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Steve hated dates all his life, from the very day when Susie Donk, a girl with golden curls of hair and a dollface, wrinkled her nose and spat out with disdain, “I won't go on a date with you for the world, you scallywag!”, even though Steve hadn't wanted to ask her anywhere at all, he just asked how she was doing while they were standing together near the classroom waiting for the teacher to come. Nothing changed when a decade later Bucky started dragging him out on double dates, and it wasn't even that after all those years girls still considered him a scallywag not worthy of their attention. Another decade later, when, on one hand, Steve finally stopped technically being a scallywag, and on the other hand, they unanimously decided dames weren't needed on dates after all, nothing could change Steve's mind anymore. Neither about dating girls nor about dating in general. Actually, it was better to forget the issue altogether: they were in the middle of the war, and there were too many curious pairs of eyes that definitely didn't need to see which dark corner had Captain America dragged his Sergeant off to.
But Bucky loved dates. He loved them even at the time when dates meant wandering off deep into the forest with a jar of vaseline and a melted chocolate bar. He'd always been so damn romantic. And if all he needed to be happy was such a little thing like wallowing around in the grass, only with wildflowers behind their ears and a stain on his chest pocket, then Steve was glad to fulfill his desire. What's there to say about the twenty-first century then, when they don't even need to hide, when there's nothing to keep a secret from people? Steve was ready to follow all formalities and conditions. No. He'll make their date topnotch!
He decided to make it a surprise date outdoors - right what they need after their long separation. A wonderful idea! The sunset, the silence, 'their' place, a little wine, candles, maybe some quiet music, if Steve finds the stupid music column he ordered back last year but still couldn't remember where he had placed it right after unpacking. If he doesn't… well, nobody'll be upset. Bucky always told him the best song was the one you'd sing in somebody's ear right before kissing them with a laugh.
Steve whistled while taking the shower. Their. Date. At their. Place. What could be better than this? How to bear all this waiting? How to stop himself from rushing there headlong? How to stop himself from arriving inexcusably early? Difficult, very difficult.
Making himself dress up was even more difficult. The date was supposed to happen outdoors, no need to put on a suit jacket. No need for a three-piece suit at all, though Bucky would have liked his style. Jeans and a supposed-to-be-clean T-shirt would have been alright. But Steve was going on a date with Bucky, and so he decidedly shoved the T-shirt back into his wardrobe and took a dress shirt off the hanger. A pink dress shirt. Right to Bucky's taste: he'd always loved such things.
Steve pressed out a little hair gel onto his spread palm and smoothed his fringe. Bucky had always diligently watched himself. Sometimes he did it for Steve too. As if forgetting himself for a minute, he gently pushed away the other man's hand when Steve started biting his nails or tugging his hair. “That way you show people you are nervous,” Bucky explained apologetically. But everything changed long ago. Steve became appropriately flawless for the ideal man people wanted, and not a trace of uncertainty was left in him. But the man was glad that now he could say “I wanna be perfect just for you, Buck” out loud, while standing in front of the mirror with a stupid gel tube in his hands.
The phone rang. Natasha. Steve had all the rights not to answer. It was his day off. He had a date. He wasn't even curious what the spy who always knew how to outdo everyone in everything wanted from him.
However, Steve answered the call, because the ringing made him feel guilty. Knowing their work it was unlikely that Natasha wanted to chat about the weather or some movies. Especially considering the fact that Steve wasn't good at both topics.
“An accident call,” Natasha said. “You busy?”
“I am,” Steve answered.
“Okay, I'll call you later,” she puffed, as if running somewhere. He heard shooting in the background.
“You need something?” Steve asked immediately, not waiting for her to hang up. The following twenty minutes he spent in front of the map of some shabby town, pointing Natasha in the best direction.
“Do you remember Liz from the analytics department? Not bad, is she?” Natasha inquired, when everything calmed down.
“I'm busy,” Steve answered reproachfully and hung up with a sense of accomplishment.
From his point of view, all this idiotic matchmaking stopped being funny long ago, like a joke repeated three, thirty, three hundred times. Besides, he was long time taken and utterly happy with that.
Though Steve still had lots of time, he stumbled down the stairs like a schoolboy, unwilling to wait any longer. Actually, he couldn't do that when he was a schoolboy, or at least he wasn't supposed to, because every other game involving the stairs ended with a twisted ankle or a smashed face for him. But he was the only kid from their yard who could jump over a whole flight of stairs with Bucky's cries of astonishment. Wow. Steve really was trying hard to impress him even then. Well, years after that he succeeded, and Bucky ended up right in his bed. And now they had a date. Steve couldn't stop smiling. Their date! Who knows, maybe that jump towards a smashed nose became a tiny brick in the foundation of their relationship.
"To think about that! A date!" Steve mused, rushing to the door to open it with his shoulder. "A date!" he managed to think one more time before the world in front of him turned upside down and he barely avoided stretching out on the road. He clearly slipped on something. Right. Just what he needed.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" he heard.
A woman stood on all her fours next to him. A couple of paper bags and a bunch of food that had fallen out lay in front of her. It just had to happen on the day of his rendezvous! Though, considering the woman's apologise and the absence of angry stares, the fall was probably her fault and not Steve's.
"Let me help you," he spoke hurriedly, leaning forward and picking up the already leaking egg tray.
"Thank you, but it's no problem," she answered. "It seemed like you were in a hurry… A date, then?" she smiled slyly, looking Steve over.
"Yeah," he smiled back, picking up the products. "It's alright. I still have some time. And then I'll be able to tell him I was hurrying so much that I slipped on a banana peel.”
"But you slipped on an egg tray," the woman objected.
"A banana peel seems funnier."
"Oh, I'm sure you'll have a good laugh over this," she answered.
"Of course," Steve answered confidently. Bucky held a special love for funny stories, although he didn't like any 'funny' falls and traumas, especially the ones concerning Steve. But it was another matter today. Steve adored his laugh. Oh, he wanted to hear it once again so much!
Steve scrutinizingly looked himself over. Though his clothes were spotless, he still was a little bit thrown off his track. He was trying so much to make the day ideal, but it seemed his plans were slowly but surely falling like dominoes. Halfway to their meeting point Steve remembered he had forgotten about the most important things. A box of cupcakes Steve ordered for this special case stayed in his favourite candy store. They were just like the ones that had been displayed on spinning racks in the stores of their childhood. As little boys they used to drool on them for hours. Steve wasn't sure he had been good at arithmetics then, but somehow he had known he'd never have enough money to try one of them. Those cupcakes had been a luxury, and Steve had been a pauper. Bucky had just been poor.
And also, Steve thought with a wave of disturbing shame, he was going to buy a large rose. Yes! He wanted to give Bucky flowers and treat him with sweets. Yes! Steve wanted to woo him, to do it in a beautiful way - in his own way of understanding 'beautiful'. So what? It wasn't anyone's business! No one who knew their history could blame him for unnecessary sentiments. They deserved to be just as gentle to each other as they wanted. And if somebody disagreed with him on that… Well, Steve never had to be asked twice to punch someone.
Still, it was a pity that he so stupidly forgot about the flowers and the treat. Well, better not dwell on it. After all, Steve wasn't looking forward so much to a meal outside. He was hurrying on a date, and the most important part of it was Bucky. And their love for each other.
Steve barely managed to stop the car when a man jumped right on the road from around the corner. On the contrary,
Steve swore, hit the steering wheel and then leaned out the window to swear once again. The man wasn't the least bit upset by this. On the contrary, he waved both his hands and rushed to the open window practically right from under the car smiling desperately.
“Thanks mate! Thank you for not ignoring me!” the man cried out with an appropriate amount of guilt in his heightened voice.
Actually, Steve had little choice - it was either stop or hit him. And Steve definitely didn't want to hit a person with his car on the day of his date… any day, really.
"I've got a flat tire, could you help me, bro? I don't have a jack," the guy continued with that smile of his.
"I'm running late," Steve answered, impatiently tapping on the steering wheel with his fingers and looking at the already setting sun. "I could call a tow truck for you if you wish."
"It'll take an hour for it to get here. Come on, it's a five minutes job," the man didn't budge. "Veronica's gonna have my hide if I'm late for dinner again."
"Actually, I need to meet up with someone, too," Steve sighed, already getting out of the car. The man triumphantly raised his hands and went after him.
"Do you have a jack?" he asked once more.
"No," Steve answered..
He could hardly imagine what a jack was and what it looked like. When he woke up in the twenty-first century, it turned out people expected a lot from him. And it was no longer about war or saving the world. If only. Somehow people were sure he was a master of different crafts and could do anything. Fixing cars, watches, electric irons (they didn't even have them in his times!), darning clothes, woodworking, wiring laying, spinning, churning butter in a mortar or what else people thought everybody did in the ancient forties. But in the forties Steve had been too poor to buy a car and too frail to work in a workshop smelling of oil and gasoline. And there had been a lot of people always glad to dig into the car motor around during the war. At these times though car services were too developed for Steve to even think of sticking his head under the car hood instead of paying professionals for it and forgetting about the problem altogether.
Lots of people thought that, too. So Steve expected the man to either point a gun at him and ask for his money and his car keys or just hit him on his head with a bat after he looked away when he came closer to the stranger's car. But nothing followed, probably because of Steve bending down and easily lifting the car off the ground.
He had to stand for a damn half an hour with his back crouched keeping the wheel on a level height and looking at the already setting sun, while the man took his time fixing the car. He no longer smiled or laughed, either having understood that robbing Steve wasn't the best idea or having decided that already getting help meant he no longer had to be nice.
The man even thanked Steve after finishing the job; when he shook his hand with his own dirty, dusty and oily one, he imperceptibly put there a wrinkled dollar, as if Steve was a doorman, and then hurriedly whirled away.
Steve threw a short puzzled glance after him and hurried, too. Bucky was waiting for him.
When Steve finally got to his destination, it was almost dark outside. The sun had already set, and stars were appearing in the darkening sky. But he instantly saw Bucky's figure. As always, he was waiting for him under a massive oak tree. Steve felt his eyes getting wet. Bucky never stopped waiting for him. Near the cinema, praying for Steve to be late for his own reasons, praying for him not to lie beaten in another alleyway. Before his bed, praying for his friend who was burning with fever to come back from wherever his mind had already went. Even on Zola's table, as Bucky told him, he had been waiting for something, anything, to happen before his death and stupidly, hopelessly praying to see Steve one more time. And Steve… He was always late. He arrived too late, when Bucky was already tired, mad at him, almost dead… Well, almost… He was always late for an hour, for ten minutes, for one moment that could decide everything… He was too late.
He shook a yellow leaf off Bucky's hard stone shoulder. Bucky didn't move; his eyes were looking somewhere far, where the sun had already fallen asleep, where the town of their childhood and youth stood. Where they were happy sometimes.
"Forgive me for being late again," Steve said hoarsely, pressing his forehead against Bucky's.
After thinking for a minute, he took off his jacket and put it on Bucky's shoulder.
"The evenings are so cold now," he whined. They really became colder, though the sun kept shining every day. That's why he hurried so much on this date. The evenings were colder, and Bucky got cold so fast…
Steve hugged the figure, pressed to Bucky as close as the stone could withstand, his eyes pressed shut, trying to catch the slipping warmth, touching him face to face, forehead to forehead, cheek to cheek, nose to nose, and every little cell of his body guessed the beloved traits flawlessly.
He just wanted to be close to him. To love him. To cherish him. But what could he do if Bucky had passed seventy years ago and no longer needed any flowers, or sweets, or kisses, or even his love?
Steve didn't cut back on Bucky's memorial. It was the last thing - the only thing - he could give him now. Steve couldn't tell if the master had done his job well. He just went there one day, showed him a bunch of photos with crying angels on them and said he needed something similar. So what? Bucky used to be his angel on the Earth. And Steve could only hope that Bucky didn't glance away from him if he noticed him while looking at the sinful world from the sky. There were no tears on the stone. Bucky's look was calm, wistful, aloof. It was directed at the sunset. At the town. At Steve, who still couldn't deal with his loss that happened decades ago. Perhaps it was right. Steve hadn't seen him crying since childhood. Years ago, half dead and chained to the laboratory table, Bucky had smiled right after coming back to himself a little.
“I need you so much,” Steve repeated over and over, kissing the marble shoulder.
“I miss you so much,” he whispered in the marble ear, pressing closer to the marble temple.
“I love you so much,” he breathed into the marble mouth.
Steve cried silently, whispered some words, but it wasn't what he needed, what he wanted, what he thought of every single day.
“Take me to you,” Steve begged. “Bucky, please, can you take me to you?”
He pressed his lips to the marble ones and froze. He stood there for so long that it suddenly seemed to him the mouth had opened slightly to welcome the kiss. That a real heart was beating under the stone tunic. He stood there for so long that he felt the stone lips cooling down slowly yet far too fast, unable to get warm and come alive, no matter how hard Steve wished for that.
“I need to go,” Steve said with sorrow. “I'll come back, I'll come back again real soon, I swear. I just can't stay with you forever yet…” he whispered guiltily.
He gave Bucky a quick sloppy goodbye kiss and hurried away. Like a thief, like a lover who got what he wanted and was scared of getting caught red-handed. He was truly scared. Scared to shiver, to circles in the eyes of feeling Bucky's deadly cold figure, just the way he would have felt had Steve found him in the canyon back then. Steve knew Bucky was dead. Even he couldn't resist the facts. He fell right before Steve's eyes, Steve heard his scream. Bucky was dead. And still, this thought could be silly and naive, but since Steve hadn't seen his corpse, Bucky was a little bit alive. And so Steve would come back with flowers and sweets over and over. Who knows, maybe the dead need love no less than the living.
***
That wasn't a dream. The Asset knew that, because there were no dreams in the cryo. He saw a man woven of light whose face stayed unclear. He heard his voice though he couldn't make out the words. The man stretched his hands out to him, smiling. The Asset knew the man loved him, just like he knew it wasn't a dream. He knew the man loved him, because no one else ever had.