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Buck had always been an early riser. When he was a kid, he liked to rise early and start work on the farm before the sun was high enough in the sky to burn him. After he enlisted, he sometimes lay in bed staring up at the ceiling for hours before the orderlies entered the hutches to wake crews that were on deck for the day. In the Stalag, Buck was first to wake and ran out into the yard as soon as possible as a means of distraction and a method of warming during the cold months. Now that he and Bucky lived together, Buck’s circadian rhythm remained much the same.
Buck’s eyes opened as the first rays of the sun peeked through the curtains, just the barest bit of heat tickling his cheekbones. He sniffed the air, chest warming as he noticed that Bucky’s scent surrounded him as tightly as his mate’s arms enveloped him. They both still had nightmares about what they’d seen in Europe, but Buck never felt more safe or secure than when Bucky wrapped his arms around him. A barrier against the world, and proof that they had survived.
Buck leaned back to press a soft kiss to Bucky’s temple before he untangled himself, tugging on the nearest article of clothing which just happened to be the shirt that Bucky had worn the day before. The alpha’s scent lingered in each stitch. The reminder of Bucky’s presence would be good company for the omega as he headed out onto the ranch. Buck’s boots kicked up dirt along the path to the stables, head hung to avoid the sun that was perfectly on eye level at the horizon line.
Once inside, Buck clicked his tongue to get the attention of their horses, Jasper and Lucky. Lucky, Bucky’s horse, stuck his nose in Buck’s face, eager for attention. Loathe to deny the sweet creature anything, Buck scratched underneath his chin for several minutes. When Lucky seemed satisfied, Buck grabbed a pitchfork and heaved ample hay into their racks in the hopes that the fresh food would be enough distraction so he could muck out each stable without a hungry interloper.
With the stables cleaned, Buck refilled each horse’s water troughs with a hose. Sometimes, Lucky got desperate enough for affection that he would dump hay into the troughs right after Buck filled them, but luckily, ironic naming aside, he had been settled by the chin scratches from earlier. “Y’all wanna get out on the pasture?” Jasper whinied quietly, which was outspoken for him, and Buck took it to mean that the stallion was quite eager indeed. “Alright.” Buck pulled open the door of the barn as well as each of the pens, practically jumping atop the pen barrier to avoid getting trampled by overeager equines.
While Buck had been distracted, Bucky somehow snuck up on him, tall enough to reach Buck even with the latter sitting atop an object of great height. His long arms wound around Buck’s waist, pulling him close to Bucky’s furnace-adjacent body. Buck made a soft noise of contentment, pressing his face into the soft skin of his alpha’s throat. “Mmm, good morning, baby.”
“Mornin’,” Bucky greeted in reply, his voice gravelly from sleep, incredibly alluring. “How long have you been up?”
“Long enough to set the boys right,” Buck murmured, winding his arms around Bucky’s neck. “You know me, I never get a lick of sleep more than my body deems necessary.” The longest sleep that Buck had ever gotten was when he’d first arrived in the Stalag, beaten down by exhaustion, illness, and the torture the Nazis had put him through. Fifteen hours straight, Benny had said, refusing to wake him even when other men wanted to. He wasn’t a very sickly child, so he hadn’t been bedridden like his sister, Doris.
“Yet you always let me sleep in, like I won’t notice you’re missing from bed,” Buck could feel Bucky’s grin as it was pressed into his skin about a trillion times through copious amounts of kisses on every inch that the alpha could reach. Back in the Stalag, sometimes Buck woke up early just to watch Bucky sleep, still in disbelief that he was really there with him and that they were mated. It felt like a kind of fantasy that a dying mind might create in a moment of true desperation. That was when he had memorized every feature of his mate, and he now knew what Bucky looked like better than his own reflection in the mirror. “I’ve been hoping I could fuck you well enough that your body would force you to sleep a little longer.”
“I’m not going to stop you from trying, even if I don’t think it’s possible,” Bucky replied, tone even until it transformed into a low moan after Bucky sunk his teeth into his shoulder.
“Don’t worry, darlin’. I’m not the type to give up.”