This was supposed to be simple. Romantic and a little bit nerve-racking, sure, but simple.
Bucky was supposed to stick his fork into the brownie, feel the clang of metal hitting metal, notice the ring, and then Sam would drop down to one knee, and yada yada yada.
Instead, Bucky had mumbled, “I’m starving,” picked up his brownie, and had the entire thing stuffed into his mouth in two bites so quickly that Sam could have sworn he inhaled it without chewing.
Now Sam’s brain was running a mile a minute, while he stared at Bucky and wondered just what he was supposed to do next.
Oh my God, he ate it.
He did not eat it, he argued with himself internally. With his super senses he would’ve felt the ring. Hell, a regular person would feela ring.
Can’t feel what you don’t chew, his inner voice shot back immediately. He definitely ate it.
Or…
Or, it never made it into the brownie in the first place.
Nah. Sure, Sam didn’t make it himself, and he couldn’t ask Sarah because she was taking a much needed vacation with the boys, but, still, he trusted the person that did make it.
Earlier that week he’d dropped by Long’s Bakery and called in a favor from the owner/operator, Stella Long: “when you make our regular Friday afternoon order” - a heaping slice of peach cobbler for Sam and an almost ridiculously large double fudge brownie for Bucky - “can you somehow slide this into Bucky’s dessert?”
He had handed her the ring then, a fairly simple white gold band with three black diamonds in the center, and she’d practically squealed then came around the counter to hug him. And in that moment, with Stella so obviously happy for them and his plan set in motion, Sam had felt like everything was going to work out perfectly.
And boy had he wanted things to work out perfectly. Bucky deserved a perfect proposal. Sam owed him that.
Six months before, Bucky had been the one talking about marriage, and Sam had shut it down. Not on purpose, and not because he didn’t love Bucky, but because Bucky had caught him completely off guard.
They had been in the middle of nowhere, battling a group of rogue werewolves (something Sam would’ve been content to never have known existed, Captain America title be damned), and while he was sewing up a scratch of Bucky’s that would’ve probably healed by itself in a few hours, but Sam refused to watch bleed the entire jet ride home, Bucky had looked down and, for reasons Sam still didn’t understand, mumbled:
“What do you think about getting married?”
“I don’t,” Sam had answered honestly, without really thinking about the question or why Bucky might have asked it, and then immediately regretted it once he caught the hurt look in Bucky’s eye.
“Oh.”
That was all Bucky said, and before Sam could gather his wits enough to reply, Scott, Hope, and Monica were surrounding them, all talking a mile a minute about their newfound knowledge that werewolves definitely existed.
Sure, they spoke that evening, once they made it back to Louisiana. Or, really, Sam spoke and told Bucky that it was just a knee-jerk response because he hadn’t thought about marriage being a possibility in his future since about the second Steve and Natasha had shown up at his door all those years ago. Sam explained that, yeah, when he was a kid his expectations for the future had been, a steady job, a spouse, and kids, but that he’d pretty much thrown those expectations out the window the second he strapped on a stolen pair of wings and started fighting Hydra.
Bucky nodded, said he understood, and then turned on the TV, effectively ending their conversation. Sam had been willing to discuss it further, but Bucky had not. And he never brought up marriage again.
However, that didn’t stop Sam from thinking about it. For weeks, Bucky’s question played on loop in his mind: What do you think about getting married?
After a couple of months, Sam had to admit that he thought it sounded great. They already lived together, spent most of their free time together, loved each other, and protected each other. Bucky wasn’t just his boyfriend, he was his best friend.
And Sam wanted to spend the rest of his life with him.
It took a few more months to realize that if they were ever going to get engaged, it was going to be up to him. Bucky hadn’t brought up their future again, and Sam had the feeling he wasn’t going to. The ball was officially in Sam’s court.
So, he’d bought a ring, and thought of a plan, but instead of popping the question, Sam was now looking at his maybe-soon-to-be fiancé wondering if they should be making their way to the nearest emergency room.
“Why do you look like that?” Bucky asked, then proceeded to lick the remaining crumbs off his fingers.
“Huh?” He replied, not because he hadn’t heard Bucky, but because he wasn’t sure what he should be doing. Calling Stella, finding Bucky the nearest x-ray tech, explaining what had happened in case he was worried for nothing because Bucky was fucking with him and holding the ring under his tongue - a combination of all three?
“Why do you look like that?” Bucky repeated slowly.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to stroke out,” he replied, straight faced. “You’ve barely even touched that messy pie you like so much.”
“It’s cobbler, not pie. We’ve discussed—”
Bucky rolled his eyes. “Quit stalling and tell me what’s going on.”
Sam sighed. “Look, let me just walk you through a hypothetical,” he said, and Bucky pulled a face.
And for the first time that afternoon, Sam almost wanted to laugh.
“Ha ha,” Bucky deadpanned. “Just spit it out already.”
His choice of words actually did have Sam huffing out a laugh.
“Sam—
“Okay,” he held up a hand to cut Bucky off, “listen, I might have put something in your brownie. Something small,” he rushed to add. “Something I thought - think - you’ll like.” He took a deep breath. “But, something metal that could be potentially dangerous if eaten, and since it’s not on your plate and you basically inhaled that brownie like you were scared it was going to disappear, I think you may have swallowed what I put in there.”
“And what exactly was it you put in there?”
Sam bit his lip in lieu of answering. Bucky deserved to know, of course, but Sam didn’t want to tell him what it was… not yet… not like this. What kind of proposal would that be?
It didn’t matter though. Bucky wasn’t an idiot (not noticing he was eating a hunk of metal aside), and if the dopey yet excited expression he was suddenly wearing five seconds later was anything to go by, he had put two and two together and figured out what people usually hide in their significant other’s food.
“Wait, Wilson, are you asking—
“No!” Sam cut in quickly, and Bucky’s face immediately fell. “Shit,” Sam said, just as fast, and stepped forward. “No, baby, I meant ‘no stop talking,’ not ‘no…’” He trailed off, gave his head a tiny frustrated shake, and took a deep breath.
“I’m pretty sure what you were about to say was going to be absolutely right - that you’ve guessed what was in your food,” he explained, and grabbed Bucky’s hand and gave it what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. “But it’s important to me that we do this right, that I do this right, so please just humor me,” he said, and kind of winced. “Until we get this whole mess sorted out, can we just not talk about what was in the brownie and focus on how to get it out of you?”
That time there was no “kind of” about it, they both flat out grimaced.
“Okay…” Bucky said, slowly. If Bucky was right about what it was, then it was small enough that they could wait for it to come out the way most things that went in a person’s mouth came out. Yuck . So he didn’t see what they needed to discuss about it, but at that point he was willing to do whatever helped get that pained look off Sam’s face. “Okay, sure.”
Sam nodded. “Cool. Umm… so, are you in any kind of pain? Do you feel like you’re having trouble breathing?”
“No…” It was the truth, Bucky felt fine. “Maybe nothing was even in my food.”
“I thought about that,” Sam said. “But Stella made it herself, and she promised she would be the only one who would touch umm…” he paused, and cleared his throat, “the ingredients. If she said she put everything in it that I asked her to, then everything was in there.”
“I just can’t believe I ate it.”
That makes two of us, Sam thought, but knew better than to say it.
“Yeah, well, as far as I remember” - from a babysitting class his parents forced him to take when he was twelve - “as long as the object was smaller than a quarter and you’re breathing regularly and not like choking or anything, we don’t need to see a doctor.” And nobody outside of us will ever need to know this happened. Thank God.
“A doctor?” Bucky balked. “Until she was about six, Becca used to put anything that wasn’t nailed down in her mouth, and all my Ma ever did was give her some castor oil and wait for nature to take its course.”
“Okay, well we don’t have any, but I can run to the drugstore—
“Don’t bother,” Bucky cut him off. “I would literally rather be choking than drink that stuff.”
“There’s other stuff I could get, Buck—
“Don’t worry about it,” he interrupted again. “Seriously, Sam,” he continued, “I feel fine. I think we should just give it a few days and uh see what happens.”
Sam sighed. “Okay,” he paused, then, “but Bucky, baby, I really am sorry about all this,” he said, gesturing vaguely with his hands. “I truly didn’t think it would turn out like this.”
“Hey, no,” Bucky said, lacing their fingers together. “Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault.” Not entirely anyway, not even almost entirely, he thought sheepishly. If this story got out, he was pretty sure he’d be the one dying of embarrassment, not Sam. “Like I said, let’s just give it a few days, okay?”
“Okay,” Sam agreed, and gave his hand a quick squeeze.
******
It didn’t even take a few days. Thanks to Bucky’s super digestive system, the ring made its triumphant reappearance the very next day, and, after a very thorough cleaning, made its way back into Sam’s gloved hands.
Of course, it took another seventy-two hours before Sam felt it was disinfected enough to actually touch with his bare skin.
And, it was about one hour after that, when he realized that, whether it was unreasonable or not, or mature or not, that ring was pretty much dead to him and he couldn’t start their official life together by giving it to Bucky. (Even if Bucky had hinted that he didn’t care either way.)
So, he sealed it in an envelope, threw it in the back of his file cabinet, and headed to the jewelry store the next time they had a day off and Bucky was out of the house.
The same clerk was working when Sam arrived, and if she was curious why he was back buying a slightly different men’s engagement ring and having it engraved with the same exact initials, she was polite enough not to ask any questions. She simply completed Sam’s request, boxed the ring, and sent him on his way with a smile that was so encouraging he was almost embarrassed that he must’ve looked like he needed it.
Bucky hadn’t returned by the time Sam made it back home, and Sam couldn’t help but feel that things were going to work out this time.
He set the table for dinner, added the special item he’d gotten from Etsy the night his original proposal had gone down the toilet… literally , ordered Chinese food from their favorite hole in the wall, and pulled out a bottle of the fancy wine Bucky pretended he didn’t care about, since he couldn’t get buzzed, but still somehow managed to always drink two bottles of whenever Sam brought some home.
Bucky walked in the door about five minutes after their order arrived. He looked a little surprised (and excited) at the semi-fancy set table, but didn’t say anything except: “I thought we were having pork chops.”
Sam shrugged. “I know it was my turn to cook, but I just had a taste for lo mein. You don’t mind, do you?” He sent Bucky who was now washing his hands a smile. “I got you that sweet and sour chicken you like.”
It was Bucky’s turn to shrug. “You know I’ll eat just about anything,” he said, without really thinking, then immediately grimaced.
Sam snorted, but had the good grace not to say anything other than:
“Come on man, sit down before it gets cold.”
Bucky rolled his eyes at Sam’s smirk, but joined him at the table.
The conversation was like a hundred others they’d had over meals, with the two of them alternating between teasing each other and telling each other about their day, and Bucky started to feel himself deflate a little bit. When he saw the good wine he’d thought (hoped) that maybe tonight would be the night, but now he wasn’t so sure.
When he cleaned his plate - after chewing incredibly carefully throughout dinner, just in case - Sam still hadn’t even looked like he was anywhere close to proposing. Even though he knew Sam was going to pop the question eventually, Bucky couldn’t help but be disappointed that it wasn’t going to be that night.
“You want to watch a movie once our food settles?”
“Sure,” Bucky said, working up a smile. “Anything in particular you want to see?” He stood up and started gathering their dishes.
“Nah.” Sam leaned back in his seat. “I figured we could just scroll through HBO until we find something.”
“Sounds good to me.” He sat back down and topped off his glass of wine. “I think that new sci-fi movie is available to stream now.”
“Of course,” Sam said, sarcastically. “Well, before you go nerd out, can we at least have dessert first?”
“Another brownie?” He guessed, smartly, and had to duck the balled up napkin that came flying in his direction.
“You’re hilarious,” Sam mumbled, but still handed a couple of fortune cookies to him.
Bucky gave him a grin. “Same time, right?”
Sam rolled his eyes but picked up his own cookie.
“One,” they began counting in unison.
“Two.” They both cracked open their cookies.
“Three.”
“A fresh start will put you on your way,” Bucky read aloud, while at the same time Sam said:
“Will you marry me?”
“Wait - what ?” Bucky asked, looking up at Sam, eyes wide as saucers, once his brain caught up enough to process what he’d heard.
“Seriously, that’s what it says,” Sam said, and handed him the piece of paper, and then immediately dropped down to one knee and pulled a black box out of his pocket.
“Will you marry me, Bucky?” He repeated, softly, then took a deep breath. “Baby, we both know there was a time when I didn’t even think marriage was a possibility for me, but now it’s damn near all I can think about.” A bemused laugh escaped his throat. “ You’re practically all I can think about, Buck. Being with you forever, loving you forever - I’m gonna do those things with or without a ring, but it sure would make me the happiest man on earth if you’d wear it and agree to be my husband.”
“Sam,” Bucky murmured, rising from his seat and walking the few steps it took to close the distance between them. He was as close to tears as Sam had ever seen him, but, wobbly though it may have been, he was wearing a smile.
“Of course I’ll marry you.”
Sam’s answering smile was so bright it could’ve rivaled the sun.
He immediately stood up, pulled the ring out of the box, and slipped it on the fourth finger of Bucky’s right hand.
“Wait,” Bucky said, examining his hand. “Is this a different ring?”
“Well, yeah,” he admitted. “I hope that’s okay? I know you said you were fine with the other one, but…”
Sam was still talking, but Bucky hadn’t heard anything after “I hope it’s okay?”
Was Sam crazy? Of course it was okay. Sam could have proposed to Bucky with the prize from a cereal box and Bucky would have happily said yes. He didn’t give a damn what the ring looked like, he just cared that he got to wear Sam’s and that Sam would one day be wearing his. He cared about what it meant: that they officially and permanently belonged to one another.
“Sam,” he interrupted his fiancé’s babbling. “I love the ring, and I love you,” he said.
“I love you too,” Sam said, and then pulled Bucky into a searing kiss.
The road to this moment may have been somewhat rocky, and weird, and kind of gross, but it was entirely worth it. Seeing the smile that was currently plastered on Bucky’s face was worth anything.
The end.