Too Long We Have Tarried | Steve/Bucky | NC-17 | Part One
Title: Too Long We Have Tarried
Author: kototyph
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Bucky, Minor Background Relationships
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~19.5k
Warnings/Tags: Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Domestic Avengers, Wedding Planning, Weddings, Pining, Misunderstandings, Angst, Memory Loss, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, stevebuckyspringfling
Summary: Bucky picks up the ring and holds it between them. “Steven Grant Rogers,” he says solemnly. “Will you marry me?”
Notes: For relenafanel and their fabulous prompt: "the 'remember when we were 20 and you had just broken up with your girlfriend and you drunkenly made me promise to marry you if you were single at 30? well happy birthday, jackass, here's a decoder ring I just pulled out of a cereal box. Marry me.' trope. It starts as a joke/BFF trolling, but then they keep joking about it right to the alter."
Many kudos and smooches to my two fantastic betas, bekstek and saintsandsavages. They cranked through this in record time and helped me kill some darlings- the best thing a beta can be is honest. :-*
The two Russian phrases used have mouseover translations, FYI!
“See, now that’s cute,” a voice says, somewhere distant in the room. “That’s the cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen. Can I take a picture?”
An annoyed grunt. Something shifts beneath his head. “No. And be quiet. Bad enough you woke me up.”
“Hey, man, I just want to know where the coffee is. You don’t have to come with me.” “
‘M not leaving you in my kitchen unsupervised. You drink out of the carton.”
"In my own place, yeah-”
“Shhh. Hey, Buck?” A touch, light but lingering, ghosting along the curve of his shoulder. “You wanna let go of me?”
Arms tightening, face turning to press back into warmth. Emphatically no.
“Oh, damn,” says the first voice. “I take it back. I take it all back, that, that right there was so fucking cute I need insulin.”
“C’mon,” the second says, cajoling. “I’m gonna be right downstairs-”
“Yeah, Barnes, let him go before we all drop into a diabetic coma.”
“Please? I promise I’ll be right back,” and the warmth starts to ease away again. No.
“He doesn’t believe you.” “I can see that, thanks. You wanna give me a hand here?”
“No way. If we play tug of war with the Winter Soldier, somebody’s going to lose an arm. And it’ll probably be me.”
A sigh. “Thanks a lot. Bucky, just- please, let me-”
“Wait, wait, I’ve got my phone, stay just like that-”
“Damn it, Sam- oh, thank God. See, that wasn’t so bad, right?”
"Aw, I didn’t get my picture.”
“Oh, can it.” The warmth is gone but the touch is there, brushing hair back from his face. “Come downstairs when you get up, okay, Buck?”
“Look at that fucking murderface. We need to get him a teddy bear or something.”
“God, if he feels half as bad as I do, it’s no wonder. Those Temperance League gals had the right idea.”
“Well, let me put it this way- if I drank what you did, I’d be halfway to Arlington in a pine box by now. You’re getting off easy.”
The door closes with a soft click, and Bucky jerks awake in an empty bed, fingers clenched in the pillow under his head.
He doesn’t move for a long, confused moment, blinking groggily at the opposite wall where bars of sunlight lance across the dresser and mirror. The room is quiet, just a whisper of sound from the central air, and the still-made sheets are soft under his body.
The room seems deserted, though he could have sworn someone was there a moment ago. The tail end of a dream, maybe. He doesn’t remember words, or faces- just the rapidly-dissipating feeling he was just talking to someone, had something important to say, and they wouldn’t fucking listen to him.
“Steve?” he says out loud, because that sounds like their kind of conversation. His voice comes out on a rusty croak and he’s abruptly aware of how uncomfortable he is, his boots gone but his clothes all on, the still-buttoned waist of his jeans digging painfully into his stomach. Piled onto that is a truly vengeful headache threatening pry his skull open like a C-Ration can of beans. There’s a bottle of water going tepid on the sheets next to his face, and he grabs for it gratefully because sweet Jesus Christ his mouth is dry. “Fuck,” he rasps, once he’s downed it all. “Steve?”
There’s another bottle of water on the nightstand, upright and half-empty. Bucky’s curled on the leftmost side of the bed, but the comforter is rucked up next to him, too, and when he reaches out they’re faintly warm. He lets his hand rest for a moment in the indent where another body might have been, and looks back at the door, listening to the murmur of far-off voices and the creak of floorboards under footsteps.
Then he groans and rolls off the bed, because he’s never had to piss so badly in his goddamn life.
When he shoulders the bathroom door open, Barton is asleep and shirtless in the partially-filled bathtub, an empty bottle of whiskey bobbing around his knees. He’s still wearing his party hat from the night before and there’s wet confetti stuck to his bare torso. Bucky glares down at him for a moment, then yanks the shower curtain closed and uses the toilet anyway. He’s washing his hands when a there’s a “Hrrngh,” from behind the striped fabric, followed by, “Fuck, what?”
Bucky looks over, and the curtain lifts to reveal Barton’s pale face. He looks accusingly at the flushing toilet and then at Bucky, whiskey bottle clutched to his chest like a child’s pacifier. “You’re fucking disgusting, you know that, Barnes?”
“Who passed out in whose bathroom, here?” Bucky says, and Christ, he sounds like he’s been chewing glass. He leans over to offer Barton a hand up anyway.
The man ignores him and uses the towel bar, staggering out of the tub. “Fucking. Disgusting,” he grumbles, scratching over his stomach in two circles. When he’s tired, he signs along with what he’s saying. “Wait, why are my pants wet?”
Bucky shrugs and cups his hands under the faucet, making sure it’s lukewarm before he splashes it on his face. The water feels deadened and strange on his left hand, like cool silk instead of water. “What’s the handle for it now? T-M-fuckin’-I, pal.”
Barton flips him off and jerks the curtain back, popping a few of the rings free. “Fuck you, there’s a foot of water in there. Someone tried to drown me.”
Bucky grabs the hand towel, gives him a quick once-over. “And shampoo you, too. Red-letter night.”
Barton touches his sticky hair and says, “Goddamnit.”
Bucky leaves him to his rinsing and steps into the upstairs hallway with the intention of getting out of his beery clothes and maybe crawling back in bed. His feet take him further, though, past his door and down the hall where it opens into the foyer. There’s a quiet but persistent part of him that demands reconnaissance on the voices downstairs, has already assessed and reassessed their upstairs hallway for blind spots and points of egress and discarded the idea of the wall sconce as a defensive weapon.
He needs to know where Steve is. He can go back to bed in a second, but first, he needs to see Steve.
The cracked door to Steve’s room catches Bucky’s eye, but when he pushes at it with light fingertips it’s Thor spread lengthwise across the mattress. Fully clothed and spread-eagle, his massive arms and legs dangle off the sides to the floor. Jane, whose party hat has migrated to the side of her face, is draped over his back like a kitten on a Clydesdale. As Bucky watches, Thor starts to inhale on a thunderous snore and she smacks him without opening her eyes. He coughs himself quiet, resettling with his mouth closed.
Bucky’s lips twitch, and he pulls the door closed again. He continues down the hallway, and at the stairs he pauses with a hand on the newel post.
"- asking you, please.”
“I don’t know, man. Isn’t this kind of wasted on your super-metabolism? We should really save the caffeine for people who need it.”
“Sam. Coffee.”
“Why do you even want any if it doesn’t work?”
“Because coffee, Sam, gimme that.”
Bucky closes his eyes. It’s enough, for now. He turns and pads noiselessly back to his room.
He has a sleeveless Yankees shirt that makes Steve scowl every time, so he grabs that and peels off everything else but his knives, kicking the offending jeans in the direction of the hamper. There are angry red indentations marching across his stomach like stitches, and the visual sparks against something- a flash of pain and confusion, disassociated from any time or place. It makes him dizzy, and he drags his eyes up and grits his teeth through the vertigo as he pulls on the shirt, left shoulder resettling with a quiet whir. He finds the soft sweatpants he wants on the floor next to the hamper, under the jeans, and as an afterthought he goes to the dresser and digs around for another pair.
“Hey, do you have anything I could- asshole,” Barton says, as Bucky steps out and chucks the balled-up pants in his face. “You’re such an asshole, holy shit.”
“Change quick, ‘m not saving you any cereal,” Bucky says, and starts down the stairs. His balance is shot to shit by the headache and the dregs of last night’s drunken stupor, and when he stumbles over a plate of melted ice cream someone’s left on the steps he nearly takes out the bannister. Barton pulls some kind of highwire move and vaults past him at the landing, but Bucky hits the first floor in time to body-check him into the entryway closet. The morning is looking up.
The kitchen is blisteringly bright when he gets there, the kind of searing yellow only seen on summer mornings after a storm. Cast in sharp chiaroscuro by the sun in the windows behind him, Steve is hunched over the kitchen table, cradling a coffee mug to his face with both hands and the air of a supplicant at the feet of St. Mary. Across from him, Natasha is folded over her arms and perusing the funnies from inches away, hair falling out of a messy bun. Next to her, Sam has dark circles under his eyes and glitter in his goatee. He’s giving Bucky a dark look over the lip of his own mug.
“You guys sound like a herd of elephants,” he complains as Barton elbows Bucky out of the way and makes a beeline for the cabinets. There’s glitter there, too; the counters are crowded with half-empty bottles of alcohol and disposable cups and plates, the sink and garbage can overflowing. There’s a banner with HAPPY 100TH, GRANDPA! in loud cartoon font hanging crookedly from the ceiling above the stove. “Aren’t you supposed to be spies or something?”
“Or something,” Natasha says, flicking an amused look at Bucky. “Ne delai iz mukhi slon.”
“K’chortu. ”Eyes half-shut against the brightness, Bucky feels his way along the wall towards the fridge, finding Steve’s shoulder and and slapping it a few times as he passes the table. “Hey, birthday boy. How you feeling?”
“Fuggoff,” Steve grumbles. His eyes are squeezed down to tiny slits of pain. “You did this to me.”
“Pretty sure Thor and Stark did this to you, and you let ‘em,” Bucky says. Barton shakes a brightly-colored cereal box in his direction with a quirked brow and Bucky shrugs at him, pulling the fridge open to grab the milk. “You want some water?”
Steve nods, lip poking out in a pout he’s denied using since age eight and a half, and Bucky starts tunneling through ketchup and pickle jars in search of a bottle.
Eight and a half, he muses while he digs; pretty specific. Did he know that before? Maybe, maybe not. It still sneaks up on him, this knowing-without-knowing thing- like always hearing the echo, never the sound.
Water in hand, Bucky shuts the fridge door with his hip and tugs open an adjacent drawer for spoons. Barton is already at the far end of the table with the bowls, pouring what looks like three-quarters of the Cap’n America Crunch Berries out for himself. Steve’s expression gets even surlier when he notices the box; last Sunday, Bucky had a fifteen-minute laughing fit in the breakfast aisle then insisted they buy it over Steve’s flustered protests, if only for the extremely strategic placement of two large berries on the cartoon Cap’n.
Natasha is in Bucky’s seat, so Bucky kicks at Steve’s ankle until the man makes an angry inarticulate noise and shuffles over on the bench. Their shoulders bump as Bucky sits and sets the water bottle in front of Steve, freeing up a hand just in time to catch the bowl Barton throws and fling a spoon in response.
“It’s nonstop Barnum and Bailey around here,” Sam mutters, leaning out of the way as he tugs the sports section out from under Natasha’s comics. “Every damn day and night.”
“Posers,” Barton says, rolling his spoon from knuckle to knuckle.
“Hand over Cap’s berries,” Bucky says, and feels more than sees Steve’s full-body eyeroll.
Barton steals the milk while Bucky dumps what’s left in the box into his bowl, powder the texture of sawdust and color of an American flag put through a woodchiper raining out along with the sugary puff cereal. The very last thing to fall out is a small plastic package with something bright red inside, and it settles on top of the mound like a cherry on a patriotic sundae.
“Ha,” he says, picking it up and shaking off the powder. “I got the prize.”
“That’s not fair,” Barton whines, and Bucky preemptively tucks it close to his chest to open, tipping the object into his metal palm. It’s a habit he didn’t notice until Steve pointed it out- he tends to hold things in his left hand if they’re new or strange.
“Hey, it’s a decoder ring,” Sam says, newspaper folded down. “Cool. Didn’t know they made those anymore.”
“Decoder ring?” Bucky touches it cautiously, a lettered blue disk attached to two curved plastic tines. There’s a slip of paper in the package too, telling him he can use the ring to “Help Cap’n America™ Fight Nazis By Decoding Secret Messages!”
“Just what you always wanted, right?” Steve says dryly, back to communing with his coffee mug. The water bottle sits half-empty on the table in front of him. “Ah, let Clint have it. Look at that face.”
“Yeah, let Clint have it,” Barton says, already reaching out.
“No, wait,” Bucky says, because he’s remembering something else. Something about a ring, and- “Steve. Your last birthday. One of your last birthdays, before, you know.”
“Yeah?” Steve blinks at him, then sets down his mug. “Whaddya got?”
Bucky frowns down at the ring, exploring the thought. There’s an art to this, to concentrating enough to make the memory surface but not dissolve, finding the exact right pinch-point that will let him pull it out like a line from deep water. “You were all small and mopey. Something about a dame.”
Natasha props her chin on her hand, mouth curved mockingly. “Do tell.”
Steve gives her a look, but turns back to Bucky with an encouraging nod. “Yeah? What else?”
And just like that, it comes: suffocating heat and wilted collars, ruffling Steve’s sweaty hair and getting swatted for his troubles. Bathtub gin and sunburn in a red stripe over Steve’s nose. Sneaking up the stairs to the roof, wood slats over tar, lying under the stars and the entire tenement’s laundry waving on lines strung between the chimneys.
Bucky picks up the ring and holds it between them. “Steven Grant Rogers,” he says solemnly. “Will you marry me?”
Barton chokes on his cereal. Natasha blinks, hand falling from her face. Sam sets his coffee down with a sharp clack and says, “If you two have been secretly engaged since the forties, I am not going to be surprised. You hear me? Not surprised. At all.”
And Steve, after one glorious moment of slack-jawed, blue-eyed shock, smacks a hand to his face and groans. “No, we aren’t- God, of all the nights, Buck, that one?”
“Caterwauling about being a bachelor forever, all ’cause some skirt told you to pound sand on your birthday,” Bucky says, grinning at him. This new memory is a good one: Steve, moaning and mauldin and so drunk he could barely stand, hanging onto Bucky’s shirt, letting his head fall against Bucky’s chest.
At that moment, Bucky had been enjoying the warm, slight weight of him, even with the boney press of his shoulder digging into his ribs. He’d been thinking about how easy it would be to kiss him, to just lean over and plant one on his red, red mouth. He doesn’t say that part out loud.
“Well, you’re sure as hell old now, Grandpa America,” he says instead. “Officially on the spinster shelf.”
“Bucky-“
“Marry me, Steve. Where’re you going to get another offer like this, huh? Tasha was your first kiss in seventy years.”
“She was not-” Steve sputters, already mottled pink at the ears and cheek. “You were not my first kiss in seventy years, stop telling people that!”
“Pics or it didn’t happen,” Natasha says dismissively.
Barton is still coughing hard but he manages to get out, “Wait, wait, what exactly did he say?”
Bucky smiles broadly in the face of Steve’s hot glare. “He made me promise, swear up and down that if we were still single fellas at thirty, we’d get married-”
“I was drunk!” Steve protests. “Men couldn’t get married then anyhow-“
“- and said we’d set up house and be confirmed bachelors together for the rest of our lives, away from women and their cruel, mysterious ways,” Bucky continues over him, waving the ring. “And here we are. Won’t you marry me, Steve? Make me the happiest man in the world, say you’ll be mine.”
“You’re a real laugh riot, you know that?” Steve says, folding his arms across his chest.
“C’mon, Steve, you’re breaking my heart,” Bucky says, sliding off the bench so he can get on one knee. Steve’s making the most beautifully pissed-off face right now, all furrowed eyebrows and jutting jaw. Bucky wants to draw it out, make it last; maybe frame it and hang it somewhere. He presents the ring again with a flourish. “Say yes. Do me the great honor of accepting my hand in holy matrimony, and all that.”
“Bucky.”
“Stevie,” Bucky replies in the same threatening tone. “What, don’t you love me?”
Steve’s eyes narrow. Bucky waggles the ring at him, and they narrow even more.
“Well, alright,” Bucky says with a gusty sigh, dropping his hand and gazing down at the flimsy little ring. “If you really won’t have me. I’ll cry myself to sleep tonight and every night after-”
“Fine,” Steve declares.
Bucky looks up, still grinning a little. “What?”
“I said fine,” Steve repeats, planting his feet on the floor and setting his hands on his knees. “I’ll marry you, James Buchanan Barnes.”
“You... will?” Bucky says. He what?
“What, you didn’t mean it?” Steve asks, a belligerent tilt to his chin. “You don’t want to be the happiest man on earth?”
And now Bucky narrows his own eyes. Oh, yeah? Two can definitely play at that game. “Give me your hand then, punk, I’m gonna put a ring on it.”
Natasha snorts, and Steve seems to get the reference, sticking his hand out like he’d rather punch Bucky in the face with it. Bucky grabs him, fingers curling into Steve’s warm palm, and stares right into his eyes as he slides the ring on.
It barely makes it past the first joint. Steve looks distinctly unimpressed.
“Well, knuckle rings are in these days,” Sam says, peering across the table at it.
“Don’t be dumb, we’re obviously getting it resized,” Barton says. “I know a guy.” His hands follow the words, tapping above his eyebrow and pinching out from his forehead.
“I’ve got my mom’s rings upstairs right now,” Steve says, still glaring down at Bucky. “If you’re serious about this.”
“I’m serious,” Bucky promises. He’s oddly, acutely aware of Steve’s hand in his, and the eye contact is getting intense, but it doesn’t feel right to let go or look away just yet. “This is just our engagement ring.”
“Oh, will it be a long engagement?” Natasha asks, leaning back and laying an arm across Barton’s chair. “When should we start dress shopping? It takes Clint forever to find shoes.”
The man scowls at her and Sam says, “How much longer can it get? It’s been overdue since, what, 1950?”
“He’s right. Let’s get married now,” Steve says.
“Now?” Bucky says despite himself.
“Right now,” Steve says determinedly, and turns to yell into the living room. “Tony!”
Pepper is the only one immediately visible, still fast asleep on the couch with Stark’s jacket from the night before draped over her. Bucky doesn’t see the man himself until Steve bellows again. “Hey, Tony!”
“I’m awake,” Stark says, popping up from the floor between the couch and the coffee table. His hair’s a flattened mess and his goatee is worse; Bucky’s seen guys come out of wind tunnels looking better kempt. “Oh, God, why am I awake. Is there coffee.”
“Bucky and I are getting married,” Steve announces, just like that, and Stark makes some kind of windmilling of course you are gesture with his arms as he gets to his feet.
“Great,” he says loudly, hand over his face as he stumbles blindly across the room and into the kitchen. “Congrats. Nifty keen. Coffee?”
“It’s on the counter, old man,” Sam says, pointing. “Mugs are in the- or you could drink straight from the pot, that’s absolutely a thing people do.”
Stark holds up a finger and continues drinking until the pot is down two inches of liquid, then lowers it with a lip-smacking sigh. “Okay. Okay, you may continue.”
“Bucky and I are getting married-”
“That would explain why he’s kneeling with your hand in his,” Stark muses, like he’s just noticed. “Sorry. Carry on.”
Steve’s fingers twitch, and Bucky lets him go under the guise of standing and stretching. The plates in his arm flex and settle uneasily; his hand feels cold. “Yeah, that’s right,” he says. He’ll be damned if this idiot out-bluffs him. “We’re getting married today.”
“That’s right. As soon as possible,” Steve says, sticking his chin out like he expects Bucky to argue. Ha, no.
“And Natasha is my best man,” Bucky adds, before Steve can think of it. He looks over his shoulder at her, and she flutters her eyelashes at him.
“Fine, Sam is mine,” Steve says testily.
“Nice,” Sam says, and high-fives Natasha without either of them looking.
“Typical,” Barton says, “just typical. Leave the bowman out of everything, you don’t need him-”
“You’re the ringbearer, you’re doing the rings,” Bucky tells him, annoyed. “You know a guy, remember?”
Barton perks up pathetically easy. “He does rush jobs, too, or at least he will for me. When’s the ceremony? Where’s the ceremony?”
“That’s why we need you, Tony,” Steve says, turning back to him. “You got married a couple months ago and-”
“Oh, you need Pepper,” Stark says, looking immensely relieved. “Pep! Hey, Pepper-pot, rise and shine, these crazy kids need your help-”
“I am sleeping, Tony,” Pepper says primly, tugging his jacket higher.
Stark, still carrying the coffee pot, starts flipping open cabinet doors while he’s talking. “No, Pep, listen, Cap and Barnes are getting married-”
“What?” Pepper’s eyes pop open. “Married?”
“Today,” Steve interjects, in case anyone had forgotten the plan in the intervening thirty seconds.
“Today!” Stark repeats, finding the mugs and pouring coffee into one. “Which is why they need you, Pep. You’re the best, most ruthless wedding planner I’ve ever seen.” He motions demandingly at Barton and the milk, which gets passed to him over Steve’s head.
“Thank you... I think,” Pepper says, sitting up and blinking sleepily. “You’re- you’re getting married? Really?”
This might be the part where one of them admits that no, they’re just fooling around, and Bucky gives Barton the damn toy ring and they all have a good laugh and things settle back into their everyday grooves. They’re supposed to be doing interview prep for Tuesday, and running courses in night infiltration. Stark’s got a new gadget he’s been itching to test on anyone who’ll hold still long enough, and Banner had mentioned it might be nice to get out of the city for a few hours.
Bucky steals a glance at Steve, sees him staring right back with an eyebrow arched in silent challenge.
“Yeah, we are. I’m the happiest man on earth,” Bucky coos, making his voice sticky-sweet. “Gonna marry the light of my life, my moon and stars.”
Steve gives Bucky a covert one-finger salute, but Pepper somehow doesn’t seem to catch the sarcasm. “Oh, James, Steve, that’s so- just, amazing! How wonderful, I had no idea. Were you planning this?”
Steve says, “For ages,” at the same time Bucky says, “Oh, always.”
It’s a complete lie until he says it out loud. Something in his temple twinges, and Bucky stills as the familiar disorientation sweeps up and over him.
Something about it rings true, and that’s… they were? Were they planning this?
No, that’s not right. Or not quite right. He has the feeling, insubstantial and unsupported, that they’d never brought it up again after that night. Just one silly, stupid moment between them, heads close together and his stomach sore with laughter, Steve kicking at him even though he was laughing too. One moment like a thousand others, words forgotten almost as soon as they’d been uttered.
But that’s not quite right, either. And when he tries to remember why, there’s nothing there to tell him. Nothing to pull at, nothing to touch. Just that gut feeling, that hunch, that glimmer like something moving through dark water.
Steve is saying, “Thinking about it for a while, just decided today,” and Bucky suddenly has no idea if he’s lying at all.
Pepper accepts it readily enough, and seems simultaneously thrilled and worried. “Oh, I’m so happy for you! And so suddenly? It usually takes months to plan an event like this. Tony and I took years.”
“That was not my fault,” Stark says. Under Pepper’s stare, he adds, “That was a little bit my fault. But yes, I have been informed by several sources that the date is set.” He lifts the sugar bowl from the counter and carries it and the coffee into the living room. Pepper already has her hand out for the mug when he passes it to her and ducks to kiss her temple.
“Then, your marriage license?” she asks, taking a quick sip. “Mm, did you get the sugar-? Thanks. There’s a twenty-four hour waiting period, so if you haven’t-”
“That will not be a problem,” Stark informs them with a wave of his hand. “JARVIS? Oh, right, no JARVIS in your tiny Brooklyn hovel, Pep, where’s my phone-“
“Also, it’s July 5th,” she continues, pulling his phone from a pocket of the jacket still draped over her shoulders and passing it into Stark’s grabby hands. She produces a sleek little phone of her own from somewhere while Stark starts typing with one hand and spooning sugar into her mug with the other. “It will be harder to get people on the line just after a major holiday. We need… oh, a guest list, a venue, a photographer, an officiant-”
“That’s fancy future talk for whoever’s performing the ceremony,” Stark adds, stirring briskly, still typing. Sometimes Bucky wonders why he hasn’t just implanted the thing in his damn head, but he knows better than to ask Stark something like that; it might inspire him. “And in your case, will probably be a justice of the peace. Most priests still won’t do the guy-guy thing.”
“Transportation we can do from the tower’s motor pool,” Pepper continues, flipping quickly through screens. “We have several nice-”
“Limo,” Natasha says immediately. “A big white stretch limousine with leather seats and a built-in bar. It’s a classic,” she explains to Steve, who’s squinting dubiously at her.
“For a high school prom, maybe,” Stark says, looking highly offended.
“Sorry, I don’t make the rules. Limo.”
“And then, um.” Pepper bites her lip and taps something. “Flowers, rings-”
“Clint’s on rings,” Sam says, reaching past Natasha to nudge him in the shoulder. “Aren’t you.”
“Yes I am,” Barton says, using one hand and a foot on the wall to flip neatly over the table. He lands on his toes and looks expectantly at Steve, ready to bounce off. “Where are they, exactly?”
“Uh,” Steve says.
The rings, those are important to Steve. Bucky knows it abstractly, saw the way Steve had sat and stared when the New York Historical Society had surrendered them and a few other things Steve had put in storage before crossing the Atlantic. Bucky can see the start of something like uncertainty in his eyes, and he suddenly doesn’t want to give him an excuse. Not yet. Not until Bucky remembers why it’s so important.
“Leave ‘em, Barton,” he says casually, leaning his hip on the table. “Go- go and get me a big fat diamond for this loser, the biggest one you can find.”
“Don’t you dare,” Steve says immediately, pointing a threatening finger at Barton even as his shoulders drop, telegraphing relief. “Get normal rings, Clint. No diamonds, I’ve read about those, it’s horrible what they do to the miners.”
“Boring,” Barton complains, but he makes for the stairs at a trot. “Give me two hours. Steve, I’m gonna need to borrow some clothes.”
“Knock yourself out,” Steve sighs.
“Use the black card!” Pepper calls after him, and when Steve starts to protest she adds, “We can always invoice it later. Rings, great, and now-”
“The party, Pep,” Stark says with big eyes. “The party’s the best part.”
“Not for everyone,” she says, giving him an amused look. “After the wedding, if we have a reception for the guests, we’ll need to hire a caterer. And depending on the size and site, we should consider entertainment. A DJ, or a band.”
“A caterer,” Bucky repeats. When did weddings get so complicated? You dressed up, you said your vows in the church, half the neighborhood brought casseroles. No catering needed. Then again, Pepper doesn’t look like the kind of woman who has time to make a casserole. Natasha he knows would laugh in his face.
“A band?” Steve asks weakly, because of course the first thing his phobic mind jumps to is dancing.
“Maybe something small,” Natasha says, looking back and forth between Bucky and Steve with badly suppressed schadenfreude. “Something here, or in the tower. It’ll be more intimate.”
“I think Bruce could help with the food, if you want it small,” Pepper says, frowning down at her list. “He’s such a good cook.”
“And a great chemist,” Stark says loyally. “He should do the cake.”
“I want something with five tiers,” Bucky says, just to make that muscle twitch in Steve’s jaw again. “Big old columns. A hundred white frosted roses and all those little pearls.”
Pepper pokes something on her screen and starts typing rapidly. “Five tiers is probably a job for a professional, and… okay, it’s a tight schedule, but Susan owes us for the blackcurrant disaster. Do you have a favorite flavor?”
“Lemon,” Bucky says, at the same time Steve says, “Blueberries.”
“Lemon and blueberries,” she says, and keeps typing while Steve and Bucky eye each other. “White roses. Wait, have you thought about what you’ll wear?”
“Their uniforms,” Sam says immediately, and Natasha bursts out laughing.
“Skintight leather and black Kevlar, that should be memorable.”
Sam waves her words away. “Hush up, I meant their dress blues. I know you’ve got a set in the closet upstairs, Steve.”
Bucky cocks his head. “I don’t.”
“I can fix that,” Stark says, setting the sugar bowl on the coffee table. “I can fix that in a millisecond. JARVIS, ping Rhodey for me.”
“We can do this,” Pepper says encouragingly. She’s looking at Steve and Bucky with an excited, luminous smile, and Bucky abruptly feels like a heel for leading her on. Not enough to back down, but they’ll have to do something nice for her after he beats the pants off Steve. “If you’re really set on today, each of us can take something. Someone will need to pick up the cake-”
“I’ll do it,” Sam says, hand shooting up like a star pupil. “And I’ll get the flowers. To quote the Amazing Hawkeye, I know a guy.”
“I’m picking the church,” Bucky tells Steve, “or whatever. You can do that entertainment thing.”
“No entertainment,” Steve declares.
“JARVIS can do the entertainment, too,” Stark corrects. “Right, dear?”
“Indubitably, sir,” comes the familiar, exasperated voice through his phone.
“I’ll get Bruce to send you a menu,” Natasha says, shark-smile of hers firmly in place. “Thor can be your party planner, how does that sound?”
“Hey, where is Bruce?” Stark says, craning his head around. “And Thor, and Dr. Foster?”
“Bruce is wishing he’d thought to grab a pillow or something,” comes a disembodied voice, “because the floor is very hard and very bad for Bruce’s back.” A hand appears on the back of the couch, the man attached to it slowly dragging the rest of his body up until his greying curls and bloodshot eyes are visible as well. “For the, ow, record, and weddings notwithstanding? You’re all completely crazy. And I charge thirty aspirin per plate, take it or leave it.”
“You gave your bed to Thor when Jane passed out in your birthday cake,” Natasha says to Steve. “Don’t you remember?”
“There was cake?” Steve says vaguely.
“This is why I don’t drink anything Thor brings, you know,” Sam says. “I need those brain cells.”
“Unlike the rest of us, I suppose,” Pepper says with a grimace, smoothing her rumpled dress. “This poor thing. I can’t remember the last time I spent the night on a couch.”
“Could be worse,” Bucky says, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. “Barton was in the bathtub when I got up.”
“He was not,” Natasha says, sounding delighted.
“A bath sounds like, owww, a good idea,” Banner says, pulling himself very slowly and carefully upright. “Unless you’re getting married in the next thirty seconds, I’m going back to the tower now.”
“We meet at the tower,” Stark proclaims, brandishing his phone at Steve and Bucky. “I can’t plan anything out of this place, this is a museum, this is the Natural History annex with the animatronic cavemen. You have one hour. Uh, three hours. Rhodey is bringing the uniform up from DC and he’s refusing to take the suit.”
Natasha, who’s gotten to her feet and is already halfway across the room, suddenly turns and points at Bucky. “You. Don’t leave the apartment without me. Your best man has plans.”
“Great. Can’t wait,” Bucky says insincerely, and she disappears around the corner. “Shit.”
Steve is unsympathetic. “You picked her, Buck. I got the sane one.”
“Speaking of,” Sam starts, and laughs at Steve’s hunted look. “Nah, man, it’s too late to be planning wild bachelor parties or whatever. Just keep your phone on and close by. I’m going to send you pictures of what I find for the flowers, and you need to tell me what you like.”
“On the... phone,” Steve says, in a way that could be a question or statement. Sam nods anyway, because he’s kind like that. “Okay, got it.”
Stark helps Pepper up from the couch and points a finger at Bucky. “Keep us updated, kids. The old folks are going home to get a nap in.”
“Really, I’m so happy for you both,” Pepper adds as she lets herself be steered towards the foyer. Banner limps after them, scrubbing a hand through his messy hair. “Congratulations!”
“Guess that’s my cue, too,” Sam says, rising. “Steve, seriously, phone.”
And in less than a minute their kitchen is empty, just soggy bowls of cereal and the two of them staring at each other. Steve looks a little shellshocked, but mulish. Bucky’s not about to fold either.
“We’re getting married,” he says. “I’m going to go find a priest or a justice or whatever and we’re doing it.”
Steve opens his mouth. Closes it in a tight line, and something in Bucky’s chest clenches.
“You got something to say to me?” he asks, angling his body to face Steve more squarely.
Stupidly, he hopes the answer is no. He hopes it’s no, and maybe they can go on like this a little longer. At least until Bucky knows why, like a tattered letter in his pocket, these things feel so damn familiar: the war is over, a sunny room in Brooklyn, his ring on Steve’s finger.
“Yeah, I got something to say to you,” Steve says, looking up, and Bucky tenses. “I’ve got plenty, starting with you proposing to me in a goddamn Yankees shirt. The Yankees, Buck.”
“That’s it? You know what, you need to let it go,” Bucky says, and he’s relieved, why is he so relieved, by the habitual argument. “The Dodgers are gone, Steve, and the Mets are terrible. There are other, better teams to hate now.”
“Ah, shut up,” Steve says. He slides off the bench and takes his bottle of water with him, knocking Bucky’s shoulder with his as he passes. “I’ve gotta get washed up, because apparently, I’m getting married today.”
“Yeah, you are,” Bucky says to his back, and swallows against everything else that wants to spill out after it.Memories are thorny, splintering, dangerous things.
Bucky doesn’t recall having much of an opinion on them, before. It’s not a thing people generally have to worry about, whether a color or sound or smell is going to send them tumbling into a razor-edged pit with no handholds or bottom, built entirely from their own mind. Most people are spared the kind of experiences that make memories like his. There’s shit Bucky doesn’t want to remember because it’s ugly, and there are things that will pull him under and drown him, memories he’ll surface from only hours later under the bed or behind the couch, shaking and nauseous.
This is different.
He knew. He knows, alright? He knows that he’s... that he just is, and he has been for a long time, at a distance that was never quite closed because Steve isn’t. Never was. Steve is Steve, and Bucky is not the man he remembers, and they’ve never- Steve has never said anything like he knows how Bucky feels.
And Bucky has never needed him to, has never needed all the pieces. Never needed to know the why or how. He didn’t care because he didn’t have to care, because Steve isn’t going anywhere. The sun rises in the east, the grass is green, and Steve is going to be there ’til the fucking end of the fucking line.
This is different. This is, potentially, the foundation of everything Bucky has built since the Potomac shifting, making what should be the most familiar geography of all strange and new: Bucky and Steve, Steve and Bucky. The memories he thought were the most solid of anything he has are suddenly just as suspect as the rest, and he hates it. Hates it, and at the same time…
“This is stupid,” Bucky says, opening another internet-window on Steve’s pad computer. He has twelve or thirteen open already, churches and banquet halls and gardens all around the city.
“The stupidest,” Natasha agrees from behind him, followed by another careful snip. They’re speaking Russian, because it’s easier sometimes. Bucky ignores the flat memory of rubber in his mouth and slouches in his chair, dragged into the bathroom from the bedroom. “If you leave Steve at the altar after all this work,” she continues, “I’m not the only one who’s going to want to hunt you down.”
“No, I mean, have people really gotten married in a public toilet?” Bucky says, scrolling down through the article. “That’s bizarre, right? That’s not a thing normal people do nowadays?”
“Setting in motion an entire wedding when they have no intention of getting married is also not a thing normal people do,” she says. “I know it can be confusing sometimes.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bucky mutters, clicking on another link, and Natasha tugs on the lock of hair she’s holding. “Ow!”
“James.”
“What?” Bucky’s facing the mirror, so he can glower at her reflection and she can smile lazily back.
“Normally, I’d enjoy watching every second of this trainwreck,” she says. “You’re an ass and Steve’s stubborn as a Cossack, so I imagine by this time tomorrow the two of you would be legally married in the state of New York and insisting it’s exactly what you meant to do.”
“But?”
“But,” she says, and drops her eyes to the scissors in her hand. Her fingers thread through his hair, gentle. “What else did you remember?”
He doesn’t ask her how she knows. “Nothing,” he says. “Not a damn thing.”
She makes a noncommittal noise in her throat, and the snipping starts again.
“I just… there’s something about this I’m not remembering.”
“Ah,” she says. “One of those.”
“Got any tips?” he asks, bitter.
Natasha’s smile is dark, and aimed inward. “None guaranteed to work. Want to talk about it?”
“No,” he says sullenly, and she pulls at his hair again. “Stop that. I don’t want to walk down the aisle with a bald spot.”
“I wouldn’t worry. Tony is probably sewing a matching veil as we… James?”
“A veil,” he mumbles, staring blindly past the sink. Mrs. Rogers’ veil was neatly folded in a hatbox under her bed, yellowed and layered with dry crumbling springs of lavender. It looked like it should be soft but the tulle was rough and caught on his callouses and why is he remembering this.
“James.” Hands on his shoulders, and when he refocuses Natasha looks worried.
“Something else happened,” he says, more to himself than her. “Can’t have been much, or Steve would have said something.”
“Unless he thought it would somehow damage your friendship or impede your recovery,” she says neutrally.
She’s right, of course. Damn it all to hell.
They’re quiet for a time, and Bucky eventually refocuses on the computer screen. One result has kept popping up, no matter what combination of wedding and venue and New York he types in. “We’ve been looking at all these fancy places, but what about City Hall? They still do the civil marriages, right?”
In the mirror, Natasha’s lips quirk. “It’ll be packed. Steve is fairly recognizable, and if you add Stark and the rest of us there’s no way you’ll be overlooked.”
“Let’s just- look, it says here they’re open until four on weekdays,” Bucky says, glancing at the time. “It’s eleven now. We can make it.”
“Assuming Stark can circumvent the paperwork, Rhodes gets the uniforms, Clint gets the rings, and you don’t get cold feet.” She says it like she’s teasing, but she’s watching him again.
“I’m not going to-” he starts, frustrated. “Look, something will happen. Someone will invade the city or steal the moon or something else completely nuts, the Avengers will assemble, and when we win we’ll eat the damn cake and laugh about it. They’ll forget about it. Steve’ll forget about it.”
“And what will you do if he doesn’t?” Natasha asks, softly.
A soft chime saves him from having to answer, and a notification appears on the pad’s screen. Bucky prods it with a fingertip, and it’s mail from Pepper. She’s attached paperwork for them to sign. Their judicial waiver, whatever that is, will have to be obtained from City Hall. Also, have they chosen a venue yet?
Let’s just do it all at City Hall, Bucky writes back, pecking at the virtual letters. Easier that way. It closes at 4, let’s go by 3. He hits the button to reply to everyone, because he sees Sam and Steve on the addressee line.
Stark, who is not on the addressee line, replies, city hall, 3, got it. bad luck if groom sees wedding dress, come to tower 1pm for suit.
“As if Steve isn’t going to be wearing the exact same thing,” Natasha says, reading over his shoulder. “Do you want this to be a surprise too?”
She ruffles what’s left of his hair, and Bucky looks up and silently evaluates his reflection. It’s a cut he remembers seeing in so many reels from the war, but it looks strange and new on the man in the mirror. The bones of his face are suddenly more prominent, hollows of his cheeks deeper. He looks tired. He looks young. He doesn’t know if he likes it, or what Steve will think when he sees it.
“Take a shower,” Natasha advises, rising from her seat on the bathtub rim. “Shave some of that stubble, slap on some aftershave, whatever men do to feel pretty. I’ll be waiting outside.”
“Thanks, Tasha,” Bucky says quietly, and she gives him a flippant little wave before pulling the door closed behind her.Bucky takes as long a shower as he dares with Natasha waiting, and stares at himself in the mirror afterwards for longer. This hair curls. He remembers being annoyed that it does, too late, just like he’d forgotten he hated butterscotch until he was spitting into a garbage can outside the ice cream place on Vanderbilt. Steve, that asshole, watched it all and then collapsed across a park bench in hysterical laughter. Bucky reaches for the flat comb and tin of Brylcreem that sits on the counter, and his hand closes on a rounded orange stick with gleaming slats of metal at the head instead.
He stares at it, nonplussed, and it takes an embarrassingly long time before he recognizes the safety razor, and that he has no memories of using Brylcreem after Nantes in ’43. For all he knows, they don’t even sell it anymore. Men do it differently these days, spikes instead of flat and smooth. He runs his fingers through his wet hair experimentally, and doesn’t like the spikes any more than the curl. The cut was a mistake. He already feels off-balance, doesn’t know why he keeps pushing himself-
Yes, he does.
Bucky takes one deep breath, and gets out the shaving cream. That at least hasn’t changed so much. He runs the water in the sink hot enough to scald, and guides the razor against the grain until his whole face feels unnaturally bare.
Now he looks all of fifteen. For Christ’s sake.
He splashes the last of the foam away and pats his cheeks dry. He has to look away from the mirror; this hair, this face, they don’t match the body attached to it. The body that’s broader, bulkier. Scarred. Water condenses and runs along the metal of his arm, down to his fingertips to drip on the floor, and he rubs a towel along the stylistic suggestion of a tricep while he stares at nothing.
On the counter, the pad chimes. Bucky tries to tap it with a metal finger, scowls, and switches hands.
Sam has sent a picture of himself holding a bouquet that looks like a flock of tropical birds in flight, and Steve has broken with his own stubbornly-kept texting etiquette to write without salutation, PUT THOSE AWAY IMMEDIATELY THEY ARE HIDEOUS.
He’s also written back to Bucky.
City hall? You sure know how to make a girl feel special.
A few minutes after, The water’s been running for half an hour, did you drown?
Then, twenty minutes after the other two, Having second thoughts?
It’s a private message, no other names attached. Nothing before or after it. It’s an out, if Bucky wants to take it.
Instead he painstakingly types out, Not a chance. Get your spats on, Stevie, and drops the pad on the counter with a clatter.
<< Marvel Masterlist | Part Two >>
Author: kototyph
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Bucky, Minor Background Relationships
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~19.5k
Warnings/Tags: Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Domestic Avengers, Wedding Planning, Weddings, Pining, Misunderstandings, Angst, Memory Loss, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, stevebuckyspringfling
Summary: Bucky picks up the ring and holds it between them. “Steven Grant Rogers,” he says solemnly. “Will you marry me?”
Notes: For relenafanel and their fabulous prompt: "the 'remember when we were 20 and you had just broken up with your girlfriend and you drunkenly made me promise to marry you if you were single at 30? well happy birthday, jackass, here's a decoder ring I just pulled out of a cereal box. Marry me.' trope. It starts as a joke/BFF trolling, but then they keep joking about it right to the alter."
Many kudos and smooches to my two fantastic betas, bekstek and saintsandsavages. They cranked through this in record time and helped me kill some darlings- the best thing a beta can be is honest. :-*
The two Russian phrases used have mouseover translations, FYI!
“See, now that’s cute,” a voice says, somewhere distant in the room. “That’s the cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen. Can I take a picture?”
An annoyed grunt. Something shifts beneath his head. “No. And be quiet. Bad enough you woke me up.”
“Hey, man, I just want to know where the coffee is. You don’t have to come with me.” “
‘M not leaving you in my kitchen unsupervised. You drink out of the carton.”
"In my own place, yeah-”
“Shhh. Hey, Buck?” A touch, light but lingering, ghosting along the curve of his shoulder. “You wanna let go of me?”
Arms tightening, face turning to press back into warmth. Emphatically no.
“Oh, damn,” says the first voice. “I take it back. I take it all back, that, that right there was so fucking cute I need insulin.”
“C’mon,” the second says, cajoling. “I’m gonna be right downstairs-”
“Yeah, Barnes, let him go before we all drop into a diabetic coma.”
“Please? I promise I’ll be right back,” and the warmth starts to ease away again. No.
“He doesn’t believe you.” “I can see that, thanks. You wanna give me a hand here?”
“No way. If we play tug of war with the Winter Soldier, somebody’s going to lose an arm. And it’ll probably be me.”
A sigh. “Thanks a lot. Bucky, just- please, let me-”
“Wait, wait, I’ve got my phone, stay just like that-”
“Damn it, Sam- oh, thank God. See, that wasn’t so bad, right?”
"Aw, I didn’t get my picture.”
“Oh, can it.” The warmth is gone but the touch is there, brushing hair back from his face. “Come downstairs when you get up, okay, Buck?”
“Look at that fucking murderface. We need to get him a teddy bear or something.”
“God, if he feels half as bad as I do, it’s no wonder. Those Temperance League gals had the right idea.”
“Well, let me put it this way- if I drank what you did, I’d be halfway to Arlington in a pine box by now. You’re getting off easy.”
The door closes with a soft click, and Bucky jerks awake in an empty bed, fingers clenched in the pillow under his head.
He doesn’t move for a long, confused moment, blinking groggily at the opposite wall where bars of sunlight lance across the dresser and mirror. The room is quiet, just a whisper of sound from the central air, and the still-made sheets are soft under his body.
The room seems deserted, though he could have sworn someone was there a moment ago. The tail end of a dream, maybe. He doesn’t remember words, or faces- just the rapidly-dissipating feeling he was just talking to someone, had something important to say, and they wouldn’t fucking listen to him.
“Steve?” he says out loud, because that sounds like their kind of conversation. His voice comes out on a rusty croak and he’s abruptly aware of how uncomfortable he is, his boots gone but his clothes all on, the still-buttoned waist of his jeans digging painfully into his stomach. Piled onto that is a truly vengeful headache threatening pry his skull open like a C-Ration can of beans. There’s a bottle of water going tepid on the sheets next to his face, and he grabs for it gratefully because sweet Jesus Christ his mouth is dry. “Fuck,” he rasps, once he’s downed it all. “Steve?”
There’s another bottle of water on the nightstand, upright and half-empty. Bucky’s curled on the leftmost side of the bed, but the comforter is rucked up next to him, too, and when he reaches out they’re faintly warm. He lets his hand rest for a moment in the indent where another body might have been, and looks back at the door, listening to the murmur of far-off voices and the creak of floorboards under footsteps.
Then he groans and rolls off the bed, because he’s never had to piss so badly in his goddamn life.
When he shoulders the bathroom door open, Barton is asleep and shirtless in the partially-filled bathtub, an empty bottle of whiskey bobbing around his knees. He’s still wearing his party hat from the night before and there’s wet confetti stuck to his bare torso. Bucky glares down at him for a moment, then yanks the shower curtain closed and uses the toilet anyway. He’s washing his hands when a there’s a “Hrrngh,” from behind the striped fabric, followed by, “Fuck, what?”
Bucky looks over, and the curtain lifts to reveal Barton’s pale face. He looks accusingly at the flushing toilet and then at Bucky, whiskey bottle clutched to his chest like a child’s pacifier. “You’re fucking disgusting, you know that, Barnes?”
“Who passed out in whose bathroom, here?” Bucky says, and Christ, he sounds like he’s been chewing glass. He leans over to offer Barton a hand up anyway.
The man ignores him and uses the towel bar, staggering out of the tub. “Fucking. Disgusting,” he grumbles, scratching over his stomach in two circles. When he’s tired, he signs along with what he’s saying. “Wait, why are my pants wet?”
Bucky shrugs and cups his hands under the faucet, making sure it’s lukewarm before he splashes it on his face. The water feels deadened and strange on his left hand, like cool silk instead of water. “What’s the handle for it now? T-M-fuckin’-I, pal.”
Barton flips him off and jerks the curtain back, popping a few of the rings free. “Fuck you, there’s a foot of water in there. Someone tried to drown me.”
Bucky grabs the hand towel, gives him a quick once-over. “And shampoo you, too. Red-letter night.”
Barton touches his sticky hair and says, “Goddamnit.”
Bucky leaves him to his rinsing and steps into the upstairs hallway with the intention of getting out of his beery clothes and maybe crawling back in bed. His feet take him further, though, past his door and down the hall where it opens into the foyer. There’s a quiet but persistent part of him that demands reconnaissance on the voices downstairs, has already assessed and reassessed their upstairs hallway for blind spots and points of egress and discarded the idea of the wall sconce as a defensive weapon.
He needs to know where Steve is. He can go back to bed in a second, but first, he needs to see Steve.
The cracked door to Steve’s room catches Bucky’s eye, but when he pushes at it with light fingertips it’s Thor spread lengthwise across the mattress. Fully clothed and spread-eagle, his massive arms and legs dangle off the sides to the floor. Jane, whose party hat has migrated to the side of her face, is draped over his back like a kitten on a Clydesdale. As Bucky watches, Thor starts to inhale on a thunderous snore and she smacks him without opening her eyes. He coughs himself quiet, resettling with his mouth closed.
Bucky’s lips twitch, and he pulls the door closed again. He continues down the hallway, and at the stairs he pauses with a hand on the newel post.
"- asking you, please.”
“I don’t know, man. Isn’t this kind of wasted on your super-metabolism? We should really save the caffeine for people who need it.”
“Sam. Coffee.”
“Why do you even want any if it doesn’t work?”
“Because coffee, Sam, gimme that.”
Bucky closes his eyes. It’s enough, for now. He turns and pads noiselessly back to his room.
He has a sleeveless Yankees shirt that makes Steve scowl every time, so he grabs that and peels off everything else but his knives, kicking the offending jeans in the direction of the hamper. There are angry red indentations marching across his stomach like stitches, and the visual sparks against something- a flash of pain and confusion, disassociated from any time or place. It makes him dizzy, and he drags his eyes up and grits his teeth through the vertigo as he pulls on the shirt, left shoulder resettling with a quiet whir. He finds the soft sweatpants he wants on the floor next to the hamper, under the jeans, and as an afterthought he goes to the dresser and digs around for another pair.
“Hey, do you have anything I could- asshole,” Barton says, as Bucky steps out and chucks the balled-up pants in his face. “You’re such an asshole, holy shit.”
“Change quick, ‘m not saving you any cereal,” Bucky says, and starts down the stairs. His balance is shot to shit by the headache and the dregs of last night’s drunken stupor, and when he stumbles over a plate of melted ice cream someone’s left on the steps he nearly takes out the bannister. Barton pulls some kind of highwire move and vaults past him at the landing, but Bucky hits the first floor in time to body-check him into the entryway closet. The morning is looking up.
The kitchen is blisteringly bright when he gets there, the kind of searing yellow only seen on summer mornings after a storm. Cast in sharp chiaroscuro by the sun in the windows behind him, Steve is hunched over the kitchen table, cradling a coffee mug to his face with both hands and the air of a supplicant at the feet of St. Mary. Across from him, Natasha is folded over her arms and perusing the funnies from inches away, hair falling out of a messy bun. Next to her, Sam has dark circles under his eyes and glitter in his goatee. He’s giving Bucky a dark look over the lip of his own mug.
“You guys sound like a herd of elephants,” he complains as Barton elbows Bucky out of the way and makes a beeline for the cabinets. There’s glitter there, too; the counters are crowded with half-empty bottles of alcohol and disposable cups and plates, the sink and garbage can overflowing. There’s a banner with HAPPY 100TH, GRANDPA! in loud cartoon font hanging crookedly from the ceiling above the stove. “Aren’t you supposed to be spies or something?”
“Or something,” Natasha says, flicking an amused look at Bucky. “Ne delai iz mukhi slon.”
“K’chortu. ”Eyes half-shut against the brightness, Bucky feels his way along the wall towards the fridge, finding Steve’s shoulder and and slapping it a few times as he passes the table. “Hey, birthday boy. How you feeling?”
“Fuggoff,” Steve grumbles. His eyes are squeezed down to tiny slits of pain. “You did this to me.”
“Pretty sure Thor and Stark did this to you, and you let ‘em,” Bucky says. Barton shakes a brightly-colored cereal box in his direction with a quirked brow and Bucky shrugs at him, pulling the fridge open to grab the milk. “You want some water?”
Steve nods, lip poking out in a pout he’s denied using since age eight and a half, and Bucky starts tunneling through ketchup and pickle jars in search of a bottle.
Eight and a half, he muses while he digs; pretty specific. Did he know that before? Maybe, maybe not. It still sneaks up on him, this knowing-without-knowing thing- like always hearing the echo, never the sound.
Water in hand, Bucky shuts the fridge door with his hip and tugs open an adjacent drawer for spoons. Barton is already at the far end of the table with the bowls, pouring what looks like three-quarters of the Cap’n America Crunch Berries out for himself. Steve’s expression gets even surlier when he notices the box; last Sunday, Bucky had a fifteen-minute laughing fit in the breakfast aisle then insisted they buy it over Steve’s flustered protests, if only for the extremely strategic placement of two large berries on the cartoon Cap’n.
Natasha is in Bucky’s seat, so Bucky kicks at Steve’s ankle until the man makes an angry inarticulate noise and shuffles over on the bench. Their shoulders bump as Bucky sits and sets the water bottle in front of Steve, freeing up a hand just in time to catch the bowl Barton throws and fling a spoon in response.
“It’s nonstop Barnum and Bailey around here,” Sam mutters, leaning out of the way as he tugs the sports section out from under Natasha’s comics. “Every damn day and night.”
“Posers,” Barton says, rolling his spoon from knuckle to knuckle.
“Hand over Cap’s berries,” Bucky says, and feels more than sees Steve’s full-body eyeroll.
Barton steals the milk while Bucky dumps what’s left in the box into his bowl, powder the texture of sawdust and color of an American flag put through a woodchiper raining out along with the sugary puff cereal. The very last thing to fall out is a small plastic package with something bright red inside, and it settles on top of the mound like a cherry on a patriotic sundae.
“Ha,” he says, picking it up and shaking off the powder. “I got the prize.”
“That’s not fair,” Barton whines, and Bucky preemptively tucks it close to his chest to open, tipping the object into his metal palm. It’s a habit he didn’t notice until Steve pointed it out- he tends to hold things in his left hand if they’re new or strange.
“Hey, it’s a decoder ring,” Sam says, newspaper folded down. “Cool. Didn’t know they made those anymore.”
“Decoder ring?” Bucky touches it cautiously, a lettered blue disk attached to two curved plastic tines. There’s a slip of paper in the package too, telling him he can use the ring to “Help Cap’n America™ Fight Nazis By Decoding Secret Messages!”
“Just what you always wanted, right?” Steve says dryly, back to communing with his coffee mug. The water bottle sits half-empty on the table in front of him. “Ah, let Clint have it. Look at that face.”
“Yeah, let Clint have it,” Barton says, already reaching out.
“No, wait,” Bucky says, because he’s remembering something else. Something about a ring, and- “Steve. Your last birthday. One of your last birthdays, before, you know.”
“Yeah?” Steve blinks at him, then sets down his mug. “Whaddya got?”
Bucky frowns down at the ring, exploring the thought. There’s an art to this, to concentrating enough to make the memory surface but not dissolve, finding the exact right pinch-point that will let him pull it out like a line from deep water. “You were all small and mopey. Something about a dame.”
Natasha props her chin on her hand, mouth curved mockingly. “Do tell.”
Steve gives her a look, but turns back to Bucky with an encouraging nod. “Yeah? What else?”
And just like that, it comes: suffocating heat and wilted collars, ruffling Steve’s sweaty hair and getting swatted for his troubles. Bathtub gin and sunburn in a red stripe over Steve’s nose. Sneaking up the stairs to the roof, wood slats over tar, lying under the stars and the entire tenement’s laundry waving on lines strung between the chimneys.
Bucky picks up the ring and holds it between them. “Steven Grant Rogers,” he says solemnly. “Will you marry me?”
Barton chokes on his cereal. Natasha blinks, hand falling from her face. Sam sets his coffee down with a sharp clack and says, “If you two have been secretly engaged since the forties, I am not going to be surprised. You hear me? Not surprised. At all.”
And Steve, after one glorious moment of slack-jawed, blue-eyed shock, smacks a hand to his face and groans. “No, we aren’t- God, of all the nights, Buck, that one?”
“Caterwauling about being a bachelor forever, all ’cause some skirt told you to pound sand on your birthday,” Bucky says, grinning at him. This new memory is a good one: Steve, moaning and mauldin and so drunk he could barely stand, hanging onto Bucky’s shirt, letting his head fall against Bucky’s chest.
At that moment, Bucky had been enjoying the warm, slight weight of him, even with the boney press of his shoulder digging into his ribs. He’d been thinking about how easy it would be to kiss him, to just lean over and plant one on his red, red mouth. He doesn’t say that part out loud.
“Well, you’re sure as hell old now, Grandpa America,” he says instead. “Officially on the spinster shelf.”
“Bucky-“
“Marry me, Steve. Where’re you going to get another offer like this, huh? Tasha was your first kiss in seventy years.”
“She was not-” Steve sputters, already mottled pink at the ears and cheek. “You were not my first kiss in seventy years, stop telling people that!”
“Pics or it didn’t happen,” Natasha says dismissively.
Barton is still coughing hard but he manages to get out, “Wait, wait, what exactly did he say?”
Bucky smiles broadly in the face of Steve’s hot glare. “He made me promise, swear up and down that if we were still single fellas at thirty, we’d get married-”
“I was drunk!” Steve protests. “Men couldn’t get married then anyhow-“
“- and said we’d set up house and be confirmed bachelors together for the rest of our lives, away from women and their cruel, mysterious ways,” Bucky continues over him, waving the ring. “And here we are. Won’t you marry me, Steve? Make me the happiest man in the world, say you’ll be mine.”
“You’re a real laugh riot, you know that?” Steve says, folding his arms across his chest.
“C’mon, Steve, you’re breaking my heart,” Bucky says, sliding off the bench so he can get on one knee. Steve’s making the most beautifully pissed-off face right now, all furrowed eyebrows and jutting jaw. Bucky wants to draw it out, make it last; maybe frame it and hang it somewhere. He presents the ring again with a flourish. “Say yes. Do me the great honor of accepting my hand in holy matrimony, and all that.”
“Bucky.”
“Stevie,” Bucky replies in the same threatening tone. “What, don’t you love me?”
Steve’s eyes narrow. Bucky waggles the ring at him, and they narrow even more.
“Well, alright,” Bucky says with a gusty sigh, dropping his hand and gazing down at the flimsy little ring. “If you really won’t have me. I’ll cry myself to sleep tonight and every night after-”
“Fine,” Steve declares.
Bucky looks up, still grinning a little. “What?”
“I said fine,” Steve repeats, planting his feet on the floor and setting his hands on his knees. “I’ll marry you, James Buchanan Barnes.”
“You... will?” Bucky says. He what?
“What, you didn’t mean it?” Steve asks, a belligerent tilt to his chin. “You don’t want to be the happiest man on earth?”
And now Bucky narrows his own eyes. Oh, yeah? Two can definitely play at that game. “Give me your hand then, punk, I’m gonna put a ring on it.”
Natasha snorts, and Steve seems to get the reference, sticking his hand out like he’d rather punch Bucky in the face with it. Bucky grabs him, fingers curling into Steve’s warm palm, and stares right into his eyes as he slides the ring on.
It barely makes it past the first joint. Steve looks distinctly unimpressed.
“Well, knuckle rings are in these days,” Sam says, peering across the table at it.
“Don’t be dumb, we’re obviously getting it resized,” Barton says. “I know a guy.” His hands follow the words, tapping above his eyebrow and pinching out from his forehead.
“I’ve got my mom’s rings upstairs right now,” Steve says, still glaring down at Bucky. “If you’re serious about this.”
“I’m serious,” Bucky promises. He’s oddly, acutely aware of Steve’s hand in his, and the eye contact is getting intense, but it doesn’t feel right to let go or look away just yet. “This is just our engagement ring.”
“Oh, will it be a long engagement?” Natasha asks, leaning back and laying an arm across Barton’s chair. “When should we start dress shopping? It takes Clint forever to find shoes.”
The man scowls at her and Sam says, “How much longer can it get? It’s been overdue since, what, 1950?”
“He’s right. Let’s get married now,” Steve says.
“Now?” Bucky says despite himself.
“Right now,” Steve says determinedly, and turns to yell into the living room. “Tony!”
Pepper is the only one immediately visible, still fast asleep on the couch with Stark’s jacket from the night before draped over her. Bucky doesn’t see the man himself until Steve bellows again. “Hey, Tony!”
“I’m awake,” Stark says, popping up from the floor between the couch and the coffee table. His hair’s a flattened mess and his goatee is worse; Bucky’s seen guys come out of wind tunnels looking better kempt. “Oh, God, why am I awake. Is there coffee.”
“Bucky and I are getting married,” Steve announces, just like that, and Stark makes some kind of windmilling of course you are gesture with his arms as he gets to his feet.
“Great,” he says loudly, hand over his face as he stumbles blindly across the room and into the kitchen. “Congrats. Nifty keen. Coffee?”
“It’s on the counter, old man,” Sam says, pointing. “Mugs are in the- or you could drink straight from the pot, that’s absolutely a thing people do.”
Stark holds up a finger and continues drinking until the pot is down two inches of liquid, then lowers it with a lip-smacking sigh. “Okay. Okay, you may continue.”
“Bucky and I are getting married-”
“That would explain why he’s kneeling with your hand in his,” Stark muses, like he’s just noticed. “Sorry. Carry on.”
Steve’s fingers twitch, and Bucky lets him go under the guise of standing and stretching. The plates in his arm flex and settle uneasily; his hand feels cold. “Yeah, that’s right,” he says. He’ll be damned if this idiot out-bluffs him. “We’re getting married today.”
“That’s right. As soon as possible,” Steve says, sticking his chin out like he expects Bucky to argue. Ha, no.
“And Natasha is my best man,” Bucky adds, before Steve can think of it. He looks over his shoulder at her, and she flutters her eyelashes at him.
“Fine, Sam is mine,” Steve says testily.
“Nice,” Sam says, and high-fives Natasha without either of them looking.
“Typical,” Barton says, “just typical. Leave the bowman out of everything, you don’t need him-”
“You’re the ringbearer, you’re doing the rings,” Bucky tells him, annoyed. “You know a guy, remember?”
Barton perks up pathetically easy. “He does rush jobs, too, or at least he will for me. When’s the ceremony? Where’s the ceremony?”
“That’s why we need you, Tony,” Steve says, turning back to him. “You got married a couple months ago and-”
“Oh, you need Pepper,” Stark says, looking immensely relieved. “Pep! Hey, Pepper-pot, rise and shine, these crazy kids need your help-”
“I am sleeping, Tony,” Pepper says primly, tugging his jacket higher.
Stark, still carrying the coffee pot, starts flipping open cabinet doors while he’s talking. “No, Pep, listen, Cap and Barnes are getting married-”
“What?” Pepper’s eyes pop open. “Married?”
“Today,” Steve interjects, in case anyone had forgotten the plan in the intervening thirty seconds.
“Today!” Stark repeats, finding the mugs and pouring coffee into one. “Which is why they need you, Pep. You’re the best, most ruthless wedding planner I’ve ever seen.” He motions demandingly at Barton and the milk, which gets passed to him over Steve’s head.
“Thank you... I think,” Pepper says, sitting up and blinking sleepily. “You’re- you’re getting married? Really?”
This might be the part where one of them admits that no, they’re just fooling around, and Bucky gives Barton the damn toy ring and they all have a good laugh and things settle back into their everyday grooves. They’re supposed to be doing interview prep for Tuesday, and running courses in night infiltration. Stark’s got a new gadget he’s been itching to test on anyone who’ll hold still long enough, and Banner had mentioned it might be nice to get out of the city for a few hours.
Bucky steals a glance at Steve, sees him staring right back with an eyebrow arched in silent challenge.
“Yeah, we are. I’m the happiest man on earth,” Bucky coos, making his voice sticky-sweet. “Gonna marry the light of my life, my moon and stars.”
Steve gives Bucky a covert one-finger salute, but Pepper somehow doesn’t seem to catch the sarcasm. “Oh, James, Steve, that’s so- just, amazing! How wonderful, I had no idea. Were you planning this?”
Steve says, “For ages,” at the same time Bucky says, “Oh, always.”
It’s a complete lie until he says it out loud. Something in his temple twinges, and Bucky stills as the familiar disorientation sweeps up and over him.
Something about it rings true, and that’s… they were? Were they planning this?
No, that’s not right. Or not quite right. He has the feeling, insubstantial and unsupported, that they’d never brought it up again after that night. Just one silly, stupid moment between them, heads close together and his stomach sore with laughter, Steve kicking at him even though he was laughing too. One moment like a thousand others, words forgotten almost as soon as they’d been uttered.
But that’s not quite right, either. And when he tries to remember why, there’s nothing there to tell him. Nothing to pull at, nothing to touch. Just that gut feeling, that hunch, that glimmer like something moving through dark water.
Steve is saying, “Thinking about it for a while, just decided today,” and Bucky suddenly has no idea if he’s lying at all.
Pepper accepts it readily enough, and seems simultaneously thrilled and worried. “Oh, I’m so happy for you! And so suddenly? It usually takes months to plan an event like this. Tony and I took years.”
“That was not my fault,” Stark says. Under Pepper’s stare, he adds, “That was a little bit my fault. But yes, I have been informed by several sources that the date is set.” He lifts the sugar bowl from the counter and carries it and the coffee into the living room. Pepper already has her hand out for the mug when he passes it to her and ducks to kiss her temple.
“Then, your marriage license?” she asks, taking a quick sip. “Mm, did you get the sugar-? Thanks. There’s a twenty-four hour waiting period, so if you haven’t-”
“That will not be a problem,” Stark informs them with a wave of his hand. “JARVIS? Oh, right, no JARVIS in your tiny Brooklyn hovel, Pep, where’s my phone-“
“Also, it’s July 5th,” she continues, pulling his phone from a pocket of the jacket still draped over her shoulders and passing it into Stark’s grabby hands. She produces a sleek little phone of her own from somewhere while Stark starts typing with one hand and spooning sugar into her mug with the other. “It will be harder to get people on the line just after a major holiday. We need… oh, a guest list, a venue, a photographer, an officiant-”
“That’s fancy future talk for whoever’s performing the ceremony,” Stark adds, stirring briskly, still typing. Sometimes Bucky wonders why he hasn’t just implanted the thing in his damn head, but he knows better than to ask Stark something like that; it might inspire him. “And in your case, will probably be a justice of the peace. Most priests still won’t do the guy-guy thing.”
“Transportation we can do from the tower’s motor pool,” Pepper continues, flipping quickly through screens. “We have several nice-”
“Limo,” Natasha says immediately. “A big white stretch limousine with leather seats and a built-in bar. It’s a classic,” she explains to Steve, who’s squinting dubiously at her.
“For a high school prom, maybe,” Stark says, looking highly offended.
“Sorry, I don’t make the rules. Limo.”
“And then, um.” Pepper bites her lip and taps something. “Flowers, rings-”
“Clint’s on rings,” Sam says, reaching past Natasha to nudge him in the shoulder. “Aren’t you.”
“Yes I am,” Barton says, using one hand and a foot on the wall to flip neatly over the table. He lands on his toes and looks expectantly at Steve, ready to bounce off. “Where are they, exactly?”
“Uh,” Steve says.
The rings, those are important to Steve. Bucky knows it abstractly, saw the way Steve had sat and stared when the New York Historical Society had surrendered them and a few other things Steve had put in storage before crossing the Atlantic. Bucky can see the start of something like uncertainty in his eyes, and he suddenly doesn’t want to give him an excuse. Not yet. Not until Bucky remembers why it’s so important.
“Leave ‘em, Barton,” he says casually, leaning his hip on the table. “Go- go and get me a big fat diamond for this loser, the biggest one you can find.”
“Don’t you dare,” Steve says immediately, pointing a threatening finger at Barton even as his shoulders drop, telegraphing relief. “Get normal rings, Clint. No diamonds, I’ve read about those, it’s horrible what they do to the miners.”
“Boring,” Barton complains, but he makes for the stairs at a trot. “Give me two hours. Steve, I’m gonna need to borrow some clothes.”
“Knock yourself out,” Steve sighs.
“Use the black card!” Pepper calls after him, and when Steve starts to protest she adds, “We can always invoice it later. Rings, great, and now-”
“The party, Pep,” Stark says with big eyes. “The party’s the best part.”
“Not for everyone,” she says, giving him an amused look. “After the wedding, if we have a reception for the guests, we’ll need to hire a caterer. And depending on the size and site, we should consider entertainment. A DJ, or a band.”
“A caterer,” Bucky repeats. When did weddings get so complicated? You dressed up, you said your vows in the church, half the neighborhood brought casseroles. No catering needed. Then again, Pepper doesn’t look like the kind of woman who has time to make a casserole. Natasha he knows would laugh in his face.
“A band?” Steve asks weakly, because of course the first thing his phobic mind jumps to is dancing.
“Maybe something small,” Natasha says, looking back and forth between Bucky and Steve with badly suppressed schadenfreude. “Something here, or in the tower. It’ll be more intimate.”
“I think Bruce could help with the food, if you want it small,” Pepper says, frowning down at her list. “He’s such a good cook.”
“And a great chemist,” Stark says loyally. “He should do the cake.”
“I want something with five tiers,” Bucky says, just to make that muscle twitch in Steve’s jaw again. “Big old columns. A hundred white frosted roses and all those little pearls.”
Pepper pokes something on her screen and starts typing rapidly. “Five tiers is probably a job for a professional, and… okay, it’s a tight schedule, but Susan owes us for the blackcurrant disaster. Do you have a favorite flavor?”
“Lemon,” Bucky says, at the same time Steve says, “Blueberries.”
“Lemon and blueberries,” she says, and keeps typing while Steve and Bucky eye each other. “White roses. Wait, have you thought about what you’ll wear?”
“Their uniforms,” Sam says immediately, and Natasha bursts out laughing.
“Skintight leather and black Kevlar, that should be memorable.”
Sam waves her words away. “Hush up, I meant their dress blues. I know you’ve got a set in the closet upstairs, Steve.”
Bucky cocks his head. “I don’t.”
“I can fix that,” Stark says, setting the sugar bowl on the coffee table. “I can fix that in a millisecond. JARVIS, ping Rhodey for me.”
“We can do this,” Pepper says encouragingly. She’s looking at Steve and Bucky with an excited, luminous smile, and Bucky abruptly feels like a heel for leading her on. Not enough to back down, but they’ll have to do something nice for her after he beats the pants off Steve. “If you’re really set on today, each of us can take something. Someone will need to pick up the cake-”
“I’ll do it,” Sam says, hand shooting up like a star pupil. “And I’ll get the flowers. To quote the Amazing Hawkeye, I know a guy.”
“I’m picking the church,” Bucky tells Steve, “or whatever. You can do that entertainment thing.”
“No entertainment,” Steve declares.
“JARVIS can do the entertainment, too,” Stark corrects. “Right, dear?”
“Indubitably, sir,” comes the familiar, exasperated voice through his phone.
“I’ll get Bruce to send you a menu,” Natasha says, shark-smile of hers firmly in place. “Thor can be your party planner, how does that sound?”
“Hey, where is Bruce?” Stark says, craning his head around. “And Thor, and Dr. Foster?”
“Bruce is wishing he’d thought to grab a pillow or something,” comes a disembodied voice, “because the floor is very hard and very bad for Bruce’s back.” A hand appears on the back of the couch, the man attached to it slowly dragging the rest of his body up until his greying curls and bloodshot eyes are visible as well. “For the, ow, record, and weddings notwithstanding? You’re all completely crazy. And I charge thirty aspirin per plate, take it or leave it.”
“You gave your bed to Thor when Jane passed out in your birthday cake,” Natasha says to Steve. “Don’t you remember?”
“There was cake?” Steve says vaguely.
“This is why I don’t drink anything Thor brings, you know,” Sam says. “I need those brain cells.”
“Unlike the rest of us, I suppose,” Pepper says with a grimace, smoothing her rumpled dress. “This poor thing. I can’t remember the last time I spent the night on a couch.”
“Could be worse,” Bucky says, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. “Barton was in the bathtub when I got up.”
“He was not,” Natasha says, sounding delighted.
“A bath sounds like, owww, a good idea,” Banner says, pulling himself very slowly and carefully upright. “Unless you’re getting married in the next thirty seconds, I’m going back to the tower now.”
“We meet at the tower,” Stark proclaims, brandishing his phone at Steve and Bucky. “I can’t plan anything out of this place, this is a museum, this is the Natural History annex with the animatronic cavemen. You have one hour. Uh, three hours. Rhodey is bringing the uniform up from DC and he’s refusing to take the suit.”
Natasha, who’s gotten to her feet and is already halfway across the room, suddenly turns and points at Bucky. “You. Don’t leave the apartment without me. Your best man has plans.”
“Great. Can’t wait,” Bucky says insincerely, and she disappears around the corner. “Shit.”
Steve is unsympathetic. “You picked her, Buck. I got the sane one.”
“Speaking of,” Sam starts, and laughs at Steve’s hunted look. “Nah, man, it’s too late to be planning wild bachelor parties or whatever. Just keep your phone on and close by. I’m going to send you pictures of what I find for the flowers, and you need to tell me what you like.”
“On the... phone,” Steve says, in a way that could be a question or statement. Sam nods anyway, because he’s kind like that. “Okay, got it.”
Stark helps Pepper up from the couch and points a finger at Bucky. “Keep us updated, kids. The old folks are going home to get a nap in.”
“Really, I’m so happy for you both,” Pepper adds as she lets herself be steered towards the foyer. Banner limps after them, scrubbing a hand through his messy hair. “Congratulations!”
“Guess that’s my cue, too,” Sam says, rising. “Steve, seriously, phone.”
And in less than a minute their kitchen is empty, just soggy bowls of cereal and the two of them staring at each other. Steve looks a little shellshocked, but mulish. Bucky’s not about to fold either.
“We’re getting married,” he says. “I’m going to go find a priest or a justice or whatever and we’re doing it.”
Steve opens his mouth. Closes it in a tight line, and something in Bucky’s chest clenches.
“You got something to say to me?” he asks, angling his body to face Steve more squarely.
Stupidly, he hopes the answer is no. He hopes it’s no, and maybe they can go on like this a little longer. At least until Bucky knows why, like a tattered letter in his pocket, these things feel so damn familiar: the war is over, a sunny room in Brooklyn, his ring on Steve’s finger.
“Yeah, I got something to say to you,” Steve says, looking up, and Bucky tenses. “I’ve got plenty, starting with you proposing to me in a goddamn Yankees shirt. The Yankees, Buck.”
“That’s it? You know what, you need to let it go,” Bucky says, and he’s relieved, why is he so relieved, by the habitual argument. “The Dodgers are gone, Steve, and the Mets are terrible. There are other, better teams to hate now.”
“Ah, shut up,” Steve says. He slides off the bench and takes his bottle of water with him, knocking Bucky’s shoulder with his as he passes. “I’ve gotta get washed up, because apparently, I’m getting married today.”
“Yeah, you are,” Bucky says to his back, and swallows against everything else that wants to spill out after it.Memories are thorny, splintering, dangerous things.
Bucky doesn’t recall having much of an opinion on them, before. It’s not a thing people generally have to worry about, whether a color or sound or smell is going to send them tumbling into a razor-edged pit with no handholds or bottom, built entirely from their own mind. Most people are spared the kind of experiences that make memories like his. There’s shit Bucky doesn’t want to remember because it’s ugly, and there are things that will pull him under and drown him, memories he’ll surface from only hours later under the bed or behind the couch, shaking and nauseous.
This is different.
He knew. He knows, alright? He knows that he’s... that he just is, and he has been for a long time, at a distance that was never quite closed because Steve isn’t. Never was. Steve is Steve, and Bucky is not the man he remembers, and they’ve never- Steve has never said anything like he knows how Bucky feels.
And Bucky has never needed him to, has never needed all the pieces. Never needed to know the why or how. He didn’t care because he didn’t have to care, because Steve isn’t going anywhere. The sun rises in the east, the grass is green, and Steve is going to be there ’til the fucking end of the fucking line.
This is different. This is, potentially, the foundation of everything Bucky has built since the Potomac shifting, making what should be the most familiar geography of all strange and new: Bucky and Steve, Steve and Bucky. The memories he thought were the most solid of anything he has are suddenly just as suspect as the rest, and he hates it. Hates it, and at the same time…
“This is stupid,” Bucky says, opening another internet-window on Steve’s pad computer. He has twelve or thirteen open already, churches and banquet halls and gardens all around the city.
“The stupidest,” Natasha agrees from behind him, followed by another careful snip. They’re speaking Russian, because it’s easier sometimes. Bucky ignores the flat memory of rubber in his mouth and slouches in his chair, dragged into the bathroom from the bedroom. “If you leave Steve at the altar after all this work,” she continues, “I’m not the only one who’s going to want to hunt you down.”
“No, I mean, have people really gotten married in a public toilet?” Bucky says, scrolling down through the article. “That’s bizarre, right? That’s not a thing normal people do nowadays?”
“Setting in motion an entire wedding when they have no intention of getting married is also not a thing normal people do,” she says. “I know it can be confusing sometimes.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bucky mutters, clicking on another link, and Natasha tugs on the lock of hair she’s holding. “Ow!”
“James.”
“What?” Bucky’s facing the mirror, so he can glower at her reflection and she can smile lazily back.
“Normally, I’d enjoy watching every second of this trainwreck,” she says. “You’re an ass and Steve’s stubborn as a Cossack, so I imagine by this time tomorrow the two of you would be legally married in the state of New York and insisting it’s exactly what you meant to do.”
“But?”
“But,” she says, and drops her eyes to the scissors in her hand. Her fingers thread through his hair, gentle. “What else did you remember?”
He doesn’t ask her how she knows. “Nothing,” he says. “Not a damn thing.”
She makes a noncommittal noise in her throat, and the snipping starts again.
“I just… there’s something about this I’m not remembering.”
“Ah,” she says. “One of those.”
“Got any tips?” he asks, bitter.
Natasha’s smile is dark, and aimed inward. “None guaranteed to work. Want to talk about it?”
“No,” he says sullenly, and she pulls at his hair again. “Stop that. I don’t want to walk down the aisle with a bald spot.”
“I wouldn’t worry. Tony is probably sewing a matching veil as we… James?”
“A veil,” he mumbles, staring blindly past the sink. Mrs. Rogers’ veil was neatly folded in a hatbox under her bed, yellowed and layered with dry crumbling springs of lavender. It looked like it should be soft but the tulle was rough and caught on his callouses and why is he remembering this.
“James.” Hands on his shoulders, and when he refocuses Natasha looks worried.
“Something else happened,” he says, more to himself than her. “Can’t have been much, or Steve would have said something.”
“Unless he thought it would somehow damage your friendship or impede your recovery,” she says neutrally.
She’s right, of course. Damn it all to hell.
They’re quiet for a time, and Bucky eventually refocuses on the computer screen. One result has kept popping up, no matter what combination of wedding and venue and New York he types in. “We’ve been looking at all these fancy places, but what about City Hall? They still do the civil marriages, right?”
In the mirror, Natasha’s lips quirk. “It’ll be packed. Steve is fairly recognizable, and if you add Stark and the rest of us there’s no way you’ll be overlooked.”
“Let’s just- look, it says here they’re open until four on weekdays,” Bucky says, glancing at the time. “It’s eleven now. We can make it.”
“Assuming Stark can circumvent the paperwork, Rhodes gets the uniforms, Clint gets the rings, and you don’t get cold feet.” She says it like she’s teasing, but she’s watching him again.
“I’m not going to-” he starts, frustrated. “Look, something will happen. Someone will invade the city or steal the moon or something else completely nuts, the Avengers will assemble, and when we win we’ll eat the damn cake and laugh about it. They’ll forget about it. Steve’ll forget about it.”
“And what will you do if he doesn’t?” Natasha asks, softly.
A soft chime saves him from having to answer, and a notification appears on the pad’s screen. Bucky prods it with a fingertip, and it’s mail from Pepper. She’s attached paperwork for them to sign. Their judicial waiver, whatever that is, will have to be obtained from City Hall. Also, have they chosen a venue yet?
Let’s just do it all at City Hall, Bucky writes back, pecking at the virtual letters. Easier that way. It closes at 4, let’s go by 3. He hits the button to reply to everyone, because he sees Sam and Steve on the addressee line.
Stark, who is not on the addressee line, replies, city hall, 3, got it. bad luck if groom sees wedding dress, come to tower 1pm for suit.
“As if Steve isn’t going to be wearing the exact same thing,” Natasha says, reading over his shoulder. “Do you want this to be a surprise too?”
She ruffles what’s left of his hair, and Bucky looks up and silently evaluates his reflection. It’s a cut he remembers seeing in so many reels from the war, but it looks strange and new on the man in the mirror. The bones of his face are suddenly more prominent, hollows of his cheeks deeper. He looks tired. He looks young. He doesn’t know if he likes it, or what Steve will think when he sees it.
“Take a shower,” Natasha advises, rising from her seat on the bathtub rim. “Shave some of that stubble, slap on some aftershave, whatever men do to feel pretty. I’ll be waiting outside.”
“Thanks, Tasha,” Bucky says quietly, and she gives him a flippant little wave before pulling the door closed behind her.Bucky takes as long a shower as he dares with Natasha waiting, and stares at himself in the mirror afterwards for longer. This hair curls. He remembers being annoyed that it does, too late, just like he’d forgotten he hated butterscotch until he was spitting into a garbage can outside the ice cream place on Vanderbilt. Steve, that asshole, watched it all and then collapsed across a park bench in hysterical laughter. Bucky reaches for the flat comb and tin of Brylcreem that sits on the counter, and his hand closes on a rounded orange stick with gleaming slats of metal at the head instead.
He stares at it, nonplussed, and it takes an embarrassingly long time before he recognizes the safety razor, and that he has no memories of using Brylcreem after Nantes in ’43. For all he knows, they don’t even sell it anymore. Men do it differently these days, spikes instead of flat and smooth. He runs his fingers through his wet hair experimentally, and doesn’t like the spikes any more than the curl. The cut was a mistake. He already feels off-balance, doesn’t know why he keeps pushing himself-
Yes, he does.
Bucky takes one deep breath, and gets out the shaving cream. That at least hasn’t changed so much. He runs the water in the sink hot enough to scald, and guides the razor against the grain until his whole face feels unnaturally bare.
Now he looks all of fifteen. For Christ’s sake.
He splashes the last of the foam away and pats his cheeks dry. He has to look away from the mirror; this hair, this face, they don’t match the body attached to it. The body that’s broader, bulkier. Scarred. Water condenses and runs along the metal of his arm, down to his fingertips to drip on the floor, and he rubs a towel along the stylistic suggestion of a tricep while he stares at nothing.
On the counter, the pad chimes. Bucky tries to tap it with a metal finger, scowls, and switches hands.
Sam has sent a picture of himself holding a bouquet that looks like a flock of tropical birds in flight, and Steve has broken with his own stubbornly-kept texting etiquette to write without salutation, PUT THOSE AWAY IMMEDIATELY THEY ARE HIDEOUS.
He’s also written back to Bucky.
City hall? You sure know how to make a girl feel special.
A few minutes after, The water’s been running for half an hour, did you drown?
Then, twenty minutes after the other two, Having second thoughts?
It’s a private message, no other names attached. Nothing before or after it. It’s an out, if Bucky wants to take it.
Instead he painstakingly types out, Not a chance. Get your spats on, Stevie, and drops the pad on the counter with a clatter.
<< Marvel Masterlist | Part Two >>