1402 words
When Steve thought (imagined, dreamed, hoped, prayed, wished, fantasized) about finding Bucky, it was always some version of Steve finding him and Bucky greeting him with a cheesy grin, a bit sheepish as he called, “Hey, pal. Guess you found me, huh?” and Steve would nod, take a breath and try not to fall to his knees in front of him, sob into his lap like baby. They would get some lunch or dinner (depending on whatever time of day it was) and then Bucky would let Steve take him back home, to Brooklyn. Bucky would want to go back to Brooklyn.
He never imagined… this.
Bucky, standing next to an RV at a gas station out in the middle of nowhere, pumping gas while he kept an eye on a very small dog on the end of the bright pink leash he was holding. The motorhome and the dog weren’t the shocking part.
The shocking part was the light pink skirt he was wearing drifting up in the breeze, revealing his plump ass that was clothed in lacy black fabric.
Good god.
The only indication that this wasn’t a complete fever dream was the presence of a pink glove in place on Bucky’s left hand, hiding the metal arm from view, helped by the long, purple sleeve of the… ripped shirt he was wearing. It revealed his entire midsection and sent Steve’s heart into overdrive.
He felt like he was having a heart attack, serum or not.
Bucky turned towards him then, and Steve was almost too distracted by the sight of the pink cartoon bear on the front of his shirt to notice that Bucky was looking over at him. He wore sunglasses that were bright pink with rhinestones and had pink lenses, but he was definitely looking him.
Steve, panicking, ducked down and slammed his head into the steering wheel, making the car honk. He shut his eyes in humiliation and cursed himself. How very subtle of him. If Natasha were here, she’d be appalled. If Natasha were here, Steve would let her put him out of his misery. After she was done laughing at him.
He heard footsteps and then a knock, which was a surprise. He blinked his eyes open and sat up, staring at Bucky, who was standing on the other side of the glass, a murderous scowl on his devastatingly handsome face.
“What are you doing here?”
Steve gaped at him, floundering for a reply. Wasn’t it obvious?
“I, um…” he began pitifully, before falling silent.
Bucky rolled his eyes, clearly overestimating Steve’s ability for speech. He glanced inside the beat-up old sedan, which the salesman had reassured Steve was a total ‘lemon’ when he had asked him for the worst looking car on his lot. It had only cost three hundred dollars, money Steve was glad to part with if it meant he was able to remain undetected enough so he could find Bucky.
“This heap of junk yours?” Bucky asked him, distracting Steve from gazing lovingly at his face.
“No,” Steve immediately replied, then hastily corrected himself, “Yes. I mean, it could not be, if you want it to?” He cringed at the way he sounded, how desperate he was.
Bucky gave him a heavy look, the same one he gave Steve back before the war when he thought he was being supremely stupid, which was damn near all the time, according to Bucky. Steve almost cried at the look, thinking how lucky he was to see it, when he once thought he’d never see it again.
“Well, I have plans to see the Grand Canyon, and you are not going to stop me, so if you ditch this piece of shit car, I’ll let you come with me. I can't be seen with it.” Bucky sniffed, haughty and pretentious, and Steve huffed a laugh that was almost a sob.
Steve would set his car on fire and chuck it into a Pizza Hut if that’s the only thing that stopped Bucky from letting Steve go with him.
Bucky stepped back, and after a second, Steve realized that he was waiting for Steve to get out, so he scrambled to comply, grabbing his duffle bag and his shield cover from the backseat, succeeding in hitting himself in the face with it as he tried to pull it over the center console.
“Oh my god,” he heard Bucky mutter to himself, which made Steve smile widely at him as he climbed out of his car. Bucky looked him over, shrewd and piercing, and Steve felt his cheeks get warm. He tried to dial back his enthusiasm so Bucky wouldn’t be uncomfortable and regret his decision, remembering what Sam had cautioned him about.
Apparently finding Steve satisfactory, Bucky turned on his heel (of his normal looking black combat boots) and marched back over to his RV, and Steve’s face went up in flames when the breeze lifted Bucky’s skirt again, and he averted his eyes with a nearly inaudible strangled noise. The dog was tied to the passenger’s side mirror, and Bucky quickly undid the knot, and before Steve could foresee it happening, bent over to pick the dog up.
The action revealed the lacy black underwear and the entire lower curve of his asscheek.
Steve mentally upgraded that heart attack to an aneurysm and prayed to the patron saint of blue balls and homosexual behavior that he wouldn’t cum inside his pants.
“There you go, punk,” Bucky said, providing a distraction to a grateful Steve.
“Yeah, Buck?” he had missed half of what Bucky said, engaged in deviant homosexual behavior, or so some people would say. The dog was now inside the passenger’s seat, strapped into a harness fastened to the seatbelt.
Bucky twitched a little and gave him a weird look.
Shit, was he creeped out by Steve? Just the idea made Steve want to crawl into a small hole and expire.
“Fuck, I forgot,” Bucky said suddenly, reaching out to grab the dog again, unfastening his harness from the seatbelt entirely. “You’ll have to hold him on your lap.”
“Okay, that’s fine,” Steve said immediately, eyeing the dog. It was a boy, a shorthaired breed that he couldn’t remember the name of. He had eyes that bugged outwards and a very small snout. He was cute, and probably didn’t weigh even five pounds.
Steve climbed into the seat and grabbed his seatbelt, letting Bucky refasten his dog into it before he snapped it into place. Bucky closed the door, grabbed Steve’s stuff and tossed it into the back.
“Hi, buddy, what’s your name?” he smiled down at the dog in his lap, who looked up at him and suddenly snarled, lunging up and going for Steve’s face, making him flinch back in shock. Luckily, the harness prohibited the full movement. Bucky climbed into the driver’s side and only spared the attacking dog a glance before starting the RV and driving away.
“Uh…” Steve began dumbly, wondering what to say in his defense. He didn’t even know what he did to deserve the attack. Finally, he decided to just grab him and hold him close to his body, effectively immobilizing the little furball of rage, and probably making him even angrier.
He looked over at Bucky, making sure this was alright, and received a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah, he’ll do that sometimes. Did you smile at him? He hates it when people smile at him. He hates anything bigger than he is, too, so get ready for being the target of all his pent-up anger all the time. I stole him from a lady who was jerking him around on his leash all the time, so I figure he’s just working through some issues.”
Steve looked away then, down at the dog that was painfully reminiscent of Bucky, and felt a lump in his throat. What a horrible metaphor.
“I think he’s amazing,” he told Bucky thickly, smiling at him. “I love him.”
Steve caught a glimpse of pink on Bucky’s cheekbones, half hidden under the huge pink sunglasses. “How embarrassing,” Bucky mumbled, and Steve pretended not to hear him, his cheeks actually hurting from how widely he was grinning.
In spite of the less than five-pound trembling ball of rage in his lap that was trying his damndest to bite his arm clean off his body, Steve had never felt in higher spirits.