imaginebucky:

Imagine Bucky craving touch like oxygen. He’s always been a very physical person, showing his affection through pats on the back and grabbing and nudging and rough one-armed hugs that used to jar Steve’s fragile ribs. Now, after decades of being handled like a live grenade and touched only to restrain or hurt, his hands-on approach to friendship has been all but burned out of him. He’s twitchy and jumpy, all too aware of the brute strength in his own hands and the implicit danger in other people’s. He does not touch. He positions himself at a cautious distance from everyone around him, and when close quarters are required he shrinks in on himself like all his limbs are dangerous weapons that might lash out unexpectedly if he doesn’t keep them locked against his body.

And the others all assume that the distance is what he wants, until the day Steve finds him slumped against the bathroom cabinet after an incident Bucky has made it clear he doesn’t want to talk about, trying to strap his bruised and battered right hand with a bandage held taut between his teeth. “Let me,” Steve says, and Bucky cedes the task without a word of protest; Steve wraps his hand as gently as he can, aware that it’s probably sore as hell, and when he’s done Bucky doesn’t pull away. Just sits there, staring with a kind of wistful fixation at Steve’s hands cradling his.

So Steve tests the waters. Slowly, respectfully, mindful of the many reasons Bucky has to be wary of intrusions on his personal space. But everywhere he touches, all Bucky’s careful boundaries seem to melt like ice beneath his fingers: he rests his hand on Bucky’s forearm when they talk, and Bucky actually sways in closer, until the standing distance between them just barely rides the edge of social comfort. He sits right next to Bucky on the couch and lets his arm go numb from the weight of Bucky leaning in against him, cushioning his head on Steve’s shoulder with a comfortable sigh. He rests a hand on the back of Bucky’s neck and rubs the tense knots of muscle he finds there, and Bucky - there’s no other word for it - purrs, mouth slack and eyes wide with possibly the most disproportionate gratitude Steve has ever seen from him.

And it doesn’t cap out. The more Steve offers, the more Bucky drinks it all in. Steve commits every detail and every preference to memory: the arch of Bucky’s spine when Steve knuckles the knot between his shoulder blades; the quiet, radiating contentment when he sits beside Bucky on the couch and laces their fingers together; the shaky little exhalation when Steve combs his hands through his hair and scrapes his scalp with blunted nails.

Later, he will learn more again: the way Bucky melts into Steve’s kisses, eyes wide open like he doesn’t quite trust the experience to last if he closes them. The way they do scrunch closed when Steve wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist; the tiny shivers as Steve mouths his way down the curve of Bucky’s throat. He maps every inch of Bucky’s body with his hands and mouth until Bucky is squirming beneath him, eyes glassy and unfocused, breath coming in shaky gasps.

(When it’s over, Bucky does not let go of him for a very long time. Steve, unsurprisingly, doesn’t mind.)