Chapter Sixteen
After dinner the following day, Steve remained behind after the others rode out, promising Runa that he would teach her to drive the wagon and buckboard that afternoon when she was done with the dinner dishes.
Soon she was seated on the wagon, the team’s reins in her hands, her entire body tense.
“It’s all right. Relax a bit.” Steve instructed her, “They can feel your tension through the reins.” Runa tried to do as she was told as he quietly and calmly instructed her how to manage the team in the heavy wagon, how to set the break and bring everything to a halt when necessary. “Once you’ve managed to learn how to drive the wagon, the buckboard should be easier.” He assured her. “We didn’t use it much before your arrival, but we’ve kept it in good repair. Now we’ll be using it to get to church, and you can use it to go visiting Laura, or anyone else.”
Runa smiled at that, having begun to relax a bit as she guided the horses around the circular drive in front of the ranch. “I’d like that. Instead of having to ask someone else to always do the driving.”
“I still want someone else to manage the team for you.” He said firmly. “Salt and Pepper are good, steady horses, but I’d feel better if you left their hitching, unhitching, and care to someone else.”
“What if it’s an emergency and I can’t get anyone else?” She asked.
“That’s why I’m going to be teaching you to ride, once you have trousers to wear.”
“Would you feel the same about any woman needing to hitch up the team, or just me because I’m smaller than most?” She asked without looking at him.
Steve was silent as he thought that over. “I don’t know.” He finally confessed. “A little of both. I know you’re capable, it isn’t that,” He hastened to assure her as she bristled a bit, “But if they get spooked they could trample you easily. You wouldn’t have the strength to try to control them. I don’t even have the strength half the time. Horses are strong, and as beautiful as they are, they can be dangerous. And there are enough people working this ranch that you should never have to hitch or unhitch a team, or saddle and unsaddle a horse.” He paused. “I don’t think you’re even tall enough to swing a saddle onto a horse.”
“But you think I’m strong enough?”
“I know you’re stronger than you look.” He said quietly, “No one on this ranch is fool enough to think otherwise. We’ve all seen you slinging around cast iron pans and filled pots that are almost as big as you are.”
She laughed, “The stew pot isn’t that big.”
“All right, half as big as you are. What I mean to say is that we all know you’re strong in your way. You could carry a saddle to a horse easily. It’s the getting the saddle up onto the horse’s back that worries me.”
“Are you going to say that when it comes time to train Allegro to the saddle?”
“Allegro?”
She flushed. “Gingersnap’s colt. I named him Allegro. It was either that or Snickerdoodle, but I think we have too many horses named after food as it is.”
Steve laughed. “All right, so we aren’t an imaginative lot when it comes to naming our horses. But Allegro?”
“Have you seen him in the paddock with Gingersnap? I go out and watch him when my chores are complete or I have a few minutes while waiting on something. He prances and skips around, and never goes at a walk. And since I like music… Allegro.”
Steve nodded. “Allegro it is. Fine name for a fine colt.”
~*~
That night Steve offered to help with the dishes again, and Runa allowed it. Once everything was washed, dried, and put away, she shooed him out of the kitchen, wanting to have things ready for the canning that would begin the next day. Steve headed to the sitting room, where Bucky sat in his chair, a hunk of wood in one hand, a knife in the other. Only Bucky wasn’t carving, he was just staring at the wood accusingly, as if it had done him wrong.
“Something wrong with that piece?” Steve asked as he settled into his chair, not reaching for his sketchbook just yet.
Bucky shook his head, tossing the wood back into the basket by his chair and flipping his pocket knife closed. “Nah. Just don’t feel like carving tonight.”
“Am I still an idiot?” Steve asked quietly. The words had hurt, had hurt far more than he had let on. Bucky’s good opinion meant the world to him, and getting called an idiot by his best guy, well…
Only Bucky wasn’t his best guy any longer.
“No. You’re doing better. Last night and this afternoon… That was good.” Bucky said before they lapsed into silence.
Steve stood up abruptly. “I’m going to head to the bathhouse.” Before Runa’s arrival, he would have asked if Bucky wanted to join him. He wanted to ask now, but knew he shouldn’t. Couldn’t. Not since getting married.
Married, Steve mused as he fetched a towel and headed out to the bath house and started up the fire in the area built for it beneath the building before heading inside to half fill the tub with water.
There were times Steve regretted placing an ad in the Matrimonial Times. Whenever Bucky looked at him or sat next to him he felt guilty for ending things with Bucky. And Steve felt longing at those times as well, longing for what they once had, longing for things to go back to the way they were before Runa arrived. But then he remembered the promise he had made to his Ma, that he would lead a good, happy life, and would find a good woman to marry and have a family with when he was older.
It was seeing Laura Barton at church only a week after Nathaniel was born that reminded him of the promise. Seeing her with the baby had been like a punch to the gut, and when she had caught him staring at Nathaniel she had asked Steve if he wanted to hold the baby. Steve said yes immediately, and well… He could have been knocked over with a feather at the feeling of longing that shot through him. He had held that tiny body and looked down at the wizened features of the newborn and realized that this was what he wanted. As much as he loved Bucky, loved him with all his heart, they couldn’t have children together. Sure, they could make an arrangement with Nat or one of her girls at the Desert Rose, but… That didn’t sit right with him.
It wasn’t what Sarah Rogers had wanted for her sunshine boy.
That night he had loved Bucky with an intensity that almost scared him. Bucky had loved him right back, and it had all been a tangle of limbs, hair pulling, and the scraping of teeth against flesh as they came together. Afterwards Steve had laid in bed beside Bucky, watching the man he loved sleep, and knew he was about to break both their hearts, even though they had never said anything about their feelings out loud to one another. He knew he loved Bucky, and Bucky loved him.
They were with one another to the end of the line.
The next day Steve had written out his ad for the matrimonial times, because if he wanted to have children, he should have a wife to have them with. He had been purposefully blunt in his ad, a part of him not wanting anyone to answer, hoped that his plain words would discourage anyone from answering. If no one answered, he could at least say he tried to do what his Ma had wanted but it hadn’t panned out. He and Bucky could continue on as they had been and things would stay the same. Maybe the longing for children would go away with time.
In the three months that the advertisement had run in the paper, it didn’t. It only grew.
Then, just when he was starting to think about ending the run of the ad, he had received Runa’s letter.
It had been stiff and formal, the handwriting elegant, but he hadn’t been able to get a feel for her through what she had written to him. Still, it was the only letter he had received, so he felt duty bound to reply to it. He had thought that she might be put off when he wrote that he wanted Bucky to remain in the house. Bucky had read the letter before he sent it and said the same thing, that it would probably make her want to keep far away from them, but Steve had shrugged. If she couldn’t accept Bucky as close family, she didn’t belong on the ranch.
It was her second letter that made him smile. She had seemed so excited that he had written back to her. Had seemed so pleased that there was a large family waiting for her, even though they weren’t related by blood. And when he had read the word “orphaned”, he knew he wanted her to come to Amaranto Springs and Bluestone Ranch. He told himself that stiff and formal first letter was from a young woman used to being alone, and afraid of rejection.
The letters hadn’t prepared him for the reality of her arrival.
He had been an idiot, he thought as he tested the water with his hand before going out and banking the fire so the embers would keep it warm without being too hot. He went back inside the bath house and stripped, finally climbing into the metal tub and sitting down on the cedar rack that fit snugly inside the tub and kept him from burning himself against heated metal. An absolute, complete and total idiot.
Steve had tried to prepare for Runa’s arrival, had thought he had everything well in hand. He had sent the train ticket with his letter, and had immediately gone to Reverend Fury to tell him there would be a wedding soon. He had seen that Barton’s wagon at the mercantile, and went in to talk to Laura, had asked her what he needed to make sure his bride wouldn’t find things lacking. Steve had been told by a stunned Laura that she would probably want a bath and a change after arriving, so he had gone to arrange things with Pepper Potts. Meanwhile, Scott, who had overheard the exchange, was quite happy to spread the news that Steve Rogers was expecting a bride.
Reactions had been… Mixed. Steve hadn’t thought people outside the ranch knew about him and Bucky, but they hadn’t exactly hidden it from anyone either. Either they had been more obvious that he had thought, or people were making assumptions that happened to be correct. Several people, including Reverend Fury, asked Steve if he was sure about going through with the wedding. Repeatedly.
Then it was June first, and she had stepped off the train, looking so small and lost that it made his chest hurt. She had smiled shyly at him, and even though she was small and frail looking, even though she didn’t look like she belonged anywhere near a ranch, even though she looked nothing like the woman he had been picturing in his mind, Steve knew she the one he was meant to marry. He felt a connection to her immediately, as if she was meant just for him.
For a few hours, he had managed not to think of Bucky.
That was, he managed not to think of Bucky until Reverend Fury had told Steve that he could kiss the bride.
As he soaped up he remembered the moment when he had realized that he had made a very, very big mistake.
The only person Steve had ever kissed was Bucky. The only person Steve had ever been with was Bucky. He loved Bucky with everything he had in him. What had he been thinking, promising to love, honor, and protect anyone else? To forsake all others save for Runa, when he belonged heart and soul to Bucky?
It didn’t help that he was growing to genuinely like Runa. She worked hard, and did her best to please both him and Bucky, make the house a comfortable home. He generally had trouble talking to women, but once he got started talking with her, things flowed naturally. She was… She was comfortable. But the way she curled up against him when she was asleep was anything but comfortable. The soft form pressed up against his body every night made him long for the hard one that he used to press against, his blood burning with want. Want for Bucky, desire for Runa. With his little wife pressed against him, it was hard to forget that he could wake her up if he wanted, figure out together how to love one another in the physical sense, bring each other pleasure and release.
But every time he started to reach for her to wake her up, his mind went back to Bucky, what it had been like with him, and the guilt of betrayal washed over Steve once again.
Steve was torn between the two, knowing that until he figured this out, found some sort of resolution, he couldn’t have either of them.
At least he was perfectly capable of taking care of the problem himself.
Steve finished rinsing off and, then reached down, one hand gripping his half hard cock while he used his other hand to cup and fondle his balls, but not too lightly; Bucky had taught him to like it just on the edge of pain. It made the eventual release so much sweeter.
A little frisson of pleasure raced through him, made his scalp tingle and a small shudder work its way down his spine. Runa, he decided as he ran his thumb over the head of his cock before gripping it more firmly, beginning to stroke. He would think about Runa and the way she looked in the thin nightgown she wore. He had seen her in it only a few times, still trying to give her some privacy in the mornings and evenings when she changed, but seeing each other was inevitable, a part of sharing a room. He thought about how her breasts were outlined beneath the thin fabric, how he could almost see the curves of her body clearly through it. Small breasts, not quite a handful, but enough that he still wanted to cup them in his hands and see how she would react. He pictured her with her hair loose, dropping down to her knees before him to use her mouth the way Bucky used to.
He had never seen her with her rosebud mouth wrapped around his cock and looking up at him with those enormous blue eyes, but as he stroked himself he could imagine it so well that he saw it behind his closed eyelids and moaned softly at the pleasure the vision brought in conjunction with his touch. Thinking about that was almost enough to get him where he wanted to be, but then he thought about Bucky. The sapphire eyes lightened, became a pale blue that was almost gray. The silvery blonde hair turned dark chestnut, and it was Bucky sucking now.
Steve could feel the familiar tightening in his balls, and he gave them a little squeeze, not quite painful, but nearly, the warm water that surrounded him adding sensation to the illusion that it was his former lover pleasuring him. He felt his mouth drop open and he pictured Bucky’s cock, hard and leaking precum, remembered how it felt in his own mouth, imagined he was waiting for Bucky to use him the way he used to. Imagined Bucky standing over him, about to put his cock in Steve’s mouth while Runa began using hers on Steve once again.
That bit of imagery helped to do the trick, and he let out a muffled cry that was almost a grunt as he clenched his jaw, pressed his lips together as he came in the water, feeling his cock twitch in his hands, his balls tighten and loosen in time with the spurts until it was done, and he was left feeling even more guilty and bereft than he had before.
It was a sad echo of what he truly wanted. What he needed.
Muttering a curse, Steve stood and let water race down his body. He stepped out of the tub and grabbed a towel, drying himself off vigorously before he unplugged the tub, letting the water flow out over the wooden floorboards. He dressed carefully to avoid getting his clothes wet before leaving the bath house, slamming the door behind him and making certain the embers of the fire would soon burn themselves out before he went to the house.
Neither Bucky nor Runa was in the sitting room, and most of the lamps were unlit, so they must have gone off to bed early. He hadn’t thought he had been in the bath that long, but a glance at the worn clock on the mantle told him it had been well over an hour since he had gone out to bathe. He shook his head and moved towards the bedroom, extinguishing the light of the one lamp they had left burning for him as he passed it. When he opened the bedroom door he could see Runa in the moonlight that poured in through the window, just getting into bed.
“Steve?” She asked quietly, and he almost groaned, feeling stirrings in his cock once more at seeing her framed in the moonlight. He had hoped taking himself in hand would be enough to stop that from happening tonight.
“I’ll only be a minute.” He promised her as he moved to the bureau where his nightshirt was.
She hesitated, before slipping between the sheets. He could hear her settle into the bed as he stripped off his shirt. “Is everything all right?” She asked, her voice barely audible.
“Everything is fine.” Steve lied. “Just a little tired is all.”
“All right.” He could hear the hurt in her voice, as much as she tried to hide it. He wanted to tell her that she wasn’t lacking, it was him, but he didn’t know how to get the words out. It was one of the few things he wasn’t comfortable sharing with her. Until he figured this out, they were both going to suffer a bit, much as he hated it.
“Good night, Runa.” Was all he managed to say.
“Good night, Steve.” She murmured, before rolling onto her side, facing the window, her back to him and the door.