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Steve carefully eyed the bills arranged before him by his knees, his hands hesitant to remove any unnecessarily. After a long moment of apparent deliberation, he withdrew from his careful stacks two hundreds and held them out to Bucky across the game board.
"I’d like to purchase electric company," he said, his face formal. Bucky smirked a little at that, taking the bills and putting them back into the "bank", as was his duty as banker. He passed the electric company’s title card back in return.
"See, you make Monopoly formal as a military court, and theoretically that should just suck all the fun out of it, but it actually just makes this so much better," he explained, laughing now in all his attempted serious composure. Steve gave him a half smile and watched him toss the dice.
"I think this game might actually be older than us," Steve said.
Bucky nodded, frowning for a moment at the dice. “Your turn; I’m not buying anything. Really, though, how many things in this room, even, are as old us?” He raised his eyebrows. “Water and all of that doesn’t count,” he added when he saw Steve start to figure out the flaws in his logic.
"I think I have a shirt from before somewhere in the dresser," Steve offered, looking around their room. "It’s close."
Bucky looked down at his boots. “We’ve got some things.” He handed Steve the dice. “Hell, I have you,” he said, looking at the other man fondly. “Makes everything else worth it.”
Steve smiled again, not purposely but more as a reflex than anything. He rolled. Before he could reach for a chance card Bucky had grabbed at the top card in the pile and started reading off it. “You get called a lame hipster for trying to be modern and using the word ‘grooving’ in reference to your teammates; pay the bank fifty dollars,” he recited.
"That was one time," Steve groaned, shelling out the bills. "Why would I even have to pay for that?"
"Because the slang police issued you a ticket," Bucky replied promptly, laughing.
Steve muttered something about the slang police. “I can’t even use ‘swag’ properly, and according to the urban dictionary you can’t go wrong with that,” he sighed.
"Swag," Bucky said immediately, grinning again. "Oh man, I hate hearing people use it so often, though. We can have our own language, Steve," he decided. "And it will be grooving, and radical, and- beast." He offered his best friend a very modern fist bump, and after a moment’s confused hesitation on Steve’s part it was returned.
They kept playing, and the rain beating on the window didn’t make the place a bit grayer.
"Pay a hundred bucks," Bucky said offhandedly later.
"What’s your reason this time?" Steve asked, trying to peer over Bucky’s hand to see the card. This was not permitted.
"Hm." Bucky thought for a moment. "You break your phone again and have to ask Tony to fix it. And he’s busy again."
Steve resisted the- although somewhat modern, perhaps- urge to roll his eyes. “He wasn’t busy, he was- well, I guess what he was doing was sort of- Hm. Does having sex count as being busy?” he queried, tilting his head.
Bucky shrugged. “Apparently it’s applicable. My turn,” he said quickly when the shadow started to darken Steve’s face. He let his fingers brush Steve’s comfortably when the dice were passed.
More rain.
Steve’s phone rang. He got up from the floor to get it, spent a couple seconds trying to press the answer button correctly, then pushed the thing to his ear. Tony was already talking, telling him to come up the labs on another floor in the tower to test some sort of thing out. Steve considered this, then looked down at the Monopoly board game and Bucky.
He considered it some more.
"Actually, Tony," he said, "I’m busy."
Tony sounded somewhat surprised; Steve had never said this to him before. “Oh. What are you doing, then? Since I’m not interesting enough?” He didn’t sound snide, just sort of curious.
Steve thought again, this time back to the numerous phone calls he’d had to make to Tony when things around his room broke, or when he needed some type of superhero assistance. And of Tony saying he was busy, because apparently sex was so important. Well.
He shrugged, then went nonchalantly, “I’m having sex.”
He could hear Tony spitting out some beverage and then swearing at the stain it had made on his white shirt. After he had apparently regained his composure, he said, “I guess we all do that, right? Shouldn’t be surprised.”
"Sure," Steve said. Bucky was leaning towards him and whispering at him to tell Tony he said hi. So Steve did so, saying, "Bucky says hi."
Tony took another spit take, and Steve was unable to get him back on the line. There was static for a moment, and muffled words, and then silence. He shrugged again and hung up the phone. He sat back down by Bucky and the game board. After a short minute of silence, he went, “Well, I guess it worked,” and then Bucky lost it laughing, and his smile was infectious so Steve was doing the same after a second.
They laughed until their stomachs hurt and they’d forgotten the joke, and Bucky reached across the board and messed up the piles of cards hugging Steve. “Steve, you’re awesome and I love you,” he told him.
The rain kept coming, and it was still alright.
Steve smiled into Bucky’s neck. “I think you’re pretty grooving, too.”