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"I'm not going to have this conversation, Steve." Coming from Bucky, the words are uncomfortably formal, too concrete and stoic. It matches how businesslike he is while shooting his cuffs and swinging his jacket around his shoulders again. The knot of his tie redone and hair hastily combed back into place. Steve may be taller, but he's the one near jogging to catch up with the brisk pace of his best friend.
"Just tell me why." Steve insists, angry and hurt all at once. Bucky had frozen the moment he saw him, gone completely blank in expression and voice. He hadn't looked at Steve since they had first locked eyes over Natasha's shoulder and his stillness had prompted her to turn to whatever he was fixated on.
"Captain," she'd said, smooth and natural. Like they weren't obviously fooling around in a small room off from where a large fundraiser was being held at Stark Tower.
Steve thought very highly of Natasha. They worked well together; he respected and admired her a hell of a lot. When she had looked at him, raised and eyebrow and curled her lips up into a smile in the arms of the man he had always loved, he almost wanted to hate her.
But he could never hate Natasha.
Bucky turns so sharply on his heel that Steve almost didn't stop soon enough to keep himself from accidentally bowling him over.
He glares up at Steve, eyes dark from under his brows.
"You want to know why? Because I love her. That's why."
Steve doesn't say the first thing that came to mind ("I thought you loved me.") and instead busies himself schooling his expression to try and mask the lancing hurt.
"Didn't look too much like love to me." He says softly, recalling the few moments of frenzied passion right after he opened the door before his interruption brought it to a halt.
"And what would you know?"
Steve is taken aback, pales. Blinks hard. Bucky seems as though he wants to retract the words, but even after a moment working his jaw back and forth, he remains silent. Ducks away from Steve's gaze, turns to retreat with shoulders hunched and gait stiff.
"Bucky," Steve stops himself. Pulls back the hand that had outstretched and forces his gaze away.
He will not be angry.
He will not be heartbroken.
**
Steve comes closer to killing Bucky than he ever had fighting the Winter Soldier when he comes back to his apartment after a mission to find the assassin in his bathroom, clad only in sweatpants and brushing his teeth. Bucky gives him a completely nonplussed look until Steve lowers the gun he'd drawn automatically. Steve wishes he could be as comfortable with how close a call that was as Bucky seemed to be.
Bucky spits toothpaste into the sink.
"Some welcome, Rogers," he remarks, like they'd arranged this beforehand.
They hadn't.
"Could say the same to you."
Steve is wary. Doesn't know what to make of this situation, after Bucky had refused to speak to him in the few days following the fundraiser and preceding his next mission.
Bucky looks as though he wants Steve to believe he's relaxed, but Steve knows how Bucky moves. He's watched him for years, he always has. He sees the tension in his shoulders, the way his movements were a little too deliberate.
"What are you doing in my bathroom?" Steve asks him, holsters his gun, and leans against the door frame. He tries not to think of himself as using his arms crossed over his chest as a shield between Bucky and himself. Protecting his heart.
It was far too late for that.
" 'M staying the night." Bucky says to him, and Steve hears the implied what did you think I was doing, genius? in the tone.
"Something wrong with your place?"
Bucky is looking at him oddly.
"No."
"Then why aren't you there?"
Bucky rinses out his mouth, and Steve refuses to admire the cut of his lean figure, hard muscles shifting under scarred skin. Bucky turns to rest one hip against the counter, crosses his own arms over his chest. His expression is as guarded as Steve feels.
"Look, Steve. I'm trying to apologize,"
"For what?"
"You know what."
Frustration is beginning to boil over, low in Steve's chest. He glares at the towel rack.
"You don't have to apologize."
"Apparently I do."
"By what, sleeping on my couch?" Steve shoots back, not even trying to keep the incredulity from his voice.
Bucky rolls his eyes.
"No, punk. Sleeping with you."
Steve knows that Bucky means like they used to, chest to back and sharing body heat and secrets in the dark.
It hurts anyways.
He's going to have a headache, from the tension that continues to draw tighter across his neck, his jaw.
"I don't want your pity." Steve is finally able to tell him, and his voice is as hard and cold as the ice they had both become so familiar with.
"Steve--" Bucky sounds like he did when he was trying to placate a boy with a temper much stronger than his body.
"Go." Steve turns away, but he hears Bucky exit out the fire escape, sighing once before he does. The window slides closed.
**
There is another reason why Steve tries so very hard not to remember hearing Bucky's voice from behind a door and opening it to find him tangled with Natasha, one that he can scarce admit to himself at most times.
The reason is this:
He was just as mad at Bucky, for being with Natasha, as he was at Natasha for being with him.
The reason is that Steve is much more fond of her than he should be, and he knows this. Knowing it does not keep it from being, and he'd wrapped it deep under layers of professionalism and teamwork. He'd denied even to himself the times that he woke, aching for the sure touch of her hand, and the flash of mischief in her eyes.
He can't do the same for the times he wakes reaching for Bucky (he's never there, Rogers. Get a grip, Rogers.), because it's been far too long for that. He doesn't know how anymore.
And though he'd had no real reason to think that his deepest desires were known and reciprocated, he had. Now he had very real proof to think they were not.
Some days Steve felt as if he had his boy taken from him, and other days he thought it was his girl that was stolen.
It hardly mattered. They both hurt.
**
They're on the helicarrier when Natasha slips her arms around him from behind in an embrace that managed to just edge toward sensual, tracing over his chest.
This mission hadn't gone as well as some others.
Steve closes his eyes. She's so small, that surprises him so much more often than it should by this point.
"Natasha." They're alone in the locker room, except for Bucky. Bucky. There are too many reasons why this is wrong. Steve doesn't step away. "Don't."
She stops, but only the movement. Her hands stay splayed across his chest. He can barely feel them resting there through the fabric of his uniform.
"Natasha, please don't."
It's humiliating, but he is pleading with her now. They knew what this did to him. Why did they keep insisting on salting the wound, never allowing it to heal?
Now he does step away, and the way her hands slide from him almost seems reluctant.
"What's on your mind, Cap?"
She's inviting him to express, explain. Like it isn't obvious to her already.
Steve turns, disbelief clear across his features. He looks between Natasha and Bucky once. Bucky has stripped out of his uniform and is back in his street clothes, holding his jacket in both hands and expression so terribly empty. Natasha seems to be trying to look concerned, but doesn't have the hang of it. Not something she's used to.
Steve makes a noise low in his throat. Incredulous, pained.
"If you're going to be with each other, do it. Leave me out of it."
He demands nothing further, ducks his head.
"You hurt him pretty bad, Talia." Bucky says quietly, and the sound of it is thin in the empty space. Steve can imagine what sort of puzzled look she had shot at Bucky to get that response, and he can even make a guess at her reply (if they're referring to him walking in on Bucky with his hands up her skirt and hers sliding between the buttons of his dress shirt, to finding them)-- 'You mean we hurt him'.
Natasha surprises him. Nothing new there.
"James. Does he know?" Her tone, though low, is firm. Perhaps angry, but Steve can't make any sense of that.
Bucky appears to feel the same way.
"Know what?" He sounds prickly, defensive.
Natasha raises her voice a fraction. Enough to make Steve wince internally at having her sharpness so close.
"Does Steve know that you love him?"
Silence. Steve does not look at Bucky until perhaps a minute passes, and Bucky won't meet either of their eyes. He mutters something unintelligible, wrestles his jacket on, and escapes.
Steve's can't stop looking at the door until he hears Natasha leave by another way. When he moves, it's to spin, slamming his fist into a locker. The metal crumples with the force of it and Steve finds himself panting. Out of breath and heart pounding, though he's barely done anything. He braces himself with both hands and the cool surface of the lockers is almost soothing against his flushed, feverish skin.
**
"He does, you know."
Steve has been holding the door open with Natasha standing outside his apartment and fearlessly meeting his the accusation in his eyes for far longer than he would have cared to before she finally broke her silence.
Steve's grip on the door tightens. Her eyes flicker to that hand.
Nothing gets past Natasha.
She studies him for several more painfully long minutes.
"But even if you know that, you're still angry." She says, like it's a suggestion.
"I'm not angry."
One of her brows arches in amused skepticism.
"It isn't just him, is it? You're angry with both of us."
"I said I'm not angry."
"I could see it, when you found us together. You were mad, Steve."
She takes a step forward, and Steve won't do her the satisfaction of stepping back. "Not just at him, for being with me, but at me. For being with him." Her eyes flash, and he can feel her fingertips skating over his stomach. Just light enough for him to feel it.
"You're being ridiculous."
"Am I?"
"Yes."
A long pause. "So," Natasha doesn't sound as if she believes him at all. "You're not upset? Jealous?"
"No."
"Prove it."
Frustration begins to crackle just under the surface. Steve forces himself to take several deep breaths, jaw working back and forth.
"Just drop it, Natasha, alright? Lay off."
Steve's reflexes are good, but he isn't the assassin. Natasha slips under his arm as he closes the door, and steps in once more. Close enough that he has to bend his head down to look at her. Her words are carefully, lovingly formed. Completely unrepentant.
"Make me."
If that was how she wanted things to be, he was happy to oblige.
Steve took her by either arm, shoved her back against the wall.
"I'm only going to tell you this one more time, Agent Romanoff. I don't want to be in between you and Bucky because you both feel sorry for me. Drop it, and leave me alone."
He glared at her a moment longer before letting go, turning on his heel. Steve was just rounding the corner when Natasha spoke.
"I see how you look at me, Captain. I know what it means. I know what you want."
Steve is about to tell her she has no fucking idea what he wants, but she doesn't give him the chance.
"And you're wrong. You do want to be in between us. Right in the middle with James at your back and me at your front. You want us to lavish you with attention. You want--"
He wanted her to stop. It's too much, too close to home. If she knew, how could she do this to him?
Steve has always been told he had a big heart like it was a compliment, something to be proud of. The truth is that it hurts. He can't stop himself from caring so deeply and abashedly about the people around him. He can't even begin to rein it in. He doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve, Steve gives pieces of it to anyone who stops long enough. It won't run out, Steve knows enough of love to know that. But as big as his heart is, he can't hold all he feels for two people in particular. Loving them both is tearing him apart.
"Shut up!" He whirls around, and Natasha obviously hadn't been expecting the raw anguish in his voice or features. But she schools herself and steps closer. Two words, quick and efficient.
"Make. Me."
He kisses her.
He doesn't mean to, he doesn't think about it. One moment she's looking him in the eye, waiting for his move. The next, Steve has her pinned against the wall and his mouth crushed to hers.
Some of the showgirls had stolen kisses and felt him up a bit, maybe had a quick tumble between the sheets, and there had been a few girls on the way. Not to mention Peggy.
But it wasn't like this.
This was angry. Steve feels like he is attacking her in some way, forcing Natasha to look at the bitterness and hurt that twisted in his stomach.
And she kisses him.
Natasha doesn't just let him, she fights back. And she fights dirty.
He should stop. In fact, he never should have kissed her in the first place. Natasha was Bucky's girl, and Steve had no call to be doing what he was.
Natasha reaches for him, and he wraps big hands around each slender wrist and slams them back against the wall. He swears he hears her purring in response.
This is wrong and it isn't fair. It isn't fair because Steve is sure that he can feel as much want from her as is burning in his own chest. Because it almost feels like there's some depth to the way she kisses him fierce and unapologetic in return. Because he wants so badly not to have to regret this.
Bucky walks in without knocking when Steve's shirt is lying on the floor by Natasha's and her hands are curled tight in his hair. His face is pressed into her neck, and he steadies one of the long legs wrapped around his waist with one hand and braces against the wall with another. Steve has fading red marks from her nails on his shoulders and chest, and Natasha is going to have a bruise where he holds her tightly to him with his hips grinding into hers.
Steve is pulled out of his haze of pain and pleasure by the "Shit," that tumbles out of Bucky's mouth at the sight of them, and the next sound he hears is the door closing once more. He's too far gone to be ashamed, too caught up in the moment to feel self-conscious.
"James-- stay."
Natasha's voice is beautiful. Usually so smooth and measured, it's become something open and ragged. Apparently it affects Bucky as much as Steve, and he actually pauses in his escape.
"I'm-- Mmm-- fairly certain-- he plans on wrecking you next."
Her nails scratch down his scalp, soothing and inciting at the same time. Steve manages to get a hold of himself, and it's only then that he realizes his breath is fractured by sobs and his cheeks are wet. He stills, head ducked to Natasha's shoulder, and says nothing.
The silence is unbearably heavy. When Bucky breaks it, he sounds a lot calmer, more amiably suspicious than Steve ever could have expected.
"You planned this."
Natasha rests her cheek against Steve's hair, and he feels her nod.
"Mm. My mistake for counting on you to have taken any emotional initiative at all."
"So this is my fault?"
"Completely."
Natasha manages to pull him away, raise his head up with slender hands framing his jaw and meet his eyes. She isn't hiding, and Steve can clearly see the part of her that breaks to find him looking (he assumes), as lost and broken as he feels. Her thumb swipes at the line of tear tracks on his cheek.
"Steve, baby," She's being gentle with him. Natasha, who was deadly and dangerous and beautiful, was treating him so very gently. It's agony. "I think it's about time you stopped waiting on this clueless bastard and showed him what you want."
He can't help but furrow his brow in response, and Steve is fairly certain he'll never understand how he got to this point. Natasha kisses his forehead, squeezes at his hips with her knees. Steve steps away from the wall, hoping he's reading her signals right, and steadies her when she untangles herself from around him to stand on her feet. She presses her lips to the corner of his mouth.
"Go get him." She murmurs, and gives him an encouraging swat on the ass after forcing him to turn around. At least, that's what he thinks it is.
This is undoubtedly the most bizarre situation Steve has ever been in, and he isn't entirely sure he shouldn't be apologizing for the fact that his best friend just walked in on him rutting on his girl against the wall. Steve sniffs up hard and rubs a hand under his nose. His eyes are still glassy and bloodshot when he steels himself enough to look up at Bucky.
Bucky swallows, adam's apple bobbing visibly. "God, Steve," his voice cracks. "Don't you look at me like that. Don't--"
And as quickly as it had happened with Natasha, the restraints were shattered and Steve was clutching Bucky hard, both arms drawing him close to the man that he had loved ever since he'd known how.
Steve had never thought of it as being about men or women, it was just Bucky. And Bucky had always been there for him. Always had his back and been ready for anything. More than anything else, Bucky was home.
He hates that he's crying about this, and hates that he can't bring himself to apologize for kissing Natasha because he's not sorry. If that was what he was going to get, at least he had it once, right?
(It's not right, he knows that. None of it is at all right.)
When he pulls away, Bucky curls cool metal fingers around the back of his neck and touches their foreheads together. Steve can hear how his breathing quickens for just a moment before Bucky is tilting, brushing their lips together in the most hesitant affection Steve has ever felt. A pained, needy sound breaks from his throat and he tries to urge Bucky into a comfort he himself does not feel by pouring out years of adulation into his reciprocation. Bucky laughs against his mouth. Soft, pleasantly surprised. A touch bitter.
"Much better."
Steve could have lived without Natasha's dry commentary, reminding him that this has been far too long in coming.
"Do you mind?" He mumbles before pulling back. Bucky chases his mouth, and Steve is surprised at how gratified he is by that.
"No." Natasha replies, and slender fingers are smoothing the hair at the back of his neck.
Steve gives her an unamused glance and she shrugs, completely unconcerned.
"You knew."
It isn't a question.
"Most people did." Natasha doesn't need more information than that to know what it is he's talking about.
"And you didn't say anything."
"I thought you were one of the people that knew."
Steve turns on Bucky.
"And you didn't say anything."
It didn't seem like he would now. Steve looks at Bucky, and sees himself. He sees the number of times he'd studied his own reflection, trying to find the answers. He sees the same frustration and confusion, loneliness and learned revulsion. The intrigue, the self-hatred at his being intrigued at all.
Steve knows that expression, the searching anxiety that pleaded for any sort of explanation or hope.
And he dislikes it on Bucky almost as much as he dislikes seeing it on himself.
"How long? " Steve asks quietly.
Bucky hesitates before shaking his head, as if rejecting the question altogether.
Steve knows that feeling, too.
Any time he had ever tried to pinpoint or deconstruct his feelings for Bucky, it didn't happen. It wasn't possible. Steve's feelings for Bucky were tangled to the point of being impossible to untie; he couldn't come close to finding where his desire to be with and protect Bucky became the wish to hold him, to touch him. It all bled and slid together-- if there was a way to love someone, Steve felt it for Bucky. If there was a way to show that, Steve wanted to.
"But you're with Nat." Steve's tone became utterly resigned. He knew how this was going to go, it wasn't as if Bucky leaving Steve on his lonesome for a girl was at all news.
Bucky loved her. He'd told Steve so, told him he didn't know anything about it.
An apology was seeming more like a good idea by the second.
"No," Natasha said, and both Steve and Bucky look over to her in bewilderment.
Bucky looks heartbroken.
"I'm not. Not if it means coming between you." Her voice is firm. There is never any bargaining, when it comes to Natasha.
Steve's throat feels very dry. He swallows, and it makes little difference.
"And what if we want you there?"
**
"You know," Natasha is rubbing her hand across Steve's shoulders, steady and reassuring. "This isn't wrong."
"Easier said, ma'am," Steve mutters, and he hears the slight huff of air out of her nose; what would have been a laugh if it were not so subdued. He and Bucky are sitting next to each other on the edge of Steve's bed, angled in and with their thighs slightly brushing one another's.
"Some people will disagree, but that's hardly new." Natasha continues as if he hadn't interrupted her. Like they were having some casual conversation rather than trying to address the mental-block that came with two men who were as much afraid of their attraction to one another as they were filled with want.
"But you know, it's actually illegal to discriminate against someone because of their sexual orientation. It's a hate crime, these days."
Steve wanted to ask her if she thought they didn't actually know that already.
Her hands were elegantly formed, but strong. They pressed into the muscles of his back just enough to remind him she was there. Her opposite hand rested on Bucky's thigh, easy and comfortable with familiarity.
"But that didn't keep you from thinking about it before, did it? How much of it did you make a fantasy? Were you able to be out in the open, holding hands? Kissing in public? Taking each other hard in a tent in Europe somewhere without worrying if you had to be quiet? Or did you think it would be enough just to have it validated, no matter what form that came in?"
Her hand slid up to smooth his hair, and her voice grew as soft as it got, from Natasha.
"It doesn't have to be a fantasy anymore, boys. You can have this. But you have to take it."
Steve wishes he knew, because that feels important to know, but he doesn't. When their mouths crash together in anxious clumsiness he can't say who started it.
Natasha pets their hair and tells them that they're good boys.
**
Nothing much happens that night, but they all sleep together. Literal, not biblical sense. Meaning that Bucky has his arms around Steve like he used to, and Natasha has her nose pressed into his neck and one long leg thrown over both of theirs.
It isn't exactly restful, because the three of them sleep in fits and starts due to the ghosts that clung to their minds, but it's nice to have somebody there when they inevitably wake up.
Which is probably part of the reason why it's so hard to see Natasha stretching up on her toes to give Bucky a lazy kiss when Steve opens his eyes at a time that could finally be called morning.
He's alone in the bed, and they're over there. Without him.
There's a surge of something like envy-- though Steve doesn't know who or what it's directed toward. But he wants. And apparently, he can have it. All the times he'd denied himself, seen them and he hadn't been able to touch them...
Steve is angry. At himself, at Bucky, at Natasha. At the not knowing. At never having said anything. At never having seen it.
"Whatever happened to not wanting to do things without me."
Steve is surprisingly quiet for how big he is, and they're a little preoccupied. And even though his voice is low, it's direct. The intonation makes it more of an accusation than a question.
Bucky pulls back, startled. Confused. Somewhat fearful.
"Steve--"
He isn't allowed anything more than that before Steve is yanking Natasha away from him and backing Bucky up against the wall before crushing their mouths together, hard and bruising. All teeth, tongue. No tenderness. He keeps a good grip on Natasha's wrist, and his fingers can wrap all the way around it.
From where their bodies are pressed together, Steve can feel how Bucky enjoyed the harsh affection and knew that Bucky could feel it, too.
He claws at Bucky's torso, trying without much success to rid him of his shirt. Steve only lets go of Natasha when she moves to help. As feverish as he feels, there's some relief at his friend's skin flush to his, chests heaving and muscles flexing in such a beautiful way.
Bucky allows himself to be manhandled back to the bed, shoved down. He gives Steve a cheeky grin, and Steve slaps it off of his mouth. Bucky tastes the blood from his split lip and smirks again.
"C'mere..." And he's tugging Steve down, biting his lip so that now they're both smearing blood across one another as they kiss savage and raw. Steve's pulse jumps, and he doesn't want to think about the implications of that too much at all. Instead he shucks off his sweatpants, clambers more fully onto the bed with Bucky and grinds his hips down. Bucky curses, nips at his jaw. Chuckles.
"Fuck. Do that again, Rogers."
"I'll do what I damn well please." Steve retorts, and Bucky surges up to kiss him so hard he think he might be having an asthma attack again.
They kiss for a long time, rutting against each other and marking one another with bruises from their hands; lovebites; tooth marks. It's strange, to be feeling another man below him. Part of him recoils at the thought, but he boxes that away. This is Bucky. Even if he feels fumbling and virginal because it's a man, it's Bucky. He can work through it for Bucky.
When Natasha touches his shoulder, he stops. Sits up straddled across Bucky's pelvis to find Natasha had stripped herself of all of her clothes. Not just down to her drawers like they were, but completely out of her clothes. She was so ethereal, so flawless in her beauty that he could have stared at her for hours just drinking in the sight.
She didn't give him the chance.
Natasha's lips twist into the hard caricature of a smile that Steve loves and hates in waves. She doesn't ask him if he likes what he sees, because she knows. Bucky touches her knee, and she swats at his hand. He murmurs something in Russian, and Natasha rolls her eyes.
Steve had stopped moving the moment she touched him, but Natasha wasn't caught up in the same amount of awe that he was, and she could move just fine.
Specifically up to sling one leg over; straddle Bucky's face. Steve blushes at the realization of what she plans, though it's a little ridiculous to be blushing now. Natasha plants a hand on Bucky's chest and he grunts. She ignores him, leans in to Steve.
He'd noticed her for a long time, he couldn't help it. Natasha was beautiful and dangerous, and she could have killed them but instead she was taking his jaw in her hand, pulling him closer to her. Natasha kisses him, and it's like fire. Steve shudders back into motion, gives as good as he gets.
He feels just as much as he hears it when her breath catches in a soft gasp, and he knows Bucky is licking into her. Bucky's hips twitch up, and Steve presses down. Natasha laughs against his mouth when he groans.
"You'll get your chance, Captain,"
He can't even find it in himself to reply, because he's mapping her body with his hands and he knows she'll have bruises on her hips, upper arms, her ribs. Florid marks staining her white skin, branding her. Natasha is wild and unpredictable, dangerous grace and lethal beauty. And she's his. Steve growls, tries to pull her closer. Natasha resists, but there's no point.
Steve unquestionably has the upper hand when it comes to strength.
He snaps her up against his chest, tasting the skin of her neck and feeling the soft weight of her breasts pressed to his skin. She's his, and she could have been his for god knows how long, and he wasted it. Natasha's fingers dig into his shoulders, grip tight to his hair.
"Mind letting me up?" Bucky sounds hoarse, and his mouth and chin are slick when Steve looks over Natasha's shoulder. Steve gives him a brisk nod, Natasha untangles herself and he tumbles off off Bucky to follow her. Natasha fits herself to him perfectly, warm and soft and small.
Steve reaches down, plunges two fingers inside her and her back arches. Bucky comes up behind Natasha, his own hands running up and down her sides and mouthing at her shoulder. Steve's propriety is telling him that this shouldn't feel right, but it does. He's fingering his girl while his boy soothes and coaxes her with soft words and touch. It's the most /right/ thing he's ever done.
None of it is enough to get any of them off, but for a while that's alright. It's touching and kissing and sounds low in their throats with arousal a vague hum beneath their skin. Just pleasure and contact.
And then, suddenly, it isn't alright, and Steve pushes Bucky away, lays Natasha down. He strips off his boxers as quickly as he can, fumbling in his haste. The fingers of one hand are sticky-slick when he nudges her legs open. She doesn't need much encouragement, and it doesn't look like lust to see her eager and wanting. It looks like trust. Natasha grips his hips and her hands slip around to clench on his ass. Steve hisses, but it turns into a moan as he slides into her. Natasha tightens around him, wet heat flexing on his aching length. She smiles sweetly when he bites off a curse. Steve plants both hands on the wall, and fucks her.
There's really no other word for the way he drives in deep and purposeful, like he's trying to get so far inside her that a part of him will always be there. When Natasha tells him to hold back a bit, he does. One of her hands is between them, rubbing herself, and the other scores down his back. The wet, messy sound of her kissing Bucky joins that of where they're joined together. Steve watches himself moving into her, the way her lips stretch around him, flushed and slick.
"Don't-- Steve--"
She can evidently feel how his rhythm is beginning to fracture.
"Steve," Natasha hisses at him. "Don't stop, I'm--"
The force of his orgasm curls Steve around her, mouth fallen open in a silent cry. He can feel his release trickling out around him when the world brightens back into significance with his breathing heavy and a slight ringing in his ears.
"Bastard," Natasha tells him, her tone fond; tugs painfully at his hair. Steve can only press hot, open-mouthed kisses to her neck before rolling off and blinking at the ceiling. Bucky is already going down to take his place, but he puts his mouth on her again. Bucky's brow puckers in concentration, and Steve can see how his fingers flex on Natasha's thigh.
Natasha's mouth curves up into a secretive smile and she turns her head to look at Steve, eyes half-lidded and lips parted. She hums before speaking.
"Hmmm, he's sucking you out of me." She tells him, and at first Steve is angry. He'd marked her. Spilled inside her, made her his. But the thought of Bucky wanting to taste them both makes his skin prickle. There's a sort of roaring somewhere in his ears, and all he can manage is a weak, "Yeah?"
Natasha nods, and one of her hands comes to rest on his cheek, thumb running over the line of his cheekbone. Without looking away, she addresses Bucky, says something in a language Steve doesn't understand and Bucky is wiping his mouth off again, moving to prop himself up over Steve. His cock is thick between his thighs, brushes Steve's stomach. Steve shivers.
"Sorry," Bucky offers up a wry smile.
"S'okay," Steve is telling himself as much as Bucky. He swallows, settles his hands on Bucky's hips. Buck was a lot more compact than he was, a beautiful economy of form that Steve and hundreds of dames had admired. A slight squeeze of his fingers got him to feeling hard bone, the flex and stretch of muscles beneath the skin as Bucky shifted somewhat uncomfortably.
"Buck..."
Bucky gives him a smile, open and nervous. Steve doesn't like seeing Bucky nervous. But he doesn't get to look for long before Bucky is leaning down, claiming his mouth. Steve had laid claim to Natasha, and Bucky had tasted it. And now he was showing Steve.
Steve lets him. Bucky gives, and he takes. The things they've been wanting to show for so long without allowing themselves finally breaking free might be better than getting it in return. So for a while, Steve just takes. Bucky comes against Steve's hip, skin pressed flush together and swallowing back a low whine.
Steve holds him the way he had always been held by Bucky; tight and secure, like there was nothing in the world that could pull him away.
And the only person that was any sort of contest is wedging her way between them, slipping in next to big arms and broad chests to make them notice her.
Bucky calls her Natalia and kisses her hair. She calls him an idiot. Steve laughs.
"Don't think you're exempt, Captain. If anything, you're worse."
Steve kisses her hair, and sees Bucky tracing down her arm.
"Yeah. But we're your idiots."
Natasha looks up at both of them, and Steve has to wonder what it is that she sees that makes her look like that; like she's looking at a miracle.
"My boys." She corrects after a moment.
Bucky snorts. "I'm pretty sure we're adults by now, Natalia."
"No," Natasha says, considering, and traces down Steve's jaw.
"You're boys. Better late than never."
Fin.