Chapter Text
Steve was drawing on Brighton Beach when he saw a fella get down on one knee before his girl. He presented her with a little box, and she covered her face with her hands, but by the grin that split the lucky lunk’s face, she must have been saying yes, yes, of course, yes!
It was too cold out for there to be much of a crowd, just some folks walking barefoot in the sand, but they all whooped and hollered when the fella stood up and spun his girl around in celebration.
Steve packed up his pencils and followed his feet back home.
—
Steve kept his mother’s wedding ring in a little pill box in his sock drawer. His father’s, too. She’d plucked it from his inert hand when the army had sent her his remains, and she’d worn it on a chain around her neck until she went to join him.
They were a matching pair of his & hers rings in a soft, inexpensive gold, littered with dings and dents. His mother’s band boasted a little sapphire that Steve would get cleaned up and polished when he had some money to spare. If there had been inscriptions, they had long since rubbed away.
Sometimes he took them out and stuck them on his index finger, where he could rub at them with the pad of his thumb. His dad’s was loose, spinning restlessly over his third knuckle, but his mother’s always got stuck halfway down.
—
Steve was so caught up in the rhythmic worrying of the rings on his finger and the strokes of his pencil that he didn’t hear Bucky come home, and he startled when Bucky laid a smacker right in his hair.
“Jeez, Buck, you want me to have a coronary?”
Steve twisted around to scowl up at him, but he knew it was a losing battle when he saw that Bucky’s most maddening smirk had taken up residence in the corner of his mouth, and his hands were heavy on the back of Steve’s chair.
“Hmm, no,” Bucky said, “got plans’n all.” He leaned all his weight into the chair so Steve was half tipped over. He bent down and slotted his mouth against Steve’s, who couldn’t help but sigh into the contact. The angle was odd, but they kissed a long time anyway, retracing familiar topographies rendered foreign until Steve got lightheaded and forced his chair back down. Bucky rubbed at the achy space between his shoulder blades where he was, at twenty-five, already growing stooped. “Hey,” Bucky murmured. “You all right, pal?”
“Tip top,” Steve said, only a little breathless.
“Sorry,” Bucky said. “You just looked so good there, with the light like that and how you chew your lip when you’re thinkin’ too hard, I couldn’t help myself.” He was pressed up against the back of Steve’s chair, carding his fingers through Steve’s hair. Steve let his head fall back against Bucky’s stomach.
“I don’t think too hard,” Steve said, “you just don’t think hard enough.” His eyes fell shut as he savored the light scratch of Bucky’s nails on his scalp.
Bucky snorted, and then his left hand swept down Steve’s left arm until Bucky’s big hand cradled his, and he fiddled at the rings on Steve’s finger.
“Quit tryna snow me, Stevie,” he said. “You forget I know you too good.”
Steve stood up and nudged the chair out of the way so he could put his arms around Bucky and stick his nose where it fit just right under his ear. He smelled like sweat and a day at the docks, but also himself, that deep, fresh smell that meant Steve was home. He squeezed him tight, and Bucky’s arms around him felt like safe harbor.
Steve toyed with the rings, and Bucky stepped out of his embrace.
“So I got us a couple’a dates for Friday,” he said, and Steve’s heart sank. Bucky dragged a hand through his hair and sighed, tilting his head. “Don’t look like that,” he said. “They’re like us. Won’t it be nice, going out somewhere respectable?”
“We can’t afford it,” Steve said. He rubbed at his nose and turned back to his drawing. Two hands, entangled, one bigger than the other. Wearing wedding rings.
“Steve…” Bucky pressed himself against Steve’s back and set his nose at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. His hands were warm on Steve’s hips. “Don’t be sore.”
“I’m just tired of it, Buck,” Steve said. “Don’t you get tired? I just wanna be with you.”
“And you will be. You are.”
“It’s not the same, some dame on my arm when it should be you. You make a liar outta me with these phony dates, Buck.”
A puff of air across his neck brought goosebumps up all over Steve’s skin. Bucky extracted himself and moved his heat and hard lines away from the cold, damaged little twist of Steve’s, and Steve hated it.
“I gotta shower,” Bucky muttered, half-turned away from him, but Steve darted a hand out and caught his wrist. Courage seized him, swelled in his chest like a living, beating thing, and he sank to his knees. Bucky’s brow furrowed, that lush mouth turned down. “Steve—”
“Marry me,” Steve said in a rush of breath. “Here and now.”
“Stevie, get up, don’t do this.”
“We don’t need anyone else’s say so, Buck. You and me forever, right? To love and cherish in sickness and in health? What’s that but a marriage?”
Bucky’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and his mouth parted to make way for his quickened breath. He knelt down in front of Steve, eyebrows still drawn together.
“It won’t be real, out of the sight of God,” Bucky said.
“I know you don’t believe that,” Steve said.
“It’s not a matter of what I believe,” Bucky said. He took both of Steve’s hands in his and pressed them to his face. Steve took them away to cup Bucky’s cheeks and leaned their foreheads together.
“Bucky,” Steve whispered. “Marry me.”
“God, Steve.”
“Say yes.”
“You’re certifiable, you know that?”
“Bucky.”
“Yes. Yes, you little shit, I’ll marry you every goddamn day the rest of our lives.” Bucky’s voice broke, but Steve was too busy smiling so hard his eyes leaked to call him on it, and they clung to each other like a pair of limpets.
Eventually they let go, and Steve slid his father’s ring onto Bucky’s finger. Bucky huffed a single laugh and ran his thumb over Steve’s cheekbone.
“Sucker,” he said. “You’ll never be rid of me now.”