Chapter Text
Eleven months, Three weeks, and One day later
“Steve come’ere and taste this would you?” Bucky calls from across the kitchen counter, scooping up a spoonful of the béchamel sauce bubbling in front of him.
Steve groans but rises from the couch, where he’s been installed for the better part of the day surrounded by messy stacks of paper, a red pen tucked behind his ear. He stretches, and Bucky smiles at the tuft of hair sticking up on one side of his head from Steve unconsciously ruffling it in concentration.
Steve swings around the end of the counter, coming up to press himself up against Bucky’s back, allowing Bucky to pop the spoonful of sauce into his mouth over his shoulder.
“It’s good, that for this week?”
“If you think it’s good enough,” Bucky replies, reaching for his pepper grinder, “don’t think it needs a little more kick?”
Steve doesn’t reply, distracted instead running his hands over Bucky’s bare abdomen. It’s his own fault for cooking shirtless, Bucky thinks. Steve presses up tighter against him, pushing Bucky’s hips into the counter tantalizingly as he mouths at the juncture of Bucky’s neck and shoulder. Steve’s body is very warm and solid behind him, and Bucky rolls his head to the side a little to give Steve a better angle.
But when Steve’s hand dips lower to fiddle with the top edge of Bucky’s sweats Bucky laughs and smacks it with the back of the spoon in his hand.
“Quit it, I’m busy here,” he says, smirking back at Steve.
“Mmm,” Steve murmurs, unperturbed. “So’m I.” He flicks his tongue out against the soft spot behind Bucky’s ear and Bucky’s resolve weakens a little.
“How are the papers coming?” Bucky asks, trying his best to sound unaffected.
Steve sighs, propping his chin on Bucky’s shoulder and wrapping his arms around Bucky’s waist.
“Bad. Seventh grade writing is terrible.”
Bucky chuckles. “Wow, three months into student teaching and you’re already a jaded old crone—I love it.”
“Yeah well…I can think of ways I’d rather be spending my time at this exact moment.” Steve says, smiling against Bucky’s skin.
“Too bad!” Bucky says, joggling his shoulder a little to dislodge Steve’s chin. “We’re due at the farmhouse tomorrow by six and this all has to be Pepper Potts-worthy before then. You’re too distracting.”
“Can’t help it,” Steve says, though he does ease up slightly, letting his hands fall to rest lightly on Bucky’s hips. “You’re pretty when you cook.”
Bucky turns down the burner on the sauce so it won’t boil over, and turns in Steve’s arms to wrap his own around Steve’s neck. “Yeah? I cook a lot,” he remarks.
“And you’re pretty a lot,” Steve says, grinning.
Bucky tilts his face up, and Steve brings his lips to Bucky’s with a sigh.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost a year of this, of kissing Steve.
Even better, it’s been nearly four months since Steve was honorably discharged from the marines to enter a teaching program here in New York. He moved into Bucky’s small, crappy apartment at the end of September, and Bucky thinks he’s never loved this place so much—janky windows and all. Every day Steve goes to the school where he’s a student teacher, and then to his own classes where he’ll be getting certified.
And when he comes home Bucky’s there to make sure Steve’s fed and satisfied—in all the ways he can think of—to reward him for his day’s labors.
In exchange, Bucky’s cooking and baking and decorating projects all have a new, enthusiastic audience on which to vet them. After all—they’ve got to be Stark Media level awesome now.
His posts on Thatchery&Sprig, as well as his guest spreads in Home and Hearth, still mention D.H. as much as they ever did. Pepper had been resigned to that—it wasn’t like Bucky could just let him disappear from the narrative entirely. And if the details about him are a little more pointed now, Pepper doesn’t seem to mind. Steve, while very Darling indeed, hasn’t quite acquired the H yet. But Bucky has hopes that he’ll be taking up the mantle soon.
In fact, he’s hoping that when Steve finds the smallest, but most important little velvet gift box under the tree this year, Steve will say yes.
(Sam said, when Bucky asked him to go help pick out the ring, that Bucky must be as dumb as he looks if he really thinks Steve might not accept. Sam had pretended to be exasperated by Bucky’s anxiousness about getting the band right—but when Bucky had told Sam as they walked into the third jeweler of the day that he was free to go home and Bucky could ask Pepper for help instead, Sam had been very quick to shut that down. Bucky knows Sam well enough at this point to see through the fake grumpiness. He predicts Sam will cry at the wedding and deny it happened later.)
Bucky smiles, thinking about this week—they’ll be spending the holidays in Connecticut again with Tony, Pepper, Sam, and Natasha, as against all odds it turned out everyone had as much fun as he did with the last one. Last year was good—he thinks this one’s going to be even better.
Going to bed with Steve each night instead of Sam just being one of the many ways in which they are likely to improve on the experience—as Sam wholeheartedly agrees.
“What is it?” Steve asks, eyeing Bucky’s grin suspiciously.
“Nothing,” Bucky says, though the grin remains. “I just love you.”
Steve ducks his head, looking pleased. “I love you too.”
Bucky kisses him one more time for good measure, Steve leaning into it happily.
“Good,” Bucky says, turning again out of Steve’s grip and reaching for his recipe binder. “Now go away and let me get ready—you’re a menace.”
Steve huffs. “Fine. But only because I do actually have to finish these before we leave or else it would be béchamel be damned!”
Bucky laughs, and watches as Steve stomps back to the couch, sinking down to pull a stack of unmarked essays toward him with a focused crease between his eyebrows.
Behind Steve, the one good window in the apartment is outfitted with what Christmas decorations they could manage in the tiny space (nowhere near the glittering excess he’s planned for the farmhouse again)—a garland over the top glints with a handful of ornaments, including one of last year’s kissing balls, and on the sill sits a little snow globe with a miniature stone farmhouse inside. Steve, unbeknownst to Bucky, had bought it after all, bringing it out almost shyly when he’d unpacked his things that first week here.
Bucky turns back to the stove, setting the oven to preheat for the cake he intends to make ahead for tomorrow night.
As he works he finds himself humming—the comforting, familiar strains of I’ll be Home for Christmas.
He glances again across the kitchen at Steve’s golden head bowed over his work, and thinks—
Yeah. I am.