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Steve dropped the last box on the ground with a heavy thud on the floor of their new apartment. This one was Bucky’s, marked by his familiar messy scrawl reading his name.
Neither of them had much to move in. There was nothing in Steve’s old DC apartment or at the tower he was particularly attached to, mostly they were filled with stuff that Tony, ever the mother hen, had pushed onto him, showing up at his door with a sentient blender he’d been tinkering with or a box of some IKEA furniture that they’d build together. (Or Tony would build, change, and perfect it in the time it took for Steve to unfold the instructions.) The only things he brought with him to his new apartment were a box of clothes and a box of some of his old sketchbooks and photographs that the Smithsonian let him keep, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop Tony coming by with more couches he’d managed to give artificial intelligence.
The door clicked shut behind him and Steve looked up, broken out of his thoughts and broke into a grin the minute he saw Bucky, hair damp from the rain and smiling a tired smile, just for Steve.
“Hey baby.” Bucky, crossing the small apartment in a few short strides and wrapped his arms around his boyfriend’s waist, pressing a kiss to the back of Steve’s neck. “How’s the unpacking going.”
“You know,” Steve gestured around the room full of boxes. “Hauled our mattress up the stairs. No help from you, Buck.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Bucky grinned sheepishly, Steve could feel the smile against his skin. “I had a busy day.”
“Yeah?” Steve asked, closing his eyes and leaning into Bucky’s touch like a cat. “Tell me about it.”
Tell me about it started as soon as Steve had Bucky back, starting as a way for Steve to ask are you okay, did anything happen, are you feeling alright, did you talk to anyone, are you happy now? Here? With me? But slowly their lives had settled into a sense of normalcy, or as normal as it could be for two retired super soldiers, but it was habit now.
“Well,” Bucky hummed, moving his hands up to Steve’s shoulders and starting to rub. “Went for a run with Sam this morning-”
“Early. You woke me up. Hope you got breakfast.”
“He tried to take me to one of those fancy places that just serves yogurt and avocado toast, but Stark saved my ass and we had pancakes at the tower.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Hmm, someone shouldn’t have slept in this morning.” Bucky teased and Steve elbowed him playfully.
“You could’ve woken me up, jerk.”
“And have you steal all my pancakes? Not a chance, punk.”
Bucky didn’t say it, but Steve knew the real reason. He was slowly starting to get past the nightmares, starting to sleep through the night again. The more Steve slept, the better. Of course Bucky wasn’t going to wake him up.
“Besides, rest of the day was just getting dragged around by Nat. Shopping.”
“Yeah?” Steve asked and turned to face his boyfriend. “Did you get groceries? First dinner in the new place. We could make cookies.”
“Cookies aren’t dinner Stevie.” Bucky laughed. “They’re just the only thing you know how to cook. Besides, I...forgot to get food. We can order in.”
Steve rolled his eyes and pulled Bucky in for a quick kiss before untangling himself from Bucky’s arms and busying himself with a box in the corner marked sheets .
“Mind giving me a hand with the unpacking?” Steve asked, absentmindedly. “Unless you want to sleep on the floor tonight.”
“Steve-”
“Oh, if you’re hungry now we can just order pizza. Watch that movie Sam was telling us about-”
“Steve.” Bucky caught his shoulder and spun him around. “Hold up a second. There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
Steve’s eyes widened at that, then softened as he ran his hands up and down Bucky’s arms.
“Anything, Buck.” Steve said. “Are you okay-”
“Marry me.” Bucky blurted out, then immediately winced. The entire day he’d been thinking of what he would say. Going over it again and again, with Sam, with Natasha, ignoring Tony’s suggestions of just tell him he has a world class ass .
But what could he even say? Bucky loved Steve every single day for almost a century. Even when he couldn’t remember Steve, or his own damn name, he loved Steve. He loved Steve when he was a skinny little kid in Brooklyn who couldn’t stay out of a fight, he loved Steve when he fell off the train, he loved Steve now. Somehow, when he didn’t even know himself, he knew he loved Steve. If he didn’t love Steve, he didn’t know how he would’ve survived this.
But he was supposed to tell Steve that, not just blurt out will you-
“Marry you?” Steve asked, and when Bucky finally looked up from the small black box he was gripping tight enough to break, he saw Steve’s eyes were shining.
“I get if you don’t want, you know, things to change-”
“Buck, of course I’ll marry you.” Steve said softly and wrapped his arms around Bucky’s waist, pulling him close. “I’m with you til the-”
“End of the line?” Bucky asked, raising an eyebrow. “Did you miss when purple alien came out of the sky, brought his whole alien army? When I died and came back? The end of the line’s come and gone, Stevie. But I’m still here.”