Archive of Our Own

It had all started with a drink ticket.

No, that wasn’t strictly accurate. It had started before that—with an advertisement in the want ads that had read:

Wanted: Subletter in shift-sleep shared space, Flatbush. Day worker. Tidy, quiet, respectful.

The advertisement had led to Steve writing a letter, which had led to him receiving a letter. He’d been offered the spot after one meeting with the girl who was trying to move out of it (Steve had been pretty sure she would have readily compromised on the tidy, quiet, respectful requirements as long as she’d found someone who could be out during the day). She was done with the city, she’d said, headed back to Indiana. But she couldn’t leave her apartment without getting someone to fill in her end of the arrangement.

It’s not strictly legal—but he can’t beat the price, so he’s not too fussy. He wondered at first if it would feel strange, knowing that someone else was in the apartment, sleeping on the same bed and brushing their teeth at the same sink, all while he was out for the day at work. But it’s not so odd in practice, and it’s a fraction of the rent he’d spend if he wants a place to stay empty when he’s not in it. So there’s that.

It’s been four months since he started hot-racking with J.B., the only name he has for the man who takes over the apartment sometime after Steve vacates it in the mornings, and is gone by the time he returns from dinner each night.

It’s a tiny, cramped space overlooking the street. There’s room for a table when the murphy bed is folded away though, so on nights when his eyes aren’t too tired for it Steve can spend an hour or two sketching or painting (in theory, if he ever wants to again) on the rickety card table.

Usually before he leaves, Steve puts away the murphy bed and sets up the little table, making sure the kitchen is tidy from breakfast (if he’s managed to make any). It’s the way he always finds the apartment set up when he gets home at night, so he figures it’s only polite to return it to that state for J.B.

This morning as Steve is getting ready to leave in the cold, early grey light of February, he carefully unwraps a piece of banana bread and sets it on one of the handful of mismatched plates from the cupboard along with a folded piece of paper. Mr. McGower’s wife had baked it and sent some by the old man to give to Steve. He smiles a little as he wraps his scarf around his neck to exit the apartment. He hopes it’ll be well-received.

He tucks a different page of ruled notebook paper into the pocket of his coat.

The letters, he thinks—those had all started with a drink ticket.

It had been three weeks into the arrangement, and Steve was frankly surprised at how smoothly the whole thing was running. He’d yet to see so much as a crumb out of place as evidence that another person occupied the space with him.

Which is why he’d been surprised, closing the door and latching the chain behind him, to see a scrap of trash on the floor in front of the kitchen sink.

It wasn’t a big deal—hardly in the territory of breaking their roommate agreement. Just unusual. So Steve had paid the little red scrap more attention than he would otherwise as he’d leaned over to deposit it in their trash bin.

And he’d realized he knew that elegant lettering and logo stamped on it. It was a drink ticket—from a well-known queer bar. One that used to be a regular haunt of Steve’s though he hasn’t been in months.

Truth be told, he hasn’t been out much of anywhere lately. Didn’t seem like much point when he hasn’t wanted anyone near him that way. Or any way.

Since his mom’s death and putting art school on hold, Steve has been doing okay. As long as you look from far off, he’s held it all together nicely. But he’s afraid that if anybody got a look up close, they’d see that he’s made up entirely of hairline fractures, and any moment could be the one where it falls apart on him. So he’s been keeping to himself. It’s better that way.

Which is why, to this day, Steve still isn’t sure what fit of boldness overtook him that morning. But he’d snatched up a discarded half-page from his sketchbook, and scrawled:

J.B., think you dropped this. Piccadilly is one of my favorites—wonder if I’ve seen you there?

It had been a risk. J.B. could have denied the ticket was his, or just been a day-tripper, walking for a night on the wild side of town. He could very well have demanded that Steve find new accommodations.

But he hadn’t. Steve had arrived that evening to a response—friendly, clever, even playful.

Since then there has rarely been a day that’s gone by he hasn’t begun by leaving a note for J.B., and looked forward to getting home if only to read J.B.’s reply.

Steve steps off the front stoop of his building into a bright, brittle morning, breath puffing out white in front of him. Though it’s about as cold as the rest of February has been, the first half had insisted on sleeting nearly every day—miserable sheets of icy, dirty water turning the world grey. In comparison the sunshine, weak as it is cresting over the city, is a nice change of pace as he walks the six blocks to the newsstand.

Mr. McGower gives him a gruff nod when he arrives, sliding wordlessly from his stool and slipping out the little door in the back of the stand. The old man opens the place every day before dawn, so that the early-morning crowd can get their papers and cigarettes on their way to work. Then, six days a week, Steve arrives at seven to spell him for the day, the old man returning in the evening to keep the place open until the day shift has filtered all the way through. Steve’s pretty sure McGower would still be here running the place from dawn to bedtime all by himself if his wife hadn’t told him it was time to take on some help. They’d been Steve and his ma’s upstairs neighbors at the time, and the steady work has been a boon the past two years when everything else was so uncertain.

Steve hops up on the stool, resting his elbows on the counter. Mrs. McGower must have come through this morning, because there’s a thermos still half full of hot coffee tucked into a corner, and a cup with a scrap of paper that says Steve on it. Steve isn’t sure if Mr. McGower is ever annoyed at his wife for doing nice things for him. Or if maybe Mr. McGower isn’t actually as grumpy as he seems, but instead of any direct gestures—like a smile maybe, or a friendly chat—he expresses his fondness through her. Steve shrugs to himself—either way, he’s grateful for the hot coffee.

Most everybody who comes through the newsstand in the mornings are regulars, though there’s always a handful Steve doesn’t recognize, just passing through. The street buzzes at this hour (though there’s really no hour when it goes completely silent, not in Brooklyn). You can usually tell who’s on their way home—looking worn out from a night shift spent down at the docks or at the hospital or in one of the clubs—and who’s just starting their day, looking freshly pressed and a little less weary for the moment.

“Pack of Luckies, please.”

Steve picks up the dime sliding across the counter out of habit, but his fingers freeze over the rows of cigarettes when he looks up and finds a familiar face looking back at him.

“I—” Steve clears his throat, “is that it?” He plucks a pack from the rack and holds it out.

Bucky Barnes’ mouth slides into a sideways smile as he takes the pack. “All set today, thanks pal.” He tips two fingers to his forehead in a comic little salute, and turns away from the stand to saunter up the street, hands in his coat pockets.

Steve slumps a bit on his stool with a frown at himself. Bucky isn’t an every day regular, but he comes by the stand at least once a week—often enough that it shouldn’t surprise him anymore. Often enough that he should be used to it, inured to it even.

He sighs. At least it never seems like Bucky remembers him one week to the next, so it doesn’t really matter how awkward he is about it. And Bucky certainly doesn’t remember him from their school days, or he’d have mentioned it by now.

But that, Steve thinks, is pretty cold comfort. He’d far rather Bucky remembered him than enjoy the safety of the fact that he clearly never made an impression on him.

It’s hardly fair when Bucky’s got the kind of face—strong jaw, piercing eyes, lips made for all sort of things—that manages to get Steve stuttering like an idiot every time that stormy gaze lands on him.

Ah well, what is there to do? There are some people in life made simply to admire from afar, never really meant to be touched or talked to. Bucky Barnes is just one of those people—like Carol Lombard or Errol Flynn. He may dress like the other people milling in front of a Brooklyn newsstand on a Tuesday morning, he may have dirt under his fingernails, he may even have a swipe of grease on his cheek now and then. But that shouldn’t fool anybody—he’s still not like the rest of them. He’s untouchable. He’s made for dreaming.

The day wears on, and the stand grows quiet like it always does in the afternoon after the lunch rush. It’s been close to an hour since Steve’s last customer. His eyes are starting to droop with boredom and staying sedentary, and he’s already read today’s paper, as well as all the monthlies. They’ll be getting in the March issues soon so he’ll have some new material, but until then he’s got nothing much to do but twiddle his thumbs.

Or reread something, he supposes. Not that there was anything that riveting in any of the rags the first time around.

His thoughts turn to the folded letter in his coat pocket, the one he’d found sitting propped against the milk jug on the little table in the apartment when he’d gotten home last night. Now that is something worth reading again…and again, and again…

Steve glances around, trying not to look guilty when there’s no need, and slips his hand into his pocket, drawing out the letter. There’s nobody around, and nobody who would care enough about what he’s doing to check up on him even if there were.

He props his chin on his hand and lets his eyes roam over the slashing, spiky handwriting in front of him.

S—are you enjoying the little bit of sun we’ve finally got? I hope so. I hate to think of you being cold, especially when the apartment is so dim and cheerless (but for thinking of you in it, of course). You called your hair tow-colored—but I don’t believe it. I’m betting it’s gold, and that sunshine suits you. Your notes are too bright to be any other way, so no use talking me out of it you dope.

I imagine you taste like sunshine too. I bet even pressed up against the brick outside Piccadilly, in the dark, after hours—I bet kissing you would be like kissing fire. What do you think, S? Or maybe you prefer that alley out back of Fiero’s, with the broken streetlight and the covered door. I’d get on my knees for you if you wanted—would you let me? Let you warm me up. I can feel you, sometimes, the blankets still just a little warm from your skin. I wonder what it feels like when you’re close enough to taste. Have you thought about it? —J.B.

Steve’s read it four or five times since he got home last night, but his cheeks are still burning crimson as he refolds it and places it back in his pocket.

That? He’s not sure how that started. But he’s not sorry.

Maybe some corner of him had known, when he’d written that first note. Known that he was opening a door with not quite entirely pure intentions by identifying himself as a kindred soul to a fellow young, single, queer man living not just in his neighborhood but in his actual apartment.

Steve isn’t quite sure who started it, even. When things had tipped in their exchanges from friendly to…friendlier. Maybe it was that way from the start.

There’s something thrilling about strange combination of intimacy and distance between them. They share a bed, but haven’t ever been in the room at the same time. J.B. says things about him that gets Steve’s heart racing, but they’ve never set eyes on each other. All Steve knows about J.B. is that he’s a brunette, and a good several inches taller and broader than Steve—from the time he left one of his jackets out over the back of a chair.

In some ways, it’s the precise inverse of how most of Steve’s encounters have occurred. When you go out to meet someone in one of the pansy bars or regular haunts in the neighborhood, it’s all in the eyes. Meeting gazes with someone across the polished wood of the bar, running your eyes in a blazon up and down their body, eventually a flickering a glance toward the door. Sometimes there isn’t any talking involved at all.

So even though Steve hasn’t strictly met J.B. in the traditional sense, he still feels a connection to him that he isn’t willing to part with if he can help it. Between letters like this—searing and flirtatious—there have been others, too. Ones where J.B. told him about his sisters, about working the graveyard shift in the customs warehouse, and where Steve in turn told J.B. about his mom passing the year before, about his art, and about growing up a sickly child. So Steve likes to think that, aside from J.B. setting his skin aflame, they might also be friends.

He’d cried for the first time since his birthday last summer the night he came home to a letter bearing the post script:

P.S. I noticed some brushes drying by the sink. I’m glad you’re painting again, S. I know I never met your ma but from everything you’ve said about her, I think she’d be proud too.

Steve had felt broken open, seen. But not in the way he’s been afraid would happen, all his little cracks splintering. It was more like something falling away and letting in the light. With J.B., for the first time in a long time he feels…he feels like maybe he wants to share himself with another person.

Which is why in his own replies to J.B.’s letters, he does his best to encourage him in everything—except his suggestions that they meet. Imagining J.B.’s hands and mouth on him in the dark—that’s one thing. Something he’s very fond of, and likes to replay with some frequency these days. But actually meeting him? Steve’s not sure he’s ready to risk what they have on the page for something uncertain in person.

On your knees, tangling up your tidy sheets—I’m sure there’s nowhere I wouldn’t want you. Steve had written in his reply. Maybe if I’m the sun then you’re the moon, at home in darkness but nothing dark about you. Are you soft, like moonlight? Or rough-edged? Your hands are calloused—they’d have to be. But I bet your mouth is soft.

J.B. sometimes leaves an opening, where Steve could suggest they meet. But it’s easy enough to bypass it and leave things the way they are. The way things are is good.

It is tempting though, Steve thinks as he winds his scarf around his neck and pulls on his gloves to leave. He hands the key back to Mr. McGower, glancing up the street toward his apartment. It’s six o’clock when he gets off in the evenings. An hour before J.B. leaves the apartment and he’s cleared to return. All he’d have to do is skip his stop at the automat for dinner, just head straight home…

He doesn’t. Not tonight anyway. And the automat is bustling as it always is at dinner hour. By the time he snags the last chicken pot pie in cardboard and foil and makes his way up the dingy grey stairwell of the apartment, it’s already seven fifteen.

He’s huffing a bit as he opens his door at the top of four flights. The cold air always puts his lungs on a little shorter fuse than he’d like, though not anywhere near a dangerous level at the moment. Just an annoying, inconvenient one—and he’s used to that.

Even in the gloom, his eyes can already find the white shape of the letter waiting for him on the table, and his stomach swoops.

He moves first to take off his coat and jacket and hang them both in his half of the narrow wardrobe so they don’t get rumpled for tomorrow.

There’s a thin plank of plywood someone tacked up down the middle of the armoire, so he can’t actually see J.B.’s clothes hanging on their side without opening the other door. Which he won’t do, because if nothing else he is a respectful flatmate.

Steve hesitates for a moment in front of the wardrobe. His mother’s voice is in his head saying no gentleman would go to the dinner table in his night clothes. Then he shrugs. He doesn’t want to get food on his trousers, and he’ll be changing into his pajamas right after anyway if he wants to draw at all tonight before bed. He slips the slacks over a hanger and places them alongside his jacket.

He forces himself sit at the table and eat his chicken pot pie, newspaper open to his right so he can do the crossword while he eats (Mr. McGower will always give him one of the unsold ones free at the end of the day, so he tries to save it until he gets home). But his eyes flick more often than not over to the letter.

It’s not like he hasn’t been dying to open it since the moment he stepped into the room. He has. It’s just…reading J.B.’s letter is pretty consistently Steve’s brightest moment of the day. He likes to delay the gratification, to savor it.

Steve washes the plate, knife, and fork as soon as he’s done emptying the wrapper and remaining crumbs into the waste basket. Then he flings himself back into his chair and pulls the folded page over to himself, letting out a sigh of satisfaction as he begins to read.

S—

I didn’t sleep well today, so I’m sorry if this isn’t my best work here. But I am thinking about you. That’s true, even if I don’t have it in me to be so poetic as usual. I think about you a lot. I hope that’s okay to say. I think about how you make me laugh, no matter how long a night it’s been. I think about how I feel like I could tell you just about anything, somehow.

I know you don’t want to meet, at least not yet. I want you to know I’m okay with that, too. I’m okay with whatever you want—only don’t stop writing, sweetheart. We may not have met in reality, but I still somehow feel you know me better than almost anybody. I can’t stand the thought of losing you. So it’s okay. Even if I never see your face I don’t mind.

I hope though, that it’s still okay I think about other things. If we did meet. One day maybe. Or maybe just in shared dreams, that’s okay too. I’ll tell you this—my hands are calloused from the work, and rough. But I’ll bet your skin is smooth. You said that you’re slight, I wonder if I could pick you up? That damn murphy bed in our place isn’t up to much of anything it’s intended for, so maybe instead I’d leave it shut, and just hold you up against it in my arms. Your legs around my waist, arms around my neck, I’d get my mouth all over your smooth, soft throat ’til you’re gasping.

And what shall we do next, kitten? Tell me how you like it, so I can think of you when I shut the curtains tomorrow. I’d do anything you ask, so let your imagination run wild…so long as you tell me all about it. –J.B.

Steve is practically gasping now, even as he sets the letter down, heart fluttering against his ribs.

He isn’t sure what has him burning more—the image of his legs wrapped around J.B.’s waist with his back to the wall, or…or J.B. saying he doesn’t want to lose him. Calling him sweetheart.

He’s not going to get any drawing done tonight, Steve decides. Not anything he could use for his portfolio, at least.

He folds up the table to lean against the kitchen counter and flicks off the light switch on the wall.

The apartment is still plenty light enough to see by—moonlight, which he won’t be seeing the same way again in the near future, as well as the yellow glow from streetlamps down below—so it’s easy to unlatch the murphy bed and tug his pillow off its shelf in his wardrobe with the lights off.

J.B. was right when he said the bed is barely any good for its intended use. A spring digs into Steve’s back, and the entire frame creaks as he tries to resettle himself. He wonders if the bed was the reason for J.B.’s bad sleep today.

Steve turns over, scooting to the other edge of the thing, the springs all groaning underneath him. The sound sends his mind in an entirely different direction. Back to J.B.’s letter, and the question posed…what shall we do next?

He feels a little guilty—but not guilty enough to stop—as he closes his eyes and slips his hand beneath the waistband of his pajamas, and considers the scenario at length.

*

The last of February passes by in much the same way, which is why it seems to take the whole city by surprise when March blusters in like a lion in a torrent of new storms.

Steve trudges to the newsstand in his raincoat with a spare pair of socks in his pocket, and does his best to stay dry during the day. It’s not so bad as long as the wind is driving the rain any direction but the open front window of the thing. Of course it doesn’t do business any good—though Bucky Barnes stops by, collar turned up and looking hectically flushed and beautiful instead of like a drowned animal like the rest of them do. Steve is too cold and annoyed even to admire him (much) as he hands over his Luckies.

J.B. says the storms don’t bother him too much, since he’s working mostly inside a big warehouse. But a few nights there are problems out on the docks he has to go deal with, which isn’t particularly enjoyable in the dark while the sea heaves with rain.

You’d be surprised though, sometimes, how the harder the work gets the faster it seems to go. Honestly I sometimes like a real tough night that’s over before I get my feet under me better than the slow ones where all I’m doing is tracking the clock. Plus I like to fall asleep tired, you know? Those nights (well, mornings for me) where you’re out before your head even hits the pillow and sleep hits you without even having to try for it. Trying for rest always feels like the worst kind of paradox to me (there’s a ten cent word for you S, so you don’t get to thinking I’m just muscle and a pretty face)…

One night Steve gets home drenched and irritable, only to see a wrapped brown box on the table where he’d usually look for J.B.’s note.

He regards it with mild curiosity as he hangs up his wet things, before he notices that the usual note is tucked underneath it.

S—It was my birthday yesterday, and my ma still always insists on sending me a whole spice cake, even though she knows I live alone. Thought you might like to help me out with a little bit of it? Gonna take the rest of whatever’s left to share with the guys in the clerk’s office tonight, so this one’s all yours. Hope you’re staying dry and warm. –J.B.

Steve lifts the lid of the little box gingerly, finding a generous slice of cake still left in it. He sniffs and lets out a pleased groan—it smells amazing.

Yesterday would have been…the tenth? He wishes he’d known it was J.B.’s birthday. But then why would he? Still he’d have said or done something nice, offered to do the shared apartment laundry this week maybe. Though he supposes he could still do that.

On a whim, Steve shoves off his jacket and sits down at the little table, flipping open his sketchbook.

He tries to think about what he knows of J.B., what he might like drawn for him.

He gets distracted half-way down the train of thought, going over what J.B. has said about himself, and if Steve might be able to draw him.

Steve lets himself sketch absentmindedly for a while—cropped brown hair curled on top, blueish eyes…it’s not much to go on, really. Steve leans back, surveying his work, and finds that the sketch actually is starting to look familiar. Only that’s odd, because he and J.B. really haven’t gone into much detail, yet he finds his hands automatically filling them in…he drops his pencil, realizing whose face his mind has supplied for him. Dimpled chin, crinkled eyes, cupid’s bow mouth—it’s Bucky Barnes taking shape in front of him, from somewhere in his subconscious.

Steve rips the page out hastily, shredding it into as many little pieces as he can manage.

Trying to guess at what J.B. might look like is obviously not the best route to go with whatever treacherous mood his fingers are in. Steve certainly doesn’t need the thought of J.B.’s words in Bucky’s mouth to make him even more inclined to trip over himself whenever the guy stops by to buy a candy bar or cigs. He does enough of that as it is, without picturing him…like that.

Steve shakes himself, returning to the blank page.

His mind insists on drifting. So instead he starts to write.

J.B.—Happy birthday! I wish I’d known yesterday, I’d have left you breakfast or something at least. I hope you ate at least half of that spice cake all by yourself as god and your ma intended, and didn’t get too generous sharing all of it around.

Wish you had better weather for celebrating too. Gotta agree everything’s been pretty dreary this week. I’ve been wearing my mac all day long often as not just to keep the water off. Last thing anybody ever wants is to get sick that one last time when spring is just around the corner right? Well I always hated it anyway, guess I don’t really know if it ever happened to anybody else often enough to notice, hah. Still I’ve had a lucky year so hoping to keep up the streak.

I think what would really set you right, what you ought to do if you want a birthday just fit for the occasion, is this: first, you order up some good weather—not June good, you know, just a real mild sort of day. Then in the evening it’ll be fresh and clean and not too cold out so we don’t have to wear all our winter gear. You and I’d walk up to Piccadilly, start out with something nice and familiar, warm us up. I’d buy you a gin rickey or two, and once we’re feeling real good and bold we’ll make our way over to The Adelaide for a champagne toast—celebrate you in style.

Now you might think, The Adelaide doesn’t have a back room—and you’re right. It’s a class joint, which is fitting for your birthday when you deserve better than that anyhow. Maybe it’s a big one this year, maybe we decide it’s worth a little splurge. Take a room somewhere for the night with satin sheets and a bed that doesn’t creak. Maybe we’ll drink more champagne.

Maybe, when I lean over finally to kiss you, champagne is what I’d taste on your tongue. Can’t be any sweeter than you already are. It’s true you’re taller than I am, and you’ve gotta be strong in your work. You could throw me around if you wanted (maybe sometimes I’d want you to)—but not tonight. Tonight you’re gonna pull me on your lap and let me take control, make you feel good—make you feel everything. I’d get you out of your clothes sprawled out under me and spend the rest of the night figuring out every little thing that makes you moan—how about my mouth on your stomach? my hands pulling at your hair? a kiss at the back of your knees?

My fingers inside you? Me inside you?

You can have whatever you want, darling. It’s your birthday after all. –S.R.

Steve folds the paper up with slightly trembling hands, feeling a flush high on his cheeks.

He’s not sure if it’s too much. But J.B. had told him to let his imagination run wild, a command he’d taken to with enthusiasm.

Eventually, there’s going to be a line that they can’t cross in this odd arrangement. Or even worse, one that they shouldn’t and then do anyway. Eventually, things will change and end as they always do—especially the harder you try to hold onto them.

After a few more minutes of pensive thought, staring down at the folded pages in his hand, Steve shrugs, and scoots his chair back from the table.

No use trying to see the future, his ma had liked to say, when most folks are bad enough at just looking around them now. Usually she’d just been telling him to pay attention to where he was walking, but it fits this moment anyhow.

He tucks the letter into a tall glass on the kitchen counter, and gets himself ready for bed.

*

The next day the miserable rain of the past two weeks seems to congeal into a thick, soupy fog swirling through the streets at eye level.

It’s slightly better, Steve muses, in that it’s not driving down in any direction or turning umbrellas wrong side out. But it’s just as wet, in a clinging, damp-to-your-bones kind of way.

For whatever reason, Steve finds himself in a foul temper this morning. Woke up on the wrong side of the bed. No—just woke up on the wrong bed, piece of shit springs digging into his back and radiator groaning with the effort of keeping the place just this side of livable.

So it feels fitting that the city around him has sunk into this grey swamp; it suits his mood. The day sitting at the stand passes like ten, an odd haze around all of his interactions only deepening his ill humor.

He eats dinner at the automat up the street like he usually does, just a bowl of corn chowder today in an attempt to warm himself up from the inside out. And he must look pretty grim because Ethel, the old woman behind the counter, slips him a cookie with his receipt as he goes to pay.

Steve’s chewing on it morosely, thinking maybe he ought to go see a movie or something instead of going straight home, when a sound catches his ear.

It’s not a raised voice—just a very specific sort of tone for which Steve, despite his less than stellar ears, has developed a special kind of hearing.

It’s something snide in it, something self-satisfied and mocking. Somehow he always notices when someone’s using that voice (and he can picture the face that goes with it) in his vicinity.

“I’m sorry, I thought—” a quieter, somewhat frail voice floats out onto the street from the alley Steve’s coming up beside.

“Thought what? That a respectable business can run on free handouts to good-for-nothings?” says the one that Steve had clocked halfway up the block.

“Didn’t mean nothing by it—”

“Why don’t you go take a dunk in the river, do us all a favor?”

Steve squares his shoulders and turns at the mouth of the alley, taking in the scene.

It’s an alley between storefronts, opening from the backs of the restaurant and shoe store on either side of it. A man in an apron is leaning out of the open side door of the café, jeering at an old man in a collection of worn, ratty clothes. For all that the first man seems to be telling the homeless one to get lost, his body language has the old man trapped at the dead end of the alley.

The old man’s face is lined with care and sorrow. While the Hooverville’s and shanty colonies throughout the city have been shrinking—slowly, too slowly—there’s still plenty like him, down on their luck. And you’d think a guy managing to run a business in this part of town ought to remember how close he could be to being one of them, if the market stops improving or takes another turn. If they all learned anything the last ten years it should’ve been that fortunes can turn on a dime for just about anybody. But some people have short memories, and compassion fades with it.

“There some kind of trouble here?” Steve asks, voice coming out deep and strong.

The restaurant owner’s head jerks around, mouth open in surprise. But his sneer quickly returns when he spots Steve, short and slight and bangs dripping into his eyes.

“I dunno, you looking to make some?”

“Maybe,” Steve says, turning his eyes to the old man.

“I heard from somebody that you could get the end of day bread and stuff here, I just came to ask—didn’t mean to—”

“You came around looking for a handout from a hard-working businessman—” the restaurant owner cuts in.

Steve doesn’t let him finish, cutting him off to address the old man directly. “That was probably the former owner, he was a good man—sold it last year. Place hasn’t really had the same class since then.”

Once again the restaurant owner’s head turns to look at Steve, and Steve gestures to the old man to get moving. He scurries past the distracted, red-faced brute and out past Steve with a whispered “thanks.”

But the restaurant owner’s eyes are still on Steve.

“Listen here you little pipsqueak—”

“Mister you oughtta try a taste of your own medicine, I hope one day if you’re ever in a jam you get help from someone whose ma raised ’em a whole lot better than yours seems to.”

Steve glares back, jaw set and gauntlet thrown. There’s a buzzing feeling under his skin, like there always is before a fight. And yeah, maybe he’s looking for it, inviting it. But it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a worthwhile one to pick—just because it happened to be a time he was looking for one doesn’t make it a bad reason to have it. Much more satisfying than going to the pictures, says a distant corner of his brain.

The other man’s face goes red with speechless rage, mouth gaping like a fish. And he’s not a fighter, Steve can tell, because he telegraphs his punch about a mile off from winding it up.

But he’s still big, and although Steve ducks the first punch and lands a decent one to the guy’s kidney, he can’t avoid his fists entirely. Between luck and bulk the man eventually gets a fistful of the back of Steve’s collar, and as Steve looks up into his bloodshot, snarling face he feels a mixture of elation and dread.

The first really good hit is right to his jaw—a classic cartoon strip smack that has him seeing stars. Steve kicks out at the man’s shins and hears a gratifying grunt…but the guy doesn’t loosen his hold on Steve’s jacket. At another blow Steve feels his lip split and starts to worry—he really doesn’t want to have to slip out of his jacket to keep at it but the man is practically holding him off the ground now and he has the advantage of longer arms, plus the taste of success in his mouth making him stronger and…

“Hey! How about you pick on someone your own size?” someone says from behind Steve’s shoulder.

There’s a blur of motion Steve doesn’t quite track, but the fist in his coat releases and he stumbles to regain his footing. The restaurant owner is reeling back with a livid expression, rubbing his jaw.

“You both go on and get out of here!” he yells, the strength of his command a little weakened as he retreats, slinking to the door of the café again. “I mean it!” He slams the door shut.

Steve straightens up, back of his hand going to his lip where he can feel the hot slide of blood starting to run toward his chin, and turns.

Bucky Barnes is grinning back at him, looking pleased with himself. He looks practically angelic, haloed by a ring of light from the streetlamp shining off the fog, shadows playing around his perfect sharp jaw and the broad square cut of his shoulders under his coat.

“You go looking for trouble often? Looks like you haven’t changed much since school eh Rogers?”

Steve’s mind goes momentarily blank at Bucky using his name—remembering him?—and his mouth speaks without his brain’s permission.

“You remember—?” Steve’s mind catches up with his words before he can add “that,” or “me,” or whatever else to the end of the question.

Bucky shrugs, still smiling. “You’re tough to forget—plus you were getting stood up in front of the class to have your knuckles rapped just about once a day for scrapping.”

“Huh,” Steve replies intelligently, still trying to stem the slow bleeding of his lip.

Bucky frowns, noticing, and reaches into his pocket to pull out a handkerchief, offering it to Steve wordlessly.

“Thanks,” Steve says, holding it to his mouth. “For uh—for the other thing too.” He pauses a beat, but then can’t stop himself from adding, “But I can take care of myself. Don’t need rescuing.”

Bucky’s smile slips a little bit, and Steve feels a twinge of guilt. Bucky shrugs a second time.

“Wasn’t trying to rescue you. You’re not the only one who enjoys the chance to sock a bully now and then.” Bucky shoves his hands in his pockets, and looks away, clearing his throat. “Anyway. See you around, Steve.”

“I—see you around,” Steve manages, still too surprised for any eloquence—he’s always startled into stupidity by Bucky. But Bucky doesn’t seem to notice, turning on his heel and disappearing again into the fog, vanishing as silently as he’d appeared.

Steve stands still in the alley another moment looking at the place where he’d stood. If he didn’t know any better he’d think he’d imagined the whole thing.

Bucky knows his name? It’s unaccountable. But he’s got the split lip (and by the feel of it probably a swollen jaw too) to prove that the whole thing really happened. That part included. And how about that.

Steve tugs his coat higher around his neck, and tucks the now red-splotched handkerchief into his pocket, shuffling back onto the street in the direction of home.

As quickly as the fight ended, the effects of it don’t leave Steve quite so easily.

When he shuts the door of the apartment behind himself, he finds that his hands are still trembling a little with unspent adrenaline coursing through him. He splashes cold water on his face in the tiny bathroom, scrubbing the coppery, dried blood off of his chin and trying to steady his breathing. But he still feels jittery even after he’s done, running his hands through his hair restively.

He returns to the kitchen and puts the kettle onto the stove, thinking he’ll make some tea. He actually feels unusually warm thanks to the pounding rush of blood in his ears, but he thinks maybe the ritual of making and drinking a hot cup of it will help calm him down.

Then he sees the letter on the table. Steve snatches it up hungrily, dropping all pretense of holding out tonight—and nearly chokes on his next breath at the first line.

S—Ahh, so now we get to it—you wanna fuck me, huh?

I wonder if you thought you’d be surprising me with that. I’d guess if you’re small, maybe a little fey even, guys make assumptions. They do when you’re big and don’t seem the type, you know. But the joke’s on you pal, I prefer to take it. And I think I’d especially prefer it if you’re the one giving it. How do you want me, baby? I promise I’ll moan for you, for all of you. Bet you like to take your time, make it last. That’s good. I told you once I’d press you up against the wall outside Piccadilly—but that’s not true. You couldn’t ever be a quick fuck in an alley. If we ever meet, or hell even just inside my own eyelids, no matter what way I don’t want it to be over before I’ve had my hands and tongue on every inch of you. I wanna feel you in me and all over me for days when we’re through. I wanna wrap myself around you ’til you don’t know where you end and I start and I wanna watch your face when I make you come. God I bet you’re gorgeous. Just your handwriting on the page gets me going, I can’t—(there’s a handful of words scratched out dark enough that Steve can’t make out what they’d said)—don’t really know what I’d do with you, really you here to touch. But I won’t stop trying to imagine it any time soon. –J.B.

“Fuck,” Steve breathes aloud, letting the page fall to the table and scrubbing his hands over his face.

His heart is racing again. God—what if he’s being a complete idiot about this whole thing? What if meeting J.B. for real wouldn’t ruin anything, but actually…make it all right? Steve’s fingers are practically itching with a yearning he hasn’t felt in a while, to feel warm skin under them, real and vibrant and here—

Steve’s whole body jerks as his thoughts are interrupted by the piercing sound of the kettle, coming to a boil on the stove and shrieking at him. He moves it from the burner with shaking hands, but doesn’t move to pour any.

He doesn’t want tea anymore.

He wants a tongue in his mouth, or another fight maybe, or several shots of whiskey. He just wants. He shakes his head. He’s not getting any of those tonight. Maybe a hot shower (and the quick release of soapy fingers) will have to suffice.

It doesn’t take long after he climbs in under the shocking, hot spray for all the heady energy of the fight and the letter to clash together inside of him, winding him up all over again.

And that’s why, Steve tells himself, the two somehow seem to get mixed up together as he takes himself in hand—why it’s J.B.’s words flashing across his mind…but Bucky’s smirking face accompanying them. The image hits him strong and hard, and before he can banish it, the visual of Bucky’s hands on him, Bucky’s mouth on him, Bucky’s body under him (Bucky whispering sweetheart). It doesn’t take long from there.

Steve slumps against the cool tile of the shower wall, and tries not to feel guilty.

He washes his hair and scrubs himself hastily, and by the time he’s hopping out and into a dry towel, he’s already decided firmly that that was a fluke—just the mental proximity of adrenaline left over from the fight combining with J.B. ratcheting him up again. That’s all.

Steve puts on his pajamas and folds up the table, making space to let the bed down.

Really. Bucky’s just undeniably an attractive guy, he was fresh in Steve’s memory, and in absence of knowing what J.B. looks like it makes sense that’s who his subconscious would supply. That’s all.

Steve flicks off the light, and climbs in under the blankets. He shifts, still too restless, and throws off a couple of them, skin unaccountably still warm and flushed.

His feelings for J.B. don’t seem to be going anywhere, is the problem. And his brain is just trying to make sense of that without a face to put to it, with him apparently doing all of this backwards. Falling for somebody he’s never laid eyes on. Maybe it is time to think seriously about whether he’s ready to take the next step and meet J.B. after all. Because until then he’ll probably keep just filling the gap with any old person, he’s gotta imagine someone. Bucky’s just a convenient face. That’s all.

Yeah, Steve thinks forcefully, putting a pillow over his head to block out the glare of the street lights.

That’s definitely all there is to that.

*

The next day, the uncomfortable warmth of the night before hasn’t dissipated. Steve’s cheeks in the mirror are pink and even his eyes feel oddly hot whenever he blinks. His jaw is stiff as he’d expected from the scuffle the day before, but so are the rest of his joints.

He’s been around the block enough times to know exactly what it all means.

He ignores it and pretends it isn’t happening anyway.

But the day feels extremely long, and his stool at the newsstand especially hard and uncomfortable beneath him. There’s a harsh, cold breeze blowing today, so the fog is gone. But it cuts through Steve’s clothes, even leaving on his coat and scarf.

He passes through most of the day’s sales in a bit of a daze, taking and making change mostly on muscle memory.

It’s almost enough that he doesn’t startle when Bucky Barnes steps up to the window, a friendly grin on his face and eyes twinkling as he asks for his usual Luckies. But not quite.

“Anything else?” Steve asks faintly, knowing that there is a truly brilliant blush climbing up his neck as he avoids Bucky’s eyes out of embarrassment.

“Nah I’m good,” Bucky says, easily, but not stepping away. “Your lip doesn’t look too bad today, musta seemed worse than it was huh?”

“Oh—yeah, musta,” Steve says, stumbling over the words. “Isn’t too bad,” he repeats, dumbly.

Bucky gives him a little bit of a funny look, and Steve closes his eyes for a moment, trying to gather himself. He tacks on a smile as he opens them, aiming for cool and friendly but probably landing somewhere along the lines of strained. Ah well.

“Listen, Steve—” Bucky starts, at the same time as Steve says,

“Well uh, anyway—”

Bucky hesitates for a moment, but hitches up his own smile again quickly. “Right. Anyway.” He raps his knuckles on the counter, and puts the cigarettes into his pocket. “See ya around, Steve.”

“See you around,” Steve says to Bucky’s already retreating back.

He drops his head to his arms with a suppressed groan. God. He cannot let Bucky anywhere near his fantasies again. Especially if Bucky's going to continue this strange new habit of chatting with him. It’s too hard to look him in the eye after.

“You okay buddy?” a concerned voice asks, and Steve’s head shoots up again, spinning. He’s not sure how long he was sitting like that, all slumped over. His pulse pounds a bit behind his eyes as he tries another polite smile for the worried looking customer in front of him.

“Right as rain. What can I get you?”

By the end of the day, Steve can’t deny any longer that the clammy heat skittering over his skin and the pounding in his head is anything but what it is—a fever. Damn. He’d really hoped he’d get through this winter without any more sick spells.

He stops by the pharmacy on his way home to restock his supplies of medicine, hoping if he goes to bed early and drinks plenty of water it won’t have time to really settle into his system for the long haul.

It already makes him weary, thinking about tomorrow—this will be his first real bout of illness he’s had to deal with in the apartment, where even if he takes the day off work he can’t exactly stay home. He’ll have to figure out where he can go if he’s too sick to be at the stand—the library maybe, he thinks vaguely. He goes there sometimes on his day off when he still has to stay out his normal hours. It’s warmer than the stand at least and he could probably nap in one of the chairs in back if he needed to for the day.

He has just the presence of mind (and long years of training) to make himself heat up and eat some canned soup before falling into bed. Steve knows from experience that it only takes longer to get well if he doesn’t make himself eat and drink, even when he’d prefer nothing less.

His head feels like it weighs a hundred pounds as it crashes to the pillow, and his joints feel like they’re being slowly cemented into place with a stiff, creaking pain. He musters a few final shreds of energy to wrap the blankets tight around himself, even though there’s a trickle of sweat at his temple.

Sleep…sleep will help.

Hopefully he’s catching it in time, can head it off at the pass…

His dreams are restless, and filled with his mother’s face.

He’s at her bedside, holding her hand as her body is wracked with coughs.

He’s clutching her skirt, looking up at her beatific face as she sings a hymn at mass.

He’s watching her bending over their neighbor’s sickbed, murmuring gently as she cajoles them into accepting spoonfuls of broth.

He’s watching her bend over his sickbed, her cool hand on his hot forehead, soothing him, telling him he’ll be alright, that he’s a strong, brave boy…

“Oh Steve,” says a soft, deep voice above him—decidedly not his mother’s, “you idiot I told you to stay dry…”

It takes a few more moments for Steve to process that there is a cool, soothing hand on his forehead. But it’s not his mother’s smooth, slim one, but large and calloused...

The dream finally fades entirely, his still feverish brain slow to find the line between it and reality. But once it does, he forces himself to open his burning, bleary eyes. And he immediately wonders if he actually has awoken, or if the scene around him is just a new product of his sick-addled hallucinations.

There’s daylight in the apartment, and he’s shivering under only one of the four blankets he’d initially fallen asleep beneath.

And Bucky Barnes is sitting beside him on the edge of the bed, a hand on Steve’s forehead and a look of deep concern across his face.

Steve blinks several times, willing the vision to go away.

It doesn’t. Bucky reaches onto the floor and retrieves the other blankets, and begins to tuck them in around Steve’s curled form.

“I told you to take care of yourself, you dope,” he says as he returns to sit beside him, brushing the sweat damp bangs from Steve’s forehead.

“What—how—why are you here?” Steve’s voice comes out as a croak.

Bucky bites his lower lip, eyelashes fanning over his cheeks as he looks down, brow furrowing.

“It’s—I mean I’m—I’m J.B., Steve—I’m your flatmate. I live here,” he says, haltingly.

It takes a moment for this statement to make it through Steve’s fuzzy thoughts.

“You’re not,” he says automatically, when he manages to realize what Bucky’s saying.

Bucky gives a humorless bark of laughter. “I am. Sorry if—if I’m not what you um—thought.”

“No! That’s not—” Steve says, pausing to cough as his rush to reassure Bucky grates at his dry, painful throat. “I mean how could I be—how could it be you?”

Bucky doesn’t meet his eyes, instead reaching over him and pulling over a glass of water, holding it out and making sure Steve can handle bringing it to his own lips before letting go. Then he clasps his hands together in his lap, twisting them nervously.

Nervously? Steve thinks, stupidly, still trying to understand. Why would he be nervous about—with me? How could it have been Bucky?

“Told you I don’t seem like the type, remember?” Bucky asks, glancing at Steve sidelong. “I wasn’t—I didn’t know it was you. But I—wondered, a little.” He pauses. “Hoped, maybe.”

“Why?” Steve asks flatly, confusion blunting his reactions.

The corner of Bucky’s mouth—Bucky’s perfect, beautiful, sinful mouth that Steve’s been trying so hard for weeks not to put J.B.’s filthy words into—tips up.

“I always liked you. In school. You were tough and didn’t need anybody’s approval. That was before I realized I might—I could like you, or any other guy that way. When I started seeing you again at the stand, after I moved in here I wondered—but I didn’t want to assume. Didn’t really know how to strike up a conversation when I only ever saw you on the job.” Bucky shrugs, smiling. “Wish I’d known you’d already started it, day I lost that drink ticket.” His smile falters, and his hands return to twining in an anxious grip in his lap. “Sorry. I know you didn’t…didn’t want to meet me. I’m sorry if it’s all spoiled now.” Bucky’s voice creaks a little over the last sentence and chews at his lip again, looking away.

Steve’s mouth is open, taking in each new perplexing blow as it lands. Bucky liked—likes him? Him just as Steve him? Bucky thinks Steve won’t be happy to know he’s the one he’s been exchanging letters with—been picturing in the dark—been falling for?

“Bucky,” Steve rasps, reaching out and wrapping his hand around one of Bucky’s wrists. “God you think—you think knowing J.B. is you could be anything but—but a goddamn dream?”

Bucky looks at him now, hesitant smile returning. “Yeah?”

Steve nods, fervently. “Yeah. Jesus, look at you, you’re—and I’m—” he looks down at his sweat soaked pajamas, and rubs at his sticky eyes and groans. “I’m really only unhappy about the fact that I’m finally meeting you—my guy, my perfect guy—and I’m sick as a dog and probably look it.”

Bucky’s smile widens, and he covers Steve’s hand on his wrist with his other one. “I don’t care Steve,” he says. “Shit—if getting sick and not being able to get outta bed is what it took to get us in the same place at the same time—I’ll fucking take it.” He squeezes Steve’s hand. “Let me take care of you?”

Steve closes his eyes and lets himself fall back against the pillow, taking in a few exhausted breaths. The brief conversation, monumental as it is, has drained him of whatever store of energy he’d rebuilt during his long sleep.

But he feels lighter, too—happy. And happiness is a good feeling, even running through veins still aching with fever.

Steve closes his eyes and looks for the traces of all the little cracks—the ones he always thought would be so clear if anybody just got close enough at the wrong moment to look. But to his amazement, even lying ill and unexpectedly before his friend (his love?) in the most vulnerable kind of state, he can’t seem to find them at all.

“Okay,” he says, helplessly. Because what else is there to say?

“Good,” Bucky says softly, and Steve looks up to find Bucky’s eyes on him, expression tender enough to send sparks of something warm and unsettling in the best kind of way through Steve’s stomach.

Bucky squeezes his hand one more time, holding his eyes, before he lets go. Steve sucks in a deep breath, finding that he was holding it while the moment had stretched out.

Bucky moves away, and Steve closes his eyes again—maybe even drifting a little on a wave of fever, because when he opens them Bucky is there with clean pajamas. He helps Steve into them, and changes the bed sheets while he’s up so that it’s fresh and tidy when Steve climbs back in, already feeling considerably better in new clothes, maybe even like the fever is breaking. At Bucky’s behest he takes another dose of medicine, hoping it could even be gone all the way by tonight.

Oh, tonight—but—“J.B.—Bucky!” Steve exclaims, sitting up from his pillow, eyes finding Bucky moving around quietly in the kitchen. “Shouldn’t you be—don’t you need to be sleeping?”

“Oh—I uh—I’ll make do, it’s not as important as you getting to—”

“You can’t go to work on no sleep!” Steve protests stubbornly, already scooting to the edge of the bed. “There’s plenty of space.”

“Ah Steve no—you gotta get better, you need good rest not all cramped up sharing with me—”

“If you don’t come here and share this bed with me,” Steve says, setting his jaw, “I’ll get out and lay down on the floor. So unless you think there’s any use in neither of us using the bed, it’s gotta be both.”

Bucky gives him a wry, knowing smile. “Stubborn,” he remarks, already unbuttoning his shirt and slipping out of his suspenders.

“Just so,” Steve says with a nod. He flops back down, again feeling spent from the exertion. His head lolls to the side though, and he has enough clarity to be annoyed at himself for being too sick to really enjoy the sight of Bucky Barnes undressing in the middle of his apartment.

Bucky pulls on a pair of sleep pants, and slides the heavy drapes closed over the windows, blocking out enough sunlight to cast the room into a sort of grey twilight. He climbs in delicately beside Steve, body a little stiff as he lies back on his own pillow.

Steve rolls over, eyeing how uncomfortably Bucky is stretched out at the very far edge of the bed, on his back. He huffs, reaching over to grab Bucky’s arm and tugging until Bucky seems to get with the program, laughing as he rolls on his side and scoots in to drape one arm over Steve’s waist.

Bucky’s nose nuzzles gently under Steve’s ear, and Steve sighs, settling back into him. Steve’s not sure he’s ever felt so warm or comfortable in this bed before.

“Kinda thought the first time I met you J.B.,” Steve says, the words coming out a little thick with waves of sleep already starting to wash over him, “kinda thought sleeping together the first time would be a little different from this, gotta be honest.”

Bucky’s low laugh rumbles through his chest and into Steve’s where he’s holding him tight.

“Yeah you’ve made me a lot of promises.”

“Gonna keep all of ’em, if you still wanna. Soon as I’m better.”

Steve can feel Bucky’s mouth curving into a smile where it’s pressed against the back of his neck.

“Good. Gonna hold you to that.”

*

It takes two days before Steve gets his feet back under him, or rather before J.B.—Bucky—lets him.

Bucky goes by the newsstand on his way to the warehouse that night, to make sure Mr. McGower knows what happened. He reports back later that the old man just grunted and said he’d guessed as much, and to tell Steve he could handle things until he was really better.

“He managed without you for twenty-five years he said,” Bucky tells Steve the next morning with a grin, “he said he thinks he can wait out your cold without the business collapsing.”

Even though he’d slept all through the day with Bucky, he rises that first evening only to shower and eat and read the brief, precious note waiting for him on the kitchen counter. It reads, simply:

Steve, with all my heart I’m glad it was you.—Bucky

The next day his fever is gone, though he’s still fatigued. But he’s clear-headed enough to feel awestruck, when Bucky’s warm, strong body is curled around his—at the strange and extraordinary circumstances which in forty-eight hours had brought Bucky Barnes to be sleeping in his bed.

That evening Bucky leaves again for work and Steve gets up, puts on real clothes for the first time in nearly three days, filled with new energy and determined to make sure Bucky knows exactly how Steve feels about the development.

They’ve been in an odd suspended animation, like the clock stopped that morning when Bucky got home and found Steve asleep there. But Steve is ready—eager, a little desperate even—to start it running forward again.

When Bucky gets home, the first steely rays of dawn are just starting to break over the roofs outside their window. But inside the apartment it’s still dim, the early light kept out by the heavy curtains pulled across the windows, lengthening the night inside.

Steve’s just putting the final touches on the little table when he hears the latch, and his heart jumps instantly into his throat as he steps back and folds his hands behind him.

Bucky steps inside cautiously, clearly expecting that Steve will still be asleep. He raises his eyebrows when he sees that the place has been rearranged to put the bed away and bring out the table, and they creep even higher as they land on Steve—cleanly pressed and nervous in his good suit and nicest tie.

“What’s this?” he asks, slow smile spreading across his face as he shrugs out of his coat.

Bucky’s shirt is a little rumpled and he has to reach up to push his hair from falling into his eyes, the pomade he uses to keep it slicked back having worked its way out of it during the night.

He’s breathtaking.

“It’s um—” Steve starts, fumbling over the words like he always has in front of Bucky. He ducks his head. But then Bucky—Bucky Barnes, his J.B.—steps forward with that same smile and places a soft hand to the side of Steve’s neck, and Steve remembers who he’s talking to. He looks up and meets Bucky’s bright grey eyes, trained already with fondness on Steve’s face.

“It’s your birthday dinner,” he says, reaching out to place his hands on Bucky’s arms, tentative at first and then more solidly. “I know we couldn’t—can’t really afford to do what I talked about—in the letter, about the hotel. But I—” he gestures at the table, where a single rose and two lit candles grace their one and only table cloth. “I got some champagne. For that toast. Only a little late, right?”

“Right,” Bucky agrees, eyes on the two full glasses on the table, and voice brimming with some deep emotion.

Steve picks the two glasses up, handing one to Bucky, who meets his eyes with a serious expression.

“To um—” Steve says, and clears his throat. He lifts his glass higher—to make it a proper toast. “To you, J.B. To Bucky Barnes. I—I want you to know…I’ve wanted to know you since the moment I knew you existed. Both times. I wanted it so bad it scared me into putting it off for a long time—too long.” Steve ducks his head, then looks back up, resolutely. Bucky’s lips are parted slightly in something like surprise. But Steve’s determined to say what he set out to. “But I was stupid, and all I was doing was keeping the most important person in my life at arm’s length, thinking it would hurt less when really—when really having you close was all I needed to stop hurting. J—Bucky, I think I’m in love with you.”

Bucky is staring back at him, frozen. And Steve would worry he’s said too much—except, for the first time in a long time, he can’t worry. Because all he said was exactly the truth.

Then Bucky moves, very slowly, like he doesn’t want to make any startling gestures. He sets his glass down on the table, and reaches out to pluck Steve’s from his numb fingers to set it down beside it. He shifts forward, hands half raised, eyes on Steve’s. He stops just shy of their chests being able to brush against each other, and Steve sways forward, pulled by something like gravity to close the distance, leaning into the solid heat of Bucky’s body. Steve breathes deep, taking in the warm scent of his skin, a mix of sea air and sweat and cigarettes (Lucky Strike means fine tobacco flits across his mind).

Bucky’s hands come up to cup Steve’s face, and finally he tilts down to brush his mouth against Steve’s. It’s a fleeting touch at first, like a whisper or a dream. But then Steve presses forward, and their lips meet more firmly, open and warm and promising.

Bucky smiles into the kiss, warming to it, and his hands fall away from Steve’s face, sliding under the collar of his jacket and gently pushing it off his shoulders. Steve’s tie follows quickly. Then Bucky returns to the single-minded effort to kiss him senseless.

Steve makes a desperate sound against Bucky’s mouth as Bucky’s tongue slips between his parted lips, and Steve’s arms go by instinct to cling around Bucky’s neck as he holds on for dear life.

Bucky’s arms wrap around his waist, pulling Steve onto his tiptoes so their bodies are flush—all of Bucky’s lean muscle stretched out against him. Steve moans and surges up to kiss Bucky deeper and harder, forgetting about finesse, and one of his hands roams up to grab a handful of Bucky’s hair. Bucky gasps as Steve tugs lightly at first, and then harder.

Bucky pulls back a little, eyes heavy and dazed looking, and his mouth—his fucking mouth, Steve thinks. It shouldn’t be legal to look like that, the way it looks open and panting and red from rough kisses.

Bucky looks around behind him and hooks his foot around the leg of one of their two chairs, kicking it out from the table. Steve gets his drift just as Bucky whirls them in an efficient motion, sitting down and pulling Steve with him onto his lap, and Steve shifts quickly so that he’s straddling him before once again finding Bucky’s lips with his.

Bucky makes incredible, delicious sounds in his throat as they explore each other’s mouths and let their hands wander and—fuck Bucky’s hard against Steve’s thigh and Steve can’t help but roll his hips down against him to grind them together.

Bucky’s head falls back with a gasp, and suddenly he’s babbling as Steve repeats the motion, slower. “God—Steve fuck I love you too, Jesus but I do, you’re so—” his words give way to a less articulate groan, and Steve feels a smirk on his face despite himself. Reducing someone as beautiful as Bucky, as eloquent and articulate as J.B. to a wordless mess feels something worth savoring.

“What do you want?” He whispers into Bucky’s ear as his head lolls, circling his hips again with more teasing friction this time. Bucky’s hips stutter at the movement.

“Oh god, Steve,” he says in a low moan, “you gotta—shit you gotta fuck me, please, just like you promised okay—”

Steve smiles against his ear, thumb stroking over Bucky’s sharp jaw. “Yeah—yeah Buck, I will—fuck of course—”

They both seem to remember the same unfortunate detail at the same moment, and Bucky groans again—but this time in sheer, utter annoyance.

“The goddamned bed,” he says, and Steve groans too in shared aggravation, stilling for the moment.

He pulls back, and they meet each other’s eyes—and both break into helpless, pathetic laughter realizing they’ll have to get up and reset the whole apartment to continue.

“That piece of shit,” Steve says, laughing and dropping his head to Bucky’s shoulder. “Guess this isn’t quite a perfect substitute for that hotel suite, huh?”

“Guess not quite,” Bucky agrees, laughing too.

“How about,” Steve says, voice dropping husky again as he licks his lips. Bucky’s eyes flick down to the motion, and his hips cant up against Steve’s, letting him know he’s still with him. “How about we just call this the opening act? And uh…save the finale for a little later?” He reaches down to palm Bucky through the front of his pants to emphasize his point, and Bucky’s eyes roll back, fluttering. “Cuz I really don’t wanna stop,” he adds in a rough whisper.

“Yeah—yeah okay,” Bucky says, a bit breathless.

Steve kisses him once more, long and filthy to seal the agreement. Then he slips off of Bucky’s lap, going to his knees on the floor and running his hands down Bucky’s strong thighs to push his knees apart.

“Hang on!” Bucky says, a little raggedly as Steve leans in, “Hang on, I wanna—let me—” he can’t seem to finish the sentence, but he makes his meaning clear as he reaches out and grabs Steve by the front of his shirt, hauling him up before he can protest the reversing of their positions.

Bucky blinks up at Steve from between his open legs, eyelashes sweeping the blush high on his cheeks.

“But I—it’s your birthday,” Steve says helplessly.

“That’s right,” Bucky agrees, reaching for his fly. “So I get to do what I want. And I wanna do this.”

“Well I—alright,” Steve says with a breathy laugh.

Bucky unfastens Steve’s pants with shaking hands, tugging them down low on his hips, and Steve takes in a sharp little breath when Bucky pulls him free. He takes an even sharper breath when Bucky wraps his hand around him, and moves it slowly, experimentally up and down his length, eyes glued reverently to Steve’s face.

“We got so many firsts ahead of us, Stevie,” he says in a hushed voice, smile softening the lines around his eyes.

Then he ducks his head and takes Steve into his mouth, and Steve loses the ability to respond with rational thought.

Steve lets his head fall back, getting lost in the heat and sensation of Bucky’s mouth moving around him. Bucky takes it slow—almost agonizingly so, eyes crinkled up around the corners showing that he knows exactly what he’s doing as Steve’s sounds grow more and more desperate.

Eventually without realizing it Steve finds himself running his hands through his own hair, over and over—until Bucky pulls off, startling him. Bucky looks up at him seriously, mouth red and curving in a pleased smile, and reaches for one of Steve’s hands, tugging it to his own hair.

“Go on,” he rasps—and returns to his ministrations.

Steve threads his fingers through the soft brown strands, hesitant at first. Then he remembers how Bucky had responded earlier when he’d pulled, so he tightens his grip, testing it out. Bucky moans, pulling an immediately corresponding sound from Steve as his throat moves around him. Steve grabs another handful of Bucky’s hair with his other hand too.

Soon Bucky gives up the measured, torturous pace he’d been maintaining, and Steve feels that he has absolutely no control left over the situation—that Bucky will take him over the edge just exactly whenever he decides to, Steve is at his mercy. And Bucky seems to reach the same conclusion, redoubling his efforts, and his hands tighten bruisingly on Steve’s thighs as Steve twists his fingers tight in Bucky’s hair and feels his hips start to stutter.

Steve just manages to choke out a warning, but Bucky doesn’t budge as Steve’s orgasm hits him in a wave like a punch to the gut.

He slumps over in his chair, legs still spread wide and open around Bucky as Bucky rests his head on Steve’s thigh, looking up at him, pleased. Steve drops his face to run his nose through the unruly mess of Bucky’s curls as all of his muscles loosen with a sigh.

But as he comes back around, he realizes that Bucky is stroking himself lazily from his spot on his knees—and that won’t do at all. Steve growls, shoving at Bucky’s shoulders so that they both tumble back in Bucky’s surprise onto the bare strip of floor alongside the wardrobe. Bucky looks up at Steve wide-eyed as Steve climbs over to straddle him again, reaching for him at once and watching Bucky’s eyes fall shut with pleasure.

He must have been close just from sucking Steve off, because it takes no more than a handful of rough strokes with Bucky thrusting up into his fist before he’s finishing too, muscles spasming as his mouth drops open in a silent O, for all he’s been so noisy until now.

Steve rolls off to lie half beside and half atop of him in what little space is left on the floor between the wardrobe and the table. Bucky sighs, eyes still shut.

“Thanks,” he says, and his voice is hoarse in a way that makes Steve shiver, knowing he made it like that.

“It’s your birthday—couldn’t let you do all the work,”

“Ah well, I made some promises in those letters too you know—wanted to get in there with one of mine before you sweep me off my feet.”

Steve chuckles, tucking his head up against Bucky’s chest.

“Buck—I mean it, what I said earlier. It wasn’t just to get in your pants.”

Bucky snorts, “Still haven’t been in my pants Rogers.”

Steve smiles. “True, guess I’ll have to remind you again after then.”

Bucky opens his eyes now, looking down at Steve with naked tenderness in his gaze. “I want you to remind me every single morning I get home. And I’ll remind you every night before I leave. I’ll even write it down if you need to check it while I’m gone.” Bucky tips his head down and places a light, soft kiss on Steve’s mouth. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Steve lays his head back down on Bucky’s chest with a contented sigh, listening to the steady, comforting beat of Bucky’s heart beneath his ear.

Eventually they’ll get up and reset the apartment so they can both lie down on an actual bed. Maybe they’ll even drink that champagne first. Maybe they’ll do a lot of things.

Suddenly there doesn’t seem to be any rush—Bucky’s right, there are so many firsts left for them.

Steve’s planning to relish every single one.

*

Steve—

I want you to know I stayed up late after you fell asleep last night, just so you could wake up to this in the morning like the old days (not that you’ll ever hear me complaining about working day shift again, hah!).

It’s been one year since you moved into this apartment, can you believe it? Could either of us ever have imagined that a year after moving in with a fella you’d never laid eyes on you’d really be living with him?

I know it’s been a tough year, with this winter hitting you so hard. But it’s been a good one too. Better for me than all the years that came before that didn’t have you in them, sweetheart. And spring is around the corner. I know you’ll be accepted back into art classes for next semester—and then just look out world!

It’s tempting some days, I know, when you’re awful down about your lungs and fretting about the future, to worry over how everything is so uncertain. And you know what? Just about everything is. I don’t know what another year will bring to us my darling, or any of the ones after. Certainty is a rare commodity in life—so know that this is the most precious thing I have when I offer you this: I love you, I love you, I love you. Today, tomorrow, always. No matter what.

Count on it.

Yours,

J.B.