#profuse blushing

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Now, Bucky looks far from cared-for. Steve doesn't know the extent of what Hydra's done to him--Natasha swears she'll get him the records, but until then, he can deduce a large part of it. Bucky looks like the product of overwork and no more care than it would take to keep him physically functional. He's obviously been treated to no more maintenance than any other piece of military machinery, and it makes Steve ache somewhere deep. For the first few nights Bucky stays over, Steve doesn't catch a wink of sleep.  Much to Steve's relief, though, Bucky takes to his attention as the weeks go by. Twenty-first century food is rich and calorie-laden, and Bucky's ravenous all the time. He eats like tomorrow he'll be put back into cryo-freeze, and his weight creeps up at a steady pace as he settles in at Steve's apartment.  Sometimes, as he watches Bucky gorge himself like a man starved, he wonders if it might drudge up memories of the past. They used to do this together, the two of them--when they could afford it. Overindulge past the point of comfort, hand-feed each other only to wind up stuffed and dizzy in each others' arms as both an act of affection and a big fuck-you to the Great Depression.  Once Bucky's calmed down enough to let Steve within a foot of him, Steve decides to try and jog his memory. Bucky's pacing the kitchen while he takes lunch, holding a box of some cheesy takeout pasta, when Steve cautiously walks up beside him, takes the fork out of his hand, and scoops up a sizeable bite. "I wanna try something." "Get your own," Bucky starts to say, but then Steve carefully nudges the fork into Bucky's mouth and Bucky's eyes flutter shut as he swallows.  When he opens his eyes, Steve thinks he might see a flash of recognition in them. It's gone as quickly as it comes, and Steve can't say for certain whether he really saw what he thinks he did, but he's calling it progress--he's always been the hopeful sort.  - For the first month or so of shuffling around Steve's apartment, Bucky's past is a vacant, intangible haze floating somewhere in the back of his mind. He knows his name, the year, and that he's safe, because Steve keeps repeating it whenever he gets jumpy.  He knows he's been through a lot, because Steve keeps stressing his recovery.  And even though their conversations are succinct and full of smalltalk, he knows, whatever battle he and Steve might have fought before he pulled an unconscious Steve from the river, Steve isn't the enemy. How could he be, when he's looking after Bucky the way he is? Indulging his every whim, sometimes hand-feeding him, once Bucky's nerves settle down enough for him to let the blond touch him at all... He remembers remembering. He knows there's something about his past with Steve that his conscious mind isn't letting him in on, but he doesn't know what he managed to unlock the last time, before they froze him again--Jesus Christ, he thinks when that particular realization hits him over the head like a bag of bricks. He had a life--he doesn't remember what it was like, but he had one, until a bunch of assholes with earpieces locked him in a box for safekeeping.  It's the cranberry-orange muffins that finally get through to him. Steve picks up a half-dozen from a nearby bakery and they have breakfast together on the living room sofa. Steve's got a window that faces the sunrise, and Bucky finds it all calming--the view of the open sky, Steve's presence beside him.  Steve finishes one of the muffins and Bucky puts away three before he's comfortably full--they're pretty sizable--but when Steve nudges him and asks if he thinks he can go four for four, he starts peeling the wrapper off another. Something about the flavor stirs a memory, and there's something familiar about Steve's marked interest in feeding him and doting on him. He doesn't have much more than an instinct to go on, but he pursues it anyway.  He scarfs half of it down no problem, but just as the dull ache of satiety starts to finally hit him, so does the flashback.

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The day after Christmas, Steve came in with a bag full of fruitcakes that would have been discarded, only the economy was at an all-time low and throwing away food was the latest cardinal sin. "Hope you're hungry, Buck," he said, "'Cause tonight we eat like kings."  "One of those nights, huh?" Bucky asked, perking up. It was a rare night when they put their little tradition into practice. Times were tough, and they couldn't afford to regularly waste food on their weird sexual interests, but that just made it all the more special.  "Dinner's served," said Steve, handing Bucky the bag. Bucky picked out a fruitcake, broke it apart, and shoved a hunk in his mouth, smirking at the flush of desire that rose in Steve's cheeks.  "These are gross," he said with his mouth full, but he carried on, because it was less about the quality of the fruitcake and more about the intimacy of the act.  He usually paced when he ate--it was a bad childhood habit his mother had always griped at him for. But he didn't get far before Steve stopped him, pulling him close with an arm around his waist. With his free hand, he broke off a piece of fruitcake and brought it to Bucky's mouth.  "Easy there, Steve--we've got all night ahead of us and a bag full of fruitcakes," Bucky laughed after sucking the crumbs off Steve's thumb. He broke off a piece of cake and fed it to Steve, who swallowed it down with a blissed-out expression as if it didn't taste like garbage.  The fruit was sickly sweet and the cake part was just dry, but Steve's hand felt good, kneading and teasing at Bucky's waist, and he ate with vigor as he anticipated what Steve's mouth would feel like there, later on in the evening. In public, the closest they ever got to showing the true nature of their feelings for each other was gentle play-fighting: mussing each other's hair, punching each other lightly in the arm. But behind the closed door of their flat, they shared the tender moments that Bucky lived for.  He liked it best when Steve was feeding him--touching him everywhere, telling him how wonderfully soft he felt and gently coaxing him to eat just a bit more, "C'mon, Buck, we won't get to eat like this in training…"  It was partly an overindulgence thing--with poverty came deprivation, and deprivation lent itself to a craving for decadence.  But more than that, there was just something about the thought of Steve filling him up to the brim with love. 

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