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“Where else could we go?” Steve smiled at the woman sitting on the stool beside him, taking a sip of his beer and reminding himself to be casual and to think before he spoke. He knew that sometimes he came off as a fumbling jerk, saying all the wrong things, or the right things but at the wrong time or with the wrong audience. He got tongue tied and flustered, and for some reason people didn’t see that he was floundering; they just saw a tall, broad, confident man.
“I don’t like indecisive men,” Christy finally told him, standing steadily on her four inch heels. She’d asked him if he wanted to take this somewhere else, and Steve couldn’t think of anywhere else to take this that wasn’t completely presumptuous. All he had asked was where else they could go. He wasn’t entirely sure why that sounded indecisive. Maybe she actually expected him to say yes and then take her somewhere instead of approaching it like a negotiation that put emphasis on her comfort?
Yeah. Actually, that was what she wanted. He’d read the signs wrong. Again.
And really, he was probably incapable of throwing someone he just met over his shoulder and bringing them back to his bedroom, but he supposed he could have phrased the question differently?
He looked at her with an enquiring expression as she stared down at him like she expected something from him. Then she sighed with exasperation, gathered her jacket, and huffed as she stomped away from him, leaving Steve with the confused look on his face.
“And Steve doesn’t like people who make terrible choices,” Bucky answered her, slinging his arm around Steve’s shoulders and swaying slightly into him. “You’re missing out, lady! Steve knows how to make decisions,” he called after her as she moved away from the bar, probably to get away from Bucky’s yelling by that point. “He’s a big D with a big D. It’s some package,” he giggled, falling into Steve’s lap, his back jolting against the lip of the bar before Steve could bring his hand up to cushion Bucky’s spine. “Some package. Hi.”
“Hi Buck,” Steve answered, his mouth twitching in amusement despite the horrible embarrassment he felt as everyone within earshot either turned their backs on them or gave Steve a once-over.
“I pre-gamed too hard,” Bucky slurred at him, trying to get back to his feet. He ended up petting Steve’s shoulder. “It was a terrible choice. You still like me, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll like you no matter what terrible choices you make,” Steve promised, steadying Bucky as he got to his feet. “Unfortunately I seem to be stuck with you.”
Bucky pursed his lips in thought. “Good.”
Her name was Christy, and it wasn’t the first time Bucky had completely failed at being a wingman, but it was definitely the first time he embarrassed Steve in front of the whole bar while doing it.
Ok, no. That wasn’t true either.
*
“I’m really looking for more than a one-night stand,” Abby told him, picking at the corner of the table they were sitting at in a way that grated on Steve’s nerves. He knew that bar tables were bought to withstand the abuse of drunk customers, and these looked like they’d been through a lot of it, but Steve still thought it was disrespectful to deliberately add to the distressed look of the table that probably was neither neglect nor aesthetic.
Steve wasn’t exactly opposed to the idea of more out of a relationship. He just wasn’t sure that she was the right fit. One of the first things she said to him was ‘I hope the cocktails are good here. The bartender’s outfit is really gay, so I assume he can mix a drink’. It was immediately off-putting, but Steve didn’t want to be the guy who would just get up and leave a date. He felt like there was a 1-hr minimum he was obligated to sit through after making the commitment to go out with someone, especially someone he didn’t know.
His eyes cast towards the bar where Bucky was lounging with his back pressed against the counter, a beer in his hand as he casually spoke to the person next to him with a charming smile. Steve had almost murdered Bucky when he had shown up ten minutes into Steve’s blind date, tossed Steve a mischievous smirk and a quirk of his eyebrow that Bucky probably thought was charming but just prompted Steve into wanting to physically pick him up and throw him out of the bar, and settled himself just far enough away that he couldn’t overhead what Steve was saying.
But he could oversee everything in typical Bucky douchery.
Bucky’s eyes cut towards Steve and he gave Steve a questioning look. Steve hoped his expression said ‘we’re going to be done here soon, no need to save me.’
“I’m not very good at casual,” Steve admitted, turning away from Bucky, “but I’m not sure the fit is right.”
“What do you mean you’re not sure?” she questioned, more piqued than Steve was comfortable with. “Is this some kind of play to trick me into having sex with you?”
“No,” Steve exclaimed, horrified at the very idea. “Being in a relationship is something that I want, but…” he was about to tell her that he really wasn’t interested in a relationship with her when Bucky slid into the booth next to him.
It was the worst, considering that Steve was nearing the end of his soul searching and was starting to wonder if the reason he kept trying for casual, even though he knew himself enough to know that it wasn’t the way he wanted things, was because he needed to leave himself available for someone else.
Someone who was about to open his goddamn trap.
“Steve’s great in relationships. Worst thing I ever did was let this guy go,” Bucky said, slinging his arm around Steve’s shoulder. “He started talking about ‘forever’ and my brain just went ‘nope, bye’.”
Yeah, thanks for the support Bucky.
“The two of you were together,” Abby asked, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion as she looked back and forth between the two of them. “You’re gay, then?”
“Nope, bi,” Steve answered because he couldn’t help himself, enjoying the feeling of Bucky trying to hide his mirth beside him.
She wrinkled her nose at his answer. “So you’re gay.”
“Nope, bye!” Bucky answered her, actually making a shooing motion.
“I’m sorry,” Steve said, grabbing Bucky’s hands to stop him. “But I really don’t think I’m the right person for you, and you’re not the right person for me. I’ll take care of the tab, have a good evening. It was nice meeting you,” then he physically pushed Bucky off the bench chair and herded him back towards the bar like a wayward child. “What the hell was that, Buck?”
“Come on,” Bucky responded, leaning into Steve’s space like he was telling a secret. “I just cut out a good ten minutes of conversation for you before you realized she’s a terrible person. I’m the best wingman a guy could ask for.”
“I already knew it wasn’t going to work,” Steve told him in frustration as he pulled his credit card out of his wallet and handed it to the bartender. “I was trying to ease away, not make the situation worse. She’s the sister of one of my coworkers!”
“Please,” Bucky answered, waving away Steve’s concern. “How could I have possibly made it worse?”
Her name was Abby, and Steve knew one hour into his day on Monday morning that Bucky had definitely made it worse.
*
Steve’s head was resting against Bucky’s shoulder, the bone digging into his ear hurt a bit, but not enough to prompt him into moving. “Her, maybe,” Bucky said, pointing the neck of his beer at a brunette standing to the left of the stage.
“No,” Steve answered, not doing more than giving a cursory look and an automatic answer. He was too tired to make any kind of effort to get to know someone tonight. “I’m too exhausted for this.”
“Then maybe you’re looking for someone more like him,” Bucky questioned, pointing his finger towards a group of guys standing just out of Steve’s field of vision. Steve allowed his head to loll on Bucky’s shoulder, glancing through eyelashes that just didn’t want to stay open. He immediately knew which of the men Bucky was referring to. Steve’s type was strong-minded, intelligent women and, occasionally, men with dark, wild hair and a slight build. Steve didn’t have personality preferences in the men, because Steve had no interest in forming lasting relationships with them – he was infuriatingly aware that they were all stand-ins for Bucky because the real thing was outside of his reach.
It was so obvious, Steve wasn’t sure how everyone in his life didn’t see it.
He gritted his teeth and ignored the way it felt to have Bucky point out someone else to stand in for him for the night, like some kind of sexual supplement that Steve wasn’t sure if Bucky was aware of or not.
“Not tonight,” Steve answered, taking a drink of the beer in his hand. “I think I want to go home.”
“Ya think or ya know, Rogers?” Bucky asked around a mouthful of nachos, giving Steve a direct look. Steve stared back at him for a moment before Bucky swallowed his food and grabbed Steve’s arm with one hand and his beer with the other, bodily dragging Steve away from his seat. “Come on,” he said, and, well, Steve would follow Bucky anywhere.
Even across the room towards the guy Bucky had picked out for him.
“Hey, I’m Bucky,” Bucky said, easily inserting himself in the conversation with a social acuity that made Steve itchy with nerves and partial jealousy. “And that sleepy looking asshole following me is my pal Steve. Steve’s Irish, and it’s St. Paddy’s, and he just told me that he’s tired and wants to go to bed. That’s blaspheming the Blarney Stone or something, right? But I know what he really needs,” Bucky said, looking back at Steve with that mischievous glint in his eye, and Steve hoped more than anything that the next word out of Bucky’s mouth wasn’t ‘cock’. “He needs to get fall down drunk.”
“We’re all Irish tonight,” one of the guys agreed with Bucky, and they were all looking more or less like they were waiting for Bucky to get to his point before they decided how to handle him walking up to them.
“Steve does best with healthy competition, so who here wants to try to drink this big muscly guy under the table? I’ll buy the first round.”
An indeterminable amount of time later, Steve was slouched against Bucky’s side, four empty pint glasses on the table in front of him, and the garish green of a feather boa Bucky had picked up somewhere tickling his nose. He was missing time between drinking pint three, doing another round of shots, and finishing pint four if the boa was any indication.
The first thing he became aware of was Bucky stiffening, an almost imperceptible tensing of his muscles that Steve wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t half draped over him.
“The,” the guy who both did and didn’t look like Bucky was saying. Then he repeated the word slowly, like he was teaching a child to speak. “Try it. We’ll make it easy. There’s got to be a good th word. Oh, say… theatre.”
“Well, I don’t damn well say deatre, now do I?” Bucky answered in a sarcastic drawl.
“I’m not hearing you say theatre, either,” one of the other people at the table pointed out.
“Theatre,” Bucky said, but it sounded more like ‘eat shit and die’ to Steve’s well trained ears, and Steve was instantly awake, because he knew this conversation. Bucky never sounded more Brooklyn than he did when he was drinking, and for Bucky, someone who took a lot of pride in his appearance and the perception other people had of him, just knowing he hadn’t been able to train himself out of his thick childhood accent while drunk grated on his nerves like nothing else. To have someone mock him for it, well…
“See, he can pronounce th sounds,” someone said. “Just not ‘the’.”
“Duh,” Bucky answered with an audible roll of his eyes.
“Hey,” not!Bucky said, elbowing his friend in the side, “make him say Long Island.”
Bucky took a shuddering breath. Nothing made Steve more furious than someone hurting his best friend.
“Fuck you,” Steve said in a low tone, getting to his feet in a movement so rapid that the glasses on the table all clinked together and threatened to fall. Bucky reached out a hand towards them as Steve leaned across the table with his finger perilously close to not!Bucky’s nose. “Fuck you and your fucking pretentious boat shoes. Have you ever even been on a boat? Or did you spend all your money on your polo shirt and your fucking Timberlands so you feel secure in the illusion of your fake superiority?” Steve smirked, harsh and self-righteous at winning this game of wits. He could feel Bucky moving the glassware that was pressed beneath Steve’s stomach, shuffling them out of the way before his hand clutched at the back of Steve’s shirt, trying to pull him back.
Steve resisted the way his shirt pulled at his shoulders, not going so far as shrugging Bucky away, but not allowing him to stop Steve from glaring at the man who had actually charmed Steve into considering exchanging phone numbers.
That wasn’t happening.
“I went boating on Lawn Guyland,” the guy responded with less self-preservation than Steve had. “And your boyfriend got on his knees and sucked my cock and danked me for it.”
Two people with no self-preservation baiting each other was a bad combination, because Steve barely allowed the man to finish talking before he reached forward with one sharp jab and hit the guy’s face with the heel of his hand. There was a satisfying crunch, and Steve opened his mouth to mock the man for the blood dripping down his chin and splattering on his crisp white shirt.
Everyone else at the table looked up at the two of them in slow motion, somewhere between surprise and action.
“Oh no,” Bucky said, physically yanking Steve away from the table because he was better attuned at realizing when Steve was about to get the two of them into a shitload of trouble than Steve was. Of course, Bucky wasn’t perfect because he hadn’t stepped in to stop Steve before that moment, either because he didn’t think Steve would actually punch the guy or because he wanted to see it happen. Steve struggled against Bucky’s arm around his waist, attempting to get back to the table to do more than just break the guy’s nose. He’d made fun of Bucky. That wouldn’t stand.
He must have said that out loud, because Bucky was giving him a half smile even as he herded Steve with a strong grasped on his arm. “Thanks, bud,” he said. “But I can handle myself.”
Bucky shouldn’t have to handle himself because other people should not be raging douchebags.
“Besides, it’s true, ain’t it?” he continued with a self-effacing grin. “I talk like I know where I belong.”
Steve blinked at him for a moment, before turning sharply back.
“I’ll own you,” Steve yelled across the bar. “Let’s take this outside, come on!” he continued, bouncing on his toes as Bucky collected their jackets. Everyone in the bar was looking at him now and the entire table stood. Steve had faced more frightening individuals in back alleys than a bunch of guys wearing boat shoes.
“Jesus Christ, Steve,” Bucky said, grabbing the jackets handed to him and hauling Steve out in the chilly March air. He shoved Steve into the back of a cab, his head banging against the back of the seat after the driver moved away from the curb. He looked more exhausted than Steve had felt earlier that evening, and all Steve’s ire faded away. Bucky turned his head and looked straight at him, and Steve reached forward and wiped a piece of green glitter off his eyebrow. He was still frowning at Steve, and Steve would do anything to make Bucky feel better.
“You’re better than him,” Steve promised.
“You didn’t have to punch him,” Bucky answered through a wheezed breath, and Steve recognised it as a laugh. “Usually you reserve that for people who actually deserve it.”
“He did deserve it,” Steve answered, relaxing into the knowledge that Bucky wasn’t angry at him. “He made you feel small.”
His name was Cory and Bucky probably should have just taken Steve home when he asked.
(Except, if he had taken Steve home, then he also wouldn’t have the truly spectacular story of the time Pepper asked Bucky to sit in on the hiring committee for a new junior engineer and Cory walked into the room, took one look at Bucky in his suit, and paled so significantly that Pepper asked him if he was going to faint.
He didn’t get the job.)
*
It was going really well, much to Steve’s confusion.
He’d signed up for online dating and met someone in a coffee shop, and Ezra didn’t seem to be interested in more than finding someone attractive to have fun with.
And Steve might have been ok with that. If only…
If only Bucky hadn’t insisted on sitting across the room with his own coffee, telling Steve he was just there for moral support in case Steve got stood up or was too polite to extricate himself from a bad date. Steve tried to point out that Bucky almost always failed to accurately gauge how he felt, and Bucky pointed out that Steve always seemed to want to be anywhere else, so how was he supposed to tell the difference?
It was more likely that Bucky was just there to laugh at him if it failed and then buy him a brownie, but then Bucky was a great friend like that.
If Bucky hadn’t been there, Steve might have been able to go home with Ezra.
Might.
“Well, you certainly to seem to be qualified,” Ezra said with amusement, giving Steve a blatant look over, eyes lingering on his shoulders and then moving down to his hips. It made Steve feel warm. Slightly objectified, but that was kind of the point of meeting first, wasn’t it? “My place or yours?”
“I’m not…” Steve started, unable to help himself from glancing over at Bucky. Interested. He wasn’t interested. God. He wanted to just put his head down on the table because if it was ever going to work, it would be now.
Steve didn’t seem to be able to get in a relationship with someone who wasn’t Bucky, and he didn’t seem to be able to have casual fun with someone who wasn’t Bucky, so where did that leave him?
It left him having to face his obtuse best friend at some point. God. He was not looking forward to that conversation.
“Steve is such a sensitive lover,” Bucky inserted, sitting on one of the empty bistro chairs next to Steve. Ezra seemed taken back by Bucky showing up out of nowhere and exulting Steve’s attributes. Then he looked carefully back and forth between the two of them. Steve had reached out to grab Bucky’s arm the moment he appeared, an appeal for him to not claim that he had any idea what kind of lover Steve was.
Because Bucky had no idea. That was the problem.
“Maybe I could watch sometime?”
“When you could experience all this for yourself?” Bucky asked, stroking his hand over Steve’s right nipple in a way that made him grit his teeth.
“We’re not together,” Steve insisted, grabbing Bucky’s hand as it tried for another stroke and holding it tightly. It made a strange tableaux of Steve holding Bucky’s hand to his chest with both hands as Bucky tried his best to extricate himself with a smile. “Never have been.”
“Nah, not together,” Bucky answered, using his spare hand to pat Steve’s thigh. It was uncoordinated at best, slightly indecent at worst, the way Bucky’s hand seemed to get closer to Steve’s dick with every motion. It was probably Steve’s fault for not trying to stop him. Bucky probably anticipated more resistance. “It’s just a benefit of being Steve’s friend.”
Steve shot Bucky a look of horror. “Stop helping.”
Steve’s date just laughed, looking at Bucky closely with a thoughtful frown. “Well,” he mused, expression clearing. “It was good to meet you, Steve, but it looks like there’s an entirely different conversation you need to be having.”
“What did that mean?” Bucky asked, watching the man leave. His hand was still clasped in Steve’s, close to his heart, and Steve became acutely aware of exactly what Ezra had meant.
See, he hadn’t managed to hide it from someone he knew for all of five minutes.
And then there was Bucky, sitting next to him with a frown on his face, like this wasn’t entirely his fault.
“It means that I was going to go home with him before you interrupted,” Steve answered, but he wasn’t really sure if he would have.
“No, you were ready to bail,” Bucky said with confidence. “Just like every other time this year.”
“I was ready to bail?” Steve questioned, and if he sounded confrontational, it was only because his mouth had decided that maybe there was a conversation to be had before his brain really caught on to what it was. The words were emerging from his mouth at the same time the realization was hitting him, not giving him time to actually think about it. “Or you made sure that it wasn’t working?”
“What?” Bucky asked, squinting at him in the mid-day sun before he grabbed Steve’s coffee and took a drink from it, looking at the chalkboard above the front counter. It was an avoidance technique if Steve ever saw one. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you want a cakepop?”
“Either you’re the worst wingman in the world,” Steve answered him, stealing back his coffee and getting to his feet, “or you didn’t want me going home with any of those people.”
Bucky squinted back up at him, his face completely perplexed, nose scrunched up in a way that would be adorable if it wasn’t in response to Steve finally being brave and asking Bucky if there was more to their relationship than friendship.
Well. Kind of.
It was implied.
“Think about it,” Steve finished, leaving the coffee shop and heading for Sam’s. He couldn’t go back to the apartment he shared with Bucky, not now. Not when he was about to take his own advice. Steve was about to think really hard about all the things he’d been feeling about Bucky recently, and then he was going to figure out what to do about them.
His name was Ezra, and he became one of the single most important encounters of Steve’s life.
*
“You’re right,” Bucky said with a slight grimace, his face forcing a smile that Steve could tell he wasn’t feeling. “I may have deliberately stepped in once or twice and said some unhelpful things that I probably shouldn’t have. I don’t want to say sabotage, but…” he took a deep breath, avoiding Steve’s eyes entirely as he took a long pull from his beer.
“Buck,” Steve answered, rubbing his hand along Bucky’s forearm. “No.”
“I’m sorry,” Bucky answered. “I’ll make it up to you if you like. Right now. If you could go home with one person in this room, who would it be? I’ll do better, I promise.”
Steve frowned at him, not liking the direction this was going. He’d hoped that they would have a chance to talk out their mutual behaviour, but Bucky seemed intent on putting it behind him. Steve felt like he was a few months ahead of Bucky when it came to self-awareness of the truth that maybe what both of them really wanted was to be in a relationship together. He could admit it to himself directly now. Bucky was still in a place where the knowledge was terrifying. If Steve was honest, he was still in a place where the knowledge was terrifying, but he had enough perspective now to also think of the rewards, and the possibility that Bucky was feeling the same way gave him confidence.
This was it. This was the conversation.
And if it wasn’t, he’d try again.
Steve knew what he needed to do now.
“If I could go home with one person in the room?” Steve mused, leaning in close to Bucky so their shoulders were pressed together. “It would be you.”
Bucky inhaled, a long shuddering sound. It was his tell. He swallowed and didn’t look at Steve. “Yeah,” he answered quietly. “I’m not feeling this crowd either. Let’s go home.”
“Bucky,” Steve appealed, grabbing his hand and stopping him from moving away. “That’s not what I meant.”
Bucky looked at him out of the corner of his eye, his eyelashes sweeping in an exaggerated blink as he tried to control his reaction. “Explain what you mean,” he asked, looking over at Steve directly for the first time that evening. His expression was so hopeful and tremulous and beautiful, his mouth red and bitten from nerves and his eyes wide. Steve wanted to kiss him more than anything, and it was a thought he’d been avoiding for a very long time. “Please. I need to hear it, because recently you’ve seemed more interested in casual and I can’t do that with you.”
There were a lot of things he could say in response to that, a lot of explanations he could give Bucky, but what emerged from his mouth was simple. “It could never be casual with you,” he promised. “I want us to be everything.”
Bucky closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against Steve’s shoulder for a moment. Steve could feel him breathing, the way his breath evened out as Bucky calmed, became more certain in what his response would be. Steve gave him the time, his hand rubbing along Bucky’s back, and he thought about how Bucky would never show this vulnerable side to the world, but he’d always given it to Steve. Finally Bucky looked up at him, a smirk on his face. “Everything Rogers?” he asked in a confident tone, and then gave Steve a big smile. “That’s a lot of responsibility to start with. Let’s just try being boyfriends first.”
“Yeah, alright,” Steve answered, grinning back at Bucky and tilting his head down towards him. “If that’s the way you want to go.”
Bucky hummed, a teasing, thoughtful sound. “I think so,” he answered, straightening his posture so that they were extremely close. “Good negotiating, we should seal it with a kiss.”
Steve was laughing as he reached out, his fingers moving easily over Bucky’s jawline and around the curve of his neck below his ear. For all that this was unfamiliar to them, touching Bucky had never been difficult. Bucky seemed to be thinking the same way because his fingers were clinging to Steve’s hip, tucked through the belt loop of his jeans and slipping slightly beneath the edge of his waistband.
Bucky tilted his face the last inch between them and then they were kissing. Bucky’s mouth felt like it looked: opened and curious as he kissed Steve easily, like someone who had nothing and everything to prove. For the first few moments the kiss was tentative, exploratory, and Steve felt the way his brain was tipping over into the realization that he was kissing Bucky. He felt the thrill of it ignite every nerve from the follicles of his hair right down to his toes, each cell of his body aching to move closer to Bucky.
Bucky laughed into his mouth, full of joy. He pulled back, grinning with his teeth biting into his bottom lip. “I guess I’ll find out if all that stuff I told people about you is true,” he said, and then started laughing again, pressing his forehead against Steve’s. “I can’t believe some of the things I said.”
“Some of them,” Steve answered. “I guess you will have to find out which.”
His name was Bucky, and Steve loved him for a lifetime.