Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Hey, the Brooklyn boys made it!” Clint was already pulling open Bucky’s door before Steve’s beat-up old Chevy even came to a stop. “C’mon, you guys should see this place! This week is going to rock!”

“Who’s here?” Steve asked, throwing the car into park. He released his own seatbelt and Bucky’s in a practiced swipe of his arm -- not that Bucky couldn’t unfasten his own seatbelt, but it was awkward, and Clint was already tugging on Bucky’s arm.

“A’right, I’m comin’, I’m comin’,” Bucky complained, climbing out of the car. He shook Clint off long enough to stretch -- it had been a bit of a drive, a good four hours from school to the beach where they and their friends were going to spend the week, a last hurrah of the summer before they all dove into their senior year of college and had to knuckle under and get serious about school.

“Well, me an’ Sam, obviously,” Clint was saying, “and Tony and Pepper and Rhodes were already here when we got here. Nat got in just before lunch--”

“And she hasn’t maimed you yet?”

“Oh, she did; you just can’t see the bruise because I have clothes on. And Bruce beat you guys by like half an hour. Thor’s not here yet, but he texted a bit ago and said he’d be here by dinner.”

“Awesome.” Bucky opened the back door of the car and pulled out his duffle bag. “Just show me which bed is mine.”

“Uh, yeah, about that...”

Steve and Bucky both looked at Clint sharply. “What?” Steve demanded.

Clint backed away a few steps. “I’m... gonna let Tony explain it.”

***

“So there’s a tiny hiccup with the rental,” Tony said as soon as Clint ushered them into the living room. “Minuscule, barely even an issue.” He was pacing, turning his cell over and over in his hands. “Just a minor translation issue--”

“Spit it out,” Steve said, folding his arms.

“Right, well, I definitely told the booking agent that there were ten of us. And that there were two couples who’d need big beds. And that the rest of us were willing to share rooms. But I think she misinterpreted that as us being willing to share beds, because--”

“Oh, no,” Bucky said.

“--there are five bedrooms, and they only have one bed each in them.”

“I am not sharing a bed with you,” Bucky told Steve. “You kick.”

“One time!” Steve protested.

“One time too many,” Bucky proclaimed. “If you think--”

“So we thought,” Nat interrupted, “we’d draw lots to see who gets which rooms, and roommates can work out for themselves what to do about the sleeping arrangements. The couples can draw together, obviously.”

Bucky looked around the room dubiously. “And you’re... okay with that?” He determinedly did not look at Tony.

She smiled. “I’m sure whoever I end up sharing with will be a gentleman.”

“We need some more girl friends,” Pepper grumbled.

“Hey, I invited Jane and Carol,” Tony protested. “They couldn’t make it.”

Clint produced a salad bowl that he’d doubtless scrounged from the kitchen, filled with slips of paper. “Rooms are identified by their decor,” he said. “Each one is in here twice, so we’ll wind up with a couple of leftovers at the end. Everyone ready to embrace the awkward?”

“We’re doing this now?” Steve said.

“The only one missing is Thor,” Bruce pointed out, “so he’ll just end up in whatever slot doesn’t get taken.”

“Ladies first,” Clint said, making a faux-gallant bow as he offered the bowl to Pepper.

She pulled out a slip and unfolded it. “The sunshine room,” she read, and made a face. “Is that the one with that hideous yellow bedspread?”

“We’ll put the spread in the closet,” Rhodey promised. “I like it, it’s got those east-facing windows so I can get up and go for my morning run.”

“Ug,” Tony complained, “honeybear, we’re on vacation. You’re supposed to sleep in and snuggle, not jump up at the crack of dawn for calisthenics.”

“I’m not setting an alarm for before dawn,” Rhodey pointed out. “I am sleeping in.”

Clint presented the bowl to Nat. “The mermaid room,” she read, and nodded. “I can live with that.”

“Next up, my honeyboo,” Clint said, turning to Sam.

Sam rolled his eyes. “Dipshit,” he said fondly, but he fished a piece of paper out and opened it. “Uh. Mermaid room. Nope, sorry Nat, I know you and Clint have this whole platonic soulmates thing going on and I respect that, but we’re not sharing a room with you.” He refolded it and put it back in the bowl before drawing again. “Oh hell yeah, we scored the pirate room!”

“Dude.” Clint high-fived him. “Captured-by-pirates roleplay sex!”

“Gross,” Rhodey complained. “We don’t want to hear about it. Or hear it.”

“You’re just jealous,” Sam told him, grinning.

“Not even a little bit.”

“Alphabetical order for the rest,” Clint suggested, and held out the bowl in Bruce’s direction.

“The... I can’t even read this. What the hell is your handwriting, Clint?” Bruce turned the paper over, frowning at it. “The... sandler room? Oh! Sand dollar. Which one is that?”

“The one to the left at the top of the stairs,” Nat told him. “On the downside, you’re next to the bathroom. On the plus side, you’ll have the bathroom between you and the pirate room.”

“There are worse fates,” Bruce agreed.

Bucky reached into the bowl when Clint turned toward him, and opened the raggedly-torn piece of paper. Bruce wasn’t kidding about the bad handwriting. It started with an S, and there was a loopy L in the middle. “Also the sand dollar room?” he guessed, though it didn’t look like “sand dollar” to him. “Maybe?”

“Let me see,” Clint said, leaning over. “Oh! No, that’s the sailboat room.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “You are a case for making penmanship a graded subject again, birdbrain.”

“Blah blah blah.” Clint held out the bowl to Steve and grinned. “All the rooms have at least one person in them now! Choose wisely!”

“Or randomly,” Steve suggested. He opened his paper and immediately flushed. “Uh. Mermaid.”

Nat nodded. “Acceptable,” she pronounced.

“Make him sleep on the floor,” Bucky advised. “He kicks.”

Steve shoved him, and Bucky cackled.

Then Clint turned to Tony, and Bucky’s blood turned to ice. How had he not realized until this second that this meant he might end up sharing a room -- a bed -- with Tony? His stupid crush was hard enough to hide as it was.

Tony made a production of it, because of course he did, stirring up the remaining pieces of paper and dramatically putting one hand over his eyes as he selected one. “The sunshine room.” He grinned at Rhodey. “Threesome?”

Rhodey plucked the paper from Tony’s hand. “Not even. Draw again.”

Tony pouted and reached back into the bowl. “Uh, sailboat,” he said, holding up the scrap of paper for everyone to see. He tossed Bucky a smile that was just a little too wide. “Hope you don’t snore, Buckaboo.”

Bucky’s stomach dipped and flopped over like he was on a roller coaster, but he pasted on a returning smirk. “Long’s you don’t kick.”

***

Tony spent the rest of the day in a state approaching panic. For some reason it hadn’t even occurred to him that the drawing of names might match him up with Bucky. He’d been hoping to draw Bruce, actually, and braced for the possibility of Natasha, but somehow he’d assumed that Bucky and Steve would bunk together.

And now he was going to spend a week sleeping right next to the guy he’d been crushing on for a year and a half. Shit.

He thought he covered up his panic pretty well, talking shop with Bruce and having dinner delivered and joining everyone around the table after they’d eaten for an epic game of Cards Against Humanity. He managed to avoid being alone with Pepper or Rhodey, because dealing with their knowing looks was bad enough without having to talk about it.

He lingered in the kitchen as everyone else began to make their way to bed, pretending he was still hungry and wanted a snack. He made himself a sandwich that he couldn’t taste and didn’t really want, and listened to the thumps and muffled murmur of voices as everyone jostled for the three bathrooms and made their way to bed.

He waited a little longer, picking at his sandwich and listening to the squeaks and thumps of people settling into their beds, the occasional giggle, a couple of shouts of laughter. Bruce and Thor apparently got into a pillow fight, from the sound of it, and there, see? Tony’s subconscious demanded. We could be having fun right now.

Tony took another bite of his sandwich, defiantly.

I wonder if Bucky sleeps shirtless.

“And that, right there,” Tony told his subconscious out loud, “is why we are down here.”

But finally, everything was quiet and Tony’s sandwich was nothing more than a plate of crumbs, and there was nothing left for him to do but put the plate in the sink and trudge up the stairs to his doom.

Please let Bucky be asleep. Please let Bucky be asleep. Please let Bucky be asleep.

Bucky was not asleep. Of course. He was stretched out on the bed, head propped on a pillow as he idly scrolled through his phone. And of course he was shirtless, showing off the sculpted muscles of his shoulders and chest. He looked up as Tony shut the door and smiled. “Hey.”

I’ve had wank fantasies that start just like this, Tony’s subconscious reminded him.

Shut up or I’m trading you in for a new subconscious, Tony snapped mentally, and managed to return Bucky’s greeting somehow.

Tony kicked off his shoes and pulled his shirt off, then hesitated with his hands on the button of his jeans. He hadn’t seen whether Bucky had on boxers or sweatpants or jeans or--

Nothing? Tony’s dick thought that was a great idea.

Oh my god both of you knock it off! Tony really didn’t want to sleep in jeans, that was not comfortable. Boxers wasn’t too weird, right? It wasn’t really any more revealing than his swimsuit. That was probably safe.

Before he could make things even weirder by standing here second-guessing himself for another ten minutes, he unzipped and shoved the jeans off (careful not to let the boxers go with them) and kicked them into the corner on top of his shoes.

Bucky turned off his phone and scooted a little closer to the edge of the bed, leaving at least two thirds of the bed available.

Tony tried not to look as he climbed under the covers and turned out the lamp and laid down. The quick glimpse he’d gotten under the covers suggested that Bucky was also in boxers, so that was a good guess on Tony’s part.

“So, uh. Yeah,” Tony said. “Embrace the awkward.”

“Probably not as awkward as Steve and Nat,” Bucky said, sniggering.

“Or Bruce,” Tony conceded. “I bet Thor takes up like three-quarters of the bed all on his own.”

Bucky snorted. “Hey, being down an arm means we’ve got an extra few inches to work with.”

“Is that your idea of a silver lining?” Tony was slowly relaxing; it was the same banter they always had, easy and snarky. Maybe he could do this.

“I’m just sayin’,” Bucky said. The bed dipped and shook as Bucky turned over. “If I snore, just shove me or something.”

“And now we get to the real reason Steve kicked you that one time.”

Bucky chuckled, but didn’t say anything. Tony stared at the dark ceiling and listened to Bucky’s breathing as it slowly evened out and went shallow in sleep. It was okay. He could do this without making a complete ass of himself. He turned onto his side, putting his back to Bucky and careful to maintain a strict no man’s land down the center of the bed between them, and matched Bucky’s breathing until he slipped into sleep.

***

Bucky woke slowly, feeling as content and comfortable as he’d ever felt since the accident. He was warm -- a little too warm, even -- and pleasantly but not urgently aroused, morning wood rubbing up against Tony’s thigh--

Bucky’s eyes snapped open.

There had been a space between them when they’d gone to bed the previous night nearly wide enough for a third person (maybe Steve, before he’d hit his growth spurt). But sometime during the night, that had been utterly obliterated. Tony was snuggled up against Bucky, arms and legs intertwined, head resting in the hollow of Bucky’s shoulder, breath spilling warm and sweet over Bucky’s throat.

Bucky was torn between wanting to wallow in having (however temporarily) everything he’d been dreaming of, or sneaking out and pretending this had never happened.

Tony looked so sweet, his body all lax and pliant and warm, it was definitely tempting to just stay like this, revel in the closeness and contact until Tony woke up.

Bucky’s dick thought that was an excellent idea. It gave an excited jump, pushing a little harder against Tony’s thigh. And fuck, fuck, Bucky did not need Tony to wake up and realize Bucky was creeping on him like this.

Bucky tried to scoot away, put some space between them again, but Tony tightened his hold, clinging like a limpet and making an adorably disgruntled sound.

Carefully, Bucky pried Tony’s hands loose, slipping a pillow into Tony’s grasp instead. Tony grumbled and flopped over onto his other side, leaving Bucky free but pillow-less. Bucky let out a sigh of relief.

Too soon, because Tony promptly snuggled back against Bucky, little-spoon style, pressing that perfect ass up against Bucky’s dick, which was utterly unconstrained by Bucky’s moral and emotional dilemmas. It swelled even more, dragging Bucky farther from “ignorably aroused” and all the way to “uncomfortably hard,” and verging on “needing a long shower” territory.

Shit. He had to get out of this bed before Tony woke up. Bucky put a hand down to push himself up--

--and Tony went suddenly rigid.

Bucky froze, hoping against hope that Tony was just dreaming or something.

“So,” Tony said, dashing that hope, “the awkward. Embracing it. Enthusiastically, even.”

Bucky winced and scooted back quickly, though he had to stop when he found himself teetering on the edge of the mattress. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh, you know, I was just--”

“Hey, I’m the one who invaded your side of the bed, apparently,” Tony said. He scooted away from Bucky. “Oh, and I... stole your pillow. Crap.” He shoved the pillow back toward Bucky and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and leaning over to put his face in his hands. “Sorry.”

“No, I... The pillow was kind of my fault,” Bucky said. “You were kind of. Um. Aggressively cuddling. I gave you the pillow so you’d let go. I was the one who was rubbin’ up all over you like some kind of creeper.”

The back of Tony’s neck was bright red. “What, really? That’s, you know that’s totally normal, right, it’s an involuntary thing, you wake up like that, it’s there, you don’t have any control.”

Bucky snorted. “Are you saying you consciously cuddled up to me in the middle of the night?”

“Well, no...”

“Embrace the awkward,” Bucky said. “Right. We can be adults about it, right?”

“Sure, yeah, I guess. And we can... You know, see if anyone wants to trade rooms?”

Bucky swallowed and let himself look at the shape of Tony’s shoulders and back, and curled his hand into a fist so he didn’t try to touch. Still, he couldn’t quite swallow back the whispered, almost petulant, “But I don’t want to.”

Tony stiffened. “What?”

“I...” Bucky bit his lip, then forged ahead. “I liked it. Wakin’ up with you so close.”

“Right,” Tony snarked. “That’s why you were trying to get away from me before I woke up.”

“I was trying to get away ‘cause I liked it a little too much,” Bucky protested. His neck and ears flared hot with a flush. “I was rubbin’ my damn dick on you like some kinda perv. I didn’t want you to think I was takin’ advantage of you or...” He waved his hand helplessly.

“Are you serious?” Tony’s voice cracked a little and he turned, just a hair, just enough that he could probably see Bucky in his peripheral vision. “Because if you are jerking me around right now to make fun of me, I’m going to tell you that’s the most fucked up bullshit--”

“What? No! Why-- How does that-- Tony, wait, are you... are you sayin’ that you... you like me?”

Tony squinted at Bucky suspiciously. “You didn’t know? Christ, everyone else knows, and you... had no idea? Seriously?”

“Seriously. I swear,” Bucky said. He felt dizzy, suddenly. Lightheaded. “Does... Guess that means you’ve got no idea how long I’ve been crushin’ on you, either.”

“You have not.”

“Just ask Steve,” Bucky challenged. He chewed on his lip. “Does that mean we... I mean. You and me, we could...”

Tony clambered back to the middle of the bed, his eyes wide. “Can I--” He reached for Bucky with one hand, cupping the side of Bucky’s face.

“Yeah,” Bucky breathed, and closed the space between them, sliding his mouth against Tony’s. Oh, oh god, he’d imagined doing this hundreds of times, but he’d never thought Tony’s mouth would be so full and lush, or that Tony would open to him so sweetly.

By the time they parted they were both panting for breath. Tony’s eyes were pupil-blown and dark, and Bucky’s dick had reawakened and was getting harder by the second.

“Maybe, uh, maybe we should ‘sleep in’ this morning,” Bucky suggested.

“Absolutely.” Tony was nodding, even as he wormed his way back under the covers. “Vacation is for sleeping in.”

“And snuggling,” Bucky agreed, pulling Tony close.

"Is that what we're calling it now?"