Not until a few enthralling chapters later did Bucky realize what time it was. He’d been re-reading the same sentence and his eyes were starting to close. Checking his watch with bleary vision—it was 2am—he decided Tolkien could wait for tomorrow. He marked his place and set the book down on the table behind him. At the movement, the steady rise and fall of breath stuttered against his chest. “Stevie, wake up,” he murmured into disheveled, aurelian hair, trying gently to cajole him from sleep.
“I’ll fight ya—” Steve mumbled, half in a dream.
Gingerly scratching blunt nails down his spine through the fabric of his shirt, Bucky remarked, “I know ya will, punk. Get up. Your back’s gonna hurt tomorrow if you stay like this all night.”
Steve grumbled again; an unintelligible disagreement, then more clearly, ‘make me.’ So, Bucky did. With minimal effort, he had Steve scooped up to carry him to bed; one arm under his knees, the other encircling his waist. Cheeks were still flushed from the alcohol, the freckles on the bridge of his nose obscured by dusted rose. Steve laughed; like light and bells and crisp winter air—pressing his hot face into Bucky’s neck, his skinny arm around his shoulders.
Carefully set onto the bed, as soon as Steve was left to his own devices, he fell flat backwards against the mattress. Enough light from the hall shone in for Bucky to see the big, still-drunk grin on his face.
“Why’d ya have so much, huh?” Bucky asked, halfway between amusement and concern as he tried to get Steve out of his day clothes so he could be comfortable enough to have some decent rest.
“Thinkin’,” Steve said, letting heavy eyelids close again; peaches and cream tones and those long eyelashes.
Unbuttoning Steve’s shirt, helping him shrug out of it, Bucky murmured, “What about?” He tugged on the blanket trapped under Steve to try to coax him under the covers. (Too drunk to remember any of this, but Steve was safe with him.) Unprompted and without sitting up first, Steve tried to get his undershirt off, only managing to get it caught halfway over his head. When Bucky helped him pull it the rest of the way off, Steve reached out to grab his hand. Palm to palm, long slender fingers, the freckles on his knuckles. Just...warm. The only thing Bucky could think was, ‘warm.’
“You’re beautiful,” Steve slurred.
Bucky’s heart leapt into his throat, choking him. Sitting down heavily on the side of the bed, he pulled his hand from Steve’s grasp to tuck the blanket up around him. “You’ll forget you said that in the morning, when you’re miserable and hungover.” And Bucky would pretend this hadn’t happened—for his own sanity.
Steve shook his head, blinking half-lidded eyes. Glacial isles, made of magic. Every word was slow. “No, I won’t. Think about it every day. Beautiful. One of them Botticelli paintings of a saint.”
Bucky squeezed his eyes shut thinking, ‘Don’t. Please, don’t. It hurts.’ Because it wasn’t real. Steve had an eye for aesthetics; that was all. He could appreciate nice bone structure. It wasn’t real. His eyes flew back open when a soft hand touched his burning cheek.
“So pretty I could cry.” Wide-eyed, Steve was still looking at him like the oldest light. It poured mercy over him, soothed him like nothing else.
He held Steve’s hand against his cheek, biting down hard on the inside of his bottom lip. “Please, go to sleep.”
Chapter 6 is up!
