Chapter Text
It happens like this: a sudden light, a swirl, a trembling hand, a screeching noise of wheels turning; the sky.
Dark sky with stars among it, uneven breathing which is hard at first to recognize: his own.
Steve’s voice.
“Bucky? Are you okay? Fucking hell!”
He’s fine. Nothing broken, not even twisted, just bruises, but that won’t calm Steve down, of course, no matter how much Bucky keeps saying it.
“What happened? You just lost control—”
“It was nothing—”
“Nothing?”
Bucky sighs.
“I thought I saw something.”
“Like, a deer?” Steve’s voice is skeptical, his eyes are worried.
Bucky shrugs.
“Maybe.”
He’s lying, but telling the truth isn’t an option; he’s not sure of the truth himself. He did see something; thought so, at least. Maybe he imagined that.
Steve shuffles near him, six feet of awkwardness.
“I’m fine, you mother hen. We drove for a long while, and you had a bunch of times when you ended up on your butt, too. ‘M just tired.”
“Okay. Right,” Steve hesitates. “It’s just— are you sure you are—”
“If you end this with ready to drive, Rogers, I’m going to punch you in the face, I’m not kidding.”
Steve lifts his hands up in defeat.
“Yeah-yeah. Your bike, though—”
“Oh fuck.”
His bike isn’t so lucky.
The closest town is tiny and depressing in its emptiness. Bucky manages to drive up to it, but on the outskirts of it his bike fully dies. It’s morning, bleak and cloudy, and they walk, exhausted, with no clear direction apart from basic forward.
The road until the first passerby is long; luckily, she explains how to find the nearest car shop, although not without caution and skittish looks at their attire.
“That’s welcoming,” Bucky tells under his breath when she walks away, clutching her bag.
“Empty streets, one defenseless girl, two men. It’s understandable.”
“I bet she’d be more at ease did we look different. Wonder what the car place will be like.”
“You’re such a grumpy old man before the afternoon.”
“Me? An old man? Which one of us thinks that khaki pants make a great combo with a leather jacket?”
Steve looks unrepentant; he adopts a serious expression that means he’s ready to give Bucky shit.
“They’re very comfortable. Anyway, the repair shop should be fine. They probably deal with motorcycles all the time.”
“And crazy men on them, I’m sure.”
“Bucky!”
“Yeah-yeah, not talking over myself.”
Steve nudges him with his elbow.
“You’re not crazy. You are the best man I know.”
Bucky shakes his head.
He’s tired, hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in a while, exhausted by the long night, the expectations of their trip, his dreams, which now haunt him even when he’s awake, too, it seems; still, Steve stands near him. It’s a comfort.
“Back at ya, pal.”
The repair shop is, luckily, open, big neon sign inviting them in, even though there’s no one inside. They stop at the doorstep, peek in, and look around.
“Here it goes,” Bucky mutters and cries out for anybody inside.
There’s a second of nothing, silence, waiting, but then a man comes into view, in overalls and tank top, clearly working here, and just like that, Bucky wakes up.
The man is gorgeous.
It’s been a long, long time since Bucky flirted easily and went after every smile and every look cast at him, all of his spark dimmed in the face of life’s not-so-bright offerings; and yet, one look at the stranger changes it: that part of Bucky, half-forgotten, is back as new.
There’s something— he can’t explain it, but the man is like the North Star, like coming home, like finding one’s life purpose; lust at first sight, at least.
“Hello, fellas,” the man says, his eyes traveling over both of them in a casual once-over. “I’m Tony, and I own this place. How may I help you?”
Steve opens his mouth; Bucky interrupts him.
“Hi, Tony,” he slowly smiles. “I’m having trouble with my ride.”
Tony’s eyebrows go up in interest, and Bucky steps aside, showing his bike.
“Oh, poor thing.”
“Yeah, she’s pretty beat. You think you’ll help her?”
“I will try for sure,” Tony comes closer, examining the damage; Bucky tries not to stare so obviously. “Her, huh?”
He turns his head to look at Bucky, voice teasing but kind. Up close, it’s more noticeable that he’s inches shorter than Bucky.
“Well,” Bucky drawls, stroking a line along the wheel, “I needed to have at least one girl I liked between my legs to meet my parents’ expectations.”
That earns him a surprised snort. Bucky grins. Tony has a nice laugh, deep and unashamed.
Steve coughs behind his back. Bucky almost flinches out of surprise.
“Can you say how long it’ll take you?”
Tony frowns.
“Not sure yet. Are you two passing through? Of course you are, there’s shit to none to do here. I’ll look and tell more accurately later, but you should prepare yourselves for staying at least for a day.”
Steve catches Bucky’s eye. Bucky nods.
“You know any decent places to sleep around here?”
“So,” Steve says with a shit-eating grin after they walk outside. “Tony seems nice.”
“Fuck you,” Bucky replies, but in good nature.
Their forced stop doesn’t seem so burdensome anymore.
Bucky’s bike has got no luck; the next meeting with Tony starts with the man informing them they need to wait for days.
“I have to order new parts, and that’s going to take time. Your girl’s basically a corpse by now.”
“Oh. Okay.” Not that Bucky longs for their destination; the delay’s welcoming, especially now, with Tony’s presence as an accompanying gift. “We’ll wait then.”
“Good. I’ll even get the chance to show you some basic maintenance,” Tony turns to him, his face changed to a teasing reproach. “How to care for your bike and all.”
“You think I need that?”
“Yeah, was it your first time riding?”
The shit-eating grin Tony’s flashing at him is clear proof he isn’t serious, but Bucky feels his hackles rising all the same.
“First time?”
“Uh-huh.” Tony wipes his hand with a towel, greased enough to not make any difference, and comes closer to Bucky, deep in his personal space. It should be a discomfort; it isn’t. “That poor girl clearly was untouched before your, ah, unfortunate outing.”
The words get inside Bucky, brush over the barely closed wounds — memories of why exactly he hasn’t touched the bike for so long — and leave. Caring isn’t worth it anymore; Tony doesn’t know and didn’t mean no harm. The outrage that births along even helps a little.
“You have to treat her right,” Tony continues, and Bucky lets out a disbelieving laugh.
He can argue. His skill of playful insults was carefully raised by his life-long brothership with Steve: he can bring attention to his attire, the stereotype of a big scary biker, can remember his reputation of days before his accident, can insinuate that Tony’s not that great of a mechanic if he can’t get all that right. But that would be boring, staying in the same field, playing the same game, and harmful, potentially, for there’s always a chance of misunderstanding. So, instead, he smiles and crowds Tony, just a little.
“Teach me, then,” he asks, smirking, their faces so close. “Since I have time while we wait for parts, and you do have a wide assortment here.”
Tony lifts an eyebrow, backs up a little; there’s a second of hesitation, the moment where unsureness waves over his face; but then he goes back to smiling certainty.
“Give me a ride?” Bucky continues, voice deliberately low.
“You’d like that, huh?”
“I’d like you seated between my thighs.”
“Who said it’s not going to be you between mine?”
“I’m good with both.”
Tony chuckles, slowly — clearly on purpose — licks his lips, keeping eye contact, his eyes darker, promising.
“Well, I do admire when a man admits his faults.”
“Oh, come on, you don’t seriously think I can’t drive?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Soldier, I haven’t seen you in action yet.”
The name throws Bucky a little; he didn’t realize Tony would know his old alias, the name coming from the days he and Steve filmed their tricks (how young they were; how ludicrous it looks now what once seemed so cool). He recovers quickly; it matters so little.
“You’ll see me in action. Let’s say, this evening?”
“Alright. I’ll be done closer to eight.”
“Okay,” Bucky steps back, making his voice softer: Tony is at work, after all. “Would you choose the place to eat? I have no idea of what’s good around here.”
This time Tony’s face is more prominently baffled.
“You’re taking me to eat? I thought we were going in, not out.”
Bucky stops. The arousal of the previous conversation is suddenly on pause.
“I’d like to do both,” he says gently. “Would you?”
Tony considers him for a moment, unreadable, at an impasse, then nods.
“I’m good with both.”
They go out.
Firstly, before that, Bucky comes back to the hostel he and Steve are staying at, and Steve needs one look at his face to say congratulations, the punk; and, for the rest of the day, Bucky can’t but pace and worry, and fight the strangest feeling in his chest, the feeling of the importance of this date, this moment, Tony. He’d say it's fate, waiting for them, if he believed in fate, if he wasn’t so burned by it.
The waiting ends; the nerves do too; they go on their date.
The conversation’s easy. Tony, now in a band t-shirt and cleaner jeans, looks perfect, and Bucky keeps on unsubtle staring. They are still a little assholish in their flirting, but all in good fun, and by dessert the innuendos start to fly.
“I live above the shop,” Tony tells him after they finish eating. “And it has a bedroom. Just so you know.”
Bucky smirks and laces their hands together.
“I appreciate you telling me,” he deadpans.
But as they go outside, he stops. There’s something in the air, it seems, or, maybe, it’s a coincidence of weather, space, time, mood, but the result is that Bucky’s somehow awed and calmed by the world itself. It’s quiet, fresh, the street lights are warm, and the streets themselves are empty beside some picturesque dwellers disappearing into the night. It’s peaceful. Bucky’s not sure when he last felt such peace, a moment of enjoyment, when he last went on a date that went so well, when last he stopped, admiring the simple, invisible beauty of the world.
“Can we walk?” he asks.
Tony agrees.
As the night outside differs from the noise and bluster of the restaurant, their walk differs from their dinner. The flirting changes to quiet talking, the darkened gazes — to tender touch. Bucky revels in it. The accidental heaven of quiet starry night catches them into its trap, and leaving it would be a regret.
“I love the quiet of it,” Bucky says. “Call that the novelty of a smaller town, maybe, but I’d love to have it more, no noise, no crowds.”
“It gets annoying with time. Boring as hell. Although, some people like it, I suppose.”
“Why do you stay, then?”
Tony shrugs.
“Life. A series of unfortunate events leading to a point in space. That’s all there is, don’t you think? Just as boring.”
Bucky chuckles.
“That’s pretty bleak.”
“I’m your regular depressed poet.”
“It’s still good for something, though. This, for instance. Walking in the twilight, talking. Dating.”
“You’re alright, yes,” Tony says, turning to him in an appraising stare, to Bucky’s laugh. “I don’t do that often, to be honest.”
“Date? Why?”
Tony looks far away from him, his gaze unseeing, lost, opens his mouth as if to say something, but closes it again.
“It just happens so. But let’s get back to our prerogative. Are you planning to take me to bed, Soldier?”
Tony’s eyes are darker in the night, and he steps closer, closer, closer; Bucky loses the thread of conversation just from that cocksure, predator walk, breathes yes, and then keeps on his promise.
They stop the heartfelt conversations long till morning.
It goes like this: they date. They sleep together, sex being great, and Tony as a lover — attentive and incredibly responsive. They go out. They hang out in the shop, Tony works, Bucky around, talking about old cars and obscure movies, and every other common interest they have.
The time they have is short, soon to end, to run out, finish; it’s not the end of them, per se, for they can do long distance, and nothing really holds Bucky in one place after his trip, but still it feels like a deadline, sometimes. They never talk about it, but Bucky feels it, senses it hanging above his head.
Steve’s mostly exasperated by the situation, but in a fond way. He voices no complains and is always ready to leave Bucky alone with Tony, to extract himself from it without any hard feelings of being discarded. He jokes and needles — not much but still — and he’s glad, sincerely, for Bucky.
Bucky himself is cautiously happy. He feels like the colors in his life have brightened, like he is ready to believe in fate again. He feels, and feels, and feels, his chest expanding. He texts Tony every chance he gets, he daydreams, and he spends an unfair amount of money on flowers because when, on their second date, he got them as a joke, Tony’s face softened to something akin to awe.
Bucky’s life is a row of events, crowded in a limited time.
There’s one thing, one worry.
They talk a lot, Tony and him. He mentions his accident to Tony, talks about his dreams, flashes of strange worlds, unknown places, and different times. He talks about his life but, most importantly, talks about the secrets deep in his soul.
Tony tells him nothing.
He talks, of course. Bucky knows some of his life story by now, but there’s always something hidden, always something masked. Bucky feels like he’s being held at arm’s length, distrusted.
It’s disheartening.
It’s the blandness of Tony’s eyes when he avoids, masterfully, all questions about his youth; the smiles and jokes and quick one-liners, always ready, always there, never replaced by sorrow or heartfelt story. The way he sometimes seems so far along, no powers in the world can help Bucky reach him.
“Do you want to go to that cafe?” Bucky asks and gets a fleeting smile and nod and no opinion.
“If you had to choose between that Harley and this Audi—”
“You know I’m always up for both, darling.”
“Tony? Are you— you okay? Do you want to keep doing this?” Bucky stops moving, Tony spread under him, gaze faraway.
“Of course,” Tony breathes in his mouth, kisses him, and everything’s forgotten.
Maybe it’s nothing; maybe it’s in Bucky’s head. He doesn’t trust it, sometimes. Doesn’t trust himself, his own mind, its fantasies and dreams, and broken memories, even after the two-year row of specialists and therapists and whoever else. But maybe not.
“So I’m your first boyfriend since what— years back?”
Tony shrugs.
“Yes. Lots of time. I told you before — I don’t date much. Outside of, you know, extremely hot bikers passing by my shop.”
They are in the shop, Tony supposedly working on a car while Bucky acts as a distraction.
“Is that my attraction? That I’m just passing by?”
It is a hurting thought.
“Your attraction lies,” Tony keeps his voice just as calm, nothing in it, no change, no feeling, “in the fact that you’re drop-dead gorgeous. And smart. And you don’t take my shit.”
“But why did you choose to be with me? Really?”
Bucky knows he’s pushing, crossing the line Tony doesn’t want him touched, but it bothers him, worries him, leaves him feeling rejected. Tony stops his work.
“Because that— it’s happened. Choice is an illusion, anyway.”
“An illusion.”
“Yes. Call me a fatalist, baby, but the world has more say in us than we’re in the world.” Tony walks to him, and Bucky’s worried face reflects on Tony, the hesitation growing in the shape of his lips. “Don’t take it personally, I’m just— like that, I suppose. I do like you a lot. Isn’t that enough?”
“Is that it?”
“You don’t believe me?”
Bucky ponders it.
“No, I think you think like this, right this moment, in telling it,” he begins slowly. “But it’s not the real reason.”
“Is it?”
There’s something new in Tony’s tone, worrying, dangerous.
“I think you’re afraid. Of intimacy, connection, love. And that you don’t allow yourself to be close to people because of that. To have anything real.”
A wave of regret cones up in Bucky just after the last word is said; he’s certain his opinion holds the truth, and yet the flashing hurt in Tony’s eyes makes it not worth it.
“You can’t be more wrong about that,” Tony replies, quiet, abrupt, cold, and turns away. He’s a statue, an unfeeling marble, faraway and unachievable. “This conversation’s over.”
Bucky wants to close his eyes and groan; Bucky wants to go after him; Bucky wants to wake up, rewind the time, forget, fix it; Bucky wants to argue, yell, drop the pretense of a normal conversation, to feel Tony’s response, see pure emotion.
“Do you want me to go?” he asks instead, broken and angry and quiet.
A soulless, joyless laugh.
“I don’t care.”
The next morning, Bucky’s regretful more than anything. He had no right to tell Tony what to do, to feel, and no matter how cutting the hurt is from the two of them living out different stories, from Tony not accepting Bucky’s daydreams of a relationship, lasting and changed, no matter how much he would wish for another ending, changing it isn’t in his power.
Tony may want him, yes, but not in the way he needs. Bucky has no choice but to accept it.
Still, they have two days left — less than it, for tomorrow Bucky and Steve should get back on the road, late enough as they are — and there is no need to keep in misery, no need to stop himself from seizing the last moments.
Bucky goes back to Tony’s and plans on pretending nothing’s wrong.
The tension is still here, electrified, heady. Bucky ignores it. He helps around, and they manage small talk, meaningless joking, no mentions given for the elephant in the room.
Bucky — by accident — brushes Tony’s arm, not covered by his t-shirt, and it’s the first skin contact for that day. It’s electrifying. Tony stops, as Bucky stills, frozen in time, turns to look at him, and for a moment Bucky thinks that all his masks are thrown away, discarded, lost, forgotten, for on Tony’s face there is a wonder so open, so raw it shocks him.
Tony’s a statue, again, but while the metaphor is repeated, the image can’t be more different from the last night. His eyes are wide, his gaze is scorching, and the power of the emotion behind is staggering.
It lasts a second.
Bucky blinks, and Tony’s the same, and they are in the same place, same motion, same dialogue; dimmed and familiar, nothing strange.
(Was it a dream again, he will ask himself later, was it not real? Was it a connection, the one he ached for? Or maybe just wishful thinking, him longing to find anything of that extent in Tony’s heart for him?)
“You were wrong about me,” Tony tells him, his eyes averted. “Yesterday. It’s not some fear. It’s just me. It’s okay to be mad at it, and I’m sorry for, well, inadvertently stringing you along, I suppose. I’ve been called heartless before.”
“I don’t think you’re heartless.”
Tony chuckles, a tired sound.
“Still. If it — me — isn’t something you can deal with, alright. If you can,” he waves at himself. “It’s your choice.”
“Isn’t choice an illusion?”
Tony turns back to him, smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes at first.
“Yes, but you still have it.”
Bucky looks into his eyes, unreadable as always, waiting without judgment, and makes his choice.