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Bucky hated taking baths.
If he could help it, he would never take a bath again. Unfortunately, baths seemed to be the only solution to one of the items on his ever-growing list of issues.
Things were always getting stuck in the rivets of his arm.
Since the Wakandans graced him with new tech and a home, Bucky felt like he was beginning to turn over a new leaf. The king’s witty little sister, Shuri, was too smart for her own good, in Bucky’s opinion. It gave him purpose, helping out in her lab, but she wouldn’t even show him the schematics on his new arm until the thing was already built.
Or rather, until all three of them were already built.
One of the things Bucky had noticed about the kid was that she tended to over do things when it came to building new equipment— which was all she ever worked on. So here he was, with a heavily fortified and shielded heft arm that was meant for work in the fields of Wakanda, or other heavy-lifting jobs, an even bulkier and yet somehow lighter piece of pure power that she claimed was to be used in emergency situations only— and his simultaneous favorite and least favorite— the every-day use arm.
Now, Bucky was not to be misunderstood— the effort was appreciated more than the kid would ever know, and he loved the smoothness with which each limb was going to be attached and taken off, the fluidity with which each one would function— he just felt slightly overwhelmed with all of his choices. When was it necessary to use his work-intended arm? Does moving furniture around his and Steve’s shared floor at Stark Tower warrant its use? What is considered emergency enough for the battle-body-arm?
So, Bucky found himself leaning mostly to the everyday-use choice. It would get each job done well enough, and it wasn’t like he would be in any fights that would call for a more sturdy fit. There was only one problem with Shuri that left him endlessly frustrated, which brings him back to the hatred towards baths.
She couldn’t seem to settle on any one specific design.
This led to the fact that she had yet to remove Bucky’s old arm, which was more of a pain than he was willing to admit. Having all of Hydra’s wiring in his brain removed and yet still carrying this heavy hunk of shit that was all too much of a reminder left Bucky in a constant state of discomfort and impatience.
And yet, despite the trauma that the piece of metal left him with and triggered in his memory every time he looked at it, one of the things Bucky hated the most wasn’t even the arm’s history.
It was that everything seemed to find its way down into the wires below, whether it be dust, or dirt, or the ice cream he had eaten the night before. Sometimes he had no idea how it happened.
Bucky’s problem was that in order to clean out whatever gunk got underneath the panels, he had to take the arm apart.
This was the single most tedious task on the planet.
So Bucky often found himself staring at the bathroom door with a looming sense of dread, absolutely reluctant to even step foot in the direction of the definite rage that was going to be caused by his stubborn arm.
“Buck.”
A voice shattered his begrudging thoughts. Bucky looked up and met Steve’s steady, bemused gaze. He looked away almost instantly, stiff-necked and rigid. He hated the soft sound of Steve’s stifled chuckle, and cast another sharp look at the man sitting across the room on the couch. The blonde was looking right back at him, eyebrows high on his forehead.
“What’s so funny, pal?” Bucky asked, spitting the last word out like it tasted bad. Steve, seemingly unfazed, just shrugged his shoulders and looked away innocently. Bucky scoffed. “Don’t even try, punk. You’d better say whatever’s knockin’ around in that thick skull of yours.”
“Oh yeah? Or what, pal?” Steve asked, a mischievous grin tugging at his lips. Bucky sulked, averting his eyes once more and resorting to once again glaring at the bathroom door. The silence stretched for what felt like a million years, and Bucky knew his ears were getting red under the suddenly much-more-present feeling of the super-idiot’s gaze on the side of his head.
“I was just wonderin’ how long you’re gonna try to burn the door down with your eyes, that’s all,” Steve finally said, and Bucky could hear the punk’s barely-restrained laughter in his voice. He huffed, making a big show of getting up and dragging his feet all the way across the wide empty space.
They didn’t have enough furniture to fill this place up, but Steve insisted on leaving it near-empty. Bucky pretended to hate it, but he secretly liked the way it gave a clear view to the wall made almost entirely of windows— He could see the outside world from his favorite chair should he ever look up from the book he was reading.
Bucky slammed the bathroom door shut beside him, grumbling the whole way in, and glared daggers at the tub, half-hoping the water would be too cold for a bath, or perhaps that it wouldn’t run at all. But after a few more moments of stalling, he threw off his shirt and sweat pants, turning on the steady floor of water and waiting for it to warm up before closing the drain.
Their bathroom was bigger than their Brooklyn apartment in its entirety. Part of Bucky disliked the openness of the room, but another part of him was fascinated, and liked the amount of space actually resides in the tub he was forced to use weekly rather than the shower that he used every normal day.
Bucky could hear the faint flow of Steve’s music flowing from under the door, barely discernible over the thunder of water hitting the sides of the bath, but still pleasant. It was the kind of music they listened to when they were kids, not the crap that the bird guy made him listen to lately. Bucky knew it was for him the second he stopped the water and recognized the melody flooding from the next room over.
Autumn in New York had been a guilty pleasure of Bucky’s back in the day. It was one of Steve’s favorite songs, and Bucky always gave him shit for it, especially since he liked the Billie Holiday version better than the original. Secretly, it was Bucky’s favorite, too, and it definitely didn’t have anything to do with the way Steve’s eyes would light up every time the familiar tune started trickling from the record-player, or the way his fella would beg him to dance whenever it did start to play.
Bucky shook his head softly, butt he was starting to smile, especially when there was a soft knock on the door and Steve was peeking his head in, those gorgeous blue eyes just as bright as they always used to be when this song graced their eardrums.
Billie Holiday’s voice filled their apartment as Bucky strode over to the door and opened it slowly, looking up at his fella through his lashes with a soft smirk. The music seemed to grow louder when Bucky grabbed Steve’s wrist, leaving the door wide opened as the pair made their ways towards the steaming bath, the blonde rolling his sleeves up the whole way there. Bucky’s boxers hit the floor just as the chorus struck, and he tested the water with his toes, leaning back against Steve’s chest and enjoying the way his partner’s hands brushed his bare hips, before traveling up his arms and settling at his shoulders.
A moment later, Bucky pulled himself away, with some reluctance, and stepped into the tub, lowering himself down and resting against the wall. Steve sat by him on his knees and got to work, pressing gently into the pressure point at Bucky’s shoulder that hissed with a soft mechanical noise and loosened each panel in the arm, giving easier access. Steve popped the first off with a gentle care that Bucky relished, closing his eyes and tilting his head back with a soft sigh of content. He let Steve do his part, knowing full well that if he tried to help, the stubborn captain would just smack his hand away and continue to clean each plate with the same love and affection in every one.
Sometimes it takes longer than others, because sometimes Steve is in a more patient and loving mood than others— this is usually just after he gets home from a mission, and he’s been missing every part of Bucky— “Every damn part, Buck!”— so he tries to ‘prove it’ by caring for him this way.
It’s so close, and it’s so intimate, that the first few times, Bucky forgot to breathe, watching with huge and mesmerized eyes as Steve worked at the wires with such careful delicacy in his huge, calloused hands. They were the hands of an artist, and Bucky loved them, especially when they were covered in graphite or pain stains after a particularly quiet day.
Right now, they were simply covered in soap.
But Bucky couldn’t find it in him to care when the last plate was snapped back into pace and the sudsy hands grasped his face and pulled him in for a sweet kiss.
God, Bucky loved taking baths.