[Bucky Barnes; R] I'll Be Home For Christmas: Chapter 5 Character/Series: Bucky Barnes, Cast; Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: R Notes: So Bucky really likes cooking and baking and goddamnit, can I bring him home and have him be my housewife? Title: I'll Be Home For Christmas- Chapter 5: Arsenic And Old Lace Author:yuuo Word Count: 5813 Summary:"Honey, I'm home!" Bucky called into the apartment as he stepped through the door, JARVIS closing and locking it behind him.
"Honey, I'm home!" Bucky called into the apartment as he stepped through the door, JARVIS closing and locking it behind him.
Steve glanced up from where he was reading on one of the couches. "So how much nonsense did you tell my new girlfriend about me?" he asked.
Bucky hung up his coat. "Just that she's the other woman in this household. And that she's coming over for dinner and a movie tonight, so you're going to want to clean up, and you are absolutely not cooking dinner tonight. Don't scare her off with your Irish mother's recipes."
Steve stared at him, his book apparently forgotten in one hand, half-turned on the couch that faced away from the front door, and gave him a couple confused blinks before everything processed. "You asked my girlfriend on a chaperoned date for me?" He sounded more boggled than anything.
Bucky pulled his boots off and tucked them into the closet. "No, I invited my little brother's girlfriend to have dinner with us and meet the family. Be glad there's not more of us around to make her feel uncomfortable."
"You know, putting it like that makes me almost glad that I never had a girl to take home to meet my mother. I'd feel guilty doing that to anyone I was interested in."
Bucky grinned, then frowned in irritation as he walked across the carpet with his socks on. Annoying. "Your mother was something special, that's for sure."
"Irish Catholic. The only kind of mother who is better at guilting their kids are Jewish mothers." Steve slipped a bookmark into his book and set it on the coffee table. "So what movie, and since you're obviously going to avoid Mom's recipes, what are we having?"
"I have no goddamn idea what I'm cooking yet," Bucky said, staring at the fridge from in the living room. "But we're watching Arsenic And Old Lace. Because you know when Peter gets here for Christmas, he's going to hit me if I haven't watched it yet."
"That's that Cary Grant movie he told us about, right?"
"That's the one," Bucky said. He gave up on the fridge for the moment and sat down on the couch next to Steve and picked up his tablet off the table. "Do you know what kind of food she likes?"
"I know she doesn't like Mexican, but that's all I know," Steve said. "Why didn't you ask her when you invited her over?"
"Because I'm dumb," Bucky said, staring at his tablet's browser, hoping inspiration for a recipe to look up would come to him if he just waited long enough. He got up, carrying his tablet with him, and went to the kitchen to search the fridge and the cupboards. He sighed in frustration, nothing catching his eye. "All of our meat is frozen," he said. "Which means unless we want to go vegetarian tonight, I'm going to have to send you to the grocery store." He looked back at Steve. "Where's the nearest one again?"
Steve's brow furrowed in concentration. "Morton Williams, I think is the name," he said. "It's about, well, maybe a ten minute walk from here?"
Bucky made a noise of acknowledgement, but barely, and started scrolling through recipe sites on his tablet. He had a few regular ones bookmarked, a couple individual recipes he'd seen and wanted to try someday. Steve would probably pick on him for how many cooking-related sites he had bookmarked if he ever saw, but too bad. Bucky liked cooking, and now he didn't feel guilty for making too much, because they had to eat more to keep up with their accelerated metabolisms.
"Oh, hey, I could make this," he said, loading a bookmark and handing his tablet over to Steve.
Steve took the tablet and studied it. "Chicken Kiev?" One of his eyebrows shot up, reading the ingredients. "Six tablespoons of butter? That's a lot of butter."
Bucky motioned at the tablet with his hand. "Look at how much it covers, though. That's not that much. And we have enough, I just bought a bunch of stick butter for making cookies for Christmas." Steve gave him a wordless look over the top of the tablet. "Shut up, you know I like working in the kitchen. Women shouldn't get all the fun."
Steve shook his head and went back to the tablet. "I'd have to get some chicken, your said ours is all frozen." He frowned. "Do we have panko crumbs?"
"No, you'll have to pick that up, too. The only thing I don't know about is that the prep calls for a mortar and pestle, and I'm not sure a regular grocery store is going to carry one."
Steve rolled his head back, looking up at the ceiling. "No, probably not. JARVIS, where's the nearest place we could get one of those?"
"There is a novelty store on floor five, Captain," JARVIS said. "Though I could not say how effective it would be for long term cooking."
"It'll work for one meal," Bucky said. "Apparently, I'm going to have to invest in a good one eventually anyway."
Steve handed Bucky's tablet back to him. "You should've gone to culinary school instead of the military."
Bucky took the tablet, looking over the instructions with a bit of distraction by Steve's words. "I figured they'd draft my dumb ass eventually anyway, might as well choose when I went in so I could get out quicker. At this point, I'm better staying in the merc business and just making you make more friends to invite over for me to cook for."
"We have plenty of friends here to invite over," Steve said. "I doubt Tony would turn down the chance to get pampered and have someone cook for him. Especially if you make it a party."
"Maybe for Christmas," Bucky said. "Okay, go get the chicken and panko. And that mortar and pestle." He paused, something else occurring to him. "It's December. I get my snack cakes and so help me, if you say a word about it, I am stuffing your head into a bag of Doritos."
Steve held up his hands in surrender. "It's December, you know that's all I ask." He counted off on his fingers. "Chicken breasts-"
"Boneless and skinless," Bucky interrupted.
Steve gave him an impatient look. "-panko bread crumbs, and those cakes. And the mortar and pestle. Anything else, dear?"
Bucky laughed. "Call Sam, tell him you're busy after dinner tonight. And be quick with all this, it takes about an hour and a half to make this, it's already four-thirty. I don't want her waiting until seven or later to eat."
"Just make sure she knows when to come over," Steve said, heading out of the kitchen to go pull on shoes and a coat.
Bucky watched him go. "Relax, I'll call her. Just get the stuff I need to welcome her to the family."
Steve shot him a grin that Bucky hadn't seen as much recently as he had before Hydra took over their lives. It'd shown up, but not as often. For the moment, Steve was genuinely happy, without a care in the world.
Bucky smiled, kept smiling after Steve had left. Steve deserved that happiness. Heaven knew that he'd spent a lot of his life fighting to get to where he could be. It was nice to see his best friend finally in that place.
And Sharon was part of that and speaking of Sharon, Bucky needed to call her. He walked into the living room, standing between the coffee table and the large screen, the width of which nearly eclipsed the window panel behind it. The screen was more meant to be a TV, but it could double as a screen for either Steve's laptop, or Bucky's tablet, and JARVIS could use it as a telepresence system. It was mostly done with the Avengers in mind, most of them had their own personal cell phones for regular calls, but it didn't hurt to have it capable of outside communication.
This time, however, Bucky was interested in the internal system. "JARVIS, can you call Sharon for me?"
"Of course, Mister Barnes," JARVIS said, and Bucky had to grit his teeth again. He'd have to talk to Tony about making JARVIS stop calling him that.
After a few seconds, Sharon appeared on the screen. "Don't tell me you're already breaking a date with me," she said, a teasing smile on her face.
He raised an eyebrow. "Do you even know what time that date is for?"
She stared at him a moment, then tilted her head back just slightly. "And thus, the reason for the call. Don't feel bad, I forgot to find out a time. So, our strange little family meal is still on?"
"Be here at six," he said. "Dinner won't be ready for a little after that, but if you want time to talk to Steve without me hanging over your shoulders like an unwanted chaperone, you might want to come early."
She had that same smile that Steve had as he'd left. Bucky really hoped he would get to see that smile on their faces more often. "I'd hardly call you unwanted. If we wanted alone time, we'd go out on our own. This isn't a date, it's friends. At least as long as you two are willing to keep me around."
"As long as you don't pee on the carpets, you're good," Bucky said. "And I'm going to be completely crass, but if you wanted any wine or anything like that with dinner, you're on your own. I didn't think to tell Steve to pick any up."
She shook her head. "Not crass at all. And I don't do alcohol much. Clouds the mind, not happy making for a spy with a stressful protection detail. Maybe if I get to come over for Christmas, I'll pick up some eggnog of the non-child friendly variety, but not tonight."
"What's this 'if' crap? I don't think anyone's been able to screw up things that quickly with us," he said.
"I'm not about to break that streak then," she said. "How formal is dinner? I hope I don't have to show up in a nice dress and heels."
"Oh, god no," he said. "You looked fine today, just wear that. If you want to change, you don't have to get any more dressed up than that."
She glanced down at herself. "I suppose I should probably ditch the fuzzy slippers though, huh?"
"I think you might shock Steve with that much modernism if you didn't," Bucky said. "Remember, be here at six. If you're going to be late, have JARVIS let us know."
Sharon smiled. "I wouldn't leave you guys in the dark. I know that worry makes you go grey prematurely." He was almost expecting an age joke, but she either hadn't thought of one, or decided against it, because none was forthcoming. "I'll see you two in an hour and a half."
They bid each other goodbye, and the line disconnected.
Bucky contemplated the merits of baking cookies while he waited for Steve; a small batch of basic chocolate chips wouldn't take long, but it'd take up the oven and he needed that for the Chicken Kiev. He grabbed his tablet and looked at the recipe again. The only thing he could do before he needed something Steve was getting was chopping some garlic. And it'd be a bit before Steve got back, so having two cloves of garlic chopped and sitting in the fridge for the next half hour or so seemed pointless. But that extra half hour meant he could get cookies baked.
Good for his sanity, because otherwise, he'd spend the time trying to distract himself with the internet. He had something he needed to do on a deadline, and without anything that might actually distract him to do while he waited until he could start, he might go crazy. While he liked the internet, it was somewhat passive in the entertainment department.
It was actually forty minutes before Steve returned, about ten after five, and Bucky already had a batch of cookies cooling on wax paper spread out on one counter.
"Remind me to thank Tony for giving us the best kitchen ever," Bucky said after Steve came around the corner from the entrance way, a paper bag and a small plastic bag marked with the name of the novelty store in one hand.
Steve walked over and deposited the bags on the island separating the kitchen from the dining and living area. "You baked cookies."
"And you don't get one until after dinner," Bucky said, digging into the paper bag and pulling out a small, plastic produce bag that the chicken was wrapped in. He counted how many breasts were in there. Six, which meant he could make something with the other two for lunch the next day. That solved that question. He set the chicken on the counter by the stove, then dug back into the bag, pulling out the panko breading and the box of Little Debbies. Those he stashed on top of the fridge.
"So what made you decide to bake cookies?" Steve asked, watching Bucky examine the mortar and pestle. "Decided we needed a dessert?"
"No," Bucky said. "This thing's going to last this one meal before it craps out. Definitely getting a proper one later." He looked up at Steve. "I got bored." He turned away to start working at the counter.
"You got bored, so you baked cookies." Steve sounded somewhere between awed and amused.
Bucky decided not to grace Steve with so much as a pause in his work as he started pulling out the rest of what he needed to make dinner. "There's worse uses of my time," he said. "And Tony gave us a nice kitchen, I'd be an ungrateful asshole if I didn't make use of it once in awhile." He pulled out his chopping board and a small knife, and dropped two cloves of garlic on the board. He glanced over his shoulder at Steve one more time before getting to work. "Sharon's going to be here around six, so if you want to, go clean up."
"You sound like my mother," Steve said. "Is this what you're going to be like every time a girl comes over for me?"
Bucky pointed his knife at Steve. "It'd better not be different girls unless this one goes seriously south," he said. "And no, it's not. But I'd be a terrible older brother if I didn't fuss at you to make a good impression on your girl." He turned back to the garlic. "And I never said you had to go clean up, just that if you wanted to, go do that now. Quit making me sound like the annoying housewife around here."
"Annoying, no," Steve said, sounding amused. "But if you were the housewife around here, you'd be running a damn tight ship."
"I learned from my mother," Bucky said, mincing the garlic. "She had four of us to keep under control, and she'd been the eldest of five. It's a Barnes family tradition of being uptight about how the household is run."
"I remember meeting your grandmother once. I could see where your mother got it. And you are no different now."
Bucky chuckled. "If I have to take after a woman, no better woman than a Barnes woman," he said. "Although your mother was a piece of work, too."
Steve said something that Bucky didn't understand, couldn't parse as a language he knew, but it sounded familiar, and Steve's thick accent on the words made it painfully obvious why Bucky recognized it without knowing what was being said.
He stopped and stared back at Steve. "Okay, what did you just say? And I can't believe you still remember Irish."
Steve laughed. "I'm rusty. It's been awhile since I've used it. And I said she'd thank you for the compliment." He paused, then frowned. "I think. I clearly need to brush up on it if I plan to ever use it again."
Bucky tested the mortar and pestle cautiously, then decided it'd hold up if he was careful. "If you're actually going to start using it, you're teaching me. You'll drive me crazy, saying things I can't understand, otherwise." He scraped the garlic into the mortar with some salt, then looked at Steve. "Go entertain yourself and let me cook. You're distracting me."
The Chicken Kiev actually took a lot of waiting. The butter and garlic mix had to cool in the fridge for fifteen minutes. Then after it was spread on the chicken and the chicken was folded around it, the chicken had to sit in the freezer for a half an hour. Bread the chicken. More time in the freezer.
He was just preheating the oven for the final cook time when JARVIS announced Sharon's arrival. He looked at Steve just long enough to confirm that Steve was on his way to let Sharon in. Or rather, greet her at the door, since JARVIS controlled the door. Bucky sometimes wondered what they were supposed to do if something happened to JARVIS, but he suspected that his metal fist could probably make a decent hole in the door, if necessary.
Actually, thinking about it, Tony probably had a back up in place. He'd have to ask JARVIS later, when it was more appropriate to loudly ask a paranoid question than when his roommate was welcoming the new lady in the family into the apartment.
Sharon had changed from earlier, which was probably a good thing; the shirt she'd been wearing earlier was practical, but not very flattering, and even though she no longer had to make a first impression on them, it pleased the old-fashioned side of Bucky that she'd made a bit of an effort to look nice, even in an informal setting. And that shade of pale pink her sweater was in was flattering on her.
Steve had good taste in women, as far as Bucky was concerned.
"I'd say dinner smells good," Sharon said with a teasing smile once Steve had escorted her into the dining area. "But I don't smell anything."
Bucky shot her a mock sour look. "That's because the food required mostly freezing. It's about to cook now. It'll take about twenty minutes. Why don't you go sit with your boyfriend and stay out of my hair."
She looked at Steve. "I like him. Can we keep him?"
Steve grinned. "He's handy to have around sometimes. Sure."
"Both of you go sit down and leave me alone or you don't get dinner," Bucky said, dipping one of the pieces of balled up chicken into a saucepan full of hot oil with a pair of tongs.
"Now I smell cooking," Sharon said, and Bucky glanced back just in time to see her taking a seat at the dining room table after Steve offered it to her. "What are you making?"
"Chicken Kiev," Bucky replied, a bit distracted while he counted off time for the breading to brown in the oil. He heard the sound of another chair moving, and assumed that Steve had joined her at the table.
"What's in it?" Sharon asked.
"Chicken."
Steve very audibly sighed. "Sharon, may I introduce my informally adopted older brother, the smartass."
"Like you have any room to talk," Bucky said.
"It runs in the family," Steve said.
"It must be nice, to have someone so close," Sharon said.
After rescuing the first of the balled up chicken from the oil and placing it on the aluminum-covered baking sheet, Bucky glanced back at her. "You know, everyone keeps telling us that, and the more you people say it, the guiltier I feel that we have that and you don't."
She waved it off. "Don't. You shouldn't feel guilty for having something special. I just was an only child. Had lots of cousins and second cousins that I played with as a kid, and friends at school. A couple girls that I stayed close to up through high school, but then there's college, and everyone scatters across the country, and you still Facebook with them, but then there's marriage, and children, and people just kind of drift away. And then you get wrapped in your job, and protecting your neighbor becomes the only thing you really have time to care about."
"Oddly specific," Bucky said.
"She's been watching my back longer than she probably cares to remember," Steve said. "And being underhanded about it." He didn't sound angry, much to Bucky's relief. He wasn't about to let Steve screw up a good thing so quickly.
To her credit, Sharon sounded genuinely sorry when she replied. "I know you weren't happy about it, but you know how the industry works. If I wanted to keep you safe, it'd have to be without your knowledge until I was left no other choice."
"I know," Steve said.
"He's just sore that he's not that good at lying," Bucky said, sticking the last of the chicken on the baking sheet and slipping said baking sheet into the oven. "Sure did a lot of lying to get into the Army, though." He set the timer for the oven, and started cleaning up the mess left by the rest of the cooking, leaving the saucepan with the hot oil on an off back burner to cool.
"How many times did you try to enlist?" Sharon asked, not at all sincerely and with far too much amusement. If she honestly didn't know, Bucky would be very surprised.
"A few," Steve said, sounding somewhat contrite. "I didn't feel it was right to stay behind." There was a pause, and Bucky looked back from sticking the plate that had held the chicken into the dishwasher to see Steve studying him. "Besides, I couldn't let my best friend go without me."
"Don't you dare blame me," Bucky said without any heat.
"I blame you, regardless," Steve said, flashing him a grin that only a little brother could master. Bucky returned that smile with a grumpy look.
Dinner only took between fifteen and twenty minutes to cook, and Bucky stayed mostly silent during that time, keeping his attention on the timer and the rice he decided at the last minute to make to supplement the chicken, listening in as Steve and Sharon talked. Sharon asked about his day, Steve said he'd spent most of the time reading. "Life between jobs isn't terribly exciting," he'd said.
Sharon didn't mention what went on at the meeting at the VA, said that the drive was relatively easy, well between lunch rush and the evening rush hour, but other than that, she just motioned to Bucky pointedly and Steve let the subject drop. They found other things to talk about, little things that only two people who were close could manage to come up with and be entertained by. Two strangers would be bored out of their minds and feel awkward.
Bucky was almost surprised at how easily those two fit together, he hadn't heard Steve have quite that much ease in a conversation with a woman except with Peggy. Sharon was fitting in well, and Bucky couldn't help but be happy about that. It was far too early to assume how long this relationship would last, or where it would go, but if they ended up having to rearrange their lives to accommodate her as a member of the household, Bucky was fine with that. It'd be nice to have a sister around again.
As long as she didn't bring in a hair dryer and take forever in the bathroom. He might have to draw the line there.
"Okay," Steve said once dinner was served and they were seated. He looked at Bucky. "Sharon made a point of making me wait to ask you. Where is the VA having you work?"
Bucky gave Sharon a betrayed look, then focused on his food. "I'm not working with the VA directly," he said, cutting into his chicken. "Most of the help they need would involve me contacting other people on the vets' behalf and it might discourage someone from helping if they get a call from James Barnes about it. The guy there referred me to an emergency shelter that deals with vets exclusively. I'm going to apply as a volunteer, maybe play security overnight a couple nights a week. Depends on if they decide to let me in."
"Don't sound so excited about it," Steve said, pausing in the conversation to compliment Bucky and the recipe, a sentiment that Sharon shared. "So what on the internet did you find that made you decide to pick this cause for the season?"
Bucky glanced at Sharon, who watched him pointedly over a forkful of rice, then sighed. He went back to his food. "Not just for the season," he said. "Those guys need help beyond just Christmas."
Steve was, as usual, undeterred when Bucky hadn't answered one of his questions. "True. So what'd you find?"
"I didn't find anything on the internet," Bucky said, taking a bite. "Found out from the streets directly what was going on." He looked up at Steve. "Where do you think I was before I showed up at the apartment after the helicarriers went down? I was getting soggy in back alleys because the only places out there are almost exclusively for families and there's pretty much nothing for us vets."
At first, Bucky couldn't tell if Steve was shocked or completely unsurprised. It was an odd juxtaposition on his face. Finally, he drew in a deep breath. "You should've come home."
"Couldn't yet," Bucky said. "My head wasn't screwed on straight enough for it to be safe for either of us." Then he gave Steve a stern look. "We're not discussing this." He almost said more to put Steve in his place, but he glanced at Sharon and decided that much family intimacy might be better saved for when she had been around them longer and wasn't such a newcomer. So he settled on giving Steve a further silent warning in a raised eyebrow and pointed silence.
Steve took the hint.
"Is this a family recipe?" Sharon asked, not quite so gracefully switching the subject for them. "I wouldn't mind a copy, if it's not a secret."
Bucky shook his head. "I wish I could say it was a family recipe, but I got it online." He grinned in almost a laugh. "I'll send the link to you. The site lets you change how many servings you want, so it'll adjust the recipe to feed just you, if you'd rather."
"Perfect," Sharon said. "It can be hard to find good recipes for people living alone."
"Just imagine having to take every recipe you learned that fed a minimum of six people and try to scale it down for one," Bucky said. He motioned to Steve. "He didn't have it much better, he was an only child, but he didn't eat much, sometimes not at all, so he still had to scale everything down."
Sharon looked at Steve in shock. "Why didn't you eat? Was it that bad during the Depression?"
Steve shrugged, clearly trying to figure out the best way to answer. "It was sometimes, but not so bad that I couldn't afford at least a little bit. The problem sometimes was that I got ulcers, and those aren't conductive to wanting to eat."
She shook her head, cutting another bite of her chicken. "I've read the files, I know about the physical ailments, but it's hard to remember that it was a reality at one point. I never knew you before the serum."
Steve looked at Bucky, even though he was answering Sharon. "Nobody really does anymore."
"Don't give me that look," Bucky said, barely remembering to swallow before talking. "Peter's still around, he knew you back then."
Sharon covered her mouth with her hand, clearly trying to chew faster so she could say something. "Your best friend can't be grateful to have you back?" she finally asked.
Bucky looked at her, then at Steve. "Steve? Focus on your girlfriend, please. I am just here to cook and pick out the movie."
"I thought you said this wasn't a chaperoned date," Steve said, giving him a pointed look.
"It's not," Bucky said. "But you're neglecting her, and you're already making a bad boyfriend."
"Oh, he doesn't neglect me when we're alone," Sharon said, and Steve actually turned a bit red.
Bucky studied Steve for a long, quiet moment. "If it were anyone other than you, I'd be making inappropriate comments."
"But you're not going to," Steve told him firmly.
Bucky laughed. "Shut up and eat."
Steve tried to make Bucky let him do the kitchen, but Bucky told him that he should spend the time with Sharon, Bucky'd had plenty of time with her that afternoon, and to start the movie. It'd be nothing but the opening credits, and Bucky would have the dishwasher running by the time the movie actually started.
Steve and Sharon had seated themselves on one couch, the one with its back to the door, which Bucky thought was awfully trusting of them, particularly of Sharon, but it meant he could sit in the couch that was angled just enough that he could watch the door himself.
Steve gave him a curious look when Bucky settled himself on the other couch, but didn't question, particularly not when Sharon decided to lean against him. Hint received.
Bucky was surprised that he actually remembered far more about the movie than he thought he did when Peter brought it up weeks ago. Somehow, though, he'd forgotten about the insanity line. He must've been asleep at that part in the theater back in '44.
Bucky noticed Steve looking at Sharon every now and then out of the corner of his eye, looking somewhat awkward with her curled up against his side, her head on his shoulder. He'd get used to it, and good.
The movie was just shy of two hours long, and it was nine before it ended. Sharon looked half-asleep against Steve. She shifted, sitting up and stretching with a yawn. "Bucky, I think your cooking almost put me in a food coma." She looked at her watch. "Or, maybe it's just an hour from bedtime and that might be why I'm tired."
"I was going to say, dinner was two hours ago, you can't blame my food for that now," Bucky said.
She stood. "So I won't," she said. "But I do need to get home. I have a few things I want to do before I go to bed."
Steve got up. "Do you want me to walk you home?" he asked.
Sharon smiled. "Thank you, but I live just down the hall. I'm sure I'll survive the big, bad, omni-present computer that might sneak up on me between here and there." She took his hand. "You can walk me to the door, though."
Bucky decided about that time to watch out the windows at the Manhattan night, lit up brilliantly by the city lights, rather than watch Steve and Sharon. He may be sitting right there, but he could afford them some measure of privacy.
The city had grown since he'd lived in Brooklyn, lights and buildings even more impossibly tall than they had been in his day having taken over everything. Manhattan was its own world compared to Brooklyn, or so he was told. He hadn't gone back to Brooklyn since moving to the Tower, but he had a feeling it was still going to be overwhelming compared to what he remembered. Maybe not in some of the older areas, but they would be so aged, they wouldn't be recognizable, either, and Bucky didn't care to go seeing how much even the buildings had gotten old and worn down and he hadn't.
He shoved those thoughts aside when he heard the door shut and Steve's footsteps coming back into the apartment. His good mood took back over, looking at Steve with a shit-eating grin. "So, good idea?"
Steve pointed at him. "I know that's not the question you wanted to ask," he said. "And the answer to that is none of your business. As for the question you actually asked, yes, it was. Don't say you told me so, because you're too old for that."
"You're never too old for 'I told you so'," Bucky said. "But seriously, is tonight a good indication of how things are going for you two?"
Steve took his former seat, reclining back, looking at the blank screen in front of him. "For the most part. Didn't realize she was a cuddler, though." He looked at Bucky. "I'd ask if it made you feel awkward, but I saw you grinning like an idiot every time I caught you looking at us."
Bucky laughed. "If she'd gotten friendlier than that, I might've, but no, not really. I'm just glad you've got a good girl, finally."
"Mm." Steve glanced back towards the door. "Okay, so it took me awhile." He looked at Bucky. "Now we need to worry about you."
Bucky made a derisive noise. "You know I don't want commitment," he said. "I'll find a date when I find a date. Relax. You're the one interested in settling down someday, that's harder to find. Finding a girl interested in a few dates with no strings attached is easy."
"Harder now to find no strings without a string that last I knew, you weren't interested in tugging on too hard because of how risky it was."
For a second, Bucky honestly couldn't figure out what the hell Steve was talking about, before it sank in. "Oh, that string. It's a fun risk to take sometimes. And these days, it's a bit easier to find that string's not as risky as it was. Don't worry about me and what I do or don't do with girls, okay? Just focus on your own girl." He hoped Steve didn't actually believe that Bucky had remained celibate all those years.
"I'm the annoying little brother, I'm supposed to poke you about girls," Steve said, the issue seeming to pass by.
"Let's get you settled, first," Bucky said. "Seriously, don't nag me."
Steve held up his hands in surrender. "All right, subject dropped."
With the dropped subject, the conversation strayed to almost nothing, finding themselves winding down a bit, the tablet and a book becoming their focus instead, until ten passed, and they both said good night to each other.