Chapter Text
Sharon watches Sam walk away and slowly spins around on her barstool to look at Bucky. He’s already more than half-drunk, and he has both elbows planted on the bar in an attempt to remain upright. She tilts her head to the side as she studies him. He’s doing a truly terrible job of staying upright, but then, she has to give him credit where credit is due. He’d held himself together remarkably well, given that Cass had canceled the wedding with less than a day’s warning. Dumped him at the rehearsal dinner, no less. No one knows why, though Sharon – who is naturally more suspicious of people – has her… well. Suspicions.
She and Bucky aren’t the closest of friends. They’re friends, sure, but not besties or anything. They’re more like cats that are drawn to Sam and don’t get along with each other particularly well. But he’s clearly in a bad spot, and she’s not the worst person in the world, and Sam isn’t here to keep comforting Bucky himself. So in Sam’s absence, she leans over and gives his head a few pats. “Aww.”
His head goes down under her hand. Once, twice, three times, popping up each time like a beach ball on the water. “Don’t,” he warns.
“Aww.” She pats his shoulder instead.
He turns to glare at her.
She shrugs. “You’ll need my help getting home and you know it.”
He groans.
Oops. She’d forgotten he’d moved in with Cass a couple months before. “Right,” she says. “My couch, then?”
He kicks back his drink. She’s not sure what he’s drinking at this point, but she knows it’s strong. “Sam not here?”
Oh, he’s drunk. “He left a couple minutes ago. Has to take the kids to school tomorrow.”
Bucky grumbles and glowers into his glass.
She watches him.
The bartender sets another glass in front of him, and she gestures for a water for each of them.
“In the morning I’ll help you get the rest of your stuff out. Want me to talk to Cass about it?”
He nods, then looks like he might vomit and goes still. “I’ll do it.”
“It’ll be better if you don’t beg for her to take you back,” Sharon suggests. “You know. Like you’re probably going to do.”
“I love her,” Bucky argues, but the words run together.
She makes a face. “I believed you more when you said that about Natasha,” she mutters. “Or Gretchen, for God’s sake.”
“You never liked Cass,” he accuses her, sullen. But then, he’s always worn his feelings on his sleeve.
Apparently, so had she. “I liked that you liked her,” she says noncommittally. The bartender sets down the waters, and she pushes his toward him. “Drink up. And then we’ll get you to the worst couch in Queens.”
He grunts and drinks, not caring what it is, and she takes advantage of his apathy to get a couple more cups of water in him until he announces loudly, “Hafta pee.” He pushes himself away from the bar and stumbles to the bathroom. His balance improves with practice, but she still watches him to make sure he gets there okay.
“And there goes a real keeper,” she mutters. She pays the tab and silently vows to make Bucky pay her back. Why the fuck would anyone pay that much to get hammered when the cheap stuff gets the job done just as well?
She’s waiting for him outside the bathroom, already wearing her coat while carrying his, more or less trying to make conversation with a guy nearby who keeps shouting at her, “Wadsyurnaaaame.” She does not, from their one-sided “conversation” think he has an opinion on stock portfolios. Shame.
Bucky greets her with a grunt, and she moves one of his arms around her shoulders. “I can walk,” he grumbles.
“Yeah, but in a straight line?” She guides him to the sidewalk, and he practically falls into a cab. She climbs in beside him and rattles off her address.
“He not gonna vomit, is he?” the cabby asks. “He starts to vomit, he’s getting the fuck out my cab.”
“Sure,” she lies. She reaches over to where Bucky is sagging in his seat with his eyes closed and pulls him toward her so his head is in her lap. There’s a good chance he’s going to vomit, but she figures she’ll do what she can to ease the motion sickness.
At her place, she pays the cabby while Bucky sags against the car, then again pulls his arm over her shoulders. He still looks green, but nothing’s come out of him yet – as far as she can tell, at least. He doesn’t even try to avoid the slushed snow that has somehow turned black, and she shivers as a snow flurry melts in her hair.
“You’re freakishly tall,” he says without thinking. “It’s gross.”
She presses her lips together. He’s not the first man to tell her a variation of that. “You’re taller than I am. What does that say about you?”
“That I’m tall.”
“That you should wear heels,” she corrects. “So you can be taller.”
“I should wear heels,” he accepts with a nod. It isn’t until she’s gotten him into the elevator that he looks confused. “I should wear heels?”
“Yep.”
She leans him against the wall outside her door and fumbles with her keys.
“But you’re- Cassie is so cute,” he says. “Short.” He reaches out, his fingers coming together like claws. “Squeezy.”
Her eyes narrow. “You mean she has big boobs.”
He grins to himself. “Those, too.”
She tugs him so that he’s resting against the door. “What a man you are, James.”
He nods along again, not having the critical thinking skills to doubt her sincerity.
She shoves the key in the lock and watches him as she turns the knob. The door swings open, and he falls to the floor.
“Oh, damn,” she says. “Did you see that?”
He holds up an arm with his middle finger raised. It takes a couple seconds to get the hand to stay still. “Purpose.”
“Maybe,” she agrees, bending to look down at him. “Whoops. Can you get up?”
His finger goes down and he opens his hand, and she grabs it and helps him to his feet despite how he almost takes them both down several times. She manages to get him to the couch. “My favorite part about her,” he begins.
“Please don’t say the sex.”
He stares at her. “What? No. The sex was boring.” Still too much information, she thinks. Bucky falls back against the cushions. “Her eyes,” he says. “The way she laughed.” He goes quiet, and Sharon tries not to think of how he actually likes sweet things about Cass as she goes to close and lock the door. “I thought she loved me.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe you should have looked more at her hands than her eyes.”
“What’s mean! That. What’s-” He blinks in confusion.
“Nothing.” She helps him take off his shoes before pushing him gently onto his side and pulling his feet up onto the couch. She tosses a blanket over him, taking just enough care to cover him up so he won’t get cold. “We’ll get your stuff from your place tomorrow. And then you can go on your honeymoon and relax.”
“Honeymoon,” he repeats.
“You’re not going to get any of that money back,” Sharon says. “She canceled the wedding too close to the date, and no one in their right mind is going to refund you a tropical honeymoon with such short notice. You might as well use what you paid for.”
She wakes to the sound of the shower running. Her parents were as rich as Bucky’s, but they didn’t believe in letting children feel too comfortable while out of the house. As such, her one-bedroom apartment has a noisy plumbing system. Among other idiosyncracies. Like how the place is never actually warm in the winter. Even now, she pulls the blanket with her as she slides out of bed.
She stumbles out into the living area to find he’s already started coffee, and she pours herself a cup before she leans against the counter. She rubs her eyes. They have to get Bucky’s stuff out of his place before Cass can set it on fire, she thinks. No telling how long that will take. Sam can’t help because he’s helping Sarah run the shop. They don’t know anyone with a truck.
Ugh. This is the problem with friends, she thinks darkly. She had met Sam and Bucky through Steve, her one-time crush. He’d moved to study art at the Royal Academy in London – for fucking real – and she’d been stuck with Sam and Bucky. Who are, technically, her friends. But they’d always been his friends first. She thinks they mostly tolerate each other because they have their own shit to the point that they don’t actually make many other friends. They’re what they were left with, and they’re what they still have. Well. Sam is a friend. But even there, she thinks he’s more Bucky’s friend than hers.
But meeting new people is worse than putting up with Sam and Bucky, so here she is.
The bathroom door opens, and she startles at the movement. And then she stares as Bucky walks out wearing only a towel.
He sees her, and they stare at each other for several minutes. She’d known he was fit; she hadn’t known about the abs. “Um. I don’t suppose one of your conquests left a change of clothes?”
She twists her head to look at the couch. “You don’t have any other clothes.”
“I mean. I can wear what I had.”
“Your rehearsal dinner outfit.”
He nods, looking very hard as if he’s trying not to look dour. “But if you had, like- I don’t know. Jeans?”
She clasps her coffee with both hands and shakes her head. “Want to go get your stuff in about half an hour?”
He looks at her, then the couch, then back again. “Sure.”
She gets the hint and scurries back to her room, her blanket threatening to slip from her shoulders the entire time. “I’ll get ready, then.” And leave him to do the same.
She’s ready in minutes. Exercise pants, loose shirt, sneakers, hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looks, she thinks as they ride uptown in a taxi, like she’s hunted Bucky for sport. An ambitious, put-together woman with her clearly wealthy boy-toy prize. “You are going on your honeymoon, right?” she asks at the light.
He groans and rubs his face. Coffee hadn’t eased all of the hangover. She doesn’t think anything will ever beat that hangover completely. “Why would I go on my honeymoon, Sharon? I’m not married.”
The cabby is clearly starting to pay attention, but this can hardly be the worst thing a cabby in New York has overheard.
“And she canceled it. Which means you get the honeymoon. That’s a lot of money to just piss away, Bucky. And you need to get away for a while.” And then she won’t have to babysit him and she can have some peace.
“I don’t need my honeymoon.”
“You need the relaxation,” she counters. “You need the included massages. You need the sun. Where was it? Fiji?”
He thinks for a couple seconds, his features scrunching up with the effort to remember, either from the hangover or because he’s thinking of his almost-wedding. At last, he nods.
It’s not the sort of place she’d have thought he’d go, so she can’t be blamed for forgetting. “Take Sam. Do the friends thing.”
“Sam can’t go,” he says. “He’s helping Sarah. AJ has a big school concert Friday.”
Right. She’s supposed to go to that.
“Take someone,” she presses. “Take those books you like.”
He makes a face at her. “‘Those books?’ Do you mean my Lord of the Rings books?”
She shrugs. “I guess?”
“Sharon. Those are first edition. I don’t take them out of the vault. There’s no way I’m taking them on a plane.”
“So get second-edition ones.”
He scowls. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to go to a beach and read my favorite books when I should be there with her.”
She groans loudly enough that the cabby pretends to concentrate on the road. “Just do something to get your mind off of her! You’re bad enough without being depressing.”
“You’re bad enough as you always are,” he counters.
She crosses her arms and sinks into her seat. “I should have let you choke on your vomit,” she mutters.
The cabby hits the brakes. “Here!” he exclaims, and she can’t tell if he’s anxious to not hear more about Bucky’s disastrous life or to get them out of his cab after the mention of vomit. It doesn’t matter. She grabs the boxes she’d snagged from the deli under her apartment and climbs out.
They head to the elevator in the Fifth Avenue building – there are nicer parts of town but of course Cassandra would live in a place with name recognition, Sharon notes ungraciously. The elevator operator lets them out on one of the higher floors, and they both stop as they look down the hall.
“She could at least have taken it downstairs,” Sharon offers.
All of his stuff is piled on one side of the hallway. He walks forward and grabs his suitcase. Finding it empty, he starts stuffing his clothes inside, starting with the underwear that had been left sitting on top of the pile. “I wouldn’t want to trouble her.”
“Yeah, why trouble the person who would never go out of her way for you anyway?” Sharon mutters.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she says, and she goes to the opposite end of the pile and starts organizing things into the boxes she’d brought along. “And you said we wouldn’t need these.”
“You don’t have to rub it in.”
She drops the teasing immediately. Say what he might in Cassandra’s defense, Bucky is evidently more upset than she’d realized.
It takes a couple trips downstairs, and the doorman and elevator operator end up helping, but they get everything in the trunk of the taxi. Bucky tips them and wishes them well, then looks at Sharon and bites the inside of his lip. “I hate to ask.”
She waves a hand. “I know. I expected it.”
“You expect everything.” Despite how it usually sounds like a tease, this time, he just sounds tired. He climbs into the cab and waits until Sharon’s given her address before he says, “Why did you think I wouldn’t join my parents at their hotel?”
“Because as much as you love your parents, you wouldn’t want them to see you like a sad sack. And Sam and I have already seen you like this. So we’re used to it.”
“I could go alone.”
“Do it, then,” she challenges.
He drops his head back on the seat. “The tickets aren’t first class,” he says at last.
“It’s a taxi in New York, Bucky. No ticket is first class.” She catches the driver’s eye in the rear view mirror and rolls her eyes.
He tilts his head. “To Fiji.”
She looks at him in surprise. “So you are going? That’s great!”
He frowns. “Are you just trying to get me out of your place?”
“No.” But the O lasts a little too long. She shrugs. “I mean it. You need to treat yourself right now. And what better place to treat yourself than at a resort?”
He shrugs. “It is all expenses paid.”
She nods. “See?”
He looks out the window. Last night’s snow has already turned to dirty water that stains the sidewalks; piles of dirty snow cling to life at the edges of buildings and sidewalks. “You should come with me.”
She frowns at him. He can’t be serious.
“To Fiji,” he finishes, as if thinking she’s slow in the head.
A large piece of snow melts enough to slide off an awning, and the woman it lands on screeches.
“We don’t have to do anything together,” he offers. “And I owe you for paying for my drinks.”
Well. When he puts it like that…
The woman continues to stand, frozen save for how her arms are shaking in shock and disbelief. Sharon knows that, at any moment in this city during this time of year, that could have been her. Come to think of it, a trip to Fiji would be… really, really nice. And AJ doesn’t need her at the concert. And when is she going to get a chance to take a vacation someone else has paid for? She’d never be able to afford it on her own.
She looks back at Bucky. “No honeymoon stuff. That would just be weird.”
“Agreed.”
Right. Because he thinks she’s too tall, and she’s not short and squeezy like his ex-fiancee.
She nods, then frowns. “Wait. Weren’t you supposed to leave tonight?”
He nods. “Still am.”
There’s a rush after that. Sharon makes a list, then checks it and crosses things off and adds to it and crosses those things off until she’s sure everything is taken care of. It had taken some doing, but she’s covered at work. She’s packed with what few summer clothes she could dig out. She hopes they’ll be able to buy something there. She’d never had a reason to look up shopping options in Fiji, and now that she has a reason, she doesn’t have time.
Still, by the time they get to the airport, she’s more or less certain she accounted for everything.
Except for the travel arrangements themselves. Bucky spends the ride to the airport on the phone with the hotel, assuring them that no, he’s still coming, don’t accept any changes to his reservation. It will be two people. Is there a two-bedroom option available. At length he hangs up, nods, and takes a breath. That’s sorted, then.
He works his magic at the airport, too, where they tell him his ticket was changed, and Sharon frowns at that even as he argues politely and explains the situation and wheedles and probably offers them his parents’ beach house for the summer or whatever. In the end, he joins her at the end of the counter and takes her suitcase. “I lied.”
She makes a face at him. “I’d better be trapped in a terminal with a good food court, at least.”
He grins. “We got bumped up to first class.”
Her eyes widen. First class?
“You can stop acting like that. I know you’re not poor,” he says.
“Tell that to my parents.” She shakes her head and follows him as he sets her suitcase on the platform to be whisked away.
He shakes his head as well and – since they’re running late – grabs her hand and sets off at a run toward the gate.
She reminds herself that this is how he is. Effortlessly charming, thoughtful, fun, occasionally adventurous. She’d nearly fallen for it once before, but she knows better now. So long as she keeps her head on this trip, she should be fine. And she needs to keep her head.
The trip is monstrous. She’s not sure how people in coach survive, and part of her delights in stretching her legs in her seat just because she knows she’d never be able to do so back there. At some point she falls asleep, only to wake and sleep and wake and sleep and wake and sleep the rest of the time. There are too many distractions, too many things beeping or murmuring or coughing or squeaking.
By the time they touch down, she and Bucky both are grumpy and having difficulty thinking. They get on the shuttle to the resort and try to nap, but they’re jostled awake at every turn until they give up.
At the hotel, there’s evidently been another mixup. The staff insist that Bucky changed the reservation to a four-room suite, to which Bucky just points at himself and Sharon and says, “Do we look like we need four rooms?”
In the end, they’re driven in a golf cart to a honeymoon suite on the water, and Sharon nearly falls asleep on his shoulder. She manages to keep it together until they get to their place, and then she stands there, staring at the bed. The single bed.
“You did a great job with everything else,” she commends him. She peels off her coat and throws it at a chair.
He stares at the bed and follows suit.
No matter what else, she thinks, at least she knows that he, too, isn’t looking forward to sharing a bed with her. How nice.
Too tired to be irritated, she kicks off her boots and gets some shorts and a tank from her suitcase. Bucky’s changing, too. It’s too hot for their winter clothes. After a moment, she figures out where the bathroom is.
“Want to get something to eat first?” she asks through the door.
“Sure.”
He sounds as enthused as she does.
She’s yawning when she returns, and Bucky’s wearing loose jeans and a t-shirt. “You said it was all-inclusive, right?”
“Stop acting like you’re so goddamn poor,” he grouses. He still holds the door open for her, though.
They make their trudging way to the resort restaurant. She suspects they both instinctively know that if they eat room service, they’ll fall asleep without eating. They’re shown to a table for two, and Sharon pauses and looks at Bucky.
Something is different. The place had been noisy when they’d come in. Almost downright rowdy. And now it’s quiet save for the clinking of silverware against plates. And even that is quickly gone.
Bucky is staring at something inside the restaurant, and she grins at him. “You look worse than you did last night,” she teases.
“Last night?”
Everything in Sharon’s mind comes to a screeching halt. Jesus Christ in a clam shell, she knows that voice.
She turns and pastes on a smile. Cassandra. Short, lovely, squeezy Cassandra. Glossy dark curls. Deep dark eyes. Perfect eyeliner and lip gloss (not lipstick; she’d told Sharon smugly that lipstick is out of fashion when Sharon had last worn some).
“Cassandra,” Sharon greets her. Somehow, her sleep-deprived mind realizes that she sounds far too warm and chipper. And, as if she’s two different people, the sleep-deprived part of her mind realizes what her awake part of her mind is thinking and chortles.
With both parts of her mind combined, Sharon slips her hand into Bucky’s. “After that brilliant show at your wedding rehearsal dinner-” Is everyone in the restaurant staring at them? Is Sharon talking too loud? Oh, shit. Oh, fuck it. She turns to Bucky, silently screaming at him to stop her. “I saw how hurt Bucky was. And you know how irresistible he is when he’s sad.” She gives his hand a squeeze and leans into him. Stop me stop me stop you fucking asshole stop me. “So his mom and I were talking about how upset he was, what with how happy he’d been with you and how you told everyone there you’d realized you couldn’t go through with it.” She’s definitely talking too loud. “After his parents met you and told you they’d cut you both off if he went through with it. And then you were like, ‘I’ve fallen out of love’ or whatever? Did you hear his dad call you a scheming harlot? Were you there for that?” What the fuck is she saying why won’t someone stop her his dad hadn’t said that oh god. “No? Shame. It was really funny. Anyway. Buck’s mom and I were talking and I said I’d take him out for drinks. And you know how adorable he can get.” She brushes a lock of his hair from his face. Like the rest of him, it’s too stubborn to do what she wants it to do, and it drops back down into place. She smiles. “Anyway. It’s good to see you. And looking so…” She looks Cassandra up and down. “Well.”
Cassandra is not a blusher. Like Sharon, the best Cassandra can do is look demure. Unlike Sharon, she usually pulls it off. Right now, though, she looks like a melted Twizzler.
“Come on, babe,” Sharon says, tugging Bucky’s hand. “Our table’s-” She stops short as she looks at the table prepared for them, the one that is right next to Cassandra’s friends, then turns the brightest smile she can to the waiter. “I wonder… would it be too much trouble if we ate on the balcony?” she asks. Think sweet, Sharon. Think sweet. Everyone in the entire goddamn world is apparently staring at her right now. Bucky’s looking at her like something’s growing out of her head. “We’re really hoping to enjoy our time here.” She looks back at Cassandra, who she swears has her fists clenched like a baby about to throw a hissy fit. Still speaking to the waiter even as she sizes Cassandra up, she continues, “You know how it is.”
“Of course,” the waiter says smoothly, whisking the menus off the table.
Sharon’s heart pounds as she follows the waiter outside. Bucky’s hand is still in hers, and Sharon tugs on it with a relentlessness she’s never known before. Why hadn’t someone fucking stopped her? What the fuck had she been thinking?
Her heart is still pounding as she smiles as the waiter shows them to their new table in the corner of the balcony. It still has some dirty dishes on it, and he quickly takes them with him.
“What was that?” Bucky hisses at her.
“I don’t fucking know!” she hisses back. She’s still trying to breathe normally. What is breathing normally, anyway? “But do you really want her to see you mooning after her all week? Nobody wants to see that, Bucky. Especially not me.” She holds up her menu and leans forward. “And if you fucking ruin this vacation for me I swear to God I will tell Sam how embarrassing you are.” He doesn’t seem upset by that; Sam already knows Bucky can be embarrassing. Damn it! And your mother.”
“You don’t even know my mother,” he hisses back.
“That’s where you’re wrong, buddy. I’ve had her number for a while. Even texted her at the bar to tell her Sam and I were looking after you.”
Bucky stares at her, slowly realizing that part of the story Sharon had told might be true. That his mom really had conspired to get him shit-faced. Although, to be fair, his mom probably wouldn’t have called it that. Not to him, at any rate. “Oh my God,” he whispers.
“Just shut up and go with it,” she whispers back. “Or so help me I’ll romantically feed you a piece of shrimp and stab you in the back of the mouth with the fork.” A woman comes out, glossy curls, perfect lipgloss and eyeliner, and Sharon immediately smiles and reaches out to wipe something from Bucky’s face. The woman is clearly part of Cassandra’s group, and Sharon uses Bucky’s head to hide how she’s flipping him off. “You really want to tell the truth now?” she asks sweetly, too quietly to be heard.
He glares at her. But he also doesn’t stop her.
The woman spends several minutes on the balcony, occasionally glaring at Sharon as she sizes up the situation, then heads back in to report to her queen bee.
They put a concerted effort into appearing relaxed when it’s the last thing they are. After a while, Sharon takes a breath. This isn’t working, but she also can’t think of a way to back out while saving face. So she brings up one of the things she knows, more than anything, will get Bucky impassioned enough to ignore most of what’s around him. “You know what’s sexist? No women Ents in the Lord of the Rings movies.”
She takes a sip of her wine as he takes a deep breath, and then she leans forward and pretends to listen to him as he goes on and on about how there are no known Lady Ents - Lady Ents, not women Ents – and she thinks about what the fuck they’re going to do. Letting Cassandra think she’d broken him, letting Cassandra thinks she’s beaten him somehow and won, wasn’t an option.
Fuck. She thinks they’re going to have to see it through.