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"Hey guys, don't worry, I got this," Bucky says and he takes the check from the edge of the table and pulls it toward himself before any of his friends can take it instead.
"But Buck, you're the only one here without--"
Steve's words get cut off as his eyes bug out of their sockets at the sight of Bucky pulling out a credit card made of shiny black plastic with gold spelling out the letters of Bucky's legal name along with an expiration date on the bottom.
"Holy shit!" Sam yells. "Is that a black card?"
Bucky takes every ounce of self-control that he has not to grin at Sam's awe.
"It is." Is all he says as he pins the card underneath the metal cardholder on the metal sheet the check was brought to them on.
"Bucky, how the fuck are you going to pay for that?"
"I'm not," Bucky says. "My girlfriend is."
"You're still with that model whose father is a Senator, whose mother is a famous actress, and whose brother is a renowned lawyer?" Sam asks.
"Oh, you mean the girl you met at the party last semester?" Steve clarifies for himself.
"Her name is Shuri," Bucky tells them. "And we kept in touch all summer despite me being back home in Indiana and her being stuck in LA all summer doing photoshoots," Bucky explains. "We kept up with the long-distance and now she's coming back here tonight."
"And she gave you a black card?" Steve's eyes are still staring down the plastic card like it was about to jump out and bite him.
"Yeah, she says she wants to spoil me, whatever that means."
"What it means is," Sam begins, putting his elbows on the table as he leans in closer to Bucky, "you got yourself a sugar mommy."
Bucky snorts, though Sam's not wrong, Bucky wouldn't necessarily think of Shuri as his sugar mommy.
"I wouldn't call her my sugar mommy," Bucky says.
"Yeah, cause I'd know if you had a mommy kink." Steve pipes up. "Remember when I made you take that BDSM test." He adds and Bucky laughs fondly at the memory.
Suddenly Bucky's phone rings and he takes a quick peek, to see who's calling him. Bucky sees the selfie that Shuri took of herself in a Gucci swimsuit at the beach last month plastered on his screen. Bucky doesn't understand the appeal of Gucci, he finds the clothes and accessories to be on the ugly side. But the fame is all in the name, and though he's not a fan of the brand he is a fan of his girlfriend wearing a white one-piece swimsuit, hair in braids, wearing a wide-brim white hat and rose-gold sunglasses, lounging on a chair in the white sandy beaches of photoshoot magic lagoon.
Bucky slides his thumb on the green button to answer the call.
"Speak of the beautiful devil?" Sam asks, giving Bucky a wink.
Bucky nods, putting his cell phone to his ear just as their waitress, Peggy, takes the check from the edge of the table and back to the register.
Bucky will comment later about the heart eyes Steve gave her when she wasn't looking, and how he starred at her as he watched the woman walk away.
"Hey, baby girl." Bucky greets. "You boarding the plane right now?"
"You could say that," Shuri replies and somehow, Bucky can hear her comment echo beside him.
Suddenly a familiar pair of warm hands cover his eyes.
"Guess who." A familiar voice sings.
"My beautiful and wonderful girlfriend? Bucky responds, smiling wide as he recognizes the melodic voice as Shuri's.
"You're right on the nose." She says.
"My princess?" Bucky tries again, opting for the pet name he gave her the first night they met.
"Yes!" Shuri exclaims, pulling her hands away from Bucky's eyes and wrapping her arms around his neck from behind, kissing Bucky on the cheek with an exaggerated 'mwah' sound.
"It's really nice to see you again Shuri," Sam says, quickly engaging in conversation with Shuri.
"I would say the same thing," Steve begins, "but I hardly remember anything from that party." Steve extends his hand to Shuri, who accepts the invite and shakes it professionally. And with her family's influence, Shuri would know how to shake hands with someone like she's shaking hands with the president.
After greeting everyone Shuri sits down in Bucky's lap, arms around his shoulders and legs dangling off his thighs. It feels so natural like she belongs there.
"Bucky mentioned you'd be in town tonight, how long are you staying? Sam and I can set up the guest room unless you'd rather bunk with Buck." Steve grins.
"It's alright Steve, I'll sleep in Bucky's bed until my apartment gets furbished." She says.
"Are you going to steal our roommate from us?" Sam chuckles.
"Something like that," Shuri says. "I've decided to go back to school, get myself another Ph.D., and so I'm moving here into an apartment to attend NYU with you guys."
Bucky smirks, pride filling his chest as he sees both Steve and Sam's mouths drop in awe. Bucky knows Shuri is smart. She's a genius and officially classified as one too, and so she's already gotten herself a Ph.D. in engineering despite being a year younger than Bucky, who's just barely on track to getting his Master's Degree along with Sam and Steve who he's made a pact with to stay on track to getting their college degrees. Sam is working on a degree in psychology and Steve's working on a degree in art history. Bucky, though, is working on getting an English degree so he can become the Journalist he's always wanted to be.
"What did you get your first degree in?" Steve asks, genuinely interested.
"Engineering, but I'm thinking I'll get the second one in robotics or maybe even environmental science."
"That's pretty damn impressive," Sam says.
"I'll say." Their waitress, Peggy says, as she returns to the table with Bucky's credit card. She slips Bucky two copies of the receipt, one copy for the restaurant and one for him to keep. Bucky goes through the motion of filling out the rest of the receipt while Shuri and Peggy engage in a deep conversation about climate change and its effect on international relations. He gives Peggy a fifty dollar tip on the restaurant copy of the receipt and as he hands her back the restaurant copy, he notices the phone number written in bright red pen on the back of his copy of the receipt.
When Peggy and Shuri finish their conversation, Peggy gives Bucky a bright smile and mouths, "for Steve" as she points at the piece of paper in his hand.
Bucky gives her a nod and passes the receipt towards Steve, giving his friend a teasing smile as he pockets his card in his wallet.
Steve's face begins to turn pink and before he could say anything, Peggy walks away, hips swaying as she walks. Sam looks at Steve, then at the paper, and a wide smile spreads across his face.
"Did she give Steve her number?" Shuri asks.
"Yeah," Steve says shyly.
"It's about damn time too," Sam adds. "Steve's been making goo-goo eyes at Carter since our second semester of undergrad when we all took U.S military history together."
"I am so not making 'goo-goo eyes' at Peggy." Steve huffs.
"Oh please Steve, if you were anymore smitten you'd be doodling hearts in your sketchbook with your names combined written in cursive inside." Bucky points out.
Steve's frown falters as a smile appears on his face. "I like Steggy." He admits.
Once everything is paid for and once everyone has collected themselves, Bucky, Shuri, Steve, and Sam make their way out the door of the diner where they are greeted with about a dozen people with camera phones waiting to take a photo of Shuri, genius, model, actress, and daughter of a Senator.
"Ms. Udaku, is this man your secret boyfriend?" A woman in a yellow blazer asks Shuri, referring to Sam.
Shuri shakes her head. "No, he is not."
Shuri takes Bucky's hand and then Steve's and has Steve take Sam's hand so they can quickly maneuver their way out of the crowd toward their cars. The flashing lights of the cameras and the hovering photographers are bothersome, but they quickly get away from the paparazzi.
Quickly, the group breaks up into pairs, Sam and Steve head towards Steve's old blue VW Bug that they carpooled in on their way to the restaurant and Bucky follows Shuri as she leads him to her very expensive and very pink, Porsche.
Bucky opens the driver's seat for her and she gladly accepts and slides right in. He jumps over the front of the car and gets in the passenger side. His adrenaline is high from the evading the press, and he watches as the men and women wade away from Sam and Steve and get closer towards Shuri's car, eager for more gossip. Thankfully, Shuri gets the car started and carefully evades the bodies in their way as she drives out of the parking lot.
"This is why I usually take Aro and Okoye with me in public." Shuri sighs. "Sometimes the press can be leeches."
Bucky nods in understanding and feels Shuri squeeze his hand in hers. It's meant to be reassuring, but still, Bucky feels anxious about the crowds and having his face plastered all over TMZ's six o'clock exclusive. He also feels nervous about sitting in a car so nice and so expensive with his old oil-stained jeans and sweaty boots but he tries not to think about it too hard, since he's been in the car once before and Shuri didn't seem to mind when he accidentally got a little bit of Cheeto dust on the armrest the last time.
"So I was thinking," Shuri says, taking Bucky out of his head as she picks up speed and turns the radio channel to KIIS FM, "We should go shopping, and hopefully we'll be left alone because I wanna buy you some nice clothes, a few accessories and make you my personal Ken Doll tonight." She grins. Bucky snorts at the idea of being a doll but doesn't seem to find anything wrong with it. It sounds kind of nice to be pampered anyway. Though he can't help but feel a little guilty about the fact that Shuri will be buying everything.
"It sounds fun, but Shuri, baby you really don't have to go through the trouble of buying me new clothes." He tells her.
"Uh-huh," she sounds unimpressed with Bucky's comment. "And when was the last time you bought anything for yourself with your own money let alone with that card I gave you?" She asks, "There's a 10,000 dollar limit per day and I hardly ever see you go over 100."
Bucky bites his lip and shrugs, trying not to have a heart attack about the spending limit on the black card he's barely used since he got it a month ago.
"I don't mean to force you, honey," Shuri suddenly says, voice sweet like sugar. "But when I told you that I wanted to spoil you, I meant it." She says, batting her eyelashes at him. Bucky can't bring himself to argue so he accepts defeat and decides to let his girlfriend buy him some new clothes.
"Well, then I guess we're going shopping." He says, earning him a very happy smile from Shuri.
They drive into the city where all the high-end stores are and Bucky knows that if the workers see him alone they will judge him, maybe even try to kick him out since he doesn't fit the mold for the store's profile customer, but once they see that he's with Shuri, they're going to get the same impression Sam got and jump to the conclusion that he is a sugar baby.
Sure, Bucky is okay with being spoiled to an extent, Shuri even helped him pay off a loan and a little bit of credit card debt he obtained during undergrad. But Bucky feels that the term sugar baby implies that he's only with Shuri for her money when that is not the case. Bucky's on the path of falling in love with Shuri, despite the short time he's known her, and he wants to be with her because she's smart as hell, funny, gorgeous, and makes him feel like he matters. She is amazing and he actually likes her and she likes him and he doesn't want judgy people to think otherwise.
They go through Georgio Armani first, with little interference from the press, and Shui buys Bucky some nice pants, shirts, shoes, and some accessories. They stop by Tom Ford next, then Gucci, then Chloe, then Ascot Chang, then Chanel, and finally Prada. Each store featuring at least one, photo of Shuri in their model line-up.
Bucky tries not to look at the receipts from the stores they go to but finds himself nearly fainting when he sees the 6,321 dollars and 49 cent bill from Tom Ford, and they only bought two things from there! A white three-piece suit and matching shoes.
Though the main object for the evening was for Shuri to buy Bucky a closet full of clothes and accessories, she also splurges on herself, buying a new handbag, some dresses, a pantsuit, two pairs of shoes, and even some lingerie that Bucky almost ripped off her in the changing room they were in.
Bucky is really grateful for everything Shuri's bought him today and he plans to thank her properly later. But for now, he smiles and nods and holds onto all the bags of items they've bought, following Shuri around each store like an obedient pet, eager and happy to continue trying on clothes.
Their final stop is the Rolex store, which Bucky nearly loses his shit upon entering the store as he has in every store they've gone to today, he keeps himself composed enough to greet the salesman who's agreed to help them once they entered.
Shuri takes the reins, like she has throughout their whole shopping spree, pointing out the items she likes and wants to see on Bucky and enjoying the view as Bucky tries on each item. Shuri then either nods her head when she likes the item on Bucky or shakes her head when she doesn't like it. Then the salesman takes the item back, bringing something else he might think Shuri will like, all while Bucky stays silent unless the salesman needs his input on whatever he needs his input on.
"I think I like this one the most," Shuri says, taking hold of Bucky's left arm, examining the silver, black, and gold watch on his wrist.
"It is a wonderful choice." The salesman says.
"What do you think honey?" Shuri asks him.
Bucky takes a look at the watch it's nice, the strap is silver with gold plates wrapped around the center, the casing is black and the hands, numbers, hour marker, bezel, and crown are gold. The watch is beautiful actually, something that a prince would wear, and possibly very expensive.
"I like it," Bucky says for the umpteenth time today. In all honesty, though, he's liked and even loved all the things Shuri's bought for him today, and now that he thinks about it, the watch is verging on the feeling of love.
"Awesome," Shuri says, "we'll take it."
With that said, the salesman takes the watch to go ring it up and Bucky watches as Shuri takes out her own black card to pay for the watch.
Bucky's eyes widen as he sees the price.
He tugs on Shuri's arm, unsure if a watch is really worth over 10,000 dollars.
It's 14,995 to be exact.
"Honey, I told you I wanted to spoil you and I meant it," Shuri says as the salesman boxes and bags the watch. "Spending over 40,000 dollars on you today is nothing, and I plan to keep spending that and more once you finally let me spoil you."
"But I don't think I'm worth that much though." He admits.
"You're priceless," Shuri tells him. "And I love spending time with you and spending less than a third of my monthly salary on you." She smiles and Bucky doesn't know if it's her dazzling smile that stuns him or the fact that that she makes over 200,000 a month that does.
"Thank you, Princess," Bucky says, trying to recover from doing all that math in his head. "I'm very happy to spend time with you too."
Shuri wraps her arm around Bucky's arm, leans against his side, and gladly takes the bag from the salesman after completing their purchase.
As they walk out of the store, Shuri's ordered a limbo to take them back to her car parked in a private parking space away from all the stores they've visited, both on foot and by limbo. And once they get into the limbo, Shuri takes out the Rolex, unboxes it and takes Bucky's arm back in her hands.
"I'm glad this one looks so good on you." She says in a hushed voice.
"And why is that?" Bucky asks.
"Because it matches my own." She says, holding up her left arm to show him a very similar watch.
Bucky laughs, interlacing their fingers together as he takes another look at his new watch.
"You like making me your sugar baby, don't you?" He asks.
"And here I thought you'd never catch on," Shuri laughs, making a wide gesture to all the bags they've brought into the limbo with them and Bucky figures that maybe being a sugar baby isn't so bad after all.