Work Text:
To all appearances, Bucky’s been trying to weasel his way out of the gala since he first heard about it. Too many people, too much pomp-and-bullshit, too much glitz and glamor. It’s uncomfortable; abrasive.
Underneath that, though: Bucky’s kinda thrilled; because he wasn’t put on a guest list, he wasn't asked to attend—it was a given.
He was included as a matter of course.
So he’s there, in the corner, observing, and the the tux he’s wearing—Pepper’s designer of choice, black on black—is anything but uncomfortable, or abrasive; s’fucking silk on his skin, goddamn, and even the soft glove on his left hand feels plush, like an indulgence: it’s a nice place to retreat to, as he navigates the crowd, as he watches from afar, as he breathes through the way the bodies are oppressive, sipping at the most expensive scotch he’s ever heard of, let alone felt slide down his throat.
It’s good, he thinks, or else: it’s getting there.
He’s getting there.
His eyes flicker above the throng, constantly oriented north—his north—constantly pulled toward that blond head above the masses: Steve had stayed at his side, hadn’t pushed as Bucky’d made a point to mingle as best he could, to shake hands where he needed to, to speak to the other members of the team for at least a few moments, at least enough to pass for cordial—to pay lip service, if nothing else, to these people who’d become his friends.
His friends, fuck. What a concept.
But as Steve’d settled in to happily attach himself to Bucky’s hip, even in retreating to the sidelines; as Steve had placed a hand on the small of Bucky’s back and barely spared a glance at who was looking when he tilted his chin, barely the work of a moment, and pressed lips to Bucky’s temple: when Steve was more than ready, all too willing to turn Nat down when she’d lifted an eyebrow and held out a hand, primed for the dancefloor and dressed to kill in every sense of the term, Bucky’d put his foot down.
“Your momma raise you in a barn, Rogers?” he’d gaped at Steve, doing his best to look appalled when Natasha was watching him, seeing where this was going and doing nothing to hide her smirk. “A stand-up dame just asked you for a dance,” Bucky lets his drawl slip thicker into his words as he winks at Nat, who doesn’t tamp down the sharp peal of her snort. “Can’t leave her hanging, Stevie. S’rude.”
The grin that stretched across Steve’s face had been filled with layers, steeped in feelings that resonate sharp and heavy and gorgeous in Bucky’s gut before Steve’d leaned in, whispered, “You’re sure?” and it’d been Bucky who’d looked around, ensured the angle at which Natasha stood would give them cover before he kissed Steve’s jawline and pushed him toward a waiting Nat.
“Go, y’idiot,” he’d smiled, soft, and Steve had never looked more peaceful, more hopeful, more alive than in the moment when he glanced back, met Bucky’s eyes and smiled, watched him until Natasha led him out onto the dance floor.
Bucky, in the meantime, decides to make a game of the affair: swig of whiskey for every time Nat doesn’t flinch when Stevie steps on her toes.
He spends the whole song—a slow one, nice and dignified—remembering the half-swaying he’d tried to teach Mr. Two-Left-Feet back in Brooklyn, and grinning into his drink: thankful, for once, that he can’t feel the alcohol anymore.
He’d be three fucking sheets to god knows where by now, otherwise.
Instead, he’s only watching Steve fondly as Natasha excuses herself when something cacophonous starts playing, heavy on the bass—incongruous with the calibre of guests in attendance, but Bucky figures that if Tony Stark’s behind a gathering, they should probably just be glad they’re not being subjected to Prime Cuts on fucking repeat—and Clint cuts in, gyrating his body without restraint while Nat bites her lip, turning away before she starts cackling, leaving Steve to two-step awkwardly around Clint’s undulating frame.
Bucky is perversely mesmerized when he feels the presence at his shoulder; doesn’t have to turn to know who it is, to know it’s not a threat: not thing, not a man, to fear.
“Would you believe,” Bucky deadpans, straight-faced as anything over the lip of his glass, though he makes no attempt to stop his eyes from shining, from speaking volumes for the smirk he doesn’t give: “he never actually learned to dance?”
Phil, on the other hand, is not so capable of biting back a grin. "Shocking."
“The sad part is,” Phil tips his glass out to where his own partner’s doing something with his hips that too closely resembles the chicken dance for comfort. “Clint has learned to dance.” Phil allows himself a long drink from his own whiskey. A very long drink, that he swallows very hard in order to give himself a reason for the way that he shudders as he adds: “As in, trained to. More than once.”
Bucky’s eyes widen just a little, before he, too, hides his reaction in his drink. “Well, fuck.”
Phil hums, and Bucky just shakes his head, which is how he notices that more of his hair’s escaped from the refined little tie-up job that Pepper had promised looked “distinguished”—he has no fucking clue how to replicate it himself, though, so he just reaches back and gathers the hair at the base of his neck, twisting it by rote before Phil reaches out, grabs his right arm.
“Leave it.”
Bucky raises a brow, but there’s something playful, knowing in Phil’s gaze: which isn’t on Bucky.
It’s out on the dance floor, not on Clint, now—but on Steve.
Bucky does as he’s told, watching his partner out the corner of his eye as he shakes his hair free and smooths it toward his shoulders and yeah, his vision’s better for the serum, for everything that’s been done.
But he’d have to be goddamned blind to miss the way Steve’s watching him, to have neglected to catch the way that throat bobs. Hard.
“Now, wait,” Phil lets his hand drop, turning his body, telegraphing nonchalance in that scary way he does, but there’s an edge to his tone that speaks volumes, that talks around the mirth that his eyes aren’t showing, not yet, but not for lack of wanting to. “Loosen the tie.”
Bucky looks down, smirks to the floor like he’s reacting to something Phil’s not actually saying as he tugs at the fabric ‘round his neck.
Steve’s gone a little bit still, out where Clint’s still flouncing around him; not that it’s all that noticeable, because Steve’s dancing is more like an intermittent shuffle, at present, but still.
Bucky notices. Bucky always notices, when it comes to Steve.
“See, this is interesting,” Phil sips carefully at his drink—lightweight; his next will probably be a rum and coke that’s so light on the rum, it’s not worth drinking. “Let’s just,” he turns again, to make himself look preoccupied: “Watch.”
Bucky looks up, and tries to make it innocent when he meets Steve’s eyes and smiles; Steve blinks, his own gaze faltering down to Bucky’s throat, and Bucky makes a point to lick at his lips when Steve’s gaze slips back toward his face.
“Now the shirt,” Phil encourages idly. “Undo the top button.”
Bucky makes it look casual, unintentional.
“Other hand,” Phil looks at him meaningfully, and Bucky pauses, wants to protest, except then he reaches, lets his gloved left hand slip the button through its hole, lets the covered palm splay at the base of his throat, coaxing the collar to lie just so.
Bucky reaches with his free hand for his glass, but he shouldn’t have: he damn near spits his drink out when Steve stumbles from staring too hard, knocking straight into Clint’s shaking hips (which the song, Bucky idly notes, is blabbering about being truthful? Weird fucking music in this century, man) and sending a gorgeous fucking blush across those cheekbones, and oh, dear god, Bucky loves it, Bucky loves Steve—Bucky loves Phil fucking Coulson for giving him this spectacle, oh.
Bucky snorts into his drink and bites his lip to keep from cackling.
“They’re weren’t fucking around when they called you Fury’s good eye, were they?” Bucky shakes his head, raising god-knows-which-number-round of whiskey in salute.
“Mmm,” Phil hums around his drink, eyes still fixed on the spectacle at the center of the dancefloor, though Bucky’s pretty sure his gaze his more specifically zeroed in on the sway of a particular archer’s ass.
“Which, coincidentally, means that you should believe me when I say that you ought to just go out there,” Phil picks back up, and Bucky’s only half listening, really, because Steve’s loosened up, now—has his hands above his head, clasped as he moves to a beat that’s not actually playing, and he’s got absolutely no rhythm, looks a little like a palm tree twitching in the wind, but he makes up for it by being fucking delectable in that dress shirt, goddamn; “and save your star-spangled man from his own left feet.”
Bucky blinks, turns slowly to Phil; can feel his eyes watering with how wide he’s got them stretched.
“No one cares, Barnes,” Phil’s voice is soft, kind just like his face, his gaze as he leans in and grasps Bucky’s shoulder—the left one, where he can only barely feel it, but it means something, it means something that Phil reaches there, unbiased, without hesitation.
“Aside from the fact that it makes you both happy?” Phil grins, and shakes his head indulgently in a way Bucky can’t quite grasp, can’t entirely believe. “No one cares.”
Bucky’s brow quirks before he can stop it, not that he would stop it anyway, because seriously.
“Okay,” Phil caves, rolls his eyes. “There are some people who care,” he concedes, but Bucky can tell straight off that it’s not going to make a bit of difference, not going to kill the momentum that’s building in Phil’s voice, behind his eyes.
“But you make him light up like a goddamned Christmas tree,” Phil glances over at Steve, and Bucky feels the gorgeous sting as his lips makes to stretch wider, move to shape around more joy than they’re built for as he looks at the man he love like air, and earth, and life—and Christmas tree, yes, with his hands up like that, pointed at the top: and fuck, fuck, but Bucky adores that towering dork like his life depends on it.
And maybe, probably: it does.
“And if anyone gave a shit anymore about your very storied past,” Phil’s adding on like Bucky’s not eyeing Steve like a sap from where they stand, but Bucky can feel the change in the affect of Phil’s words, the subtle shift of his weight against the bar and Bucky knows his face gives him away where it hadn’t for so long, where it used to too often, and it’s a goddamned travesty, the way his heart stutters at the realization of it, of the way he’s drenched in all this feeling.
It’s a goddamned crime that Steve’s not there beside him, pressed against him, to feel it just as fierce, body against body like they’ll never unwind.
“Which they don’t, by the way,” Phil’s reeling him back, and Bucky lets him, lets the weight of reality, of all the reasons Bucky’s at the side of the room while Steve’s in the center when that’s his lover, his partner, his heart they’re all watching, all staring at like they have any claim to him: Bucky lets Phil try to convince him that the air has cleared, that his metal arm and his fucking red ledger, whatever the hell that's even supposed to mean aside from the fact that Bucky’s still got pieces of him that are poison, through and through—that those aren’t reason enough to hide when what he wants, what Steve has wanted from the start, was to show the world what it looks like when two halves of a whole stitch themselves across decades and lifetimes and horrors and pain and make something beautiful, something dazzling, something that makes Bucky’s breath get thin in his lungs when he thinks on it too hard, when he recognizes it for the goddamn miracle that it is.
He lets Phil talk, because he trusts Phil.
He lets Phil talk, because alongside the parts of Bucky that are poison, there are parts that desperately, hopelessly, hatefully need Phil to be right.
“They don’t care because A,” Phil ticks off the point on one finger, “that tween star did something stupid in front of a cell phone again and stole what little was left of your gossip-rag thunder, not to mention B,” he lifts another finger, raises the count; “you have contributed crucially to enough high-profile rescue missions as a member of the team to have swung your public opinion ratings and then some.”
Bucky turns, mouth a little bit open; taken just a little aback. Phil smirks.
“Did you honestly think Pepper wasn’t taking straw polls the moment she realized you and Steve were a thing?” he asks, and the look he shoots Bucky is rife with put-upon disappointment that there’d be any question as to Pepper Potts’ efficiency in such matters, which, okay, fine.
Bucky’s a little ashamed of himself, too. For not assuming it as a matter of course.
“But if anyone still gave a shit because of where you’ve been, because of what you’ve endured?” Phil’s voice dips again, low in the way that makes Bucky feel safe, makes him feel like he can cross an ocean and find the pieces of himself he lost in the soul he needs, in the body of that perfect fucking lunatic shimmying like a moron on display for the entire hall to see.
“Hell,” Phil breathes out, and there’s something in it that makes Bucky turn, makes Bucky look at Phil, who’s looking back at him.
“Look at you,” Phil stares a little, gapes maybe: marvels in a way that makes Bucky feel a little off-balance, because he’s not worth that, not in any way, not from anyone, no matter what Steve tries to tell him.
“If anyone could see you watch him, see you when you’re with him, and still believe you’re anything but a man who feels as much as any of us,” Phil tilts his head, and stares Bucky down until he’s still beneath Phil’s gaze.
“A hero,” Phil says, deliberate, until it shivers in Bucky’s bones, not like it belongs, of course, but maybe like it could; “who loves as deep as he’s loved back.”
And Bucky’s eyes find Steve for an instant—Bucky’s eyes meet Steve’s, and when Steve’s smiles at him, and shakes those hips without a hint of rhyme or reason, Bucky feels every inch of the wave that overtakes him, molten and magic and bright through his veins because Steve loves him.
God.
“If they can’t see that,” Phil murmurs, and it flows against the tide of Bucky’s pulse, of what Bucky thinks might be too much, too warm, too sheer for him to know—it flows against that impossible promise like it’s true: “then they’re blind, Barnes. And if anyone wants to look at two of the most storied American icons and begrudge them their happy ending, well,” Phil shrugs, and knocks back what’s left in his glass. “Fuck ‘em.”
He grins. “And I’ll go on the record with that in a heartbeat, if I need to.”
Bucky doesn’t say anything, because his throat’s too tight for it, just then, but he raises his eyebrow, and that says enough.
“Fine. With an appropriately censored version of that,” Phil corrects, and this is what it feels like, Bucky thinks.
This is what it feels like to have people in your corner. This is what it feels like to love in the light of day.
Bucky downs the rest of his drink—quickly—and waves for another.
“I don’t want to force him,” Bucky rides out the burn of the alcohol, if not the effect, forcing his lips to move, to give in return. “He,” Bucky bites his lip in that way Steve loves, the way Steve’s always loved, and he bites harder against the grin that wants out; against the swell of feeling that rises when he so much as thinks about Steve, good god.
“There’s a line, between him and the shield,” Bucky starts, tries to give voice to what’s in his mind, what he knows; “but then, in other ways, there isn’t.”
And it’s true, it’s always been true: it was true when his shield was only his idiot mouth and Bucky’s own feet, as fast as they could carry him to that dumb punk’s side—he’d never made a show of it, before, and he doesn’t now, hates that part, accepts it for what it does, what it means, what it allows him to be, which is himself: stupid-brave and stubborn and brilliant, and maybe that makes it so that the other parts, the humor and the shrewdness, the playful edge and the teasing, the mischievous asshole Bucky loves like aching and the soft smile that’s only for them, that’s only when the sun’s rising, or when there’s graphite on Steve’s fingertips and then on Bucky’s skin; maybe that means those parts don’t get to shine as often, but they still get their due, still get to warm Bucky from the inside out, upward and through, reminding him that he’s human, that this is real, that they’re here somehow, for sure, for good—but it’s a price that Steve pays, the trade-off. And that is him to the core, to the bones: the willingness to give just about anything for what he believes in.
The shield isn’t all there is to Steve Rogers, but fuck if it isn’t a part he wouldn’t be whole without.
And that makes it precious. That makes it necessary.
Bucky won’t stand for any part of Steve to suffer.
Hell if he can put that into words that actually come out, though.
“It’s hard to explain,” he shrugs. Coulson seems to understand, in his way, but Bucky knows he doesn’t, can’t grasp the whole of it—knows Phil well enough, now, he thinks, to realize that the man won’t let this lie without a reason, without a why.
He licks around the rim of his glass and sighs.
“I’m lucky enough, like this,” Bucky makes himself speak it, say it. “I’m luckier than I’ve got any right to be, you understand,” he glances at Phil, who’s watching him with something like fondness, and it makes him feel strange, to be looked at like that with eyes that aren’t Steve’s: strange, but not...bad, exactly.
Not bad.
“Because I have loved him for,” and Bucky shakes his head, unable to fit words around that feeling, the immensity of what it is and what it’s shaped and what it means, how long it’s stood and what it’s endured. He doesn’t know how to speak that without disgracing it somehow, without selling it so goddamned short.
“And fuck,” Bucky breathes. “Fuck, but he loves me back, y’know? I wake up sometimes and he’s just looking at me, looking at me like I’m…”
And Bucky’s overwhelmed with it, to this day, to this minute: he doesn’t think that’s ever gonna stop, really, doesn’t think he’ll ever get over the sunrise out the window where it pales compared to the eyes that watch him, that take him in and shine like nothing else—he doesn’t know how a person breathes, how any living being could make light of the sight of your own heart watching you like you’re something worth living and dying for, like you’re everything: like that fact that you’re real is some kind of gift they can’t quite grasp.
The sound that escapes Bucky’s throat in that moment is one he can mask as a laugh, as something incredulous, so he does it: he masks it. He takes the out and plays the emotion in his chest off as stupefied, dumbfounded laughter, but only because he’s well aware that Phil sees the move for what it is.
Only because he knows that Phil gets it.
“Christ, listen to me,” Bucky shakes his head, licks his lips and laughs at himself, then, in order to ease the tightness from his chest, and Phil gives him the space, the silence for it.
He clears his throat, eyes drifting back to the dance floor, back to the one person his eyes will always seek; always find.
“I just,” Bucky looks, stares through Steve’s tall frame, those broad shoulders—sees so many things written in that body, shining in that soul, more than a lifetime’s worth, more years and more love and more hurt and more wonder than he knows how to make sense of: the same line of that jaw on a thinner face; beneath the fit of that suit, the outline of his ribs superimposed over the cut of muscles, hard, strong—a laugh that doesn’t wind him as Clint pulls moves that Bucky can’t even follow, they’re so fucking ludicrous, and Bucky’s lived and died for Steve Rogers, and he knows that’s how he’ll spend what’s left from here: he knows that written in the bones of him. He knows that’s what pumps inside his heart.
“The parts of Steve that are tied up in the uniform, I just,” Bucky murmurs, watching all the parts of Steve swing his hips appallingly, endearingly with a smile on his face that swells in Bucky’s chest, that catches him swift and blind: “I don’t want those parts to suffer because of me.”
Bucky covers the strain in his voice with another drink from his glass, and it takes him too many moments, too much time to realize there’s silence that stretches between them, to register the eyes weighing on him from his side.
He turns, and catches Phil’s incredulous look dead-on.
“Suffer?” Phil asks, tone sharp, not even bothering to hide the disbelief, the censure, the clear judgement of Bucky as a goddamned moron where it colors his gaze.
“You don’t realize, do you?” Phil asks, half-amazed, jaw a little loose. “You don’t see it,” Phil’s tone softens, and his eyes on Bucky gentle, just a bit. “What you do for him. How much more he is, with you.”
And the tightness is Bucky’s chest isn’t a new thing, these days—the emotions where it wells between his pulse and the dry-rasp of his lungs sometimes, when the truth of where he is, of what he’s gained, of what’s been saved inside himself hits him with a force he can’t withstand except he can—now, like this, here: he can.
Bucky blinks, and draws in breath like it’s jagged, and when he looks at Phil, he knows his eyes are giving him away, knows they’ve got a hell of a sheen he can’t justify beyond the truth, but Phil’s looking out toward the dance floor, because Phil Coulson?
Phil’s a damned good man.
“But sure,” Phil tilts his head, considers, sips at the melted dregs of his Dalmore—Stark and his fucking thousand-dollar scotch. “Let’s play devil’s advocate,” Phil purses his lips, nods decisively, but Bucky knows him well enough now to read the hard line of his spine beneath the soft bow of his shrugging shoulders—Phil’s got an endgame, here, and he never plays without his eye on the prize.
“Let’s go ahead and pretend you’re all these horrible things,” Phil turns to him, pins him under a heavy gaze that Bucky feels down to to his shoes.
“Ruthless,” Phil bites out, hateful and certain and fierce in a way that still settles, all sickness and vengeance and guilt in Bucky’s stomach, makes him flinch against what he was, what he’s done, what he fears, at his worst, that he still—
“Even when I’ve seen you with the dog.”
Bucky’s train of thought, his entire fucking mind grinds to a halt, and his whole knowledge of the word narrows to the heavy pumping of his blood slowing, losing its tension all at once as the glint in Phil’s eyes, the playful edge of absurdity in his words, in his line of pseudo-reasoning: Bucky blinks, Bucky breathes.
He sees where this is going, and he thinks he appreciates it, but it’s not that simple, it’s not.
“I,” Bucky swallows, shakes his head; and fuck, it’s true, that dog’s a moron sometimes, but he’s loveable as hell, and he likes scritching up against the segments of Bucky’s left arm too much for Bucky to do anything but give him all the attention he wants, even if he has to spend extra time in the shower getting the hair out from from between the metal plates, afterward, but
“Lucky’s a good boy,” Bucky protests, “you can’t even—”
“Sadistic,” Phil ticks off the list, ignoring Bucky’s interruption entirely. “Like when you sat around nearly bleeding out so you could wait with those twins until their mother came, after the shooting last week.”
Bucky’s eyes narrow: those girls were terrified, what kind of person would leave them behind? And the bullet went straight through him, the shot’d been clean, it was fine, and the girls weren’t fine, so it was a fucking no-brainer; so sue him.
“I heal fast, it wasn’t—”
“Cold-blooded,” Phil says, and it’s a flat declaration, there’s no weight to it, and Bucky thinks that’s the point, that’s probably precisely the point as Phil’s eyes drift toward the crowd again, lead Bucky’s gaze in kind to settle at the center, to watch Steve’s body as it moves off-kilter, graceless but still gorgeous, still everything.
“Like when you look at him, and he looks at you,” Phil murmurs, and it settles warm in Bucky’s blood because fine, okay. Fine. Maybe Phil’s got a point, maybe Bucky’s…
Maybe.
“Or like what the two of you get up to after dark?”
Bucky smirks, and he thinks the quirk of his lips and the low gleam of the light will do enough to hide the rise of heat on his cheeks.
“Speculation,” Bucky counters; “The walls are soundproofed.”
“For normal vocal registers, sure,” Phil scoffs. “Not even Tony Stark could account for precisely which pitches that serum would produce. So,” Phil shrugs, and sucks a sliver of ice between his lips: “There’s that.”
Bucky’s pretty sure no trick of the light’s got a prayer in hiding the way he blushes, at that point.
Fuck all.
“But yes, let’s pretend those things are true,” and Phil’s voice doesn’t hide his intention, anymore: doesn’t pretend to be serious, doesn’t intend to do anything but cast Bucky’s hesitation in the most garish of lights, highlighting the threads of irrationality in them where Bucky can see them, here, yes sure: when you put them like that—he just doesn’t know if he can buy into what Phil’s trying to say to him, trying to prove to him as obvious, as self-evident truth.
“Even if the person he chose, by some unfathomable tear in the fabric of who and what he is,” and Phil’s talking about Steve, but he’s looking at Bucky, keeping Bucky in the here and the now: “Even if the person he gave everything to, was all of those things?”
Phil inclines his head, and quirks an eyebrow back toward Bucky, far too fucking knowing for anyone’s good—or maybe, yeah: for Bucky’s good.
“Frankly?” Phil smirks, and Bucky lets himself get a good look at Steve, who looks like a gaggle of limbs waving caught in a fucking hurricane, and he can’t, he literally cannot keep the laugh that bubbles up, that escapes before he can swallow the rest of them down, but it’s enough for Phil to hear it, for Phil to watch him with a glaze of triumph, of vindication to his gaze.
It’s enough.
“He’s doing far more damage to his image by disgracing whichever pop idol is currently playing, right now.”
And Bucky snorts at that, and he’s not stupid enough, not selfless enough to deny the lightness that rises through his body, that flutters and suffuses cool and swift beneath his ribs, because Steve is perfect, he is perfect when he breathes deep in the mornings, just before dawn; he is perfect when he’s bleeding but living after a fight they shouldn’t have won but they have, they do; he is perfect in the now as he’s making a fool of himself for the world to see—he is perfect, always.
And maybe Bucky’s not taking away from that. Maybe Bucky cannot possibly take away from that, just like Steve cannot possibly be anything but all that Bucky needs—maybe.
“Save him,” Phil grabs Bucky’s glass from his hand, nudges him toward the throngs of people at the center of the room. “That’s what you do, isn’t it?”
Bucky bites his lip, tries to fight the urge to go, to be near, to touch and to hold and to feel Steve give into his touch in this new way, in this new scene: to make statements without words, to move the way they always do, for everyone to know.
“I don’t know this shit,” Bucky mutters, because the song’s more of that crazy nonsense, but his feet are already pointed, already stepping half toward Steve—traitors.
Phil smirks.
“S’got a good beat, Barnes,” he quips; “and you can dance to it. Anything goes!”
He shoves Bucky lightly, and Bucky doesn’t fight it, this time. And while he’s pretty sure there’s nothing about Cole Porter in this display, Bucky moves, Bucky makes his way forward, and when he steps onto the dance floor, Steve finds him automatically, and dear god, there is nothing better than the smile that breaks across Steve’s face like the fucking sun, there is nothing that compares to those eyes on him, except there is, there is—
There is, and it’s Steve’s hands on him, bracing, as Bucky sweeps him close and moves them both, lends his own sense of the swing to count for two and Steve gives himself over, Steve follows Bucky’s lead: Steve says the words without words in the way his body follows Bucky’s, not a breath of space between them for long enough to count; in the way they watch each other and never once bother looking away.
When the song ends, they’re both breathless, and Bucky can't stop grinning, and it’s then that Steve decides to take the lead: it’s then that Steve draws Bucky close and kisses him, full and hard, the taste of salt and need on those lips so strong that it burns like the liquor should, like this had always managed better, and there’s no maybe, to this. There’s not a goddamn thing that can suffer for this, between them.
Not here.
_______________________________
Phil doesn’t have to watch the rippling of the crowd to know who sidles up toward him, when all eyes are on the good Captain as he borrows the rhythm that damn near exudes from the man with the roguish smile who stole that star-spangled heart.
Phil doesn’t have to look to know who’s there.
“Fuck, but Barnes is gettin’ some tonight,” Clint whistles low, eyes watching the main event with approval as he slips an arm around Phil’s waist; Phil lets him, because no one’s paying them any mind.
Phil lets him, because it’s still a novelty: having this again. Having Clint again.
So he lets him, maybe he even leans into it; he snorts at the words, though, because he can’t let anyone think he’s gone totally soft.
“Tonight,” Phil snarks, “as opposed to literally every other night?”
Clint coughs out a laugh because, well, yeah, Phil hadn’t been bluffing.
The walls aren’t nearly soundproof enough for anyone to deny that.
“You make me look bad when you do that, you know,” Phil changes tacks. “I taught you how to dance. Not to mention you then make S.H.I.E.L.D. look bad, because they taught me.”
“Oh boo hoo,” Clint mocks him in a high pitched whine, gripping his lapels in faux-desperation. “Poor you and your horrible Academy dance elective.”
Seriously, though, yes: poor Phil and that goddamned dance elective. Clint doesn’t understand.
“What did you want me to do, anyway?” Clint presses. “Leave Captain America hanging out there, looking like a tool? It was a public service, man. I was absolutely doing a public service,” his stance straightens, and Phil can tell they’re teetering on the edge of sarcasm, where it dips toward Clint realizing his humor is leaning toward something viable, something worthy of taking legitimate pride. “Protecting a national treasure!”
“Yes,” Phil demurs, deadpan as he can manage. “I’m sure that was a hardship for you.”
“Worth some hazard pay, definitely,” Clint nods, stone-faced, and if Phil didn’t know his lover so well, he’d have been surprised at the swift arrival of Clint’s hands upon his chest, fingertips playing at the edge of his tie.
“A special commendation, even,” Clint damn near purrs. “In fact, I suspect it should be presented in person,” and cheeky bastard: he’s got his teeth on the shell of Phil’s ear as he exhales heavy: “Upstairs.”
Phil’s trained well, more than—it doesn’t say anything that he doesn’t move, doesn’t shiver at the word, at the breath against his skin.
What matters, really, is that he wants to. Desperately.
“If you’d like to do the honors?” Clint winks, turning away and walking toward the secure lift that will take them straight to their floor—and, well.
Phil spares a glance to the middle of the dance floor, where Barnes is dancing a complicated and captivating lindy hop that almost makes Rogers’ sidecar of slightly-bent knees and mostly-timed arm swinging look rhythmical as he snaps to count Bucky’s footwork, as he smiles wide enough to break his face.
Phil spares them one last grin before he turns and makes his way to the elevator, undoing his tie in anticipation. He’s got a long evening of commendation planned once he gets upstairs, and they need to get a move on with it.
Much as a night’s worth of screwing like rabbits sounds lovely, he’d rather not still be going at it once the Sergeant and his Captain start serenading the Tower with their own merrymaking.
Phil really does need to talk to Stark about the insulation between floors around here.