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Steve listens to Sam and Nat present their arguments with a blanket pulled up to his chin.
It’s one of those nights where he doesn’t want to be anywhere but home, curled up with some green tea and Sam’s comments about how you’re really at least a hundred years old, you know that right and that Netflix show about chefs who can’t bake but are trying really, really hard. He keeps trying to convince Nat to tryout for it. She keeps flipping him off.
“We can burn cookies literally any night of our lives,” Nat says, and Sam nods emphatically. “We can go to Peggy’s party literally one night of our lives.”
Steve says, “I bet we could get her to throw another one,” and Sam sighs.
“Steve, I love you,” he says evenly. Steve waits for the but . “But you gotta get off the couch at some point.”
They’re right is the annoying thing. There’s no real handbook lying around for how to properly mourn your dying music dreams. Steve pulls the blanket up higher until he gets too warm and then leaves it in a bundle on the couch.
“Okay.” He puts his hands on his hips in the world’s saddest attempt at a power pose. “What’s the plan?”
It turns out that the plan is this: Nat and Sam bully him into the shower, then Nat bullies some gel into his hair while Sam bullies the clothes in his closet until he finds a decent outfit, into which Steve is bullied by their special combination of love and exasperation.
“You could help us,” Sam huffs.
Steve only feels moderately guilty. “I don’t like gel in my hair. It’s too crunchy.”
“That’s because you keep buying shitty brands, babe.”
The Uber’s stopped at Peggy’s curb when Steve says, quiet so only Sam can hear him (and Nat, who either hears everything or is told everything later), “Thanks for getting me out of the house.”
Sam opens the door and the night spills into the car fast like a bowl submerging in soapy water. It feels full of possibility. Distant music threads lightly in the air like Steve could touch it if he tried, could separate the strands into just the bass and the treble and each individual instrument and then braid them back together. He reaches out like he could brush the ends of every note. Sam takes his hand and helps him out of the car.
Nat’s saying thank you to the driver and Sam’s saying, “We care about you, we’re gonna be here to lift you up,” and Steve feels like he’s on the first line of a brand new sheet of music, ready begin.
“You ready?” Nat says. Steve notes the way she melts into Sam’s side and how Sam melts against her, too. Something quiet like contentment mixes in with the excitement blooming under Steve’s ribs.
Steve nods, smiling slightly. They open the doors and dive into the party.
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It’s madness is what it is. Steve can’t help feeling halfway to out of control in the best sort of way, letting the crowd ebb and flow around him. There’s a current to this place that says he could get lost if he wanted to. He reaches for Sam’s hand to anchor himself.
“You okay?” Sam asks. He has to shout to be heard over the music. It’s a strong kind of beat that Steve would never have guessed Peggy liked, but hey. This is a night for surprises, he thinks. He can live with this.
Steve says, “Yeah,” and he means it for the first time in a week.
Sam nods and Nat goes on her tiptoes to whisper in Sam’s ear. Feeling oddly like he’s intruding on a moment, Steve looks around the place.
They’re in a sheltered little corner between the hallway and the kitchen. From the sounds of everything, there’s a living room just beyond the kitchen; Steve thinks the music must be concentrated there, because there’s a bunch of people dancing on the other side of a half wall. Something sweet and alcoholic wafts from every person who passes them by. It smells like something Steve wants to taste. At least a sip.
“I’m getting a drink,” he says.
“Lead the way.”
Nat and Sam follow him into the kitchen, telling him about the nachos they’re gonna make when they head back to their place at the end of the night.
“So much fucking cheese, Steve,” Sam says, filling a Solo cup from the keg. His eyes soften. “So. Much. Cheese.”
“It’s all about the toppings.” Nat bumps Sam’s cup out of the way.
Steve sits back and lets their conversation wash over him. It’s a familiar argument born of several nights out, this one. He settles against a countertop, drinking from what someone’s calling tub juice — is it tub juice if it came out of a bowl? — and surprises himself when he doesn’t hate it. It’s more sweet than bitter.
He’d be happy to sit here and observe if Peggy hadn’t shown up just then and beelined for him. Her cheeks are flushed from either dancing or the alcohol or both. It dawns on him, from the way she’s patting his face, that his are probably the same.
“You came!” she says happily. “I didn’t think you would.”
Then a guy steps out from behind Peggy and Steve’s mind goes blank. The guy is a little shorter than Steve is and wearing a shirt that fits him so well Steve can just tell he works out and god his eyes are blue like ice, and stunning, and he has this gorgeous wavy dark brown hair that’s long to his jaw and — and maybe Steve’s alcohol tolerance has gone to shit over the last year, but. He doesn’t think it’s just the alcohol that’s making him say holy fuck.
The guy makes eye contact with Steve.
Steve thinks he might spontaneously combust.
He thinks Nat or Sam is saying, “He did his best not to,” but Steve barely hears them.
“Hi,” he says, and now Peggy says, “Oh! This is Bucky. Bucky, Steve.”
She introduces Bucky to Sam and Nat too but Bucky’s still looking at Steve. Steve takes a sip of tub juice to keep from saying something stupid like what color are your eyes, even though he really, really wants to know. No one’s moved. Steve still feels like something has fundamentally shifted.
“Bucky’s one of my friends from my English Lit classes,” Peggy finishes. She rolls her eyes. “He’s the only good part of having to be stuck in a room with Prof. Lagey for an hour and a half.”
“She keeps me sane.” Bucky’s mouth quirks. He has the sort of voice that seems to want to be softer than the environment calls for; it makes them all lean in a little bit to hear him better.
“Is Bucky short for something, or—?”
“It’s Buchanan,” Bucky says. “My first name is James, but ever since those ‘J names ruin your life’ posts got big I needed to go underground.”
Steve hides a laugh by turning it into a cough. Bucky’s nose wrinkles when he smiles.
The conversation continues. Steve desperately stares at his cup to keep from staring at Bucky, even though he wants to. He has a face that’s somewhere halfway between soft and hard. Steve wants to figure it out.
Nat perks up as the music changes. “Come on,” she says. Sam stands up straighter like he’s getting ready to follow her into a war zone. “This is a damn good song, let’s dance.”
Steve weighs the pros and cons in a split second. “I can’t.”
“No?” Bucky says, raising his eyebrows. There’s a long, drawn out moment where Steve’s almost positive Bucky’s checking him out. “I figured you’d be down to cut a rug.”
“I mean—”
Sam takes one look at his face and says, “Nah. Two left feet over here. He’d step on your feet so much you’d have to go to the emergency room.”
He says it like he’s trying to help him out. Steve loves him for it but still frowns, mildly offended. “I’m not that bad.”
“A little hands on instruction might be needed.”
Nat dodges his elbow and elbows him back in the ribs. It says, you have stars in your eyes and I’m trying to help you. He bumps their shoulders together. It says, my bad.
“Perfect,” Bucky says. His eyes are bright. “I’ll help you.”
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Dancing with Bucky means Steve doesn’t know where to put his hands. It means he feels out of place next to him; Bucky clearly knows how to move to a beat, and it’d be hot as hell if Steve wasn’t trying to impress him while knowing he can’t. It means he steps on Bucky’s toes twice, it means someone spills beer on Steve’s shirt, it means he doesn’t say no when Bucky offers to help him clean up.
“Come on,” Bucky says into his ear. “I stuck a Tide To-Go stick in the bathroom downstairs.”
Steve says, “There’s a basement?” in a poor attempt to distract himself from how close Bucky’s lips were to his neck.
Bucky leads the way through the throng, explaining as best he can that Peggy always locks the basement door before parties because the one time she didn’t, someone threw up on the couch and she hadn’t been able to clean it before it set into the fabric. The music feels like a living thing here. Steve feels it pounding in time with his heartbeat as Bucky fishes the key out from behind a plant and unlocks the door.
“After you,” Bucky says.
Steve steps down. “You’re just trying to look at my ass, aren’t you.”
He’s rewarded with a choking laugh. He smiles.
If going into the house was like stepping into a carnival, going into the basement is like jumping into a lake. The air grows cooler and cooler with every step Steve descends until he half wishes he’d argued to bring his coat along. The music is muffled now too, filtering down after them through the crack under the door, and it feels like his ears are underwater.
Bucky leads him through the basement easily. Steve lingers by a piano and keyboard long enough to read the sheet music left on the stands — untitled, probably originals — and for a moment he wants to touch the keys so badly he almost can’t stand it. He trails his fingers over the lid.
“You okay?”
Steve doesn’t move when Bucky comes up next to him. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Yes.”
He studies how sure that word is in Bucky’s voice. Like there’s no room for doubts.
Steve says, “I had an audition for the Philharmonic last week. Piano.” He glances up briefly to see what Bucky’s face is doing and what it’s doing is considering him steadily, a shallow line between his eyebrows. “I’m really good. Not to brag, but I mean? I am. So it should’ve gone well. Except.”
“Except you didn’t get the spot,” Bucky says gently. His hand twitches like he wants to reach out and hold on but he detours to tuck a strand of his hair behind his ear.
“No, I didn’t go.” Steve sighs. “Well. Technically yes, I didn’t get the job either. But I would have if I’d went.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Bucky’s voice is quiet in such a way that Steve thinks he does it on purpose, makes himself harder to hear in order to get people to lean in and get close. Steve leans on top of the piano and stretches and when he brushes Bucky’s fingers, neither of them pull away.
“I think,” he says, “I was afraid to get it. You ever have something you want so much that just the thought of having it is scary? I always dreamed of being up there onstage with that much presence, that much noise backing me up. But there’s nothing to shield you when you’re playing a solo. What if I fucked it up?”
He’s not sure if it’s the tub juice or Bucky or the pure fact that they’re alone but somehow it’s less embarrassing to say than he thought it would be. It’s easier to breathe around now that it’s been named.
“When I was eighteen I told the girl I thought I’d marry I didn’t love her because she wanted to stay with me to do college in our hometown, and I couldn’t think of another way to tell her to go for what she wants,” Bucky says. “I know it’s really not exactly the same thing at all. But I know part of it was me protecting myself, too. She wanted to get married when we finished high school. I wanted to make her happy. Maybe this was you protecting yourself. Keeping your future ahead of you.”
“Do you regret it?”
Bucky says, “No. Do you?”
“I’ve been thinking about that this whole week,” he admits. “I don’t think I do. I wanna travel more, see more things. Do more things.”
“You can always try out another time.”
“I could.”
There’s pause where they study the wood grain of the piano. Steve feels like he needs to say something more about what Bucky just offered him, but Bucky doesn’t seem to mind if his response was lackluster. You can always try out another time echos in his head.
“We really just trusted a complete stranger with all of that just now, didn’t we,” Bucky says finally.
Steve shrugs. “You don’t feel like much of a stranger.”
“I don’t?”
“No.” Steve pauses, thinking. “I feel like you should feel like more of a stranger. Do I feel like a stranger?”
Bucky says, “Less and less,” nose wrinkling, and now he takes Steve’s hand. “C’mon, let’s get that out of your shirt before it sticks.”
The bathroom is tiny. It makes more sense for Bucky to wait outside while Steve figures this out, but Steve doesn’t ask, so Bucky doesn’t offer. He’s very aware of Bucky’s eyes on him as he takes off his shirt. The beer splotch is clammy and unpleasant on his skin and the sink is cool and hard under his thighs and Bucky takes the Tide stick and Steve’s shirt without saying anything.
“This looks like the start of a porno,” Steve comments, mouth dry. It comes out just shy of joking for comfort.
Bucky glances at him from under his eyelashes. Steve’s stomach lurches. “Are you propositioning me, Steve?”
He dearly wants to know what would happen if he says yes. “No.”
Bucky folds his arms. “Are you saying no because you were joking but now that I mentioned it, you want to say yes?”
Steve swallows. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse. “Yes.”
“Hmm.” Bucky goes back to work on Steve’s shirt.
It’s like the sink counter has dropped out from under him. “‘Hmm’ what, exactly.”
“Hmm?”
“You’re doing it on purpose now,” Steve says, folding his arms. A delicious shiver goes up his spine when Bucky cuts his eyes at him again. He thinks there’s a shadow of amusement hiding in how perfectly neutral his mouth is. “I swear to god, if you say ‘hmm’ again—”
Bucky says, quiet, “What’re you gonna do? Hmm?”
It sounds like a challenge. Steve studies the vague pink tinge spreading over Bucky’s cheeks. Slowly, Steve fingers the hem of Bucky’s shirt. Bucky sucks in his bottom lip. Steve traces a circle on his hipbone.
Then he turns on the sink and uses his other hand to throw water at Bucky.
“Hey—!”
Bucky sputters, trying to retaliate. Steve’s laughing before he realizes it and Bucky takes advantage to pour water on his chest, and then freezes like he’s been shocked.
“This is so unfair,” Bucky says. He flicks some water off of Steve’s pec. Steve shivers again and turns the tap off.
“What’s unfair?”
Bucky makes a face that Steve thinks is supposed to refer to the everything-ness of him. “I didn’t think about the fact that adding water would make you hotter. It’s unfair.”
“It’s your own fault,” Steve says. “I didn’t tell you to do this.”
Bucky inches closer. Steve’s breath catches in his throat. “You can’t start a water fight and not expect me to return the favor—”
“Okay, well you can’t ask me if I’m propositioning you and then just ‘hmm’ your way through an entire conversation—”
“Okay, but—”
“Shut up,” Steve breathes, and Bucky kisses him back.
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It is not the most dignified kiss Steve has ever had. He feels unlawful right now, how stupid hot he feels like this — sitting on the counter with his shirt off and Bucky standing between his legs and Bucky’s hands on his back and at the hem of his jeans and Bucky’s tongue in his mouth. Steve wants him closer. Maybe he says it out loud, because Bucky crowds him against the mirror. Steve runs his fingers through Bucky’s hair and kisses him deeper.
“Shit,” he gasps when they part.
Bucky’s mouth looks thoroughly kissed and his hair is practically standing on end. Steve can’t help thinking I did that. The way Bucky’s eyes keep flitting from his lips to his eyes tells him Bucky’s thinking the same thing.
Bucky murmurs, “Wow. Just — wow.”
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A few minutes and two burgeoning hickeys later, Bucky’s working on his shirt again when Steve brings it up.
“You look like something I don’t wanna fuck up,” he says.
Bucky meets his eyes in the mirror. “What if you don’t?”
“Are you saying you’d wanna try this,” Steve says, gesturing between them, “out there?”
“Isn’t that what you’re saying? We can at least skip the nerves over whether it’ll be a good kiss,” Bucky says. He tilts Steve’s chin up and oh, it’s hard to argue against that.
They blowdry Steve’s shirt as best they can until Steve decides to just call it, pulling on the slightly damp shirt. They’re in college, after all. He can deal with this for at least one night of his life.
Nat and Sam find them in that corner they’d hunkered down in originally and Nat immediately spots how they’re holding hands. Steve widens his eyes. It says, tell you later. Sam jerks his chin in a nod, smiling.
“You coming with us then?” Sam says.
Bucky shrugs. “I heard there’d be nachos.”
“There most certainly will be,” Nat says, linking their arms. “Okay. So. When you have nachos, it’s all about the toppings, right? Like cheese is good and all but arguably it’s still topping.”
Sam throws his hands up and starts heading toward the door. “All I’m saying is you fundamentally cannot have nachos without cheese. Ergo it is not a topping. That’d be like saying pie crust is a topping.”
“But…” Bucky looks back with wide eyes. Steve shrugs, grinning. Bucky flips him off subtly. “Aren’t there pies without the top crust thing? So then pie crust would be a topping, right?”
“Thank you!”
“No, wait—”
“They’re fucking intense about their nachos,” Bucky comments. They watch the two of them make their way onto the lawn, carried by the current of their argument.
Steve says, “They are. Still wanna come along?”
“I desperately want to see what level of nacho creations await. No other reason.”
“Ah. You’re using me.”
“Exactly.”
Steve kisses him again, and Bucky smiles against his lips. It’s a solo note, this smile. It makes all the difference.
Sam and Nat shout for Bucky to finish the tie and Bucky sighs like they’ve been doing this his whole life and Steve really, really wants to try with him. It feels like this could be something good. Bucky lifts their hands and kisses the inside of Steve’s wrist. They step into the night.
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