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Published:
2018-07-30
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1/1
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Close Quarters Animal Husbandry

,

Summary:

“So,” Sam said.

“I’m not afraid of trains,” Steve said preemptively. “Bad things happen to me everywhere, if I was afraid every time something reminded me I’d be a nervous wreck just going out to get groceries.”

Sam stopped next to the dining car and gave Steve a long, considering look. “I was gonna ask if we should get coffee, but yeah, let’s talk about this.”

Steve ducked his head to avoid eye contact. “Bucky’s the one who fell off, and he picked the train. Go intuit feelings about him,” he muttered, pretending to search for their tickets.

Notes:

Thanks to Silentwalrus for beta work and hilarious jokes!

Work Text:

“So,” Sam said.

“I’m not afraid of trains,” Steve said preemptively. “Bad things happen to me everywhere, if I was afraid every time something reminded me I’d be a nervous wreck just going out to get groceries.”

Sam stopped next to the dining car and gave Steve a long, considering look. “I was gonna ask if we should get coffee, but yeah, let’s talk about this.”

Steve ducked his head to avoid eye contact. “Bucky’s the one who fell off, and he picked the train. Go intuit feelings about him,” he muttered, pretending to search for their tickets.

“Don’t gotta go through the whole song and dance with the arm when we take a train,” Bucky explained, speed walking down the empty terminal to their assigned car with his cap pulled low. “Don’t gotta make sure I only bring what I can smuggle through security. This way if I want it, I can take it.”

Then Bucky patted his really just surprisingly large rolling suitcase. It clinked ominously. It was also tartan. Sam’s face was doing the thing that said he was processing a lot of feelings calculations in his head.

Steve rolled his shoulder to resettle Bucky’s second and third firearms duffels more comfortably and didn’t comment.

“You know what?” Sam said finally. “Let’s swap bunks. You room with Steve instead.”

“No, Sam,” Steve said, at the same time as Bucky said, “Okay.”

Steve turned around to glare, and Bucky raised his hands, palms outwards. “I mean. Noooooooo,” Bucky said, eyes wide and innocent. “You don’t gotta be the third wheel again. You can room with Steve even though you’re not the one sleeping with him. It’s cool that he’s exiling his actual wartime sweetheart to another room.”

“I can’t believe Pegs called me dramatic with you Mae Westing all over England,” Steve accused, squinting down the track to see if there was someone on duty. “Anyway, they’re all twin bunks. It’s not like we’d be sleeping together anyway.”

Bucky said “Ha!”, somehow conveying an audible leer, and swanned off towards their cabin.
***

“You know what,” Bucky managed, staring into the room. “I think Sam maybe got the good deal after all. I’m gonna go tell him I’m sleeping by myself.”

“How soon we forget,” Steve said, trying to peek around him from the hallway. He’d had to sidle down it just to get where they were, his chest almost brushing the wall even with his shoulders firm against the windows. It had been claustrophobic when they’d boarded, and it wasn’t getting any better with Bucky standing at the door like whatever the opposite of a bead curtain was. “What happened to wartime sweethearts?”

“I’d swap you, too,” Bucky admitted, not moving. “You can lay with Sam biblically if it means I have an extra bunk.”

Steve rolled his eyes and body checked Bucky into the room with a grunt— Bucky weighed a lot more with the arm and reinforcements he had now— and Bucky tumbled through the doorway with eighteen grenades, three rifles, two pistols and a rocket launcher, furiously spewing such a stream of vitriol that even Steve felt his ears turn a little red.

And Steve STILL couldn’t get in. The room was now filled with enraged assassin and firearms. He took a moment to watch Bucky trying to disentangle himself long enough to murder him and then left to beg the top bunk off of Sam for luggage. “Why do you even have this much?” Steve muttered over his shoulder as he edged back down the hallway. Something in Bucky’s duffel jabbed him in the hip with every step. “Can’t you just buy more when we get there if you need it?”

“Do these look like extra toothbrushes?” Bucky called from inside, as if he hadn’t ended up shaking down a local crime syndicate for firearms on their last trip. He stuck a machete out of the door and waved it around. “Does this look like a packet of dollar face wipes I can pick up from CVS?”

“But you have eighteen different sticky bombs,” Steve reasoned, knocking on Sam’s cabin. “You brought two rocket launchers.”

About a third of Bucky emerged from the room, which was all that probably fit in that hallway comfortably, looking like Steve was the crazy one. “What if I need them both and didn’t bring them? Do you know how hard it is to find the right models overseas?”

Sam was ignoring them, which, honestly, was probably why he stayed sane. Steve rolled his eyes and knocked again.

***

The bed wasn’t…terrible.

It was fine. It was even surprisingly long, considering the size of everything so far. A normal adult human could probably even sleep in it.

When you’d been genetically modified by the government to hit your head on every lintel on the continent, though, it was a little cramped. Steve shifted, trying to get comfortable with one arm completely hanging off the mattress and his knees brushing the bunk above, and nearly put his head through the slats when something soft touched his stomach.

The top bunk jolted and crunched but stayed intact, even as a second supersoldier started crawling in.

“Move over,” Bucky purred in the dark, and Steve sat up as far as he could to give him an incredulous look. The rest of him sat up and took notice, too, which was goddamn ridiculous because—

“Move over where,” Steve demanded, but Bucky was already eeling over him, folding into every remaining space in Steve’s bunk using whatever terrifying superassassin yoga the Soviets had taught him.

“C’mon, baby,” Bucky murmured, somehow wiggling his hips into place against Steve’s. Steve tried very hard not to respond— if he moved, they were going to break something. “If I’m gonna be trapped in this pillbox with you, I want to make the most of it.”

“The most of—nglf.” Steve shivered as Bucky slid a hand down his side. “Buck. This—“ he swallowed. “This is going to be like two draft horses rutting in an elevator. This isn’t going to work.”

Bucky ground down against him, hard and mean, and Steve couldn’t help the noise that came out. He pressed back up, but there wasn’t room, and the bed groaned. “Yeah, champ,” Bucky murmured, and Steve wasn’t sure how he’d gotten his hands down there but oh, oh yes please. “Like sexy, sexy draft horses. Push my elevator buttons, baby. I want you to.”

Somehow Steve was still turned on. He choked. “That is the least attractive thing I’ve ever heard you say,” he laughed, gasping as Bucky trailed teeth along his jaw. “Bucky, this elevator is going 80 miles an hour. We’re going to break it going 80 miles an hour.”

“So don’t move,” Bucky said, and Steve almost swallowed his tongue when Bucky slipped—

“Jesus Christ,” Steve yelped, jolting then both up several inches. The berth above crunched again and something snapped. Shit. They were going to have to pay to get that fixed. “When did you get the—”

Bucky didn’t even answer, and Steve had to concentrate on just breathing without putting a knee through the wall adjoining Sam’s room for a moment. Bucky was not making it easy. Steve’s treacherous fingers were working their way under Bucky’s shirt, rucking it up as far as he could without putting out his own eye or something.

There were probably folks who were really into being strapped in like this, Steve thought wildly. He didn’t know if train car and part-liquid partner exactly hit anyone’s specific checkboxes, but sure. This was probably on somebody’s top ten list of fantasies. Steve felt like one of those dogs tucked into a bag on the subway.

He tried again. It was really hard to think. “We’re gonna…”

“Remember that time inside a German tank,” Bucky whispered, twisting his fingers and making Steve see stars. Steve had wiggled his hands down to Bucky’s waistband, and now he accidentally ripped the fly open with the sound of rending seams and scattered buttons. “We made do,” Bucky moaned, sliding like a buttered eel to make room for Steve to touch. “It’ll be worth it baby, you’ll see.”

It took Steve a moment of mindless gasping to bring his brain back around, but, “That didn’t happen,” he managed, trying not to break his own wrist getting a hand on Bucky. “What? A German tank? Why would we have fucked in a German tank?”

“We should have.” Bucky shoved his entire sweaty face into Steve’s sweaty neck and when they both breathed in at the same time the bunk and roof of the car made extremely worrying creaking noises.

But—“There was a time on your roof, when we were...uh...avoiding your family,” Steve admitted, and every time his chest heaved, something in the wall ground against metal. That time on the roof had been arguably worse than this, because while they’d had a lot more room it had also been Christmas and the thermometer outside had showed a grand total of eight degrees.

Bucky laughed and it drove his ribs into Steve’s ribs, but also continued to convince Steve’s dick of things that were probably actively hazardous to their health.

“Look if you just—” Bucky withdrew his fingers and wiggled, but Steve was not, unfortunately, at least partially oobleck. Bucky’s elbow drove into his side and he hissed and squirmed, and then Bucky crashed with a hard clang into the ceiling.

“First you remind me of that time we almost got frostbite on our balls,” Bucky complained, clutching the back of his head with the clean hand and slithering back into place. The train rocked, and Steve really hoped it wasn’t because of them. “And then you try and give me more brain damage. Just—don’t move—”

“I can’t move, that’s the problem—”

“Yeah, there we go, you know how to do this,” Bucky said, finding some kind of...glacial drag of movement between the two of them. His other hand was on both of them, now, and oh, “There’s been at least one broom closet that has some historically significant stains in it.”

“What you do with brooms—” Steve kicked his legs and the bed wobbled to the opposite tempo of the train. “That’s, uh. That’s your business,”

Bucky was right though, and it’d smelled like bleach and he’d been terrified of bringing all the shelves down on their heads. “I like tall blondes with bad hair,” Bucky said, smug, and it took Steve longer than it should have to realize they were still talking about brooms and laugh. Bucky’s knee shoved into his and twisted, crushing them into the corner like terrible spiders, giving his hips room to move. Provided they were fine with the steady thump of Bucky’s back directly against the wall, and Steve’s teetering against the void.

“You know how we could save space?” Bucky asked, somehow hitching Steve’s leg up. Where had he found the room? Steve vaguely worried Bucky had somehow stolen important technology from that Scott Lang fella, and but figured Bucky would probably have used it for something else by now if he had.

“If you say put—”

“I could put my dick in you,” Bucky said, mouth hot on Steve’s ear. “One less thing to worry about—”

“Gee,” Steve managed, voice catching, “who woulda guessed that was what you were after with your metal hand up my—”

“Ahh sweetheart,” Bucky kissed his shoulder. Steve’s eyes drifted shut and when he shuddered, the room moved with him. “That mean you don’t want to?”

“If you don’t,” Steve threatened, because they could probably heal from a sex injury before anyone noticed, and Bucky laughed and turned just right, and fuck, fuck—

Sam Wilson slammed the cabin door open.

“Jesus Christ,” Steve shouted, almost destroying the wall when he jerked back and only avoiding major property damage by toppling off a swearing Bucky, into the wall opposite, and smashing his shoulder hard onto the tiny floor space next to the bunk. “Sam, why are—”

“The fuck?” Bucky yanked the fallen blankets out from under Steve to cover up, sending Steve pinwheeling into the wall again. Steve knew he was still going to let Bucky make time later, but damnit, he was at least going to be salty about it after that one. Sam, horribly, didn’t pause, stomping over Steve and reaching for the top bunk. “My dick was out, Wilson!”

There was a fraught moment when Steve, and apparently Bucky too by the look on his face, realized that this was not exactly true and almost swallowed their tongues.

Sam’s face didn’t change, though. He only paused long enough to give Steve a deeply disappointed look, snapped two latches on the sides of the bed by the door, and folded the whole of the upper bunk forcefully into the wall.

There were a few long, embarrassed seconds of silence.

“Oh,” said Steve.

“There are people sleeping on this train,” Sam told him, and slammed the door again on his way out.

Steve and Bucky stared after him, then stared at the stowed upper bunk.

“Huh.” Bucky reached up and poked it. “Guess the whole hearing everyone on the car breathing wasn’t a supersoldier thing after all.”

“Oh my god,” Steve croaked, realizing how many people had just heard him having terrible, cramped sex with Bucky while he smacked his head against the wall like a confused woodpecker. He hadn’t known that after surviving being frozen in ice and two alien invasions that he would finally die of mortification in a sleeper train in Scotland, but here they were. It was worse than he would have thought, especially since apparently his dick was fine with it.

Bucky nodded at the bunk, looking impressed. “Nice to have more room,” he mused, stretching back against the mattress as well as he could and taking his dick back in hand. “Hop back on, baby.”

“No.” Steve could feel his feet blushing. He must have looked like a blonde tomato. “No. Are you kidding me? After that?”

“We’ll be quiet this time,” Bucky promised, sliding his hand up and down his own dick a few times and smiling wide when Steve couldn’t look away. “Come on, sweetheart. You love being quiet and hoping no one notices, and the train is loud enough. You know you’re going to.” His eyes were half-lidded, stupid lashes laying against his stupid cheeks, looking like every laughing sculpture of reclining satyrs Steve had ever seen - minus the goat parts, of course - and damnit, Steve did, in fact, know he was going to. It was horrible.

“I hate you,” he hissed, clambering back on and letting Bucky guide his hips into place, voice breaking like a teenager’s as Bucky sank home again. It still wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was really nice not having the metal beams of the upper bunk crushing his ribs and grinding against his scalp. “Oh god. I hate you. Why do I keep giving you whatever you ask for?”

“Because I keep asking for your ass,” Bucky breathed, and rocked up almost half a foot off the bed just to make Steve start swearing again.

***

“Sam,” Steve tried when they got out in Edinburgh.

“No.” Sam tossed Bucky’s luggage at him and held up a hand. “You guys can work out your anxieties however you want, but I don’t wanna talk about it in the morning.”

“Just join in next time, baby,” Bucky said, and Steve’s heart stopped at the very thought. Everything probably showed on his face, too, he was going to die right there. “You made the room, you coulda squeezed in.”

Sam glanced at Steve and oh no. Oh no. He had to have seen. It was written all over him, oh no. “Not on a sleeper train in Scotland, Barnes, come on. Have a little class.”

Bucky shrugged and Steve tried to sink into the cement.

“Try again in Glasgow,” Sam said, and Steve stopped breathing.

“There’s a sleeper train to Glasgow,” Bucky mused as he sauntered after Sam down the platform.

“I’m not quite as into risk as Steve is, broom fucker.” Sam slapped Bucky on the back and Steve tripped on his own feet scrambling after them. “And I wouldn’t play fuck sardines with you if you paid for it. You’re gonna need a different direction with me.”

“You’re a liar,” Bucky said cheerfully, and turned to include Steve as he caught up. “I just gotta find the right risk.”