When Steve and Bucky Have "The Talk"
EARLIER THAT SAME DAY (AFTER LUNCH)
When Bucky walked into the communal kitchen to grab a late lunch, he was surprised to see Steve sitting at the counter with a dumb look on his face. Not so much like he’d seen a ghost, more like there was something on his mind that he just couldn’t figure out. He always got this look when something was perplexing him, the same way he did back in the 40’s when Dum-Dum would make a dirty joke and he was the only one who couldn’t figure out the punchline.
“Stevie you start thinking any harder, you might hurt yourself. You look constipated, your face is gonna get stuck that way.” Barnes went in the fridge and poured himself a glass of orange juice.
“Huh?” Steve said, snapping out of it. He hadn’t even noticed Bucky entered the room, so something must really be bothering him. “What’s on your mind? You look like you’re about to explode.” Bucky said before taking a huge gulp.
“What? Oh, nothing…nothing’s bothering me.” Steve said, looking down at his phone. Bucky shook his head with a smile. “Who is it? Peggy’s niece?” He asked.
“Sharon?” Steve answered. “What about her?”
“You have that stupid look on your mug like back when you thought you were in love with Annie Hardlake. So it must be a girl. Who is she?’
“There’s no girl, Buck.” Steve said stubbornly.
“Is it a guy?”
Steve gave him a stern look. “Okay, so it’s definitely not a guy.” Bucky laughed.
Steve sighed. “Buck, if I tell you, you have to promise not to tell a soul.” Steve said.
“Cross my heart and hope to die. Swear to God!” Bucky said, with his hand raised. Steve gave him the look again.
“What? It’s not like Sister Martha is around to smack my hand with a ruler for saying it.” Bucky smirked.
Steve sighed, and decided to ignore it. “Well, you know Dr. Foster’s intern?”
“Darcy? Yeah, the girl built like she stepped out of a pin-up magazine. When she’s not wearing those huge sweaters.” Steve gave him the look once again. “Wow, you are touchy today.” Bucky chuckled, drinking more from his glass. “Still though, the gams on that dame could win the first prize at the world’s fair.”
Steve flat out smacked Bucky in the head, making him choke on his orange juice. But he didn’t take it personally.
“So what about her? I know you’ve been sweet on her since you first saw her, did you finally ask her out?” Bucky asked, deciding to take the high road this time. Steve looked back down at his phone.
“No I didn’t ask her out, I’ve just…been having dreams about her.”
“Who hasn’t.” Bucky mumbled.
This time earned him three swats to the head, and he finally had enough. “Okay, last one I swear.” Bucky laughed, taking a good luck at his friend. “You do know it’s normal for a guy to have dreams like that right?”
“Yeah, but I aint talking about no normal wet dreams Buck,” Steve whined, his Brooklyn accent slipping out in his frustration. “This was different…these dreams felt real. Really real. Like when I woke up I felt like I had run a marathon, real.”
Bucky looked down at his empty glass, and chose his words very carefully. “I’m only asking to get more of an idea of what you’re dealing with, so don’t hit me. But what exactly happens in the dreams?”
Steve looks over at the microwave, willing his blush to not go further than his ears turning pink. “You know…we have sex.”
Bucky sat silently for a few minutes. “I’m failing to see the issue here, Stevie.”
Steve crossed his arms in a huff, he knew this conversation wasn’t going to be easy. “When we’re…you know, in the moment…it feels real. And incredible. Better than anything my imagination could ever come up with. But hands down, it’s the best…” He looks Bucky in the eye, who urges him to go on. “Sex, I’ve ever had.”
Bucky considers this for a moment. “Better than Millie Anderson?” He asked.
“Millie ‘The Human Vacuum’ Anderson couldn’t even hold a candle to Darcy.” Steve assured, remembering their times with the USO girls from his tour.
“Shit, Steve.” Bucky says, blown away. “Can you remember anything else about the dreams?”
“There’s always music…both times it was a song I didn’t know, but somehow I knew it because I was…singing the words to her.” He mumbled the last part.
“You? Singing? The president couldn’t even convince you to sing on the USO tour!” Bucky laughed.
“I know that! And the songs get stuck in my head!”
“What were the songs?”
“The first one was a song called Pillowtalk, and the one from earlier was called Gorilla.”
Bucky thought about it. “Pillowtalk I know, they’re playing that one on the radio, but what the hell is gorilla?”
“It’s a song by some guy named Bruno Mars.” Steve said, having googled the lyrics earlier.
Bucky thought for a minute, and then squared his eyes at Steve. “Have you been stealing my Ipod?”
“What? No, Bucky, why would I do that? I have my own!”
“Because yours has nothing but boring shit on it and mine has all the good music! It went missing a few days ago! Then it magically reappears out of thin air!”
“Bucky why would I steal your Ipod just to listen to your music? I could just download music to my own.” He said, rubbing his temples.
“I don’t know Stevie, I’m pretty hip these days. You could be trying to listen to my music so you won’t be so square.”
“I’m pretty sure that entire sentence makes you just as square as me. I didn’t steal your flippin’ Ipod.”
Bucky huffed. “Fine. Anything else unusual about the dreams?”
“The first one was pretty normal…I’m pretty sure we were in her bedroom. Not that I’ve been in her bedroom, mind you.” Steve corrected himself.
“Shut up and finish the story, Jerk.”
“The second time, since the song was…themed, the space we were in transformed into a rainforest floor. No kiddin’, the plants, the trees, the sounds, the smells…and a big bed in the middle of it all. I even had a Tarzan costume on.”
Bucky gave him a sideways glance. “Are you on drugs?”
“I’m just going to ignore you because we both know my body would metabolize drugs too fast for them to take effect.”
“Fine. If what you say is true, here’s my two cents—wouldn’t it have to be like that, though? I mean, if it’s your dream, from your imagination, of course it’s going be amazing like that.”
“But that’s just the thing, Buck. It’s real…all of it, I swear. When I wake up after it FEELS like I just had the best sex of my life. When it happens, I always check the mirror afterwards…she likes scratching my back. But of course, the scars are gone—”
“Because of the healing factor in the serum.” They say together, as Bucky understands. “Right. And when I check the sheets I don’t find any…evidence. Even though I know I…reached completion. So I have no proof! I feel like I’m going crazy!”
“When was the last time this happened?” Bucky asked. Steve willed the blush to go away again, but he was failing miserably. “About an hour ago.” He mumbled, embarrassed.
“An hour ago?” Bucky said at his normal voice level. “What the hell were you doing sleeping in the middle of the day?”
Steve rolled his eyes at him. “We came back from our morning run and had lunch, and I didn’t have anything else to do.”
“How in the hell can you even sleep in the middle of the day? You require less sleep than I do. I once saw you stay awake for 6 days straight and still run at 100%.”
“That’s why I have to do something extremely physically draining to make myself sleepy.”
“What were you doing before you fell asleep? Did you hit the gym?”
Steve bit his lip, and looked back at the microwave. “Can we…not…can we just leave it at I took a nap?”
“Stevie, I’m trying to help you out! Maybe what you’ve been doing before you fall asleep has been affecting your dreams!” Bucky said, annoyed. Steve leaned forward to rest his elbows on the counter, and put his face in his hands. He rubbed his eyes, unbelieving that this was his life.
“I was…having personal time.” He mumbled into his hands, and had Bucky not had enhanced hearing.
Bucky blinked. “You were jacking off?” Again, he spoke at normal volume and Steve looked around to make sure they were alone. “Why the hell do you call it that, Buck?” He asked, exasperated.
“That’s what they call it these days.”
“Who in the world told you that?”
“Clint.”
“Of course Clint did.”
“Were you watching porn?”
Steve sighed again. “What?” He asked, getting more annoyed.
“Were you watching porn? And if so, what kind? That can affect what you dream about.”
“Why did I discuss this with you?”
Bucky went and grabbed the orange juice carton, and poured himself another glass. “Take it from me Stevie, tentacle porn is not something you want to fall asleep to.”
“I wish this conversation would stop.”
“Shut up, I’m trying to help.”
Steve stole the glass and drank some. “No, I wasn’t watching porn Buck. Now can we never say the word porn again?”
Bucky shook his head. “One day, you’ll get that stick out of your ass. Hell, you might even put something else up there and discover you like it.”
Steve banged his head on the counter, willing the ground to swallow him whole. “Okay, moving on. So you weren’t watching porn. What’d you use? Magazine?”
Steve rubbed his eyes more. “No Buck, I didn’t use a magazine. I just used my imagination.”
“Your imagination? That hasn’t worked for me since I was 12.”
“I have a pretty good one. Plus a photographic memory.”
“Well who’d you pull from the spank bank? Rita Hayworth?”
“No. Where did you hear spank bank?”
“From Clint. He said Darcy says it all the time, so apparently it’s a girl thing too.”
“Darcy said it in my dream.”
“There you go. Spank bank for the win. You know she told Clint she uses you in her spank bank too.”
“I’m putting spank bank on the list right after porn. And I swear Buck, stop talking about her like that.”
Once again, Bucky took a really good look at his best friend. “You really like this girl, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do!” Steve ran his hand through his hair. “Which wouldn’t be a problem if I didn’t put my foot in my mouth every time I spoke to her. It’s like my IQ drops down to squat when she’s around.”
“When did you last see her?”
“This morning, when we got back from the run. The first time I had a dream about her was last night and, Jesus Buck, I couldn’t even look her in the eye this morning. I felt like such a pervert. But I swear, it’s like she knew I had a dream about her.”
“And then it happened again around lunch?”
Steve nodded, finally having all his cards on the table.
Bucky nodded at all the information he’d received.
“Do you talk to her in your dreams?”
“No, there’s never really much…talking involved. I wish there was though. I’d love to have all of it. The conversations, the love making, the whole package.” Steve said sadly.
“You should talk to her.” He said.
Steve looked at him like he grew two heads. “Sure, right after you talk to Clint.”
Bucky rolled his eyes, decidedly ignoring that. “I mean it. If you like her, you should tell her. Didn’t we waste enough time not having what we wanted in life? Who knows how much time we have left?”
Steve sat silently, thinking about what his best friend said. “Okay…I’ll ask her out for coffee if I see her tomorrow.”
Bucky stood up, feeling like he’d accomplished his mission. He put his glass in the dishwasher, and put the carton away. Before he left, he turned back to Steve.
“Hey let me ask you something, when you jack off do you do it in the buff or do you just pull your trousers down?” Bucky asked.
“In the buff?” Steve asked, wondering why in the world Bucky wanted to know and yet again how was this his life.
“Yeah, in the nude. Naked as the day you were born. Or do you just pull your pants down?”
“Why in the Sam Hell do you wanna know that, Bucky!” Steve rubbed his forehead in frustration.
“Apparently it’s a modern thing.”
Bucky had made leaps and bounds in his recovery, fully acclimating to the current century and developing a personality different from the James Barnes Steve grew up with. On his journey to rediscovering himself, a lot of his likes and dislikes changed. Things he felt were once personal, he was more open about. Which Steve was fine with, as long as Bucky was happy, Steve was happy. So Steve indulged him.
“Nude.”
“Thank you, as GOD INTENDED IT! Wait till I tell Clint!” Bucky walked away, raving about the fact he was right and Steve confirmed it.
“Bucky!” Steve yelled after him.
He wouldn’t actually tell Clint…
Would he?
TO BE CONTINUED.