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Honey, Thrill Me
“Oh,” Tony said, then realized he’d promised he wouldn’t react and promptly clapped his hands over his mouth, horrified.
“I’m going back to the den,” Bucky said miserably.
Tony held his hands out to him, placating, as he exclaimed, “No, no, no! I didn’t mean that in a bad way!”
“There’s only one way to mean that type of ‘oh,’” Bucky argued, morose. “I’m going back to the den.”
Tony sighed and placed his hands on his hips, frowning. “It’s… not that bad. Really.” He looked Bucky over carefully and did his best to hide a wince.
Bucky saw it anyway. “I am no longer attractive to my mate,” he said gravely to absolutely nobody.
Natasha had apparently been watching all along, though, because she gleefully crowed, “He should have just shaved you bald!”
Bucky looked like he was seriously considering chucking a boulder at her. She squawked and took flight before he could make a decision either way, because the likelihood his decision would be ‘Tony will forgive me eventually’ was frighteningly high.
“It’s not that bad,” Tony repeated, just a touch desperately.
Bucky turned to give him a sour look, then took a step back and spread his arms to show Tony the full effect of his ‘treatment.’
Tony had had the bright idea of the yetis breaking into beehives because of their thick fur and layer of fat, and once he’d found a hive, Bucky had gamely climbed up to retrieve it to see if his hypothesis was correct. And it had worked! Any sting he felt was more like a little pinprick of static electricity than anything really painful. His claws had cracked open the hive easily, and scooping the honey up into jars was easy as scooping up water. He’d gotten some honey in his fur, but that was easily brushed out.
Unfortunately, Bucky had also gotten a healthy amount of tree sap on his fur, too, and it had quickly cooled and hardened. Bucky didn’t really know how to get tree sap off of his fur, and all of Tony’s ideas had sounded harebrained, like grinding some nuts into butter and rubbing it into the sap, or a special paste that he’d once whipped up in his lab before he’d come to live in the caves that he'd called ‘bicarbonate’ or something. Bucky hadn’t been enthused, so Tony had finally thrown his hands up and suggested they cut the sap out. Which had seemed like a reasonable decision, honestly, since the sap wasn’t that deep—or at least, it hadn’t seemed like it at the time.
Now Bucky was covered in bald patches, and Tony had said ‘oh’ in that ‘this was a terrible mistake’ way, and Natasha had said they should have shaved him completely bald, he looked so bad. He didn’t even want to see the mess of his fur.
“I’m sorry,” Tony murmured, ducking his head. “This was all my idea and you’re the one suffering for it.”
“I mean,” Bucky began, sighing, and rolled his eyes in frustration. “It’s not your fault I got covered in tree sap.”
“But it was my idea to cut your fur instead of it just wearing off, or using one of the other techniques, or seeing if we could just peel it off when you were in your human form—” Tony began, hunching his shoulders.
Bucky stared at him blankly. “My human form.”
Tony looked up at him, concerned. “Oh, would you—would you not have been able to shift?”
“My human form,” Bucky repeated, like an idiot, and then bellowed, “I COULD HAVE SHIFTED TO MY HUMAN FORM AND RUBBED IT OFF.”
“…I thought you hadn’t suggested it because it would hurt too badly,” Tony began.
“I hate everything,” Bucky hissed, picking up two of the wicker baskets of jars with a loud clank.
“Be careful!” Tony yelped, more on instinct than actual care.
“I’m not leaving the den until my fur grows back,” Bucky growled, stomping past him.
Tony scurried after him, clutching the last basket of jars guiltily. “Do you want me to pick up the—”
“No, I don’t want my sappy fur,” Bucky hissed. “Whatever finds it can keep it.”
“Okay,” Tony mumbled, shoulders hunching.
.-.-.-.
There was a patch of sap that Tony had missed under Bucky’s right jaw, and Bucky tried everything Tony told him to before finally throwing his hands up and sighing in frustration. “Shave it off.”
“Are you sure?” Tony asked, frowning, even as he walked over to their wash basin and began to make up some lather.
“I’m in my human form now so it doesn’t matter, and you always complain that my stubble grows back too fast anyway,” Bucky muttered, picking at the bald patches on his skin where there used to be a normal amount of body hair and now was not.
“Stop picking at it,” Tony ordered, reaching out to bat his hand away.
Bucky scowled down at his arms. “I’ve still got bald patches even in this form.”
“It’ll grow back,” Tony assured him, then reached out to gently cup his cheek and urge him to tip his head back. “Tilt your head back so I can see.”
Bucky grumbled to himself even as his eyes drifted closed at the first brush of foam. He rarely shaved, and he had never gone clean-shaven (he felt uncomfortably naked like that). He’d also never allowed Tony to shave him, because Tony had once gleefully exclaimed, ‘I’m gonna do it like mine!’ and Bucky had known he wouldn’t be able to pull it off. But now, letting Tony lather him up and carefully make sure his razor was sharp, he couldn’t help but bask in the trust and intimacy between them.
“I’m sorry about the tree sap,” Tony said softly as he cleaned the foam off the razor.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Bucky murmured. “Trees are sticky, and I knew that.”
“I’m still sorry,” Tony insisted, so Bucky just sighed and gave a brief nod while he cleaned the razor again. “I’ve never seen you clean-shaven,” he added thoughtfully. “I’ve always wondered about it. Steve’s got such a strong jaw that he can do anything with it and still look good.”
Bucky squinted up at him with an irritated grunt. “Don’t talk about Steve looking good in front of me.”
Tony glance down at him with a smirk. “Why? Are you jealous?”
“If you think Steve looks better than I do with a naked face, I will go find him and I will throw him into a wall, and you’ll have to think about what a stupid yeti you married to,” Bucky warned him.
“Yeah, yeah,” Tony agreed, clearly not threatened at all, and grabbed a warm towel to wipe away the rest of the suds. “Looks like I got most of the sap.”
Bucky felt along his neck to feel it. It was only a little tacky, and he figured that would wear away quickly with nothing to cling to now. He really was an idiot, not shifting before letting Tony hack away at his fur with his obsidian knife. “So, what’s the damage?” he sighed when he noticed Tony staring at him, eyes darting up and down to take everything in. “Am I going to go throw Steve into a wall?”
“Huh? Sure,” Tony answered, distracted.
Bucky stopped moping to turn his full attention to him, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “What?”
“What?” Tony repeated, still not meeting his eyes.
Bucky stared at him for a moment, just watching him, before his lips slowly spread into a grin that showed off all of his teeth. “Oh? You like what you see, doll?”
“Yeah,” Tony answered breathlessly. Then he jerked, as if he just realized what he answered, and blushed bright as a tomato. “I mean—”
Bucky reached out to take his hand and pull it to his face, smirking when he heard Tony’s breath hitch as soon as their skin came into contact. “How’s it feel, love?”
“Razor burned,” Tony muttered mulishly, even as he carefully cupped his jaw and ran his thumb over the skin there. Eventually, though, his scowl fell, and he mumbled an embarrassed, “It’s soft.”
“And what were you thinking about my soft face, love?” Bucky cooed, trying to keep any notes that sounded like teasing out of his voice.
“…It might be nice… to not get beard burn?” Tony asked with a wince.
Bucky did not whoop, but only because Tony was still stroking his chin, clearly still a little hesitant about the fact that the only reason he no longer had facial hair was because of him climbing a tree after he’d asked him to. “Let’s find out,” he purred, curling his hands over Tony’s hips and drawing him closer.
“…You’re not still mad at me, right?” Tony asked, frowning in concern.
“I was never mad at you,” Bucky assured him. “I was just mad at the situation. And I’ll prove it to you. With my mouth.”
“Well, if you’re sure,” Tony demurred, and then let out a squawk when Bucky stood and yanked him up into his arms so that he could carry him to their bed. “Bucky!”
“I’m sure,” Bucky told him firmly, and then leaned down to swallow Tony’s startled laugh.