh clothes that smell of Steve and eat some food that Steve puts in front of him.
Steve stares at him like he’s made of pure diamond, when nothing can be more precious and rare than Steve’s face, perfect and unharmed as if Bucky had never touched him.
“You’re staring,” Steve says.
“You’re real,” Bucky says. “For so long, you were only a dream — sometimes, not even that.”
“I’m so sorry,” Steve says, and Bucky won’t have it.
“Shut up, punk,” Bucky says, easy as breathing, but they both know Steve would have burned HYDRA to the ground if his plane hadn’t crashed into the sea.
“You remember,” Steve says, frown lines between his brows.
Bucky shudders, but tries to talk. “They kept me frozen, years at a time I guess, and they’d wake me up and prep me and then wipe me again when it was over. They couldn’t keep me awake for long or I’d start to remember who I was, who they were.”
Steve looks at him with awful compassion, blue eyes dark with the urge to make someone pay.
“Whatever Zola did to me — I heal fast, and my brain heals too. They’d try to wipe everything away, but it comes back. I know a lot more about HYDRA than they wish i knew.”
“We’ll take them down, till there’s nothing left,” Steve swears and lays his hand on Bucky’s good shoulder.
Bucky’s left arm comes up, and his metal hand falls on top of Steve’s. Steve’s eyes fly open, startled, but Bucky’s hand is subtle, and Steve isn’t hurt.
“They’ve made improvements, over the years,” Bucky says, flexing the hand as Steve assesses it, and Bucky sees the artist in him reluctantly appreciate the shining, symmetrical flakes of its armor.
Steve looks up at him then and their eyes catch and that pull tightens between them, that golden cord that has never severed, after wars and years, ice and torment, lies and forgetting.
Steve’s mouth falls open a little, that old asthmatic habit from when he’d lose his breath when he got too worked up. His lips are full and red and Bucky wants.
His left hand reaches out to touch Steve’s face. Steve’s eyes are darker still.
“Steve?” Bucky whispers.
“Yeah, Buck?” Steve answers.
“Is this okay?” Bucky asks.
“Absolutely, yes, whatever you want,” Steve says, in a rush, and he turns his face to kiss the metal palm. As his lips meet the cold metal, his eyes slant back to Bucky. “Can you feel that?”
Bucky shakes his head, “Not really,” and Steve reaches out for his other hand.
“Touch me so you can feel it,” Steve says, and leans closer, and then they are kissing, Steve’s lips so sweet and soft under his, and Bucky is devouring Steve, pulling him tight and hard against himself, running fingers of flesh and metal through Steve’s fine golden hair, feeling the strength of Steve’s neck and shoulders, trying to get so close they merge, so they can never be torn apart again.
—
Steve is breathless and so is Bucky, and this fire hasn’t warmed him in so long he can’t remember. Way back, he used to dance with dames so small and soft, he loved the blondes with the bright blue eyes, and how he and Steve could ever have been so goddamn backward he will never understand.
“Please,” he’s murmuring, “Steve, Steve,” and Steve is saying “yes, Bucky, dear God, yes,” and Steve never takes the name of the Lord in vain, so Bucky knows he means it.
The dames were always so soft, and Steve was always so little, but now he’s so big, so strong and hard, and Bucky is bigger now too than he was, but somehow they still fit. Two men’s bodies, two warriors well-matched, they struggle to hold each other tighter, closer, each unyielding, till somehow Steve is squirming down, kissing his way toward Bucky’s belly.
“Bucky, please, let me,” Steve is saying, and Bucky knows this, he remembers the bottle blonds down near the Navy Yard, in the dark alley ways where Steve wouldn’t know.
“You sure?” he can’t help asking.
Steve’s eyes flash and his ire goes up and he’s such a little punk Bucky has to laugh. “Sorry,” he says.
“Damn straight,” Steve mutters and pulls Bucky’s pants down.
Steve leans in to kiss it and Bucky groans. Steve’s lips are wet and swollen from kissing and Bucky wants him so bad. Steve’s tongue comes out to taste, licking over the head, swirling and Steve moans a little sweet moan as though he likes the flavor, and Bucky gushes a little bit and Steve moans again, taking him in a little deeper. Bucky watches as he slips inside Steve’s cherub mouth, and Steve groans, and opens his eyes and stares up at Bucky. He grabs Bucky’s hands and puts them around the back of his head and whispers, “feel.”
“Steve,” Bucky begs, and Steve bobs his head, licking and kissing and taking him just a little bit deeper with every pass till he’s hitting the back of Steve’s throat, and then Steve holds him there, and swallows, and his tongue is stroking Bucky and his throat is rippling around him and Bucky tries to pull away, tries to be polite, but Steve has his hips in both hands. Bucky’s hands tighten, his hips quiver, and the urge to stay in control makes it even more intense as his control gives way, his body seizes, and fire pours through him, gold and white and all-consuming, pouring into Steve as Steve moans and swallows and shudders around him.
Finally Steve pulls back, panting a little, squirms back up to hold Bucky close.
“Touch me,” Steve says, and Bucky’s right hand closes around Steve, giving Steve a place to thrust and then Bucky is kissing Steve’s open, soft mouth, tasting himself there as Steve shouts out his release.
—
“They’ll never take you again,” Steve swears, holding Bucky in the darkness as he shakes off the terror. “Come with me to New York, I have friends there, allies.”
“Okay,” Bucky says, trying to breathe, trying to stop the shuddering.
“And, um,” Steve says. “It’s okay, now, about us.”
“We were awful dumb back then, Stevie,” Bucky says. “That’s what I think.”
“Let’s be smarter now then,” Steve replies.
“Sure thing,” Bucky answers, and settles back around Steve, holding him close.
The sun comes up over Washington DC, edging the monuments with gold. Bucky climbs on behind Steve and the new bike roars into life.
Bucky wraps his arms around Steve and remembers those nights he kept him warm, how things come around.
They head across the bridge, and crews are dragging wreckage out of the Potomac, and the sun is dancing like gold and diamonds on the cold rough water, spring foliage along the shoreline warming into summer.
author:
fannishlisspairing: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes
rating: Mature
warnings: none; post Captain America: The Winter Soldier
length: 2120
summary: The pull is too hard for him to resist.
(title is from the song "So Cold" by Breaking Benjamin, always one of my favorite post-apoc songs and thematically appropriate to the Winter Soldier, so...)
>>>>>>
Washington, DC, is a gray-white city, the alabaster buildings blending in with the asphalt and the concrete in a monotony of toneless monuments. A breath of pink floats like a cloud around the tidal basin for a few days in spring, then falls back into green against the gray of the Potomac.
Now giant spars of steel mar the smooth surface of the river, churning it back into rapids as crews in dark gear try to clear it all away. The colossal wreckage writes SHIELD’s downfall stark on the blank page of the nation’s capital. For lives lost, candle flames float along the shore in the twilight near the ruins of the Triskelion.
The city pulls back from chaos. Trees bud, flower and give over into green. Street people breathe a little easier, but one of them does not yield up his wariness. A double handful of days untaken is a lifetime. So much has been recovered, so much of his conditioning shed, so many memories reclaimed, and so many horrors unveiled.
He wears dirty clothes and goes unshaven, unwashed, becomes one of the invisible. He stares at his own clean shaven face and remembers, flickering like a newsreel, who he used to be.
He remembers who he’s been. His hands are so dirty. How could he even begin to wash them clean?
Days are spent shuffling, begging, hanging his head under a tattered ballcap, hair hanging lank around his ears. The best hiding place is in plain sight. Nights, he buries himself down the deepest holes he can find, where his screams will echo in his ears alone, as horror after horror replays before his unblinking mind’s eye. It hurts to know how many times he’s been wielded as a weapon, unwilling; how many lives he’s taken at HYDRA’s behest. He’s been a soldier in a war they never even bothered to explain, and as much as he tried to buck their control, he’s never managed it until now.
He’s already gone to the bank, dispatched the technicians, and pounded the equipment into twisted scraps of metal. That, at least, he’s accomplished. HYDRA’s puppet has cut his own strings, and so far, their best kept secret has not been remembered. So far, no one has found him — not even the one man he hopes might succeed.
Every morning just as the sun rises Steve emerges from his apartment to run around the city, around the basin and the monuments. Steve passes by, and he’s a bundle of rags in a doorway, a heap of trash down an alley, a shadow under overhanging shrubbery.
Every time he sees Steve, though, he feels something pull a little harder. He remembers, he thinks he can remember that pull, the gold in Steve shining so bright that nothing could keep him from reaching out to touch, to feel that warmth and catch a little of the gleam.
The pull is becoming too hard to resist. Every night, he suffers through kills, conditioning, tortures of fire and ice, but sometimes, sleep brings sweeter memories, laughter and Steve and the feel of that sweet yearning, a smile and the feeling that he’d never get enough of Steve, or never be able to give enough of himself to Steve to make the balance come even.
This morning, Steve runs down the steps and away into the dim sunlight. He’d lain on this very roof to put three slugs in the man who ran to Steve, the same man he’d met in the cemetery yesterday, when the Widow gave Steve the file with his picture inside.
From roof to roof and down, he’s soon inside Steve’s apartment. The file is right there, on Steve’s dining table. He flips it open, shuts it again when he sees himself in the tube. It makes him sick to think of Steve seeing that, of Steve learning all that Hydra has done to him, of all that he has done. He’d told himself he was after the file, but it wasn’t true. Maybe the file could tell him something, but he was really here just to breathe the air Steve had breathed, to touch things Steve had touched, to fully convince himself that he hadn’t killed Steve despite being wiped and prepped to kill him — twice — that despite his bullets and his fists, Steve was still alive, that he might hear his friend say his name one more time, even though he brought his metal fist crashing down onto that perfect face again and again and again —
“Bucky?”
He’d gone down, drowning in the horror of remembering, but now the door is open and Steve is right there, golden and glowing even though his apartment is dim and shadowy, and slowly he surfaces.
He takes two steps backward but can’t make himself run. He’s fought so many wars for so many years, always on the wrong side — but now, with Steve so near, he can’t fight any more. He’s frozen, staring, hoping, wanting, drinking in Steve’s glory with his eyes, yearning for him.
And Steve steps forward, once, twice, and reaches out and pulls him in.
Time stops and all he can feel is his heart pounding against Steve, and Steve’s arms around him, so strong, and he fell all those years ago, never stopped falling, the nightmare never ending, but Steve has him now. The gray and the cold gives way to gold, and he hugs Steve back.
“I gotcha, I gotcha,” Steve says, and Bucky believes.
—
Steve’s apartment is simple, unadorned, maybe even a little depressing, but to Bucky, it’s heaven.
Of course Steve’s friends would tighten the security at the apartment when Steve insisted he’d still be living there. It feels safe enough, anyway, to let his guard down, to wash himself clean in Steve’s hot shower, to put on fresh clothes that smell of Steve and eat some food that Steve puts in front of him.
Steve stares at him like he’s made of pure diamond, when nothing can be more precious and rare than Steve’s face, perfect and unharmed as if Bucky had never touched him.
“You’re staring,” Steve says.
“You’re real,” Bucky says. “For so long, you were only a dream — sometimes, not even that.”
“I’m so sorry,” Steve says, and Bucky won’t have it.
“Shut up, punk,” Bucky says, easy as breathing, but they both know Steve would have burned HYDRA to the ground if his plane hadn’t crashed into the sea.
“You remember,” Steve says, frown lines between his brows.
Bucky shudders, but tries to talk. “They kept me frozen, years at a time I guess, and they’d wake me up and prep me and then wipe me again when it was over. They couldn’t keep me awake for long or I’d start to remember who I was, who they were.”
Steve looks at him with awful compassion, blue eyes dark with the urge to make someone pay.
“Whatever Zola did to me — I heal fast, and my brain heals too. They’d try to wipe everything away, but it comes back. I know a lot more about HYDRA than they wish i knew.”
“We’ll take them down, till there’s nothing left,” Steve swears and lays his hand on Bucky’s good shoulder.
Bucky’s left arm comes up, and his metal hand falls on top of Steve’s. Steve’s eyes fly open, startled, but Bucky’s hand is subtle, and Steve isn’t hurt.
“They’ve made improvements, over the years,” Bucky says, flexing the hand as Steve assesses it, and Bucky sees the artist in him reluctantly appreciate the shining, symmetrical flakes of its armor.
Steve looks up at him then and their eyes catch and that pull tightens between them, that golden cord that has never severed, after wars and years, ice and torment, lies and forgetting.
Steve’s mouth falls open a little, that old asthmatic habit from when he’d lose his breath when he got too worked up. His lips are full and red and Bucky wants.
His left hand reaches out to touch Steve’s face. Steve’s eyes are darker still.
“Steve?” Bucky whispers.
“Yeah, Buck?” Steve answers.
“Is this okay?” Bucky asks.
“Absolutely, yes, whatever you want,” Steve says, in a rush, and he turns his face to kiss the metal palm. As his lips meet the cold metal, his eyes slant back to Bucky. “Can you feel that?”
Bucky shakes his head, “Not really,” and Steve reaches out for his other hand.
“Touch me so you can feel it,” Steve says, and leans closer, and then they are kissing, Steve’s lips so sweet and soft under his, and Bucky is devouring Steve, pulling him tight and hard against himself, running fingers of flesh and metal through Steve’s fine golden hair, feeling the strength of Steve’s neck and shoulders, trying to get so close they merge, so they can never be torn apart again.
—
Steve is breathless and so is Bucky, and this fire hasn’t warmed him in so long he can’t remember. Way back, he used to dance with dames so small and soft, he loved the blondes with the bright blue eyes, and how he and Steve could ever have been so goddamn backward he will never understand.
“Please,” he’s murmuring, “Steve, Steve,” and Steve is saying “yes, Bucky, dear God, yes,” and Steve never takes the name of the Lord in vain, so Bucky knows he means it.
The dames were always so soft, and Steve was always so little, but now he’s so big, so strong and hard, and Bucky is bigger now too than he was, but somehow they still fit. Two men’s bodies, two warriors well-matched, they struggle to hold each other tighter, closer, each unyielding, till somehow Steve is squirming down, kissing his way toward Bucky’s belly.
“Bucky, please, let me,” Steve is saying, and Bucky knows this, he remembers the bottle blonds down near the Navy Yard, in the dark alley ways where Steve wouldn’t know.
“You sure?” he can’t help asking.
Steve’s eyes flash and his ire goes up and he’s such a little punk Bucky has to laugh. “Sorry,” he says.
“Damn straight,” Steve mutters and pulls Bucky’s pants down.
Steve leans in to kiss it and Bucky groans. Steve’s lips are wet and swollen from kissing and Bucky wants him so bad. Steve’s tongue comes out to taste, licking over the head, swirling and Steve moans a little sweet moan as though he likes the flavor, and Bucky gushes a little bit and Steve moans again, taking him in a little deeper. Bucky watches as he slips inside Steve’s cherub mouth, and Steve groans, and opens his eyes and stares up at Bucky. He grabs Bucky’s hands and puts them around the back of his head and whispers, “feel.”
“Steve,” Bucky begs, and Steve bobs his head, licking and kissing and taking him just a little bit deeper with every pass till he’s hitting the back of Steve’s throat, and then Steve holds him there, and swallows, and his tongue is stroking Bucky and his throat is rippling around him and Bucky tries to pull away, tries to be polite, but Steve has his hips in both hands. Bucky’s hands tighten, his hips quiver, and the urge to stay in control makes it even more intense as his control gives way, his body seizes, and fire pours through him, gold and white and all-consuming, pouring into Steve as Steve moans and swallows and shudders around him.
Finally Steve pulls back, panting a little, squirms back up to hold Bucky close.
“Touch me,” Steve says, and Bucky’s right hand closes around Steve, giving Steve a place to thrust and then Bucky is kissing Steve’s open, soft mouth, tasting himself there as Steve shouts out his release.
—
“They’ll never take you again,” Steve swears, holding Bucky in the darkness as he shakes off the terror. “Come with me to New York, I have friends there, allies.”
“Okay,” Bucky says, trying to breathe, trying to stop the shuddering.
“And, um,” Steve says. “It’s okay, now, about us.”
“We were awful dumb back then, Stevie,” Bucky says. “That’s what I think.”
“Let’s be smarter now then,” Steve replies.
“Sure thing,” Bucky answers, and settles back around Steve, holding him close.
The sun comes up over Washington DC, edging the monuments with gold. Bucky climbs on behind Steve and the new bike roars into life.
Bucky wraps his arms around Steve and remembers those nights he kept him warm, how things come around.
They head across the bridge, and crews are dragging wreckage out of the Potomac, and the sun is dancing like gold and diamonds on the cold rough water, spring foliage along the shoreline warming into summer.
