Chapter Text
He takes the attic rooms for the light.
He'd seen the sign in the window one night, illuminated by the reedy streetlights as he stumbled out of his regular bar, clinging to Sam and coughing from the cigarette smoke when he could take a breath between laughs. Jazz spilled out behind them like the wine some fairy had stumbled into Steve's shirt and all over their table, and they'd stopped under a lamppost for Sam to roll a cigarette where he could see his tobacco in the darkness.
"I bet that place has a skylight." Steve had pointed drunkenly at the white card in a nearby window, advertising the top floor apartment for rent. "If I set up on my own then Stark couldn't keep scalping me on the rent."
"I told you that nine hundred times." Sam had rolled his eyes as he ran the edge of the cigarette paper over his tongue, patting Steve's shoulder when he finished rolling. "Tomorrow, buddy. They're not gonna rent to you if you wake them up in the middle of the night."
The following morning, hungover as hell and struggling to try and look like the sort of respectable guy you'd want to rent to, Steve had secured the rooms and Sam had helped him haul his art supplies out of the shitty apartment he'd been sharing with three other guys. The new rooms were bare, stark, but airy and full of light from the (correctly predicted) skylight. Steve set up his easel and put an ad for a model in the grocery store window the very next day.
Three days later, he gets a response.
A soft knock at his door draws him away from nervously adjusting the backdrop he's set up directly under the bright shaft of sun pouring through the skylight. The elderly shopkeeper told him a young man had taken the card, when he called in for milk this morning, and Steve has been anxiously waiting for his model to call ever since. He's got a gallery spot to fill in three weeks, and the large canvas will take enough time to perfect that he needs to get started right away.
He opens the door (it always creaks fit to burst his eardrums, he needs to oil the hinges sometime before he loses his hearing altogether), unashamed in his rolled-up shirtsleeves and paint-flecked trousers because he's about to ask the guy to take his shirt off so propriety isn't a big issue, and stops dead in his tracks.
The man standing in his hallway isn't handsome, he's beautiful. A few inches shorter than Steve, he has carefully-sculpted dark hair and intense blue eyes framed with thick lashes, full lips and cheekbones in a contrast of angular and soft that makes Steve's stomach lurch uncomfortably. The guy is wearing the dusty clothes of a labourer, cigarette tucked behind his ear and eyebrows knitting curiously when Steve doesn't immediately say anything.
Oh, fuck. How is Steve going to look at this face for weeks and not humiliate himself?
"This is the modelling job, right?" The guy looks slightly self-conscious all of a sudden, and it's enough to have Steve recover from his aesthetic reverie and usher him inside.
"Yeah, yeah. Come in." He tries to blink the stars out of his eyes as he closes the door behind them and sticks out his hand. "Steve Rogers, I put the ad."
"Bucky Barnes." The guy wipes his hand on his pants before he takes Steve's, shaking it firmly. He's got a lot of nervous energy running through him that he's trying to tamp down, eyes darting around to take the room in, and Steve briefly worries if he's going to be a terrible sitter. "So, uh, what's the deal here?"
"You ever sat before?" Steve leads him through to the part of the rooms he's dedicated as studio space. It's small, but there's a threadbare couch in the corner and his stuff set up near the backdrop. Bucky takes it all in with an appraising nod.
"At the art school once or twice. About an hour at a time." He tugs at the corner of his pants pocket anxiously, the nervous tell of a smoker without a cigarette between his fingers.
"This is gonna be a bit longer than that, but you can take breaks." Steve smiles, trying to be reassuring because an anxious model is a difficult model. "And you're gonna have your shirt off. That okay?"
"Uh, yeah. Sure. No problem." His fingers twitch again and Bucky plucks the cigarette from behind his ear. There's a control to his movements that might be self-consciousness, Steve wouldn't be surprised since a lot of sitters are uptight in the beginning. "You mind if I smoke?"
"Go ahead. Just crack a window, my lungs ain't the best." Steve waves vaguely towards the window and crosses the room to get his paints set up. His planned colour scheme has totally gone out the window now he's got a look at his model and had his mind blown six ways to Sunday. "This might take me a couple weeks altogether, you okay sitting that long?"
"Forty cents an hour and you can take as long as you want, pal." Bucky is actually leaning out of the window to smoke when Steve turns back to look at him. It's an oddly touching gesture, because people generally think he's being dramatic when he says his lungs are shitty. Nobody's ever not smoked next to him indoors except Sam, until now. "You want me here every day?"
"Yeah, if you're not working around another job." Steve beckons him over to the stool he's set up, a coat rack standing behind it to give him something to lean against. Bucky tosses his smoke out of the window before he slouches over, nerves seemingly slightly calmer. "Take your shirt off and stand up on here, put your arms behind your back like you're tied to the coat rack. You can put your stuff on the couch."
"This isn't some kinda blue comic, is it?" The words are a little cocky, a little forced, and Steve carefully doesn't watch as Bucky strips his shirt off in case he blushes and gives himself away.
"Nah, I'd be paying you fifty cents an hour if you had to get your cock out." It's a flippant statement, supposed to be reassuring, but Bucky is bright red all the way down to his navel when Steve turns back, and his expression softens slightly at the sight. "It's a portrait of Saint Sebastian, you know the type?"
"Arrows, right?" Bucky's forearms are darker than his chest, stark and tanned as the V in a print of his open shirt collar against the pale flesh hidden from the sun. He must have been recently laid off wherever he was working outdoors, tan barely faded and a few glints of lighter brown in his hair catching the light as he moves into position. "Arms behind my back like this?"
"Yeah, perfect. Is that comfortable enough to hold for a while?" Steve takes a moment to assess his pose as Bucky nods, chest pushed slightly forwards, hairless but for a dusting of dark curls disappearing into his worn pants, shoulders dropped back against the coat rack and arms crossed behind his back. He has the lithe muscle of someone working hard and not eating enough, and Steve has to fight down his reaction as his face threatens to heat up like coal. "Alright, stay still."
They're quiet for the first hour, little snatches of conversation swelling up here and there only to ebb again like a tide. Bucky spends a lot of his time looking at Steve when he thinks he can't be seen, only to turn his eyes to the skylight when the observed is caught observing. The sun turns his eyes translucent, like cheap stained glass trying to pass as sapphire, and Steve paints a swatch to remind himself of their colour before he's even finished with his sketch.
They take a break once the sketch is half done, Steve brewing murky coffee on the stove while Bucky rolls out his shoulders and hurriedly pulls his undershirt back on. Steve politely doesn't ask about whatever job he lost, but Bucky is very interested in the whole process of making art and before Steve realises what's happening he's lost half an hour rambling about anatomy while Bucky listens, chin on his hand and totally enraptured. Staring at Steve's mouth like he's wondering what it would feel like against his own.
It's not like Steve hasn't hooked up with models before, sometimes the tension created by being alone in a room staring at each other for hours can only be dispelled by a quick roll in the sack, but something about Bucky makes him hold off on closing the gap between them. There's something different about this guy, an air that Steve wants to know better, wants to breathe in and be around for as long as possible before, like every fleeting hook-up in the art world, he's gone with the wind. So he holds back, for now.
He calls time around five, when the light has faded enough that he needs to pick things up in the morning. Bucky gets dressed quickly and leaves, collecting his money at the door with a smile and a too-long look into Steve's eyes. Steve has his pants around his knees and his cock in his hand before Bucky's halfway down the street, probably, pulling himself off like a teenager with a time constraint. Maybe holding back from hooking up with his model isn't the easiest idea he's ever had.
At the next sitting, they're taking a break and brewing more bad coffee when Bucky reaches past Steve for cups and accidentally presses against him in the tight space. They both freeze for a moment, before Steve takes a chance and presses back into his body, just a little. Bucky makes a breathless sound in the back of his throat, then he's pulling away and asking Steve some shit about pigment like nothing happened. Steve has to stay at the stove until the coffee's even more over-brewed than usual just so he doesn't embarrass himself by turning around with a boner. Bucky's cheeks are still flushed when he accepts his mug and doesn't quite meet Steve's eyes.
They carry on like this for the next week, the slow car crash of coming together in between Steve trying to get work done and Bucky pulling stupid faces to try and put him off. They learn more about each other, get closer, but that's as far as it goes. Steve pushes, Bucky pulls back. Bucky pushes, Steve reciprocates, and then Bucky pulls back like he's scared of what will happen if he allows himself to cross the line into actually acknowledging that they want to fuck each other's brains out.
It's all very confusing to Steve, which means Sam has to hear about it all the fucking time.
"I'm really not here to listen to your bullshit problems until I get a lot more to drink." Sam rolls his eyes and signals to the waiter for a refill of cheap rum. They're in their usual bar early and he needs to be way more prepared to listen to Steve mooning over this Bucky character again. "I have my own trouble, man. Your problem boils down to whether you bone him now or later, I dunno why you're getting dizzy with this guy."
"Oh yeah? And what are your intense fuckin' problems?" Steve thanks the waiter with a nod when he tops them up, inadvertently checking out the guy's ass as he walks away. Maybe he's just hard up right now, it wouldn't be the first time.
"I'm a black man trying to organise a gallery show outside Harlem without white critics writing about how primitive the art is. That's a problem. What you have is an opportunity." Sam raises his eyebrows pointedly and Steve ducks his head in acquiescence because yeah, okay, that's true. Sam's twice the painter he is and his work flies under the radar in comparison because critics are always the last people to get with the times. "Why don't you just not fuck him until the end of the project? He might be thinking the same thing."
"Because I'm in love, man. I'm totally stuck on this guy." Steve lets his head bang down on the table in frustration to the background of the band tuning up between sets, and Sam pats him on the back of the neck sympathetically. "Every time I try and make a move he backs off."
"Maybe he's not into guys. There are straight people left in this neighbourhood." Even Sam can't keep a straight face when he says that, and Steve picks his head up to look at him incredulously. "Alright, I don't know any, but theoretically they exist."
"I'm telling you, I'm not the only one vamping. He's picking up what I'm putting down, he just won't make the leap."
"Maybe he's got a guy already. Other people must notice this unearthly beauty I keep having to hear about." The level of sarcasm is far higher than someone as nice as Sam should rightly be capable of, and Steve narrows his eyes to glare at him sideways. Maybe he goes a little overboard describing Bucky's looks, Sam can bite him.
"Even if he does, he's flirting back. He almost kissed me the first fuckin' day." He rubs a hand over his face and pushes back the stubborn lock of hair that no amount of hair oil will keep off his forehead, letting out a grunt of frustration when it falls straight back in his eyes again. He stands up, sighing in his most put-upon fashion just to annoy his friend. "You've got no sense of romance. I'm gonna take a leak."
"Maybe you should pick up some trade in there, take the edge off." Sam suggests, ducking Steve's predictable slap to the back of his head with a smirk. Steve regularly rethinks their friendship at moments like this, when all Sam seems to do is drink on his tab and have terrible ideas about anonymous bathroom dick.
The bar is starting to get crowded now the band are playing, and Steve has to alternate between pushing and shoving and carefully navigating his way to the bathroom. It's at times like this, squeezing between a woman with very sharp embroidered beads on her dress and a man who looks like he's probably concealing at least one weapon, that he's relieved he didn't really bulk up muscle-wise when he got taller as a teenager. He's not as skinny as he used to be, but he's still slight enough that he can squeeze through the crowd without upsetting any drinks over anyone who might get him kicked out.
Right before the turn into the tiny corridor that contains the bathrooms, though, he hits a bottleneck. There's a line for the ladies and way too many guys hanging around the bar to do anything but cause a traffic jam of people. Steve gets an elbow to the ribs as someone squeezes past him and he sighs irritably to himself because apparently he becomes invisible at times like this. He lightly touches the shoulder of a woman standing in front of him, blocking his only path to the bathrooms. Her green dress is shabby and slightly frayed at the edges where he touches it to get her attention, probably one of the hookers who hang out here so they don't get bothered before they start working.
"'Scuse me, miss. Can I just—" He's cut off by some sailor shoving past him like he's not even there and he taps on the woman's shoulder again. "Sweetheart, can I get past you here?"
"Oh, sorry." She finally hears him and steps to the side, letting him through the crush. Steve glances over his shoulder to thank her and freezes dead in his tracks.
He painted a swatch of those blue eyes just a week ago.
"Bucky?"
It's definitely Bucky, who turns chalk-white under the powder on his face, the artificial rouge somehow obscene on top of his panic. Not only would Steve know those eyes anywhere, but once he gives the woman more than a second glance he can tell she's a man in a cheap wig, hair pulled around his face unfashionably to try and hide his jawline.
"Who the hell is Bucky? I don't know a Bucky." He stutters out quickly, wide-eyed and cringing into himself when someone standing in front of him turns to witness their conversation. He stands frozen in front of Steve for another second or two, then he's shoving his way out of the bar the moment Steve opens his mouth again.
"Wait—" is all he gets out before Bucky is disappearing out onto the street, a flash of green and loose dark hair before he's gone like he was never there in the first place.
Well. That explains nothing and a lot all at the same time.