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Bucky’s got a problem, and for once it has nothing to do with his past.
It’s you and the way the sunlight bounces off your brown skin to make it shine. It’s you and the way your smile makes his heart do backflips. It’s you and the way your deep brown eyes look at him with nothing but admiration and care.
Bucky loves you, and he is not ready to do anything about it.
He knows, logically, that you wouldn’t do anything to hurt him if he were to confess. You damn near killed yourself trying to save him during a mission in Beirut, when a mercenary lobbed a bomb his way. You plucked it from the air and flew off with it, wrapping yourself in a blue shield just as it went off – you got a nasty scar, and it make his chest hurt every time he thinks about it. You smile to reassure him when he stares and tell him that it gives you a cool story to tell at family reunions. Worst case scenario, you would let him down gently and ask to remain friends. Even still, the worst-case scenario was apocalyptic to Bucky.
If he were going to confess, he needed to be absolutely sure that you would love him back. That was how things were, and that’s how it was going to stay until Bucky finally found the right time to confess.
Too bad the rest of the world didn’t get the memo to play along with his pining.
You got flowers the morning of June 26; Bucky remembered the exact day because his world came to a screeching halt when he read the note attached to them.
“Roses are red, violets are blue,
Know what’s on the menu? Me ‘n’ U~<3
From,
Your Secret Admirer”
Bucky should’ve thrown the flowers away as soon as he saw them, should have stomped on them, thrown them in an incinerator, anything to make sure you didn’t see them. People sent you flowers all the time, and you never cared what anyone did to them – you like to joke that you had the opposite of a green thumb.
But he didn’t. He froze, and you came trudging out of your bedroom, rubbing the sleep from your eyes, wondering why Bucky spent so long outside your door without knocking.
“Aww, corny but sweet,” you cooed sleepily when you read the note. Bucky’s heart squeezed when you said that, and not in a good way. “Any chance these are from you?”
“No. No, they’re not.” Bucky grits out. If he sent you flowers with a note, he would be pouring his heart and soul into the card, not leaving a shitty pickup line.
“Wonder who it is then,” you yawned as you breezed by him.
Bucky spent the day tracking down the secret admirer. It was a random SHIELD agent, lower in the hierarchy, and too cocky for his own good. It only took a single visit from the former Winter Solider to get the agent to back off. Unfortunately, that agent wasn’t the last to pursue you.
When you went for your morning runs, a woman would join you every morning at exactly the halfway mark. She asked you if you wanted to go to the botanical gardens with her; Bucky showed up and pretended that there was a mission at the same time that would have happened. Thank god there actually was a mission to back him up.
When you thwarted a bioterrorist’s attempts to clear out the “undesirables,” you rescued a civilian from falling rubble with a well-timed shield. They offered to make lunch or dinner to repay you for saving them; Bucky waited till your back was turned to tell them that the Avengers didn’t accept food from strangers. Standard procedure and all that. There technically was no such procedure, but it was just common sense not to eat anything made by a stranger, right.
When Tony threw another one of his notorious parties, you were approached by a random well-to-do bachelor. He fancied himself an art aficionado and invited you to a personal showing of a rare Basquiat painting. When you left to get more champagne, Bucky got Sam to distract the man before you could give him an answer. Sam was sworn to secrecy, of course, Bucky would rather you didn’t see this side of him.
“How long are you gonna keep this up, man?” Sam groaned when he came back to the table.
“Keep what up?” Bucky kept his eyes trained on you, your enchanting laugh reaching his ears even through all the blaring music and cacophony of voices.
“This!” Sam gestured at you and Bucky. “It would just be easier to confess at this point. You can’t scare off everyone that goes near them forever.”
He gave Sam a deadpan glare. “I can and I will.”
“You would have to keep an eye on them all the time at that point, you’d basically be stalking them at that point.”
“Actually, that’s not such a bad idea.”
“Wait-“
“There’s cafe across the street from their apartment, could probably stake out there.”
“Bucky-“
“You think I could get those little spy cameras from Tony’s lab without him noticing?”
“No! You need to say something to them before someone else asks them out and they say yes.”
“’S not the right time.”
“Man, someone else is gonna snatch them up while you’re busy waiting for the right time!” Bucky left before Sam could finish talking; another woman had sidled up your table.
As much as he hated to say it Sam was right.
Bucky hated this; the constant vigilance of chasing away would-be suitors, the way his heart squeezed every time he saw you smile at someone that wasn’t him, the fear that you would pick someone else before he could show you how much he loved you.
So on a cold November 12th, Bucky woke up earlier than everyone else in the tower to finally enact his plan. He went to the only shop open in Brooklyn for a fruit bouquet – filled with all the fruit he knew you liked and drizzled with chocolate. He dressed in the outfit Steve had helped him with – something casual, but made to impress. He put on your favorite playlist – Etta James, and Al Green, and Aretha Franklin.
With everything in place and his nerves at an all-time high, Bucky took a deep breath and knocked on your door.