Chapter Text
It’s always been tradition that Steve goes home for winter break. His ma picks him up at the airport in the car they barely use, and Steve always spends the drive home telling her stories from the last semester and catching up on everything that’s happened at home.
This year is no different.
Even if Steve would have liked to stay on campus and mope around after Bucky, hoping to get to the point where they can do more than hold hands or whatever, Sarah Rogers, standing three inches shorter than even Steve and looking like a particularly hard breeze could knock her over, is a force to be reckoned with that Steve will absolutely not reckon with.
Besides, he’d miss his ma like crazy if he didn’t come home.
“I still think that mate of yours should have come with you,” Sarah says as she flips through a pile of takeout menus once they’re home from the airport and safely inside the apartment Steve’s grown up in.
“I don’t think we’re really at the bringing him home to meet the parents stage yet, Ma,” Steve says, “Besides, he has his own family to go home to.”
“Really? Where does his family live?”
“Uh, I’m not sure exactly.”
“He’s not particularly generous with information that one, is he?”
“No, uh, not really.” Steve says, rubbing the back of his neck, and then, “I get the feeling there’s a lot he hasn’t told me actually.”
“Give it time,” Sarah says, setting down the menus and reaching across to take Steve’s hands into her own, “Not everybody is going to to tell you their life story the moment they find out they’re your mate. Now, how do we feel about pizza for dinner? I’m not saying I forgot to go grocery shopping before you flew in, but I’m not not saying that.”
Steve wakes up bright and early on Christmas morning to the sound of his phone vibrating next to his head.
He grabs the phone, jabbing at the screen blindly until it picks up and sleepily slurring “Hello?” into it.
“Hi,” Bucky says into his ear, “Merry Christmas.”
Steve would like to say the sound of his mate’s voice wakes him up immediately, but if anything it just sort of makes him want to curl up in it and go back to sleep. He forces himself not to however, and wrenches his body into a sitting position.
“Merry Christmas, Buck. Where are you that you’re awake at-” He pulls his phone away from his face long enough to squint at the time, “8 in the morning? It’s like 5 back at school.”
“Not that far,” Bucky says vaguely, and Steve can hear background noise through the phone- the sound of street traffic, a honking car, something sizzling on a stove, and four femine voices going back and forth, but it’s nothing identifiable.
“Cryptic, but okay,” Steve says.
“Did you find your Christmas present?”
“It was shoved into the top of my carry-on, so yeah,” Steve says, already reaching for the neatly red and green wrapped package with a post-it note not much smaller than the package itself declaring ‘ DO NOT OPEN BEFORE X-MAS!! I MEAN IT ROGERS!’ still stuck to it, “Did you find yours?”
“No, I completely missed it sitting on my doorstep when I left for the airport. Yeah, of course I found it.” Bucky says, and then, a little more hesitantly, “Do you wanna like, I don’t know, video chat and open them or something? I think I safely have like 15 more minutes before my sisters come in here.”
“ Yes,” Steve says with zero hesitation, and then, before Bucky can change his mind, he hits the little camera button to turn their call into a video call.
“Oh shit, I really did wake you up didn’t I?” Bucky asks when his face fills Steve’s phone screen, his eyes glancing noticeably towards the bottom of the screen.
“Oh, uh, yeah, you did,” Steve says, scratching at his bare chest. Maybe he should have actually thought to put on a shirt and comb his hair before this. He squints at the screen, “Nevermind that, are those christmas penguins on your pajamas?”
“Yes,” Bucky says with an indignant sniff, “we’re a matching pajamas on Christmas morning kind of family. You got a problem with that?”
“Absolutely not. They’re adorable. I was just wondering if it’s two pieces or a full on onesie?” Steve asks, not even trying to hide his grin a little bit. It’s Christmas, and Bucky is in front of him, even if it’s via a phone, and he’s adorable.
“I can tell you’re mocking me Rogers so I’m not answering that question.”
“Sorry,” Steve says, unrepentant.
“Liar,” Bucky says, but he’s smiling and fond, so Steve doubts he minds too much. “So, you ready to open your present?”
“Absolutely,” Steve says, propping his phone up on his bedside table and twisting around to face it properly so that he has both hands free.
There’s a little bit of shuffling on Bucky’s end as he seems to do the same, and then, Bucky’s voice saying, “You first, Steve.”
Steve carefully undoes the wrapping, feeling like this is somehow special- the first gifts he’s exchanged with his mate- and wanting to treat it like such.
Inside is a small bottle attached to a long chain. The bottle itself seems to be made of some sort of crystal- fluorite, maybe? Steve’s never been great with stones- and whatever’s inside it seems to glow gently in the way that some magic does where it makes Steve’s eyes want to instinctively shift away.
“It’s a spell bottle,” Bucky says as Steve holds it between two fingers, turning it in the light, “As long as you wear it it’ll bring protection.”
“It’s beautiful, thank you,” Steve says as he slides it on over his head, the pendant like bottle coming to rest on his sternum, and beneath it, Steve’s heart giving a thump at the pleased look on Bucky’s face.
“My turn,” Bucky says, overly careful for Steve’s patience as he unwraps his present. Or maybe not careful enough. Suddenly Steve feels the pit of dread in his stomach that comes from not being sure about a gift. Is it enough? Will Bucky like it? Was Natasha fucking with him when he sent her pictures for approval?
Finally, Bucky unwraps the last of the hand painted brown paper and picks up the first item- a carved, wooden wolf, small enough to fit in the palm of Bucky’s hand- inspecting it.
“I uh, took a wood working class last year and I, uh, I don’t know, I thought you might- But if you don’t it’s not-” Steve starts, coming to stop when Bucky raises a hand.
“Steve. Stop worrying. I like it.” He says, setting the wolf to the side where Steve can no longer see it from the vantage the camera offers, and shaking the other item free of it’s wrapping.
It’s a shirt, the fabric a sort of sheer pink something that Steve knows feels soft and slippery beneath Bucky’s hands, with a pattern made of glittering strawberries all over it.
Bucky’s expression curls into a smile that lifts Steve up like a balloon as Bucky holds the fabric of his shirt closer, and delighted, says “Steve.”
“I thought you’d like it,” Steve says, wishing he could somehow move through the phone- be in the room where Bucky is so that he could touch, or at the very least just share the space with him.
“I do, thank you-”
There’s a cacophony of sudden noise as Bucky’s interrupted and a girl throws herself into the spot next to him. She’s followed by another one, and then yet another who settles behind all of them.
“Is this Steve?” One of them asks.
“Ooooh the famous Steve-” Another says.
“We’ve heard so much about you Steve.” The last one says.
“Excuse me Steve, I have to murder and hide my sisters’ bodies,” Bucky says, and then the call is disconnected.
Steve would be upset at their call getting cut short but, well, Bucky has apparently been talking about him.
🐺🐺🐺
When Steve gets back to school it’s straight into a hugeass frat party.
“Have you seen Natasha?” Sharon asks, pitching her voice to be heard above the music and shoving a red solo cup full of something into his hands.
“I just got here. And shouldn’t you know where she is?” Steve asks, barely trying to hide the way he leans up onto his toes, trying to peer through the crowd and spot Bucky.
“We’re on a break.”
“How are you on a break when you weren’t ever official?”
“I don’t know Steve, you tell me,” Sharon says, and then “Wait, I think I see her.”
And then she’s disappearing into the crowd and leaving Steve alone. Or well, as alone as one can be in a frat house surrounded by a bunch of mostly drunk or high college students.
After she’s gone he wastes a little bit of time moving through the party, drinking from and refilling the cup that Sharon had handed him before her disappearance. He catches Sam for a few minutes before Scott drags Sam into a conversation, gets corralled by Peter Parker for what feels like an eternity, and stumbles upon Thor and Loki doing something that might be fighting back and forth but also just might be them that he backs away from very slowly before Loki can try to demand Steve backs him up in whatever they might or might not be fighting about.
Through all of this he doesn’t find Bucky, which is just as well, because Bucky is the one who finds Steve when Steve escapes out the front door to the patio to get a breather.
Steve is just tipsy enough that what leaves his mouth when he sees Bucky is “ Wow” and “I shouldn’t have gotten you that shirt for Christmas.”
Bucky, presumably because he’s not privy to the melody of Steve’s internal monologue currently sounding like a group of shrieking twelve year old girls, looks confused.
“What? What’s wrong with it?”
“ Nothing,” Steve says, maybe a bit too vehemently. “It’s just-,” Steve gestures sort of vaguely to Bucky and all of his everything , wearing a shirt that Steve(!) gave him, the sheer nature of the garment leaving very little to the imagination, “It’s a lot. For me, personally. To handle.”
“ Oh,” Bucky says, moving closer to Steve, a slow, almost cocky, smile spreading across his face. Steve suddenly feels a little like prey, trapped under Bucky’s gaze, a feeling that as a werewolf Steve is certainly not used to. “So, what you’re saying is, you like it a little too much.”
“Not in so many words, no, but yeah,” Steve says, bringing his hands up when Bucky is close, his palms flat over the planes of Bucky’s stomach, the skin warm beneath them and only separated from Steve by a thin, sheer, delicate layer of fabric.
Steve wants.
“I want to kiss you,” Bucky says, a detour from teasing Steve. It would be incredibly easy to kiss him like this, with Steve backed up against the wall of the house and Bucky’s hands to either side of him on the wall. Bucky’s taller than Steve by a good deal, but it would be so easy just to lean up and kiss him.
“Why don’t you then?” Steve asks, breathless, like some damsel in a harlequin romance novel. He can’t believe this is his life- being weak in the knees because his soulmate wants to kiss him, but not making the first move because he’s been resolved this whole damn time not to come off as some overbearing werewolf who pushes Bucky into anything.
“Because… I think if I start, I won’t be able to stop.”
“And that’s bad how exactly?” Steve asks, “I mean I certainly wouldn’t compl-”
The words die in his throat when Bucky leans down, interrupting Steve with his mouth on Steve’s own.
It’s soft at first- the barest press of Bucky’s lips against his own and they stay that way for a while. Exchanging soft kisses, sharing space, sharing air.
It’s slow and easy, until there’s a shift- Bucky’s hands on Steve’s waist, pulling him in, Steve’s hands in Bucky’s hair, holding on, grounding himself, pressing closer into Bucky’s warmth. Where once they were sharing air, now Steve feels like they’re trying to breathe each other in like oxygen.
He dimly registers the sound of people spilling out the front door and onto the patio, a voice saying “oh shit, sorry bro,” before disappearing but it’s impossible to even start to pay attention to anything but Bucky when it feels like-
When it feels like Steve had felt the day he met Bucky and realized who he was, but multiplied until Steve feels like an entire galaxy, orbiting around one point- Bucky.
When they break apart, Bucky’s flushed, his mouth swollen and red and Steve thinks he could kiss him again. He could kiss him and keep kissing him, until the party goers have long gone home and the sun is making its way into the sky once again.
Every feeling he’s kept carefully managed and tucked away, beneath as many layers of self control as he could manage has been upended and he understands, deeply, exactly what Bucky had meant when he said he was afraid he might not be able to stop.
“That was-” Bucky says, gesturing sort of vaguely with one hand, the other one still firmly holding onto Steve, grounding, keeping him from floating off like he very well feels he could.
“It was- Yeah,” Steve agrees, words to describe what that was exactly failing him in the moment.
“We should- uh-” Bucky pauses, tipping his head forward until his forehead rests against Steve’s, his hair forming a curtain that makes them feel like they’re alone, in their own little bubble, “We should do it more often, maybe.”
Unfortunately for Steve they’re not actually in their own little bubble. They’re in college. At a party. Surrounded by other people. Some of them being their friends, who burst out onto the patio, seemingly oblivious to what they’re interrupting.
“We’re gonna go get food,” Sharon says, Natasha wrapped around her from behind, whatever their issue was it’s seemingly been resolved in the span of a party.
“I already vetoed Denny’s,” Sam says.
“I happen to love Denny’s,” Bucky says, and Steve’s sure it’s not true and is just to irritate Sam. They seem to have developed a very specific bond that means they disagree with each other about everything purely on principle. “I’m unvetoing Denny’s.”
“Literally all I care about is that I get french fries in me within the next 20 minutes,” Natasha says as they all tromp down the stairs, Bucky tucking Steve under his arm as they go. “You two can argue all you want about where we go, but if it delays me getting what I want I promise I will come for you in your sleep.”
“She’s very serious,” Sharon says, looking disgustingly fond. Steve supposes he can’t judge, he probably has a similar look about Bucky right now.
🐺🐺🐺
Things are peaceful for a while.
Steve continues to be disgustingly into Bucky, and Bucky continues to reciprocate just as much as he had on the patio at that party. Bucky can still at times seem like he’s vaguely puzzled by the whole werewolf soulmate thing, but it feels like they’re really going somewhere with this. They go on dates. Bucky brings Steve lunch sometimes at the coffee shop. Bucky brings himself to the coffee shop 4 days out of 5 and endures Loki’s heckling when he and Steve definitely break the employee code of conduct and kiss over the register. Hell, Bucky even heckles back.
So yeah, things are going pretty smoothly.
Or they are until Steve shows up on Bucky’s porch for the Valentine's Day date that Bucky had informed Steve that Steve is taking him on.
“We need to go. I’m coming to stay with you and Sam,” Bucky says as soon as he opens the door, shoving a bag into Steve’s arms and shoving him towards his car. He’s frazzled, muttering to himself about protection spells and dragon scales and how they should have worked, dammit.
“What? Bucky, what’s going on?” Steve is… Well, in all honesty, Steve is worried as hell. Things have been going so well. Sure, Bucky has yet to really warm up to the whole sharing information about himself thing even as he’s warmed up to Steve, but Steve had started to be pretty convinced that was just a Bucky thing . But now- well this seems different.
“Somebody’s been in my house, Steve. They- They found me. I knew- But I thought that maybe- I don’t- Steve, I just- I need to come stay with you, okay? It’s important.”
And okay, Steve is not going to say it doesn’t absolutely kill him to stop this train in its tracks, because having Bucky close to him is basically the thing that Steve’s entire soul wants most, but, “You have to tell me what’s going on, Bucky. All of this- Everything you haven’t told me yet- I need to know.”
“Okay-” Bucky says, “Okay, just- Just get in the car and I promise I’ll tell you on the drive, okay?”
And yeah, no, Steve isn’t going to not listen when it sounds like Bucky is practically begging. So he gets in the car, and once he does Bucky starts talking.
He explains, in stops and starts, how he’d gotten involved with HYDRA, a not very well kept secret, secret society at Echidna. How it’d seemed like just a frat that took itself too seriously at first. How he’d gotten, if not comfortable, complacent with it. It’d seemed mostly harmless, and being a HYDRA alum was supposedly one of those things that would open doors after college was over.
And then, Bucky tells him, it turned a little less harmless. Rituals and spellwork to help their grades, to make them more charming, for luck in the big game- all things that while ethically questionable were more or less harmless- turned into something else, something much, much darker.
“It was like once you were upperclassmen you got to see all the terrible shit finally,” Bucky says, one hand on the steering wheel, the other tugging fretfully at his hair. “Once I realized the kind of stuff they were really doing, I tried to quit, but I guess you don’t just leave HYDRA. Especially when what you are contributes oh so much.”
By this point they’ve pulled up out front of Steve and Sam’s apartment, and Bucky pulls out a bundle of cloth, unwrapping it to reveal a gleaming horn, cracked and broken at the bottom, but still undeniably magical.
“They tried to take it from me.” Something in his voice is brittle- distant, even- and Steve shifts closer in the car, wrapping his hands over Bucky’s. “I hoped that maybe if I ran they wouldn’t follow. I mean, it wasn’t a sure thing. I know them. I know how… Fucked up, I guess, they are. But I’m not- I’m just one fucking unicorn. It was a long shot but I thought maybe they wouldn’t bother to chase me across the country. And then that night in the woods- I knew they knew I was here, but I guess I convinced myself it was a fluke.”
It all makes sense in a terrible, horrifying, gut churning sort of way. A unicorn’s magic is pretty fucking incredible, but if you can’t get a unicorn on your side- a thing that can be pretty difficult if your side happens to be, well, morally bankrupt, to say the least, then their horn holds enough magic to do… well to do a whole fucking lot, and they’re worth more than their weight in gold. Hell, they’re probably worth more than a whole unicorn’s weight in gold. And that doesn’t take into account all the other bits of a unicorn that can be sold off.
It’s wrong to hunt them. Hell it’s beyond wrong, it’s highly fucking illegal, but that doesn’t mean they don’t turn up dead all the time. There will always be people willing to bend the rules to get power, or to get money from the people who want power. Hell, get enough magic on your side and you no longer need to find ways around the law, you become the law.
“So what- They thought that they could just take your magic?” Steve is so angry he feels like he’s shaking with it- so furious that his muscles and bones ache with the urge to shift.
“It just takes a unicorn, a ritual and a little bit of unicorn murder,” Bucky says in a tone that’s striving for lightness and coming about two miles short of it, shrugging his shoulders helplessly.
“They were just going to sacrifice you. For what? Better scores on their finals? World domination? Wait- Wait- So have you been weird this entire year because you’ve been hiding out from some crazy secret society?” It’s maybe a self centered question to ask, but it makes sense, and, in Steve’s defense, it gets a laugh and a rueful grin out of Bucky.
“Steve, if you had announced I was your mate at literally any other time of my life I probably would have jumped on it. I just… I couldn’t trust it right away, you know? The timing seemed … too convenient. I had to be sure.”
“That I wasn’t trying to trick you.”
“Yeah,” Bucky says, grimacing and somehow apologetic about the fact that he’s been worrying about his life this whole year, “Sorry.”
Steve takes hold of the front of Bucky’s shirt, pulls him in and kisses him.
When he pulls back, Bucky looks a little pleased and pink around the edges.
“I don’t care,” Steve says, pressing one more light kiss to Bucky’s lips, “You had every right to be cautious. Now that I know though, I can help and we can figure out what to do now that they know you’re here. Together.” Like mates, Steve’s brain finishes for him, but it seems a little sappy and overly werewolf-y to say it out loud.
Sam seems a little peeved by the development of Bucky and Steve showing up at the apartment with a bag of Bucky’s stuff. Or at least he does for all of 10 minutes before Steve gives him an abridged bullet points summary of the situation. Once he’s caught up, Sam calls Natasha and Sharon over.
Natasha needs only to look at Bucky, curled up into the corner of the couch with Steve tucked around him from behind, before she’s giving Sharon a rundown.
“Natasha already knew most of it,” Bucky elaborates, patting at Steve’s hands where they’re clasped over Bucky’s stomach, answering the question Steve hadn’t yet voiced but wanted to, “Our families have known each other a long time.”
When Sharon has gotten the full story, with Bucky chiming in to fill in the full details Natasha doesn’t have (though she has an almost terrifying knowledge of it all), she turns to Steve and Bucky. “And here I thought senior year might end up boring.”
“With us?” Steve asks, all feigned shock, “ Never.”
“This is why you don’t join secret societies, James,” Natasha says, wandering into Steve and Sam’s kitchen and then reappearing again with a bag of chips like she lives there.
“I refuse to be judged in my own home,” Bucky says with an indignant sniff.
“This absolutely isn’t your home, Barnes,” Sam says.
“I refuse to be judged in my boyfriend’s own home,” Bucky says, and despite the enormity of the current situation, Steve absolutely preens at being called Bucky’s boyfriend.
🐺🐺🐺
The pack searches the woods around campus.
Wanda bitches about unicorns acting like they know how to use magic just because they are magic but casts some protective spells on Sam and Steve’s apartment, annoying their neighbors in the process.
And even Natasha uses her frankly terrifying social connections to ask around. But in the end they come up short of finding whoever broke into Bucky’s house.
Well, they know who, as an entity, did it, but it’s not like they can easily track down whatever members of a secret fucking society happened to do it.
So, for now, they’re left waiting.
Steve hates it.
He wants to be doing something- anything- to make sure Buck’s safe, but there’s not a damned thing he can do right now.
“How are you so calm?” Steve asks Bucky after the second time Steve’s gotten up to peek out the window, searching for something that’s not there.
“You’re worrying enough for the both of us,” Bucky says, catching hold of Steve’s hands and dragging him back down into the bed that Steve has very quickly started thinking of as their bed.
It’s a dangerous game, because when this is all over Bucky will most definitely go back to his own place and Steve will have to get used to thinking of it as just his bed all over again.
Before he can get morose however, Bucky rolls them over until Steve is underneath him, Bucky perched atop Steve with their hands still clasped together. Like this, with Bucky over him, his hair spilling in waves like a curtain around the both of them, there’s nothing but Bucky that Steve can even contemplate thinking about.
“I just like you an awful lot,” Steve says, his tone purposefully light, untangling one hand from Bucky’s so that he can curve it over the strong line of Bucky’s jaw, “It’d be pretty upsetting if you got nabbed by a frat boy secret society.”
“Understandable,” Bucky says, turning his head to kiss the center of Steve’s palm, “I am pretty great. It’d be a shame for the world to lose this face.”
The kiss sets Steve’s skin alight, which is why he thinks it’s perfectly justified that he maybe sounds a little breathless when he says, “I won’t let that happen. I’m a humanitarian, after all.”
“Hmm, is that so? I thought you were an art major.”
“Humanitarian, art major. Jobless tomato, jobless tomahto,” Steve says before he’s giving in to his urge to slide his hand back, back, back, until he can lace his fingers through soft hair and pull Bucky down to kiss him.
They don’t talk much after that, and Steve’s worries melt- just for a little bit- as easily as he melts for Bucky.
🐺🐺🐺
While Steve is personally delighted to have his mate more or less living in his own home, there are other parties that are not quite as keen on the situation.
Those parties being one Samuel Wilson: the very best friend Steve has ever had, and also his roommate.
“Your hair is a disgusting lump on the wall in the shower. Again ,” Sam gripes for possibly the 12th time in the last week as he pours himself a bowl of overly sugary cereal and glares a hole into the back of Bucky’s head where Bucky is half asleep in a textbook.
“You’re the dog here, maybe it’s not mine and is because you’re shedding,” Bucky replies, though Steve’s sure it’s only by rote at this point and is lacking any of the heat that might lead to an actual argument.
Sam and Bucky’s relationship seems to be a friendship, but it seems to be a friendship based on mutual disdain and bickering.
“I’m sorry Barnes, I’m not the one with Rapunzel-esque locks, so it’s definitely not me,”
“You think I have Rapunzel-esque hair?” Bucky asks, seeming to perk up dramatically and flicking said hair over his shoulder. “I’m touched. Truly. Deeply. ”
“I hate you,” Sam says, and Steve would be offended on Bucky’s behalf, but it’s said with the sort of heat that Sam uses when he tells his sister’s dog it’s an asshole, so he sincerely doubts Sam is in any way shape or form serious about it.
“I hate you more,” Bucky sing-songs as Sam takes his bowl of cereal and disappears back into his room.
“You two have an incredibly weird friendship,” Steve tells Bucky seriously.
“We’re mortal enemies, Steven,” Bucky says, just as seriously.
“Right. Right. That’s why when there was only one bowl left of your favorite cereal you left it for Sam this morning. I’m sure that’s born of true and deep hatred.”
“Aren’t you supposed to agree with me?” Bucky asks, tipping backward in his chair and twisting around to look at Steve judgmentally, “I thought that was how this mate thing worked.”
“Nope,” Steve says, popping the p, sliding off his perch on their little kitchenette counter and smacking a kiss to Bucky’s cheek. “Sorry. I think my duty as your werewolf mate mostly just consists of making out, some light stalking, and also informing you when you’re going to be late to class. Which you currently are.”
“ Shit,” Bucky says, checking his phone, and then, “Shit. Shit. Shit. Why did I take an early class?” As he grabs his things and shoves his hair up into a sloppy bun, and then disappears out the front door like a whirlwind.
Steve, despite himself, feels very fond.
🐺🐺🐺
It’s easy to slip up.
To get lulled into a sense of false security.
For days, and then weeks to pass by with nothing in the way of danger jumping out at them that by the time the end of April is rolling around and the flowers are in bloom and the start of finals cramming is abuzz everything that transpired- everything Steve found out- on Valentine’s Day feels a little less dire.
For Steve to start to pay just the littlest bit less attention.
Which is, of course, when he gets fucking snatched while walking to his job at the coffee shop .
When he comes to his head hurts like a motherfucker, and his shoulders ache where his arms are wrenched behind his back, his wrists tied together with rope that burns like a bitch when he tries to wiggle around in it in an attempt to escape.
“Fucking wolfsbane in the rope? What, scared of what I’ll do to you if I get out of these?” Steve asks, catching the attention of the two absolute frat boy looking douchebags sitting a few feet away playing cards.
“I knew we should have muzzled him,” Frat Boy A- an asshole with a backwards snapback and a tank top that unironically says ‘SUNS OUT GUNS OUT’, tells Frat Boy B- an asshole with a truly unfortunate buzzcut and sunglasses on despite the fact that they’re in the middle of the woods where it’s shaded.
“Shouldn’t you guys be preparing for finals? At your own school?” Steve asks, shifting as subtly as he can manage against the tree his back is pressed to, attempting to use that to somehow get out of the rope. “Or like, I don’t know, getting ready for a kegger? Also at your own school? Literally anything other than kidnapping me and tying me up in the woods? Because I do have finals to prepare for and this is really fucking with my study schedule.”
“Don’t worry about your finals. You’ll be dead long before then,” Frat Boy A says.
“Oh. Good. That’s one less stressor I guess,” Steve says, absolutely and entirely not willing to let on even a little bit that okay, yeah, this whole situation is kind of terrifying. Steve does not want to die. “So what’s the plan? Why kidnap me, in particular? General hatred for werewolves? I know that’s a big one for some people. Nah, if it was that you woulda killed me outright. You wouldn’t bother tying me up. Ohhh. I’m bait aren’t I? For Bucky.”
Frat Boy A is apparently the smarter of the two, so he doesn’t give much away, but judging by the look on Frat Boy B’s face, Steve’s hit the mark. Granted, it was less of a mark and more of a blindingly obvious neon sign, but still.
“It’s not just to the two of you is it?” Steve asks, “Because- I mean, we do have friends, and it’d be kind of sad for you both if they wiped the floor with you just cause you’re outnumbered. On the other hand, it might be even worse if there’s more of you and you two are just the grunts stuck watching one lousy werewolf.” Frat Boy B makes another face, which is telling, and also probably part of the reason he’s apparently stuck doing grunt work. “Oh man, that really sucks for you guys. I’d hate to realize I was at the bottom of my friend group too. Or I guess in this case, weird murderous secret society.”
“I’m gonna kill him man. I know we’re not supposed to, but I think just this once it’ll be fine.” Frat Boy B says, which okay, is suboptimal.
“We can’t fucking kill him, idiot,” Frat Boy A says, “How do you think you end up like fucking Barnes?”
“I don’t care man, I don’t fucking care,” Frat Boy B responds, throwing himself towards Steve with- oh fuck that’s a knife.
Steve grits his teeth and, with a minor shift in form- even though growing fucking claws isn’t exactly pleasant - claws through the ropes around him and throws himself to the side.
There’s a reason that most werewolves aren’t particularly keen on shifting outside of when they’re forced to on the full moon, even for minor shifts like claws or teeth or whatever, and that’s that it hurts like a fucking bitch. Steve guesses they wouldn’t call lycanthropy a curse if it was a walk in the park, but goddamn do his hands ache.
“Bringing a knife to a claw fight feels a little unfair, dude,” Steve says as he comes up swinging at Frat Boy B.
Steve hears his name called from somewhere beyond the trees and it’s enough of a distraction that Frat Boy B gets him between the ribs with the knife, which is about the time when people spill into the woods and all hell breaks loose.
So this is what it feels like to be stabbed, he thinks.
And oh, how did I end up on the ground? as he blinks up at the canopy of treelimbs above him.
And also, holy shit that hurts.
It hurts like an absolute son of a bitch, and it’s not healing like a knife wound should, which is worrying, and probably means there was silver involved, which is also worrying.
Steve turns his head towards the chaos and blinks at the sight in front of him. Or, well, to the side of him he guesses.
His friends are there, but there’s also a shitton of people Steve doesn’t know- frat bro looking motherfuckers with an ominous energy. No wonder HYDRA sucks at the secret part of secret society. There’s too many of them.
One has a book and seems to be chanting something, and one’s caught Sharon by the hair, and another has Bucky and Steve- Steve needs to help.
He tries to push himself up, but his arms feel like jelly, and the trees around him are spinning, and his head feels a little like it’s a balloon. None of this points to anything good when it comes to how much blood might be left inside of Steve’s body.
A frat bro makes a horrified noise and Steve blinks his eyes open (huh, when did he close his eyes?) to see that Natasha is there, large, and scaly, and shining red.
If it were possible for someone to smirk while in their dragon form, Steve would swear that Natasha is smirking. But as it is, she seems to exchange a look with Bucky, who jerks himself away from the frat bro who has hold of him and throws himself to side as Natasha opens her mouth and roasts the asshole.
Steve should feel bad about what must be a very traumatic end, but also the guy had a hold of Bucky so that HYDRA could sacrifice him so like, maybe he shouldn’t.
After that everything seems to go quickly. Or maybe it doesn’t, and Steve just loses track of time.
Either way, the next thing Steve takes notice of is Sharon somewhere seemingly far off saying “Fucking a, the knife was silver,” and then Bucky’s voice saying, “Hi, no, please- god, please don’t go-” suddenly beside him and everything- it feels sort of fuzzy but Bucky’s voice is choked and he sounds so terribly, terribly sad that Steve wants desperately to fix it.
“Hey, don’t- don’t be upset,” Steve says, reaching up to touch Bucky’s cheek. His cheeks are wet with tears and Steve thinks maybe it’s the blood loss but they seem to be glowing, shining with a silver-blue light where Steve gathers them on his fingertips.
“I’m- God- You’re okay, okay? You can’t bail on me now, Rogers. You can’t . I’m so fuckin sorry I got you into this mess. I love you and now- You never should have been-”
“You love me?” Steve asks.
“ That’s what you’re focusing on?” Bucky asks, tipping his head down until their foreheads are touching. “You were stabbed. You could- You’re such a fucking idiot .”
“That’s a little rude,” Steve says, and god, he’s so tired, but Bucky’s right there, and Bucky loves him, and he’s crying, tears that land on Steve’s face and- “Hey, don’t unicorn tears-”
And then the world goes dark.
When Steve wakes up every inch of him hurts and the antiseptic smell of a hospital makes his nose twitch like he needs to sneeze.
Also, his mother is there, both her hands wrapped around one of Steve’s while she dozes in a chair pulled up to the side of Steve’s bed.
Which means he’s been out for long enough that his mother flew across the country. Jesus.
“Oh thank god, you’re awake,” Sam says and Steve twists, dislodging his hand from his mother’s, to see his best friend sitting on the other side of his bed.
Steve opens his mouth to speak, makes a terrible croaking noise, takes a drink of the water Sam holds up for him, and then finally, manages to say “You look like shit, man.”
Sam laughs, and some of the tension seems to leak out of him. “Yeah, no thanks to you, asshole. You scared us. If it weren’t for your boy...”
“I’m sorry,” Steve says, and means it, “I promise I’ll try not to get kidnapped and almost killed again.”
“I appreciate it,” Sam says and glances past Steve to where Sarah has woken up and is giving Steve a look. “Anyway, I’m gonna give you and your mom a chance to talk. I’ll go let Barnes know you’re awake. We had to force him back to the apartment so that he’d get some rest.”
And then, with a hug for Steve’s mom, Sam, the traitor, leaves Steve all alone with her.
“I would appreciate it if next time you go up against someone trying to kill your boyfriend, you let me know so that I don’t wake up to a phone call about how my son is in the hospital with a silver wound.” Sarah Rogers says, giving Steve absolutely no time to think that this scenario could go any differently.
“In my defense, this isn’t even in the like, top five for stupidest things I’ve ever done Ma.”
“Steven Grant Rogers, that is not a good defense.”
“I know, I know. But I thought we could handle it. And to be fair, we kind of did . I ended up okay. Really ” Steve says, taking his mom’s hand in his own and giving it a squeeze.
“Yes, because your boyfriend happens to be a unicorn whose tears healed you enough that you didn’t bleed out in the middle of the woods before they could get you to a hospital.” Steve’s mom says firmly, and then she takes a deep breath and heaves a great big, blustery sigh. The sort of sigh that means she, like Steve has to do so often as well, is reminding herself to be patient. She relaxes, after a moment, the spring coil of tension she’d been holding herself in melting as she smooths a hand through Steve’s hair, “I’m so glad you’re okay, sweetheart, and proud of you- but I really wish you weren’t too old for me to ground you for eternity.”
“If it helps any I’ll pretend it’s possible,” Steve offers.
“It does, thank you. Now, tell me all about this boy of yours. The way he was looking at you when I got here makes me think there’s been some developments since Christmas...”
Later, when Steve has been discharged from the hospital, his friends have all trickled out of his and Sam’s apartment, and his mother is sound asleep on his couch, Steve lays tangled up with Bucky in his bed.
The moon lights Bucky up like he’s Steve’s very own constellation, his hair spilling across their shared pillow, their faces very close.
“ Oh ,” Steve says, like he’s remembering something, twisting a strand of Bucky’s hair around his fingertips absently.
“Mmh?” Bucky hums, his eyes half closed. He looks tired, with shadows beneath his eyes, and earlier he told Steve that he was sure Steve was going to give him a gray hair from worry.
“I forgot to tell you before I passed out.”
“What?”
“I love you too.”
🐺🐺🐺
Finals pass and graduation rolls around, and while Steve’s not sure he’ll remember walking across a stage in a graduation gown he knows for a fact that the sight of Bucky in his suit after it all will remain in his mind for many, many years to come.
After, they all take one last camping trip.
“I don’t think I ever want to see the woods again,” Steve says, complaining only for the sake of it.
“Shut up Rogers, you love it here,” Bucky says, looping his arms around Steve’s waist and dragging him down onto the seat next to him.
The sun has long since set and the fire is burning bright and when Steve glances around, at his friends, at Sharon and Nat discussing something in low voices while roasting marshmallows and Thor attempting to shove an entire s’more at Loki’s face, at Sam, who catches his eye and grins back at him, he thinks that okay, well, it’s not that bad.
“I guess it has its charms,” Steve relents.
“More charms than you, that’s for sure,” Bucky teases.
“Asshole,” Steve says, shoving at Bucky without any force.
Adulthood, real actual adulthood without the shelter of college, is right around the corner and even after the year he’s had, after nearly fucking dying and then having to talk to police and then news reporters when they’d caught wind of a magical collegiate secret society murder scandal going on, even after all of that it still feels a little like he’s diving headfirst into the unknown.
“You’re thinking again, that’s bad for you,” Bucky smooths his thumb over the little crease between Steve’s eyebrows then follows it with his mouth, pressing a featherlight kiss to the skin, “And you should get used to the wilderness, city slicker. Remember, we’re gonna be sleeping under the stars at the Grand Canyon.”
“I didn’t agree to any outdoor sleeping on the road trip, Buck,” Steve says, because while he’s pretty enthusiastic about the idea of the two of them on a sort of one last hurrah road trip before Bucky starts grad school and Steve starts… whatever he’s going to start with a goddamn art degree, he absolutely did not agree to anything even close to roughing it. Werewolf or not, his spine does not agree with sleeping on the ground. “Also, the city slicker thing doesn’t work when you’re literally from Brooklyn too.”
“I’m a unicorn Steve, that means I’m practically part horse. I run wild and free. No city can keep me.”
“Ohhhh, right. Of course. Of course,” Steve says, “And me?”
“Hmm?”
“Can I keep you?”
Bucky hums out a considering noise, tilting his head this way and that, really making a show of considering it before he finally heaves a dramatic, put upon sigh. “I guess I wouldn’t mind if you do,” He says, leaning in close, their foreheads pressed together. “You’re pretty easy on the eyes. And you’re good in bed. Plus you’ve got that whole devoted werewolf soulmate thing going for you, so I guess.”
“Right. It’s just my good looks and my sexual prowess that makes you want me around. I guess I could go find a new werewolf soulmate. I mean, I don’t think it’s possible, but you never kn-”
Bucky cuts Steve off by dragging him into a kiss, and Steve laughs against his mouth, feeling a little bit like Bucky is a balloon, tucked just under his ribs that could carry him away.
And the future is ahead of them, something big and unsure, the same way the future is always huge and unsure, no matter how old you get (though they’re both maybe too young to have realized the part where it never really gets any clearer), but he knows he has Bucky, and really, that’s the part that matters.