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Steve smiles when he feels a throw blanket being draped across his shoulders. There isn’t a day Sam isn’t proving he’s as much of a mother hen as he says Steve is, and there isn’t a day Steve doesn’t love him for it.
He didn’t mean to stay outside for so long. After a week of discussions and apologies between the former Avengers and a month of post-Thanos dinners and parties, Steve had looked forward to this intimate reunion. A nice, lively dinner with Buck, Nat, and Sam, music playing softly in the background, and Willow wrapping herself around their feet, purring and begging for food she knew she wasn’t going to get. Everything had been good, everything had been perfect, and Steve had been overwhelmed all of a sudden, watching his friends argue and laugh and touch like they hadn’t been able to in five lengthy years.
“You want me to stick around while you’re feeling your emotions?” Sam asks as he sits next to Steve on the steps of their balcony. “We’ve got ten more minutes of Bucky and Nat arguing about the movie we’re watching.”
“Thought we were doing Coco? You said it’s a classic.”
“Nat wants something lighter, Bucky says she’s being emotionally constipated.” Sam shrugs. “It got worse from there.”
Steve smiles. “Isn’t often that I’m the one handling my feelings properly.”
“And what feelings would those be?”
“I’m一” Steve swallows hard against the lump that suddenly grows in his throat “一I’m just so lucky.” Sam’s eyes soften and he moves closer to Steve, their thighs touching. Steve lifts the throw off his shoulder so he can wrap it around Sam too. “I was never gonna give up, you know? We were going to find you and Buck and everyone who got taken away by Thanos. But it feels like I focused on making things right so much that I forgot what I was doing it for, but this...this is what it’s for.”
“So that others may live,” Sam says nodding, and he’s not wrong, but it’s more than that. It’s so Bucky may live, and so that he can keep healing and growing into someone he likes to be. So Natasha can keep giving the world the good she doesn’t think she deserves. It’s so Sam can keep taking Jody for ice cream or hot chocolate every Sunday. So he can keep perfecting that pot roast recipe. So he can keep lighting Steve up inside with a few words, laughing eyes and a careful, soothing touch.
It’s so Steve can say the words he’d bitten back at Tony’s party years ago and are apparently ready to come out on a late Friday afternoon, the setting sun painting the sky lavender, pink and gold.
“You’re what this is for.”
“Baby.” Sam gives affection so well, but isn’t that great at receiving it.
“I mean it. I didn’t have much going for me before, you know?”
“I do. Just being a living legend and a superhero or whatever,” Sam says, but Steve knows he’s teasing.
“Or whatever. You make all of this,” Steve says, casting his hand in a wide, vague circle, “bearable, you always have. You’ve always一” there’s that lump again “一you’ve always made my life better. Made the hard days lighter and the good days brighter. I don’t know what I'd do without you, and the thing is, Sam, I don’t wanna have to find out. One time was too many.”
Sam’s brown eyes widen, like he just realized this isn’t just another one of Steve’s speeches.
“I一Steve, just...Steve?”
Has Steve ever seen Sam speechless? He’s not gonna pass it up. If this goes well, they have forever.
“Sam?”
“Are you一you’re. Is this一”
Steve grins. “I’ll answer when you ask me a full question.”
“Now you wanna play coy, Rogers?” Steve laughs and Sam shoves him. “What are you saying一I mean一are you saying something?”
Steve leans in and kisses Sam’s nose. “I am saying something.” He kisses Sam’s lips. “I’m asking something, actually.”
“What are you asking?” Sam’s voice is quiet, his question almost disappears in the soft breeze.
Steve takes Sam’s hands in his and takes a deep breath. He doesn’t have a cleverly-concealed ring or any more words than the ones he’d just said, but it doesn’t matter. His family’s inside, at their back as always, and his world is right in front of him, biting his lip.
“I’m asking, Sam Wilson, if you’ll make me the luckiest man in this universe and the next and marry me.”
Sam gasps, then breathes out slowly, and Steve knows. He jumped, and it’s only a of matter time, now, before Sam’s hand reaches out and catches him.
“Yes. Yes. Yes, Steve I’ll marry you.”
Steve kisses Sam’s grin, ignores the cheers and commotion inside.
For the first time in a long, long time, everything in Steve’s world feels right.