Avengers kissing fest!

[such_heights]

(Me? Procrastinating on my own fannish projects? Never!)

I declare a festival of kissing for my pretty summer fling fandom. Avengers movieverse, all characters, all ships and no ships, all fanworks.

THE RULES:

01. Leave a comment with two or more characters from the Avengers movieverse who you'd like to see kiss. You can include a prompt if you like as an optional extra for the prompt-filler.
02. Reply to a comment with a fanwork in which those characters kiss. The kissing can be platonic or romantic, on the mouth or the cheek or the forehead or the shoulder or anywhere else that you like.
03. All fanworks welcome, including art/podfic/vids/icons/recs/meta/fic etc. Multiple fills for the same prompt are encouraged. Replying to your own prompt is fine. Anon commenting is fine. Coming back and posting a fill two months later is fine.

\o/

eta: fills so far:

Bruce/Clint
by estelendur

Bruce/Natasha
by musesfool

Bruce/Pepper/Tony
by d_generate_girl
by such_heights

Bruce/Tony
by musesfool
by thingswithwings
by florahart
by estelendur

Bucky/Natasha/Steve
by hederahelix

Bucky/Steve
by gorgeousnerd
by jain
by laylee

Clint/Coulson
by sunnyrea
by meinterrupted

Clint/Darcy
by liseuse
by liseuse 2
by grammarwoman

Clint/Hill
by stevie

Clint/Natasha
by recessional (contains gory imagery)
by liseuse
by liseuse 2 (gory imagery)
by some_stars
by recessional 2
by ceridweyn_lin
by recessional 3
by recessional 4
by anonymous

Clint/Steve
by longwhitecoats

Clint/various
by ashen_key

Coulson/Fury
by emmypenny

Coulson/Steve
by estelendur
by such_heights

Darcy/Jane
by meinterrupted

Darcy/Thor
by florahart

Darcy/Steve
by musesfool
by liseuse

Fury/Hill
by longwhitecoats
by igrockspock

Fury/Steve
by jain

Heimdall/Loki
by just_ann_now

Hill/Natasha
by just_ann_now
by liseuse

Hulk/Pepper
by spicedrum

Jane/Tony
by spicedrum

Loki/Thor
by terryh-nyan
by longwhitecoats

Natasha/OFC
by ashen_key

Natasha/Pepper
by thingswithwings
by such_heights

Natasha/Rhodey
by sinensis

Natasha/Steve
by liseuse
by musesfool
by spicedrum

Natasha/Thor
by spatz

Pepper/Tony
by thingswithwings
by spatz

Rhodey/Tony
by spatz

Steve/Thor
by estelendur

Tony/team
by such_heights

Comments

[jain]

Steve/Bucky/Natasha, reciprocity.

Triangular Distribution (part 1/3)

[hederahelix]

Surprising no one who knows me, this got kind of long. Oops?



Steve watched the suited shoulders of a man he'd thought never to see again retreat from the deck overlooking the Pacific. Phil Coulson. Alive and mostly well. That had been unexpected. And enraging. On the other hand, it had kept Fury remarkably subdued and off their backs for a while which, Steve figured, was as close to an apology as the team was going to get. It was hard to believe that Coulson was on his sixth visit to what Tony referred to as the Malibu house already. Hard to believe that he'd been holed up here with Natasha and Bucky for most of half a year.

It had been a delicate, terrifying dance most of that time, and he'd been relieved to have Natasha at his side that whole time.

And JARVIS. JARVIS West? Did they need to delineate by location with an AI?

He was still trying to work out how the AI could be in more than one place at a time, but that was officially the territory of people like Tony and Bruce. Knowing just the broadest strokes was fine with him. The tech details bored him if he didn't need to know them. And right now, he didn't.

He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the cushion of the chair he was seated on. A minute later he heard the doors to the house open and then close and bare feet move quietly across the deck.

"Do you think they sent guys in BDUs out?"

He looked up.

Natasha was leaning against the railing. She was wearing a sweatshirt he recognized as Bucky's over a t-shirt and jeans as she stared out at the ocean and sipped fresh orange juice from a mug. It was a thing she did that amused him each time he saw it. She looked like her mind was even more distant than usual. He wondered as he watched her. Of all the places she'd been sent—how many of them had had a view?

He couldn't really blame her for enjoying the view here. It was spectacular. He'd come to enjoy watching the morning fog roll in or out or the way on clear mornings the sunlight played on the water. There were surfers out there, jockeying for position when a good wave would come in, but they spent a lot more time sitting on their boards with their feet hanging into the water. It looked peaceful. The house was surprisingly peaceful, and he wondered how much Tony and Pepper missed being able to retreat to this. Even Steve had to admit hearing the endless movements of the waves had a soothing effect. All of them were carrying around enough red on their ledgers that even this idyllic setting wasn't enough for them to find peace, but it was a respite in a storm, and soldiers knew to take advantage when they found that.

They were all of them soldiers now. "I'm sorry, what?" he asked.

She didn't turn around. They both knew she didn't need to. Her eyes were still locked on the horizon as she spoke. "The protocol these days when a soldier is killed in battle is that the branch of service sends out personnel in full dress uniform. They brief the families, you know, before deployments. Class A's means the soldier, sailor, or airman is dead. BDUs mean an injury."

"Coulson was military?" It seemed he learned something new about his team every day. Coulson was a part of the team. Had been from the second he took the weapon and went after Loki alone.

"Rangers. Before S.H.I.E.L.D.. We were told he'd been interred at Arlington. The whole nine. Not sure who his family is. I asked to go along, but Fury said that the military would handle it. But I'm sure they sent out some Rangers in their Class A's. You can say a lot of things about S.H.I.E.L.D. but you can't say they don't grasp the importance of gestures. Do think they send the right uniform out later if they screw up?"

He pictured Army officers in their Class A's showing up at Bucky's parents place decades ago. He'd asked—months ago. If Bucky wanted to contact his sister. She was alive. Married. Had kids, apparently. Bucky had just gone still and looked away and said it was too much. Too soon. Steve had understood.

In response to Natasha in the here and now, Steve shrugged. "If I got BDUs this long after a Class A visit, I'm not sure the guys in the BDUs would still be standing."

A casual observer might have thought that Natasha didn't register a response, but Steve was getting adept at reading her. There was nothing casual in how he'd been observing her for the last six months. She moved away from the rail, and all he could do was watch as she folded herself up on the chair next to his. Mornings oceanside were cold. She was carefully tucking her bare feet under one leg. This didn't surprise him. Among the things he'd learned by watching was that her feet ran cold all the time.

Natasha took another sip from her mug. Her eyes were still fixed on the horizon. "We going to talk about this?"

Steve watched a gull zip across the horizon. "Gonna need you to be more specific than that."

"Coulson okayed it, you know."

Coulson knew that much about their personal lives? He supposed that was possible, but, he looked at her. She seemed to calm for that to be what she meant. Maybe? Sheesh. Talking with Natasha was almost as bad as watching Tony and Bruce talk about science. Conversations that made his head spin. She changed conversational tacks so fast it gave him a kind of whiplash inside his mind. "Okayed what?" He'd thought they were talking about something else entirely.

With the hand that wasn't still holding the juice glad, she held out her S.H.I.E.L.D. phone. Must've had it tucked in a pocket somewhere. On the screen was the email with the official approval. Bucky was cleared to leave the property. Steve whistled as he looked at the details "Two special ops members with him at all times?"

Natasha smiled. "I think that's a hint from Phil."

"That's quite a hint," Steve said, keenly aware now that they were definitely having at least two conversations at the same time.

She sipped again. "He's quite an asset."

"I am, indeed, quite an asset." The third voice came from behind them. Steve hadn't heard the door open, but he supposed it must have. Bucky had all sorts of new skills, but teleportation wasn't one of them. Time was he'd expected never to hear that rich male voice again. He liked to be proved wrong that way. It was one of the most beautiful sounds in the world.

"I see Bucky's decided to join us in the land of the awake."

Bucky scoffed. "Speak for yourself. The body is up and moving around, but my brain is really not yet online."

Steve smiled. "It's a Stark facility, Buck, but S.H.I.E.L.D. might still be listening in. I wouldn't make casual jokes about your body not being under your own control."

Bucky grinned. It was that devilish grin that had always gotten him into trouble. "I don't think with all their research S.H.I.E.L.D. knows quite that much about what my preferences about my body being out of my control are. Are they really that thorough, Natasha?"

She put her glass down. "I try very hard not to know."

Steve stood up and then realized he didn't know what to do with himself. He'd been feeling that way a lot lately.

They'd had six months of relative piece. S.H.I.E.L.D. had been giving them the space they needed to help Bucky get himself back. There were intermittent visits from agents—Hill and even Coulson after the news came down that he wasn't dead after all. (Steve had never in his life been so glad to be so far away from Pepper Potts. Tony texted him updates and photos of the epic shitstorm that followed.) Every so often, Natasha and Steve had been called out to handle west coast missions, but there'd been plenty of secondary support. Tony and Pepper and Bruce and Clint came out to visit a few times, providing just the right level of interaction with people other than themselves. Someone—he suspected JARVIS—had an uncanny knack for figuring out when they were all about to kill each other from over familiarity, and just about the time that there was likely to be a screaming or throwing match over something stupid, one of the New York team members showed up asking if it would be too much trouble if they could—well, really, they were all convenient excuses he was glad to have.

When things needed doing on either coast, S.H.I.E.L.D. had tasked any number of operators to them as needed, and goodness knew that Tony's ideas about a house were slightly more expansive than some military's notions of a FOB, so they were well stocked and as secure as could be.

In between various visits and therapies and treatments, Steve had spent some time with Natasha working on their fighting tactics. Bucky had been anxious to get back into physical shape after Tony upgraded it to Stark-based tech. Learning to work the new features had killed a good week or two of down time.

Natasha and Steve had worked on his Russian. They'd all worked on the other languages they had in common. Natasha helped get the two of them caught up on some of the history and pop culture it was hard to learn from reading and watching.

But in between those bright spots, there had been a lot of long hours of waiting. Sometimes he felt useless, watching Natasha walk Bucky through a process she'd been through herself.

Yeah, he'd been given a false set of memories in the war, but they were designed to be similar to his. Plus he had a lot more of his own. Bucky got some back over time, but there were still big gaps. And the process he'd been through had not been gentle or voluntary. In quiet moments when they were alone, Natasha admitted to Steve that that made a difference. Natasha understood it, having been through it, and when things got bad, Steve was pretty helpless when it came to doing anything for Bucky as he dealt with it.

Natasha, on the other hand, knew the process all too well. She kept a brave face on when Bucky was around, but when he wasn't, Steve could see the toll it was taking on her emotionally. He wanted to offer support, but she had grown—if that was even possible—even more closed off as she had to endure more and more pain. Steve had read the worry on Barton's face on the last visit.

And even if he hadn't, when Coulson, Hill, Stark, and Banner had taken Bucky (along with a squad of armed and armored S.H.I.E.L.D. agents) to the helicarrier for tests they couldn't run here, Barton had pulled Steve aside and asked him about it. It had been a less than productive conversation since there was not a whole heck of a lot Steve could do. Natasha was keeping him at arm's length, and lately, Barton seemed to be held off that far too.

They were all paying a high price for helping to bring Bucky back.

Steve was certain that Natasha wasn't any less willing to pay the price than he was. What he was worried about was that the cost would be much, much higher.
Not that the process was easy for Bucky, either. Steve had known Bucky longer than anyone else alive. Literally. He knew too well how often Bucky's charm could be nothing but a cover for uglier feelings, and the three of them had a lot to feel ugly about.

Bucky had spent most of the six months dealing with all kinds of guilt over what he'd done after being reprogrammed. The first few days he'd been too out of it to get much of what was going on; they'd had to keep him sedated while Tony and Bruce examined and worked on the arm with input from Natasha on what she knew about the Red Room and Department X.

Triangular Distribution (part 2/3)

[hederahelix]

Once the first few hurdles had been passed, the memories slowly came back, and the rest of the team gradually drifted away to give the three of them the space they'd need to work through things.

It was then that Steve began to feel like he was living in some kind of fishbowl. Three people, about twelve pasts, and clearly, at least two substantial past relationships that would need sorting out.

The house might be big, but put all that inside it, and it was hard to get away. He saw the hungry look flicker through Natasha's eyes when they were sparring in what used to be the garage. He saw the way she'd close off and pull back when something hurt Bucky. He saw the way she stared out at the ocean as if it could bring her peace when clearly it couldn't.

He also saw the way Bucky's eyes followed Natasha's body. And, really, of course. Even if you didn't factor in their previous relationship, Natasha's body was a beautiful weapon. Finely honed, perfectly tuned, and spectacularly balanced. And that was when she was sitting still. In motion, it was pure magic.

Watching that, though, he often wanted to retreat himself. If he could see that so clearly, he was sure they could see the other parts of the triangle too. He knew how he looked at Bucky when his shirt was off. He was sure they both knew. Natasha was clearly smart enough to suspect that Steve's past with Bucky was something more than—something much closer than just brothers in arms.

None of them were really the kind of folks who talked about those things.

That was understatement. Early on, S.H.I.E.L.D. had insisted on sending in a shrink to help with the process.
It didn't exactly help. Unless help meant provide them all with some entertainment. When they got the message, the team immediately set up a pool. It had actually been entertaining watching Natasha run the poor woman off. Steve had won the bet. Tony had, based on previous experience with said shrink, wagered on 2 days. Bruce was in for 5. Clint came in second at 6. Steve had had weeks by that time to watch the subtlety of Romanov's work, so he'd picked 7 days. Natasha had put in for 8, and she probably would have made it if it hadn't been for the unfortunate response to the idea of thwacking at some sort of stand in for Division X personnel with soft foam bats. The shrink responded less than ideally when Natasha pulled out a pistol and shot the stand ins to pieces.
After they cleaned the mess up, Bucky had genuinely laughed for the very first time, but Steve still wasn't going to give S.H.I.E.L.D. any credit for that.
Two hours later, he'd gotten a text message from Barton that said only "Nat couldn't have pulled that yesterday? I would have won the bet."
A seagull crying out pulled his attention back to the present. He took the phone from Natasha's hand and started reading.
"So long as you take two special forces operators—"

"Can we just be frank and call us—"

Steve paused as he searched for the right word. He hadn't even had time to try any options out when they finished his sentence for him.

"Gods?" Bucky suggested, only a split second before Natasha slapped him at the same time that she offered, "Precision weapons?"

Steve smiled. "Was going to go with Superheroes myself. Gods might be a bit much. Last I checked, all but your arm is human; Natasha's all human, and Thor is not in town, after all."

A flicker of pain and guilt ran through Bucky's face at that, but he dropped the mask back down quickly enough. Easy enough to distract him. "S.H.I.E.L.D. says so long as you take us with you, you are cleared to leave the compound. Short visits only. For which I am grateful."

"Why?" Bucky asked, clearly willing to play along.

"Stark—rather Pepper—may be good at controlling the media, but I'm not sure even she will be able to contain the press if you get turned loose among the women of LA these days. You've been off the market how long?"

Bucky quirked an eyebrow at him. "Too long. Decades, apparently. However, I also think it is only fair to warn you that I'm told these days it's okay with the public if it's not only the women."

Steve raised an eyebrow back. So they were going to play it like that, were they? Bucky never seemed to understand that Steve would never back down from a challenge. They'd had decades of riling each other up, but Bucky was surprised every time. Or he liked it. Steve tried not to think too hard about that possibility. The results were all on Bucky. "JARVIS," Steve asked, "What is our current distance from WeHo?"

"Would you prefer freeways or surface streets, sir?"

Before anyone could say anything in response to that, Natasha leapt up and made for the house at a run. She called out over her shoulder as she went, "I have a fabulous idea." Steve barely heard her, entranced as he was—as he always was—at the graceful way she moved. It was like watching a deer spring across the land—elegant, graceful, powerful. Steve noticed that Bucky was watching her too. Hard not to. Natalia Romanova was quite the woman.

Bucky reached out with his left hand and punched Steve in the arm. "How well you know her, exactly?" he asked, his voice pitched low enough that there was a slight chance she wasn't hearing every single word. Over the last six months, he'd learned that Natalia Romanova had hearing like a teacher. It was creepy. And a little hot, if he was being honest, which he was really trying not to be, especially with Bucky standing close over him with his hand still around Steve's wrist.

"Well enough to know that when she gets like this, she has a plan. When she has a plan, heaven help anyone or anything that gets in her way."

Bucky's hand came to rest on his shoulder. "Oh, Steve. You clearly don't know her as well as you think. When she moves that fast this early in the morning. You should be far more terrified than you are. It's not just a plan to get her moving like this, it's a mission."

Steve plastered a smile on his face. "Who says I'm not terrified?" he winced a little at the truth even he could hear leaking out around his words. "I had acting lessons. I can hide my fear."

Bucky's eyes met his. "Not from me, you can't." Bucky turned away. "You never could from me."

Steve flushed at that because damn it if he wasn't right. "James—"

Bucky smiled. "Don't call me that. It makes me feel like my mom's going to start yelling at me. Or something."

"You want me to call you Yakov instead," he said, unable to keep the tinge of spite from his voice. As soon as the words had left his mouth, he regretted them, but he couldn't take them back. It was impossible to get them back once spoken. More was the pity.

If Steve was being honest with himself, he was on edge. Six months in a house with his ex and his ex's ex, and the three of them trying to find their way through that tangle of emotions was the least complicated thing in this whole arrangement. There were secret Soviet brainwashing techniques and a few run of the mill missions to save the world from alien invasions, or, you know, traffic on the 405 which the locals seemed to take as worse than an influx of Asgardian herd animals. In the midst of all that, the three of them had done very well by not talking about the elephants in the room. He hadn't planned to start now. That last comment—it had just gotten away from him. His control had to slip sometime. He had just hoped it wouldn't be now—not about this.

By the time he'd had long enough to realize that Bucky hadn't responded, Natasha was back with a set of car keys dangling from her hand. "I know just the place for the thee of us to celebrate this excellent development."

Steve raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

Apparently, stealth training was a priority for the Soviets. Russians. Whatever. Steve had trouble with that one. When he looked up, Bucky wasn't beside him because Bucky's arms slipped around Natasha from behind as he pulled her into a full body hug. Steve could do nothing but watch as Bucky lifted her up playfully. "Really, Natasha? You think you know me well enough to know how I want to celebrate this?"

Steve wasn't quite sure how she did it, but before he could figure the logistics of it out, Natasha had worked herself free of the hold and was standing, utterly unruffled as always, in front of him, keys still swinging from her outstretched finger. The easy detente between them spoke of a long history of sparring. These were partners who had done this dance before. Many, many times. Their stances were charged with potential energy and restraint, and if he hadn't been so personally embroiled in the emotion of it all—if he'd had any critical distance at all, he might have been able to enjoy how luscious it was to watch that tension simmer between the two of them. "I think I know you both perfectly well enough to know that you're hungry—because the two of your are always hungry—and to know that Steve has never been to an In-N-Out in his life. This is a crime against humanity which must be remedied. We cannot let either of you want for anything on a day like today."

"What, the burger joint? You've brought food from there back here before. Also, I know what a drive-through is. We really need to work on everyone's history instead of just mine. So many of you assume something is before my time when it's not, and—"

She slapped his ass as she moved by him to reach for something on the counter. Her sunglasses, apparently. She slipped one arm into the neck of her shirt. Miraculously, he did not jump in response, but he clearly felt Bucky's eyes watching him like a hawk.

"I am aware that you've been through a drive through before, and that you've both had burgers from In-N-Out, but I want to take you to one," she said, as she grabbed Bucky's hand—his right one, part of her ongoing process of helping Bucky accept all of his new body now that he had Bucky's memories but Winter Soldier's bionics, even if it was now bionics modified by Stark and Banner—and drew him closer to them, "In person. I want to watch his little earnest face when they're so polite and happy when they take the order through the little box."

Bucky smiled, and Steve felt his heart swell. Bucky's smiles were still all too rare, and this one was heavy with that devil-may-care joy that always presaged trouble on the streets of Brooklyn a few lifetimes ago. If being with Natasha could make him look like that—

Well, no matter how painful it would be for Steve, he couldn't possibly deny Bucky that joy. If being with Natasha made Bucky feel like that, then Steve would just have to—

Natasha's fingers snapped in front of his face. "Rogers. I asked you a question."

"Sorry, what?"

"Are you in?"

He got the distinct impression that they were all suddenly talking about something other than hamburgers and drive-throughs. "In what?"

"In on the plane. Maybe we'll go to Tommy's. Neither of you have had that, have you?" she asked, as she drew closer. "Because I am hungry. Starving, in fact."

And then Bucky was moving towards him too. "Uh, Natasha, are you sure about—"

Steve still wasn't quite sure how it had all happened. One moment, he'd been standing there talking about hamburgers, and then next, he was bunched tightly together with two people whose eyes were focused on his lips.

Triangular Distribution (part 3/3)

[hederahelix]

Natasha was moving with a smoothness he had never, ever seen her use before. When he that Bucky's carriage held that rakish posture he'd watched a thousand times, he realized when he'd never seen Natasha move like this. The only time he saw Bucky stand like that was when he was seducing someone. Steve began to try to figure out how to get out of there. He was willing to do what Bucky needed, but he didn't think he could bear to watch it, but before he could escape, Steve felt Natasha's hand slip from his waist to his back at the same time that he watched her other hand sliding from around Bucky's waist to rest on his ass. He knew—oh, God, how he knew—what Bucky's ass felt like beneath his own fingers, and his mouth dropped open a little at the memory. He closed his eyes for a moment to try to get his bearings. It wasn't working. Not at all.

"Boys, I want to be clear here. We've danced around this long enough. I have missed James something fierce. I would very much like to see how things go with this new version of him. I have held back long enough for us all to get our feet under ourselves and see how we felt once the James came back to himself and to us. But I'm not waiting now that we're here"

She leaned over and held her lips over Bucky's for a moment before he surged forward and met her, apparently also unwilling to wait even one second more. Steve knew he should have been pulling away from this—leaving them to it, but instead he found himself mesmerized by the way James's lashes looked against his skin with his eyes closed. He looked beyond peaceful that way; he looked happy. Steve heard Natasha moan in response. Their kiss may have begun as the kind of tentative kiss of a first date. A way to ask permission for something when no one is sure exactly what. But it didn't stay like that for long. Bucky's arm slipped around her waist and drew her body to press against his. Steve had to close his eyes to steady himself even as he felt Natasha's hand on his own back begin to retreat. He couldn't blame her for that; he knew all too well what it was like to be caught in that kind of focus from Bucky. His body remembered vividly and was responding accordingly.

It was Natasha who finally pulled back to end the kiss. Steve watched as she blinked once slowly before turning to face him. Her hand moved up to the center of his back and tugged gently, urging him closer. "But I would have to be blind not to see the past you two had, and I could never deny either of you that even if I wanted to. And I don't want either of you to give up something that makes you both so happy."

And then Bucky was leaning toward him. Somewhere, in the far reaches of his mind, there was a klaxon sounding. Men did not kiss men with agents around. Where cameras could see. Natasha for whatever else she was was a lady, and was Bucky's, and—

At that moment Steve Rogers realized that he just didn’t care. He'd done his duty over and over. He'd lost more than he could stand to feel. He'd stood up to ideals someone else had set and fought to make them the law of the land for a long time. He thought about Peggy's face in the locket as the plane went down, her frantic broken voice over the radio—

And he realized that, damn it, he deserved to be happy too.

It was now the future. And there was Bucky—who was alive and warm and underneath new scents smelled exactly as he always had—standing right in front of him. There for the taking. And Natasha, who could take care of herself and who always knew what she wanted—had offered them this. He saw the tiny tremble in Bucky's lower lip, and any resistance Steve had left was gone. He was done. Something snapped and he pushed forward. The kiss was messy. It was terrible. It was teeth and tongues and heat and wetness and closeness that wasn't nearly close enough. It was awkward in its familiarity and strangeness all rolled into one, like they both had to remember how to do this while trying to convince themselves that it was really real, but it didn't matter how bad it was because it was coming home. It was amazing. He felt Bucky's body press against his and leaned into that contact. Pressing all of his body against Bucky's, he groaned and pulled them tighter together. Bucky had always been fast to respond to the familiar, but he wasn't quite sure he'd ever known Bucky to start getting hard this fast. It was just as much of a rush as he remembered—maybe more so since he hadn't expected ever to feel it again. Steve's hips moved forward, and as they kissed again—slightly more gracefully, slightly less predatorily—he thrust slowly against him. Then he remembered Natasha.

As he pulled his head away, he turned to see her watching raptly. His mouth was open to apologize, but she spoke first. "Wow," she said, softly. "That was even hotter than I imagined."

"You imagined this?" he asked, his own voice soft and unsure.

He watched as she held herself perfectly still, perfectly apart. Like she was asking for permission. "An embarrassing number of times." Her hand came up to rest on his cheek. "I don't think there's anyone who could be this close to you and not fall a little bit in love with you, Cap. If you want, and he's okay with it, I want to kiss you too."

For a moment, he flashed back to the last woman he'd known brave enough to pick up a gun and shoot it at something impossible without a second thought because Natasha's words felt as skilled and as daring as when Peggy picked up a pistol and fired unerringly at a S.H.I.E.L.D. that hadn't even been tested. He closed his eyes and asked Peggy's permission as a way to say one last goodbye to her even as he leaned forward and thought maybe in a way he was finally making a date he hadn't expected to make after all. It was just a few decades late with a person--or persons --he hadn't expected. He had a momentary flash of some kind of unnamed desire that had maybe slithered through his stomach on a plane in enemy airspace with hostile fire all around them as he looked at Howard and Peggy just before he dropped in to save the man who was standing in front of him again. His mind flashed to the way the sunlight slanted through the windows of the apartment as he laughed at that joke his parents were laughing at. And he realized what he was feeling.

Home. Belonging. It was here, his for the taking.

Bucky was still. It was a body Steve'd known nearly as long as he could remember. There was a time when he had had to look up at it, but not now. He squeezed Bucky gently, hoping his movements would say what he didn't trust his voice to. And then Bucky was pulling back, and somehow Steve managed not to whimper at the loss of contact, which was lucky because Natasha was moving into his space. Then he turned to Natasha and took her in his arms. He heard Bucky gasp beside him, and he looked over, fearing what he would see on Bucky's face, but what he saw there was only desire and curiosity and the best kind of anticipation.

And a fragile tiny wave of hope. Steve realized that Bucky was just as scared of this going wrong. Of any of them losing each other. Steve turned his attention back to Natasha. If this was going to work, it had to work between each of them, and a woman this strong and beautiful deserved his full attention anyway.

Compared to Bucky, Natasha felt tiny pressed against Steve in the circle of his arms, but he wasn't fool enough to miss the underlying strength coiled in her smaller frame. Still, this was uncharted territory, and underneath that brave facade, there also the slightest tremor in her muscles. For all her worldliness and controlled exterior, she was just as anxious as he felt, he realized. Somehow that made it easier. If she was anxious, Steve knew how to do this. All he had to do was be there to protect her. They had done that on dozens of missions. As she drew her hand away, letting it come to rest on his shoulder, he let his right hand reach up to rest on her cheek. He was mindful that unlike the two kisses so far, this was a first kiss. He brushed his thumb across her lips and watched as her eyes fluttered closed, as her lips opened slightly, and as a sigh that was little more than a breath escaped her throat. He let his left hand rest on her waist and gently, so gently, being extra mindful of his own strength as he felt his nervous system crying out for more pulled her toward him. He let his lips brush lightly across hers once, moving left to right. She moaned at the same time as Bucky did, and he felt the tell tale swelling begin in earnest below his belt. He drew his lips slightly less gently back across hers back to where he began, brushing once more before he let just the tip of his tongue lap softly at her lower lip. She moaned and opened her mouth, pressing to meet him. Her tongue led her kiss, reaching for and then circling his, its pressure even more delicately teasing than he thought it could be. When they pulled away, she was not the only one panting as she tried to catch her breath.

Could it be that easy, he wondered?

He'd spent months planning how this might go down. This solution had never occurred to him.

"Really?" he asked, winded. "Really, we're all—are we all sure that we're all all good with this?"

Natasha smiled and drove her hips forward against his, and Steve tried to force his brain to focus on now. He was already thinking about the later—about what it would feel like to slide into her, to sink home. Would Bucky be watching? Would he have been there first? Oh, God, Steve thought, closing his eyes and pushing away the overwhelming desire that thought evoked in him.

He looked up at the two of them and felt slightly stunned.

Her whole being was radiating a kind of hunger she'd never let him see before, but now that he knew where to look, he suspected there had been hints of it there all along. Up close and full force, though, it was mesmerizing.

"I would be better with it if we were naked and horizontal," she said, the hand of hers not still on his back reaching out towards Bucky.

Bucky's arms came around them both and with barely a hesitation, he lifted the two of them up off the ground. "I'll second that."

"Yakov, put us down. We will all walk into this together. Not be carried," she said as if it were vitally important.

Bucky leaned over and nuzzled her neck. "I seem to recall you very much enjoying being carried before."

She looked at Steve, who offered, "I'm not much for being carried, but if it makes you happy, it's fine with me."
He smiled as he said it, and it got the response from her she hoped as she smiled back. Her voice was steady, but if you knew where to look, you could see the apprehension. It settled into the tense way she held herself still. He'd had a taste of what she looked like when she let all the restraints go; he'd never not know again what it looked like.

He let his thumb brush her cheek again. "Natasha, it's fine. You have a past. It's okay. I'm not going to spook if you bring it up." She looked down and away. "But I appreciate you asking. Do you want me to ask before I bring up our past?"

Bucky looked at them with his best fake wounded look squarely in place. "You two have a past? Natasha, you never—"

She kicked him in the shin. "Pronouns. A pain in the ass in every language. James, the longer you stand here making jokes, the longer it'll take to get to the naked and horizontal parts—"

Steve leaned over and whispered in her ear, purposely allowing his lips to brush against her ear. "Ignore him when he gets like this. He's incorrigible."

"Then don't—"

Steve leaned over and kissed Bucky so he'd shut up. Her eyebrow raised, Natasha said, "That'll work."

But once he'd gotten Bucky back under his mouth, he realized he was going to have a hard time letting go. It had been so long. Natasha was new and seductive as hell in a totally unexpected way, but tasting and touching Bucky was filling a longing so deep he was afraid he'd fall in and never come out again. And from the way Bucky was responding, Steve wasn't the only one who felt that way. Bucky looked like a kid in a candy store.

He pulled back. They all stood there, unsure. Steve broke the silence by saying, "I heard something about naked and horizontal."

Natasha nodded, slightly dazed looking. Bucky was just panting.

"Call it, Cap," she said as she ran one hand down each man's chest.

"Whose bedroom?" he asked as he let his hand slide down Natasha's neck.

She smiled as she leaned into the touch, but her voice was steady when she spoke. "I would say the master just because it would make me happy to think of Tony imagining that, but he doesn't get to have even that much of this."

Steve felt Bucky's hand come to settle at his lower back fingers dipping just beneath the waistband of his trousers. "Mine. I want it to be in mine."

Natasha moved away from Steve and walked past Bucky, allowing her hip to brush the front of his pants. Steve watched as Bucky's eyes closed and he groaned.

Natasha stopped and turned to face them. "Good. That's where I stashed a few things we might need."

The expression on her face was one Steve had seen a thousand times, but it felt like it meant something different now. "You stashed a few things we might need?" he asked.

She darted away from the two of them and towards the bedroom. "You seriously thought my idea of celebrating a milestone this big would be fast food, Rogers?" She smirked and turned to Bucky. "We need to work on his sense of scale.

Buck tugged on Steve's trousers. "I told you she was dangerous when she planned this early in the morning."

Dangerous indeed.

Re: Triangular Distribution (part 3/3)

[(Anonymous)]

This is lovely. Love the emotional build-up and hints at the backstory. Your descriptions are just gorgeous ♥

Re: Triangular Distribution (part 3/3)

[sinensis]

awww, nicely emotionally complex! and hot, too, which is always a bonus. I love the idea of the three of them thrown together, dealing with their (omg, SO complicated) histories with one another. And their yen for In-N-Out. *g*