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The full moon shone high in the cloudless sky, a jewel crowned with the glittering of pinhead stars strewn over the darkness.
Bucky slipped quietly downstairs, throwing on his dressing gown to ward off the night chill, until he could get a nice crackling fire going in the hearth. It couldn’t be any later than midnight, and he was already craving something warm.
He was putting the kettle on when he heard the cottage’s back door creak open, and the unmistakable sound of paws clicking on the floorboards follow close behind. His nose caught a whisper of musk and pine needles, the scent of cool soil freshly disturbed.
The corner of his lips ticked up, amused.
“Back so soon?” He called out, grabbing a mug from the cupboard. “I thought you’d be off frolicking in the woods till morning.”
Steve padded in through the kitchen’s open door, taller than a pony and yet as eager as a young pup; that his massive bulk even fit in the tiny room was a feat Bucky still marveled at.
He looked down, surprised to see a rabbit held cautiously between the wolf’s sharp teeth. Bucky could hear the poor creature’s heart thrum in pure terror behind that tiny ribcage, the little body pumped flush with hot blood.
His own heart swelled with fondness.
“Sweetheart,” he cooed, lifting his hand to his chest. “You brought me breakfast?”
Steve trotted closer, his majestically fluffy tail swishing proudly behind him. If ever a creature thrived on praise, Bucky mused, he’d found himself the very best and very neediest of them all.
He pulled a chair from the table and sat down, coming eye to eye with Steve.
“C’mere, you old sap,” he urged, sinking his fingers in Steve’s wheat-gold fur and dropping kisses all over the wolf’s head, ruffling the soft tufts of hair coating his cheeks. Steve all but preened, leaning into the loving touch with all the weight contained within his large frame, his eyes closed in bliss. “What would I do without you, huh? What would I do without you? Oh, would you lookit that. I’m the luckiest fella in the world. A nice treat just for me. Let me see it, honey, let’s see what you got here.”
No sooner had he plucked the rabbit from Steve’s jaws, that the wolf was on him, two colossal paws propped against Bucky’s chest and a pink tongue lapping enthusiastically at every inch of Bucky’s face, evidently determined to smother him in happy wolf kisses.
The rabbit very nearly ended up squashed into jelly under the amorous onslaught.
“Alright– Alright already,” Bucky gasped in between fits of giggles, trying to angle his face away from Steve’s relentless affection. “Thank you for the treat, I’ll drink him in a minute, I promise.”
Steve rewarded him with a swift lick over Bucky’s nose – his own sloppy stamp of approval.
A howl echoed in the distance, cutting sharply through the quiet winter night with its yearning call, stretching far and wide across the valley. Steve’s ears perked at the sound.
Bucky chuckled. “Come on,” he said, standing up with the rabbit tucked snugly under his arm. “They must be wondering where you are.”
The back door opened onto a fenced garden. The rose bushes billowed gently in the breeze, and the pale stone of the pathway twisted and glowed like a silver stream through the neatly arranged shrubbery.
Bucky tugged his dressing gown tight about him, shivering at the brisk caress of the late night air.
Steve rumbled low in his throat, and pressed his gloriously, gloriously warm body to Bucky’s front, nuzzling close into Bucky’s breastbone, radiating pure, blissful heat like the hairy furnace Bucky was sure he must secretly be.
For all that he was an undead cold-blooded creature, Bucky could have melted right there and then, like a curl of butter tossed in a hot pan. Of course. Trust the hard-headed werewolf to turn his century-old heart into the molten core of a lava cake – and one that Steve could cut into at will, too, with no more than a teaspoon, and watch it bleed sweetness for him alone.
“Always a gentleman, aren’t you,” Bucky hummed, scritching the delightfully sensitive spot behind Steve’s ear. “Off you go, now. Your pack’s waiting for you.”
He got a goodbye lick for his troubles, a nice long swipe right under his clean-shaven chin. He watched Steve descend the three steps down to the flagstone pathway, and there the werewolf stopped, turning to look back at Bucky.
“Go on,” Bucky prompted him, offering Steve a playful wink. “I know you want to.”
Steve didn’t move a muscle. He only whined mournfully up at him – the sound of a truly heartbroken soul.
His golden fur glinted in the moonlight, mussed by a northern wind. Standing there against the thick backdrop of the woods, poised like a shimmering shadow in the night, he looked like wildness itself, raw and fiercely beautiful; a creature born of moss and frosted streams and long winter nights, a bridge between this world and the next. And yet, the emotion in his ice-blue eyes was so undeniably, so painfully human – more human, perhaps, than Bucky himself had been, living and unliving in the cold shell of his body for the past century or so.
“It’s all right, you big softy,” he teased Steve gently. “You’re not abandoning me, I swear.”
Steve made a protesting noise.
“None of that, now. Look, I’ve got my snack right here,” Bucky reminded him, making a show of petting the rabbit in his arms, “and I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied until dawn. Go. Have fun with your friends. I’ll be here when you come home.”
Steve seemed to ponder his words for a long moment; until at last, he snuffled in Bucky’s direction and turned away, ambling gingerly down the pathway.
He stopped again, looking back longingly from the garden’s gate. Bucky threw his free hand up in fond exasperation.
“You ridiculous thing– What is it you want me to say? That I’m gonna miss you? That I already miss you? That I’ll spend every waking minute thinking of you and yearning for your arms around me? Is that it?”
Steve borked cheerfully at him, tongue lolling out of his slack jaws: as close to a smile as a wolf could produce.
It was maddening, and it was ludicrously adorable, and Bucky could have chased that smug canine face with a fork all the way to Alaska and back, it was so infuriating.
“Get out of here,” he laughed, and this time, Steve vaulted over the low picket fence, and went bounding into the maze of trees, disappearing from view in a matter of seconds.
“Right. Now that that’s out of the way.” Bucky scooped the rabbit up higher, resting his chin over the fuzzy little head. The critter’s heart was still beating frantically under his hand. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Bunny, we’ll get you home in one piece tonight,” Bucky soothed, patting the animal’s soft white coat, still damp from Steve’s jaws. “You’ll just be a little lighter, is all.”
He threw one last amused glance at the dense darkness calling from the copse of trees, and then, finally, he slipped back inside the cottage and pulled the door shut behind him.