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No one had the right to look that good mowing a lawn, and yet this man pulled it off. He pushed his brand-new mower with unnerving grace, as though there was an art to the whole thing, and everyone else got it wrong. He smiled the whole time too, despite his fluffy brown hair practically sticking to his forehead with sweat. Bucky had turned the AC on full blast earlier today, but even in his cool kitchen, he felt hot under the collar.
He couldn’t look away. The man mowing his lawn defied all laws of common sense, dressed to the nines in the middle of July like he was attending a wedding, or maybe a funeral.
It was definitely the funeral of Bucky’s long-term dry spell, at least in his own head.
“Jesus Fucking Christ.”
Helmut Zemo, the ‘landscape artist’ that Sam had recommended – Bucky was pretty sure that was merely the posh version of ‘gardener’ – was really good at what he did, and that included bending over like a wet dream to trim his thick hedges all the way down to the ground, careful not to miss any wild-growing bit.
Bucky was careful not to miss anything from the sight offered to him, which meant that he completely messed up what he was doing mid-ogling.
The lemon he’d meant to squeeze flew right off his hands to bounce against the bars of the cage where his hamster, Delight, was frantically running in his little wheel.
Bucky felt quite envious of the animal, right now. He had lots of energy to burn, but as one couldn’t simply walk up to their employee and invite them in their bed for a couple rounds of sex, he settled for making lemonade. He was so fucking thirsty. He nudged half a lemon to Delight through the bars, much to the hamster’s delight. Its little cheeks puffed happily as he munched on the treat.
Bucky’s brain shifted gears abruptly as he remembered his first meeting with Zemo, and how he’d briefly fantasized about squeezing the handsome man’s freckled cheeks as he’d stuttered through a vague explanation of what, exactly, had to be done in his yard, which was pretty much everything.
Bucky shook his head, disturbed by the connection his mind had apparently made between Zemo and Delight.
Thankfully, there was lemonade to make, and he poured all his focus into that.
By the time he stepped outside, he was already sweating, and it had nothing to do with the temperature. Zemo, who was crouching and plucking weeds with an extreme degree of precision using the sharpest gardening tool Bucky had ever seen, looked up immediately, as though he’d sensed his approach.
“How you can wear a fucking suit right now is beyond me, but here.” Awkwardly, Bucky handed out the glass of lemonade he’d just made.
Zemo’s lips curled up into a pleased smile. When their fingers brushed around the glass, Bucky’s cock throbbed.
Thankfully, Zemo chose that moment to close his eyes. The sight of his throat bobbing didn’t help Bucky’s situation.
And neither did the moan that graced that first sip.
“Thank you, Mr. Barnes.”
“Please call me James,” Bucky blurted out, and promptly not-ran back inside to jerk off furiously in the shower, the sight of his gardener looking up at him with a flushed face and a pleased smile branded into his mind.
*
“So, this guy’s good or what?”
Bucky, who’s been picturing the guy in question bent over his couch rather than a bush at the back of his yard, shook the fantasy loose. “Er… yes. Very much so.”
“Distracted much?”
Bucky leveled his friend with a suspicious glare. “Is that why you recommended him?”
“Nah, but I had high hopes and everything.” Sam just waggled his eyebrows at him, his meaning more than clear. “He looks at you when you’re not looking, you know.”
Bucky pressed one hand on Sam’s brow, trying to stop the dancing eyebrows before his face completely caught on fire. “Shut up a minute and drink this.”
Sam, bless him, just picked up the glass and tilted his head back, about to down the content in one gulp… and promptly spat it all back on the floor.
“What the fuck did you do that for?” Bucky exclaimed.
Sam’s face scrunched up in horror. “I know you’re no good in a kitchen but holy shit, man, this is squeezed lemons. How hard can it be?”
Bucky thought back to Zemo’s expression when he’d been offered a glass and scowled as he picked up a cloth to clean the mess. “Just because you’ve got no taste doesn’t mean it’s bad.”
“Oh, I see how it is.”
Bucky tossed the lemonade-soaked cloth at Sam’s head.
*
Three weeks and four days after Bucky hired Zemo – he knew that number because that was how many days he’d masturbated in a row, which was more than the last two years put together – the yard finally looked like something straight out of a landscape magazine.
Bucky actually looked forward to Zemo’s final touches to the flower beds, which had earned their names thanks to the gardener’s clever handiwork. He was still horny whenever he got within looking distance of the other man, but he’d taken an interest in flowers recently. As a matter of fact, he’d just gotten back from the nursery, where he’d picked up a baby cherry blossom tree after hearing Zemo mention once how much he liked them.
He almost dropped his purchase at the sight of his yard.
Zemo was there, but he wasn’t alone. And he wasn’t gardening, either.
“Did you just… kill three guys with a spade?” was the first thing that came to mind.
His gardener turned around. His usually impeccable clothes – which remained spotless through all manners of dirt-oriented activities – were covered in blood spatters, and he had some on his face, too. The spade he was holding had gory bits all over it, which explained why the dead guy directly in front of Zemo’s feet had one part of his head missing.
There was a melancholic note to Zemo’s sigh. “It was the best weapon on hand, I am afraid.”
Bucky held the baby tree closer to his chest. He wasn’t afraid, even though he should be. Truth be told, he’d never wanted to jump that man’s bones quite so badly, and he’s seen him bent over his flower beds more times than he could count.
Zemo dropped the spade and stepped over the corpse and what looked like a rocket launcher with an apologetic expression.
“Mr. Barnes-”
“I told you, it’s James.”
“James, then. I… apologize for the inconvenience, truly. I never meant for-”
As an accountant, Bucky was ashamed of how long it took him to put two and two together. He supposed that anyone would have to reboot their brain after seeing their crush covered in blood. And the corpses. “This guy… guys, they were after you, weren’t they?”
He took a step forward, which brought him very close to Zemo. The smell of blood was strong, and so were those of sweat and cherry blossoms, but beneath this surprising bouquet was, unmistakably, the addictive scent of his cologne.
Bucky wanted to kiss the other man so bad, but some of his brain cells were still functioning. “Who the hell are you, Zemo?”
His gardener smirked, and for the first time, that smile had a dangerous edge to it.
“A death squad commander who tried his hand at retirement.”
Bucky gulped. “… didn’t work so well, did it?”
Only Zemo could shrug like he did everything else – with grace. “It worked for a while, but it seems that from now on, I might need to tend to more than flower beds.”
To Bucky’s ears, this sounded suspiciously like a goodbye. Hit by a wave of panic the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since Sam got an allergic reaction eating octopus at Hydra’s, he pressed the baby cherry blossom to Zemo’s blood-soaked waistcoat. “Here. You said you liked those. A gift, I-”
“James.”
Did he just get heat stroke? His head spun so much, and he felt like he might puke – that could probably be blamed on the corpses, though. “What?” he asked in a weak voice.
“I am thirsty.”
Bucky blinked at the non-sequitur. “Er, I could make more lemonade, but shouldn’t we, like, take care of the-”
Zemo’s hand snaked down to grab Bucky’s crotch and squeezed, the gardener’s smile turning feral.
“Please allow me to take care of the mess I made all by myself. As for drinks… I have no wish to offend, but your, ah, lemonade-making skills leave much to be desired.”
Bucky would have been offended if Zemo hadn’t been fondling him with such delicious aggressivity. The bold move, out there in the open with a few corpses as their obvious witnesses, made him ache something fierce. He still felt dizzy, but for a vastly different reason now.
“I-”
Zemo dragged his nails across Bucky’s denim-covered balls. “How about you offer me something a little less sweet, and a little more substantial, hm?” He leaned in, humming in appreciation as the tip of his nose brushed a cherry blossom petal, and pressed his lips to the corner of Bucky’s mouth. “I realize this is quite bold of me, considering-”
“Please,” was all Bucky could say.
He barely even blushed, but Zemo quickly fixed that in the shower when he shed his bloodied fancy outfit and dropped to his knees. While pink water circled down the drain, Zemo wrapped his lips around Bucky’s cock and set to work, as skilled at this as he was at handling a spade.
“Oh fuck.”
With two handfuls of fluffy brown hair, Bucky stared at Zemo, at those hands that had killed now stroking his sides, at that mouth that had completely bewitched him sliding over his cock with such exquisite dedication it felt a little like dying, to get a taste of heaven.
The sudden realization that Zemo could kill him anytime he wanted, with whatever was handiest in the shower, only fed his desire. His hips bucked on their own accord. Zemo took it in stride, humming in encouragement as Bucky’s control finally snapped. Zemo had barely sucked him for a full minute, but Bucky could tell he was close, unmade by the intense focus in those brown eyes speckled with gold. He let go of Zemo’s hair to rub a thumb at the corner of his mouth, the fetching pink of it even more fetching now adorning his cock.
Zemo took him deeper without warning, and swallowed around his glans, eyes filled with dangerous mirth.
“Fuck!”
Bucky couldn’t remember an orgasm as intense as this, and yet he was forced to admit that the one that followed – with Zemo’s cock up his ass, and his gardener’s mouth on his neck, those callused hands bruising his sides a little more with each thrust – was just as intense and memorable.
“You’re not leaving, are you?” he blurted out as soon as Zemo left the bed. “I mean…”
The gardener’s amused expression turned soft, and Bucky was reminded of his earlier wish to squeeze those nice freckled cheeks.
He barely dared to entertain the thought after what he’d witnessed out in the yard, but he sure soaked in the other man’s affectionate expression like he was one of the flowers under his care. Like Zemo was the sun. Or water, maybe.
Bucky needed him like oxygen and it should probably concern him a lot more.
“I am not going very far, and I have no plans to leave your side so soon,” Zemo assured him, returning with a wet cloth to clean them both. “After all, I have been offered such a beautiful gift. One that requires plenty of care.”
“The tree?” Bucky asked, confused.
Zemo’s kiss was all the answer he needed.
*
Zemo ended up burying the corpses in Bucky’s yard, and the baby cherry blossom tree got planted right on top. Within weeks, it became the prettiest tree in town. Zemo wasn’t shy about using fertilizer, and always returned from his bouts of special gardening with a mischievous smile. Bucky was no fool, but he didn’t mind the occasional trail of blood in his hallway when all that murder was followed by Zemo fucking the living daylights out of him.
And there was nothing quite like making love to his freckled, frankly adorable killer against their tree. Zemo just looked so pretty with pink petals caught in his hair and a blush dusting his nose.
Bucky never made lemonade again.
