Chapter 5
Bucky Barnes is a showoff.
His memories from before the war are blurry, but he can recall, sometimes, the way it felt to charm a girl, make her laugh, spin her in his arms, cock his hat at a jaunty angle and swagger over to her.
He can remember, a little bit, the way it felt to rescue Steve from some back alley brawl, and how good it felt to take control that way.
And then—well. HYDRA had given him missions, and it had been his job to complete them as he saw fit. And he often saw fit to jump from buildings, leap into traffic, and otherwise make a scene.
So. Bucky knows that he has a bit of a thing for attention. Steve even told him that back in grammar school, their first grade teacher had informed Buck’s mother that he “was a troublemaker because he wanted all eyes on him.” Steve had laughed as he’d told the story, eyes full of affection and most certainly all on Bucky.
Given all of this, it’s not really a surprise that since The Ice Cream Incident, Bucky has been eating like it’s his job. Steve likes it. Steve can’t keep his eyes off of him when he does it. Bucky is already the center of Steve’s world—he knows this the way that he knows the sun rises in the east and the sky is blue—and on a day when he’s on his second meatball sub and third can of Coke at lunch, propped up at the kitchen table, panting, Steve’s world shrinks to nothing more than Bucky. He is not just the center; he is everything. Bucky is pretty sure that the world could fall to ashes around them and as long as he shoved another handful of chips into his mouth, Steve would just stand there, gazing at him like he hung the moon.
So Bucky eats. He eats Oreos and king sized Hershey’s bars. Graham crackers. Cupcakes Steve brings home from a little frou frou bakery. This cheesecake that Bucky discovers in the frozen food section of the grocery store where every slice is a different flavor. Boxes of Chinese food—spicy kung pao chicken, beef and broccoli, container after container of fried rice, egg rolls, wontons. Convenience meals, whole frozen lasagnas that he can pop in the oven and then methodically consume whole over the course of an evening.
He eats until his belly hurts, until his jeans don’t have a hope of fitting, until he lives in track pants that dig into his chubby sides, itch and dig at his chunky waist even though he wears them slung under the blubbery curve of his lower belly, where the skin has grown soft and so, so sensitive.
And through it all Steve just watches, wide-eyed and panting after Bucky. It’s a heady feeling, to have so much of Steve’s undivided attention.
Bucky still isn’t sure of the objective of this game they’re playing. They haven’t—technically—fucked yet. They kiss, hot and slow and lazy, on the couch and in bed and once, memorably, up against the wall in the kitchen. They swap handjobs, sometimes slow and painstaking, other times fast and rough, almost agonizing in their intensity. And Steve touches Bucky’s belly, rubs it and pinches it and pokes his long, pretty fingers into Bucky’s increasingly fat tummy.
Sometimes it feels like the atmosphere in the apartment is nearly aflame, crackling with a sexual tension that is only marginally eased by handjobs and frotting and frantic adolescent kisses. It feels like something has to give, like a wire stretches between them, taut and razor-thin, pulled a bit farther with each day, each bite, each ounce that Bucky packs onto his thick frame.
*
It all comes to a head—finally—one evening when Steve is at Stark Tower, doing something or other. He would tell Bucky about it, Bucky knows, if Bucky ever encouraged that line of conversation at all. Bucky doesn’t. He doesn’t want to get involved, doesn’t want to have anything to do with any of it. He knows that at some point there will be a conversation about it—what does he want to do? Would he join the Avengers? And a part of Bucky thinks he should. Thinks he owes them his time, his effort, his supersoldier abilities, as if he could ever repay his debts to the world or atone for the sins he was forced to commit.
But another part of him—the larger part—doesn’t give a shit about any of it. Doesn’t want any truck with politics or government or the greater good, by anyone’s definition. He wants no ideologies, no dogma, no rhetoric about what must be done. He wants, mostly, Steve and good food and to sit on his ass. So he does.
On this particular night, Steve says he’ll be gone for a few hours, and he kisses Bucky on the cheek as he heads to the door, like Buck is some housewife he’s leaving behind for the evening. “Have fun, sugar,” Bucky tells him, playing up the part and winking at him, just for the fun of watching Steve break into one of those ray-of-light smiles, like Buck is the best thing he’s ever seen,.
As soon as Steve’s gone, Bucky orders pizza. It’s probably his favorite thing, food-wise. It’s not the best food he’s eaten since he’s been here with Steve, or the fanciest, not by a long shot. But it’s good. Simple. Bucky orders a large sausage, bacon, and pepperoni pie, along with a large order of breadsticks, which has become his go-to order. At the last second he throws in a two-liter of Coke, because he used the last can of soda in the house to make an ice cream float with his lunch.
The guy on the phone says it’ll be forty minutes, which seems like an awfully long time, and Bucky ends up nosing through the kitchen for snacks. Steve, bless him, keeps it incredibly well stocked, like he’s providing for a football team instead of himself and Bucky.
Bucky ends up finding a box of Twinkies and a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips. He eyes the box of Twinkies for a minute before shrugging and grabbing the entire thing, taking it and the chips back to the couch.
He starts with the Twinkies. He tells himself he’ll only eat a couple, but even he knows it’s a lie. If he’d only wanted a couple, he wouldn’t have brought the whole box back to the couch.
The thing about Twinkies, anyway, is that they’re really not very big. Three bites, maybe four if he’s being conservative. They go down quickly, easily. And they’re good, sweet and fluffy. Soft.
He doesn’t even feel full when he plucks the last one out of the box. Just happy, tingling with that little low-caliber thrum of pleasure that he gets whenever he’s eating like this.
The chips are sort of an afterthought, just something to do with his hands while he waits for the pizza. The salty-sharp flavor of them is a perfect antidote to the sticky sweetness of the Twinkies, and he ends up eating them mindlessly, crunching through handful after handful while he watches Orange is the New Black on Netflix. He doesn’t get all the jokes, and he thinks Chapman is a bitch, but he likes Taystee, and Red’s accent is strangely soothing. He’s pretty into it—this episode the prisoners are chasing a magical chicken or some shit—and he’s legitimately surprised when he hits the bottom of the bag.
About the moment he realizes he’s just consumed a box of Twinkies and an entire bag of chips, his pizza arrives.
So here’s the thing. Yeah, he’s eaten a lot, kind of, already, but he’s not exactly stuffed. He’s pretty full, but his belly doesn’t hurt or anything. It’s a little bloated, but if he’s being honest with himself, his tummy is sort of permanently bloated lately. So maybe looking down at empty junk food wrappers and a soft, fat belly should give him pause, but it doesn’t. He just answers the door, pays the guy, and drags his food back to the couch.
The first half of the pizza goes down easily, and he chases it with long pulls from the bottle of Coke. His tummy aches now, heavy and hard in his lap, but it still doesn’t exactly hurt. The elastic of his waistband is cutting into him, and he can’t quite get comfortable, but it’s not painful, per se.
The second half is harder. His tummy keeps gurgling, and it’s hard to take a deep breath. He stops putting the Coke on the floor and props it against the couch cushions so that he won’t have to bend over.
There is no sane reason to keep eating. He knows that. His henley—which had already been stretched tight over his fat middle, clinging to his belly button and prone to riding up over his love handles—has worked its way up, exposing a couple inches of wobbly lower belly. He feels hot, fat and uncomfortable. He should stop.
But he doesn’t. He has no idea why, but he doesn’t. Instead he just keeps going, methodical and steady, like it’s his job. Like his handler told him to.
He’s not crazy, no matter how anxious Steve gets sometimes, looking at him. He knows he doesn’t have a handler. He knows stuffing himself like a pig, eating until he’s gasping and swollen, isn’t his mission.
But there’s something about it that’s soothing, like following orders, all the same. The routine of it. The strangely alluring challenge.
Plus food tastes fucking good, and do you think the fist of fuckin’ HYDRA got very many decent meals? No. No he did not. So Bucky’s not about to squander the opportunity to make up for it.
When he gets the last bite down, his tummy is throbbing. He looks obscenely bloated, like a cartoon character who swallowed a watermelon.
Fuck. He tries to catch his breath, but he can’t inhale fully, just short little pants punctuated by occasional hiccups. His poor distended tummy bounces with each one, and he’s pretty well miserable, really.
He rubs his tummy gingerly, wincing, and nearly cries in relief when the hiccups fade. It’s small comfort, though. He still hurts, his poor belly churning. He’s hot, a little sweaty, sticky and fat and miserable.
That’s when Steve opens the front door.
Bucky is curled up in the fetal position, cradling his big belly, and Steve skids to a halt just a few steps into the living room, staring.
“Hey,” Bucky says, because he figures he should speak even if he can’t bring himself to sit up—or even find the energy to try to tug his shirt down over his gut.
“Hey, Buck. You okay?” Steve’s voice is weirdly gentle, like he’s afraid Bucky might be having some sort of episode.
“Full,” Bucky grunts. “Hurts.”
Steve is beside him instantly, kneeling down next to the couch. “Poor baby,” he murmurs, like this is a thing that happened to Bucky, rather than a thing that Bucky did to himself.
Bucky blinks up at him, and fuck, Steve looks so concerned, like he’s just beside himself that Bucky has a fucking belly ache because he’s a fat ass with no self control.
Steve reaches out a hand and lays it on the crest of Bucky’s belly. He’s careful, but Bucky still hisses at the contact.
“Shh, sweetheart, I got you.” Steve’s voice is a soft little singsong, like Bucky is a sick child. “Can you sit up?”
Bucky shrugs, squirming around and heaving himself upright. “Fuck. Ate too much, Stevie.”
“I see that, pal,” Steve says, eyeballing Bucky’s fat belly—which looks even fatter now that he’s sitting up and it’s being pushed forward.
Steve sprawls onto the couch next to him and pulls Bucky flush against him. “Want me to rub it?”
Bucky nods, feeling embarrassed for the first time since they’ve started this. Finishing everything had seemed like a grand idea, but now he regrets it a little, feels silly and overfed next to Steve and his my-six-pack-is-visible-through-my-shirt body.
“What’d you eat?” Steve asks, gently pushing and rubbing into Bucky’s bloated gut.
“Pizza,” Bucky says. “And breadsticks.”
“And Twinkies?” Steve asks, looking at the empty box and wrappers on the floor.
“And the chips,” Bucky agrees. “And Coke.”
“No wonder you have a stomachache,” Steve says, shaking his head.
Bucky closes his eyes, drifts a little on pain and the feeling of Steve’s firm, strong hands on his stuffed belly.
He loses probably half an hour, not exactly asleep, just resting, letting Steve take care of him until he feels better. Steve rubs his belly like a champ, gradually pushing a little harder, pressing out some of the pain. His fingers move carefully over the top of Bucky’s stomach, where he’s stretched the tightest, and push in harder along the bottom roll, where he’s soft and flabby even now, as swollen and full as he is. And they work, Steve’s big hands. Bucky’s breathing evens out, and he starts to feel like he isn’t panting, like he hasn’t just sprinted up a few flights of stairs.
“Poor baby,” Steve mumbles, still kneading and rubbing at Bucky’s gut. “Think you can make it back to the bedroom?”
Bucky nods, happy to let Steve take control, put him to bed.
And Steve does, walking slowly beside Bucky as Bucky cradles his stomach with both hands.
Steve helps him undress, too, laying him down on the bed and pulling off his boots, tugging hard to get Bucky’s too-tight track pants over his fleshy hips and thick thighs. “How’d you even get in these things, Buck? They’re way too tight.”
“You callin’ me fat?” Bucky jokes weakly.
Steve lays a big hand on Bucky’s lower belly and squeezes lightly. “I’m saying you need some new pants, pal.” Steve grins. “And calling you fat. But I like it.”
“Weird bastard.”
Steve pulls at Bucky’s henley until Bucky grudgingly raises himself up enough for Steve to tug it over his head, grumbling the entire time.
“You ate an entire box of Twinkies and a bag of chips as an appetizer, sweetheart. Who’s the weird one again?”
Bucky’s too full and fat to try too hard, but he smirks a little. “I did it for you, baby, ‘cause I know it gets you off.”
“Not when you’re hurt,” Steve immediately protests, shucking his own jeans and pulling one of his ridiculously small shirts over his head and tossing it toward the hamper.
Bucky nods. “Yeah, yeah, I know.” He reaches down, poking a metal finger into the soft fat of his lower belly. “I was just really hungry.”
Steve gets a look in his eye, and Bucky hides a smile. Fucking kinky bastard.
“Next time don’t eat so much we can’t fool around. Kinda puts a damper on things, Buck.” Steve gives him his best earnest Captain America voice.
Bucky snorts. “You think I can’t fool around?”
“I think if you move you’ll explode,” Steve says dryly. He climbs into bed and very carefully rolls Bucky onto his side.
“You’re gonna be the big spoon?” Bucky says, feigning indignation when truthfully he kind of liked the feeling of Steve maneuvering his big body.
“Shh,” Steve says, not taking the bait. He just throws an arm over Bucky and grips his belly, rubbing. “Sleep it off, pal.”
Bucky’s almost asleep when Steve adds, “I’m taking you clothes shopping tomorrow. That shirt is indecent.”