Chapter 4
They spend mornings codebreaking, studying Nazi radio transmissions, memorizing lists of names and ranks and nationalities for all the armies massed on the European continent. That’s Carter’s show, and her business.
“My superior told me in training,” Carter said to them one day, bracing her arms on the table with palms splayed flat. The pattern of scarlet nails on metal table was startling, like paint on a tank. “That two traits will destroy an espionage operation. One is wishfulness; the other is yesmanship.”
“We don’t suffer from that here,” Monty told her, parrying the hot poker of her interrogation with a cool Oxford drawl.
Morita said, “Wishful we ain’t.”
“What I mean to say,” Carter went on, straightening and coming around the table, “Is that you should at no point fear to question our plan or suggest one of your own. You are now part of this operation, wholly and completely.” She turned to Dernier and repeated something in French, then added, “C’est entendu?”
“Entendu.”
“These same traits will be the downfall of the Germans,” Carter added. “After all, we’ve baited our line with, well.” Her gesture encompassed Bucky, blissfully free of the costume for the afternoon.
“A superhero, yeah, but they believed in that anyhow,” Gabe pointed out. “Ubermenschen, and all that.”
“Not only that, but they are desperate to please the Fuhrer and Schmidt, who between them have exceedingly odd ideas about the occult. You ought to meet some of the rest of our subcommittee on occult matters. The SSR has at times, I believe, engaged the services of a trained magician, a Princeton-educated investigator of paranormal phenomena, and an Egyptologist. And now you gentleman as well: artists, carneys - ”
“Hey,” Dugan put in, then shut up.
“ - radio hams, engineers, and performers. And soldiers, all of you soldiers, too.”
“The cyanide makes that pretty clear.” They’ve all got a pill sewn into a jacket seam. Dernier’s is inlaid into the bottom of a wristwatch.
-
They’re learning, also, the business of war. The strategy of it. The hungry rush of invention, the better mousetraps being built. The costume is the best mousetrap of all, baited and ready.
They had to go to London to retrieve it: a bumpy, two hour ride for Bucky, Steve, Dernier - who came along because there were some questions about the kind of explosives they want - and Carter. The countryside was full of sheep, bomb craters, and wide open pastures - profoundly boring to everyone except Bucky, who was the only one still gazing avidly out the windows when they passed an American encampment on the outskirts of the city.
There, on the stone, next to a sign pointing the way, someone had painted a red and blue circle, with a white star in the middle. He thought of jostling Steve awake, making sure he saw it too, and didn’t - just watched it pass by, craning his neck until it was all the way out of sight. When he looked back, Carter was looking at him, her red lips poised in something like a smile.
“Captain America,” she said lightly, “is becoming quite the topic of gossip. We’ve been issuing the usual opaque briefings to MI5 and MI6. Some are skeptical, but two of the double agents the British government employs have already taken anxious prompting from the Germans. They’re quite curious about the ‘American superman.’ ”
A bump in the road tipped Steve over into Bucky, who nudged him carefully back upright. “I didn’t know it had all started,” he said. “I mean, we haven’t even …” He trailed off uncertainly, overwhelmed by the scope of it all, by how much they hadn’t yet.
“This sort of thing takes time and planning,” Carter answered. “Quite a lot of planning, really. We don’t need to wait for your unit to be combat ready before we start muddying the waters. I’ve been in contact with Howard since the moment Colonel Phillips gave the greenlight for this operation. Before you’d signed up, actually.”
More sheep, more farms whizzed past them. Bucky felt like he’d stepped into a Beatrix Potter book. Last week Steve had sent a letter to Bucky’s sisters with its pages ringed in little drawings of rabbits, hopping around in made up Indiana fields. “Who’s Howard?” he asked.
“ Who is a terrible question to ask a spy,” she said severely, but she smiled a little more when she said it so Bucky thought she was joking. “ Howard is Howard Stark. Oh, don’t make that face. Or at least please don’t let him see you make that face, he’ll be unbearable.”
“Howard Stark,” Bucky said, and covered his grin with his hands.
“The one and only,” she said, dry as a bone. “I had originally contacted him to help animate Dr Erskine’s phantom. The SSR is in possession of all of Erskine’s work, as far as we’re aware. Working from his notes, Howard has been helping to produce plausible scientific results, and all the paperwork that could possibly fall into the wrong hands. He’s got quite the flair for the dramatic; he’s been writing annoyed memos to our agents complaining about Erskine’s restrictions, and begging for the chance to run further tests on our super soldier.”
Steve’s shoulders twitched. When Bucky looked down he was smiling, chin still tucked into his chest, eyes closed. Shamming sleep, the little weasel.
“Tar Roberts of MI5 has already submitted his own request,” Carter continued, “that the subject be deployed in combat to test capabilities. It all fits quite nicely with our own strategies, actually. Agent Z - one of our double agents - managed to prove themselves to their Nazi handlers by turning over a report that the British have been ‘unable to replicate the experiment,’ and are ‘seeking information on procedures performed by Zola’.”
Bucky’s chest tightened. “Shadow business,” he muttered. “You’re mixing the fake and the real.”
“Of course,” Peggy said. “The best deceptions are both.”
“What happens when we need it to be real?” Bucky demanded, and turned fully to look at her. Dislodged, Steve opened his eyes, frowning muzzily up at the two of them. “What happens when it’s only us between real guns, real tanks - and real soldiers?”
“That’s why we’re lucky to have Howard,” Peggy answered. “He was quite intrigued by the challenge I posed to him. I don’t think he could’ve helped himself, anyway - once he knew what we were up to.”
They’d gone to the Stark Fair, him and Steve and some of their friends, a few days before Bucky had shipped out. It’d been fun even though Steve had been in a foul mood, even though the flying car he’d been excited to see had only caught fire and crashed down onto the stage, even though some toughs had caught Arnie by the bathroom and nearly roughed him up. In person Stark was shorter than he’d looked on stage, about the same height as Carter, with a punishing handshake and more pride in his work than Bucky’s mother would approve of.
But it was a piece of work, Bucky had to admit - the suit, the shield, all of it.
“Pneumatic tanks,” Stark said, patting the arm of the costume. Bucky used to listen to Stark’s interviews on the radio, and to hear him in person was disconcerting. He spoke faster, and he was less careful to polish off the edges of a faint accent, one that plucked at Bucky’s attention, reminding him of his cousins. “Trip the switch and they’ll shoot high pressure air from your gloves: voila, instant super strength. But don’t try and lift a tank with them, bucko. Limit yourself to a small car, a motorcycle, your average sized Nazi, things like that.”
“What’s the time limit?” Steve said.
“Fifteen seconds of lift,” Stark replied, “forty five seconds to prime. The body armor is my own design, of course. A proprietary weave, and carbide ceramic plates here, here and here. And here. The jacket will top you out at only fifteen and a half pounds, trousers are a further six. Best that the Soviets can do is a bib that’s about seven pounds all by itself. We had a whale of a time testing; I had my team throw just about everything we could think of at it. Consider yourself safe and sound from HE shells at fifteen meters, not to mention submachine guns and pistols - unless it’s Miss Carter aiming at you.”
“Don’t push your luck,” Carter said.
“Try it on, Bucky,” Steve urged.
“It’s loud,” said Bucky, fingering the edge of one stiff blue sleeve.
“It’s perfect,” Steve said, with satisfaction; he’d drawn the design for it himself.
Carter gave them a tour of all of the devices they’ll have at their disposal while Bucky got dressed. For covert communication they’ve got invisible ink, the real stuff, not what Bucky and Steve used to send away for from the backs of comic books. “These are radios?” Dernier said, picking one up and examining it. It looked too small to be real.
Bucky listened with half an ear, shivering a little as he tugged his uniform off and hung it neatly on the back of a chair. If he had to be in his skivvies in front of Howard Stark at least he looked all right, healed up from everything Hydra had done to him. Not a scar left on him, which had surprised Bucky; he used to scar pretty easily as a kid.
“Can we see the shield?” Steve asked, which was another piece of Stark’s work. A special metal, mined from a country in Africa some of Bucky’s racier pulp novels were set in. The British had tried to colonize it a while back; it hadn’t gone too well for them.
“Be careful with that,” Stark called. “That’s the only one like it.”
“Why you sending it out to get shot at, then?” Steve said, hefting it up with both hands. It looked enormous with him holding it.
“A sacrifice for a worthy cause, if you listen to Eisenhower,” Howard muttered, leaning back against his work table and folding his arms. Steve snorted.
Bucky buttoned up the fly of the costume. The pants were plain blue, thank God, and almost sturdy enough to stand on their own. A few weeks out on the front and they probably would.
“I’ve been a part of this ghost army business since ‘42,” Stark said. He pulled a cigarette out of a gold case and lit it. He offered the case to Bucky, who took one and lit it with the Stark’s gold lighter. Even the smell of it was too rich for his blood, and made his head swim. “What a hack job that was, before I came on board. But Fairbanks and I go back ages. Met on the set of The Thief of Baghdad . I’d designed the flying horse, you know.”
“Wow,” Bucky said, around his cigarette. “Could it really fly?”’ The damn jacket was covered in buckles and padding, and felt heavier than the promised fifteen and a half pounds. He held it up, shook the folds out of it, finally found a zipper hidden along the side. Stark watched him do it, mouth twitching below his mustache. Steve used to save newspaper clippings for Bucky to read, about Stark and his inventions. He may still even have them, tucked in the box underneath their bed.
Stark skewered him with a contemptuous look. “The magic of cinema.”
Probably he was still touchy about that flying car. “Oh,” Bucky said.
“Not that those effects aren’t just as useful,” Stark said. “Which is the point of all - this . You certainly got your work cut out for you, Sergeant.”
“Good thing I’m bulletproof,” Bucky said, and blew cigarette smoke toward the ceiling.
“You’re welcome,” Stark said drily, flicking his eyes down over the suit, lingering pointedly on the star demarcated in the center of his chest. Bucky put the helmet on against his stare, and Stark raised an eyebrow again, looking at a spot just between Bucky’s eyebrows. Bucky’s eyes almost crossed trying to follow his gaze, and he shook his head. He knew what Stark was getting at. It was a conspicuous outfit for a soldier.
“Let’s have a look,” Stark said. He moved forward and put a hand on the seam where thin metal plates lined Bucky’s torso beneath the cloth. Bucky tried not to think how he looked. Steve glanced over, and Bucky let one side of his mouth crimp up, self-conscious.
“It’s wired for radio?” Steve asked, meaning the helmet. They’ll be directing him during missions, giving him prepared speeches and stage cues: tugging his strings this way and that.
“There’s a microphone as well,” Stark said. “In case he wants to talk back.”
“I’ll want to shoot in it,” Bucky said tentatively. He was testing out his peripheral vision, trying to keep both Steve and Stark in his field of view. “See how the movement is. Can’t always punch out the Nazis with pneumatic gloves and all.”
“Of course,” Howard said. “Though ideally it won’t see too much combat.”
“It won’t?”
“You never know,” Steve chipped in. He settled the shield he’d been holding down on Stark’s workspace. It let off a little humming sound as it settled in a wobbling circle, like a glass when you scraped a finger around the rim.
“Hopefully you’ll be a little less reckless with this technology, Captain,” Howard told him, squaring off to examine Bucky one last time. “Speaking of which, I thought you had to go and meet with your co-conspirators.”
Steve glanced at his watch, then back at Howard, then to Bucky, who shrugged.
“Later?” he told Bucky, who gave him a little wave, still moving stiffly inside the costume. After he’d gone, Howard turned back to Bucky with a shrug. “Keep the suit. Bring it back tomorrow at seventeen hundred or so, I’ll be around. It’s a little warm for extended wear, but you’ll be grateful for that when you’re out there this time of year.”
“I guess I’ll take it to the firing range tomorrow. They’ve got all the guys learning to shoot,” he said.
Howard made a soft sound, a refined kind of snort, and stuck his hands in his pockets. He rocked back on his heels, and the look he gave Bucky was sharp and commiserating. “Teaching the fairies to act like real soldiers, eh?”
Bucky’s fingers caught, halfway through unbuttoning the heavy jacket. He looked up at Stark. “We’ll be fine,” he said. “Thanks for the uniform.”
-
Another wave from the camera. Bucky crouches. Braces his fingertips against the damp earth. His breath blows steam into the air. He’s waiting for the crack of the starter pistol, but it’s not gonna come.
Bucky’s hips lift. His feet dig into the wet earth. The hand comes down like a flag and he’s off, legs pumping furiously. A cheer goes up from the motley crowd on the grass. He barely hears it.
He pulls up just short of the camera, the crew unflinching. “Good,” the director says, and they do it twice more, and then three times past them at the angle, the camera turning to follow him down the little pony track. He’s sweating inside the suit, but he waves off the canteen Jim holds up as he stumbles to a halt just past them.
“Buck ran track in school,” he hears Steve say, with satisfaction. “Won first in the region for the eight eighty yard dash.”
Bucky swipes gloved fingers around the holes in the helmet, digging sweat out from where it presses firm against his cheekbones. “You want me to go again?” he asks the camera crew.
He lifts a tank by its barrel, bends steel bars with his bare hands, throws around barbells that look like they’d have flattened Charles Atlas. The camera crew keeps its distance. When they watch the footage later it all looks pretty good, looks like the barbells and steel bars are real, the footage of him running sped up just enough that he blurs across the screen, faster than Jesse Owens. He leans over in his seat to whisper to Steve, “What’s his mile?”
“Two minutes, fifty four point three seconds,” Steve whispers back.
“Show off,” Bucky says, and at his other elbow Jim laughs, smothers it in his hand.
-
It’s a few weeks later that they get to see one of the other films, the ones for the public, the final piece of Steve’s plan.
There’s a weekly movie night at the rehabilitation center in Packington Park. They’ve been given leave twice since arriving at Warwickshire, but it’s wintertime and there’s not much to do besides ride along drizzly country lanes and maybe stop and sketch a few picturesque brooks or find a nice place to be alone for a while. Mostly they’ve kept to themselves - they’re under orders not to get friendly with the other deception units, much less the ordinary soldiers that come and go sometimes from Walton Hall. But it’s a special night - they’re due to ship out for Italy in two days, and this week the feature film is Captain America: Defender of Democracy .
It’s cold in the gasworks - nothing but bare stone walls, uneven concrete floors. They plugged up the broken windows with tarp filched from one of the sonic units, and managed to scrounge a little electric stove. Dernier had found a mattress somewhere, or stolen it from the white barracks, and at night he and Dugan have taken to sharing it for warmth. Bucky is unspeakably envious, because the cold air is terrible for Steve’s asthma and more than almost anything else he’s longed for the lumpy, creaky bed they have at home, and the four walls they could put between them and the rest of the world. But they haven’t dared, neither of them, and not Gabe either, who has even more to lose.
They all huddle near the electric stove as they get dressed. Bucky’s clothes are new, given to him by the British. Well, mostly new. It’s hard to get underwear in wartime. Monty’s informed them that the Brits require rations coupons for underwear, so they’re all wearing someone’s old cotton sets. Used underwear. At least it’s clean.
“It ain’t silk stockings,” Bucky comments to Steve, pulling his shorts off the rim of the stove. He shakes them a little so they won’t sear his dick when he puts them on, hopping from one foot to the other in the cold air.
“There’s an Army officer,” Monty pipes up. He’s crouched near the stove heating up a kettle for the hard, bitter tea that only he really likes, so he’s at just the right height to be face to face with Bucky’s hairy, pale ass as it disappears into his clothes. “Well, an intelligence agent. There’s a rather notorious picture of him in full ladies’ wear floating about. I hear he even had a brassiere. Was undercover, of course - or so he says - as a Times correspondent.”
Gabe keeps his head down, doesn’t say anything to that - not that Bucky expects him to. Mabel had to be careful enough in Manhattan.
“Thanks,” Steve says, as Monty hands him a mug. It’s steaming hot but Steve never got any of the sense God gave man, so of course he burns his tongue going to swallow one of his white tablets.
“Hope we don’t have to do that,” Dugan says, shaking his head. “Bad enough when Kathy got sick and I hadda be the bearded lady.”
“Now you’re pulling my leg,” Morita says. He’s tying up his tie and frowning down at it like it contains a secret. It doesn’t: that’s their shoelaces, which are knitted around thin, fine garotte wire.
Bucky eyes Dugan, because honestly he can’t be sure. Dugan strokes his mustache, his face as opaque and mysterious as a walrus’s.
Because this is how they talk about it: they don’t. After they came back from London, Bucky had still been stewing over Howard Stark. He burst when the guys had been joking around, watching some of the other camoufleur units being trained. They’d been made to dig foxholes, and then stay in them while a tank drove back and forth over their heads. Steve and Gabe had been somewhere else, so they hadn’t had to hear the way Dugan and Monty imitated the delicate laughter coming from the foxholes, the mincing way some of the men had shoveled dirt.
“None’a that,” Bucky snarled, and they looked at him in surprise. “I don’t wanna hear one word outta you guys about fairies and queers, you hear me?”
“Sure,” Morita said, after a beat where he and Dugan and Monty and Dernier had looked at each other. “Okay, Barnes.”
And that’d been it, mostly. He thinks they know about him and Steve. Dugan knows. Jim knows. But they don’t talk about it. It’s easier, probably, because they’ve got orders not to fraternize and none of them have ever been prone to giggling and mincing, not even Mabel May. Steve’s never cared much, but Bucky’s watched wistfully as the other queer soldiers become friends. He thinks that maybe Gabe is seeing someone on base, because there’ve been a few times now that Bucky’s woken up from a nightmare and seen Gabe’s bedroll empty.
He wishes - well, it doesn’t matter what he wishes. But it would’ve been nice, to be able to make friends with some of the other fellows - be able to let his hair down.
Steve, at least, has made friends with someone, because it’s him who supplies the whiskey for them to drink on the ride over to Packington Park, something that tastes like smoke and burns all the way down. They’re all seven of them crammed into one Jeep: Monty in the driver’s seat, Dugan and Mabel up front, the rest of them squished into the back. Steve’s in Bucky’s lap, mostly - tucked in snug enough that Bucky’s staving off a hard-on with fear of what Steve’s bony ass will do to him if Monty goes too hard over the uneven road. Steve for his part has spent most of the drive leaning forward, helping to pass the bottle from back to front, forearm braced along Mabel’s - Gabe, it’s Gabe now - shoulder.
He asked once when they’d become friends, and they smiled at each other like he’d told a joke.
They certainly seem cozy enough now - although back in New York they wouldn’t have been talking out the logistics of getting to the front - whether one truck will be sufficient for the equipment, how to segregate Dernier’s explosives from the rest of their cargo, whether five days was really enough time to scout and set up before the first phrase of the attack.
“They haven’t even crossed the river yet,” Gabe says, “The Fifth just barely broke through the Bernhardt Line. We go any earlier they’re gonna rope us into the X Corp assault.”
“If they can’t be ready, we need to be,” Steve says, and takes a big swig from the bottle. He wipes his mouth and continues, “Can’t fake super speed without knowing where the Germans are going to be and when. Besides, I wanna get a look at that monastery, it’s supposed to be a sight.”
He handed the bottle back to Bucky. It doesn’t taste any better the third time.
Steve peels away from him when they arrive at the rehab center, leaving Bucky with a warm spot on his chest he rubs absently, and an ache in his balls he tries to ignore. They park their jeep among a line of a dozen identical jeeps, and Steve ties a handkerchief around the mirror in the hope they’ll be able to find it after the movie.
They attract some attention walking in - Gabe, mostly, and then Jim, but it’s British club, not an American one, so it’s not segregated. The place is set up pretty nice: a piano in the corner, a little bar next to the screen, where Monty and Dugan are dispatched to fetch beer for everyone. Someone’s tickling the ivories around a Tommy Dorsey song, mostly drowned out by the group gathered around singing.
“What’re you so quiet for?” Steve asks, as Dugan hands him a pint, and then yells “What?”
“S’alotta noise,” Bucky says again, and then shouts “ I’m alright ,” when Steve only looks at him, baffled, cocking his good ear at Bucky. He’s wishing, absurdly, for the costume - or at least the helmet, or maybe some cold water.
He feels too sober, despite the whiskey and the beer and the heat and noise. Everyone else is in the proper spirit - not just Steve and the rest of them, who are on their way to a real drunk - but the other soldiers too. Most of them seem to be from the other regiments stationed between here and Coventry - here for R&R, not because someone shot their leg off. He knows exactly which companies are here from their shoulder patches and the songs that have erupted now and again (they’d studied their own troops as well as everyone else’s) and - looking around, drinking their whiskey instead of his beer, dripping condensation onto the little cracked table - who’s seen action and who hasn't.
He untangles himself from Monty’s increasingly octopus-like embrace, and goes to find the toilet.
It’s hardly any quieter, and it stinks like the toilet at the Black Rabbit, a degenerate little place on Bleecker he used to go to sometimes with Steve and Arnie until the police had shut it down for good. The comparison isn't comforting.
He sloshes water over his face, sticks his wet fists in his hair and slicks it back - but it’s no good. The guy staring back at him in the mirror doesn’t look anything like that kid who used to have so much fun down in the Village. He doesn’t look like anyone Bucky recognizes at all.
The door opens, and Steve slips through the crack. He puts his back against the door, stares at Bucky in the mirror. The shoulders in his blouse don’t even fit right; they jut out like epaulettes. “What’s the matter with you, Buck?” he asks, and ain’t that the question of the hour. Bucky looks back at himself. He isn’t even wearing a tie. His hair’s sticking up in crazy spikes.
“You’re gonna get us all killed,” he says, and though he laughs on the end of it, it comes out mean.
Steve scoffs. His color’s high; he’s always been a lightweight. “Aw, come on,” he says. “No I ain’t.”
“This is, this is -” He straightens, turns to face Steve fully. “We ain’t got a chance in hell of pulling this off, you gotta know that.”
Steve looks at Bucky like he’s the crazy one. “We pulled off all the other ones,” he says. “Even finding you. We haven’t lost a man yet.”
“ Yet ,” Bucky says. “Gonna happen sooner or later. Guys get killed all the time, even the regular soldiers, not ones like - you’ve been right on the front line s, drawing fire on purpose , and now even that’s not enough for you. You wanna go off and pretend to be a - pretend to be Superman . This is nuts, Steve.”
The epaulettes hitch up towards Steve’s ears. “This is who would take me,” he says. “This is who would let me do my part.”
Bucky’s fists curl at his sides. “This ain’t a comic book,” he says. “We’re not those guys, we’re - we’re just dumb kids from Brooklyn, Steve, this is way outta our league. It’s a whole other sport. It’s war.”
Steve looks away, and Bucky’s blood goes hot. The look on his face - the disapproval - he knows what Steve’s gonna say before he even opens his trap.
“You don’t gotta be a part of this,” Steve says, “you can go back to the -” and that’s as far as he gets before Bucky shoves him. He doesn’t really mean to bring his weight on Steve but when Steve fights he fights dirty , like he’s trying to climb Bucky to get the best angle for punching.
They scrabble for dominance - slapping at each other gracelessly like when they were kids, like no one’s ever taught them how to fight or hold a gun - and then Steve gets both hands free and uses them to grab Bucky’s ears and haul his head down, mash their mouths together. Fighting dirty.
He tastes like beer, and underneath that just of slick spit, bitter on Bucky’s own tongue. His blunt fingernails dig into Bucky’s scalp; his elbows are sharp points in Bucky’s hands. One skinny thigh worms its way between Bucky’s, and Buck’s spreading his legs a little to get down to the right angle even as he gets hotter, gets madder at the goddamn nerve Steve’s got, grinding his cock up against Bucky’s like that.
He drops Steve’s arms so he can get both hands on Steve’s waist, lift him up so their hips are locked up together, rubbing hard enough that it hurts a little. Steve hooks an ankle around the back of Bucky thigh - for balance probably, or maybe just to relieve the pressure. He’s laid off kissing and is just hanging on for dear life: their foreheads pressed together, Steve’s eyes shut tight, teeth drawn back over his lips. Pinned up against the door and writhing at the injustice of it.
Most of his weight is held by Bucky’s thighs and by Steve himself so Bucky’s got enough leverage to shake a hand free, pull roughly at the buckle on Steve’s belt until the leather comes free and Bucky can snake it off him entirely, Steve’s pants loose enough that Bucky doesn’t even have to undo them to pull them down his hips. They tangle between them, bunching up at Steve’s ankle and knee but leaving him bare enough that Bucky can get his own pants open and rub up against him.
He’s hard enough he doesn’t have to use a hand to keep himself in place, thrusting between Steve’s cheeks, the only place on him that’s padded enough to feel soft.
“That all you got, Barnes?” Steve pants, hand on his own cock.
He can feel Steve’s other foot wiggling around, straining for the ground. His forearms push Bucky’s shoulders down. Bucky shoves back, hard enough that Steve’s skull knocks against the door, hard enough that he comes a little dislodged and the head of his cock slips in and presses hard against Steve’s hole.
They freeze. Bucky pulls back just far enough to look Steve in the face, both of them shocked looking, breathing hard.
“Do it,” Steve whispers, so Bucky pushes his hips up - just a little, not hard enough to push in because they can’t, they can’t here, now, but even the tease, the promise of it, it’s so good . Bucky does it again, and again, and then sets his teeth into Steve’s shoulder and comes, shuddering.
The door rattles on its hinges: drunk laughter on the other side. They both freeze. It rattles again and then Steve bawls, “Just piss outside!”
Bucky sets his forehead against Steve’s collarbone. He’s shaking all over. Steve’s belt buckle clinks as Bucky lets him get the both feet on the ground. It’s hardly any louder than the sound of Bucky’s knees hitting the ground.
Steve’s blunt nails scratch against the metal door. Bucky’s mouth is watering. He’s reeling from coming, from how bad he’d missed this. It’s been so long he feels like he’d made up the taste of it, the exact shape of it in his mouth, the familiar smell of Steve’s body. Steve’s hands are back in his hair - not pulling but tense enough Bucky can feel exactly what would happen if he let up for an instant, if he quit trying to gag himself on Steve’s cock.
But that’s not gonna happen. His eyes are closed - he’s lost in it.
Steve comes with a hard exhale, like Bucky’d punched all the air out of him. Bucky lets Steve’s cock slip out of his mouth, rests his head on the sharp edge of Steve’s hip. Steve is stroking his hair. His other hand lifting Bucky’s chin up, his thumb rubbing over Bucky’s swollen mouth, feeling the shape of his teeth behind it.
After a while Steve says, “Bucky. Hey.”
Bucky rubs his nose over Steve’s skin, feels the brush of his pubic hair, the soft, scant down on his thighs. Kisses Steve’s cock, limp and damp with spit. He knows they need to clean up. Wipe down the room. Go back to being soldiers.
“Don’t throw us away,” Bucky says, and squeezes his eyes shut tight. “Just - don’t throw us away.”
Steve’s quiet for a minute. On the other side of the door are trumpets: the movie’s started.
“Okay, Buck,” Steve says. “I won’t.”