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Tomorrow, Sarah will argue that she saw it first.
Actually, given the proper time and setting, she’ll argue that she knew since the moment Bucky first set foot on Ma and Pa’s boat, and Sam looked at him the same kinda way people look at small miracles – strong coffee on Monday mornings, two-headed lambs, snow on the Sahara, you get the gist.
Sam will protest – no she didn’t, she didn’t know shit because there was no shit to know in the first place, and how would she have known before he did anyways?
She’ll laugh in his face. 6 AM in her pink pajamas, eyes soft and hair a mess, and she’ll be laughing right in his face, and making coffee rings on the table. “Please,” she’ll say, “my boys realized it before you did.”
And he’s gonna have to swallow that pill, right? Sulk as if he hadn’t been watching Bucky’s place in the kids’ life shift from awkward guest crashing on their couch, to uncle Sam’s buddy, to excited little voices trilling at him over the phone, “Is uncle Bucky coming, too?”.
Like he hasn’t witnessed all the in-betweens with this bright warmth curling up in the pit of his stomach. Like it doesn’t light up something inside him, every time the boys swear they must take uncle Bucky fishing one of these days, and if he doesn’t know how that’s an easy fix, you know, they can teach him no problem; every time Bucky sits through a cartoon marathon with them and ends up staring at the tv with big round eyes, soaking up all the colors, all the crazy new shapes, asking eager questions to two just-as-eager boys.
Every time they call him Uncle to his face, and it still, it still takes Bucky a moment to turn around and say, Hey, kid, with the fondest grin Sam has ever seen on his face. Sometimes Sam will still catch the glint of emotion prickling Bucky’s eyes, for all the times he should have gotten to be an uncle but didn’t, and all the times he gets to be that now, somehow, in a different time, in a different place. Because sometimes life gives back just as much as it took, and there is so much more, so much more Sam wants this man to have – and it didn’t take so long, after all, to realize that he wants to be the one to give it, too.
Tomorrow, when he accepts his sister’s laughter and steals her coffee as payback, he’ll heave a long-suffering sigh and brace himself for the final humiliation.
“So. Who else was in the know?”
Sarah will show no mercy.
“The whole town,” she’ll say, easy-peasy, simple as that. “Our friends suspected, the entire neighborhood was betting on when you guys would get together, and the oldest folks just straight up assumed you were together already.”
Her hand, though, it will rest on his arm like their Ma’s used to do, comforting and indulgent, the way only the people closest to your heart can truly be.
“You didn’t fool nobody, Sam.” Tomorrow, she’ll be grinning at him, and it will feel like coming home all over again. “Neither of you did.”
Today.
Today the short hair at the nape of Bucky’s neck tickles the meat of Sam’s palm, and Bucky’s lips hesitate against his.
“This is... new,” Bucky says, oh, whispers, the puff of his breath warm and somewhat damp against Sam’s mouth.
Sam pulls back with the taste of him still on his tongue, hand slipping to frame the side of Bucky’s neck, feel the frenzied pulse beneath his thumb.
“And new is... bad?”
The sunset – oh, Sarah had better not know about the goddamn sunset – burns in bright strokes of red and gold, right there in Bucky’s eyes, and they crinkle with that shy smile of his, the one that says he doesn’t know, may never know, how easily he could bring any man to his knees.
“No,” he says, “new is good.” And he’s giggling, the madman, shaking under Sam’s hand, “New is very good,” before pulling him back in.
Ah, Sam might be mad, too. Mad for him, mad for wanting him, mad for the love of him. But not half as mad as he was before this. When he told himself that this wouldn’t feel right; that the sweetness of this would taste just like cotton candy, and dissolve on his tongue after barely a moment.
But he knows now, and he will know tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, that he was wrong.
Kissing Bucky is like biting into a piece of taffy; like scooping caramel in your mouth. It sticks to your teeth and to the roof of your mouth, and it’s annoying and it’s sweet, and it makes you crave for more.
And if this lingers there forever, tucked in a corner of his mouth, then so be it.