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After an exhausting day of skiing his ass off, the fact that the lodge had a hot tub seemed like a godsend to Bucky. It was one of those days where he pushed and pushed himself, until by the time the lifts closed at four PM and he was on his last run, his calf muscles were aching, his shins hurt like hell, and even his wrists were protesting from propelling his body forward. He liked exerting himself, though, choosing to break off from his causal-skier friends to find harder, faster, more extreme terrain. The bone-deep tired quieted how loud his brain was most of the time.
So, yeah, the hot tub sounded dream-like. He trudged back through the lodge’s hallways to the room he was sharing with Natasha, Sam, and Clint (who had all come back earlier than him and were playing pool in the game room), feeling like he was boiling alive in all his layers. As soon as he stepped through the door, he stripped his million layers (it felt like that, at least), pulled on his swim trunks, and located the provided bath-towel-texture robe. He didn’t bother to tie the belt because he was still so warm, but he slid on the white slippers he found in the pocket of the robe and left the room.
The door labeled HOT TUB & SAUNA opened to two doors for men and women. Inside the men’s locker room, Bucky picked up a striped towel and found the door to the hot tub area. Which opened—to Bucky’s surprise, as he stood there blinking silently—to the frigid outside. The heat was sucked off his skin instantly and he was very glad he hadn’t taken his robe off in the locker room. To his right, there were hooks to hang your robe on, and a few robes and towels were already hanging. This prompted him to look up and realize that there were a few people dotted around the large, circular hot tub, but not too many that his anxiety picked up. Bucky wasn’t a big fan of crowds. Or people he didn’t know… in any numbers. He wasn’t stressed—yet—but he eyed the strangers warily. Everyone seemed to be minding their own business, though, so he slipped into the pool and observed.
There was a young couple with an elementary-aged kid swimming in front of them, thankfully not being loud or splashing around; some teenage girls in bikinis with their hair up in buns; and two men talking to each other away from the other parties. Bucky had to do a double-take because the guy on the left of the two was absolutely HUGE. Like, jacked, giant muscles, huge. And blond. Wet, blond hair, and giant pec muscles…
Wow, Bucky was getting off track. And staring.
The guy on the right was smaller—well, probably normal-sized, but y’know, in comparison—with a goatee, and was smirk-laughing at something blondie said.
So, hot and funny… Bucky, always bad at following the rules he made up for himself, kept watching. Blondie had a cute smile as he talked to his friend, and was that freckles Bucky could see? Maybe his brain was just filling in things he liked in guys. He could almost feel his level on the Creep-O-Meter rising as he narrowed his eyes to figure out if the freckles were a figment of his imagination.
A chilly wind blew in from Bucky’s left, freezing the wet hair on the nape of his neck that had escaped his bun and gone into the water. A huge cloud of steam kicked up from the gust obscured Blondie and Goatee, and Bucky frowned, despite himself. Then, he felt like a weirdo, and sunk further into the water in shame.
By the time the steam had cleared, Blondie and Co. were getting out of the hot tub, and Bucky overheard Goatee complaining as they walked past him.
“I’m as pruney as a cranberry, Steve,” he grumbled, “and my skin is so dry, it feels like it's flaking off!”
Steve furrowed his brow (adorably) and replied, “Wouldn’t you be a raisin?”
His voice was deep, but not monotone—lilting and softer than Bucky was expecting.
“See, I’m in such a state that I’m mixing my metaphors!” Goatee sighed dramatically.
Steve huffed out a laugh. “We can ask for more of those tiny bottles of lotion if you want,” he offered.
And considerate, Bucky added to his list of reasons why this guy seemed too good to be true.
“A man after my own heart,” his friend said wistfully, and Bucky could only agree.
The two walked off, so Bucky couldn’t hear what Steve’s reply was.
He stewed in the warm water for a bit, letting his muscles relax as he turned over hazy thoughts of hot blond men.
● ● ●
Bucky found Nat, Sam, and Clint playing pool in a game room on the first floor of the lodge. Even as he walked through the door, he could tell that Natasha was winning a game against Clint, from the way she had a glint in her eye and a smug smile on her lips, Clint’s scowl, and how Sam was not holding back his laughter from the sidelines.
Nat noticed him coming in first, as she always did, and called over, “Hey, Bucky.” The other guys looked up from the game and tossed over words of welcome.
“Who’s winning?” Bucky asked when he reached the billiard table, just to stir the pot.
“Who do you think?” Nat said superiorly.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Clint grumbled.
Bucky chuckled, entertained. Nat—who only had two more solid-colored billiard balls left to get into the pockets before she could aim for the black 8 ball—lined up a shot.
“How was the hot tub, Buck?” Sam asked him.
“It was nice…” Bucky said slowly.
“Nice?” Sam questioned.
“Very warm.”
“That’s unexpected,” Nat snorted, and took her shot, getting the red 3 into a pocket across the table.
Clint groaned. “I’m getting murdered out here.” Sam patted his shoulder sympathetically as Nat grinned, cat-like. Everyone held their breath as Natasha aimed for the yellow 1 and got it in. Sam whooped and Nat sat back on her heels, satisfied. Clint slumped further in the chair he had pulled up, if that was possible.
“Last one!” Sam declared cheerfully. “What pocket are you calling?”
Nat pointed to the pocket diagonally to the right of the 8 ball, a challenging shot, but perfectly doable for master-pool-player Natasha Romanov.
“I can’t look,” Clint groaned, turning his body away from the table, but still looking over his shoulder.
Nat won, obviously, getting the ball expertly into her desired pocket. Nat wasn’t one to gloat verbally, but her preening was clear from her body language.
“That was brutal,” Clint gripped. Half of his striped balls were still left on the table.
“Better luck next time, buddy,” Bucky consoled.
“Not against her!” the blond responded petulantly.
“You could play Bucky,” Sam suggested, “for practice.”
“Hey,” Bucky protested, “I’m better than him at pool!”
Sam grinned cheekily. “Right! Practice.”
The competitive spirit was immediately reignited in Clint. “Oh, so you think you’re so much better than me,” he drawled.
Well, Bucky wasn’t one to back down. He liked a bit of casual competition between friends. He definitely didn’t take it very seriously.
“You’re on,” he bit back, grabbing the cue Natasha held out to him. She rolled her eyes even as she did it.
“Can’t even let me revel in my win for two seconds?” she remarked.
“I’m celebrating your win, Nat,” comforted Sam, forever the intermediary.
The group settled into idle chatter as Bucky and Clint reset the table for their game. Clint, because he was a loser and wanted a consolation prize, broke the triangle of colored balls, getting a solid one in. The game was on, and the two men traded shots in deep… casual… concentration.
After a lull in conversation, Sam cleared his throat. “So, Buck—the hot tub? Good enough that I should go?”
“Right now?” Clint objected, cutting Bucky off as he opened his mouth.
“Well…” Sam replied, caught, “y’all have a whole game to play and I want to poke around…”
Clint, accepting that, went back to focusing on finessing his shot.
Try hard.
“Yeah, the hot tub’s nice. You should go.” He waffled with how to say what he wanted to say and ended up with: “I saw a guy that was jacked as fuck in there. Made me feel like I should be working out more. Me!” He was going for a casual joking tone, but his friends saw right through him.
Nat perked up. “A hot guy?”
“I didn’t even say he was hot!”
“Oh, he was hot.” She was confident she was right, and she was, but that didn’t make it less annoying.
“You could say that,” he allowed.
“James Barnes! You’ve been holding out on us!”
“He was just a guy I saw in the pool! I didn’t even talk to him!”
“Yeah,” Sam butted in, “but the fact that you even brought it up means he must have been really hot and your type.”
“I am not that easy to read,” Bucky grouched. The three of them looked at him pointedly. “Yeah, okay, he was my type. What does it matter?” Bucky could feel himself flushing and wished he could shove the rising blood back where it came from. He leaned over the pool table and lined up his cue with the cue ball at the right angle to knock the striped purple 12 into a pocket, just to have something to do.
“Was he blond?” Nat asked.
Bucky executed his plan, getting the 12 in and not answering.
“Definitely blond,” she smirked, nodding.
“See, I don’t understand why you won’t just go for me, Bucky Bear,” Clint crooned.
Bucky wrinkled his face in disgust. “I could not think of a worse fate, that’s why.”
“You wound me!” Clint stumbled back dramatically.
“Okay, what else?” Sam coaxed. Bucky sighed. He was right, what did it matter. It entertained his friends, so he might as well.
“Fine. He was with a friend, a guy with a goatee. Blondie looked like if a yellow lab became a person. Blue eyes, I think; freckles, I think; giant muscles.” His friends waited for him to say more. “Nice smile…” he mumbled.
The three shit-eaters exchanged looks and then, at the same time, let out a collective child-like “Oooooooooo.”
“Oh, shut up, all of you.”
“You should find him and ask for his number,” Clint schemed.
“No, I should not do that,” Bucky argued pointlessly. It wasn’t going to happen. He was an introvert, for God’s sake.
“I hope you see him at the hot tub again,” Nat sing-songed.
“And give him a kiiiiiiiiiiss,” Clint crowed after her.
“Speaking of,” interrupted Sam, “I’m going to go burn my skin off in the hot water.”
“Leaving me in my time of torture?” Bucky said to him, aside.
“No one can save you from them.” Sam looked apologetic, but clearly not enough to stick around.
Bucky persevered through the rest of the game with Natasha and Clint talking about blond stranger Steve (they wormed the name out of him) and he won the game entirely out of spite.
● ● ●
Another hard day of skiing—why did he fool himself; every day was the same—found Bucky crawling back to the hot tub again like a desperate ex. When Steve wasn’t there and never showed up, Bucky tried to keep his disappointment to a minimum. In denial of the waiting game he was playing with himself, he stayed until he was sweltering and then finally got out. Sue him for wanting a bit of eye candy at the end of a long day. Glumly, he dried off on the edge of the pool. He shivered as the cold air started freezing his damp swim trunks to his legs and hurried inside.
Apparently, he should’ve been paying more attention, because as soon as the door closed behind him, someone came around the blind corner and he ran straight into them. Large hands stabilized him by his shoulders as he blinked in shock.
“Whoa! Sorry, I wasn’t looking,” a gentle voice said to him.
Hey, that voice sounds familiar. Bucky looked up into the face of Stranger Steve. Shirtless Stranger Steve. He felt heat creeping up his neck. Say something, idiot!
In his absence of words, Steve brushed off his shoulders like they had dust on them (Bucky prayed they didn’t).
“They should put one of those curved mirrors on this corner,” he joked in his blond perfection.
“Yeah,” Bucky croaked, finally recovering the ability to speak. “You came outta nowhere.” But don’t say that, idiot!
Steve adopted the look of an embarrassed dog and Bucky cursed himself.
“It’s alright, I’m sure it happens all the time. They should put up a mirror.”
A smile broke across the other man’s face again. Bucky couldn’t imagine his own emotions changing that quickly; he’d get a headache.
“Maybe I’ll write an email,” Steve said conspiratorially, and Bucky chuckled.
He ran with the bit. “If I do it too, they’ll have to consider it a petition.”
Steve’s smile widened. “I’ve always loved a bit of democratic protest.”
Bucky hadn’t thought this far ahead—he was a planner, not a fast-on-his-feet kind of guy—so to avoid an awkward pause, he offered, “Enjoy the water?”
Why did it come out as a question?
“Yeah, uh, I will,” Steve smiled back. He did that a lot.
“See you,” Bucky said, successfully escaping around the buff man who was unknowingly blocking the way in the skinny hallway.
“Yeah,” Steve said, Bucky thought a touch hopefully. “Have a nice night.”
But Bucky was already in the locker room, escaping to lick his wounds.
● ● ●
“You really ran into him?” Clint checked incredulously.
Bucky groaned. He had relived it too many times in his head already, at top of when he told his friends.
“That’s one way to stun a guy,” Clint continued. Bucky couldn’t take it anymore. His unfortunate run-in (literally) had been the talk of the morning. He couldn’t even escape it now, stuck on a chair lift with Clint and his stupid snowboard.
“Shut up,” was all he had to say on the matter. No, he was not sulking 30 feet in the air. He was an adult.
When they reached the top, Bucky put his ski goggles on and threw a, “Meet you guys at lunch?” over his shoulder before pushing off.
He heard Clint’s yell back of “Sure!” over the whistling wind. Perfect. A good three hours of questioning his life choices and skiing his legs off. Just how he liked it.
● ● ●
Bucky stayed out as long as he could in the late afternoon, working his way up the different mountains so he was as high as possible when the last lift closed. By the time he got back to the room, the sun had gone down and he was ravenous for dinner. Sam and Clint had gone out to a bar for food and drinks while Nat had a family call to take and some work to get done on her computer. Bucky heated up leftovers from a night they all went out together and scarfed it down, alone. He straightened his part of the room—fruitlessly, the whole place was a mess—and finally felt like he was done with all the things he needed to do before he could relax. Which meant: hot tub time.
It was late, at that point, and Bucky was looking forward to an empty pool, the dark night sky, and the snowy mountains to look out on. There was no activity in the locker room, and he was comforted by the silence. He was low on energy and not as high alert as usual, a rarity.
Disarmed as he was, he almost didn’t realize there was another person in the hot tub until he was eyebrow deep in the water. When Bucky opened his eyes after letting out a bigger sigh than was reasonable at his youthful age, he locked eyes with familiar blue ones. He took a sharp breath in, unintentionally inhaling chlorinated water in the process. He coughed and spluttered, and Steve’s worried voice carried across the steamy hot tub.
“Shoot, are you alright?”
Bucky nodded weakly once it no longer felt like his lungs were filled with liquid.
“It feels like every time I show up, something bad happens to you,” Steve confessed.
“You’re only two for three, actually,” Bucky replied, feeling the irrational need to soothe the other man’s guilty conscience.
“Two for three?” Steve questioned. “Am I forgetting some time I didn’t cause you bodily harm?”
Shit. Bucky cursed himself, because it wasn’t that they had actually interacted, it had just been Bucky being a spying creep. He laughed awkwardly.
“Sort of,” he scratched the back of his neck. “The first time I came to the hot tub a few days ago, you were here.”
“Oh.” Steve furrowed his brow.
Aaaaannnnndd every one of my chances is ruined, Bucky thought to himself.
“I don’t remember seeing you, but I’ve come a bunch of times.”
“You were with a friend?” Bucky said, continuing to dig his own hole. He hoped Goatee was just a friend, at least…
“Oh!” Steve’s face lit with recognition. “Yeah, that’s Tony. He’s who I’m staying with.” Steve seemed to take this weird conversational turn in stride because he breezed right along. “Are you here with anyone?”
Suddenly, his face blanched. “I just realized I never introduced myself, sorry—my name’s Steve, uh, Steve Rogers, if you must know.” He had a tentative smile on his face.
How did he put a playful spin on everything?
“James Barnes,” slipped out before he could think better of it. He never introduced himself as James anymore. “Bucky” was just who he was as an adult; he had left “James” back in college when people had started calling him Bucky. Well, fuck him for wanting any interaction with an attractive guy to go the way he intended.
“I’m here with my three friends: Natasha, Sam, and Clint.” He tried for a wisecrack— “Do you need their full legal names as well?”
Steve blushed, or maybe it was just a flush from the hot water. “No, it’s alright. Are you all skiers, too? Or snowboarders?” he added hastily.
“I take it you and Tony are skiers then,” Bucky speculated with 100% confidence.
“Born and raised.”
“Yeah, same here. Sam skies too, but Clint and Nat are both snowboarders.”
“Gross.”
“Trust me, that’s what we tell them.”
The two men sat in silence for a moment, smiling at each other. Eager to continue the conversation and have something go his way, Bucky searched for something to say. He landed on the classic fallback: ask about the other person’s trip.
“So, how long are you here for?”
“Another week, we got in a week ago,” Steve answered easily. “What about you?”
“Actually, we’re only here for two more days—we’ve been here a week, too.”
Steve’s dog-level expressive face fell into disappointment, but he schooled it back into something more polite. It was like Bucky could watch his every thought play out on his face.
Fascinating.
“Ah, where are you all from?” Steve inquired.
“New York—” Bucky was going to go on, but Steve had instantly lit up like a Christmas tree.
“We’re from New York, too!” He faltered. “Tony and I, I mean.” Bucky was amused by his attempt to recover a sense of adult-like normalcy after the excited outburst.
“What’re the chances, its only one of the biggest cities in America,” he teased. “Where in New York?”
“Manhattan, but I grew up in Brooklyn.”
Well, didn’t the surprises just keep coming.
Being able to say, “Same here, but I live in Queens now,” was rewarding just because he was able to watch Steve’s eyes grow as big as dinner plates.
“No kidding!” he exclaimed. “Are you sure we’ve never met before?” He narrowed his eyes in suspicion. Bucky laughed and put his hands up in surrender.
“Pretty sure, man. I would’ve remembered seeing you.”
Steve had a goofy half-smile on his face. “Oh really? Why’s that?”
“You’re—well,” Oh, now Bucky was really in too deep. Too late to back out now! “You’re jacked as hell! And bright blond. And you have giant eyes like a puppy. And you have a very recognizable friend with a goatee,” he tacked on to the end, aiming for the joke to save him. Steve smiled widely again—God, how many Crest whitening strips do you think he goes through?—and it seemed like he had succeeded.
Now, there was definitely a blush present on the man’s freckled (it was!) face that couldn’t be attributed to the hot tub.
“Those things are all true,” Steve chuckled, a touch bashful. “Trust Tony to be one of my defining features.” He laughed at what Bucky assumed was a private joke. “He’ll love to hear that… Well,” he collected himself and fixed Bucky with an intense look that was made worse by how clear blue his eyes were, “I think I would’ve remembered you, too, if we had met.”
“You don’t say,” murmured Bucky. He… almost… felt like he was actually picking up the right signals, for once.
“Shit, do you know what time it is?” Steve had gone as rigid as a board and broken the spell Bucky thought they were both seized by.
“Uh, I came in here at, like, 8:15, I think? Why?”
“I promised Tony I’d meet him for drinks at this karaoke place at 8:30, but it looks like I lost track of time being in here.” He sighed, defeated, and stood up out of the water. “I’ll send him a text and hope I don’t get there too late.”
Bucky felt like his destiny was escaping him or some bullshit like that.
“I’m sure he’ll understand,” he said uneasily. What could he do to not let this amazing, sweet hunk of a guy before he left in two days and didn’t come back for a year? Steve was too preoccupied in his own misfortune to see Bucky’s internal battle.
“Well, it was really nice talking to you, James,”—another shock to his system—“but Tony secretly hates when people are late and I respect that, so I gotta run.”
Bucky could almost feel his friends yelling in his ears, like a dull roar.
“I guess I’ll see you here next winter?” Steve looked so hopeful that Bucky’s heart bent a little. “If you come here, that is,” he continued, the realization turning his expression crestfallen.
“Steve, hold on—” he reached up and grabbed the man’s wrist in a desperate attempt to stop him from literally running away. “It would be a shame if we left this whole thing up to fate,” he said firmly.
“Oh, I—” Steve was definitely pink now.
Bucky wasn’t going to let this go a way he didn’t want, so he bulldozed over Steve. “Would you want to get dinner with me in town tomorrow night?”
Steve, all big blue eyes and tantalizing wet flushed skin and infuriatingly cute freckles and chatty mouth, was stunned into silence. Slowly, his surprised expression melted into a sure and pleased one.
“Yeah, I’d love to.”
Bucky breathed a sigh of relief. He looked up to meet Steve’s soft eyes. “Meet me in the lobby tomorrow at seven? I’ll take you somewhere good, I swear.”
Steve got down on one knee and Bucky inhaled.
“Yeah, I trust that, James” the blond murmured, drawing close to Bucky’s face.
Bucky shivered, but held Steve’s gaze. “It’s Bucky, actually. Everybody calls me Bucky. My middle name is Buchanan,” he explained, seeing the other man’s face start to cloud with confusion. “When you introduced yourself, I said my name was James on accident, which it is, but just—no one calls me that anymore, so it keeps freaking me out that you do…” He trailed off.
“Hey, it’s alright,” Steve said, humor sitting in his eyes and the curve of his lips. “I was kind of a frenzy of energy, and I know that can be overwhelming.” He paused. “Bucky,” he said, trying it out.
Oh, and did hearing that do something to him. Bucky didn’t want to talk anymore, really—he couldn’t wait any longer. He captured Steve’s chin and pulled the man’s face next to his mouth.
“I like overwhelming,” he whispered. “Can I?”
Steve answered the question by turning his head and kissing Bucky. Steve squeezed his eyes closed as he pushed into him, which Bucky found unreasonably cute.
It was equal parts wet and warm and really, really, good. Something he’d like to do again, he decided.
Which they did.
Many, many more times.
● ● ●
Bucky nursed a hot cup of coffee, sitting on the edge of his bed in the early morning light that was falling off the snowy mountain peaks and through the window. Steve was tangled up in the sheets next to him, still asleep. Nat, Sam, Clint, and Tony were staying in the next room over, probably up and getting ready at this point. Bucky and Steve were taking a slow start to the day, planning on hitting the slopes after lunch. It was their one-year anniversary, after all, and they wanted to bask in it.
Coming back to the lodge after a year together had felt kind of like coming home.
Going to the hot tub that evening would be a must.