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Bucky’s hair has been long for years. At least since 1991, but most assuredly before that as well. How would he know, though? It’s not like Hydra had mirrors for him to look in. But once he did have access to mirrors (and a lot of them) he realized how terrible he looked.
Bucky Barnes, upon reentering the ‘real world’, didn’t know what a hairbrush was. He assumed that someone brushed it, but he was never sure. He never could be sure. Steve taught him how to brush his hair and put in a hair tie and that ended Bucky’s skills in hairdressing. He wakes up, attempts to run a brush through his hair, and either lets it hang over his eyes or tied it up to be forgotten.
Steve hadn’t put much thought into Bucky’s hair. Of course, it was different from what he was used to, but that doesn’t mean he’s opposed to the long hair. Steve quite likes the hair long, even if he’ll never tell Bucky that. Bucky, on the other hand, could really care less about his hair.
The scream came when Steve was sitting at the kitchen counter. To be precise, it was less of a scream and more a really loud yell. Still, it freaked Steve out enough that he ran into the bathroom where he knew Bucky would be. To his surprise, nothing seemed to be amiss. There was no blood pooling outside of the shower or a visitor ready to kill them both. Steve, still terrified out of his mind, crept up to the shower and slowly pulled back the curtain. He didn’t quite know what to say when he saw nothing except for his boyfriend standing under the water, crying, with a hairbrush stuck in his hair.
“Buck?” Suddenly, Bucky’s arms fell to his side with a thud. Now that his hands were out of the way, Steve could fully see what was happening on Bucky’s head.
The brush was totally engulfed in rat’s nests of hair. The handle was breaking and the shower floor was covered in fallen clumps. Steve knew about that problem, as he was the one who had to clean out drain. His attention finally turned to Bucky and fixing thee problem at hand. He reached out and cupped Buck’s shoulder, grounding him back into the present. Then he began to speak in a soft, comfofting tone.
“Oh darling, what a mess you’ve gotten yourself into. Let’s get you dry and then we’ll tackle this beast. It’ll be alright, I promise.” Steve’s hand ran along Bucky’s right shoulder gently as his hand hesitantly touched the hair.
“I hate this,” Bucky murmured, stepping out of the shower into the towel Steve held open.
“What do you hate, darling?” Steve rubbed the fuzzy towel into Bucky’s calloused skin, asking questions with the sweetest voice.
“This!” His arms flapped about around his head. Steve kept drying his body in small, circular motions. It was beautiful and so gentle. All of it reminded Bucky of the way Steve treated him when he first came home. Whether it was after Azzano or seventy years later, Steve would hold Bucky and kiss him sweetly until Buck was finally okay to open up about the demons eating him from the inside.
“There you go, all dry. Now cmon, pants.” Steve retrieved his boyfriend’s pants from where they rested on the sink. Bucky pulled them on quickly, returning to his moping in record speed. He was groaning and frowning with a few tears even falling from his eyes. Steve shot him a sad smile before dashing out of the bathroom to grab a chair from the kitchen. He grabbed the chair into the bedroom
“Let’s take a look here and see what we’re working with.” Steve finally turned his attention to the mess in front of him. It was even worse than it appeared.
Nimble fingers began to detangle the single hairs surrounding the brush. Yeah, okay, Steve was starting to see why Bucky hated this so much. With every hair that he freed, another five seemed to reappear wrapped around the brush.
“It’s so thick ! Why can’t I have hair like yours!” Bucky shouted in yet another moment of exasperation. Like cleaning a beach one grain of sand at a time, Steve grabbed another hair.
“You’ve got your Ma’s hair. She was pretty beautiful. You got it from her side of the family.” Quickly, he swooped down to smack a kiss onto Buck’s cheek.
“Yeah sure, hon, but Ma’s hair or no hair it’s awful. I’d rather you just chop it all off. I did that once.” Steve’s eyes widened.
“What?” Bucky winced as Steve detangled a hair that had rooted itself around the plastic.
“Yeah, once I was on a mission. If I can remember right I was sniping and all that fuckin’ hair got in my eyes. Just took my combat knife and seared some of it off. Probably got a beating for it, eh’ can hardly remember these days.” His voice was thick with that old Brooklyn accent. A voice that would yell at the radio when the dodgers lost an inning. A voice that could never get his Hebrew right and a voice that was so goddamn sexy .
“Oh, darling.”
“Don’t oh darling me, Stevie. This was a million years ago and we’ve got a job in front of us. If you don’t get a move on I’m going to get my knife.” His finger moved up to poke Steve in the face with surprising blind accuracy. “I’m not kidding about that.”
“There’s no need for knives. I’ve almost got the brush out,” Steve said with his mouth practically closed. He was lying of course, because he was nowhere near getting the brush out. But if he didn’t calm Bucky down soon he would have to hide all the knives in the house. And there are a lot of knives in the house.
“I always wondered why they kept my hair long. From a practical point of view, it was terrible! The hair got in my eyes and was always matted and iced together in cryo. Still, they kept it long for years. Maybe it was for the aesthetic. The whole brooding assassin thing. Made people piss themselves before they even saw the gun, not kidding. I still fucking hated it though, not like they would ever listen to me. Or like I was even allowed to talk, hm.” Steve’s lips turned. It was selfish, but Steve hated it when Bucky talked about Hydra. He talked about it with such an air that it made it all seem like nothing. Like he was doing a stand-up show about seventy years of trauma.
It used to make Steve sick, but now it just makes him slightly annoyed.
“Maybe we could learn how to style the hair?” Bucky huffed. Steve released another hair from its shackles.
“I don’t even think that’s possible.”
“You know I can braid hair right?” Bucky, in one sudden motion, swung around the chair and stared at Steve, completely astonished. He didn’t say anything for a bit, just stared at Steve. It was starting to get scary.
“You good there, sweets?”
“I’m fucking verklempt here, Stevie! How the hell do you know how to braid hair?” Steve chuckled. Bucky’s flesh hand was planted on the chair, his eyes staring holes into Steve’s face. Steve’s face contorted. Oh yeah, he wasn’t there.
“The USO girls,” he murmured. Bucky’s eyebrows raised.
“What was that?” Bucky could hear him of course, super soldier hearing and all, he just needed to hear Steve say it again. “I couldn’t hear you there, slugger.”
“I braided the stage girls’ hair. I can do French and Dutch.” His eyes were facing the floor. Bucky burst into laughter.
“Holy Shit, Steve. I don’t know why this surprises me that much. You’re sayin’... you’re sayin’ that you want to braid this hair!”
“Well, I can’t exactly do it now!” He flapped his hands around the brush that was still stuck in a mop of brown hair.
“Well, then you better find a way to get it so you can!”
“Alright FDR quit your yappin’ and let me work,” Bucky turned back around after Steve finished his yapping too. He didn’t see the smile that broke out across Steve’s face. Half a compass of the ear-to-ear grin.
Steve did work, and for a hell of a long time. It was nearly two hours later when Steve could effectively run his fingers through Bucky’s thick hair.
“There! You are perfect,” Steve said just before kissing the top of Bucky’s hair.
“You know it’s only going to get tangled again, right?” Steve could tell Bucky was disappointed. He’d spent all this time getting his hair detangled, only to expect it to go back to the way it was in a few hours.
“I heard from Nat that there’s something called detangling spray! Maybe we could try it out on you?” Bucky’s face perked up again.
“What the hell is a detangling spray? Whatever it is, I want to try it.”
“Good, because I’m going down to the corner store to get some. Right now. And you’re coming with me.” He grabbed Bucky’s hand and spun him around, just the right angle to see his smile. And just the right angle to kiss those stupid lips in front of him.
--
Detangling spray is a miracle of the 21st century. It smells like strawberries and with one spritz, Bucky’s hair became manageable. Steve and Bucky began a new routine with the spray. When they got up, Steve would spray Bucky’s hair and brush it out. At first,, they kept it down, but as the days went on Steve began to style the hair. It wasn’t anything fancy, especially at the beginning, but it gave life to that hair. Each twist or braid plaited into the thick brown waves brought energy to what was before just a parasite attached to the scalp of a prisoner.
--
“You know, I still haven’t stopped laughing at the idea of you braiding the girls’ hair,” Bucky said as Steve Dutch braided his hair one morning. They had an appointment with Tony, and he wanted to show up not looking homeless (if that was at all possible).
“Okay, Buck, it’s not like you never…” Steve’s voice drifted as he failed to think of an equally embarrassing anecdote. “Nevermind, I’m crazy. You’re perfect and I’m crazy.” Bucky chuckled.
“That’s right, dear. I love you and your craziness. Now, are you done yet? We kind of need to get going,” Bucky tapped his watch. Steve huffed.
“Almost, lemme finish before you run away.” He cupped Bucky’s cheek a little harder than necessary for affection. Steve finished the braid, tying it up with a purple scrunchie. Bucky’s hair had gotten pretty long at this point at this pointSteve Still, especially since they’ve begun brushing it out. Unsurprisingly, once all the rat’s nests and tangles are brushed through, the hair gets pretty long.
“Now we really have to go,” Bucky said as he put his sunglasses on. He was living his style now. Bucky’s thought process was that if he was going to wear his hair nice, he was going to wear his clothes nice too. So he did. His sunglasses were bedazzled and his leather jacket pristine. Today he was driving to Stark Tower.
He didn’t wear a helmet. What was he going to do, mess up his hair? Anyways he’d much rather have Steve wear the helmet. He was also pretty boastful about his new ability to legally drive with a legal license.
When they finally reached their destination, Steve’s hair had taken a few rounds. Bucky on the other hand was completely pristine.
They came in the front door. It was their way of being spontaneous and dangerous and young. Noone bothered them, but there was always the risk that someone would come up to them and really, that was the fun.
No, the real fun was seeing Tony’s face when they walked into the lab. His eyes widened and his cheeks puffed out.
“Mr. Barnes, what is that?” He said with spaces between his words. His hand slapped over his face when Bucky passed and he saw the detailing in the braid.
“It’s my hair, Stark. It’s beautiful. Stevie told me himself.” Tony’s eyes flicked to Steve and he shrugged.
“You did this?” Tony pointed to Steve and was once again met with a shrug. He continued staring with his jaw practically on the floor as Bucky made himself comfoftable in the chair.
They were only here for a standard arm tune-up, something they did fairly often. Bucky realized about two months after running away that the arm needed constant maintenance. Thankfully he found that in Tony.
Steve always sat next to him during tune-ups. He hasn’t dissociated because of it for months, but Steve stuck by anyways.
“I will say, it is nice to see you not looking like homeless person,” Tony said. Bucky chuckled and squeezed Steve hand. Tony rolled his eyes while soldering a joint in the shoulder. Okay, annoying Tony to the point of vomiting definitely wasn’t what Sam had in mind when he told Steve to ‘get a hobby’ but then again, neither was cosmetology.
The next time they visited Tony, Steve had done Bucky’s hair up in a french twist. It had elicited the same reaction as the previous visit. He stared the couple down with his eyes bulging and his hands on his hips. His head would shake and he wouldn’t say a word. It. Was. Hilarious.
The same reaction was had by almost everyone who say Bucky out of the house. The first time Sam saw his ‘new do’ he’d stared for so long that Bucky feared he was dead. He wasn’t of course, but he was absolutely befuddled by the sight.
While the reactions to his hair and the way it was styled were fun, it was the styling he enjoyed the most. It was the feeling of Steve’s fingers deep in his hair, both while he’s doing it and at night when he’s loosening each hair from its bonds. It was Steve washing Bucky’s hair with that new conditioner with a deep smell of coconut.
One evening, while Bucky’s hair was being undone by Steve, he found himself in a rather loving mood. The two of them were sat on their bed with Bucky sitting cross legged in between Steve’s open legs. Once his hair was completely free, he immediately sprawled himself atop Steve’s chest.
“Hello there,” Steve muttered to the lump now placed on his torso. Bucky just hummed. It was reliving first, as the Captain always enjoyed Bucky’s spurts of affection. The second feeling was fear. Bucky was silent, and sometimes that silence meant terror tearing him apart from the inside, closing his lips to the one he loves.
“Are you alright, my love?” Steve asked in that voice that reminded Bucky of one of those poets. He didn’t know any poets or what they sounded like, but still, Steve was his poet he’d be damned if he didn’t say it.
Steve’s hands were rubbing up Bucky’s back just before he finally responded.
“I love you.” The utterance was but a whisper or a murmur, but it was there and so soft. Those small words were the first step into an air conditioned room after being in the hot July heat and the warmth of a hearth in winter at the same time.
Then Bucky’s face burrowed into Steve’s neck and all at once, he melted.
“What’s brought this on, darling?” Steve asked, accompanied with another back rub. Bucky humed and reached up to plant a soft, quick kiss on Steve’s lips.
“You,” the gruff yet vulnerable voice whispered. Steve’s hand migrated to Bucky’s hair. Tingles danced down Buck’s scalp as those calloused fingers combed through his smooth brown locks.
“What about me?” Steve continued his movements, with each bringing Bucky closer and closer to him. When Bucky finally responded to Steve’s query, he was practically inside of Steve’s neck. That warm crook had become Bucky’s habitat and, while he didn’t say it to Steve, he wasn’t leaving this spot.
“You...are amazing,” his voice slowed for a moment, perhaps in a moment where he considered the next words spoken.
“You spent all that time learning how to do my hair. Stevie, I love you.” While the sentence sounded simple and unfinished, it said all that he felt about Steve. The events of the past week befuddled Bucky’s old mind, leaving him clueless of how one person could do so much with nothing in return.
“It’s for you Buck, it’s nothing.” A feather light kiss fell onto Bucky’s freckles forehead after Steve pushed the hair away.
“But, that night, I wanted to chop all my hair off. But you...you took my hair and braided it. Stevie, you put me right. You always put me right.” His arms shifted to be wrapped around the base of Steve’s neck.
“Oh, love, you know i’d do anything for you. I said til’ the end of the line, right?” A choked sob suddenly sounded from Bucky’s throat. Steve moved a bit, trying to get a look at the face buried deep into his chest.
They didn’t say anything then, as neither of them could find any words. A whole dictionary of letters put together abandoned. The two of them, a soldier and a captian, lay together in a bed that they can call theirs.
The next morning, Steve brushed through Bucky’s hair. The chore had become much easier as they continued Bucky’s ‘hair care’ plan. It was strange, taking care of something so unnecessary as hair. He definitely hadn’t heard the word ‘deep conditioner’ in his hundred or so years of life. But now, it was a common word in his lexicon.
Steve was always the one to deep condition his hair. Bucky could do it and he did know how to do it, but then again, he would never turn down an offer to have Steve touch his hair (especially when he is touching his hair while naked and in the shower).
In the mornings he’d spray the detangling spray, but with all the conditioners and hair masks they’d been using, it started to become unnecessary.
Bucky found a new love in the hair brush. Hydra never brushed his hair, and he was pretty sure that he would have remembered it. But now, every morning, Steve would run the brush through his hair. The bristles would fly through it like an airplane through a plush cloud. It took a bit, but finally, Bucky stopped being embarrassed for feeling pleasure while his hair was being brushed. In support group they were told that ‘feeling happy isn’t something we need to apologize for’. Something about hearing that made Bucky rethink things greater than just his hair.
“Hey Stevie?” Buck said one night. Steve peeked around his head to face Bucky.
“Yes?” Slowly a smile broke out across Bucky’s face. A stupid grin that showed his teeth and a blush that reddened his cheeks decorated his face.
“I love you so fucking much.” Abandoning the half made braid across his back, Bucky grabbed Steve’s cheeks and slammed their lips together.
Steve didn’t complain. Bucky was his, and he loved him so fucking much too.