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Bucky comes home from playing tennis with Sam with a dramatic litany of complaints, including but not limited to a hungry belly, Sam is a cheating scoundrel, and a painful left shoulder. Steve listens patiently at first, because he’s a devoted and loving husband, and it’s easy enough to sit at the counter while Bucky rants, only half-serious in his indictments against Sam, the sport of tennis, and the criminal lack of cookies anywhere in the house.
Bucky’s t-shirt is still damp with sweat and his cheeks are pink, tendrils of hair curling at the back of his neck, and it’s so easy for Steve to let Bucky’s words wash over him while Bucky rattles around the small kitchen, pouring water and poking into the snack drawer for something suitably tasty.
However, as Bucky launches into his explanation of how his shoulder came to be injured, Steve’s patience, his ease, begins to dissipate. When Bucky pulls down his joggers and shows off the tennis-ball sized bruises all over his legs with a distinct air of pride, Steve’s mood transitions abruptly into irritation.
And, when Buck starts complaining, not that he can no longer lift his arm higher than his shoulder, but that Sam only won because Bucky fell funny on his left shoulder trying to get hit by the ball, well, Steve chucks an ice pack at him and retreats back to his office before he says something he’ll regret.
Steve loves Bucky. And Steve loves Sam. Hell, Sam is technically his best friend, not Bucky’s. Individually, Sam and Bucky are intelligent, attractive men; professionals in their field, entertaining, charming.
But...put the two of them together, and they transform into...well, a pair of dumbasses. Testosterone and adrenaline completely overload their endocrine systems. Any common sense they may have possessed separately is extinguished, unable to prevail against the resulting hormonal cocktail.
Steve’s no stranger to a healthy sense of competition - but Sam and Bucky’s hypercompetitive, overly physical friendship is an entity entirely with a life of its own, and Steve does not appreciate it at all. In fact, since it usually results in injuries to one or both of them, he finds it totally obnoxious.
But, whenever he tries to say anything to either of them about oh, maybe calming the fuck down, one or both of them pulls a wounded and long suffering attitude, complete with comments about how they thought Steve wanted them to get along.
Steve does want them to get along. He just doesn’t understand why it has to involve so much bullshit horsing around. Video games devolve into wrestling matches, board game tables get flipped (Steve is still mildly resentful over the lost thimble in their Monopoly game), and they all got kicked out of a coffee shop after Bucky challenged Sam to a croissant eating contest that resulted in flakes of pastry everywhere and coffee dumped in Steve’s lap.
Most recently, their yearly camping trip had been ruined when Sam and Bucky started jumping over the campfire. Bucky had ended up with a singed ass, and when Sam laughed at him, he retaliated by smacking Sam in the arm with the marshmallow Steve had been roasting while trying to mind his own fucking business.
Turns out hot marshmallow burns like a motherfucker, and Steve, completely over the collective shenanigans, had shut himself in Sam’s one man tent, leaving his two dumbasses to sulk with the Silvadene and a shared sleeping bag.
So, this is not Steve’s first rodeo with some kind of horseplay induced injury, and he’s learned to keep the sympathy at a minimum, lest it serve as a tacit endorsement of the precipitating events, and also because Bucky does not like to be babied.
Steve has never found this entirely fair, because Bucky is quick enough to baby him, has in fact, been doing it their entire lives. He can admit it may have been warranted (a little) before, when he struggled to put on weight, spent more time home sick then out and about.
So, he struggles to maintain an air of dispassionate neutrality, gritting his teeth and pretending his heart has vacated the premises. But, when Bucky’s shoulder keeps hurting him and he can barely lift it to shoulder height, even after a week of copious ice application and anti-inflammatories, Steve dispenses with the sham entirely.
He firmly ignores Bucky’s protests that he is managing just fine, thank you and takes over any overhead lifting that needs doing around the house. Bucky gives way, slowly, and with ill grace, and Steve exercises what he feels is extraordinary restraint and does not helpfully point out that Bucky has never been the taller half of their marriage. In fact, the upper cabinets have solely been Steve’s domain for years, and Steve very politely does not inquire why Bucky now appears to be hellbent on climbing up and down his little step ladder at the drop of a hat with a bum arm it is not safe Bucky.
Overhead lifting resolved, Bucky gets by with weird physical contortions to get in and out of his clothes and to take care of hygiene. It makes Steve’s neck hurt to watch, but Bucky flatly refuses further help, and eventually goes to physical therapy for a while. Then, he’s back to the doctor for a cortisone injection, and then a second, and then another round of physical therapy. His shoulder gets a little better, but not much, and every time he falls asleep in just the wrong way, it feels like they start all over again.
While Steve’s happy to keep manning the upper level of the house, Bucky gets progressively crankier, more impatient with himself as his injury persists. And Steve’s heart aches to see new lines of pain stretch across Bucky’s forehead, holds his own breath when he hears the sharp inhalation that now means shit shit shit shouldn’t have moved that way.
So, they see first one doctor, and then another, and have a seemingly endless series of images done, interspersed with the injections and the therapy and the seemingly never ending cycle of ice and heat and meds. Steve is incredibly thankful for their good health insurance when the bills start showing up, and finally Bucky’s got an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon for shoulder surgery. He’ll need more therapy, and at least six weeks in a sling, but they’re both relieved to have a potential end in sight.
The morning of, Bucky is grumpy from hunger, leg bouncing and knuckles gripped white on the arms of his chair while they wait. The erratic movement makes Steve a little dizzy, but he’s gentle anyways, hand resting on Bucky’s thigh until it goes still. Bucky’s hand on his is ice cold, and Steve doesn’t think, just tucks it under his own leg. When Bucky is collected to go back, Steve’s heart is a nervous flutter, an echoed memory of his childhood, but his hands are steady around Bucky’s waist and his mouth soft against Bucky’s chapped lips.
After, he sits the fuck down and now his own leg won’t stop moving and he tries to fumble for his phone, to text someone, anyone, but his fingers tremble until the surgeon is standing in front of him and only then does the air rush back into his lungs, sharp and painful while his eyes sting and he laughs with relief, a funny, broken sound.
Bucky is sweet and dopey as he comes off the anesthetic, and Steve is dumb enough to think that things from here might be smooth sailing. After all, he pledged before God and everyone to have and to hold Bucky, through sickness and health (though at the time, he had thought bad temper and stubbornness to be the more likely scenario, and so far he hasn’t been proved wrong by that, shoulder injury aside).
Regardless, he’s ready and willing to serve, and things don’t go too badly at first. Bucky gets by okay in the kitchen, and he’s uncharacteristically quick to order Steve around for anything he can’t manage, especially early on. Steve enjoys helping Bucky dress (and undress) and shower more than he probably should, and really, being allowed (by medical orders!) to fetch and carry for Bucky is…nice. But, he inevitably runs up against a task that he inevitably doesn’t feel up to managing.
Bucky has nice hair. Really nice hair that he invests quite a bit of time, effort, and money into. Really nice hair that he struggled to maintain on his own all throughout the debacle of the initial injury.
Steve himself, if questioned, is fairly neutral on Bucky’s hair. He’s loved Bucky longer than he can reasonably remember, through all kinds of style evolutions and body changes, and none of those had ever been successful in altering his level of love or attraction. (Though, if he is honest with himself, the mustache did require a significant amount of mental sidestepping, especially during blow jobs.)
So, he’s loved Bucky with the horrible bleached spikes he had in high school, the childish bowl cut as a little kid, the carefully flat ironed, long, shiny hair in college. He loved Bucky during his bout of depression, when he stopped fixing his hair at all and had to be coaxed into taking showers, encouraged to take walks in the sunshine, and to keep eating. And he still loved Bucky when he finally found the right combination of therapy and meds and then spent the next six months dying his hair every conceivable color and shaving seemingly random portions of it.
Most recently, Bucky, after years of experimentation, had decided to embrace his natural, curly hair. When he heard this, Steve hadn’t been sure what to expect. A new haircut? More or less grooming? A special hairbrush?
Bucky’s hair had always reacted poorly to being brushed, becoming bigger and more unruly instead of orderly. But, Steve has a certain fondness for that look, which dominated much of their early childhood, and today, is not unlike what Bucky looks like now when he’s been well fucked and is happy and relaxed with it.
Steve...doesn’t closely examine any links between those memories. It’s weird, sure, but things get a little weird when you marry the guy you’ve been with in some form or another since you were four, and that’s just something he has accepted.
He can acknowledge that Bucky may have less fond memories of the childhood portion of it, as pretty much whenever they tried to leave the house, Mrs. Barnes would yell, “Bucky, GO BRUSH YOUR HAIR!” and Bucky would scream back “I JUST DID!”
And then Mrs. Barnes would chase Bucky down, brandishing a hairbrush like an avenging angel with a flaming sword of mercy and brush the shit out of Bucky’s hair while he wiggled and sputtered under her ministrations. She would despair as she worked and Bucky’s hair would only grow larger and poofier, until Mrs. Barnes inevitably gave up and shooed them both out the door.
It should be noted that Mrs. Barnes and her three daughters all had perfectly straight hair that fell into place with a single pass of a brush. Mr. Barnes was no help at all, as he had gone bald years ago, and staunchly maintained that the photos of him from the ‘70s (wild, curly hair, short shorts, and large mustache) were in fact of his brother.
So, Steve hadn’t really been sure what to expect from the whole experiment, given that last time Bucky’s hair had gone unstyled he’d been severely depressed, and the time before that he’d been a screaming hellion being aggressively groomed by his mother. He’d been foolishly optimistic that it would involve regular washing, and maybe brushing as needed, from time to time.
He’d been kind of right, but the reality had been so much more convoluted that he had expected. As it turns out, curly, or wavy hair (at least the way Bucky has decided to treat his hair), was based on some sort of method, requiring extremely specific hair products, free of extremely specific chemicals, and timely, precise application of said products, in conjunction with extremely long periods of time with Bucky hanging upside down.
It requires extremely expensive haircuts, and brushing hair under certain circumstances, and complex mathematical calculations whenever they are going out to determine if washing will be required. It’s a lot, but Bucky, always beautiful to Steve, seems happy, and his hair does look beautiful, long and shining and falling in dark waves and spirals and he seems to enjoy the routine of caring for it.
Of course, two weeks post operation, Bucky’s hair is…not looking its best. Steve had tried to de-tangle it when they first got home, which had been a rousing failure reminiscent of Mrs. Barnes vs Bucky, and they finally settled on braiding it back. Subsequent days had seen Steve either freshening up the braid, or bundling it all into a bun on top of Bucky’s head, while Bucky’s hair steadily grew frizzier and wilder.
So, when Bucky finally, gently, suggests that Steve may want to help him wash his hair, Steve is...extremely fucking apprehensive given the long and storied history of Bucky’s Hair. Increasingly unlikely scenarios race through his brain, beginning with all of Bucky’s hair spontaneously falling out, and ending with it somehow catching on fire.
Overactive imaginings aside, Steve finds that he is unable to wiggle out of his obligations despite his best efforts, offering to take Bucky to his fancy salon, or to call one of his sisters, or hell, even Mrs. Barnes. Steve thinks he maybe lists every human they know, starting with Sam Sure, if I want green hair and finishing with Natasha She...shaves her head. He even half-heartedly suggests the hyper-groomed guy who updates their security system Steve, who the fuck is Tony?
It’s all for naught - Bucky doesn’t want anyone else, he wants Steve, and he makes it pretty fucking clear.
“Marriage, Steve. FOREVER.” Bucky says, pointing at his wedding ring. “I’m gonna go fucking insane if my hair is dirty for one more day. As long as you don't somehow shave my head, it can't possibly be worse than it is now."
Steve is quite sure he is capable of making it worse, much worse but he’s an idiot who’s got it bad. Because when Bucky points at his wedding ring, and then follows that up with another, ruder gesture something in his chest goes a little gooey and soft, and he finds himself on Saturday night, lining up hair products, setting out towels, and digging out the Alien-esque facehugger Bucky uses to dry his hair.
The water takes forever to warm up, so he gets it going, eyeing Bucky’s efforts to undress himself. He manages his shorts okay, but then gets stuck in his t-shirt, and Steve has to extricate him before he hurts himself. Task done, Steve goes to work untangling the sad braid hanging down Bucky’s back, pulling each loop of hair free and smoothing the strands with his fingers. When he’s done, the water is finally warm and Bucky’s hair hangs past his shoulders, covers the sharp blades of his scapula, and Steve hadn’t fully realized just how long it had gotten.
He carefully guards Bucky as he steps into the shower, visions of a fall and a fucked up surgery rattling in his brain, and then he shields him from the water while he tests it again, making sure it’s warm enough.
He can’t help but admire Bucky, has to reach out to touch him - unruly hair and thighs still thick with muscle, a bit of new softness through his chin and middle; evidence of a less obsessive gym routine and a little more grace around rest and good meals shared together.
Steve’s fingers are gentle as he runs them through the dark hair curling over Bucky’s chest, trails them down his belly, and Bucky’s squirming under his touch and then sputtering with laughter when Steve pulls him into the water.
It’s nice and hot, steam curling around them, and Bucky bends his head obligingly, allowing Steve to stroke through his hair, pulling the top layers aside until it’s all completely damp. He’s gone uncharacteristically quiet, a little shy and hesitant. It’s not the first time Steve has helped Bucky shower through the years, but it’s the first time Steve has been privy to the extensive grooming that it seems that Buck takes solace in.
When his hair is soaked with water, Bucky points to a bottle of detangler, and Steve obediently starts at the ends, stroking the product in and using the comb Bucky hands him. Slowly, the tangles fall out, leaving Bucky’s hair hanging limp over his shoulders. It’s weirdly satisfying, and Steve is feeling more capable by the minute. He takes a minute to pet Bucky’s head, running his hand over the soft, damp strands of hair. Bucky’s skull feels smaller than usual, fragile in his big hands and he’s got a sudden urge to pull him close, tuck him away, fucking eat him to protect him from more pain and surgeries and anything else that might hurt him.
Bucky puts up with it, pressing his head into Steve’s hands, tension sliding from his shoulders in a long, shuddering breath. But, their supply of hot water is not infinite, and soon enough Steve is dispensing shampoo into his palms and following Bucky’s murmured instructions.
“Mostly scrub my scalp? Harder, you don’t need to be so gentle.” Steve listens, massaging his fingers into the roots of Bucky’s hair. He’s shocked into stopping when Bucky groans, the sound torn rough from his throat and fuck he looks good, mouth soft and open and head loose on his neck and that encourages Steve to start again.
“Oh, God, sorry, it just feels….so fucking good.” Another groan and Steve redoubles his efforts, scritching over Bucky’s scalp, working over every inch until Bucky’s hair is white and fluffy with foam and little noises have stopped falling from Bucky’s lips.
He scraps up some foam, turns Bucky, dabs some onto his nose, startling a laugh from him. He pushes Bucky’s head under the spray, coaxes the foam from his hair until the water runs clean. “Okay, Buck, what next?”
“Conditioner! And…detangling, again, okay? You’re gonna use a shit ton of conditioner, like, whatever you think you need, and then more.”
Bucky’s bottle of conditioner is fucking gigantic, and Steve dispenses an alarming amount into his palms, and again, starts at the ends, strokes it in. He applies more and more under Bucky’s urging, until the hair is slippery-soft under his fingers and the tangles fall out. Bucky’s prickly irritation from earlier has also fallen out, and he’s pliant and soft under Steve’s hands, rousing only to give directions or point out necessary products.
“Okay, gel next. I gotta have my head upside down for this, okay? You can shut off the water.” Steve does so, makes sure Bucky’s arm is still tucked in at his side as he bends forward. He can’t resist pinching the ass that is now obligingly on display, grins at the dirty look he gets in return.
The rest goes pretty quickly - he applies sticky gel and other stuff to Bucky’s hair, and then pretty much….squeezes it with his fists. It’s weird, but he seems to be doing okay, because Bucky’s not complaining, and curly bits do seem to be emerging from the mass of hair.
FInally, Bucky lets Steve squeeze the extra water out with a towel, tests a curl, calls it good. He tries to launch himself out of the tub, but Steve’s got an arm around his waist in a flash, forcing him to stand upright slowly because his blood pressure has been all over the place, and Bucky never seems to realize he’s moved too fast until he’s already dizzy and lightheaded with it.
And, Steve’s not quite done with him yet. He’s enjoying himself more than he thought he would, doesn’t know if he’ll get the chance to do it again and so he carefully bundles Bucky into his robe, pulling his damp hair over his shoulders. Bucky laughs when Steve dabs his face with a towel, and sighs, sweet and low when Steve gives his feet the same treatment. “Can you..dry it for me? I know it takes a long time, but I hate going to bed with it wet.”
Steve’s arms are tired, but he’s feeling melty and warm and unwilling to deny Bucky anything. Something about taking care of Bucky, Bucky trusting him with this frankly convoluted but intimate task has his heart feeling a million times bigger.
He’s seen Bucky’s hair drying ritual enough times to not need any instructions, so he herds Bucky into the living room, helps him onto the floor in front of the couch, tucks a blanket around him.
“What do you wanna watch?” And then he gets How to Train Your Dragon set up with subtitles on the TV, plugs in the facehugger/diffuser, insinuates himself behind Bucky on the couch and gets to work. He gathers up sections of Bucky’s hair, wrangles it into the diffuser, turns on the heat, waits, waits, waits, while the warm air blows, until it’s dry enough to move onto the next section. The sound of the hair dryer fills his ears and he slips into an almost meditative state, moving methodically from section to section. Bucky is relaxed in front of him, focused on the movie, only tipping his head in response to Steve’s gentle pressure on his head.
He gets most of it dry, bundles it up out of the way on top of Bucky’s head. The man in question is half drowsing by the end, but manages to shuffle himself up onto the couch where he gradually collapses, face mashed into Steve’s thigh. ‘M just resting my eyes. The gentle snores emanating from him seem to be a statement to the contrary, but, well, they finish the movie anyways.
And then they’re sliding into bed, beneath the cool, crisp sheets, and Bucky’s head is cradled on his silk pillowcase, left arm carefully supported by a pillow. Steve rests his nose against the back of Bucky’s neck, wraps his arm around his waist. He’s barely thinks not bad for spending the night literally washing my husband’s hair before he’s sliding into sleep, Bucky’s calves warm where they’ve trapped Steve’s feet and the scent of coconut wrapping around them.
In the morning, Bucky’s hair is dry, and Steve carefully extricates it from the bun, bends Bucky over again. He’s a little overenthusiastic this time around, scrunching and fluffing the curls and Bucky has to smack at him to get him to stop when it’s apparent he’s goofing off more than anything else. Back upright, Bucky’s hair cascades over his shoulders, shiny and fluffy, and Steve is pretty fucking proud of himself because Bucky looks awesome.
He completely forgets himself, absently goes to run his hand through the curls, ruffle them up a little, and quick as a striking snake, Bucky catches his hand with his good hand. “Don’t you fucking dare, Steve Rogers.”
And Steve tries to play it cool, changes it up and strokes Bucky’s neck instead, and then his face, and then kisses him until he’s gasping under Steve, and they go back to bed and Bucky's hair does get a little fucked up, but it's okay because Steve will help him with it, as long as he needs him to.