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The dinner bell sounds in the tall, white church across the green, but Bucky Barnes ignores it and takes another drag on his cigarette. He’s leaning against the huge old oak tree next to the library, well sheltered both from the wind and from his teachers and classmates.
It’s nearing six o’clock on a dreary Massachusetts evening in early November. The chill has settled into the ground with the darkness; the pale autumn sun set hours ago.
After several minutes Bucky judges he needs to get going. Dinner will suck, as usual, but he’s famished and needs to keep his strength up. He stubs out the cigarette against the tree and stalks toward the main school building, which also houses the dining hall.
“Mr. Barnes, pull yourself together.” Miss Pym, Shield Academy’s wizened nurse and the only woman at the school, scans Bucky up and down with disapproval as he strides down the corridor toward the dining hall, his uniform in disarray, almost late for dinner. All the other students are already inside; he’s the last one in the door. As usual.
“Pymmie, stop checking me out, I swear we’ve had this conversation before, it’s inappropriate,” Bucky shoots back, smirking. Miss Pym’s brow only furrows deeper and her eyes darken in anger.
“Mr. Barnes,” she repeats, her mouth turning down sourly. “Would you like to spend dinner in Headmaster Pierce’s office? Again?”
“Nossir.” Bucky’s response is immediate and he hastily tucks in his shirttail, straightens his tie, and smooths out the curls in his unruly hair. Most of the students keep their hair regulation short, but Bucky lets his grow as long as possible without losing house points. He looks at Pymmie impatiently, arms up for inspection, and she glowers even harder but reluctantly lets him into the hall.
As he walks down the row toward his place at his house’s long table, he takes advantage of the noise in the hall to whack a few freshers at his table over the head and lean over to insult the mothers of a couple of upperclassmen sitting at the next table over.
Next table over is Danforth, the sworn enemy of Bucky’s house, Winthrop, and he never turns down the opportunity to remind them what inferior assholes they are. Bucky’s father was also a Winthrop resident and has confirmed to his son that Danforth boys were also the worst in his day, have always been the worst.
Bucky reaches his seat just as Headmaster Pierce appears on the teachers’ dais. The entire student body of adolescent males, aged 13 to 19, goes quiet and stands as one.
Before talking, Pierce looks around the huge dining room, frowning, his gaze befitting his name as he picks out certain individuals for extra scrutiny. Bucky feels his beady eyes rest on him for a few seconds, but it soon transfers to the tall blond on the other side of the Winthrop table to Bucky’s left.
Bucky won’t look at that particular housemate. He will not.
It’s a good half a minute before Pierce clears his throat.
“Young men of Shield,” he says in a sharp, penetrating voice. “Here we are at the end of the school day, one step closer to becoming the men we were born to be, to make ourselves gifts for mankind who will shape the century, ready to take our places as leaders of this great country and guardians of her security, her honor, and her sacred traditional values. When our illustrious predecessors founded this school back in 1748 and it was renamed Shield in 1789...”
Pierce drones on for a while and honestly, it’s all Bucky can do to avoid rolling his eyes and fidgeting. He’s been at this fucking school for almost four years, and the only sacred values he’s seen are the importance of licking rich people’s boots and of winning at all costs. He benefits mightily from the former and indulges regularly in the latter and enjoys both wholeheartedly, but that doesn’t mean he thinks they’re, like, worthy of reverence.
And as for honor...Bucky shakes his head inwardly. From what he’s seen among most of his classmates over the past four years here, and from what he’s seen of his father’s business dealings, “honor” hardly comes into it.
Finally Pierce finishes his blather and cries out “Ego viventum est optimus!”
Three hundred voices in the hall repeat “Ego viventum est optimus” with varying degrees of enthusiasm. On either side of him, Rollins and Rumlow practically yell it. God, they are such toadies. Rev. Zola, the school’s chaplain, follows Pierce with a prayer to Our Almighty Father in his particularly whiny and unctuous voice.
The boys sit down to eat, and the noise level in the hall rises again. Rollins and Rumlow talk animatedly about their day, how dumb their classes and teachers are, and how much they hate Danforth. Bucky chimes in automatically, his replies both dismissive and insulting to both the other house and to his friends. But the two other boys love it, love the attention he’s paying to them, and bask in the glow of his privileged obnoxiousness.
As they’re finishing their meal, Rumlow tries to turn the insults toward certain members of their own house.
“Rogers and Wilson looking especially plebeian today, I see,” he remarks airily.
Bucky finally flicks his eyes toward his left, where Steve Rogers sits next to his best friend Sam Wilson, shoveling food into his face as quickly and politely as possible, his face a blank mask.
Sam and Steve are full scholarship students; Sam is from Roxbury, Steve is from Southie. A number of their housemates give them grief about being sons of single moms from the wrong side of the tracks, and Bucky knows with unerring instinct that Pierce hates them both, especially Steve.
But they’re also the best half-back and five-eighth the school’s rugby team has ever had, and more or less personally responsible for Shield winning the NEPSAC championship for the last two years and the East regional championship last year. So Pierce grudgingly puts up with Wilson and Rogers — it’s all part of that sacred value of “winning at all costs.” And besides, it looks good to alums and other donors when he trots them out to pay lip service to “giving all young men, regardless of background, the chance to succeed” and “diversity and inclusion.”
At even the briefest glance at Steve’s face, something twists hard in Bucky’s gut. He pushes that response deep down into a soundproof crevasse under the earth where no one has ever ventured, and turns back to his friends.
“Not even worth talking about those two, Rumlow,” he says, his voice casual but with a layer of ice under it. “Moving on.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky sees Rumlow and Rollins looking delighted. Bucky hates Rogers as much as they do, they’re thinking. So much so that he doesn’t even bother to make fun of him.
Bucky presses his lips together hard. He reaches up casually to poke at his collarbone through his blazer and pushes his ass into the hard bench at the dinner table, thrilling to the tiny slivers of pain that these actions provoke.
He finishes the last few bites of his dinner as the gong sounds. All three hundred males in the dining room scramble out of their seats and stand facing their tables.
“Good night, men,” declaims Pierce. “Rest well tonight, tomorrow is a new day.” Zola oozes out some sort of obsequious blessing and dinner is over.
The students now have ten minutes to get back to their respective houses, and must meet in the study rooms on the first floor of each building to report to their house leaders and prefects. They stay in these rooms until nine-thirty, when they are required go upstairs, shower and brush their teeth, and be in their beds by ten o’clock.
Bucky has something to do upstairs in Winthrop before heading to the study room. It’s an errand he’s performed every night this semester, and he isn’t about to neglect it tonight, so he has to hurry. He races past his housemates filing in an orderly line down the table toward the door, making sure to slap those fucking freshmen upside the head again to remind them that they’re freshmen, and skids down the corridor and out onto the quad, heedless of Miss Pym yelling at him from her lurking spot near the dining hall entrance.
Bucky is a known troublemaker at Shield Academy, but his father also donates a zillion dollars a year to the school, so he can get away with minor infractions like booking it out of the dining hall out of order. But he can’t be late for study hall — his house leader is Dr. Fury, the best teacher on campus but also the scariest, and he makes exceptions to the rules for no one. Last month Bucky ran into more trouble than usual with his nightly errand and showed up at 7.03, an error which lost Winthrop ten house points and pissed everyone off, including Bucky himself.
As he barrels down the stairs of Winthrop, errand completed, he checks his watch, an old Tag Heuer he inherited from his father. Two minutes to go. Good job, Barnes. He smooths down his hair again and slows his pace to avoid arriving at study hall out of breath. Thank fuck he’s on the cross-country team; his old man made him take a varsity sport for his college apps and at least this one has proved somewhat useful.
Focusing all his attention on getting to the study room on time and relatively pulled together, Bucky fails to notice until the last minute that someone else reaches the door at the same time he does. He almost runs into this other person, and looks up.
It’s Steve. Bucky’s gut twists again and he works hard not to visibly gulp. So much for that deep underground crevasse where all his secrets are hidden. He gets it together, steps back, and plasters a mocking smirk on his face.
“Rogers,” he says, sweeping out his hand and adding just the right note of animosity to the sneer in his voice for the benefit of the few stragglers coming up behind them.
Steve looks at him with a face that could be made out of marble, devoid of expression except for an angry glint deep down in those ridiculous cobalt blue eyes.
“Barnes,” says Steve indifferently, and walks into the room, straightening his tie. Bucky winks at the boys behind him and follows Steve into the room, keeping himself on a tight rein and girding himself for the long evening homework slog.
*****
“Lights out.”
Sitwell’s smarmy voice rings through the sleeping dorm and ten seconds later the room is dark, with only the pale light of the half-moon and the outside utility poles filtering through the windows.
Bucky lies flat on his bed, trying not to move, trying to be patient as the other boys whisper and start to settle. One might think that the houses of one of the most prestigious private schools in the country would feature single rooms or at least doubles or triples, but no, this isn’t fucking Hogwarts.
All the houses have two vast rooms each on their second and third floors, and in each of these rooms are thirty to forty boys in bunk beds. The bunks are lined up perpendicular to the walls and each bunk has two foot lockers underneath for underwear, sports uniforms, and toiletries. These foot lockers are inspected three times a week for drugs, cigarettes, porn, and other contraband items.
At the end of the room closest to the door, stands a narrow closet with cubbies for each boy to hang his uniforms and dress suit. Two giant bathrooms with rows of sinks, showers, and urinals are located on the other side of the hall.
Even now, in his fourth year here, this arrangement makes Bucky ripshit. He’s got a palatial bedroom with an ensuite at the main Barnes compound in Weston, and his bedrooms in their other houses in Vail and Provence and on the Vineyard are almost that big. He could’ve gone to Andover or Exeter or St. Paul’s, where there’s at least a modicum of privacy, or even (heaven forfend!) stayed at home and gone to Weston High School.
But no, he has to sleep on a thin-ass mattress in the same room as a bunch of jackholes, some serious Jane Eyre-at-Lowood shit.
James Barnes Senior, who went to Shield back during the Crusades and still loves this place more than he loves his family, says this sleeping arrangement builds character. All it does for Bucky is give him a perennial backache. At least he’s got a bottom bunk.
“Quiet, boys.” Sitwell’s annoying voice cuts through the whispering. Bucky rolls his eyes. He could’ve been a prefect this year — Rumlow and Rollins are prefects in the dorm rooms upstairs — but he turned it down when Fury offered it to him last spring. The last thing he wants to be is a brown-nosing suckup.
Pa Barnes was furious when he found out — of course he was a prefect here back in the Mesozoic Era — and retaliated by making Bucky volunteer in Dorchester this past summer and live in a tiny studio in Southie he usually rents out, but the joke was on him, Bucky was thrilled to spend a summer away from home and away from this dump.
Bucky lies on his terrible mattress and stares at the bunk above, waiting. Waiting. To make sure he stays awake, he prods at his collarbone again and digs his short nails into his hipbones. His Shield regulation pajamas are threadbare and old and do nothing to protect him from those brief, beautiful shards of pain.
When he’s sure that everyone in his room is asleep, Bucky waits another ten minutes and then eases himself off his bed as quietly as possible. His bunk is halfway down the room and he’s perfected the art of creeping noiselessly past his roommates. Sitwell’s bunk is closest to the exit, and Bucky hears his weird snuffling in passing as he moves through the door and into the hallway.
The objective of Bucky’s late-night escape is down the hall to the left, and it was also the focus of his errand earlier this evening. The floor’s storage and HVAC closet is kept locked by the janitorial staff, but Bucky has procured a duplicate key and every night after dinner he unlocks it once the Winthrop custodian has left for the day. He moves slowly and quietly but he can feel his pulse racing as he opens the closet door.
Bucky can tell Steve is there as soon as he enters the closet and closes the door softly behind him. It’s a good-sized space and the furnace and duct work hum in the background, but Steve himself is huge and his warmth and presence radiate from him. The pale light filtering in through the small window illuminates his golden skin and hair, and he’s already shirtless.
Good Christ almighty.
If Bucky’s heart was beating fast before, now it’s hammering in his chest as he steps up to Steve. Everything about Steve is perfect, the handsome face, the piercing blue eyes, the huge and exquisitely chiseled muscles, even the bump from his once-broken nose and the bruise blossoming on his left oblique, doubtless from yesterday’s rugby practice.
All Bucky wants to do right now is lick that perfect body all over, but he knows this isn’t allowed. Nevertheless, he starts right away with a bold gambit and leans up to kiss Steve on those plump, pink lips.
A huge paw high on Bucky’s chest stops his progress.
“Uh-uh, Barnes,” comes a whisper through the near-darkness. “You have to earn that.”
Bucky shivers at the touch. “OK,” he says, already a little light-headed.
“What was that?” The whisper is sharper, more authoritative and the hand moves up to circle Bucky’s throat. Bucky can feel his dick fatten up a little in his pajama bottoms.
“Yes, yes sir,” Bucky hastens to whisper back. He can already feel himself sinking, losing himself in a fog and it is intoxicating. The hand squeezes a little, just enough to push at Bucky’s windpipe and press into the muscles around his neck, and Bucky closes his eyes for a moment. He’d love it if the choking left bruises but he daren’t hope so. The hand withdraws.
“Clothes off,” comes the quiet order. Bucky hastens to comply, then stands, shivering, partly from the cool night air but mostly from something else. He knows he’s being inspected right now, those deep blue eyes scanning over every inch of him, looking at his lean musculature, his half-hard dick, and the bruises at his clavicle and hipbones and the one a few inches under his left nipple.
Steve leans forward and Bucky feels hot breath on his neck. “Your marks are fading,” Steve murmurs as he inhales Bucky’s clean scent.
“I’ve tried to keep them up, sir, I’ve tried, but it’s hard, they go away...” Bucky is babbling, his nerves jangling in anticipation as he knows what’s coming next.
“I know you try, but I’ll just have to freshen them up,” says the low voice by his ear, just before Steve pounces, sucking and biting the bruise on Bucky’s collarbone that Bucky was poking at earlier.
Bucky hisses at the pleasure-pain cocktail but is careful not to cry out loud. If they were caught, in here, doing this, he could probably get out of it with a slap on the wrist and the loss of a bunch of house points, but Steve would almost definitely be expelled.
As Steve sucks into that spot, his huge hands slither down to twist Bucky’s nipples hard and pinch the bruise on Bucky’s left ribs. Bucky’s tingling all over, the stabs of pain Steve is inflicting are going straight to his dick and he feels himself go fully erect.
After a few minutes, Steve moves his mouth further toward Bucky’s shoulder and murmurs “this is a good place” before biting down. A new mark! Bucky is thrilled and he clenches his fists and revels silently in the discomfort as it’s created. Not for the first time he wishes Steve could spank him black and blue but that would be too noisy and they’d certainly be found out.
Steve’s warm tongue laves over both new and old bruises and up to Bucky’s earlobe. His big hands give one last tweak to Bucky’s nipples and travel back up to Bucky’s shoulders.
“On your knees,” says the voice in his ear, and oh fuck, yes. Bucky drops to his knees as quietly as possible, wishing he could bang them harder against the cold wood floor to produce yet more bruises.
Steve’s hands thread through his hair on either side of his head and pull his face into Steve’s crotch, still covered by thin pajama bottoms. Bucky rubs his cheek against the hardness there, and looks up at the huge blond towering over him.
“Can I?” he whispers, and gets a curt nod in return. Carefully, almost lovingly, Bucky unties the drawstring of the loose pants and pulls down. Steve’s cock springs free and almost hits Bucky in the face. Bucky looks at it in adoration as well as he can in the dim light — thick, long, and uncut, the dark pink crown pushing through the foreskin. He nuzzles it, kisses the shaft while breathing in Steve’s earthy scent mixed with boarding school soap.
Bucky licks up the shaft and around the crown and takes Steve’s length into his mouth, feeling the weight of Steve’s dick on his tongue as he bobs up and down, moving further and further down the shaft with each bob. Finally he opens his throat and gets it all in his mouth, suppressing his gag reflex as best he can.
As a rugby player, Steve shaves his arms and legs but he’s left a trim thatch of blond public hair at the base of his cock and Bucky thrills when these hairs tickle his nose as he swallows Steve all the way down. Steve can’t moan out loud but Bucky can hear his breath coming faster and shallower above him, and knows he’s pleased.
The hands on either side of Bucky’s head tighten and Bucky wonders if Steve is going to fuck his face, his gut tightening in delighted anticipation. There’s little he likes more than wrapping bruised lips and an aching jaw around Steve’s cock as Steve thrusts himself into Bucky’s mouth, then choking on his come.
But Steve appears to change his mind and the hands go slack. Steve pulls out of Bucky’s mouth, but before Bucky can give a little mew of disappointment, those hands are around his shoulders and pulling him upright.
“Wanna fuck you,” says Steve’s voice, low and gravelly in Bucky’s ear, and Bucky nods, his head spinning a little.
“Oh god, Steve, yes,” he whispers frantically. “I mean, yes sir, please fuck me sir, please.”
Steve manhandles Bucky over to the window, grabbing a jar off the shelf as they move. Bucky’s hidden lube behind a bunch of bottles of plumbers grease and WD-40; the jar has no label and looks very similar to the others, but the custodian will get quite the surprise if he tries to use it on a leaking P-trap.
Bucky leans over and rests his hands against the window ledge. He could stay like this forever, bent over and waiting, always on standby as Steve’s plaything, available whenever Steve needs him. He feels a little dizzy as he hears Steve open the jar of lube, anticipating the touch of Steve’s hand against his hole. He doesn’t really need opening up — Steve fucked him hard just last night, and he prepped himself in the shower earlier — but he does love Steve’s thick, calloused fingers probing inside him.
And sure enough, he soon feels his cheeks parted and cool, lube-covered digits circling his rim. Another burst of pleasure echoes through his gut as Steve slips two inside him right away, and he bites hard on his bottom lip to keep from moaning out load.
A feeling of warmth settles over him as Steve drapes himself on Bucky’s back to whisper in his ear.
“So open and ready for me already, aren’t you, Buck,” he says. “But then you’re always ready for me, ain’tcha? My needy little slut.” Steve slips into his native Southie accent when he talks dirty and fuck it’s the hottest thing in the world.
“Always...ready for you, always...want you,” Bucky manages to pant out. Steve is scissoring his fingers, not so much to open Bucky up as to coat his insides with lube. Feeling Steve caress his inner walls sends another wave of heat through Bucky’s torso, especially as he realizes that Steve is preparing to fuck into him really hard.
“Alright then,” whispers Steve, standing upright and pulling his fingers out of Bucky’s ass at the same time. He lubes up his beautiful cock and roughly grabs Bucky’s hips to line himself up (and Bucky really hopes he’s leaving some new bruises around his pelvic bones, Jesus Christ). There’s a moment of stillness as that cock presses against Bucky’s hole and breaches that tight ring of muscle...
...and then in one sharp, smooth movement, Steve fucks all the way into Bucky and he can almost feel Steve’s dick in his mouth and the stretch and burn are exquisitely excruciating and goddamn...
With that thrust, Bucky involuntarily turns his head and lets loose with something between a shriek and a moan. Immediately Steve moves to cover his scream, but in the moment and in the dim light he misjudges and punches Bucky hard in the mouth with his giant fist.
The sharp pain in Bucky’s face intertwined with the fiery ache in his asshole as Steve drives into him almost makes Bucky come untouched right there. He feels Steve covering his mouth as he fucks him and realizes that he’s got a split lip and the blood is dripping down his chin, and it’s the biggest turn-on he’s ever felt. This really is the only time all day Bucky feels truly alive — and truly himself.
Steve’s thick cock is pounding hard against his prostate and he feels the heat rising in his balls and he’s about to reach down to finish himself off when Steve pulls his hand off Bucky’s mouth, licks a stripe up his hand, licking off the blood, and grabs Bucky’s dick.
“Come for me, princess,” Steve murmurs, fucking into Bucky harder as he jerks him, and that’s it. He’s done. Bucky’s vision whites out, sparks lining the insides of his eyelids as he spurts all over the wall under the window.
Steve lets go of Bucky’s dick and grabs him by the hip again, continuing to thrust inside him for another minute. Bucky feels like a thing made expressly for Steve’s pleasure, just a vessel he can use and throw away when he’s done, and that thought makes something light up and grow warm inside Bucky’s chest.
Bucky revels in the aftershocks and the overstimulation and all that beautiful, beautiful pain and then Steve’s breath hitches and he’s pulsing inside him, filling him with heat and pushing all that lovely come further up into his body.
Steve stays still inside Bucky for a moment and huffs something like a tiny sigh. Without pulling out, he leans in, lifting his hand off Bucky’s right hip, and turns Bucky’s head back toward his. Bucky wonders what he’s doing and then...oh.
Steve fastens his lips onto Bucky’s like he wants to devour him, lapping up Bucky’s blood and probing Bucky’s split lip with his tongue and making it sting. The warmth inside Bucky’s chest turns into a glow that he feels all over his body. He’s done it. He’s earned this kiss. He returns the kiss with interest and opens his mouth to let Steve’s tongue lick over his lips and his top teeth.
Bucky’s head is fuzzy with endorphins and Steve’s mouth on his, but he notes with satisfaction when Steve’s cock slides out of him and his come drips out of Bucky’s asshole and down the insides of his legs.
Steve’s left hand slides around to pinch Bucky’s left cheek, twisting hard on the soft flesh. Another bruise, gloats Bucky. Then Steve bites hard on Bucky’s bloody lip and pulls back.
“Clean me up,” he growls. Bucky immediately turns and drops to his knees to start licking Steve’s softening dick. It tastes like come and lube and Bucky’s own musky scent. He doesn’t stop with his tongue until Steve puts his hands on his shoulders, his signal to stand up and get ready to leave. Steve sleeps in the other dorm room on Winthrop’s second floor, and he has his own prefect to sneak past to get back to bed.
Bucky gets up and stands still in front of Steve, naked and sweating and still dripping come and lube. Steve looks him up and down again in the half-light as he puts on his pajamas, the corner of his mouth quirking up, his eyes lazily cruel.
Sated and tingling, Bucky waits. Sometimes Steve just looks him up and down and exits the room, quiet as a mouse. Other times he’ll pinch a nipple or Bucky’s softening cock before he goes.
Tonight Steve leans forward and licks Bucky’s bottom lip, still bleeding a bit, and digs his fingernails into the new dark bruise on Bucky’s collarbone.
“Such a good slut,” he murmurs before turning and disappearing into the dark on silent feet.
Bucky stands still for another minute, reveling in this parting. It’s not every night he manages to please Steve well enough to merit this kind of goodbye. He feels chosen. Special.
But now it’s time to move. He throws on his pj’s and gets to work. Bucky’s hidden a large package of baby wipes behind the paper towels on the custodian’s shelf, and he cleans himself up as best he can, wishing (not for the first time) that he could bring his favorite butt plug to school and keep Steve’s come inside him.
Bucky grabs the Clorox and paper towels to clean his spooge off the wall and throws that whole mess into the big trashcan in the corner. Then it’s back to his room, opening the well-oiled door as quietly as possible, tiptoeing past that bootlicker Sitwell. It would never do to get caught right at the end.
He eases into his bunk and buries under his blanket. Still aglow from tonight’s outing, he digs his fingers into his new bruises and pulls at his lip. If he worries at it, he can keep that wound open through tomorrow. He quickly falls into a deep and dreamless sleep.
And indeed, after the seven AM wake-up bell as he dresses hurriedly in the closet to hide his bruises from his dormmates, Bucky licks his lip and tastes a faint trace of copper. He keeps biting it as the Winthrop boys march down the walkway in the dank morning air and turns his face from Nurse Pym as he enters the dining hall. He feels with satisfaction a tiny trickle run down his chin.
“Fuck, Barnes, what happened?” Rumlow frowns at Bucky’s face when they sit down at their places, waiting for Pierce to appear and bless them all before they tuck into cold, rubbery eggs and lumpy oatmeal.
“Ran into a door,” Bucky answers smoothly as Pierce enters and they stand up. He risks a quick sideways glance at Steve. Steve’s face is impassive, his lips tightly pressed together, but his eyes are fiery. Pierce starts in on his pre-breakfast bullshit and Bucky licks his lip, delighting in the sting and the tickle of the blood down his face.
He really hopes it runs down into his shirt collar.