Work Text:
Title: The boyfriend thing.
Verse:
Fandom: Avengers Academy
Rating: R.
Genre: Romance, hopefully humorous and cracky in parts. Also angsty and sappy in others.
Wordcount: 3300 circa.
Characters/Pairings: Stucky. Natasha and Janet play a big part. Cameos by Tony, J.A.R.V.I.S., Brock, Sharon, Clint, Kate, Pizza Dog, Enchantress, Loki, Thor Jess, Gwen and Pete.
Beta: The fabulous PhoenixInTheNight (itsabeautifulmidnight)
Warnings: Emotional rollercoaster. I’m not even joking. Hang on tight.
Summary: If Bucky had a boyfriend, the guy should flaunt Bucky. Hell, he should pamper Bucky and spoil Bucky and worship Bucky and put the world at his feet and pluck the moon from the sky.
* * * * *
Bucky was smiling.
Which, on a normal day, would be enough to make Steve smile back, no matter the distance, no matter what they were doing – that immediate, wide smile that came effortlessly, whether Bucky was dimpling at him or at someone else. A blinding flash of teeth that would overcome Steve's face, even as his heart went bum-badump! in his throat. A smile for a smile, like a mirror image.
Bucky was smiling, dimpling really, eyes shy and smile even shyer.
And Steve was frowning because
Bucky
was
smiling
at
Crossbones.
And, okay. The guy had joined the Academy now. He wasn't Hydra anymore. He deserved a chance.
But Bucky was smiling
at
him
and Crossbones was leaning over and draping an arm around Bucky's shoulders like it belonged there, like some sort of heavy necklace, thumb pressing at the tender hollow of Bucky's throat, their faces so close that Steve bet Bucky's eyelashes were touching Crossbones's cheek and then, woah-woah there, the stone bench crumbled suddenly under Steve's white-knuckled hold, and when had he even grasped it?
Steve jerked up, blushing at the attention he'd drawn to himself. Bucky turned and full-on beamed at him from the other side of the Park, and Steve couldn't help it, he smiled back helplessly, knees turning into some sort of jelly.
Natasha picked that exact moment to smoothly insert herself between Bucky and Crossbones. Shouldering the guy aside, she linked her elbow with Bucky's and guided him towards their next class, clucking her tongue and shaking her head at him.
Crossbones stared after her. Fists pumping in annoyance, he made to follow.
And promptly tripped on one of Jessica's spiderwebs.
“That guy really ought to know when to give up,” Janet exclaimed, materialising out of thin air at Steve's back, making him jump right out of his skin. “When will it get into his head that Bucky-Boo's not interested?”
Steve had no idea why a battalion of butterflies congregated into his stomach at the words “not interested”, but congregate they did. He surreptitiously watched Sharon give Jessica a smart salute and then ooops, bump into Crossbones and force him to pick up her books which had been dropped to the floor.
What in--?
What the--?
Were they keeping Rumlow away from Bucky?
“Sure we are,” Janet nodded. “We told him Bucky's got a boyfriend, but Rumlow kept following him around campus like a bee, so we decided on a more hands-on approach.”
Right on cue, Pizza Dog careened onto Crossbones and sent him sprawling, star-fished onto the grass. A moment, two. And then Crossbones gave up on following Bucky and began to pet the dog.
It took Steve a couple of heartbeats to force the ice out of his veins.
He swallowed.
“...you told him that Bucky's got... a boyfriend?”
Janet arched an eyebrow up at him.
“Sure we did, Cap. I mean, I get it was supposed to be a seeecreeeettt,” she tapped her lips, suddenly thoughtful. “But we all know about it, soooo~ooo...”
And, nope. The ice came back full-force. Steve's stomach dropped violently and he had to stammer an excuse before bolting.
B-
Bu--
Bucky had--
Bucky had a boyfriend?
* * * * *
Steve... didn't... quite... avoid Bucky for a few days after that initial accident.
(Steve couldn't avoid Bucky even if he tried, he sort-of, almost, well-actually-he-truly-did have trouble breathing whenever they were too long apart) But, yeah, his days got considerably more boring, his evenings lonelier, and his feet substantially clumsier, considering how Steve started stumbling awkwardly away whenever he and Bucky met around Campus.
Janet started eyeing him oddly after a couple of days of this behaviour. Natasha squinted at him from shadowed corners, mouth pursed thoughtfully. Even Tony and Clint couldn't help but glance curiously at him whenever he skid past.
It's just.
It's just.
Boyfriend.
Steve shot to his feet and ran out of the Club as soon as Loki and Thor sauntered in, a scowling Bucky on their heels.
Boyfriend.
* * * * *
“The Wasp says we should talk,” Bucky whispered. He'd cornered Steve in the gym, and Steve felt oddly vulnerable, standing there barefoot and dripping. Vulnerable and wrong-footed, never a good combination when it came to him.
“Uhm,” he said eloquently.
Bucky glanced at him from under the curtain of his long hair.
“Romanoff says she would help hide your body, if I needed,” he offered after a long silence.
“Uhm,” Steve reiterated, suddenly aware that he was wearing nothing but a towel.
“I like the Wasp's plan better,” Bucky added slowly, eyebrows edging together in concern. “Can we, though? Talk?”
“I. Uhm. I guess. Yeah.” And then he clammed right back up, feeling the back of his neck warm up with the force of his blush. Dazzling conversational skills right there, Cap.
Bucky tilted his head.
“The Wasp explained to me.”
“Explained?”
“The boyfriend thing. She said she explained to you, too.”
“She did.”
“Is that why you've been avoiding me?”
Yes!
No.
Yes.
No!
Well...
“It. It is, yeah.” Steve shifted from foot to foot, worked his throat. Bucky's bottom lip looked plump and bitten-red. Steve's heart went pitter-pattering against his rib-cage.
“I didn't know she was going to talk to you.”
“It's okay, Buck.”
“It's not. You're,” Bucky paused. Studied him in silence for a moment. “Disquieted.”
“I'm. Kind of---” pissed “---surprised. That's all. Apparently, everybody knows?”
“I didn't tell them.”
“I know.”
“And that's... bad?” Bucky sounded confused.
Was it bad?
Steve had thought about it. For days, he'd thought about it.
...You could bet his shield and cowl and the stripes on his belly that it was bad.
Steve didn't like the boyfriend thing one single bit, and he wasn't ashamed to admit it. He'd compiled a list of why Bucky keeping a secret boyfriend was a bad, no good, very horrible idea. He bet that if he asked, J.A.R.V.I.S would agree. J.A.R.V.I.S was a beautiful digital being and he would put together a presentation for Steve, slides and sounds and interactive holograms and all.
Steve took a steadying breath.
“I just... the boyfriend thing... I... I don't like it, Buck.”
Bucky reeled back, blinking quickly to hide his shock. He took a long, deep breath in, but said nothing. For a moment, he looked lost, but he quickly centred himself, stepping away from Steve as he did. He was hurt. It was hard to tell. Hard, unless you knew Bucky as deeply and completely as Steve did. Bucky was surprised. Shocked.
Hurt.
Steve had hurt him.
“I... it's... It's not... not a good idea, Buck. Having this kind of secret, is.... it's bad, is all,” he tried to explain. If Bucky had a boyfriend, the guy should flaunt Bucky. Hell, he should pamper Bucky and spoil Bucky and worship Bucky and put the world at his feet and pluck the moon from the sky, and take him out for spun sugar and milkshakes and long walks under the moonlight and sweet kisses in the dark, fumbling hands and breathy laughter, all things the stupid, sorry bastard obviously wasn't doing, because Bucky had never breathed a word to Steve about having a boyfriend, Steve, the best friend of a lifetime, Steve, whom Bucky loved, who loved Buck right back, and if the --- the--- the bastard wanted to keep Bucky a secret, if he was ashamed, or playing a game, or planning on hurting Bucky, well, he'd better run, run fast and hide well, because one look from Bucky, one whispered word, one little frown
(God help him, a tear)
and Steve would run after the guy
(Steve would raze the Campus, hunt him down, follow his scent like a hound, foam at the corner of his mouth and murder in his eyes)
and
(break every single one of his bones)
give the guy a piece of his mind.
“...bad?”
Oh Gosh, Bucky sounded so small.
Steve unclenched his fists.
“It's all the secrecy, Buck. I can't. Can't stomach it. And you just. You deserve better, you know? So much better.”
Another one of those long, tremulous exhales. Bucky sounded so, so hesitant when he asked:
“Do I?”
“You deserve the world, Buck!” Steve shot back, earnest and forceful. “But. Perhaps. You should. Well. Think of... looking for something else?”
“Something... else?”
“I guess. I guess maybe. Someone else.”
Bucky's chest convulsed. He drew back further into the shadows, and took a moment to breathe, in and out, deep and silent, like a ghost.
When he finally looked up, his eyes looked glossy. Wet. His long eyelashes clung together, eyeliner smudging a little at the corners.
“Steve. Steve, are you. Are you saying. Are you talking about. Breaking. Breaking... up...?”
Steve sagged in relief. He didn't want to be the one to say it. He wasn't that kind of controlling, asshole friend. But still. Still. He nodded, quick enough that his head spun, feeling drunk with relief.
“Yes, yes, I am.”
Bucky's beautiful mouth was trembling now. And so was his flesh hand. He caught it with the metal one, and pressed it so hard into his sternum it looked like it hurt, curling around it as if he were wounded.
A long, long eternity passed, and then Bucky said: “Understood,” in that blade-cold, ice-smooth Winter Soldier voice he had, making Steve shiver.
“Bucky I didn't want to hurt you, it's just-- it had to be said, Buck.”
“I doesn't matter.” Cool, so cool, his voice was so cool. He looked so small, though. Broken. Steadfast tin soldier, all broken and forlorn.
“Bucky, Bucky, it does, it matters, you matter, I--” he trailed off, helpless. Looking at Bucky now was its own kind of agony. Steve's skin broke into goosebumps, but he stepped closer, or tried to. Bucky retreated further back, his arm a pale ghost in the shadow, his eyes sheeny with sadness. Steve's throat bobbed as he forced himself to swallow. “--I...”
Bucky's smile came and went, like the glint of moonlight over troubled water.
“I'll. See you around, okay?”
“Buck.”
“I will,” Bucky repeated. “Don't. Don't shut me out, Steve.”
And in the time it took Steve to blink, Bucky was gone, like a thing imagined.
* * * * *
The following morning, Steve went to pick Bucky up at his door, and walked him to class. For a few days, they had breakfast together, lunch together, trained together, entwined their daily routines so deeply, they hardly spent more than ten minutes apart.
Bucky had circles under his eyes, his gaze was lost, and his smile was sad. His fingers were bitten to the quick, and he kept worrying his bottom lip. He was hurt and soldiering on, and Steve's heart went out to him. His Bucky, always so brave.
And then one morning, Janet accidentally slammed the door onto Steve's face.
Sharon tripped him, and then stomped off with a huff. Natasha took a leaf out of Peggy's book and emptied a whole clip against his shield (he had no proof, but it hadto have been her), while Steve hunkered turtle-style behind it. Pizza Dog refused him cuddles and Clint made the two-step point to eyes, then point at Steve gesture universally known as “I'm watching you”.
He got tangled in Jessica's and Gwen's AND Peter's webs no less than six times a day. Kate mistook him for a target every time he walked past. Tony walked up to him one morning, gesticulated wildly for a while, gaped like a fish, the pointed aggressively to where Bucky stood surrounded by what looked like the whole female population of the Campus and hissed: “You ruined it with the Winter Kitten!” and then just sort of... speared through the protective circle like a hot blade going through butter, and started cooing at Bucky's mechanical arm.
One day, Enchantress came slithering up to him and congratulated him on his deviousness. Loki had trouble not looking at him with round, round eyes. Even Crossbones was allowed closer to Bucky than he was. Steve would be offended, if he wasn't completely heartbroken over the whole thing.
He'd been trying to help, dammit!
Couldn't they see? Didn't they know? That Bucky deserved better than a secret relationship with a random arse-hole? That he deserved the sun, the moon and all the stars?
He was kicking at dust behind the Club A, sullen and vibrating with anger, when out of the corner of his eye he saw Bucky walk past, head bowed, shoulders trembling, Natasha following like a shadow after him.
Her face was tight with anger, and her look darkened even further when she saw Steve lurking, but her hands were so, so gentle when they curled around Bucky's arms, so, so gentle as they guided his head to rest on her shoulder, so, so gentle as they carded through his hair, her lips equally as gentle as they dropped on his head, his temple, his cheek, leaving sweet murmurs and the faint red traces of lipstick in their wake.
Steve.
Steve saw red.
He matched Natasha's glare with one of his own, clenched his fists, his teeth, and strode over.
A delicate hand on his chest was enough to stop him.
Janet was standing before him, angry enough to vibrate on the spot, her lips pressed in a moue of disappointment. The anger he could face, but it was the disappointment that stopped him cold.
“You leave him alone,” she ordered. And she was small, compared to him, always had been, but she seemed larger than life all of a sudden.
“Janet...” he said, glancing up at Bucky, feeling something explode in his chest when he saw that that Bucky was looking back with nothing but a tired sort of sadness on his eyes.
“I don't care why you did it,” Janet hissed, slapping his chest. “I don't understand, and I don't care. But this? This is cruel. This is so, so cruel and you must leave him alone, you hear me?”
“I can't... I don't know how to be without him.”
“And I don't care!” She exploded. “You miss him? Well, you should! You are hurting? Well, so is he! You broke his heart, now you give him time to heal it proper and well, you stupid prick! You can't break up with him and then expect, what, that he'll be okay in no time just because you need it to feel better about yourself?”
Steve reeled back as if slapped.
“I BROKE UP WITH BUCKY?”
“NOW DON'T PLAY DUMB!”
“I BROKE UP WITH BUCKY?”
“IT CERTAINLY WASN'T ME!”
“BREAK UP?!”
“DON'T--”
“ME?!”
“--PLAY--”
“WITH BUCKY?!”
“DUMB... I think that I lost you, Cap. Have I lost-HEY!”
He.
Probably had tossed Janet aside. Not his proudest moment. He'd grovel accordingly as soon as possible. Cross on his heart.
Natasha he didn't toss. He outmanoeuvred her by some miracle as she came charging at him, and then, as Bucky straightened and put a brave face on, as he took a step forward and opened those beautiful lips to speak, Steve did the first thing – the only thing – he could think of.
He tackled Bucky, and smashed their mouths together in the clumsiest first kiss in the whole history of clumsy first kisses.
Their teeth clicked, their noses bumped, and they fell into an undignified heap on the ground, hitting knees and elbows and bums. Bucky bit at Steve's mouth, his tongue, pushed at his chest, cuffed him on the side of the head with the metal arm, didn't soften even as Steve kissed him on and on and on and on, and managed to wrench himself away in the end, bottom lip shiny with spit, eyes wide, hair a wild cloud, squirming like an eel but unable to move that much away, since Steve was holding onto him like the human equivalent of an octopus.
“I didn't know,” Steve shouted, helpless. “I hated him, and I wanted him gone, but I had no idea that the boyfriend was me!”
Bucky stilled.
Steve stilled.
Janet squealed.
Natasha quietly lowered her tasering bracelets. And scowled.
By that time, a small crowd had gathered, and there was a lot of gasping all around.
“...what do you mean, you didn't know?” Bucky asked him, all ruffled and narrow-eyed and adorably suspicious and oh, wow, is that why Tony called him Winter Kitten? Because. Spot on nickname, that one. Totally spot-on.
“I thought you had a boyfriend you couldn't tell me about! And you deserved better than someone who would hide you like a shameful secret, so I--”
“You went into aggressive best-friend mode?”
Squinting murderously. Bucky managed to make squinting murderously look adorable.
Or.
Maybe Steve was biased.
Yeah, totally biased.
(Bucky was totally adorable too, though)
“More like jealous idiot mode.”
The frown on Bucky's mouth softened almost imperceptibly. Steve brightened so much at that, you could almost see the wagging tail.
“You were jealous?”
“Oh god, yes.”
“...of yourself?”
“Not like I knew that.”
“You didn't know we were dating?”
Steve made a miserable face.
“I'm an idiot.”
A smile ghosted across Bucky's mouth. He reached out and pressed his cool metal fingers against Steve's cheek, as gentle as snowflakes. Steve pressed eagerly into the touch, tightened his grip around Bucky's waist, thirsty for contact.
“I didn't know either,” Bucky confessed. “They had to explain it to me,” he gestured with his head towards Janet and Natasha. “They said. They said you had to be my boyfriend. Had to. Because. Because you asked me out my first day here.”
“Err...”
“You stalked me across the Campus even while I was still with Hydra.”
Steve felt like he was blushing enough to glow.
“About that...”
“And from that first day on, we've always been together. We eat together. We go out together. Steve, we sleep together almost every night.”
“WO-OOOH! Go get it, Cap!” hollered Tony from the peanut gallery. He went mostly unnoticed.
Bucky whispered on, undeterred.
“What could we be, if not boyfriends? And I thought. I thought you'd made yourself clear, but I'd missed it somehow, becauseI'm just. Like that, sometimes. My head's scrambled still, I don't understand everything yet. But. I was so happy. To be your boyfriend. It made me so happy, Steve. And then. You just.” Bucky frowned, moving away. Steve followed him like a sunflower with the sun. “You know how much it hurt when you pushed me away like that? I thought you were angry that they told Rumlow we were together. I thought. I thought you were ashamed of what I am.”
Steve reeled him back in, suddenly afraid that if Bucky left even an hairsbreadth of space between them, he'd come unmoored, and be lost forever.
“Never. Never. I’m always with you because I can’t be without you. And I'm an idiot. A jealous idiot. I just. I. I. I Love you so much that I go crazy sometimes?” he murmured. The started. Then backtracked. Then backtracked from backtracking when he realized that-- “I... Buck... Bucky, I LOVE you,” he whispered, awed. A revelation. He was delighted when he saw a matching blush spread, pink and glorious, all across the bridge of Bucky's nose.
“I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.I love you,” he kept murmuring, over and over, until Bucky folded into himself, one hand pressed to Steve's mouth, and murmured the same words back, but soft like a secret, in the tender hollow under Steve's jaw.