"Steve." Strong hands were gripping his wrists and yanking him, panting, upright. "We should stop," and Bucky's shirt was hanging open, his pants shoved down, a line of dark hair narrowing from his chest to his belly, thickening again around his cock. "We'll never come back from this, you and me," Bucky said desperately, pleading with him. "If you don't like it, if you change your mind--"
"I won't change my mind," Steve vowed. "Bucky, please, I want--"
"You don't know what you want!" Bucky shoved him down onto the bed, and then to Steve's astonishment, he rounded on him, looming, and said in sudden, honest, agony: "You're a brutal person, you know that? You're always rummaging through my guts with your bare hands!" and then Bucky turned away, his long, muscled back curving as he sat on the edge of the bed, hunched and struggling for breath. Steve wanted to draw him, and he also wanted to blot the image from his memory: this picture of Bucky in despair.
"My whole life, I've been dealing with this. My whole life, trying to keep this under control," Bucky muttered, and then he added, bitterly, "But now it's Thursday, and you've had an idea."
Steve flinched. "Bucky, I'm sorry."
"You never think of me," and suddenly Bucky was laughing and shaking his head, the tension draining out of his shoulders; laughing at himself, maybe. "Which is all right: I don't need you to think of me. I think plenty of myself. But Steve, I can't risk-- You're fucking with the only stable, the only good thing I got."
"But that's me," Steve said, shaken; he touched Bucky's arm and said, "Bucky, that's not you, it's me."
"It's me, too," Bucky said. "But you won't understand. You're my only way out, don't you see?" and Steve fumbled frantically for his hand and laced their fingers together, and this time, when Bucky kissed him, Steve tasted the desperation in it. He kissed back, trying to put everything into it he'd failed to say: I'm sorry. You're everything. I'll do better. Even so he was no match for Bucky, who pushed him down and whispered, wet mouth mashed against his ear, "You're crazy, you know that? You're thrilling. You're the most thrilling person," and then Bucky was on top of him, hot and huge, hands stroking up his body.
"Don't you sell me out," Bucky said suddenly, and it was half a warning and half terror: panic in his eyes. "Don't you dare sell me out, you bastard," and before Steve could say no, I wouldn't or I would never, Bucky was sliding down his body and taking hold of his cock and—Steve gasped and fell back, breath stolen from him, and some part of him died that day, with Bucky's dark head in his lap, moving, mouth so tight and wet, and so this was sex, this, and Steve could finally see what was such the big deal about it.
They were intensely careful, in the following days, not to do anything different, not to let anyone know that things had changed between them. They kept to their regular routines - work, school for Bucky with homework on Saturdays, the pictures. Steve wrote diligently to his mother, and Bucky went home at the usual time and went to church with his parents. He went out dancing, too, with girls. But in between, they learned each other's bodies: pleasuring each other with hands and mouths. Bucky touched him in ways he'd never imagined, making his nerves sing, making him cry out, so that half the time Steve came with Bucky's sweaty palm against his mouth and Bucky pleading, "Christ, Steve, shut up, you're gonna get us arrested."
