Chapter Text
“Hey, you know that guy you’ve wanted to bone since you were sixteen?”
Bucky looks up from his phone to find Sam smirking at him, eyebrows raised.
Bucky sighs, and briefly questions his choice of friends, before confirming: “Intimately familiar, yes.”
“Don’t look now, but he’s right behind you,” Sam snarks through a shit-eating grin.
Seriously, fuck Bucky’s friends. They—Sam and Clint, mostly, but Nat was far from innocent—had been playing “look, it’s Captain America!” with Bucky since the news dropped that the national icon’s death was more of a seventy-year combined cat nap/ice bath.
The first time, there actually had been a blonde hunk bearing a passing resemblance to Bucky’s emotional support super soldier coming out of a Brooklyn storefront. According to his (asshole) friends, Bucky had flushed to the roots of his hair, gibbered something unintelligible, and tripped over an uneven patch of sidewalk. Not-Cap had helped him up while Bucky’s friends laughed hysterically.
The motherfuckers had pulled the same schtick at least twice a week since then, because they are sadists who live to cause Bucky pain. Is a man not entitled to a little dumbassedness when the long-dead love of his life is suddenly walking around his hometown?
“You know, someday you and Nat are going to get tired of this game. I only fell for it once, max twice.”
Bucky is not fucking pouting.
“It was way more than twice,” Sam laughs, “and it will never stop being funny. But he actually is here right now, by the back wall.”
Bucky assesses his best friend warily. The shit-eating grin is still in place, the earnest look Sam always uses to set up a prank notably absent. Maybe he’s switching tactics to pull one over on Bucky again, but maybe—
Bucky whips around, the picture of stealth, to find Captain America sitting in his favorite hipster Brooklyn coffee shop, drink in hand.
He turns back towards Sam slowly, with what he is sure is a dumb star-struck look on his face. “Holy shit. That’s Captain fucking America.”
“I know, Buddy,” Sam smarms, the condescending fucker. “You gonna go get his autograph?”
Bucky risks another peek at the man over his shoulder.
He’s sitting at a dark corner table, partially hidden from sight by the shop’s long counter. His cap is pulled down over his eyes as he frowns down at something on his phone. A baggy hoodie and his slouch partially hide his trademark physique; even his broad shoulders are rounded, as if in an attempt to take up as little space as possible. Everything about the man screams, “look away, nothing to see here.”
“You know what,” Bucky muses, turning back to face Sam, “I was wrong. That’s not Captain America, that’s Steve Rogers.”
Sam stares back at Bucky with undisguised incredulity.
“You do know that Steve Rogers is—”
How fucking stupid does he think Bucky is? God.
“Yes, Sam, I know that Steve Rogers is Captain America.” Another elaborate eye roll overcomes him. “What I’m saying is, that man is clearly not looking to be swarmed by Cap groupies right now. Hell, it’s a miracle nobody has recognized him yet—who am I to ruin that for him?”
“Let me get this straight—” Sam starts.
“Ew, no.”
“Shut it, Barnes. The man you’ve been lusting over since you were a teenager is sitting not thirty feet away, and you’re really not going to get a picture with his defrosted ass?”
“Look,” Bucky says, “am I going to deny that I am sitting here sweating just from my sheer proximity to his hotness? No. But despite the fact that I’ve been in love with Captain America for ten years, I don’t actually know Steve Rogers. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have people feel entitled to your time, watching your every move. I’m sure as hell not going to ruin the man’s quiet morning coffee.”
Sam looks at Bucky contemplatively.
“Who are you, and what have you done with my selfish best friend?”
“It’s me, pal,” Bucky grins, “I got the wizard to give me a heart after all.”
Sam laughs. “Wizard of Oz reference, interesting choice.”
“Well, I am a friend of Dorothy.”
“You’re obsessed with old man shit, is what you are, that’s old man slang. Hey, you think if you went over and asked Cap if he’s a friend of Dorothy, he’d—”
Sam’s eyes go huge and round.
“Oh shit, fuck, Bucky, he’s coming over here—” Sam hisses, shrinking back into his seat.
“No he isn’t. I am absolutely not falling for your shit this time, Wilson. Your acting is improving, I’ll give you that, but there is no way—”
“Sorry to bother,” says Steve fucking Rogers. From less than a foot away.
Bucky turns, slowly, to face him. Bucky attempts to make his face communicate I have absolutely not been talking about how hot you are for the last twenty minutes.
“I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation—”
Fuck.
“Serum, you know?” Rogers says this with an embarrassed little smile, and a self-conscious rub to the back of his neck.
There is an awkward silence, during which the still-conscious, rational part of Bucky’s brain screams at him to say something so the national icon stops blushing. Thankfully, Sam picks up the slack.
“Haha, superpowers, am I right?” Sam bleats, and then thunks his head onto the table.
Steve Rogers looks mildly concerned, but is clearly used to people losing their minds around him, and soldiers on. “Um, yeah. So, uh, Bucky—your name is Bucky, right?”
Oh wow, his eyes are really blue.
“Yeah,” Bucky replies, far too breathily.
Steve just smirks, despite the light blush high on his cheeks, and says, “I know you’ve been holding a torch for Captain America, but I was wondering if you’d be willing to get a drink with Steve Rogers instead?”
Wow, Steve Rogers is a little shit.
Bucky loves it.
“As far as I know, Captain America never made dates with men,” at this, Steve’s gaze goes flinty, so Bucky hurries to add, “I think I like Steve Rogers better already.”
Steve smiles, and the sun rises in a dingy Brooklyn café.
He pulls a napkin out of the pocket of his hoodie and puts it on the table in front of Bucky. “Call anytime,” he says, and walks out of the café, stopping briefly at the door to shoot Bucky a smile. Bucky returns it, and watches as Steve disappears down the street.
When Bucky turns back to Sam, he finds the man already watching him, open-mouthed. “What are you looking at me like that for?”
“When did you become such a smooth motherfucker?” Sam asks incredulously.
“I guess all those times when you suckered me into thinking I was going to meet him were good practice.”