dysmorphics | it's you and me up against the world, it's you and me

Steph was fascinated by Bucky's laptop, but also scared of pressing the wrong button and destroying it that she refused to touch it for the most part. It could also do a lot of things that made using it feel overwhelming. She was fine watching him do whatever he needed on it.

She peered closer, trying to follow how to navigate the website and curiously checking out the thumbnail previous of the videos. "There's... so many." At least the bodice rippers she'd read kind of had similar things. "How do you decide which one to watch?"

Bucky couldn't help chuckling a little as he watched his girlfriend, then shrugged. "I don't know, I haven't really watched a ton of the stuff myself," he told her simply. "But I guess people just... pick something?"

He didn't know what half the titles meant. There was a good chance they were describing things that happened in the videos, but they might as well have just been given random numbers for titles for how much he knew about most modern day sex terminology.

At least sometimes there were words he knew. Like blonde. He knew blonde.

Steph couldn't figure out what half the titles meant either, so she just looked at the thumbnails as she scrolled. "Is that supposed to be...?" She squinted at one with a blonde in a red, blue and white bikini or something. "That ass is huge," she commented in a tone that she found it weird.

"Two at once?" she asked with a disbelieving glance at Bucky at one with a woman in a threesome. Some previews were close ups like the photos he took of her, so she couldn't be sure what the deal was without opening the video.

Then she accidentally clicked one open, and she gave a little yelp of surprise. After which she stared. The woman was blindfolded and propped up the kitchen counter with her legs open. Her hands were tied with a matching color cloth as her blindfold in front of her. She was rubbing circles on her clit while the man standing beside her had an arm around her, fondling her breast with one hand and... sticking something in and out of her pussy. Steph blinked, then went, "Oh. That's how you use it."

Bucky couldn't resist laughing a little at Steph's reactions. For one thing, while it was nowhere near the size of the woman in the thumbnails, or even the size of the Steph that had left him behind, his Steph had a great ass. It was probably the meatiest part of her petite body. For another, "I'm going to have to put my foot down at that one," he told her when she commented on the threesome. "I don't think I could share you with anyone else."

Plus he didn't want to be with anyone else.

As the video played, Bucky only half watched it, more interested in his girlfriend's reactions than the action in the video. "Earlier, you said you liked the idea of being blindfolded and pinned down," he mentioned as the video continued to play. "And that was after fitting most of your hand in yourself."

"I don't wanna be with anyone else," Steph said easily, turning to look at Bucky like he was crazy for even thinking she might consider it. "And I don't like sharing."

She bit the inside of her cheek, suddenly looking embarrassed. "Remember that time the stitches on the shirt you had me press just fell apart for no reason? Well... it was me. You were out with, what's her name... and I was so mad, and I had a seam ripper." She didn't realize just how petty she could be until that night.

She lost interest in the video after a while too, especially when he brought up the blindfolding thing. She blushed. "Yeah, it might be fun? Ain't gotta be anything like that." She gestured toward the screen. "But not knowing what you'd do, or be able to touch you... that drives me crazy." And somehow she wanted that.

Bucky blinked a bit at Steph's confession, then barked out a laugh. Then continued laughing. "I thought my shirt was broken! I didn't even know that could happen!" he told her between laughs. He hadn't known what to do when his shirt suddenly started just... falling apart on him, so he called the date early (most of his dates got called early anyway) and went home. "I think that was a date Ma set up. Her hairdresser's niece or something, I don't remember her name."

Sometimes, Bucky swore his Ma had figured out how he felt about his best friend, but then she'd go and set up dates for him, and he wasn't sure anymore. Maybe it was her way of getting him to say something? He didn't know, and she was long gone, so he couldn't ask.

Once he settled, Bucky went back to watching the video and, more importantly, watching Steph. "I'll do that for you sometime," he promised with a grin. Making her feel good was one of his favorite things.

Steph started laughing too, if only because Bucky couldn't seem to stop laughing. Though a hint of sadness flashed across her face as he reminded her that his Ma had set up some of his dates. Would she approve of Steph now? Her best friend was married, sure, but that Steph was rich and beautiful and healthy and Captain America. Meanwhile, here was tiny sickly Stephanie, with nothing to offer that other women couldn't.

But he was so amused, so happy, that she kept her thoughts to herself. Instead she just said, "I tried to date hoping it would make you jealous, but you know how that turned out."

It had been some kind of bet. She found out in the middle of dinner, after she went to the washroom and overheard him bragging to his friends that he would at the very least get to second base, not that there was much of a base to begin with. She got so mad and punched him, then doubled over as she had an asthma attack because the asshole had stolen her cigs. The irony of it all? One of his friends ran to get Bucky, who they'd seen the next block over getting ice cream with his date or something. Steph swore off dating after that. It just wasn't worth it.

Bucky remembered that night as clear as day. He hadn't even had a date planned for that night originally, but after Steph told him she was going on one, he'd been frustrated and agreed to the next girl who asked him.

Hypocritical? Absolutely. He could see that now.

But when one of that guy's friends showed up to tell him Steph wasn't breathing right, Bucky had ditched his date with barely a word. He just left and went to Steph. Luckily, he always kept some of her cigarettes with him just in case.

"I'd never been so happy to kick someone's ass before," Bucky said without thinking, momentarily forgetting that he'd never actually admitted to being the reason her date had shown up to school on Monday with a broken nose and a black eye. But, when Bucky had run into him the day after their date, he just couldn't help himself.

"I'd hoped it was you." Steph sighed. "And that something would change after that." She shrugged and bit into her granola bar. "But you just went on more dates. I couldn't let go, though. Couldn't move on."

Realizing their conversation had taken a somber turn, she smiled and turned her head to kiss his cheek. "But we already established that we were young and stupid." It wasn't his fault that she was so insecure that even now, after all the ways he'd shown and told her that he loved her, she would sometimes still feel a pang of regret and longing.

She decided to change the subject, shifting her attention back to the laptop screen. The video had ended and there were suggestions for what to watch next, but she wasn't feeling any more of it. "I don't really need this when I have you," she said, closing the laptop. "You wanna see my other drawings?"

"Of course it was me," Bucky said simply before turning to press a kiss to her forehead, a soft grin on his face. "Not only was he a piece of shit for making you into some kind of bet-" the way Bucky said that last word showed just how much contempt he had in the idea of Steph being a bet, or a joke, "-but that jackass even stole your damn asthma cigarettes, which put you in actual danger."

Sure, in the 2020s they had much better ways to treat asthma, and they learned that cigarettes of any sort actually made her lungs worse, but at the time, that was the best option they knew of. And, in Bucky's mind, that asshole could have killed her.

When Steph closed the laptop, Bucky just moved so he could set it on his bedside table, immediately done with it, then rolled back over so he could wrap his good arm around Steph's middle. "Sweetheart, I don't think I've ever turned down seeing any of your art."

It soothed something in Steph to hear the way Bucky speak about the incident like it hadn't been decades for him, yet still with the same intensity and conviction. The dumbass really did love her even back then, despite his mixed signals.

She kissed him again, this time on the month, slow and lingering. "Thank you," she said against his lips when they broke off. "For always looking out for me." She smiled. "And for not seeing other people anymore," she couldn't help adding. For all he disparaged himself and thought himself old and broken, she was sure there would be plenty who would want to date and fuck him. She'd seen things on the Internet.

While he put away the laptop, she grabbed her sketchpad again, flipping to the explicit drawings on the second half. She stopped at one with him leaning back into a chair, tie undone and dress shirt unbuttoned, and a tiny blonde kneeling between his legs, hunched over as she sucked his cock. The perspective was from the side, with most of the woman's face hidden by her hair, save for her mouth, where his dick disappeared into. There was only a subtle hint as to her identity: her dress. It had been his favorite.

"I pictured us married a lot," she confessed, blushing. "Like this is you coming home from work."

"Sweetheart, I haven't been on a date with anyone else since I shipped off to England," he told her honestly. No hookups on rare weekends off, no stepping out when he was running around with the Howlies, no second glances at anyone since he escaped HYDRA for good. As soon as he'd had excuses to stop going on dates with women he knew he wasn't interested in, he stopped. And he hadn't regretted it once.

Really, he only regretted not telling the one he did want how he felt sooner.

When he turned his attention back to the sketchbook in Steph's hands, he grinned. Sure, the picture was hot as hell and drawn amazingly well, but he wanted to point out something else when he spotted what she'd drawn herself wearing. "You know, that dress was the same color as your eyes?" he said, turning his head so he could see the eyes in question. "So they always looked extra bright when you wore it." Plus, it also just... hugged her in flattering ways.

Bucky shifted then, slouching down on the bed a bit so he could look at the sketchbook with his chin on her shoulder. He just wanted to be close to her. "I pictured us married so much that I decided I was gonna tell you how I felt and propose when I got home."

"Really? Maybe they brought it with them." Steph had taken good care of her clothes so she didn't have to buy new ones, rotating through and mix-and-matching a couple of pieces. The dress in question was still part of her wardrobe by the time Cap had sent her off to the future, so it should be in the suitcases if Bucky had a hand in choosing what to bring.

Anyway, she laughed softly at the realization that she'd never really known the colors of her clothes. "I can wear it again if you like it so much," she teased. Maybe they could even reenact her sketches, because it was a whole series.

She flipped the page, to the next drawing. He was topless and barefoot now. He stood behind her with his mouth to her ear while he had a hand shoved under the neckline of her dress and the other under her skirt, bunching it up at the front. Even without showing where his hands actually touched, or her face, as it was obscured again by her hair, the scene looked hot as hell. The little details made all the difference: one of her hands gripping his over her dress, on her chest; her head tilted back and her little gaping mouth; her panties caught on her ankles.

"We'll have to look through your stuff tomorrow and see," Bucky said with a grin. Aside from maybe taking a shower, he didn't plan on doing much of anything outside of the bed for the rest of the night.

When she turned the page the grin shifted into more of a smirk. "See, this drawing is hotter than the porn you picked for us to watch tonight," he said, chuckling softly against her ear. "But that might be because it's you in the picture."

It'll be hotter when Steph is the one blindfolded and with her hands tied. After seeing her interest in that video, Bucky might even look into getting some sort of toy to use on her while she's blindfolded.

"So you're not weirded out that I drew all these?" At the time when they were only supposed to be friends? Must be weird to be the object of your best friend's fantasies. Or by the realization, based on the sketches, that Steph was horny as fuck, despite generally looking like a harmless wisp of a woman?

Probably not, but she had to ask anyway.

She turned to the next pages to show him the progression of that series of sketches. Her bent over on a table or something, the emphasis on her hands clawing across the surface. Her thighs framing his face as he licked her pussy. Her breasts on the foreground, as though the sketch was viewed from her eyes, with him kneeling between her legs, holding his cock as he spilled on her.

Bucky was probably glad Cap's secret sketchpad never made it to the Smithsonian.

"Steph, I would be a huge hypocrite if I was weirded out by your drawings," Bucky told her with a roll of his eyes. "I might not have been drawing it cause I can't draw for shit, but I was definitely thinking these sorts of things." But while the focus of most of her pictures was clearly on him, the focus of Bucky's thoughts was all Steph.

But, he continued to grin as he looked at the drawings with his chin on Steph's shoulder, taking in the details of each page as she revealed them. "We've already done a lot of these, you know," he pointed out. "Maybe not in those close, but we've done the... activities."

Steph finished her granola bar and set the wrapper aside. Then, giggling, she turned her head to press a kiss to Bucky's cheek. "I know. Dreams do come true," she teased. Even the future she'd dreamed of while sketching that kiss on Coney Island had come true, in some way. She was happy. He seemed happy enough, too.

She put the sketchpad away after showing him the last couple drawing he hadn't seen. "You know," she said suddenly, remembering something he'd said, "you can't draw for shit, but you're really good with a camera." She wasn't only referring to the pictures he'd taken of her in bed, though she thought of those a lot.

Shrugging, Bucky moved so he was lying stretched out beside her, one arm still slung over her waist. He no longer needed to sit up to look at the book with her, so why not get comfortable again?

"Cameras are easy," he told her matter-of-factly. "You're just... I don't know. Taking a picture of what's already there." He'd always enjoyed taking pictures of the things and times he wanted to remember, but he never really thought there was anything special about it. It was what he was taking pictures of that he liked, not the pictures themselves.

That's why he'd taken so many pictures of Steph over the years.

Steph follows suit, but she lays her head on his chest as she settles horizontally on the bed, her feet dangling over the side. "I like the pictures you took of us," she tells him. She could talk about image composition and framing and all that, but that wasn't what was important.

She reaches up to run a finger along his lower lip, hesitating for a moment before finally daring to press further, "You okay? I mean, you and her, you good now?" She wanted to give him his privacy, but if there was something that bothered him, she wants to be able to do something, even if it's just to listen. Their conversation seemed to have been a lot more heated and emotional than hers with her best friend had been.

Bucky pressed a soft kiss to Steph's head before starting to comb his fingers through her long hair. "All my favorite pictures have been of you," he admitted, a soft smile on his face. It was the truth, though. Ever since he got his first camera, Bucky had taken every excuse to take a picture of his best friend. She didn't always agree to them, so occasionally he'd even snuck one here and there. Like the photo of her he'd kept in his pocket watch when he shipped off to war.

The smile faltered a bit at her question, though, and he sighed. "We'll be okay. It might just take a minute," he started. "Apparently, she didn't realize it just might come off as abandoning me to go find a non-broken Bucky when she pulled that stunt." And even though she'd explained that wasn't what she was doing, it still felt that way. That might ease over time, but he was pretty sure that would always be in the back of his mind when it came to the Steph that had become Captain America.

"But it's alright. I got you out of the whole thing, didn't I? And I wouldn't trade you for anything."

A strange expression flitted across Steph's face for a second. Like how you didn't realize you came off as abandoning me for better women, she thought, but didn't say. This wasn't about her, and besides, that was all in the past. She would have to learn to move on from that.

"You got me," was what she said, smiling. Yeah, she thought it had been a shitty move, but she understood Cap and forgave her, because they were the same person despite their differences in experience and she knew Cap would never forgive herself.

She leaned forward to give him a soft kiss. "It must've been hard, but thanks for hearing her out." She never told him about what she learned in Cap's journals; she figured it wouldn't change anything, only make him feel awful, and he didn't need that added burden after everything.

"He asked if I wanted to go back," she continued, lowkey switching the subject, "but he kind of already expected that I didn't. Would it be alright if he and I hang out sometime? Just lunch and maybe the library. I wanna show him some history books." She'd take her best friend to the Cap exhibit in the Smithsonian if it wasn't in another state, but alas.

"Of course I heard her out. I think... I think both of us needed that conversation." Even though it was painful as hell for the both of them.

"I don't mind you hanging out with him. You need more people than just me, anyway," Bucky began, sighing as he reached up to rub at his eyes with one hand. They had no way of knowing which way the trial would go, even with Captain America herself on his side, and it would be awful if it went in the bad direction and Steph was just left her on her own. Which brought his mind back around to another thing she'd said.

"You... know I wouldn't force you to stay here if you wanted to go back, right?" he asked, voice quiet. "I might not like it, and I might try to convince you otherwise, but if you want to go back..." He couldn't even finish that sentence, but the meaning was clear. Now that they knew it was actually an option, if she wanted to go she could. He would hate it, and being left again might destroy him, but he wouldn't make her stay with him if she'd be happier elsewhere.

Steph looked at Bucky like he'd lost his mind. "I ain't going anywhere," she said simply and without hesitation. Then she sat up, but it was just so she could get on top of him, draping herself like a blanket. "I'm staying right here, because you're here. I made up my mind after our first night together. But I was gonna let you go, if you wanted her back."

Not that there was ever anything between them, was there? Steph knew Cap would never have left otherwise.

"If the trial goes south, we'll figure something out." She'd already given it some thought. Cap took him on the run once, right? And there was this place called Madripoor that had no extradition treaty. "She came back for it though. I don't think she intends to lose." Especially after he'd told Cap about feeling abandoned. He didn't say it to Steph, but even she felt the weight of it hanging over her.

Hearing that almost felt like a weight lifting off Bucky's shoulders, even as Steph draped herself across his body. But, hers was a weight he'd gladly carry any time.

Not that there was much of it. She was tiny, after all.

"I'm sticking with you, Steph," he said, the relief clear in his voice. Deep down, he knew it might have sounded a little harsh, but it was true that he and the older Steph probably had too much darkness in the both of them. Finding their less traumatized counterparts was, honestly, probably the best for both of them. Hopefully, it was good for the younger Steph and Bucky, too.

"For the record, the government doesn't listen to her just cause of that shield she carried," Bucky pointed out. "If they did, she wouldn't have had to spend a couple years on the run." Sighing softly, Bucky pulled one of their blankets over their bodies. "We'll work it out, though. Whatever happens."

"Whatever happens." Steph tilted her head to kiss Bucky's jaw. "I already have a plan anyway, just in case. I just need to talk to her friends."

Actually, she was pretty sure Cap had an emergency protocol too. She seemed to have thought of everything except how Bucky would've felt being left behind, but then she was operating on the assumption that he didn't want her. Steph understood; she'd have been so confused if she was with him for years on the front lines without anything having changed. It really was tragic, the pair of them. And so dumb.

"I know it's hard when you're hurting," she said after a moment, back to resting her head on his chest, "but please believe me that I don't wanna be where you aren't. My life is here now. You are my life now." It wasn't hard to say such things now that they had nothing to fear about the different layers of their relationship. They could still be great friends even as they had sex everyday and lusted after each other.

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