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It takes Bucky less than twenty minutes to find a colony of feral cats. He toed his shoes off and left Steve unloading their bags to prowl the rental; when Steve finds him he’s crouched on the back deck-like thing, petting a scrawny brown tabby that’s curling its tail around his wrist.
“I don’t know why I expected anything else,” Steve says, leaning against the doorway.
Bucky squints up at him. His sunglasses are threatening to fall off from where he’s pushed them up his head. “What did you expect?”
“You mounting turrets on all the doorways?” Another cat has materialized and is sniffing at Bucky’s knee. Many, many more are watching them suspiciously from under the bushes. Steve wonders if this is some kind of infestation.
“You think I fit turrets into our luggage?”
“Don’t see why not,” Steve says. “Pretty sure you fit everything else we owned in there.” Another mangy-looking cat hops up onto the deck and slinks close. “Are those things safe to touch?”
Bucky rolls his eyes. “They’re just cats, Steve,” he says, as yet another one oozes out of the woodwork. This one looks taxidermied. Naturally Bucky starts petting it.
“You’re gonna get fleas,” Steve says resignedly.
“Why do you think I’m using my metal hand?”
Steve points. “That one’s rubbing on your leg.”
“I’ll wash it.”
“Gonna take your pants off before you come inside?”
Bucky shoots him a look with fifteen different sentences in it, starting with ha ha, Rogers and ending on don’t fucking try me, mister-MY-blood-can’t-carry-pathogens-so-it-can’t-be-a-disease-vector. Then he stands up, unbuckles his belt, calmly removes the pants one leg at a time and drops them delicately at Steve’s feet.
“If you insist,” he says, patting Steve on the chest as he strolls past into the house.
Steve grins like a loon, snags the pants and darts in after him. He catches up quick, crowding up behind Bucky’s back; he normally wouldn’t push like this, but Bucky practically laid down a doormat. Steve slings the pants out like a rope and snags Bucky around the waist.
Bucky whirls cobra-quick and catches him right below the throat, his flesh hand just as unyielding as the metal one. “I’m going to wash,” he says primly, like he didn’t just stop Steve so cold he skidded a little.
Steve doesn’t exactly have to struggle to breathe, but he can feel his pulse thumping hard against the wedge of Bucky’s palm. “Do you even know where the bathroom is?”
“What? Why does that matter? Did you hide it or something?"
“Then let’s wash together,” Steve says, trying to push forward like Bucky’s arm is going anywhere.
Bucky just raises an eyebrow. He’s got purpling bags under his eyes and his hair is starting to metastasize but his poker face is cracking, a smile winning out. “You think I need your help?”
“Never hurts to have backup,” Steve says innocently.
“What if I say no?”
Steve looks at him, from his bright eyes to his polka-dot briefs and his bare, scar-thatched knees. He’s suddenly so full of love that it hurts. His smile feels like it comes out too soppy but he can’t help it. He brings his hands up, slow, and carefully cups Bucky’s elbow. “Then I’ll convince you.”
Bucky’s grip falters. Then he yields all at once, making Steve stumble headlong, all his weight dropping forward with no resistance in the way. But Steve gets him right back, scooping Bucky up off his feet in both arms and hoisting him up on one shoulder.
Bucky yells indignantly and squirms like an eel, but Steve marches them down the hallway and actually makes good progress before Bucky smartens up enough to curl down around Steve’s head and start mouthing at his ear. Steve makes a choked hamster noise and has to put Bucky down immediately, mostly so he can get at Bucky’s mouth.
Bucky turns his head at the last second. “Don’t, I taste like airplane.”
“Don’t care,” Steve says, but he changes trajectory to kiss down Bucky’s neck instead. Bucky’s picky about being clean, which makes no sense given he constantly touches wild animals who’ve rolled in god knows what, but Steve’s not dumb enough to argue. He runs his hands up Bucky’s back and Bucky obligingly presses closer, the two of them lumbering in tandem the last couple of steps to the bathroom.
There’s a moment of confusion with the sliding door, but Steve refuses to let go of Bucky and their combined wits eventually get them in. The bathroom is as vast and understated as the rest of the house, paneled in dark polished wood and grey stone. The tub is massive, a huge sunken thing in dark grey that looks halfway to jacuzzi, but mostly what Steve notices is that it looks perfect. Bucky can kneel down right there, and brace his arms on the rim there, and when Steve squeezes his hips just like this Bucky’s breath hitches and he goes all pliant -
“Bath?” Bucky breathes, and Steve nods fervently against his neck.
Of course, then they have to actually turn the water on.
There’s no faucet. There’s just a single elegant spigot, sans taps, and a bunch of tiny rows of buttons. They beep, they flash digital text, they light up in yellow and blue and one hundred percent fail to deliver any water.
Bucky sits down on the floor after two minutes. Steve throws his hands up after three. “Why is this all in Japanese!”
Bucky stares. “Because we’re in Japan?”
“You know what I mean!”
“What else could that possibly mean?”
“Oh, for -” Steve stabs another button. Something gurgles alarmingly in the pipes.
“Don’t break it, we’re renting,” Bucky warns.
Steve grits his teeth. “I’m not going to break it,” he says vengefully. “I just want to - have sex, with you, in peace, in the tub, and these - tiny little buttons -”
Bucky starts laughing, sprawling back on his elbows on the bathroom mat. “Fuck me on the floor, then,” he says with poorly feigned sympathy, drawing up one leg.
“No,” Steve growls. “This is vacation. We’ll fuck in the bath if we want to, and we want to,” and gets back to his skirmish with the buttons.
Bucky sighs a sigh that says suit yourself and lies down fully on the bathmat.
It takes pulling out his phone, typing in “on” and “hot water” into google translate and squinting at the buttons to find ones that match, but finally, finally, the water starts running. Steve hisses in triumph and gets the drain to shut, the water starting to fill the massive tub.
Then he notices the cat, crouched like a moth-eaten gargoyle on the other side of the bathroom. It’s the brown tabby Bucky was petting earlier. “Damn,” Steve says under his breath. The last thing he wants is an audience with a brain the size of a walnut, no apparent need to blink and a busload of fleas. “We forgot to close the door. Buck, can you -”
There’s a small, gentle snore. Steve looks around. Bucky’s still on the bathmat, one foot drawn up, fast asleep.
Steve stares at him for a solid minute. Then he reaches over, shuts off the water and lies down next to Bucky. He stares at the ceiling, debates taking his dick out, and decides that giving himself a desultory handjob would only be more demoralizing. He shuts his eyes. He tells himself this is a good thing. Clearly Bucky needed the sleep.
There’s a strange, wet little sound. Steve opens his eyes. The fleabag is lapping at the bathwater. Steve closes his eyes. Maybe it’ll drown.