He doesn’t have the voice Bitty does, not sweet and Southern, nor the voice Jack has, rich and low and slightly amused the way he is every time someone convinces him to sing. It’s usually Shitty who gets Jack going. Sometimes Lardo, eyebrows strategic and stare daring. Lardo can get anyone to sing but won’t do it herself.
His voice carries to the attic. Holster spins aimlessly in his chair, listening. They’ve shared enough locker room showers for him to know what’s going on. The key changes — hard to say if it was on purpose — and now Rans is crooning to a bottle of conditioner. The ancient Haus plumbing creaks, heralding the end of the show, the cold water straining through the pipes. Ransom’s voice hitches like always when the temperature changes, and Holster shakes his head. Three years and it’s still baffling that Rans likes to end with a cold shower. Voice crack aside, Holster knows it would’ve been a good performance. Justin Oluransi knows how to work a room.
The wheels on Holster’s chair catch divots in the attic floor the way they always do, the way Holster’s thoughts do now. It doesn’t really matter if Rans is a good singer or not. He always sings in the shower when he gets laid.
It was funny at first. Their first year they lived in the dorms and Holster made the trek to Ransom’s after every kegster, chirping for deets from the bathroom sink as Ransom made his way through the songs he knew by heart. They laughed at the joke like they’d both had sex. Sometimes it felt like it, debriefing like that.
And then sophomore year Holster had a lengthy dry spell and suddenly it wasn’t funny his best friend sang in the shower after sex, not even a little bit, so un-funny that envy bled into jealousy and he went on runs to cool off every time Rans had someone over. It would’ve worked better if Rans wasn’t so good at wheeling. It was the worst time to share a room.
And now—
The fan shuts off in the downstairs bathroom. Holster stops spinning and yanks open an Econ textbook, heart pounding like he’d taken that run the way he should’ve when he saw how Rans came back from his date. He skims the page and does it again and by the time the door opens, he still doesn’t know what it says.
“Hey,” Rans says. He closes the door gently, two fingers on the wood. Holster doesn’t need to see it to know.
Just like he doesn’t need to turn to know Rans has the towel knotted at his hips, or there’ll be some water sliding down his chest, or that he’s puffed up and pleased with himself. Holster stares at his textbook.
“Good night?” he asks, voice light, and Rans laughs.
“Yeah, man. Really, really good.”
“That’s great, dude,” he says. He almost means it. “Happy for you.”
Elbows deep in sudsy water, scrubbing plates with his eyes kept safe on the sponge in his hand, Bucky too close to his shoulder and all the farther for it. Steve hands him a plate. Their fingers don’t touch.
There’s a dance to this. Something careful, measured; he feels Bucky’s eyes resting directly on the corner of his jaw, then slip to his neck, then drop down his forearms. If Steve looked back he’d probably see Bucky staring at the corner like he hadn’t been watching.
His gaze flits around the room quick as anything these days. There was a time when he’d spend hours looking at the clouds from the fire escape. Now he’s looking, always looking, always assessing threats and risks and exit plans. Steve still isn’t sure which category these particular examinations fall under.
In the space between them, Steve asks, “You remember that time in the alley, after Peterson punched my lights out?” His voice is quiet, quiet. There is a fragility to this rhythm that could break as easily as a dropped plate.
Bucky shifts his weight. “I remember.”
A shouting match, a sharp, radiating pain that just wouldn’t quit, not for days and days after. Bucky’s soft swear and flitting hands. Steve hands him a glass and asks, “How much of that do you remember?”
Steve risks a glance up and in their reflection in the window, Bucky meets his eyes. And back then Bucky had cursed him up and down with a damn you, damn you, why do you do this and his fingers on Steve’s jaw and Steve had spat blood out of his mouth and said, far more pathetic than he’d wanted, Steve had wiped his chin and said, I like your hands on me like that.
They hadn’t talked about it afterwards. The draft and the war and the Howlies, the serums in both of their veins running counter to one another back then and even still now, history weighing so heavy on both their shoulders, eyes that once focused on clouds trained to focus through sniper scopes. Memory is a fraught thing. They haven’t yet cleared all the landmines stretching between them.
Bucky sets the glass down. Steve holds his breath, stays still as Bucky’s fingertip outlines the memory of a scar on his jaw. Then Bucky’s thumb dips, resting on Steve’s bottom lip as he frowns in concentration. His memory face, Sam calls it. He slightly tilts Steve’s face from left to right and back again like he’s remembering the blood and the bruises before leaning in and kissing him.
Oh. It’s a breath of a kiss more than anything and he wasn’t — he’s too slow, he wasn’t expecting it; Steve kisses him back a second after Bucky pulls away, still studying him with that searching expression on his face. He catches a glimpse of his own wide eyes in the window and oh, he wasn’t expecting that. Oh, oh.
“Is that right?” Bucky asks, thumb still on Steve’s lip. “Did I do that then? In the alley?”
Steve shakes his head. “No,” he says, and Bucky’s hand falls away. He clears his throat. “No, you never — never did that.”
Bucky shrugs. Picks up the dish towel. “Must’ve just wanted to then. It’s hard spotting the difference between memories and wishes.”
He’s far away again. Farther, because he was so close just a second ago. It’s like lowering your mouth to a mirror and breathing on it to see the condensation, that’s what that kiss was. Bucky was testing him out to see what’s left between before it faded. Wasn’t he?
“Bucky,” Steve says.
And — Bucky catches his eyes in the window, looks away, turns and leans so he’s facing him. “We really never did that before?”
“I didn’t know you wanted to.”
“But you wanted to?” he asks.
And Steve says, “Yes.” And he says, “I would’ve kissed you back then, if you’d kissed me first.”
Bucky’s gaze dips, finds the door, the empty space at Steve’s hip where he usually wears a gun, skim past his thigh before flicking back to Steve’s. Threats, risks, exit plans. “And now?”
“Now—” Steve’s breath catches. He dries his hands on the towel Bucky’s holding and says, “Yeah, Buck. I’d kiss you now.”
He leans in this time. This time, he brushes Bucky’s hair behind his ear, threads his fingers through to cradle the nape of his neck, leaves some space between their bodies in case Bucky wants it there. Slow movements. Steve isn’t sure which one of them he’s afraid of spooking off. He exhales as Bucky eases him closer by his belt loops and when they kiss, it’s gentle. It’s a dance he half-remembers the steps to, a routine learned in dreams in a Brooklyn apartment years ago.
Bucky’s lips are soft. He wasn’t expecting that. He thinks a lot of things would’ve been different if he’d known this back then.
Bucky moves away first. Steve is struck again by the normalcy of him here in his kitchen, standing next to counters Steve installed and drying dishes Steve picked out at random. He doesn’t look out of place anymore. He looks — pleased. Like he got away with something he thought he’d get nailed on for sure. And Steve knows.
“You remembered, didn’t you?” he asks. He laughs a little; Bucky smiles a little. “You knew we hadn’t—”
“I’ve been wanting to,” Bucky says. “I know you’ve noticed me looking at you. Seemed like you’ve been wanting to, too. Do you still like it when I touch you like that?”
He thumbs Steve’s bottom lip as he asks it and Steve — well. Steve’s pinned by his touch. Something like anticipation whispers its way up his spine.
“Yes,” he says. Bucky doesn’t move his hand; Steve says, “If we finish the dishes first, will you kiss me again?”
And oh, there — that ghost of a laugh. Those eyebrows pulled in for a challenge and those eyes bright with amusement, teasing the way they used to decades ago. Shoulders broader and his smile heavier too. Bucky Barnes in his kitchen. He’d do it all over again if this is where they ended up. Every battle-earned bruise brought him back to Bucky Barnes in his kitchen with a dish towel over his shoulder, waiting to finish the dishes so they can kiss again, closing the loop on a circle a hundred years in the making. Steve’s so in love he almost can’t bear it.
“Okay,” Bucky says simply, eyes alight, and their fingers brush as Steve hands him a plate.
@wikipediathefreeencyclopedia Ellie idk where your 55 & Holsom ask went, but here it is (fair warning for smut) 🌸
55. Chelsea Dagger — The Fratellis
I seen you and little Steven and Joanna
‘Round the back of my hotel, oh yeah
Someone said you was asking after me
But I know you best as a blagger
I said, “Tell me your name, is it sweet?”
She said, “My boy, it's Dagger,” oh yeah
Laughing up the attic steps, hands tugging wrists pulling shirts off on the way, Solo cups dropping to the wooden floor, lamplight caught in the spills, no hesitation before unbuttoning jeans and zipping off skirts and unhooking bras, one eye on March as Holster makes out with April, no further pretense needed.
It barely counts as wheeling. Ransom, Holster, March, and April have hooked up during so many kegsters that Rans would’ve lost count if it weren’t for the Excel sheet. It’s one of those “it’d be shitty to keep a doc of all the women he and Holster have slept with” things mixed up with “they’d be total assholes if they forgot someone or forgot how many times,” and besides, this way there’s stats to study. Can’t get better if you don’t review game data.
But this, with March and April. Ransom likes this. March walks backwards to the bottom bunk and tugs him after her and Rans is already grinning, looking up at her from his knees. March is bossy. He parts her knees and lets her boss him around.
Having sex while his best friend’s having sex is like — it’s a d-man bond, that’s what it’s like. He can hear Holster and April, can practically feel them moving next to him, and he anticipates Holster’s fuck before he says it. Rans watches March’s face as April gasps and wonders if it’s the same for the two of them.
Rans and Holster don’t fuck each other. It’s almost — this is gonna sound bad, but sleeping with two best friends is almost like fucking Holster by proxy. This is the closest they’ll get. Sometimes the girls make out and Rans holds Holster’s shoulder and his eyes and syncs his thrusts to match and sometimes, at least twice, they kiss while March eggs them on. Holster kisses all needy when he’s fucking someone else. Maybe it’s the only time he can give into it, this simmering desire between them.
Shitty would have a ton to say about this arrangement. Probably something about homosocial bonding; bro took a Shakespeare class one time and came back an expert on homoerotic subtext. But it’s not subtext when Holster and March are both guiding Ransom’s dick into April, just like it’s not when Ransom and April are both pinning Holster to the bed for March to blow him. He’s mouthy when he’s getting head.
March tastes really fucking good. Sometimes, if they’re careful and feeling brave, they’ll start without a condom so March and April can taste each other on Ransom and Holster. It’s one of the hottest things Rans has ever seen, March sucking him off after he’s been in April, staring at April the whole time. He came really fucking fast. Holster didn’t have a leg to stand on because that was the day they all found out how much he likes being manhandled.
“Oh, fuck,” Holster breathes, and Rans really wants to know what’s got him sounding like that. When he glances, Holster’s eyes are wild. “Yeah, lick her like that, March is loving that.”
“Fingers, Rans,” says April now. “Do the — curl thing you do, she really — right there, Holtzy, god — she likes it when you do that.”
One finger, two, and he feels March squeeze him. He taps teasingly. She swears.
Rans looks over at Holster again, but he’s not watching this time. Now he’s got his head buried just under April’s jaw, her hands tangled in his hair. Her eyes are closed.
A heady exhale. He knows what this means, knows what March wants now. He fingers her as he tears open the condom with his teeth. She says something like finally when he slides inside her.
Holster’s breath hitches. This is another thing he’s learnt sharing a room and now sharing foursomes together; Holster’s breath hitches when he comes. April laughs. March says keep going, fuck you, don’t stop, unless it’s April getting her off, at which point she goes you’re perfect, you’re perfect.
March knows she says it. He’d asked once and she’d shrugged like it was a stupid thing to bring up, like of course she’d think April is perfect. And maybe she would. But it’s the comparison of the four of them is all. Maybe Shitty has a point about homosocial bonding.
Ransom kisses March as he fucks her. March runs her nails up his back, and the pressure roots him here with her instead of drifting across the room with Holster. She’d asked him about that too once and he’d had no good answer for her. He doesn’t think about Holster finishing a couple feet from him. He thinks about the way March says keep going, fuck you, don’t stop. He doesn’t ask if she’s thinking about April. He doesn’t stop.
______
He and Holster shower together, after. After the girls have gotten into their Uber and after they’ve opened the window to let the sex smell out and after they’ve knotted their condoms and thrown them away, Ransom and Holster tiptoe to their bathroom and squeeze into the shower together. It’s not sexual. Really it’s a little too tired to be anything at all, let alone hot.
But this is what concerns Rans the most; after the hottest foursome he’s ever had, he’s getting into a platonic shower with the probable love of his life. Both of them were balls deep in two women who are in love with each other and unaware of it and now they’re all four getting ready for bed with the same exact person they didn’t fuck, but sort of did, because the lack of fucking is even more pressing than the act of it. It’s a deliberate non-action, not fucking someone in a foursome.
And now they’re showering together. They’ve shared thousands of showers, Rans said the first time it happened. What’s one more?
It turns out one more shower turns into a habit, grows into Holster sudsing his back without being asked. Blink and Rans smooths facial cleanser over Holster’s cheeks. Blink again, and Rans massages conditioner through Holster’s hair, and Holster counts hickeys on their bodies.
Some of the hickeys show up in the same spot. Their jaws, their shoulders, once even their biceps. “They made us a matching set,” Holster says now, touching a mark blooming on Rans’s neck.
“Think they planned it?” Rans asks. He thinks so. He knows Holster told April about these showers.
Holster blinks against the water. “Yeah, they might’ve.”
“I kinda like it,” Rans says.
“You do?”
Brief glance up, and Holster’s eyes big and blue and careful, like skating onto uncertain ice. His hand is warm at Ransom’s neck.
“Yeah.” Rans thumbs the same spot on Holster’s skin, and Holster shivers despite the hot water. This feels like new ground. He wants to set words to it. “I do.”
They stand there, Rans’s thumb over their matching splotch, until the water runs cold and there’s no more excuses left for lingering.
Do you know, I could break beneath the weight
Of the goodness, love, I still carry for you?
That I'd walk so far just to take
The injury of finally knowing you
(Alicia's POV of the Kiss Cam scene from Limelight)
In the space between Kissed and Unkissed, he’s just Bobby. It’s hard to remember what’s so scary about this whole thing when she's straightening his lapel and he’s threading his fingers through her hair, gentle despite the break in his nose and the cut on his lip, despite the distance she’s tried to hide inside. Maybe because of it.
He touches her like they’re in private. It’s at odds with the way she’s playing it, very amped up for the crowd and the Kiss Cam. She exaggerates it now, smiling the way she does when she’s flirting in a movie, and she sees the moment it clicks for him. Bobby’s mouth turns playful. He glances at the crowd, sending them a heartbreaker’s smile. When he looks back at her his eyes have gone all serious again. He’s following her lead, but he meant what he’d said earlier. He still wants this with her.
Alicia has pushed him away and pushed away and he’s let her, and now she’s batting her eyelashes and pulling him closer for the audience, off balance herself, but his hands on her waist are steady.
It’s terrifying, this trust he has in her. Whatever this unshakable belief is, that she’s made the right call by coming back for him and that he’ll prove it to her. She wonders what it’d be like to be that sure of someone else.
His lips are soft at her earlobe. A thrill zings through her as he whispers, “Are you sure?”
His closeness. His cologne. Alicia is already halfway wrapped up in him.
“No tongue,” she whispers back. He’s already leaning down when she kisses him.
Bobby Zimmermann is a good kisser. This is a kiss she could get lost inside, one that’d swallow her up if she let it. It’s in the way he teases at first, asking her to chase him. It’s in the way he cradles her face, asking her to realize it’s him, to see that this isn’t a costar or club hookup she’s kissing. She tastes a promise on his tongue. This kiss could mean something, he’s telling her. He wants it to.
They’re having a baby. Her baby’s father wants this with her. The whole arena is watching him kiss her.
Her heart’s beating really fast. Everything is a little too — real.
She pulls him closer on instinct and he follows and he smashes his nose against her cheek and doubles over so quickly she just blinks, startled. Bobby Zimmermann prods his nose gingerly, swearing up a storm. He looks at her apologetically.
Alicia recovers first. There’s a crowd to woo and she’s always been good at that, always quick to push her feelings aside and be what they want to see. Right now they want to see a supermodel and the hunky NHL star she just kissed, broken nose and all, so she gives it to them. It’s not hard pretending it was a hot kiss. It’s easy to laugh a little about Bobby’s nose, a slapstick sequence the crowd’s eating up.
“You okay?” she asks. A camera swoops in, and she laughs and blows a kiss at the lens.
“Yeah,” Bobby says. The look on his face takes her breath, an obvious expression caught in his brown eyes. “Just got carried away.”
Alicia pulls her actress persona around her stitch by stitch. “I’m sorry about your nose.”
She means it as a way to create distance. That kiss left her feeling a little tumbled, a little raw, too accessible. It’s safe tucked away behind Alicia Fenway, Actress.
Bobby’s still just Bobby though, like an exposed nerve. His feelings linger on the surface. They always do. But this time, instead of making her nervous, curiosity blooms in her chest. For the second time tonight she wonders if Bobby really means what he says.
“It’s alright,” he says, and now he’s smiling a little. “It was worth it, to kiss you again.”
She blushes. She finds she doesn’t mind if he sees.
“Alicia,” he says a beat later, after the whistle blows and the game resumes. “You’ve got a little…”
He gestures at her mouth, her chin, and it must’ve been a bigger kiss than she thought if her lipstick smudged that much. She wipes at her face and he shakes his head and she does it again but it’s not better, not better says Bobby’s shaking head.
“Can you,” she starts, raising his hand to her face before she can overthink it.
Bobby straightens. That obvious expression lights up in his eyes again, and as he smooths the lipstick from her chin, she wonders if he knows. Bobby Zimmermann’s in love with her.
“There you go,” he says finally. His thumb slips off her chin slowly, like he doesn’t want to stop touching her.
She’ll play it safe for both their sake. He’d walk a thousand miles for her, she can see it now; she’ll keep herself slightly apart so he’ll never have to. She’d told him before the kiss that she doesn’t know what she wants. She’ll keep herself standing, not leaning, so he won’t have to carry the pain of knowing her. This can work.
For a moment Alicia thinks about what it’d be like to be loved by him the way he wants to love her. But it’d be too much, too all-encompassing, so she ducks behind her facade and hopes it won’t break his heart too much the day he finally wakes up.
Sam glances at him. Bucky’s flipping the shield over and over in his hands and Sam wants to cover his wrist, stop the motion. There’s a sharpness to the edge of Bucky’s jaw as if the only way he can talk about this is to be hard enough that it can’t hurt him.
“Do what,” he says.
Bucky says, “This,” and now he lets the shield settle on his lap. “All of this. Without being mad at him for it.”
“What makes you think I’m not mad?” Sam says levelly.
“Are you?”
It’s a hard question to answer fairly. People do the best they can with what they have; it doesn’t mean their motives make sense, it doesn’t mean there weren’t better choices and other options, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect the people left behind. Sam’s spent a lot of time hollowing out that knot of sadness and resentment that’s rooted in his chest.
It hurts, being left behind. It’s unfair.
Sam says, “I used to be,” because it’s true. He says, “Now I’m trying not to be,” because it’s fair to him, and adds “I don’t get it but I know it’s what he needed” at the end because part of loving someone means being kind to them even when you don’t understand them.
“And anyway, I’m kind of grateful,” he says.
Bucky raises his eyebrows as if to say yeah? Why’s that? and when Sam reaches for him, Bucky’s already lacing their fingers together. Some of the hardness in his face softens. He lifts their hands so he can press his lips to the inside of Sam’s wrist.
When it’s over and they can, they go to the movies.
Not as themselves, no — they’re still a bit too high profile to go unnoticed if Steve hadn’t worn a hoodie the whole time, if Bucky’s hair hadn’t been tucked under his baseball cap, if, this once, they hadn’t allowed themselves to slouch instead of standing like they’re waiting for a war.
They buy the tickets online using an alias Natasha had set up. Steve buys the candy and doesn’t flinch when the ice tumbles into their pop cups even though it crackles in a way that’s all too familiar. Or if he does, Bucky’s there to lean against his shoulder.
Steady, the contact says. We are each of us fighting battles every day.
What he wants is to put it down. There’s no place to hang this heavy past of his. It pulls on his shoulders.
“You ready?” Bucky asks, popcorn in hand. Already his fingers are shiny from the melted butter.
Steve says, “Yeah,” and they make their way to their seats.
Someday it’ll just be them. Someday, when they understand what the serum is and does and for how long, he and Bucky will be sitting down in another movie theater, and they won’t have to hide. Maybe they’ll even have grey hairs.
“I wanna grow old with you,” he says quietly. He’s really saying I want our time back, we should be dead but we should have grown up. Isn’t it a curse? Aren’t we stuck? Aren’t you tired?
Bucky hums. He says, “I’m here now.” He looks Steve in the eye and says, “I wanna complain about my knees when the weather shifts. I wanna be there when your beard goes white.” He says, “I don’t think we’ll ever be normal, but it’s normal how bad I want this with you.”
It sounds easy when he says it like that. “What if my beard goes dirty blond instead?”
“I think I can love you through that,” Bucky says.
Steve sinks back against his chair, scoops a handful of popcorn. The movie theater lights dim as he says, “You’ll find a way?”
There’s a moment of darkness before the movie screen flashes bright. Steve sees everything so clearly in that moment — what was, what should’ve been, what can still be, Bucky’s mouth already amused by whatever’s about to happen onscreen. And then it’s going — the story’s starting — and when he glances over, Bucky’s already looking back at him.
AU where Steve finds Bucky after he falls. 649 words, vague references to injuries
Steve trips over him. Two days of looking and two hours of planning, one night spent stealing away from the Commandos and three hours hiding from enemy tanks, and Steve trips over him.
He’s on his knees in seconds, scrambling to brush snow away from shoulders and neck and mouth with shaking hands. It’s hard to tell in this half-asleep light but he thinks Bucky stirs when Steve says his name, soft like please and altogether too close to you promised you’d stay alive with me.
Bucky’s lips are blue. Steve takes his glove off and rests two fingers against Bucky’s throat and bows his head.
A cough, sigh. Steve thinks he might cry at that. When he sits back, Bucky’s squinting up at him.
“Not supposed to be here,” Bucky whispers hoarsely.
Steve smooths snow away from his forehead, numbly registering bruising, bleeding, scratches. There’s something horrible happening around Bucky’s left bicep that he can’t look at straight on just yet. There’s something too waxen about some of the fingers on Bucky’s right hand, one of his legs is at an odd angle and his nose looks broken and swollen and he’s too cold, and Steve needs to wrap him in blankets and everything he has but he’s alive alive alive.
“Where else should I be?”
Bucky coughs again and winces and Steve adds broken ribs to his list of things to be aware of. “They want us both,” he whispers. “You shouldn’t have come back for me.”
“You’re impossible,” Steve says. “Here—”
He uncaps his water and helps Bucky upright before helping him drink. Bucky refuses it a few times before giving in, finally, and even then Steve thinks he only does it because it shuts Steve up for a few seconds.
“Can you move?” Steve asks, packing the water away. There’s a belt in here somewhere that he can use for Bucky’s arm in case it starts bleeding again — he keeps almost finding it, as if it’s purposefully slipping away to the very bottom of his bag away from him. He snags it moments later and looks at Bucky and Bucky’s shaking his head.
“You gotta leave me behind, my leg’s busted—”
Steve says, “Listen,” and covers Bucky’s mouth with his hand. Bucky goes still immediately, and for a world-ending second Steve thinks he died just to spite him. “You said before that you’d follow me into the jaws of death. Say you’ll follow me out of them.”
“Steve,” Bucky says. It tickles Steve’s palm; he cradles Bucky’s face instead. “I’m just gonna slow you down. They want you something awful — I won’t be the reason they get you on that table.”
“Don’t be,” Steve says. “Come with me instead.”
“Go without—”
“If you aren’t coming,” he says, voice steady, “then I’m staying.”
Bucky looks too weary to glare him into going. It doesn’t stop him from trying. “Don’t be stupid.”
Oh, Steve was wrong before; this is the thing that’s gonna break him. He gives up on trying to keep his voice even. It’s too dear and desperate a thing for that.
He says, “I’m not leaving you. So either you’re coming with me and we’ll hobble our way out, or I’m staying with you and they’ll take us down together.”
“You can’t die with me, Steve,” Bucky says, and he sounds so tired.
Slowly, Steve leans down and presses his lips against Bucky’s forehead. It’s barely a kiss at all — Bucky’s too bruised for that, and there’s too much unsaid — but Bucky’s eyes flutter closed anyway.
“Then live with me,” Steve says softly. “I know it’s everything to ask, but I’m asking.”
Bucky sighs and coughs and sighs again, shallower this time. Something like determination settles in the shadows of his face.
