Bucky waited about five minutes after Sam put his arm around his shoulders and led him down the docks, before pulling the newly minted Cap into the first secluded spot he found and kissing him soundly.
No, Bucky hadn’t exactly planned to end the evening that way when he’d arrived that afternoon with Sam’s favorite cake in his hands and Sam’s name on his lips, but after hours of having Carlos’ special recipe of liquid courage running through his veins, all of Bucky’s inhibitions melted away and he did what he’d been secretly wanting to do since they’d rolled through that field of flowers: kissed Sam for all he was worth.
They didn’t get past kissing that night - folks were still milling around everywhere, and neither Sam nor Bucky really wanted to put on that kind of show in front of the former’s closest friends and neighbors - but that was perfectly fine with Bucky. Because once he knew Sam was receptive, Bucky went about asking him on an actual date. And with some help from Google and Sarah, he planned an evening that would’ve made his prewar playboy-self proud. Flowers, an intimate dinner for two at Sam’s favorite hole in the wall, and then a moonlight motorcycle ride through the sticks that he maybe (definitely) added to the itinerary simply to have an excuse to have Sam’s arms around his waist and feel his breath on his neck.
That night they went to bed together. It was Bucky’s first time since the good ol’ days and Sam’s first time since he had a random adrenaline filled one night stand with an avenger (who shall remain nameless, that he would never admit to even with a gun to his head). But for the both of them it was like riding a bike - a pair of very sexy and flexible bikes - and Sam rode Bucky until they were both seeing stars and coming harder than they would’ve thought possible.
Now, here they were a year and a half later, living together, working together, and hopefully… getting married, if Bucky could get his shit together enough to pop the question. Because, see, they’d never actually talked about the possibility of marriage. Hell, they’d never really even cemented the fact that they were going steady - or whatever the kids were calling it these days.
They’d made out at a party like a couple of teenagers, then went on a date and fell into bed together, then Sam’s stuff had just sort of migrated to Bucky’s place and Sam himself started to spend a good chunk of his downtime there.
And Bucky, for lack of a better word, started nesting. He couldn’t help it. He wanted Sam to be comfortable. He wanted to make it so nice that Sam would never even consider leaving. So, he spent a semi ridiculous amount of money on new oversized furniture and all the kitchen gadgets that Sam had access to at Sarah’s house. House plants and wall art started appearing around the place. He picked up the fancy coffee Sam liked and actually started grocery shopping instead of continuing to single handedly keep DoorDash in business. He even got Sarah to give him some of Sam’s favorite recipes, and insisted on doing the cooking on the rare times they had the day off.
In a matter of a month, Bucky had managed to turn his apartment into their home and they were just… together.
They knew it. Sarah and the boys knew it. The community thought they knew it. Even Sam’s new team of Avengers basically knew it (and kind of found it hilarious). And if Twitter was anything to go by, a large part of the general public definitely suspected they were an item.
But that didn’t mean Sam and Bucky had ever sat down and had a discussion about their feelings and what they wanted from the future. Sure, Sam and Bucky loved each other. That much was obvious. Neither one of them needed to hear the words regularly though, but they still said them on occasion.
That was about all they said though, and that had been perfectly fine until Bucky got it into his head that he wanted to marry Sam.
There hadn’t been some big tragedy that sparked the thought - no life or death situation that made him realize he wanted to make an honest man out of Sam Wilson. Quite to the contrary actually. They’d been at the new Avengers compound, and Bucky was watching Sam fly much lower to the ground than usual, a carefree grin on his face, doing loops and flips while he tested out some upgrades Shuri had made to the suit. A swell of affection had risen within Bucky at the sight, and suddenly, without even thinking about it, he’d blurted out, “Christ, I’m gonna marry that man someday.”
It wasn’t until he heard Torres practically choking behind him that Bucky even realized he’d said the words out loud, and once he did, he’d leveled Joaquin with the kind of look he hadn’t used since his Winter Soldier days and the younger man had clammed right up.
Smart guy that he was, Torres had never mentioned the incident again, but that didn’t mean Bucky forgot about it. Hell, it kind of became all he could think about: getting a ring on Sam’s finger, making a permanent commitment, becoming an official part of the Wilson family. Visions of him and Sam in matching tuxes standing in front of an altar or wearing something akin to their old military dress uniforms standing in front of a judge danced in his head until one day he broke down and cornered his would-be sister-in-law in her kitchen while Sam was outside with Cass and AJ.
“I want to marry your brother,” he announced, abruptly, while they were clearing their lunchtime dishes.
And Sarah just about dropped the plate she was holding.
“What?”
“I want to marry your brother,” he repeated, almost impatiently. “But I’m not sure how to ask him… or if he’ll even want to…” he trailed off, sounding despondent all of a sudden, then sighed. “Maybe I should leave well enough alone.”
“Maybe you should,” Sarah said, shrugging, and started to turn back towards the sink.
That… was not what Bucky was expecting.
“Huh?”
“Maybe. You. Should,” she said, giving him her attention again. “If you’re not one hundred percent sure—
“I’m sure,” he cut in. “I’m sure about Sam - I’m sure about us. I’m sure I want us to be together forever,” he said, voice growing stronger with each word.
“Well, okay then.” She smirked, now that she had the answer she was looking for. “So, what’s the problem?”
“The problem is we’ve never had a detailed ‘where we see this going’ talk,” he snapped back in response to her smirk. Although, he did feel some of the tension seep out of himself at her (mostly) easy acceptance.
“You guys haven’t discussed the future at all?”
“No, not really.” He sort of grimaced. “We’ve done the ‘I love you’ thing, but that’s about it. I mean, we’ve never flat out said we’re exclusive or that we’re living together, but we clearly are both.”
“Clearly,” Sarah agreed, trying her best not to laugh since Bucky looked nervous and uncomfortable.
“And if that’s as far as our relationship ever progresses, I won’t complain.”
“But…”
“But, like I said, I want to marry your brother. I want to love him officially and loudly, and publicly. I want to call him my husband,” he said, starting to sound a little desperate. “And, God, I hope he does too.”
“Well, Bucky,” she said, giving him what she hoped was an encouraging look, “there’s only one way to find that out.”
“Only one way to find what out?” Sam said, walking into the kitchen and heading straight for the refrigerator and a cold bottle of water.
“If he can make my macaroni and cheese as good as I can,” Sarah lied easily, refocusing on the dishes. “He said he wanted to try cooking it, so I gave him the recipe.”
Sam almost choked on his water and started to laugh the second the bottle was away from his mouth.
“Oh.” Sam said, grinning at his man. “You can’t.”
“What—
“Sorry, babe,” Sam interrupted, after another quick sip. “You’re getting better, but Sarah’s been in the kitchen since she was like fifteen.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“Here you go.” Sam rolled his eyes. “You’d make everything a contest if you could.”
“Just say you’re—
“Nope.” Sam cut him off again. “I’m not about to make a bet about mac and cheese,” he said, trying to look annoyed, but he was clearly fighting a smile as he made his way back to the door.
“I’m heading back out to play catch with the boys. You make it, and I’ll happily eat it,” he continued, as he pushed open the screen door. “It might not be as good as Sarah’s though,” he added, then raced outside laughing.
“Now you’re sure you want to marry him?”
Bucky shrugged, grinning stupidly after Sam. “Yup.”
******
It took a few weeks of Bucky planning and an extra week of him working up the nerve to put those plans in motion, before he was ready to pop the question.
But one Saturday when he’d practically begged Maria not to have Sam and him paged unless the apocalypse was coming, and he’d asked Sarah to find something at her house for Sam to “fix” for a few hours, he was finally prepared to put operation Lock Sam Down into action.
He lowered the lights, and covered the dining room table with a brand new table cloth and added a couple of newly acquired candles. They regularly ate off the best off brand paper plates money could buy, but that night Bucky pulled out some china he’d ordered online when he’d been feeling particularly domestic, and set the table with the concentration of a 1950s television housewife. And then he set out to make what he hoped would be a memorable dinner.
When Sam walked in later that day, he smelled the delicious aroma of baked chicken, took one look at the immaculately set table, and sent a confused look in his boyfriend’s direction.
“What’s the occasion?”
“No, occasion,” Bucky replied, easily, pulling a pan of macaroni and cheese out the oven, before turning to smirk at Sam. “Just figured if you’re gonna eat your words, you might as well eat them in style.”
“Right,” Sam said, skepticism dripping from his voice, but he smiled at Bucky anyway.
“Let me go get cleaned up real quick, and then we’ll just see about that,” he added with a wink, and then headed towards the bathroom.
Bucky let out a shaky breath once Sam was out the room, and then set about carving the chicken and plating the food. Then he pulled out the wine glasses he’d ordered on a whim and poured them each a glass of White Burgundy that cost more than Sam could ever be allowed to know.
When Sam came back into the room, wearing khakis and a nice button up, since he’d noticed that Bucky had managed to lose his signature Black skinny jeans and t-shirt and was instead wearing a pair of Dockers and a polo (both of which Sam had never seen in his life), he started to join Bucky in the kitchen where he was putting salad into a couple of bowls.
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Why don’t you put on some music,” Bucky suggested. “I picked up a few records at a garage sale today.”
Lie. He ordered a few records from EBay, and ordered one incredibly special… accessory from Etsy.
“Put one of them on.”
Now, everybody knew that Sam Wilson just liked music. Period. He would listen to just about anything once, just to give it a try. But, anyone who spent any real time with the man knew that what Sam really enjoyed was the music he’d split into three categories: the jazz, blues, and doo-wop his grandparents used to play in their den that was always just loud enough to be heard throughout their entire house; soul and funk and pretty much any kind of oldies his parents always put on in the car or when it was time to clean the house, or really, whenever the mood struck them when he was younger; and the r&b and hip-hop he’d listened to from the time he was a young boy to when he first deployed.
So, when Bucky sat out a stack of records that included, Van Halen’s self-titled debut, Kenny Rogers’ Greatest Hits , and Don’t Be Cruel by Bobby Brown, Bucky knew that Sam would listen to each of them all the way through and probably end up liking them all, but he also knew which one Sam would listen to first.
In fact, his whole plan depended on him knowing which album Sam would pick up first. And when Sam grabbed Don’t Be Cruel, Bucky had to resist the urge to sigh in relief.
“Man, I used to love the “My Prerogative” video,” Sam said, as he made his way to the record player. “So did Sarah.” He laughed. “For some reason instead of saying ‘it’s my prerogative,’ she always said ‘it’s my broccoli,’” he said, smiling, and getting a laugh out of Bucky. “None of us ever knew why.”
Sam shook his head slightly, still chuckling, and pulled the record out of its sleeve. Then he did what he always did when they picked up second hand records: grabbed the edges of the album and held it up to check for any scratches and to see if it was warped or not, but before he could do that, he caught a glimpse of the label and almost dropped it.
Instead of displaying the artist and album title and all that goes along with it, the label was a candid black and white picture of Bucky and Sam that Sarah had taken of them many moons ago at that very first cookout Bucky had attended. And, at the very top of the picture, in bold capital letters, it said: WILLYOU MARRY ME, SAM?
“Bucky,” Sam said, softly, as he turned away from the console to stare at his partner.
His partner who was now down on one knee by the dining room table, holding a tiny velvet box open.
“Sammy,” he breathed out, his voice quiet but sure. “I love you. Shit,” he kind of laughed in disbelief, “I love you more than I would’ve thought possible, and I want nothing more than to spend the rest of my life with you. Working with you, fighting the good fight with you.”
Sam started to close the distance between them as Bucky kept talking.
“Cooking for you, rubbing your back after missions.”
“Bucky,” Sam murmured the other man’s name, completely moved by the intensely devoted look on Bucky’s face.
“Making love to you,” Bucky said, talking over him. “Being in love with you.” He blew out a breath, as Sam took those last couple of steps that positioned him right in front of Bucky. “Hell, baby, I just want to marry you. So what do you say, sweetheart? Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” Sam said, kneeling down so he was face to face with him. “Of course I’ll marry you, Bucky.”
Bucky couldn’t even get a word out, he just broke out in the cheesiest grin and practically shoved the ring on Sam’s finger.
The ring was thinner than the average man’s ring but larger than a woman’s, platinum, and with a single diamond in the center. It was clearly made to have another ring added to it at the wedding, and Bucky already had the wedding band tucked away for a later date, but seeing the engagement ring on Sam’s finger already had the more possessive part of his brain feeling like he was married - feeling like Sam was completely his.
“I love you too, baby,” Sam said, his gaze shifting back and forth between the ring on his finger and the grin on his fiancé’s face.
Bucky’s smile was starting to tremble, and his eyes were burning like he was about to cry.
“I’m gonna make you so damn happy, Sammy.”
“You already do,” Sam said, and leaned in to give Bucky a kiss.
And he did. They both made each other happy. And, of course, they lived happily ever after.
The end.