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When the shrill sound of his phone goes off, Bucky whines more pathetically than he’d care to admit. He refuses to open his eyes to look for his phone, instead choosing to blindly grab at the nightstand where he’s hoping he’d plugged it in the night before.
He has, thankfully.
“‘Lo?” Bucky pulls the phone under the covers with him–the comforter is pulled fully over his head to block out any light coming in from the window in the bedroom. He still hasn’t opened his eyes, but everything still manages to feel too bright.
“Bucky?” It’s Steve. Of course it’s Steve.
Bucky grunts in response.
“The last text I got was a photo of Jell-O shots,” Steve starts and trails off, starting to laugh at his own sentence that’s forming. “Guessing that’s why you sound like shit.”
“Be nice to me, Steve. It’s too early for this. Becca and I finished off all the shots. Minus one. Gave that to my ma. Rose and Ellie didn’t want any. Is this what Becs and I get for being the only single ones in the family?”
“What, a hangover? You brought that on yourself, pal. What the hell did you make the shots with? And wait, did you say your ma took a shot?”
“Aunt May’s a real bitch, I think my ma deserved that shot.” Bucky groans and finally decides to open his eyes, under the covers first. He really didn’t think the shots would get to him this bad. Is this what happens in your 30’s?
“That’s exactly what happens in your 30’s, Buck.” Steve is still laughing. Shit, Bucky really hadn’t meant to say that out loud. His brain hurts. He needs leftovers to soak everything up.
The willpower he has to gather to pull down the comforter is back-breaking, but he does it. “They were Maneschewitz. I hope Becca feels just as shitty.”
In the background, Steve is shuffling something around. Probably paper. Of course, he’d be working. It’s a Tuesday. Bucky is just taking a little longer to process normal thoughts, is all.
“She’s turning 30 this year, she’ll be feeling it just like you are. Trust me.” There’s that shuffling sound again, probably flipping through one of his sketchbooks. Maybe he got a little work in the few days Bucky has been out of their apartment and in Indiana with his parents. “She sent me a selfie she took with you last night. You looked like you were having fun.”
Bucky vaguely remembers Becca taking a photo of the two of them and then running around to gather Rosie and Ellie for another photo, trying to cram all the Barnes siblings into the frame. He should ask Becca to send it over to make it his background. It feels slightly less embarrassing to have his family as his lock screen than his best friend he’s desperately in love with and hasn’t said anything to.
Bucky groans again at the thought. It’s too early for those sort of self-deprecating thoughts. He should turn off his incognito mode on Grindr, maybe. Then again, they’re in in fucking Shelbyville. The well is dry. Or desperately deep in the closet. He wants to be back in Brooklyn already.
“We were, after the shots came out. Aunt May still keeps asking me about that girl I dated in high school before I came out, she–”
“Melissa?” Steve interrupts. He sounds a little further away, like he’s put Bucky on speakerphone on his desk.
“Yeah, her. And I said I hadn’t spoken to Melissa in 16 years and also hey, Aunt May, wouldn’t you know, I’m a huge homosexual?”
Steve snorts a laugh and curses after Bucky hears a clinking sound on the other end. Probably the cup that’s always precariously balanced on his desk filled with pencils and whatever else he forgets to put away. Bucky is starting to feel a little pathetic again knowing all the small sounds Steve tends to make when he’s working, but focusing on it is sort of helping his headache.
“I keep telling you not to put that cup on the corner of your desk. For someone so smart, you’re so fucking clumsy.”
“How do you–fuck you, pal. That doesn’t mean I have any hand eye coordination.”
Called it. “Why’d you ring, anyway?”
“Hm? Oh, just figured you might be hungover. Great time to see how much I can piss you off. And, you know, see how it went with the family.”
The latter is the real reason Steve’s called, Bucky’s absolutely positive of it. He can be sweet when he wants to be–when he’s not acting like a feral cat about his affection. Steve always let Bucky get the softer parts of him and Bucky holds on to that as close to his chest as he can.
Bucky waves his hand in the air above the covers, staring at the popcorn ceiling in the room. It takes a beat before he realizes Steve can’t see him. “Same as always. It’s–” Bucky sucks in a deep breath. It was nice to be a part of something. He enjoyed the ritual of it, being with his family–even the extended family he wasn’t as close to or liked much at all. But mostly his sisters and his parents. They were spread all across the country, at this point and Rosie was about to head to Spain in May for her summer abroad. “It was nice. To see everyone.”
Once his parents are gone, he’s not really sure he and his sisters will keep up any of the traditions–he felt about as Jewish as Steve was Catholic, and the only reason Steve ever attended Mass was because if Sarah was watching from somewhere, she’d box his ears for not attending Easter Vigil.
Something softens in Steve’s voice when he speaks next. “I’m sure they missed you, too, Buck.”
“Ma calls me almost every other day, she’s probably sick of me. All the girls say they get 2 calls a week, max.”
“That’s because all the women in the family can take care of themselves just fine. You can’t.” The noise in the background of the call is now gentle scratching. It sounds like pencil against heavy paper. Bucky is starting to get curious about how long Steve’s been up. Honestly, he doesn’t even know what time it is–hadn’t looked at it when he’d pawed at his phone–and Steve takes at least 2 hours in the morning to really wake up, shower, eat, and complete his own small rituals.
Bucky’s voice lacks any real heat when he says, “alright, now, that’s just bullshit. I think we do just fine.”
“We? When did I say we?”
“You’re obviously a part of this!” Again, without Steve being able to see, Bucky throws his arms up. He opts for describing it. “My arms are in the air in exasperation, Steve!”
“I’m only conceding, and that’s barely, because your ma has me practically adopted, anyway. And I know I’m hopeless.” Steve’s definitely trying not to smile.
Changing the subject feels like a good option at this point before Bucky starts going down the path of any more pathetic overthinking. We. It’s always we. Bucky hadn’t really meant to say we, but Steve and Bucky always came together. No spaces between their names. Bucky also kind of wants no space between his body and Steve’s skinnier frame, but those are thoughts for later in the shower when he can feel ashamed under hot water and steam after he jerks himself off.
“You working on something? Bucky finally pulls his phone away from his ear for a moment to look at the time on his lock screen. 11:16. Alright. Not bad at all. Anything before noon after drinking felt like an accomplishment.
Below the numbers, Steve’s face and his own stare at him, an old halloween photo of them in Star Trek uniforms. All Bucky’s idea, much to Steve’s dismay, but they’d dressed up as what Steve suggested the Halloween before, so obviously it had been Bucky’s turn to choose. He doesn’t mean to stare so long, but Steve’s quiet Buck? snaps him out of it quick enough.
He puts the phone back to his ear and lies. “Hey, sorry. Call dropped for a second. You said you were working on something?”
“Yeah. I am. It’s a dog portrait. Not the craziest thing I’ve ever done, but the owner already sent over the full amount I invoiced and a tip, so. It’s for his girlfriend, I think. I’ll send you the pictures I got.”
Bucky likes this. The ease that always comes with speaking with Steve or being near Steve. Just existing together. His mother had asked when he’d arrived on Saturday how things were going and had gently prodded him about not really dating the last year and a half while he lived with Steve and while he would never admit to it, he did cry a little bit to her. Of course his mother knew, she knew everything. She just thought it might be good to get his mind off things and get himself out there.
It was just…one or two dates weren’t enough to put away a couple decades worth of feelings. So Bucky didn’t even try. Maybe that’s the point she was trying to make. He’d completely stopped trying.
Steve’s still silent on the other end, probably looking for the photos of the dog, when Bucky hears a soft knock at the bedroom door. It’s not his room, it’s one of the main guest rooms–he’d never had a room here that was actually his. He’d stayed in New York when his parents moved back to Indiana during his first year in college.
It’s his father who opens the door and peeks his head in. His father had gone greyer in the few months Bucky hadn’t seen him and it still felt odd to take notice of. He never really noticed his father aging before, but suddenly it was all he could think about. He wondered if his father thought the same about seeing him and his sisters grow up.
“Jamie, you up?”
Bucky nods “On the phone with Steve.” There’s a quiet huh? on the line before Steve realizes what he’s said, followed by a quiet oh.
“Say hello for me, kid. Your ma’s got a full spread downstairs. Ain’t all gone yet. Should come down before May eats her way through it. Tylenol is in the cabinet by the mirror.” George shuts the door a little bit louder than when he’d opened it and Bucky winces.
“Dad says hi. I should probably let you go so I can eat breakfast. All I’ve had in the last approximately 14 hours to 16 hours have been those Jell-O shots.”
Steve laughs and Bucky wants to bottle that sound and keep it. He laughs back in response, but more at his own thoughts. He should set it as his ringtone for Steve when he calls.
“Tell your family I say hi back. And flip Becca off, she’ll know what that means.”
Bucky laughs harder before hanging up and making his way downstairs for the day.
…
Bucky lands in JFK the following Wednesday, exhausted and a little lonely. There’s something about leaving his parents house, full of people, and suddenly being completely alone with his thoughts that makes him feel empty, even though he’d been looking forward to coming back to his own apartment and to Steve.
He’d texted Steve his flight information the night before ‘in case I die, or whatever’ is what his text read.
‘I can’t afford rent if you die on the plane, so don’t be an asshole’ was Steve’s last response.
While he’s waiting for the baggage carousel to start, Bucky scrolls back up through the last few days of texting and voice memos to look at the photos Steve had sent of the dog portrait he was painting. It was of a fat bulldog, all light brown and cream colored and an underbite that makes him so ugly that he’s cute. ‘His name is Onion’ is the text below the photos.
Honestly, Bucky can’t wait to see what Steve’s painted. It’s currently giving him something to look forward to instead of the existential dread of saying goodbye to his parents for another few months. Becca would be eventually coming back to New York the following week, but she had a job interview in California and while Bucky would never say it out loud, he hopes desperately she bombs the interview, because he thinks he might ugly cry if she moves out to LA.
Becca is the closest in age and he can’t admit it out loud to anyone, but also his favorite sister. Rosie is the sweetest and dating a nice boy her age and Ellie is pretty and already married and doesn’t that just scare the shit out of him. But Becca is the meanest and the only other single one in the family and they get on like a house on fire. She’s also the one that listens to Bucky’s pathetic love sick rants about Steve.
She can’t move and be 3 hours behind. The rant schedule would get all messed up. And he tells her as much.
Three dots appear in his conversation with Steve and disappear a moment later, getting replaced with a message. ‘Flight aware says your plane landed so you aren’t dead. Congrats’ it gets sent with confetti that explodes across his phone screen.
Bucky hearts the message. ‘Alive and ready to make timely rent payments.’
Before he’d gotten dropped off at the airport by his parents, his mother decided it would be the best time to talk to him about a personal issue–he was cornered in the back seat of their SUV with his father at the wheel. His mother was good, she knew when to make the hit. But Christ, he felt like he was 15 again and in serious shit after sneaking alcohol and sharing it with Becca.
“Jamie, your father and I are worried–” She was facing him, twisting in the passenger seat to look him in the eyes in the back seat.
Bucky had just groaned.
“No, don’t give me that. You’re a grown man. Jamie, if you don’t say something to Steve, I might just call him myself. You’ve been worse than ever this last year and a half, and I don’t know if it’s because he broke up with that last girlfriend of his and now you’re over-thinking wanting to say something or what, but it’s driving me and your father up the fucking wall. You’re gonna say your mother likes to kibitz, and frankly, Jamie, I don’t care. I’m allowed to meddle. I’m your mother.”
It was funny, admittedly. Everyone in the family was tired of it. His mother dropped the f-bomb with complete seriousness and his father didn’t even look the least bit ashamed about telling him to get his head out of his ass.
He hadn’t really agreed, but he hadn’t exactly said no after. It was just some of the most uncomfortable 15 minutes of his life, a close second after coming out to his parents. Telling Steve he’d had a crush on him since he was 14 was going to top the list if it ever happened, though.
He thinks back on it again, listening to the baggage carousel creak as it turns on. Maybe it was because Steve had just gotten out of an almost 5 year relationship with someone Bucky truly thought was the love of Steve’s life. That had sent him into a spiral when they’d broken up. Somehow, Steve had been fine with the whole thing, like he’d been expecting it. He probably had, Steve always made his feelings known, and Peggy had spoken about moving back to London for work and Steve refused to move out of the states.
For whatever reason, Bucky has cried the night Steve told him they broke up. Truly broke up, no getting back together, no maybes or some days, because he realized he could say something–tell Steve what he’d bottle up for so long, but immediately knew he wouldn’t. Bucky knew the words wouldn’t come. He was going to fuck everything up. He was never going to say anything.
The second reason he cried was because Steve had dated men in the past, had come out as liking girls and boys in high school before Bucky even fully pieced together he was gay. And that meant if Steve didn’t like him, it wasn’t that he couldn’t, it was simply that he didn’t.
He really needs to see how long his mother plans on giving him. There’s no way in hell she would expect him to say it when he got home from the airport, right? He can just lie and say he said something and Steve turned him down.
Bucky rubs at his eyes and pockets his phone. Maybe he didn’t actually miss his family, now that he thought about it.
…
Steve is asleep on their couch when he finally gets home from the airport. Bucky is careful to be quiet, rolling his bag in after he realizes, but he smacks a wall while trying to turn the corner to his bedroom and winces as he sees Steve’s blonde hair pop up.
“Shit. Hey. Was trying to sleep off a headache.” Steve squints his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Hey. Sorry. I’m just gonna put all my clothes away. You don’t need to get up. Might take a nap, too, honestly.”
“You’re insane, pal. No one puts their clothes away right after they get back from a trip. They leave their bag on the floor for two weeks until they trip over it for the 6th time.”
“No, that’s just you. Jesus. Actually, I’m inspired to run a load of laundry because I’m a mostly functioning adult who knows when he’s running low on underwear.” Bucky wheels the bag into his room and shakes his head at the entire interaction.
Steve stares at him like he’s grown a second head. “You just got home. No one’s using the machine’s today, probably. It’s Wednesday. Everyone waits until Saturday. If you want something to do, you should make us some late lunch.”
Steve Rogers could make soda bread and stew, bless his Irish heart and complexion, but everything else usually went up in flames. Bucky was almost positive Sam or Natasha had been stopping by to bring meals while he was gone or take Steve out for lunch and dinner. He should probably text and thank them.
Or would that be weird? He’s done it before, but he realizes just how much it makes it sound like they’re dating. God, he fucking wishes. Maybe he should run this by Nat. Sam would give him some overly serious and very reflective answer to his self-imposed problem. It was technically self-imposed, right?. He needed someone unhinged. Therefore it would be Natasha who he would run any plans by before somehow casually admitting to Steve he wanted to kiss him and just generally enjoy his presence naked and oh, also, I’ve been in love with you since high school.
“Your ma said you had something you were gonna tell me once you got home.” Steve rubs the corners of his eyes and then tries to flatten the hair that’s sticking up on top of his head.
Oh, he was never going home for any holidays ever again. He was going to jump off the top of their apartment building, actually. If he was dead they could tell Steve whatever they wanted and he wouldn’t be around to hear it or care.
“She thinks she’s so fucking funny. No, I don’t have anything to tell you.” It comes out a bit more forceful than necessary, enough that Steve raises a thick eyebrow at him, but drops it for the most part.
“Something happen between you and your sisters?” The messy hair Steve’s got from the couch nap is actually killing Bucky, but he tries his best to ignore it. Steve trying to fix it had just made it worse.
“No, ma just thinks she’s being cute. Nothing happened. Really. You want grilled cheese? I kind of want grilled cheese and tomato soup.”
The shrug Bucky gets in response is good enough. Even if Steve realizes he’s very pointedly ignoring everything about what his mother said, he lets it drop.
…
Two weeks later, Steve gets another text from Winnifred. That’s not odd in itself, because they texted with somewhat regularity. The woman loved to hound him for pictures of his finished commissions and the terrible stories he had about his work in the art supply store, but this woman obviously had a bone to pick with her son.
‘Has Jamie told you anything?’
‘Told me anything about what?’
The only response Steve receives is a thinking face emoji and that’s enough to prompt him to text Becca. He screenshots the interaction and sends it over to her only to receive ‘HA HA HA HA’ in response. This family was going to drive him nuts. Sometimes he thinks he understands when Bucky says he loves them as much as he hates them.
He doesn’t think to tell anything to Bucky, since Bucky wouldn’t admit to anything, anyway.
This means that Steve forgets about the whole thing until a week and a half before his birthday, when he’s trying to order a cake with Bucky for his very small celebratory get together. It’s another text from Winnifired, but this time, she’s added George and Becca on to a group chat. It’s intimidating, actually. He’s just thankful there’s only one Barnes sibling added. Ellie was the relentless one. She took after her mother like that.
‘Any good news???’ She misuses an emoji that she probably thinks is smiling, but it’s grimacing. Steve can’t help but laugh a little at the absurdity of the entire situation.
‘In general?’ Steve’s not sure how else to respond.
Bucky points at a cake in the display case and turns toward Steve. “Hey, didn’t you want to do navy blue or something? I like the piping on this one.” He tilts his head to the side like a dog and tucks his long hair behind his ear. “Everything okay?”
Steve looks up. “Hm? Yeah, just your ma texting me. She’s been asking me about something and then doesn’t tell me what it is. She just added me to a group chat with your dad and Becca. I’m pretty sure it’s nothing serious, but, no offense pal, what the fuck?” He pockets his phone and ignores the buzzing, presumably from Becca. George was never really a texter.
The look that flashes across Bucky’s is intense, enough to color his cheeks red with anger, but he collects himself, quick as anything. “Ignore it. She still thinks she’s being funny. Only now she’s got Becs and dad in on it.”
“In on what?”
Bucky throws his hands up. “I don’t know!” Only it’s said in a way that makes Steve think he does actually know and he’s not letting on. “Look. Can we just pick your cake design out? I’ve been wanting to bring you here since your last birthday and I actually have the money to buy you one and make it look nice. Seriously, ignore my ma.”
Steve pats his back pocket, but doesn’t pull his phone back out. “I like the dark blue, yeah. Can we make it two tiers?”
The poor woman behind the counter, who can’t be much older than 20, looks between them before smiling a little awkwardly. “Sure! Let me get the form to start writing this all down.”
…
In the uncomfortable group chat Steve’s been roped into with George, Winnifred, and Becca, he gets almost 20 birthday wishes on his actual birth day. Winnifred is having the time of her life sending the messages with fireworks or confetti flying across the screen and Becca got in on it after, laughing her ass off in the chat. It makes Steve smile, like this is his own family, so he can forgive whatever reason he’s being put between them and Bucky for a while.
He gets messages from Rosie and Ellie a few hours later, badly edited memes with a flag and a bald eagle and they’re so absurd Steve can’t help but laugh at those, too.
He has his own group chat with his small group of friends, and Bucky, Sam, and Natasha all take turns calling him Birthday Boy with ever increasingly absurd spellings and typos. He’s not sure he’s smiled this much in a while. At least within the last 2 weeks. It’d been a little hectic trying to finish a few of his pieces that had to be mailed out in time to meet their deadlines and asking someone at work to swap a shift with him so he could actually get the day after his birthday off, as well. But he’d managed. He was also ready to get shitfaced and eat a lot of cake. He was absolutely allowed to want that as a newly turned 31 year old.
“Birthday boy,” is being sing-songed in the hallway and it’s Sam, of course. Nat will probably join in once she gets let into the apartment.
Steve’s still in his pajamas, but it was a tradition at this point. They’d stay in, PJs on, drinking wine, hard liquor, and watching terrible movies and maybe crawl to the roof to watch fireworks. The older they were getting, the nicer it was to be so close to a bed to pass out in.
Bucky’s in the shower, which feels a little silly since he’s just going to be lounging in the apartment with three other friends, so Steve lets them in, giving them one armed hugs since they both had an arm full of presents and alcohol.
Natasha pretends to wipe a tear from her face. “My little boy is all grown up. I need to watch him get black out drunk.” She says, as though she isn’t the youngest of the bunch by 5 months.
“Alright,” Sam pushes past her to set the gifts on the small kitchen counter space available. “Black out is pushing it, I’m done cleaning up vomit. If he blacks out, who knows where he could puke.”
Natasha rolls her eyes. “I’ll hold your hair, Rogers, don’t worry.”
Sam ignores hers and asks, “Where’s Bucky?”
Steve points over his shoulder. “Shower.”
When Steve was younger, Sarah had never been much of a guesser when it came to gifts. She listened and would always find a way to get something out of Steve, find out exactly what he wanted for his birthday or Christmas, so Steve was always sort of able to guess what she might have bought him. His friends, though, he couldn’t figure out worth a damn, so when he gets the chance, he peaks into the top of one of the bags on the counter as inconspicuous as he can before getting slapped away by Natasha.
She wags her finger at him once before pointing to the bathroom door. “Get the pretty boy out of the shower. We’re just going to be sitting around the couch, anyway.”
“Probably doing his hair care routine,” is what Sam mumbles out in response.
Natasha is in a shirt that’s at least 4 sizes too big and mismatched checkered pajama pants and she’s cradling a bottle of vodka like it’s child, only she’s entirely too ready to open it. He would have loved to have been a stranger on the subway, watching the pair of them.
Sam has a matching pair of gray sweat shorts and a hoodie with the arms cut off and Steve wants to tease him for still looking put together. Then again, it probably took effort on Natasha’s part to look so lazy.
Steve shuffles over in slippers and knocks on the door to the bathroom. “Everyone’s here, hurry up. Stop wasting the time we could be day drinking.”
Steve’s not actually sure what Bucky says in response, but he doesn’t come out until nearly 30 minutes later, after the rest of them have already taken a shot of vodka. He looks handsome and put together and Steve’s sure he smells nice and his hair is as soft as it looks, but he’s not really sure why he’s done all that when it was just the four of them.
The 7 days leading up to his birthday had been a little awkward, even if he didn’t want to admit it out loud, but Steve was blaming it on birthday party jitters on Bucky’s behalf. Which felt like a bullshit excuse for Bucky, honestly, there was no reason for Bucky to be such a nutcase when it wasn’t even his own birthday and the celebration plans hadn’t changed in almost 6 years, but whatever other reasoning Steve tried to come up with seemed worthless.
Bucky seemed a little better now, at least, or maybe he was putting it all on for Steve, since it was actually his birthday and they all deserved to have fun–Steve would take it for now and pull Bucky aside tomorrow, maybe, if he still wouldn’t fess up. He wasn’t going to let Bucky avoid anything like he was avoiding with his own mother.
And maybe that was the problem, because a week ago, Bucky had gotten a phone call from his mother and instead of talking to her on speaker in their small living room like he usually did, he took one look at Steve who was eating a piece of toast in the kitchen, and promptly walked out their front door.
Winnifred hadn’t sent any further cryptic messages after that call with her son, but Becca had sent a rather ominous ‘SOON,’--it just felt like it was an obvious joke about his up and coming birthday, though.
“Glad you could join us, Prince Charming.” Natasha pours a shot glass of vodka for Bucky and pushes it towards him on the counter.
Bucky looks at least a little ashamed about spending almost an hour between the shower and blow-drying and fixing his hair and immediately knocks back the shot. “Thai food for lunch to start?”
Steve smiles, “Sounds like we’re off to a good start.”
…
Bucky is trying his best. They play drunk Jenga and he knocks the tower over in 3 turns and it takes almost 10 minutes for everyone to stop laughing–so really, he’s trying his best. He diffused his hair, his curls looked nice–he moisturized, he trimmed his facial hair–really, he’d put effort into this. It almost felt ritualistic, like maybe if he looked his best, there was no reason for Steve to turn him down.
Which was stupid, truly. If Steve liked him, he’d take Bucky any way he could–because Bucky would certainly take Steve however he could. But Bucky still let himself go through with it, because he’d go insane if not.
He hadn’t been able to look Steve in the eye for most of the day, knowing what he’d be doing later in the evening, at least half-drunk, so it helped to hide in the bathroom for as long as he could. At least once Sam and Nat had dropped in, he had 2 other sets of eyes to focus on so he didn’t feel so awkward avoiding Steve’s.
His mother’s incessant texting after their last call was still driving him up a fucking wall, however, Because he barely had 2 and a half months to steady himself with this whole confessing thing. He’d spoken to Nat about it, in the most roundabout way he knew how, and she managed to pick up on it immediately. He was telling her to hold himself accountable for actually telling Steve tonight.
‘If you don’t follow through, i’m cutting up all of your clothes, Barnes’ was the text she sent immediately after hanging up. Bucky was absolutely sure she would, too. Fuck.
Natasha catches his eye a few times, during the evening, holding on to him for too long. She’s pushing, he knows, absolutely, but he still needs time.
Besides. He’s hungry again. He can’t do this hungry.
“What’re we ordering for dinner?” Bucky blinks and unlocks his phone to scroll through a food delivery app. Next to him, Steve sways and leans over him. He’s resting half of his body against half of Bucky’s and Bucky thinks he needs to be much more sober or so much more drunk.
Steve squints at the app and brings a hand over Bucky’s lap to scroll through, “I want wonton soup”
Sam groans. “It’s too hot for soup”
“I’m the birthday boy,” and Steve’s smug about it, too.
“Vietnamese it is.” Bucky’s words are soft and he’s careful not to move too much, as though any jostling will make Steve realize what he’s doing and pull away. But Steve had always been a handsy drunk.
Now that he’s starting to overthink this again, he should have done this sober, because it feels like he’s on hard mode now. This was the dumbest dumb-shit idea he’s had in some time. And he just got egged on by his family and by Nat–and Nat had probably told Sam who had been eyeing him suspiciously most of the night…
He wants to die. He wants to run in front of a taxi. He’s actually the biggest putz of the family—he can hear his mother’s voice saying it repeatedly in his head. Somehow that hurts more than just being called a dumbass by Becca like he actually had been repeatedly for the last week.
Instead, he asks what everyone wants him to order like a relatively functioning adult who’s had too much to drink and maybe needs a nap.
…
Dinner helps soak up some of the alcohol, so Bucky knows he isn’t completely shit-faced yet, but Steve was and probably always would be a lightweight. So all three of them shove water at him like he’s been wandering in the desert, parched, and they all share a look.
“He’s gotta actually remember you telling him, man.” Sam looks right at Bucky when he speaks.
Steve grabs the first water in front of him, which just so happens to be from Bucky. Not that Bucky feels good about that or anything. “Tell me what? You sound like Bucky’s ma. Jesus.”
Sam pats at Steve’s back. “You’ll know before midnight, don’t worry. Right, Bucky?”
Nat manages to look innocent during the entire exchange and Bucky suddenly wishes everyone had food poisoning. He should have actually poisoned the Jell-O shots that are sitting in the fridge.
He’s sure if he were to look at his phone, everyone in his family would be saying the same things as Sam and Natasha, and with the whole world routing for him he doesn’t know how he can break it to any of them if he fails. He feels like Atlas, carrying the weight of everyone’s expectations and the world seems to get heavier and heavier as it gets closer to midnight. He’s not actually sure if his mother would follow through with her threats if she realized how distraught he actually was. Nat will, but maybe if he starts crying in front of her, she’ll realize he’s not ready and take a little pity on him.
The result is the hot, stinging feeling that happens just before you finally cry and then Bucky can’t seem to stop the tears from coming.
Great.
Now he’s going to ruin Steve’s birthday in a completely different way.
Sam notices immediately and tries to keep Steve’s eyes on him so Natasha can pull Bucky aside. Great tag team, he thinks, he’s not sure what he’d do without them sometimes.
“I’ll only cut up one shirt if you don’t follow through. You can pick the shirt. It can be something really ugly you never wear.”
He’s almost a head taller than her, but he feels so small when he cries. He laughs, something watery and shaky, but the tears still come, and he knows it’s bad because Nat’s almost completely rescinded her threats.
The alcohol isn’t helping the tears, either. He hates himself.
Natasha’s face becomes deadly serious and she puts her hands on either side of his stubble rough jaw. “Don’t be scared. I promise, there’s no reason to be.”
She sounds like his mother, reassuring him on the phone this morning before his shower, but it makes him hiccup as he tries to stop crying. God, he’s never getting drunk again after this.
Bucky gets startled and hiccups again when he feels someone against his back–hands wrap around his stomach and when he looks down he sees they’re Steve’s. Sam had probably done his best to keep Steve distracted, but drunk Steve was even more bull headed than sober Steve. Which meant that stopping him was often literal–dragging and picking him up.
“Whatever I did, I’m sorry.”
Whatever Bucky was expecting Steve to say, it certainly wasn’t that. Nat lets his face go and steps back, schooling her own confused face into something more neutral.
“It’s not…” Bucky doesn’t know where to start. He doesn’t know where the middle or the end of that thought is, either. “I’m not mad at you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Steve butts his head against Bucky’s back. “You’ve been upset about something since you went home for Passover.” he sounds uncomfortably sober when he speaks, like it’d been shocked out of him when he realized Bucky was crying.
“I’m upset at myself, Steve. Not you. I’m just…upset at myself and everyone around me pushing me to do something I’m scared to do.”
Steve butts his head against him again and his voice is lower and rougher than just a moment ago. “Just do it scared. S’what I do.”
Bucky wipes at his eyes and avoids looking at Sam and Nat when he pulls Steve’s arms away so he can turn around. “Steve, when have you ever been scared?”
Steve furrows his thick brows and gives Bucky a look like he just asked the stupidest question he’s ever fucking heard. “I do shit scared all the time. But I just do it. That’s the point. If not, I’d just regret not doing it.”
The serious moment is interrupted by Bucky sniffing, his eyes and nose are so watery, it’s almost comical, but Steve still keeps his eyes trained on Bucky.
“Can we talk in my room for a second?”
Steve nods and looks like he immediately regrets it, grabbing his head before walking the few steps to Bucky’s room. Sam and Natasha look away and pretend like the Jenga blocks that are still on the floor are the most interesting thing they’ve seen all night.
Bucky closes his door gently, aware that Steve’s head is probably already pounding, and stands with his back against it as Steve sits down on his bed with a small ‘oof.’ No way out but through, is what Bucky repeats to himself.
“Steve, I’m so scared.” Is what actually comes out.
Steve drops his hand from his head and keeps his focus steady on Bucky’s eyes. “Of me?”
A nod is all Bucky can stomach, but that seems to confuse Steve, who shifts on the bed completely unsure of what to do with his hands. He reaches towards Bucky for a moment, like he might stand up and touch him, but thinks better of it after realizing what it is Bucky’s agreed to.
“There’s not a lot to be scared of.”
Bucky stutters in a breath and his eyes water again. “Steve, I’m scared of you all the time.” Bucky doesn’t mean to be so honest, but he is. He’s scared that Steve seems to be so authentic to himself and wants to be like that, but doesn’t know how. It’s like Steve scares him into being a better person.
“That’s stupid.” Steve looks down at his hands that he’s finally managed to set in his lap and keep still. He sounds hurt. Bucky is off to a terrible start with this whole thing. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Steve. Honestly, he hadn’t wanted to hurt himself either, but that came with the general territory of confessing.
“No, you–” Bucky cuts himself off and wipes at his nose–pushes himself away from the door to sit on the floor in front of Steve’s socked feet. His slippers are probably under their coffee table. Or maybe Nat stole them again. Her feet were so much smaller than Steve’s, despite Steve being only a few inches taller than her, but they always made her look like she was wearing clown shoes.
They’d laughed about it earlier when the boys all made her get up to go let the delivery driver in downstairs and she’d flipped them all off.
It’s easy to just look down at Steve’s narrow feet in mismatched socks instead of looking at him directly, but he forces himself to look up. The point was that he’d be the only one hurt by this whole thing if it went belly-up. Not both of them.
Steve meets his gaze after Bucky sits, worrying a hangnail on one of his fingers instead of just staring at his own hands. “It’s not me, it’s you? Jesus, are you friend breaking up with me?” He laughs after he says it, but it’s short lived. “I was gonna make you–” he pauses to burp, probably from the vanilla Vodka Sam had pulled out, and honestly in any other situation, it would be funny. The both of them, too drunk to function like actual adults with jobs and 401Ks and taxes to pay, and shit, his returns this year were actually ass, but Bucky can’t focus on that. Even if it would be so much easier to think about than the situation at hand. “If you didn’t tell me why you were being an asshole these last few weeks or months or whatever, I was gonna make you tell me tomorrow. After my birthday.”
Steve wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand and laughs again to himself. He probably also sees the utter absurdity of the entire situation.
“You never wait to tell me anything, Steve. Surprised you made me wait since the beginning of May.”
“Yeah, well.” Steve shrugs. “You never avoid telling me anything, either.
Alright, that one stings a little, but only because he’s right. The point was that they told each other everything, big and small. This wouldn’t be a problem, though, if his entire family and his small circle of friends wasn’t out to get him. Slow death by confession. Torture. Ugh.
Bucky reaches out to grab the hem of Steve’s pajama pants. The ends are a little ragged and torn from where Steve would step on them while walking since they were just an inch too long. He needs something to do with his hands. “This was kind of an important thing to avoid telling you.”
Steve pushes his feet a little closer to Bucky so he doesn’t have to reach as far. It’s almost automatic and Bucky is terrified all over again and of losing that. Of losing the simple things that they don’t even think about. He doesn’t think he’d be able to find that with anyone else, not even Becca, even if she was a close second, not that he’d ever tell her.
She probably knew, though.
Steve keeps his eyes on him, refusing to look away. He looks eager for Bucky to speak, but he’s not pushing. God help him, Steve really did know when to be gentle when it mattered, even if his head was a little clouded from alcohol and too much spicy wonton soup.
“I’m scared I’ll lose you, Steve.” Is what Bucky manages to say, quiet and raspy. His throat hurts almost like he’d been screaming.
“Why do you think you’d lose me, Buck?”
“Because I love you.”
Steve blinks and furrows his eyebrows, eventually squinting his face in drunk confusion. “How would you loving me make me lose you. You lose me. I mean…You know what I mean.” His bottom lip is full and pink and pouting and Bucky doesn’t want to lose being close enough to notice that, either.
“Because you’re my best friend and being in love with your best friend usually complicates things.”
“That’s stupid, Barnes. I’m in love with you, too.” It takes a beat before Steve realizes what he’s just blurted out and he starts laughing. He falls back against Bucky’s bed and his feet sort of end up in Bucky’s lap. “Shit, you’re right. That did complicate a lot of things.”
Bucky is pretty sure he’s about to hyperventilate, but he stutters instead, not actually getting words out. His breathing isn’t about to send him spiraling just yet, at least. That’s certainly something. He doesn’t move, though, just continues to gape like the world’s most well groomed fish in pajamas.
He wants to ugly cry again.
It takes a moment for Steve to realize that Bucky isn’t moving and isn’t going to say anything, so when he lifts his head up from Bucky’s bed and actually sees Bucky’s face, he frowns and pushes himself up on his elbows. “Bucky? Hey.”
Bucky starts to cry again. Was this because he grew up with so many sisters? No, that was wrong. He was kind of the cry baby of the bunch despite being the oldest. And he’d only ever seen Steve cry 4 times since he’d befriended him in 2nd grade, one of the times being when his mother had passed away. Bucky really was awful at this.
Steve slides off the edge of the bed and it’s awkward enough to make Bucky snort. It gets a small smile in return from Steve who finally steadies himself enough to sit criss-cross in front of Bucky, back against the bed frame.
Steve takes in a deep breath, chest rising and falling and rattling. “I asked Peggy out after you started dating that guy who lived in Murray Hill” Steve absolutely remembers his name, he just refuses to say it. Steve’s memory was almost photographic. “He was in finance. Jesus, why would you ever date someone in finance. Anyway, I was so pissed off about it, but you only ever went on a couple dates with him. I was still angry about it weeks later, even once Pegs and I started going steady. And I realized I hadn’t actually said anything to make you realize why I’d been angry. And I thought, how can he know if I don’t say anything? But you’d never said anything either. So I shoved it all away somewhere and tried to build something good with Peggy.
“I did. For a while, I did. I mean, shit, it was almost 5 years. But she told me one time she always felt like second best to you. It made breaking up easy. I never wanted to move to London, anyway. Away from everyone. All my friends. You. I couldn’t do it. She was right though.”
Bucky stares, blinking too much around his tears. “You sound too sober.”
Steve shrugs. “I’ll take a couple shots of vodka when we go back out there.”
Bucky groans. He forgot Nat and Sam were on the other side of the door. They were probably listening in, he wouldn’t put it past either of them. Fucking snoops. But Bucky does remember what he was going to say to Steve. “You didn’t leave New York because of me.”
Steve nods, once. “I can’t leave New York. I have everything here.” You’re here is so heavily implied that Bucky feels the entire weight of it on his chest.
“I thought you were you gonna marry her.” Bucky’s voice sounds small, even to himself.
“Dunno. Maybe. I don’t know if I could’ve without ever…you know. Without telling you. Then she said she was moving back home and it was easy to let it all go.”
Steve still hasn’t looked away from Bucky’s eyes, so Bucky figures it’s his turn in the confessional. Ha. Catholicism appropriate, he thinks. “My sisters know. I mean, Becca knows the most. She hears me talk about you a lot. But my parents know, too. And ma saw how bad I got after you broke up with Peggy. It was…After you broke up with her, I cried because I realized that night I wasn’t ever going to tell you. I was gonna take it to my grave.”
“You cry all the time.” Steve says, but he’s soft with it.
Bucky rolls his eyes and continues. “Ma told me to say something or she’d tell you. I actually was scared shitless because her and dad cornered me on the ride to the airport. I told, I mean, they’re probably on the other side of the door listening, but I told Nat because I needed to really hold myself accountable for telling you and I said I’d do it after you’d had your, you know, your big birthday celebration so if I fucked things up bad enough we still had a good memory before things all went to shit and you kicked me out.”
“Don’t think so bad of me, Buck. Don’t think that’s fair to either of us.”
“I wasn’t,” wow, he needs to stop tearing up, this is actually embarrassing. “I wasn’t thinking bad of you, just catastrophizing or whatever.”
“You thought I’d kick you out.”
“Probably would’ve just kicked myself out.” Bucky pulls his legs up as best he can with the little space between them so he can wrap his arms around his knees.
But Steve immediately sets his hands on either of Bucky’s knees and pushes them apart. It makes Bucky’s breath catch because whatever he expected, that wasn’t it. It was the sudden intimacy in the face of horrible embarrassment and he just wasn’t prepared, is all.
What Steve does, though, is lean in between Bucky’s legs and move one hand to cup Bucky’s cheek. It feels a little like what Nat had done earlier to calm him down, but decidedly less platonic. Steve’s going to kiss him, he realizes with sudden clarity.
And he does.
When Steve pulls back, Bucky can see his long lashes resting against the high points of his cheek. They’re soft blonde and Bucky wants to wake up to this. He wants to keep kissing right now, because it’s the only thing quieting any of the terminal anxiety in his brain. So he pushes back against Steve and tells himself he might actually be allowed to touch in a much less than platonic way. That means he sets his right hand on the upper part of Steve’s thigh and his left hand reaches up to grab Steve’s wrist as he still cups Bucky’s jaw.
Bucky’s breathing after crying is just as bad as Steve’s usually is, so they pull back for a second time and stare. “You can’t take this back.”
“I’m not taking it back, Buck.”
“I mean it, Steve.” Bucky wants to say he’s nothing without Steve, that if this ends he might as well just move to Shelbyville into his parents house because there’ll be nothing in New York that doesn’t remind him of Steve. He’ll be some sort of empty shell because what was he, really, without Steve?
“Buck, if our friendship was a kid, it’d be Rosie’s age. I mean, it’s out of college. It’s old enough to start a family.”
Bucky laughs at that, it’s absurd, hearing it put into perspective. “So you’re not going anywhere.”
“I’ll die before you’re able to get rid of me.”
“Don’t go and die just to prove a point.”
Steve smiles. “Can we do another round of shots? Fireworks are probably gonna start soon and I wanna see ‘em from the roof.”
Bucky nods against his hand. “Whatever you want, birthday boy. I made Jell-O shots for a reason. Should get you a crown next year.”
When they finally make their way out of Bucky’s bedroom, Nat and Sam are once again looking at the Jenga set like it’s some expensive Rothko piece Steve raves about, and they’re obviously anything but innocent.
There’s 4 Jell-O shots lined up on the counter, and Sam makes an exaggerated show of noticing the boys coming out of the bedroom when he says “Oh, man. You ready for another round of shots? Nat put on some Russian movie she’s illegally streaming and I’m too tipsy to focus on the subtitles.”
Nat grunts behind him and slaps his head. “The Irony of Fate is a beloved New Year’s tradition, don’t shit on tradition.”
“It’s the fucking fourth of July, man.” Sam rubs his head and heads to the small kitchen.
Nat looks between Steve and Bucky expectantly, squinting when she sees their hands clasped together. “You two are about to become completely insufferable.”
Sam glances to where she’s looking and downs his Jell-O shot before continuing. “They’ve been insufferable since we met.”
The rest of them each take their shot and Nat is the only one not to grimace.
“He’s right, Nat, I’ve been told on multiple occasions how insufferable I actually am.” Steve sounds almost proud when he says it. “I told Buck already, but let’s go up to the roof. Get some blankets. There should be 4 chairs up there already, I checked last night.”
There’s still a weight on Bucky’s chest, but it’s getting lighter and lighter. He thinks he can actually live with himself.
When they’re walking up the stairs to the roof, Bucky knocks Steve’s shoulder with his own, hands still intertwined. “Hey. Happy Birthday.”
“Not to be sentimental or whatever, but you got a great gift, Barnes. You’re gonna have a hard time topping this one next year.”
“I’m not a top, so I’m not too worried.”
Sam, who’s been walking in front of them, chokes so hard Bucky has to smack his back. “TMI, man.”
Natasha side-eyes Sam immediately. “You’re saying you didn’t know this pretty boy was a b–” and Sam’s response is to immediately clasp a hand over her mouth, which she promptly licks.
It makes Steve and Bucky exchange their own knowing looks and Steve suddenly frowns, a little disgusted at himself. ‘“Is that what we looked like? Jesus Christ.” It’s like he sees the last two and a half decades flash before him and the look of despair deepens. “Bucky,” Steve doesn’t continue his thought.
Bucky picks up on it though. “I know. Just.” He waves his hand and they follow Sam and Natasha through the hatch on the roof. He tightens his grip on Steve’s hand and starts laughing again, it’s a giddy thing and it feels precious. He wants to hold on to this feeling. “I love you, Steve. I wanna tell my ma about you.”
Steve looks confused and his reply is punctuated by the fireworks that are starting to burst around them in the skyline. “She knows about me…”
“No, I mean.” Bucky fumbles his phone as he pulls it out of the pocket of his sweats. He drags Steve by his hand to Natasha to take a photo of the two of them, because she knew angles and she always used portrait mode when she was taking close up photos. Sam, he wasn’t so sure about. He wants some nice photos of him and Steve and he wants to show them off. That’s fair, right? He was allowed to celebrate.
She seems to immediately understand the assignment, because she widens her stance and leans back and up. Sam looks over her shoulder and nods, appreciatively. “She’s good.”
“Of course I am, don’t be patronizing.”
“I’m complimenting you!” Sam sounds exasperated but he’s smiling.
Steve pulls Bucky down to kiss him and there’s a shutter sound going off in a burst from Bucky’s phone. They’ll have plenty of photos to send out to the Barnes family. And aunt May, eventually. Maybe she’ll stop asking about a girlfriend. Maybe Bucky can mail a printed copy to her house. Maybe he can mail printed copies to his parents, too. They’d probably frame it on the wall with Ellie’s wedding pictures. It’s kind of sweet to think about it even if it was actually the most embarrassing thing ever.
Nat tosses Bucky’s phone back to him after he and Steve look away from each other long enough to focus on getting settled in the chairs around them. He almost fumbles it, but he pockets it as soon as he’s steady.
“Sam and I have been fucking for weeks, by the way. We’re not idiots. That’s just you two.” Nat is relaxing in her chair, staring up at the now almost endless sea of fireworks around them.
Bucky chokes besides her, but Steve sighs. Sam looks proud of himself, entirely too much so.
Nat looks between Steve and Bucky and winks. “Don’t worry, boys. You got plenty of time.”
…
The next morning, Steve wakes up in his own bed, Bucky still sleeping heavily beside him. They’d let Natasha and Sam stay in Bucky’s room, under strict conditions that they don’t have sex. Maybe it was a little unfair, but everyone was probably too drunk by then to even get out of their clothes.
Steve lets his thoughts run, a little. If they were going to start sleeping in the same bed, Steve could use something other than the smallest corner of their already small living room to paint hunched at his desk–they could move some of the furniture around in his room and get rid of his bed set, since Bucky’s was more comfortable anyway, and turn the whole thing into a small studio space.
He was getting ahead of himself.
He grabs his phone, which had made its way under his nightstand and checks the time and wants to see if he missed anything important. Probably not, since the people who mattered most to him were currently in his apartment, but what he sees is almost 50 texts between the Barnes family in various chats and individually. He curses under his breath, a little louder than intended, but Bucky doesn’t wake up. Honestly, if Steve’s snoring didn’t wake him up, nothing would.
The first text he opens is from Winnifred, which is some hilarious emoji version of herself with heart eyes, and he laughs. It’s silly, really, and it feels so motherly. He thinks about sending a photo of Bucky’s messy hair on his pillow, but realizes the implications of that and thinks better of it. It’s not like they’d done more than simply sleep, but it does seem like over-sharing to someone he considers a mother figure.
He can send it to Becca, though. Because they liked to tease each other almost as bad as she and Bucky did–he just gets a string of vomiting emojis back and one texting reading ‘you’re both nasty. But congratulations. You disgust me tho.’ Highest praise.
The only reason he actually crawls out of bed and away from Bucky is because he has to pee, and he wants coffee and he wants food–because with Sam here, that meant amazing waffles and he could still milk his birthday boy status for a little longer. He wasn’t above that.
When he finally makes it to the kitchen, Sam is starting to cook, in the same outfit he’d worn all of yesterday, and Nat is scrolling on her phone, sitting in one of the mismatched chairs at the counter. Her hair is an absolute mess in a bun.
“Pretty boy still sleeping?” Sam turns away from whisking and looks at Steve while he asks, who just nods.
“He needs his beauty sleep.” Steve says, as he takes a seat beside Natasha.
Bucky stumbles out of his bedroom 15 minutes or so later, rubbing his eyes and grunting like he didn’t quite understand how words worked yet. He makes his way to Steve immediately, grabbing him like a comfort blanket, and kissing his neck. “Morning.”
“Morning, yourself, pal.”
Steve never could have given this all up to move anywhere out of the city. Even if nothing had happened between them. Even if it was just the four of them here, as friends. Steve wants to bottle this up and keep it on his shelf so he can think about it often. He’s missing it already, as it happens before him and that feels a bit silly, so he tries to bring himself back to the moment and reaches back to Bucky’s head, still resting against his neck, to scratch his hair.
Sam points at Nat. “You’re on mimosa duty.”
She salutes, in an exaggerated way and pads to the fridge to get champagne and orange juice. “It’ll help with your hangover, Barnes.”
“How am I the only one this worse for wear. Usually it’s Steve. Jesus.” He speaks against Steve’s neck, so it’s a bit muffled.
“Bawling your eyes out usually makes it worse.” Is her quick retort. Steve knows she’s not really trying to be mean about it.
Bucky groans again and Steve doesn’t want to tell him the vibrations actually feel kind of nice on his skin, he can save that for after Sam and Natasha go home and Bucky isn’t nursing a headache from mixing alcohol and crying and drinking less than optimal amounts of water the night before.
Bucky kisses Steve’s neck one more time before moving to the kitchen to grab some of the oranges on the counter to slice up to put on the rim of their mimosa. He pulls a small knife from the drawer next to his hip and flips it in his hand and smiles at Steve. Show off, is all Steve thinks. But he smiles back, easy as anything.