Chapter 6
As it turns out, Bucky manages to avoid clothes shopping for weeks. Steve gets busy with the Avengers—something something, a threat, something something, national security, it’s all very tedious and Bucky practically claps his hands over his ears and hums whenever Steve mentions it, because no, he does not want to participate and no, he does not care—and then Bucky gets busy, which Steve is downright shocked about. Although he hates to admit it, Steve had gotten used to thinking of Bucky as a bit of an invalid, and it is surprises him when Bucky starts to function a bit more. He settles into an easy, if unconventional, friendship with Natasha, and they hang out—without Steve!—on a regular basis. After he quizzes Bucky, Steve learns that they mostly play chess and order Chinese food.
Steve couldn’t be prouder of Bucky if he were a kindergartner who made a friend on the playground.
The upshot of all this busy-ness, though, is that nearly a month passes, and Bucky still doesn’t have any new clothes.
What he does have is probably ten additional pounds, most of which seem to have landed around his broad waist and big belly.
None of his jeans have a chance of fitting, and he ambles around in straining sweatpants, the waistband slung low under his tummy. His t-shirts cling to his softer chest and the prominent bulge of his gut, and even his underwear are too small, leaving angry red marks on his hips where they cut into him, lovehandles spilling over.
It’s all driving Steve crazy. For months now they’ve been in this weird place, not quite together, at least not officially, but definitely more than friends. Yet they aren’t actually fucking, just swapping hand jobs like teenagers, and they are ninety goddamn years old.
They don’t really talk much about what it is they’re doing. Honestly, they don’t talk about it at all. The food, the kissing, Bucky’s rather spectacular weight gain over the last few months. It just…happens.
It’s the happiest Steve’s ever been.
“We’re going shopping,” Steve says one morning, fixing Bucky with Serious Captain America face over the breakfast table. He hasn’t necessarily been dying to force the issue, but the time has come. If this goes on any longer, Bucky is going to explode out of last pair of sweats—and Steve is just going to explode, period.
Bucky looks up from his third enormous bowl of Lucky Charms. “For what, pal?” He reaches down to his side and tugs at the hem of his t-shirt, and Steve can’t see it, but he bets it’s ridden up to expose an inch or two of the soft roll that he carries on either side of his waist.
“For clothes that fit you,” Steve says grimly.
*
Bucky gestures for Steve to join him in the dressing room, and Steve only hesitates for a moment before he ducks inside, saying a silent little prayer that no one is taking a cell phone video of Captain America disappearing inside a changing room with a very chubby, very attractive, very stabby-looking stranger. He isn’t opposed to coming out—would take Bucky to the fucking White House and hold his hand at a state dinner, if Bucky would deign to make such a public appearance, which he absolutely would not—but he’d prefer to do it on his own, with a little more class than to be caught in a dressing room with his Not Technically Boyfriend.
But does that mean Steve is willing to miss the opportunity to watch Bucky try on clothes and potentially struggle to button them over his newly grown tummy, his recently thickened thighs, his perfect little lovehandles that never used to be there? No, no it does not. There is precious little that could make Steve miss this show.
So he follows Bucky into the little room and shuts the door behind them, locking it carefully. Bucky gives him one of those big-eyed, hard-to-read gazes he’s so fond of these days, and his left eyebrow quirks minutely. It’s almost nothing, but Steve knows what it means—Bucky is a little amused, a little turned on, and a lot aware of exactly what sort of filth Steve is already cooking up.
Damn Bucky. He can read Steve like a pulp novel. Always could.
“What’d you get me?” Bucky asks, stripping off the glove from his metal hand and tossing it onto the little chair in the corner of the room.
Steve hands over a stack of jeans first. “I wasn’t sure—uh, what to get—I got a couple different sizes,” Steve says.
Bucky nods once, and Steve admires his double chin as Bucky sorts through the stack. He ends up grabbing the smallest pair Steve selected, a pair of dark wash 34s that Steve would bet his eyeteeth won’t fit. He had only picked them up as a sop to Bucky’s ego, in case it might matter. (It was hard to say, since he and Bucky aren’t talking about any of this, just doing it, frotting all over each other and jerking off like kids while Bucky eats his weight in junk food because they are ridiculous failures at being grownups.)
Bucky tugs off his sweatpants, and Steve admires the fact that Bucky’s Sweatpants Removal Process includes wriggling his hips and shimmying down a little, the pooch of his tummy jiggling adorably, because the sweats are way too tight to just come off smoothly like they should.
“Look at that,” Steve breathes, reaching out across the small space and tracing the red, indented line on the side of Bucky’s tummy where the elastic waistband had been digging into his skin. “All those marks, Bucky, and –“ Steve stops on an inhale, tracing his index finger farther across the edge of Bucky’s belly to his side, where two angry red lines are marching up the soft roll of fat at Bucky’s waist.
“What?”
“You have—you. Um, you got stretch marks,” Steve says, swallowing hard. “Right here. On your side.”
Bucky twists around to look, and the movement makes the soft flesh on his upper ribs crease. Steve swallows again.
“Well, shit,” Bucky says, not sounding all that alarmed.
“It’s cute,” Steve says quietly, running his fingers over the marks.
“Fucking deviant. Captain America is a fucking sexual deviant.” Bucky’s voice is low—low enough, Steve hopes, that no one else in a nearby stall can hear him—and gentle, like “fucking sexual deviant” is some kind of term of endearment.
“Keep your hands to yourself, Steve, let me try these on.”
Steve blinks, tearing his gaze away from Bucky’s marked-up love handle and looking seriously at the jeans in Bucky’s hands. “There’s no way those are gonna fit,” he blurts out.
Bucky raises an eyebrow and gives Steve A Look. “What’re you sayin’, bud?”
“You’re too fat for those jeans, is what I’m saying,” Steve says, not even trying to pretend he’s not grinning. He reaches out and gives Bucky’s tummy a solid little slap, gentle but still firm enough to resonate. “No way.”
Bucky’s lip curls in reciprocation. It’s not a full grin, not like a Captain America smile, or even a pre-WWII Bucky Barnes smile, but it is enough, and Steve melts under it. “If you knew they weren’t gonna fit, why’d you pick them up?”
Steve ducks his head a little bit. “Didn’t want to make you feel bad?”
Bucky rolls his eyes. “Steve, I ate an entire pan of lasagna last night and then you fed me ice cream. Like a lot of it.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know how you felt about it,” Steve says weakly, scanning Bucky’s face.
Bucky snorts. “You jerked me till I came all over my own gut, Rogers. How do you think I felt about it?”
“Willing to do it for me?”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Steve. We ain’t all as noble and self-sacrificing as Captain Goddamn America.” Bucky’s words are harsh, but his voice isn’t. “You bring any jeans back here that I can actually get over my goddamn thighs?”
Steve blushes and grins harder, wordlessly handing over a pair of 38s. Bucky checks the tag and clucks his tongue, like Steve is a wayward and recalcitrant child of whom no better can be expected.
The jeans fit. “Whaddya think, pal?” Bucky turns to face Steve, barefoot and shirtless, new jeans looking crisp and spanking new.
Steve reaches out and sticks two fingers under the waistband, tugging a little. There’s quite a bit of room—he could, maybe, have gone with 36s. “Got a little room,” he says.
Bucky doesn’t say anything, but Steve has grown remarkably fluent in speaking Bucky Face. This particular expression is a very clear, “bitch, please.”
“A little room is probably a good thing,” Steve ventures.
“Living with you, it won’t last long,” Bucky mutters, rooting through the stack of shirts Steve has brought back and shrugging into a pretty blue and gray flannel.
He turns back to Steve, gesturing mutely at the buttons, and Steve immediately obliges. Bucky can do very close work with his metal hand—the cybernetics are amazing, and he once told Steve that he could embroider a very nice sampler with those terrifying metal fingers—but he doesn’t like to do it, doesn’t like the sensation of manipulating the metal appendages using fine motor skills. While it’s possible to do fine work, the arm is better suited, Steve gathers, for ripping shit apart.
So Steve buttons Bucky’s shirt for him, working from the chest down.
It gets to be a bit of a strain when he hits the top of Bucky’s tummy, and by the time he gets even with Bucky’s belly button, little snatches of belly are exposed between the stressed closures.
“What size is this?” Steve asks, buttoning the bottom two just for the hell of it.
Bucky shrugs, and Steve grabs the tag, flipping it so they can both see it. Large. “Guess your tummy is an extra large, pal.”
“Whose fault is that?” Bucky asks, tugging the shirt over his head and proceeding to root through the stack again.
Steve feels his cheeks burn a little. “If you don’t want to do this, Bucky—“
“Relax,” Bucky interrupts, his voice muffled from the shirt he’s pulling on. “You think I’m gonna complain about eating whatever I want and rubbing off against Captain America every night?” His head emerges from the shirt and he pulls it down. Another fucking henley. Red, even. Steve didn’t choose this one himself—Bucky must have picked it out special. Steve looks Bucky up and down. This shirt—unlike the one Bucky’s been wearing for months that has been driving Steve to distraction with the way it clings to every extra ounce Bucky carries, the way it pulls tight over his soft pecs and outlines the round curve of Bucky’s tummy, the way it folds and pulls over the rolls at Bucky’s sides, the way the slightest move makes it slide up and expose Bucky’s soft underbelly—fits. The thing is, fits is a relative term. It fits, in that it doesn’t look like a second skin, and Buck could probably even raise his arms without exposing his tummy. But it doesn’t disguise any of Bucky’s size, this new shirt. If anything, it accentuates it, how wide he is, how achingly fucking thick.
Steve is staring. “Get that one,” he says.
Bucky gives him another one of those almost-blank looks, blue eyes impossibly wide in his soft, handsome face. “Okay,” he finally says. “But I’m keeping the old one, too.”
Jesus Christ.
*
That night, Steve makes spaghetti and meatballs and watches Bucky park himself on the couch and inhale four plates of the stuff, eating with his usual mindless efficiency, like it’s his job to work through the entire huge batch.
He’s wearing brand new track pants—which are still tucked into his boots, but at least look like they fit comfortably and aren’t about to cut him in half—and a new t-shirt. He looks relaxed, strands of hair pulling free from the messy bun at his nape and falling forward, framing his chubby cheeks.
He looks fucking gorgeous, and Steve can’t take his eyes off him.
When Bucky’s finally finished, setting aside his plate with a sweet little “oof,” like he’s suddenly realizing how much pasta he’s consumed, Steve wants to just climb all over him, grind against him and come in his pants like a fucking teenager. And—Jesus—that’s basically what they do most nights, although sometimes they actually progress to handjobs instead of just desperate, ridiculous leg-humping.
Tonight, though, Bucky seems to have other ideas, and when Steve stands up to take Bucky’s plate to the kitchen, Bucky reaches out and grabs Steve’s hand, using him as leverage to pull himself up off the couch.
“Rogers, you ever gonna let me take you to bed?” Bucky says, one eyebrow cocked up just a little, a ghost of a smile digging at the corner of his mouth. “Or you one of those girls that just keeps a guy at second base forever?”
Steve stumbles, and Bucky calmly pulls Steve up against him, until Steve can feel Bucky’s ball of a belly pressed up against his own abs. Jesus—it’s overwhelming, all of it. The feel of Bucky, stuffed full and warm against him. The sound of Bucky’s voice, husky and teasing, the way it sounds in Steve’s memory from so long ago, a lifetime ago.
The idea of it, of finally, finally fucking.
Bucky doesn’t seem bothered by Steve’s silence, just smiles a little more and adds, “I need to make an honest woman of you first or something?”
Steve rolls his eyes, getting with the program. “Been waiting on you, Buck.”
Bucky responds by tugging Steve backwards, towards the bedroom, his metal arm heavy on Steve’s lower back, moving him effortlessly.
When they get to bed, Bucky shucks his shirt and lies down, pants and boots still in place, resting his hand under the curve of his bloated tummy, cradling it. Steve crawls up beside him, just looking. He’ll never get tired of looking at Bucky, just staring at him, feeling that weird sort of awe that it’s really him, that he’s really here—a feeling he’s been having, to varying degrees, since the day he saw the Winter Soldier for the very first time.
“Well, pal, how you wanna do this?” Bucky asks, pulling Steve over to him and down into a kiss. It’s gentle, a little lazy, and when Bucky bites down on Steve’s bottom lip and then sucks it into his mouth, Steve gasps.
“Uh—“ Steve mumbles against Bucky’s mouth. “Want, want you inside me.” And he does, god, he does. He wants to fuck Bucky, too—wants to put Bucky on all fours, push into him from behind and reach around, hold onto Bucky’s big belly, push into and against Bucky’s big, solid body. He wants so much. But tonight, right now—tonight he wants Bucky inside him.
He can feel Bucky’s smile against his own lips, and then, almost before Steve can realize it, Bucky’s flipped them over, so that Steve is on his back and Bucky’s on top of him, pinning him against the mattress, and fuck, Steve is gasping, breathless from the sexy, perfect shock of it. He’s trapped under Bucky’s big body, held in place by Bucky’s unyielding metal arm, hard and awful and completely at odds with his body, which is thick and substantial but soft. The two aspects of Bucky’s body, flesh and metal, are at odds and incongruous in a way that should, maybe, be grotesque, but isn’t anything but overwhelmingly, earth-shatteringly hot.
Bucky leans forward a little, kisses him slow and thorough, in that same weirdly mechanical, technically proficient way he has when he’s plowing through plate after plate of food. His full, swollen tummy rests against Steve’s abs, soft and heavy at the same time.
Bucky pulls Steve’s clothes off of him systematically, shirt over head, pants down legs, looking intensely focused on the task, and Steve can’t do anything but watch, writhing a little under Bucky.
Steve isn’t surprised when Bucky dumps lube into his flesh hand and preps Steve with that same methodic, precise approach that he uses with everything these days. He’s gentle, watching Steve’s face carefully as he works, blue eyes intent. When he pushes against Steve’s prostate, Steve shudders, and Bucky promptly adds a second finger, eyes never wavering.
By the time he’s three fingers deep, Steve is keening a little, rocking shamelessly against Bucky’s hand, and Bucky is making soft little “shush” noises, like Steve is hurt or something, like Bucky has to comfort him.
“Please, Buck, please,” Steve finally whispers, barely coherent, and Bucky immediately pulls his fingers free, leaving Steve to gasp with the sudden emptiness of it.
“Shh, shh, shh, you’re okay,” Bucky whispers, and Steve pulls his knees up even higher, feeling exposed and empty, frighteningly vulnerable, completely naked while Bucky’s still half-dressed, still has his goddamn boots on and just has his pants shoved down his hips far enough to pull his cock out and slick it up.
“There,” Buck says, like he’s doing Steve a favor when he lines his cock up and presses forward, rolling his hips hard against Steve. It isn’t rough but it’s unyielding, and Steve pants, feeling hot all over at the sudden intrusion, so much more that Bucky’s fingers or his own.
It hurts, and Steve can’t quite catch his breath, but Bucky just waits, braced over him, until Steve feels himself start to relax.
When Bucky does start to move, it takes Steve’s breath away. The sensation of being so fucking full, of having Bucky’s cock sliding into him, is part of it, of course. But it’s equally overwhelming to be under Bucky like this, Bucky’s big body covering Steve up, making him feel small, somehow, even though nothing about Captain America is small.
Steve lets himself feel that way, though, wraps his arms around Bucky’s broad waist and grips his lower back, reveling in the way he can grasp ahold of Bucky’s pudge and hold on for dear life.
“So good, sweetheart,” Bucky mumbles, and shit, there’s something about those words, the casual praise and the endearment, the easy intimacy of it, that makes Steve writhe in pleasure, snap his hips up even though there’s really nowhere for him to go, pinned against the mattress the way he is. His dick is trapped between his own belly and Bucky’s, the hardness of his own body and the enveloping softness of Bucky’s, and fuck, Steve doesn’t even try to reach down and grab his own cock. Just closes his eyes and lets himself feel everything Bucky’s doing, lets himself thrust up against Bucky’s big, full belly.
He cries out when he comes, Bucky’s name over and over, like it’s all he can think of in the world, like his whole experience has boiled down to Bucky, Bucky, Bucky.
And it does, really. Everything that counts. Everything that’s real.
Bucky. Bucky. Bucky.
*
One Year Later
Bucky’s laughter is low but warm, a soft little grace note punctuating the louder, more boisterous conversation between Clint and Nat. Every time Bucky’s little chuckle floats into the kitchen where Steve is dishing up apple pie, he smiles a little.
He carries Clint and Nat’s plates in first, handing them each a slice. They’re cuddled up together on the loveseat, Natasha looking more relaxed than Steve’s ever seen her.
“You want ice cream on yours, Buck?”
Bucky gives him a look, considering. He looks fucking good, leaned back on the couch, boots up on the sofa, big belly shamelessly front and center, stretched taut under the weave of his red henley—the third incarnation of the shirt, now, and looking noticeably tight around Bucky’s gut. It’s a fairly recent purchase, Steve knows, but it’s definitely pulling tight around the middle. Bucky notices Steve looking at his gut, asshole that he is, and cocks an eyebrow at Steve, giving him a filthy look. “No ice cream yet,” he says. “But make it a big piece, huh?”
Natasha snorts, and Bucky and Steve both ignore her.
“Have I ever brought you a small piece of pie?”
“Maybe during the Depression,” Bucky says seriously, and Steve rolls his eyes. He knows for a fact that Bucky doesn’t even remember the Depression. He just learned about it, after the fact, like everyone else wandering around in the 21st century.
Fucking Bucky. Steve ends up bringing him a slice that is basically a third of the pie, and Bucky just grins at him when Steve deposits it onto the ridge of Bucky’s belly.
He’s not really quite fat enough to balance anything bigger than a beer bottle or a can of soda on his belly yet, but Steve still likes to tease him about it. Bucky doesn’t mind—he even made Steve watch a documentary about otters that he found online, telling Steve that when he got a little fatter he could eat just like they did, with his food perched on his gut. Steve, predictably, had nearly shorted out from arousal, and Bucky had spent a couple weeks giving Steve shit about his “otter boner,” prompting Steve to insist over and over that it had nothing to do with otters and everything to do with Bucky’s belly.
Bucky eats with the same methodical singlemindedness as always, working through the apple pie as if it’s a task to complete. Steve knows he’s happy, though. Even if Buck’s version of happiness is a little too quiet, a little too mechanical. It’s still happiness. And it’s enough.
Later, when Clint and Nat leave, actually holding hands, which is something so pedestrian that he can barely believe Natasha is allowing it, Bucky gives Steve a big, shit-eating grin from his perch on the sofa. “Can I get that ice cream now? Maybe the last piece of pie?”
Steve obediently fetches both, returning with the pie tin in one hand and the carton of ice cream in the other.
“Vanilla ice cream and apple pie.” Bucky gives him a soft look, peering up from under his lashes. “Steve Rogers, even your dessert is All American.”
“You complaining?” Steve asks, pulling a face. “You bored with vanilla?”
“Nope,” Bucky says, drawling out the word and popping the ‘p’ like a snotty kid instead of the century-old war-hero-slash-super-assassin he is. He shifts on the couch, palming the side of his gut and calmly letting Steve spoon a bite of ice cream into his mouth.
“Because I will buy you whatever flavor you want,” Steve continues, talking mostly just for the sake of it as he settles in beside Bucky, not planning to get up again until both ice cream and pie have disappeared down Bucky’s throat. “They make pretty much anything you can think of.”
Bucky bites down on the spoon and shakes his head in an emphatic no, moving the spoon and Steve’s hand back and forth with him for emphasis. “Nope,” he repeats. “You and your plain vanilla are good.”
All things considered, an endorsement of vanilla ice cream is not a declaration of love. Steve’s not sure he’ll ever get one of those, not from Bucky, not in this century.
But it’s good. It’s enough.