Chapter Text
The night drapes itself over the ruins with a level of dramatic flair that would embarrass most theater majors. Shadows spill through collapsed archways, slinking over stone that remembers more history than is strictly polite. The ruins are doing the absolute most tonight.
The wind sighs meaningfully through collapsed archways. Shadows dramatize every movement as though auditioning for the role of “ominous foreshadowing” in a very pretentious play. Ancient runes blink awake on half-buried stones, flickering like tired old librarians muttering, not this again.
The ruins are trying very hard to maintain their dignity. They really are.
But it’s difficult when a young wizard is currently being pressed against a centuries-old pillar by a man who’s kissing him like the world is ending and this is his favorite part.
Steve makes a sound - something between a gasp and a prayer - and the pillar hums in sympathy, runes flickering like embarrassed fireflies.
Bucky doesn’t notice the pillar. Steve barely notices oxygen.
He’s too focused on the mouth moving against his, the grip on his hips, the heat of a body that should still be awkward from relearning how to walk, let alone do… this.
But Bucky kisses him with skill. Confidence. Hunger.
A very practiced hunger.
Steve’s magic flares, lighting up his skin in soft blue-white, sparks drifting between their bodies like stars in the dark. Bucky drinks those sparks in - figuratively, Steve thinks, although it should be noted that what Steve thinks isn’t always correct.
“Missed you,” Steve whispers, breath shivering against Bucky’s lips.
Bucky lifts his head just enough to look at him properly. His eyes are too dark, too deep, too knowing for someone who was a cat until recently.
“You have no idea,” he murmurs, voice so low it shakes dust from the rafters.
Steve shivers like the words touched him physically.
He pulls Bucky back in with a needy sound, kissing him clumsily, greedily, magic sparking under his skin like it’s trying to keep up. Bucky catches the kiss and deepens it, slow and devastating, guiding Steve effortlessly, like he’s done this with him a thousand times.
(He hasn’t. Steve would definitely remember that. Wouldn’t he?)
Bucky’s hands slide up Steve’s sides, deliberate and possessive, the chill of the metal leaving a burning trail over Steve’s heated skin. Steve tries to breathe but the air is thick and hot, wrapped in the electric cackle of their power tangling together like two storms flirting.
“Bucky–” Steve whispers, head falling back as Bucky’s mouth drags along his throat.
“Say it again.”
Steve does, helpless. “Bucky…”
The ruins shift. The shadows stir. Something ancient and invisible stretches lazily, enjoying the sound more than it should.
Steve doesn’t notice.
Steve is very, very busy.
Bucky presses him harder against the pillar, lips trailing heat along his jaw. Steve’s hands scrabble for purchase, sliding over muscle he swears wasn’t there last week, yet still feels so familiar.
“Slow down– I’m–” Steve tries.
Bucky kisses the words out of him.
Magic pulses between their bodies, Steve glowing brighter, Bucky drinking it in with a soft, satisfied sound that makes Steve’s knees buckle. Bucky catches him easily, too easily, holding him up with a surety that makes the shadows curl in delight.
“Easy,” he murmurs, voice molten, coaxing. “I’ve got you.”
Steve, trembling, flushed, utterly undone, believes him without question.
Steve makes mistakes all the time.
The ruins have given up all pretense of dignity. The night holds its breath. Two kinds of magic snarl sweetly around each other, all heat and want and something sharp beneath it.
Steve’s lips part on another gasp. Bucky smiles against his throat, slow, dark, and satisfied.
The hook sinks in. The trap closes gently. And Steve… Steve is too overwhelmed to feel anything but pleasure.
There is heat and magic and coils of shadow that Steve doesn’t notice, too focused on the feel of Bucky’s hands on his skin. Bucky’s hand - his human hand, flesh and blood and magic - slips lower, palming Steve’s cock through his pants, and Steve can’t stop the moan that rips from his throat.
Steve doesn’t see the shadows pulse like something pleased.
The night bends inward, the stars wink away slowly, enveloped by that spreading darkness.
Bucky presses in closer, his breath a soft, taunting drag against Steve’s jaw. His fingers curl with a slow, devastating purpose, rolling the pressure just enough to make Steve’s knees threaten treason. Steve claws blindly for his balance - on Bucky’s shoulder, on the column, on anything that isn’t the helpless sound trying to claw it’s way out of him again.
Bucky laughs, soft and dark and knowing and altogether too delighted.
“Easy,” he murmurs, like Steve’s the one with teeth and arcane remnants flickering beneath his skin.
Steve’s hips twitch anyway.
Bucky rewards it. His grip tightens, the heel of his palm dragging up in a way that makes Steve see a burst of pale light behind his tightly closed eyes. The magic around them hums, coils of shadow stroking up Steve’s spine as if echoing Bucky’s touch, sharing the same hunger, the same aim.
The air tastes like stormwind and something older.
Steve drags in another breath, sharp and clumsy, like a man’s first gasping breath after being dragged from the depths of the lake. “Bucky–”
“Yeah,” Bucky murmurs, sounding just as wrecked as Steve feels. “I know.”
His other hand slides under Steve’s shirt, fingers spreading over his ribs, warm and possessive. Every inch he touches feels claimed. Every inch he hasn’t touched yet feels impatient.
Shadows thicken behind him, half-formed shapes watching like the world itself is leaning closer.
Steve doesn’t notice. Not really. Not when he can feel Bucky’s thumbs rubbing circles low on his abdomen, not when his mouth finds Steve’s throat, teeth grazing in a way that is absolutely deliberate.
Steve’s head drops back with a sound that isn’t quite a word.
Bucky smiles against his skin. “You make the sweetest noises,” he whispers, like the shadows need to hear it too.
Magic trembles, eager. Steve can feel it building, coiling inside him, wanting to be released – a pressure beneath his ribs, a shimmer under his skin like he’s been dipped in starlight and dragged back out dripping.
There’s the sound of fabric tearing, abrupt and shockingly loud in the quiet, and Steve barely manages a startled inhale before cool night air rushes over his newly bared skin. His shirt falls away in ragged pieces, his breath catching as goosebumps ripple across him.
He doesn’t even know if Bucky used his hands.
He doesn’t see the shadows ripple like living things.
Bucky’s palm skates up Steve’s chest, slow and reverent and hungry all at once, metal fingertips tracing the shape of him like he’s memorizing every line. He presses in, pinning Steve firmly to the column–no, the wall of the ruins now, though Steve isn’t sure when they moved–as if the darkness is helping to hold him in place.
Steve shudders. Hard.
The magic inside him answers, sparking up his spine.
Bucky’s voice is a low, pleased hum. “Didn’t mean to ruin your clothes,” he murmurs, sounding so unrepentant it borders on sinful. “But I want you.” His hand drifts lower, following the line of muscle, mapping heat with cool. “All of you.”
The shadows pool around their feet, stretching higher, curling around their ankles like smoke with a mind of its own.
Steve doesn’t notice. He’s too focused on Bucky’s mouth on his throat, too overwhelmed by the way Bucky’s hands seem to be everywhere at once.
“Bucky–” His voice breaks, the magic in him flaring like a star caught behind his ribs.
Bucky pulls back to look at him, eyes dark and bright all at once, pupils blown wide like he’s drinking in every inch of Steve’s bare skin.
“Let it go,” he whispers, thumb brushing over Steve’s hipbone. “I’ve got you.”
And then Bucky… vanishes.
Not a step back, not a shift in the shadows. One blink, two, and the warm weight of him is gone, leaving Steve to blink at the empty night like the world hiccuped.
“Bucky?” he breathes, bewildered.
The dark doesn’t answer in words, but it stirs. The shadows pulse once, like they’re laughing at him.
Then Bucky’s hands are suddenly back on him, gripping his calves, his knees. Steve barely has time to gasp before there’s another vicious rip of fabric, the unmistakable sound of his pants being ripped apart by magic alone. Cold night air rushes up between his thighs, showering over newly exposed skin.
That was absolutely not done with human hands.
Steve’s face burns, his pulse vaulting into his throat, but any chance of embarrassment is obliterated in the next heartbeat, because Bucky moves.
Because something hot and wet and devastating closes around him.
Steve shouts, the sound ripped raw from the center of his chest.
His knees nearly buckle. His vision whites out at the edges. The world narrows to heat–slick, pulsing, obscene heat– Bucky’s mouth working him over with a hunger that borders on feral, reverent, both.
Steve grabs blindly for the wall behind him, fingers scraping stone as his magic slams upward like it’s been waiting for exactly this, for him, for Bucky dropping to his knees in the dark like he was born there.
“B-Bucky,” he chokes, because breathing is suddenly optional, but saying his name isn’t.
Bucky doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t even pretend to be gentle.
Shadows coil around Bucky’s shoulders, licking at his back like a cloak alive, like they’re steadying him so he can keep devouring Steve with single-minded focus.
Steve’s head falls back, a broken sound tearing out of him, his magic surging toward the point where Bucky touches him.
It coils there, bright and frantic, like it wants to leap out of his body and into Bucky’s hands.
Something cool and slick presses behind his balls, strange and unexpected, but Steve is so far gone he can’t even form the start of a question. The night sways around him, shadows thickening and thinning like breathing.
Then Bucky’s finger slips inside him.
Steve’s entire body jerks.
The breath he tries to drag in shatters halfway, dissolving into a sound he’s never made before in his life. His knees threaten to give out –again–and he clutches at the wall like the stone is the only thing keeping him tethered to the world.
The finger moves, slow, impossibly gentle, as if Bucky is mapping new territory with reverence instead of greed. Each stroke brushes against something inside him, a hidden spark, a nerve that sends starbursts flaring behind Steve’s eyes.
“Oh–oh god–” Steve gasps, voice cracking, because he truly didn’t know a person could feel like this, could come undone in these impossible ways.
Bucky’s mouth doesn’t leave him. His hand doesn’t falter. His finger curls again, deliberate, finding that same devastating point and pressing–
Steve’s magic surges so wildly he feels it arc to his fingertips, his toes, the edge of every nerve. It feels like the world is pushing light into him and pulling it back out in the same breath.
The shadows ripple around them, trembling like they’ve breath to hold.
Bucky hums, low and pleased, the vibration shivering through Steve in ways that make his vision blue.
“Sweet,” Bucky murmurs against him, voice almost lost in the sound of Steve coming apart. “So sweet when you open for me.”
Steve is still drifting, still half-drowned in the golden tide of his own magic, when Bucky’s hands return. Firm. Intent. They slide up his sides, over his ribs, and then they’re guiding him, shaping him, turning him.
The world tilts.
Suddenly Steve is facing stone - wall or column, he can’t tell. Everything is sensation: the cool bite of stone against his palms, the rough texture brushing his chest as he steadies himself, the night wind licking across his still-bared skin.
And behind him–
Bucky.
The heat of him. The presence of him. The weight of him crowding in without hesitation, without doubt.
Steve shivers.
Bucky’s mismatched hands settle on his hips, one warm flesh, calloused and sure; the other touched by old magic, fingers that feel too precise, too knowing, like they remember all the things that Bucky himself has forgotten. Their grip grounds him even as it sends another tremor racing up his spine.
The shadows still curl around their ankles, curious.
Steve feels the brush of fabric next, Bucky’s pants, coarse and worn, dragging against the backs of Steve’s thighs as Bucky steps in closer. Closer still. Until there’s no space between them, just heat and breath and the faint crackle of magic bleeding from Steve into the night air.
Steve swallows hard, forehead resting against stone.
“Bucky,” he manages, voice wrecked and low, like something molten is lodged in his throat.
A soft laugh curls against his ear. “Still with me?”
Barely. Gods, barely.
Bucky leans in, chest pressed against Steve’s back, his mouth grazing the curve of Steve’s shoulder. “Good,” he whispers, his fingers tightening. “Because I’m not done with you.”
Magic prickles over Steve’s skin in answer, sparking like static caught between them, eager and reckless and wanting.
There’s a moment–just a breath, just a heartbeat–where everything goes impossibly still.
A tiny spark of blue-green light drifts down from nowhere, hovering in the air like a slow-falling ember. It flickers across Steve’s vision, blurring his senses, making the world swim.
And then–
He feels the blunt head of Bucky’s cock press against him.
His breath stutters.
The pressure builds, insistent and unstoppable, and Steve’s body isn’t ready. He knows it, he feels it. But he doesn’t want it to stop. The magic flooding his veins is too bright, too consuming, the moment too sharp and overwhelming.
The breach is a shock.
Too much. Too soon. His fingers claw at the stone, nails scraping, tears pricking hot at the corners of his eyes.
The stretch is a lightening bolt of sensation–pain and pleasure tangled so tightly he can’t separate one from the other. His whole body trembles, caught between arching back and pulling away and pushing into it.
But then Bucky’s teeth scrape against his throat, sharp enough to claim, soft enough not to break skin. His hands are everywhere, one sliding up Steve’s stomach to steady him, the other gripping his hip like he’s anchoring them both.
Steve shudders, overwhelmed, stuffed full and shaking.
He wants to tell him to stop. He wants to tell him to wait. Both words slam against the back of his teeth, but the magic has him too undone to shape anything but breathless sounds.
Because something is wrong.
Something in the atmosphere shifts, subtle but unmistakable. A ripple. A shadow. A prickle down Steve’s spine that cuts through the haze.
Bucky wouldn't do this.
Not like this.
Not with the pain spiking so sharply through him when one whispered spell could ease it, when a touch of magic from Bucky’s hand could melt the edge away.
And Steve knows.
He knows in his bones, in the tremor in the air, in the way the shadows pulse like a second heartbeat behind him. But he’s too far gone to stop.
His magic–bright and naive and violently eager–surges toward Bucky even as the wrongness coils tighter around them. Every thrust, every drag of heat, pulls at something deep inside Steve. Not just his body, but his core. His magic. The center of him.
He gasps, fingers fumbling against the stone, because the pleasure is rising too fast, building into something incandescent. But laced through it, woven into the rhythm, there’s a tug. A siphoning. A delicate, merciless draw of power pulled straight from the well of him.
“Bucky–” he tries, but it comes out broken, swallowed by a moan he can’t bite back.
Behind him, Bucky moves with a frenzy that has nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with need, ancient, desperate need. His hands tighten on Steve’s hips, bruising and steadying all at once. His breath ghosts over Steve’s shoulder, shaking but intent.
Steve feels another pull, hears the shadows whisper.
His magic rushes out of him in a dizzying sweep–heat, light, something vital– flowing into Bucky as if dragged on a hook. Pleasure crashes over him at the same time, confusing everything, making his knees buckle.
He’s unraveling. Coming apart. Giving too much.
“Wait–” he breathes, but his voice is thin, fading under the tidal wave of sensation and loss.
Bucky doesn’t wait.
He presses deeper, faster, the siphoning growing sharper, more possessive, until Steve’s vision swims and his magic flickers like a candle about to gutter.
The pleasure crests–white-hot, blinding–before collapsing into a hollow ache as the last surge of his magic is pulled free.
Steve slumps forward, boneless, barely aware of the cool stone catching him. His legs give out entirely, and he sinks to the ground in a trembling sprawl, chest heaving, the world tilting in and out of focus.
Behind him, Bucky goes still.
For a heartbeat, the night holds its breath.
Then he withdraws, slow and deliberate, like he’s savoring the echo of Steve’s magic still humming in his veins. His fingers slip from Steve’s body, leaving ghost-warm impressions that feel too intimate and too empty all at once.
Steve tries to push himself up, and fails.
Through the haze, he sees movement.
Bucky straightens. Rolls his shoulders.
When he turns, he’s haloed in darkness, shadows coiling around him like pets greeting their master, curling up his legs, brushing his arms, slipping over his skin in adoration.
But his eyes are not Bucky’s. Not gentle, not soft. They’re lit with stolen power, icy blue and dangerous and wholly unrepentant.
He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t look back.
Steve lies there, trembling, cheek presses to the cool stone, breath shallow and uneven. His magic flickers weakly under his skin, like embers struggling against ash. The world feels too big, too dark, too hollow where something bright used to be.
There’s a shift behind him, a soft rustle, the whisper of fabric.
He hears footsteps, and for one fragile heartbeat, hope stirs in Steve’s chest.
Bucky.
Maybe… maybe there’s still enough of him left inside that shadow-drenched form to care. To help him. To–
Warmth settles over him.
A cloak–thick, heavy, smelling faintly of forest and smoke and something older drapes across Steve’s bare back and shoulders. It’s placed gently, carefully, like hands that remember tenderness even if their owner no longer does.
Steve’s breath shudders out of him. He can’t lift his head. Can barely open his eyes. But he feels the heat of the cloak protecting him from the night, from the cold stone, from being left completely exposed.
For a moment, just one, Bucky lingers above him.
A hand hovers near Steve’s hair, close enough that Steve can feel the ghost of warmth but not close enough to touch. As if he wants to. As if he can’t. As if the war inside him is already lost, but some instinct still aches for what it can’t keep.
Then the hand curls back into a fist.
The shadows gather, rippling as though they’re impatient.
Without a sound, Bucky straightens, the dark circling him like loyal hounds. His silhouette is tall, commanding, wickedly calm now that Steve’s magic hums in his veins.
When he turns this time, he doesn’t hesitate.
He walks away, the shadows parting before him and closing in behind, swallowing his form step by step until the night takes him completely, leaving Steve draped in the borrowed cloak, collapsed on the ground, shaking from the loss and the echo of pleasure, wrapped in the smallest, strangest mercy from the man he thought he knew.
Steve’s eyes flutter, heavy lids struggling against the pull of the night. His chest heaves, each breath shallow and trembling, not just from the chill, but the ache of absence, the way the air feels empty without Bucky’s presence pressing down on him, even as he hates the man who walked away.
He curls slightly into the cloak, as though it could fill the void. The stone beneath him is hard, unyielding, yet for a moment he imagines it’s warmth, imagined hands, imagined everything he’s just lost.
His vision swims. The shadows - real ones, this time, not the pet shadows that had been circling Bucky - stretch and flicker at the edge of his vision. The muted hum of power in his veins fades into a distant echo, a whisper.
The world tilts. His lids finally surrender. The cloak slips further around him and Steve’s body goes slack. Heart still racing, mind still clinging desperately to the memory of heat and touch, he drifts into darkness, hoping, praying, that when he opens his eyes again, it was all just a dream.
Author's Note:
My original draft of this fic had Sam as a crow, but as it has since been pointed out that there are racist elements attached to this, I have made some slight changes. It doesn't change the story greatly; however, I meant no disrespect, and ignorance is not an excuse for including elements that some people may find wrong, especially not once it's been pointed out.
My apologies, and I hope this hasn't ruined anything for you.