INDY

It turns out, super soldier alcohol takes a super long time to sober up from. Luckily, the wave of deep fear and sadness seemed to pass by quicker. Once his tears had stopped, I made us both dinner. We ate, then I pulled him toward our bed, giving him a devious look that he caught onto immediately, despite his inebriation.

“I can’t sleep with you like this, Doll. I’m not gonna take advantage of you like that.”

I raised an amused eyebrow at him. “Sweetie, that’s backwards. You’re drunk. I would be taking advantage of you.”

His whole face scrunched in confusion. “That doesn’t sound right. But I guess I’ll believe you.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, hugging him around the middle as his hands stroked my back.

“You’ve never called me ‘sweetie’ before,” he grinned at me, holding me as he fell back onto the bed, sighing deeply.

I curled up against him. His warmth was so comfortable I simply laid there for a while, enjoying the sound of his breathing, the feel of his hands holding me, the leather-and-metal smell of his skin that never seemed to leave him.

“You’re really not second-guessing having my baby?” he murmured into the dimness of the room.

I grinned and planted a kiss on his chest. “No. I love you like… nothing else.”

“More than Jean Valjean?”

I laughed. “Yes.”

“More than coconuts?”

“Of course.”

“More than Bigfoot?”

I paused, and he lifted his head from his pillow to look down at me, shocked.

“Oooh, you may have gone too far there,” I giggled, reaching up to stroke his hair back from his face.

He laughed and kissed my palm as it slid by. While my fingers settled in his dark hair, his eyes took on that deep, absorbing look that had tortured me for those few weeks before we’d gone on the run. A look that felt like it touched something inside me only he could find. His left hand traced cold circles against the space beneath my bellybutton, where the baby was supposedly growing. I don’t know if he even realized he was doing it.

“You’re going to be an amazing mom.”

As usually happened when people started tossing around the M word, my palms grew sweaty and my throat constricted. Normally, that was because of my own mother. Lately, however, there was an extra layer to my personal issues.

“I’m glad you have so much faith in me,” I responded quietly, trying to keep the smile on my face as I let my attention drift down to his shirt, plucking distractedly at the soft cotton.

“I know you’re worried about it.” His voice was even softer than his shirt, brushing across my skin like kisses. “But I think you’re going to do just as great at this as everything else. You’re pretty damn adaptable for a desk jockey.”

His teasing words, still slightly slurred with intoxication, made me snicker quietly. “I know, I know. I’m great. But, seriously, Buck… I don’t actually know what I’m doing here.”

“Neither do I,” he responded simply, shrugging. “We’re supposed to figure it out together.”

I drew my head back, narrowing my eyes at him suspiciously. “You’re awfully optimistic about this all for… well, you.”

He laughed deeply enough that I rocked a little atop his chest. “Maybe it’s the alcohol… Maybe it’s old age,” he paused and looked back down at me, a devoted look in his crinkled-in-the-corners blue eyes as they stared into mine. “Maybe it’s you. I just feel like it’s right. I finally know what I want. And you and our baby are at the top of the list.”

Our baby.

A sharp, stuttered inhale from me made him draw me closer.

“I know you’re worried,” he repeated, kissing my cheek before pressing his forehead to mine. “So tell me why.”

“I-” My voice cracked and died.

“Indy, we can have Bruce pull off a thousand little beachside ceremonies later, but you and I both know we’re already married. In here-” he pointed down at my heart with a silly, gorgeous smirk. “Where it counts. And if you can’t talk to your husband about this kind of stuff, then who?”

“Alright,” I whispered, tracing his lower lip with my fingertip. “But only because you’re weirdly wise under the effects of Bruce’s alcohol.”

So I told him a little more in-depth about the parts of my childhood I could still stand to remember. And a few of the things that still broke me down. Birthdays missed, milestones ignored, bitterness fostered. All of the things I’d been forced to figure out on my own after my father’s death. Grief. Loneliness. Independence.

“Part of what scares me the most,” I admitted, sitting in his lap with his arms around me. “Is that I finally found something like what my parents had… And we both are involved in so much crazy, dangerous stuff.”

“You think you’ll lose me?” he asked like the reversal of roles hadn’t occurred to him, though at this point it had to have.

“It’s always been a concern for me, Buck. You might be damn-near indestructible, but death isn’t the only way we could be separated. Hydra’s been salivating over the idea of having you back since they first lost track of you. I’ve never wanted to see you back there with them. But now… we have a-”

Bucky’s eyes softened, stubbled jaw relaxed. “You can say it.”

“We have a baby on the way,” my voice cracked with tears, my vision blurring in the space of a couple of blinks. “And if I lost you now…”

He pulled me closer against, pressing his mouth to mine firmly, like his lips could shove any doubt, any fear from my mind. His fingers curled around the back of my neck possessively.

“Nothing is taking us away from each other,” he whispered fervently against my lips. “We won’t let it.”

“But if something happens-”

“If something happens… We’d still have a piece of each other in this baby. I think that’s something your mom lost sight of. You won’t become her. I couldn’t get you to give up on a treed squirrel in the park, Indy. And you never gave up on me. So I know you’d never give up on our kid.”

His words were a gentle sweep of reassurance in my chest, wafting against my nervous heart. I shook my head, hanging onto realism. “It’s different-”

“How?”

“I- I don’t know, but I’m sure it is.”

He tilted his head to the side, eyes sharp and shrewd, but not unkind. He was just a sweet, sensitive super soldier using his skills of discernment to pick apart the things I wasn’t saying. The things I hadn’t thought to say. The things he could only hear in the lilt of my voice as I recounted memories, not the words themselves.

He lifted one arm, not removing his eyes from mine. “Get over here.”

I gave him a confused look, but let him pull me against his body. He shifted us both down the bed until his broad chest was pressed against my back, both of us lying on our sides. I felt his nose brushing the back of my shoulder and fought a shiver. One of his knees jutted forward, comfortably parting my thighs; he picked up early on the fact that I couldn’t sleep easily with my upper legs touching. And then his hands…

Smooth metal slid across my hip, over my stomach. One warm palm snaked beneath my waist, taking up a similar position. He was holding my still-flat belly like he could feel the baby through my skin.

“Does this feel… right?” he breathed the words against the back of my neck. I could guess where the uncertainty in his voice came from. It did feel a bit like being cradled by a half-robot. But the shock of that sensation had worn off quickly in the beginning and hadn’t been nearly as jarring as I think Bucky had feared. His arms were my home.

“Yes.”

There was a beat of silence. I was facing the window, so I could only see the slowly rising moon, but I imagined he was smiling.

“Then that’s all that matters.”

BUCKY

The wedding was, by obvious necessity, small. But the view…

The sun was just setting across the ocean when Indy stepped out of our home and into the sand. She’d told me she’d been in contact with Christine, who had sent a wedding gift ahead of her next appointment. Indy had been adamant that I not peek, but since it was in a white garment bag, I had a pretty good idea of what it was long before I saw it on the woman I loved.

The gown itself was simple, almost a sun dress, brushing the sand around her sandaled feet as she approached. The material was thin, perfect for the unseasonably warm weather. But on Indy… Her warm eyes catching the light that reflected off the ocean, her hair left naturally wavy, her full cheeks flushed as she grinned crookedly at me…

Bruce had to nudge me with an oversized elbow when she finally reached us and I just stood there, staring at her. Then I took her hands in mine and Bruce started in on an officiation I barely heard. I was too busy looking at her.

Remembering every night I’d spent telling myself this could never happen. All of the heartsick longing and self-denial. And now here we were… getting married on a beach by the Hulk. My life was full of surprising twists, but this one might have been the most surprising. That this sweet, intelligent, charming, nonsensical woman with the warmest heart and the most forgiving nature would want me. For better or worse. And she knew exactly how bad ‘worse’ could get.

There were tears in my eyes when we finally exchanged “I do”s. Then she slid something onto my left hand, over my vibranium ring finger. A few days before, she’d asked to see my arm. I hadn’t questioned it, simply detaching it and handing it over. She’d busied herself with tinkering and I assumed it was fix the squeak she’d complained of hearing in one of the panels when I pulled my arm forward.

But she’d modified it somehow, and I watched in awe as she slid a smooth, somewhat funny-shaped ring of gold onto my finger, silver panels shifting aside to accommodate a new link at the base of my ring finger. It was a big upgrade from our old undercover rings.

I took her face between my hands, the small gold panel catching in the last rays of the sunlight, and kissed her - my wife - before Bruce could get “You may kiss the bride” out of his mouth.

Bruce headed back to his lab, but Indy turned some music on, old 40s tunes drifting from the sand where she’d set her phone. And we danced on the beach, talking affectionately under the glow of the moon. A breeze ruffled her hair now and again, stirring up a fittingly tropical scent of coconut. Home. I held her as close as I could without hurting her, unwilling to let any space remain between us.

“You’re mine,” I murmured with my eyes closed, my cheek rested on top of her head. “Finally mine.”

“I’ve always been yours, Bucky,” she sighed, tucked comfortably into my chest, one arm around my waist as we shifted lazily from side to side. Then she mumbled below her breath, “You just had to get that through your thick head.”

I chuckled, but squeezed her tighter. “What was that? Are you teasing your husband?”

She giggled into my chest, shaking her head. “Nope. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Our laughter died slowly, and I scratched my fingers lightly through her hair, staring up at the moon and wishing this night would never end. The comfortable, familiar weight of her body against mine was everything. It set my heart on overdrive, yet calmed my mind. Every time.

“You once said,” Indy said softly, “that I’ve had you since I tapped a beer bottle on your bedroom door back at the compound. You were talking about the return from Peach Bottom, right?”

Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station. That fading sign that read ‘Buck’. Riley and his tipoff about Hydra.

I swallowed hard and nodded. That had been one of the first big missions the team had undertaken. And naturally, it had ended with me having some kind of mental crisis. I remembered, vaguely, Indy meeting us in the garage all as we all got off the jet, leading us up to the fourth floor, choked with the scent of food. It had beckoned to me like a warm hug. And I’d hesitated precisely none before turning toward the hallway and my room.

“I was worried about you.” Her voice was almost lost beneath the sound of the waves. “I heard everything through the comms and I thought… I really thought we’d lost you for a minute.”

It seemed fitting, now, that it had been her voice to call me back to reality when Riley’s dying words had rooted me to the spot. That it was her specific strain of care that made me finally feel again.

“I was lost,” I whispered, ducking my head to press my lips to her shoulder. “For a long time. Until you.”

Her hold on me tightened, her head turning so she could look up at me. Her fingertips ghosted across my cheek lovingly, eyes shining like they might absorb me. And I’d let it happen if it meant she’d lock me up inside her heart forever. My left hand trailed lightly down her arm and she shivered, maybe from the cool metal against her warm skin, maybe just because it was me touching her.

One of my biggest insecurities when I thought about this — about us — was the arm. What woman wanted to be touched by metal rather than a natural hand? But Indy had never even batted an eye. Maybe it was her preexisting knowledge of it. Of me. But she’d always seemed so content whether it was my right or left hand that cupped her face, whether it was flesh or metal that she pressed soft kisses to. Like it was as much a part of me as my smile or my voice.

“I don’t deserve you,” I said quietly, shaking my head in wonder as we stared at each other.

Her eyebrows scrunched indignantly. “You deserve everything, Bucky.”

I opened my mouth to argue with her, but she lifted herself onto her toes and cut me off with a kiss that melted whatever pathetic remains of that wall I’d erected around my heart had managed to survive this woman in front of me. Her tongue met mine, and I felt my heart stumble, just like it had when she’d first walked in front of me in a red dress meant for another man.

It was surreal to hear her say out loud what I’d so often thought about her. That she deserved the world. That I would freely give it to her if she’d let me.

My hand drifted to her stomach, over the white dress she’d just promised her life to me in. Over the child neither of us had planned for, or even entertained the idea of. Over our future.

“I already have everything, Doll.”