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Four days up, and only six hours down. Peter’s sleep ratio is starting to reach a step above insomnia. FFI? No... restless sleep disorder? But that’s for people who try to sleep, isn’t it?
He scrubs his gloved hand over his face and takes a breath. Whatever the circumstance, making excuses for the bullets lodged in his hip and thigh isn’t going to heal them. He takes his mask off the top of his head and plops down shakily in the caricature of a filthy, wet dark alley. If not for the chilly September drizzle, he’d consider a quick doze, but he’d freeze.
He does catch a moment of spacey shutdown before the quiet, even footsteps break his sputtering river of abstract thought. He huffs a bitter laugh, as much as his diaphragm will allow, and looks up at the dark figure that blurs around the edges—and that might not be the lighting.
“What, do you have me tagged or something?”
Bucky sighs, long and tortured. Peter wants to laugh at him again because it’s not like he’s the one who’s shot, or that Peter’s tendency to catch bullets warrants any kind of predetermined imposition on the soldier’s part. But Peter doesn’t laugh, and like clockwork, Bucky scoops him up and walks him to the SUV whilst Peter pretends he’s not desperately clinging to him both from the pain of the bullet wounds and from the relief of having been found.
Peter bleeds onto the leather of the passenger seat and doesn’t apologize, not like that first time, because he has nothing to apologize for. He never asks for this.
Bucky does this anyway.
Peter doesn’t manage to hold in his groan when Bucky hefts him up bridal style again, but—and maybe it’s Bucky’s no-nonsense manner—Peter doesn’t feel ashamed to let his pain be known. He feels like the world—Bucky—owes him that much.
Bucky busts into his apartment (his spacious, government-issued apartment, the bastard) and makes a beeline for the bathroom. He props Peter on the counter and shuts the door (even though he lives alone), shakes off his jacket, and starts undressing Peter. The first time, Bucky sliced through his suit to get to his wounds, and Peter never let him hear the end of it. So now, he too-tenderly peels the material off Peter’s body, careful around the areas that stick with grime and blood, leaving only thin, worn boxers. Peter watches as Bucky sets out the fading leather stitch kit and pulls a bottle of burgundy from his medicine cabinet of all places. Peter scoffs at it.
“Don’t suppose that stuff’s as aged as you are?” Bucky doesn’t answer and brings the bottle up to Peter’s lips. Peter obliges, takes a swig, and holds in a cough. “Good stuff,” he lies, voice strained. But he fails to keep in a broken yelp as his open flesh is quickly doused and immolated with the stuff. Peter clutches Bucky’s arm pathetically when the burn persists.
Bucky’s eyes meet his for a second, then he briefly clamps his lips before muttering, “Ran outta rubbing alcohol last time.”
Peter hits his head on the back of the mirror in some silent, dramatic protest, but he doesn’t let go of Bucky. “Deep breath,” Bucky tells him—always tells him—before the first stitch or before the bullets are worked out of him.
Peter hisses and tries not to shudder as the tweezers touch down in his leg. When Bucky finds the first bullet, there’s an audible tink and a much louder cry. Bucky leans in over him and Peter plants his forehead on Bucky’s shoulder while the super soldier shushes him gently. That’s where they stay for the next few minutes, with Peter whimpering from every small movement of the tweezers and Bucky whispering low assurances to him.
Peter’s a teary, shaking mess by the time the second bullet drops unceremoniously into the sink with thick drops of dark blood—blood from his artery. Peter allows himself a single, voiceless cry, knowing it’s going to be a messy clean-up, and that doesn’t mean the bathroom. Bucky rubs converse flesh and metal thumbs on Peter’s bare sides and lets him cling to him as his body revolts from the pain and fatigue and blood loss in the form of scattered sobs muffled into a broad, torrid chest. It’s Bucky who has to pry Peter off him and push him back against the mirror.
The stitches take nearly an hour. Peter loses consciousness two and a half times. Bucky’s most recent tactic at keeping him awake is to tilt his head back and press a cup of tap water to his lips—hydrated and awake; two birds, one cup. Except Peter’s not a fan. Sometimes he coughs, and if staying awake through slow, arduous stitches means he won’t pass out and possibly die from shock—well, who’s Bucky to say it’s a fair trade-off? He’s not the one bleeding on the bathroom counter.
Peter dozed off again. He’s awoken to the fuzzy image of a shirtless cyborg super soldier gently working Peter’s boxers off his legs. It’s a familiar and welcomed sight. It means a hot bath.
When Bucky lifts him again, Peter has no fight or attitude left. He’s stripped down to his basest, injured animal instincts and tenuously latches onto Bucky like a lifeline, trembling like a delicate leaf in the wind in his arms. When his feet hit the water, there’s nothing to buffer the sob, drawn out and unabashed. He lets the pain subside into a dull ache and the warmth swallows his body and soothes his dithered nerves as Bucky lowers him in it. Peter relaxes, his head resting on Bucky’s pec as the soldier takes a washcloth to Peter’s legs, kneeling outside the tub. Peter doesn’t bother trying to remember the last time he had a bath—like, in a tub. He knows it was right here, just like this. But instead of bullets, it was a four-inch-deep stab wound.
The water starts to turn an opaque red, and Bucky refreshes it, draining and refilling the tub, before grabbing a new cloth and running it gently over Peter’s face and neck. They lock eyes, and Bucky sighs at him for the second (and probably not the last) time tonight.
“Why you have to go an’ put this pretty body through all that shit, I’ll never understand,” Bucky laments in that Brooklyn drawl that lights a fire in Peter, one he’ll never admit to. Peter sighs at him too, knowing it’s not Peter’s body that Bucky is hung up on. One glance up, and Bucky knows Peter sees through him, so he shakes his head and says it how he means, “You’re too good for a place that don’t deserve you,” he mutters low, staring at Peter’s legs as he absently laves the washcloth over them.
“Don’t say that,” Peter croaks.
“It’s true” Bucky insists.
“But don’t say it,” Peter lifts his face from Bucky’s bare chest, flopping his head onto the back of the tub, and thinks to himself, because then I’ll believe you, and let you keep me, just how we both know you want to.
Peter resigns himself to letting Bucky clean him up every which way; letting him pull him out of the tub after a while and gently, meticulously dry him off; then he lets Bucky dress him in shorts and a large hoodie that smells like cigarettes and pine; and he lets Bucky lay him down in his bed—always his own bed—and run his metal fingers through Peter’s hair for literal hours. Peter lets him do it all. And when some invisible timer goes off in Bucky’s head, he jostles Peter’s shoulder and pulls him from that half-dream trance, because it’s not over yet.
Peter sighs into Bucky’s neck when the last stitch in his thigh is pulled free. It’s not Peter’s favorite part, but it’s up there. His flesh is sealed and pink and tender by the time it heals up enough to take them out. And Bucky knows—always knows—when it’s time to take them out.
“You’ve gotten better at those,” Peter mentions absently in the silence while Bucky lifts the hoodie to move onto Peter’s hip. “I didn’t feel it snag at all.”
Bucky isn’t amused. He gives him the side-eye, a look that says, “I shouldn’t have to be getting better at these.”
Peter shrugs him off. “I can picture you as one of those old wartime nurses,” he muses with a tired smile. “With the hat...” he makes a take at Bucky’s large thighs, the ones he’s happily resting on, “and the skirt—ow!” Peter feels a sharp pain in his middle, “That one snagged.”
Bucky nods and starts to gather the small mess of tools and twine, maneuvering Peter off his lap, “I know.”
“Jack-ass,” Peter whispers as Bucky gets up off the bed and walks out of the room, knowing he’s heard.
Bucky returns, sans the stitch kit, and lifts Peter’s clothes for a last look. He winces slightly as metal fingers worry fresh, sensitive, sore skin. He doesn’t lower his gaze from the soldier’s face as Bucky lifts the hem of flimsy shorts to inspect his leg, or when Bucky pretends not to notice Peter’s “reaction,” there because of some form of operant conditioning born out of routine. Peter sucks in a breath when Bucky squeezes his thigh, and Peter knows it’s not Bucky’s intention—because it never is—but it perpetuates the sensations, building onto the buildup they both know is coming.
Bucky swallows audibly and then gives Peter a genial pat on the knee. “Get some rest,” he says—always says—uselessly before Peter pulls him in by the neck.
Peter is always kissed with conviction, without hesitation, an antithesis to Bucky’s words. “You lost a lot of blood,” Bucky argues into Peter’s mouth between breaths.
“Not enough, clearly,” Peter retorts with a grunt and rides into the hand pressed generously between his legs.
Bucky scoffs at him but doesn’t stop nibbling on Peter’s lower lip in the way he loves to, the way that drives Peter insane. And Peter shows him just how much he likes it—how his skin under Bucky’s teeth strips him down to his inner animal—because he wants to, and because he has to. Bucky never likes to see it for how it is: a payment, a “thank you.” Bucky hates it, actually. It makes the now hardened and bitter part of Peter laugh, because it’s true—every hitch of his still-breathing chest, quickened patter of his still-beating heart, and scrape of his still-warm skin—is a fervent and alive thank you, as if to say, “It’s because of you.” And Bucky eats it up, eats him up.
And the thing is, he never fucks Peter; no, Bucky—always—outright makes love to him. He strips Peter of his clothes that smell like him and replaces them with the source of that sharp pine-cigar scent Peter’s long begun to crave. Bucky starts with his mouth, scraping his teeth down Peter’s neck and crafting a trail of kisses and marks that’ll heal before they’re done and leave Peter breathless. He pushes him back onto the bed—his bed—and sucks his desire into that spot under Peter’s ear as he pulls off his pants and rummages through the bedside drawer.
“If you ‘ran outta’ lube from last time, then I’m gonna—”
“Didn’t,” Bucky interrupts him between well-placed nips on Peter’s neck. “Even if we did, just means I’m gon’ take my time,” Bucky whispers hurriedly and huskily with a busy mouth like he doesn’t know that low, breathy promise alone is enough to get Peter twitching at full mast. He moans long, low, and filthy when Bucky accentuates his words with a harsh bite on Peter’s jugular and—he knows.
“As if you never take your time,” Peter retorts weakly.
Bucky lifts his head and smiles at him cockily with an icy-blue brightness that’s enough to make Peter melt right there and give in to every way Bucky wants him—slow and passionate, safe and well-kept. And the bastard knows this too, this effect he has, because he laughs when his lips touch Peter’s, not because he leaned down to kiss him, but because Peter pulled him down impetuously. Bucky swallows his eager whimper as slick vibranium fingers touch home, circling chilled lube into the tight ring of flesh. Bucky enters him two at a time and—Peter will swear up and down to every corner of the universe: there is nothing like being fingered open with the strongest substance on earth, probably in the galaxy. He throws his head back and lets his voice slip freely from his throat as Bucky takes advantage and continues working his mouth on Peter’s exposed neck. After many blissful and likewise tortuous moments of grinding on four icy metal fingers—because Bucky always, always takes his time—Peter is abruptly flipped over, producing an equally surprised and eager groan.
Because the thing is, Peter likes to pretend he doesn’t love being romanced, but Bucky can only pretend he doesn’t love to absolutely devour Peter for so long. So, when he presses into Peter slow and tender, he shakes with bridled hunger, waiting. And he needs to wait, because, whether it’s thanks to the serum or a stroke of good genetics, Bucky is girthy as fuck, and he reduces Peter to a shaky drooling ape when he’s seated fully inside him, every time.
Bucky curses hotly into Peter’s shoulder, “Fuck! …You never get looser, do ya, Doll?” He grinds lightly into Peter, who can only yelp and whimper in response. “No… you just stay tight like this, all the damn time?” He thrusts shallowly, pulling a desperate sob from Peter, “You heal from that, too, huh? I… damnit, Pete… I can never get used’t ya, to havin’ you under me like this,” he grabs Peter’s chin harshly, lifting his head and forcing him out of any flimsy sense of hiding, and starts a mild rocking rhythm with his hips. Peter keens and trips over his own breath. “You know, don’t you? If it were up to me—” he’s cut off when he rubs against that spot that makes Peter’s hips jerk and see stars. They both groan through it and Bucky’s motions stutter for a beat before picking up with more fervor, still not quite thrusting. “Y’know how I’d have you…” Bucky growls throatily and nips Peter’s ear, his heavy breath tickling his face and neck.
Peter knows too damn well. He knows just how Bucky would have him if he could, if Peter would let him. But he won’t, he can’t. So instead, he lets Bucky take everything Peter can give him, and allows the super soldier to work him up into a mindless frenzy with each teasing roll of hips and the breathy promises of dazzling fantasies that can never be.
“…How I’d make you mine, really mine…” Peter moans on just his words, and Bucky rewards him with a harsh almost-thrust that hits right home. He can’t voice his appreciation, though, because there’s an iron—vibranium—grip on his neck. Peter’s eyes roll. “You’d never wanna leave… an’ I wouldn’t hafta hunt down every bastard that shanks ya…”
Peter chokes, his eyes fluttering open wide and trained numbly on the ceiling. So, it was true.
Maybe Peter was just in denial, but he never let himself think twice about the fact that no one ever shot or stabbed him twice—because they weren’t around to do it. And maybe Peter will be angry at Bucky later, maybe even horrified, but right now…
“Oh, God…!” Peter gasps brokenly when the hand on his neck releases his airway but doesn’t recede, staying in place like an armored sentinel. The action is possessive and endearing all at once, but logic screams at him, because after what Bucky just told him, it should be none of that—but it always is. So, Peter gives in here, tonight, and lets Bucky take.
“Tell me,” Bucky demands, “tell me that’s how… how you…” His words break off with an unintelligible curse and he buries his face into Peter’s back, evidently struggling to maintain a careful pace, which is… fascinating, because Bucky never falters like this, never slips up in his words or rhythms. Peter suddenly feels like a small animal at the nose of a growling beast that promised to play nice, but whose patience is slowly dwindling, and who never truly showed Peter its fangs before. He ponders where the end of Bucky’s rope is, if he has one. But he can’t think on it for long, because the teeth that sink into his lower back and that last guttural demand rip his consciousness down to wherever Bucky wants it. “Peter, tell me you want it,” and it sounds like a threat and it should not be as hot as it is.
“Yes! Fuck—yes!” The words rip from Peter’s throat like water under pressure, the flow starting strong and then slowly diminishing. “I want—want it, yes! Fuck. Just. Okay, God, I want it, please, I want… James, I want it…” He’s out of voice, but the words continue tumbling in his head.
Peter doesn’t always say Bucky’s first name. Only four times (notwithstanding tonight’s display), and the first time, Bucky had asked him to. But whenever Peter calls him by his first name, he only has a moment to prepare for the thorough fucking love-making that’s sure to unfold.
It’s like a switch is flipped, the beast bites. Bucky sits up and the hand on Peter’s neck flies behind his head and snatches his hair as the other hand props his hips up, freshly-healed bullet holes be damned.
“Fuckfuckfuck there!” Peter cries as Bucky snaps his hips forward with deadly precision, his rolling rhythms transforming into forceful raps that turn Peter into helpless, brainless jelly. He has Peter’s body mapped out, knowing every place to bite, scratch, tenderly caress, and claim. He takes Peter apart from the inside out. And by the time he has him pressed flat against the mattress, arms held straight back and ass in the air for the taking, Peter is a sloppy mess.
He knows Bucky is getting close, because he releases Peter’s wrists and leans down over him, slipping his arm under Peter’s waist and under his shoulder. Peter obediently sucks on the metal fingers, tasting himself and letting the drool drip past his lips. It pulls an appeased groan from above him. The fingers go deeper and Peter chokes, sobbing around them, until Bucky’s other hand ceases rubbing torturous circles into his sensitive stomach and travels downwards. The nascent skin from the bullet wound on his hip sends a bolt of sensation up Peter’s spine when Bucky grazes it, forcing his hips to jolt back against him. He whimpers and hears Bucky pant harder. When that hand finally, finally gives Peter’s dick proper attention, he melts completely. He registers the fingers in his mouth traveling further, blocking his breathing, but can’t feel any kind of way about it because he’s reached the plateau.
Tears stream easily down his cheeks for the hundredth time tonight, his eyes rolled back.
“Like this… every damn night… however you need it…” Bucky pants between wet nips to the shell of Peter’s ear, “Whatever you needed, I’d—I’d…”
But Peter doesn’t get to hear the end of it, because as his whimpers reach a crescendo around Bucky’s fingers and his cock is stroked thoroughly and his prostate is pounded relentlessly, he crashes into white hotness with a buffered cry. The fingers quickly leave his lips and the words festering in Peter’s brain jump ship out of his unobstructed mouth.
“James, James, yes, fuck, there, there, Ja-James, I—I’m, fuck, oh God…!”
Because Bucky doesn’t stop and languidly chases his release, writhing into Peter in a way that can only be described as loving. He cries from the sensitivity and battles between the desires for Bucky to slow down and speed up. But he’s kept there, boneless in the super soldier’s grasp, his orgasm strung out from the constant sensation and each of his aftershocks rewarded with Bucky’s breathless moans as he inadvertently tightens around him. It starts to border on painful, so Peter does the only thing his addled brain can think up, and, his voice under pressure, quickly starts spilling more litanies of Bucky’s name, sneaking in desperate pleads and maybe even whispering, “Inside me,” at some point, and that does him in.
Peter relishes the moan that soaks into his shoulder, the warmth that spills into him with each thickened twitch of Bucky’s cock, and the tremors that wrack through them both.
Peter doesn’t always black out, either. When it happens, though, it’s well deserved.
The late morning greets him warmly, pressed against the radiating chest of a super soldier and redressed in the hoodie. He moves to, somehow, close more distance, like he always does—but then…
Bucky’s admission from the heat of last night floods back to him and he jolts up, staring down at Bucky in a new light. He lingers for too long, betrayal and bile threatening to spill over. He needs to leave, to think.
Eyes trained on Bucky’s sleeping form, he scoots back to escape the bed and find his suit, but Bucky’s arm finds him first and he hears him murmur, “Stay,” like he always does. And Peter normally obliges nowadays. But now, he's staring at Bucky’s hand wrapped around his and can’t still the tremble in his limbs.
Bucky’s head snaps up in latent realization and Peter watches him battle sleep to peruse him. “Peter?” He slurs.
Peter’s at a loss of what to say. Was it possible to develop Stockholm syndrome if he was never kidnapped? Because, in Peter’s mind, Bucky can do nothing wrong. He owes him his life twenty times over. He can write poems about all the times Bucky revived him in more ways than one. But if what he said was… was true… if Bucky killed all those… oh, God.
Peter shakes Bucky’s arm off and turns to smash out of the window if he has to, but the super spy is faster. He pulls Peter into a bear hug from behind. He doesn’t even make it off the bed. The thing is, Peter is stronger than Bucky, way stronger—but he’s not stronger than vibranium tech. It’s an unfair advantage in battle and—anything, really. Bucky locks Peter's arms to his sides, willing him to, “Calm down,” and, “Just talk to me.”
But how. The fuck. Could he?
He manages to spin in Bucky’s single-armed grasp and pin him to the bed. “You ‘hunt them down?’” And it’s not what he meant to say, but it’s what comes out, and now he’s stuck on top of Bucky and trapped in that blue gaze of surprise and panic.
But then the surprise melts into understanding, and the wry grin Bucky gives him is chilling. Peter fights an intrusive image of strangling Bucky where he lies. He could probably do it…
“Yeah…” Bucky says like he’s an indignant teen who was caught stealing sweets and gently pushes an uncharacteristically still Peter off him to sit up. “Figured you’d get in a lather,” he shrugs. Peter doesn’t feel like the small animal anymore, but he lets Bucky talk while he deciphers the likely mechanisms of Bucky’s arm so that he could—well, Peter doesn’t know yet.
“The ones I could get dirt on are in the brig…”
What?
Bucky spares a glance at Peter, but he must not like what he sees, because he turns guiltily to the window, like his apartment’s usual city morning view is a most fascinating sight.
“The others…” he runs a metal hand on the back of his neck, “I gave ‘em the shovel talk, sorta,” Peter swallows, working his helpless Gen-Z brain to translate ancient Brooklyn speak. “I put on the old vest, mask too, and waved a couple pounds’a metal in their faces. Maybe roughed ‘em up. A bit,” and he shifts, unsettled in the silence, training his searching gaze on Peter after a moment. He looks like he’s on the brink of saying more, but he stays quiet.
“Oh,” Peter breathes and slumps, suddenly weightless. Maybe… a little too weightless. He has to catch himself from face-planting on the bed.
“Pete?” Bucky asks, voice dipped in knee-jerk concern as he props up Peter’s shoulders and dips down to sleuth his face. Peter doesn’t have the words, but hopes the mix of emotions on his expression lays it all out, and he’s relieved when Bucky’s eyes snap with understanding. Seriously. For a super spy, he can be kinda dense.
“…You thought I killed them,” Bucky mutters, and Peter just sighs because—seriously! His exasperation melts when Bucky pulls him into his chest swiftly and whispers a quick, “Sorry,” followed by fitful reassurances that, no, Bucky didn’t kill anyone in a vengeful flurry for Peter’s sake.
Peter takes one last self-commiserating breath, committing Bucky’s scent to memory so he can keep it in his psyche for however long it takes for him to get shot again… but there’s something sour about it.
Peter is led over to the kitchen island and he takes a seat—his usual seat—on the barstool whilst Bucky cooks him some high-protein full-course breakfast that’s sure to fuel him for weeks, but his stomach isn’t in it. He eats anyway, obviously; it’s a matter of survival at that point, and Bucky eats with him.
He helps with the dishes, even when he’s grumbled at, but he doesn’t take his usual pleasure in brushing off Bucky’s attempts to get him to, “Sit [his] ass back down.”
So, when Peter retrieves his suit from the dryer, changes in the laundry room, and settles into his usual cue to leave, he stays standing there.
“Ya get lost in the dryer?” Bucky asks and opens the door to the now-clean, dual-use bathroom. Peter shuts the dryer but doesn’t look up. He hears Bucky sway on his feet and lean on the door frame. “Did you happen to find my grey army knife?” He fills the silence casually when usually, it’s Peter’s job. “‘Cause, I swear that thing… sucked it right up…” He trails off, somehow realizing that wordy space-filling isn’t his style. Go figure.
Peter looks up, and he can’t say what kind of expression he wears, but it must be dramatic, because Bucky stares sharply at him for a breath before pushing off the doorframe and stepping into Peter’s space. The embrace he wraps Peter in is all-telling. He’s giving Peter “space,” to talk, to feel, to just… be. And—something so small and real and Bucky—it’s all Peter needed to make up his stirred mind.
“…Okay,” Peter mutters decisively.
Bucky pulls him off abruptly and stares down into Peter’s soul. “‘Okay,’ what?” His sky, morning-glistening eyes sparkle with childlike hope that Peter didn’t know he was capable of. It makes Peter want to kiss him stupid. “You…?”
“I’ll stay. I want to stay,” he tries to shrug, but the quickened grip on his shoulders won’t let him. “But like—you kinda gotta chill out with all of the... 'shovel talk?' And I’m still gonna be Spiderman, obviously. I can’t just not—”
But his rant dies where it starts because the words are kissed out of him.