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Rain surprises them in the street one late spring day, a shy drizzle that barely grants them enough time to find shelter under an awning, before it degenerates into a crashing downpour.
It’s then, watching people rush by and Brooklyn paint itself a glistening gray, that a switch flicks on inside Steve’s brain.
If anybody asks tomorrow, he could say he had an aneurysm; he got whacked in the head one too many times and the super-serum just couldn’t catch up anymore. Perhaps he could dress it up a little, say he was struck on the road to Barnes & Noble and had a mystical revelation, and he just had to act right then and there. He’s half tempted to tell everyone he was bitten by a radioactive rat on the subway – surely that’s happened to at least a coupl’a New Yorkers before.
He doesn’t care who’ll see.
He doesn’t care if it’ll make the news.
He takes Bucky’s hands in his, and leads him out into the pouring rain, right in the middle of the sidewalk, between a rapidly filling puddle and a guy cursing after a speeding cab.
“Steve...?”
Bucky watches him, curious but otherwise unfazed; as though everything about this were a regular occurrence for them. Like he accepted long ago that Steve would just be Doing Things, and willingly following him into an open deluge is simply standard procedure.
His t-shirt is already darkening under the steady spill of rain, wetness spreading quickly from the tops of his shoulders and down his front. He’ll be drenched from head to toe within a minute, for no discernible reason other than Steve being a tall five-year-old with zero impulse control; and still here Bucky stands, eyebrows raised and lips curled up, fondly amused.
“What are we doing?” he asks, his sopping wet hair sticking to his cheeks like a second skin, a raindrop caught invitingly on the pink flesh of his bottom lip.
Warmth creeps up Steve’s spine, despite the cool rain soaking through his clothes.
It’s not that he forgets how good Bucky looks like this, wet and easy and soft – like he just stepped out of the shower, sated and heavy-limbed, and he wants nothing more than to pour himself bonelessly on their bed and into Steve’s arms.
It’s that having Bucky like this, right here where Steve can touch him, where he can savor the feel of him, still makes his heart pound as wildly as it did a hundred years ago, when Steve was sixteen and he already knew, with all the wisdom of an old soul in love, that he would never see anything more beautiful than James Buchanan Barnes, in this world or the next.
He cradles Bucky’s jaw in one hand, skin to skin, wet on wet. Some art is made just like this, after all: wet color on wet paper. And Steve, he could spend a lifetime standing here, admiring the way the long ribbons of Bucky’s hair stream down over his knuckles like dark ink, heavy and cold from the rain. How the wet tips bleed rainwater across Steve’s skin, dripping sinuously down his wrist. Everything they make together, every way their bodies touch, is worth calling art.
His gaze drops to the cupid’s bow of Bucky’s lips, answering a siren call Steve was never able to resist – not since the day he learned what kissing was, and how sweet the wanting could feel, when it ached so deep it filled the hollow of his bones.
He knows the look doesn’t go unnoticed; nothing he does ever escapes Bucky’s notice. He could lie to himself and imagine that it was the sniper’s training, honed across nearly a century, that made Bucky’s eye so keen. But Steve knows that’s not the case. Bucky always paid attention, even as a kid in short pants and suspenders and a spray of freckles on the bridge of his nose. That was how he always seemed to know when Steve was coming down with the flu before Steve himself did. That, Steve grins, was how Bucky knew to kiss him senseless, when Steve himself was still mustering the guts to do it first.
“I wanna kiss you, right here,” Steve says, wiping a stray raindrop from Bucky’s cheekbone with the pad of his thumb. People are walking around them, bumping into them, and he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care, he couldn’t begin to care if he tried. “People do it all the time in the movies. I figured we should see what all the fuss was about.”
Bucky grins at him, eyes full of mirth, and a whisper of something else, too – something Steve holds close to his heart, something that throbs inside his chest all the time now, full, and warm, and bright like a roaring fire.
Sam asked him once, a thousand years ago, what made him happy. Back then, Steve couldn’t bring himself to say the words. Truth is, he needn’t say the words now, either: he could just point at the man in front of him. And if that answer wasn’t satisfactory enough to Sam, Steve could always hand him a sharp knife instead. Slice my heart open, he’d only have to say, You’ll find him there, too.
“You want to kiss me in the rain?” Bucky says, one eyebrow cocked up teasingly.
Oh, would that Steve could settle for that only. His heart is so, so much greedier than Bucky can imagine.
He wants to kiss Bucky in the rain, right here, in front of all of Brooklyn, and see how many people won’t even care, ‘cause they see this shit every day.
He wants to take Bucky ice skating at Rockefeller Center, hold his hands and stumble across the rink with him, and kiss him breathless under the Christmas tree, when it’s all lit up and glowing and the air around them feels alight with magic, too.
He wants to share a chocolate milkshake with Bucky, one tall glass and two striped straws and chocolate syrup drizzled all over a mountain of whipped cream, and fight with him over the maraschino cherry sitting prettily on the peak.
He wants to ride on the Wonder Wheel and he wants Bucky to kiss him when they reach the top.
He wants to take Bucky dancing, sneak away to request a slow song, just so he can spend two minutes swaying on the dance floor with the man he loves in his arms. He wants to pull Bucky close, and wonder if it’d make him this breathless – if it’d hurt this sweet, to dance like this again, before their friends, with matching gold rings glinting on their fingers. He wants to smile against Bucky’s cheek, giddy and full to the brim, because he knows they’ll make love when they get home that night – and because he knows by the way Bucky’s holding him, that he’s thinking about it too.
He wants to go to the movies, and sit in the middle rows, and tease Bucky when Bucky tries to nonchalantly sneak his arm around Steve’s shoulders. He wants to lean into him and forget what the movie’s even about while they whisper to each other, and he wants to taste the salt and butter from their popcorn when Bucky kisses him next.
He wants to do all the hopelessly romantic, shamelessly cheesy things they never go to do before, all of them and more.
And this, this right here, this is a good place to start, Steve thinks.
“Yeah, Buck. I want to kiss you in the rain,” he says, too soft to be a challenge, too intent to be anything else. “You got a problem with that?”
“Just the one,” Bucky drawls, grabbing Steve by the waist to pull their bodies closer. “You’re still talking.”
Kissing Bucky in the rain is a messy, shivery affair, and it’s every bit as wonderful as Steve thought it would be.
So what if he’s got layers of cold wet fabric clinging uncomfortably to his skin. So what if rainwater’s streaming down their faces to drip between their lips, slicking up the kiss before their tongues can even meet. In the insistent patter of raindrops cascading all over them, blending everything together, Steve can’t even tell where he ends and Bucky begins anymore.
Bucky slides his hand up Steve’s chest, his touch as sensuous as it is proprietary. He cups the nape of Steve’s neck in his icy hand, and tilts his head to kiss Steve deeper, slower, sweeping his tongue against Steve’s own. It sparks a thrill inside Steve’s veins.
Is the city still standing? Are the pretty rows of brownstones still there, and the trees, and the potholes, and the sidewalk under their feet? Steve is blind to all of it.
Bucky’s cheeks are cold in his hands, and the inside of Bucky’s mouth is hot and sweet like the rich pour of melted chocolate, and if Steve’s shivering, it’s not because of the rain soaking him to the bone.
They part, slow, heartbreakingly slow.
The moment they spend looking in each other’s eyes, after, it feels like a whole eternity; a thousand lifetimes crystalized into a split second, no longer than a single heartbeat.
Bucky licks his lips.
“H-how’s that?” he stammers, soft and deliciously breathless.
There’s a feeling bubbling inside Steve’s chest, like laughter trying to burst free, and he feels lightheaded with it. He wants to open his mouth and set it free, let it spill out of him so it can occupy all this empty space outside his body.
Joy. It feels a whole lot like joy.
“I dunno,” he says dizzily. And then, nodding, “I think we need more data. See if it’s really worth the trouble.”
Bucky’s chest shakes with quiet laughter between them.
His smile puts the color back into this gray world, and Steve traces the curve of it with his thumb before diving back in, hungry for Bucky’s breath.
Someone wolf whistles. Someone else is yelling at them to get the fuck off of the sidewalk, ‘cause Some people are tryna walk here.
Steve doesn’t care. He doesn’t give a single, perfect damn.