Chapter Text
Poppy should not have worn the shapewear. First, it's unfeminist, right? She's pretty sure it is. Embrace the body in its natural form? Though her waist looks fucking killer , and maybe it's feminist to embrace liking the way she looks. Feminism is confusing sometimes. Steve would probably know.
She’s got her hair down, and it’s big and bushy and bright orange past her elbows, she should probably cut it soon. But for today, the big cloud of hair behind her makes a nice contrast to the contained lines of her tight, short emerald dress and, as previously noted, her fucking killer waistline, which just looked like a regular waistline before she wrestled herself into the cursed-yet-also-a-miracle-of-modern-science shapewear.
The real issue is she feels like ten pounds of sausage stuffed into a five pound bag, or maybe that's not how the phrase goes. Look, she can barely breathe in these god damn knock off Spanx, she should not be expected to have coherent thoughts.
She is, however, expected to be the one to decorate Sarah's stupid sacred archway according to the fifteen inspirational images Sarah texted her in a panic last week when she decided there was no way she could possibly get married under the plain white arch Bucky had built for her in the backyard unless it was dripping with flowers and sparkles. As Poppy and Steve are the only Barneses with a lick of creativity, and what with Steve being otherwise occupied between his roles for the day of helping Sarah with her makeup and keeping Bucky from hyperventilating, Poppy got put in charge of Project Perfect Pinterest Princess Arch.
She pokes her head into Sarah’s bedroom, but the room is so full of women and Steve, she just gives Sarah a good luck hug and nopes right back out of there. Clearly that’s well in hand. She heads downstairs to find the box labeled "ARCH SHIT" in Bucky's tidy block letters and then under that in Steve's loopy, slanting, barely legible artist’s scrawl: "florist wire, wire cutters, florists tape, duct tape, kitchen scissors, tulle, flowers not included.”
“Rue-rue, you got them arch flowers? I’m fixing to get them up now,” she shouts, just assuming that Ruth will be within shouting distance. Ruth always looks kind of like she's not sure how she got there and what she's supposed to be doing, and yet she nearly always manages to be in the right place at the right time.
Sure enough, Ruth wanders in with her partner Miles right behind her, each of them carrying a laundry basket full of cut branches and leaves off the magnolia tree and zinnias, which, it's kind of a weird combo but they don't have much on hand that's not gonna wilt as soon as the sun hits, and Saro didn’t want artificial flowers because LORD FORBID.
Ruth looks sharp as hell in her blue pantsuit. It matches her eyes nice, and she’s even put on a little makeup. Ruth, Poppy notes resentfully, is wearing loose clothes, so that her internal organs are surely not being squeezed past the point of functioning, and how is Ruth always so much smarter than her?
Miles looks beautiful/handsome in their meticulously gender-ambiguous frilly white shirt and high-waisted black pants, their dark curls loose and full and perfect as always. Miles' waist also looks killer, and Poppy loses a moment wondering if they’re wearing shapewear as tight and miserable as she is. The list of people she would not hesitate to ask if they are wearing shapewear does not yet include Miles Morales.
Miles is also an artist, one of Steve’s favorite ever painting students, which is saying something, as Steve has had a lot of painting students. That’s how they met Ruth, because Ruth spent most of her undergrad and now several years of her PhD hiding in Steve’s office between classes. Lucky Steve has a good-sized office with a couch, because Miles has the same tendency to need a quiet place to decompress. After approximately a hundred years or so of sitting on opposite sides of Steve’s office couch and shyly exchanging glances, they have both recently realized they were in love the whole time. Halle-fucking-lujah.
Honestly, Poppy almost had about 93 interventions because the whole saga was just fucking painful, she feels like she deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for all the hours she listened to Ruth talk wistfully about how nice Miles is on their drives to and from college. Not that Poppy is any great shakes at romance, but Poppy is a first-year college student and Ruthie is hip-deep in a PhD.
How Ruthie is related to Hannah, who runs through boys like a river over rocks, Poppy don’t know. Or Sarah, who’d marched right up to Ned after their first computer engineering group project their first year of college and told him where to meet her for their first date. Bucky’d been the same with Steve, as far as Poppy knows, not that she can remember all that well, but they like to tell the story of how Bucky was head over feet for Steve at first sight, and Steve might have liked Bucky at first sight too if he hadn’t been too shy to look at him. And of course, Becca doesn’t date, but she approaches that with the same absolute clarity of purpose that the rest of Poppy’s older siblings approach romance with.
So Ruth’s endless pining made her an outlier, but all's well that ends well, as Bucky always says. Anyway, Poppy hopes Miles sticks around forever, not just because they are nice as hell, and not just because Ruth would be completely destroyed and Poppy would have to murder Miles and then reanimate them and murder them again if they broke her sister’s heart, but also because Poppy enjoys having another person around who is capable of using the left side of their brain.
Poppy and Miles get caught up in making the archway perfect, and Ruth does her best to try and be a help. She's patient, anyway, holding up the branches nice and steady while Poppy wires em on and Miles serves as artistic director, surveying from a distance to ensure there is a purposeful yet casually asymmetric flow to the branches and flowers and the sparkly white tulle through all that. After an hour or so of fiddling, Poppy’s pretty sure it's decent enough for her sister to get married in front of.
"Alright, let's go hide before they come up with a bunch of other shit for us to do," Poppy jokes.
Ruth frowns. "I don't mind helping."
“Sarcasm, babe,” Miles says mildly, picking up the scraps of flowers and wires and putting them in the laundry baskets. Poppy goes to help clean up, frowning as her high heels sink into a muddy patch. Well. Whatever. Muddy shoes. Who is she trying to impress here, anyway? Neither her nor Monica have a date, so they’re just going as each other’s dates, and Monica will just be impressed she’s wearing shoes at all.
"Yeah, I was joking, let's go find Bucky and see what’s next."
Bucky is on the front porch making awkward conversation with Ned’s Lola, Alpine sitting regally at his feet as she typically is, her elegant full tail swishing back and forth. Normally Bucky’d be holding Alpine, as he carries her around everywhere because, as Bucky says, she appreciates the view, but he’s probably worried about getting her long white hair all over his nice dark suit. He looks incredibly handsome, Poppy thinks proudly.
Ned’s Lola has an accent as strong as Bucky, but from a whole other part of the world, and it’s clear that despite them both being fluent in some version of English there’s quite a bit being lost in translation. Ned’s Lola seems to be kind of flirting with Bucky, and normally Bucky loves to flirt with old ladies, but he seems to be trying to be formal to show that he’s a responsible adult capable of supervising his baby sister who's just 23 to get married or some shit, bless his heart.
There’s a lot of Filipino traditions they’ve been kind of half-assing their way through, as best as Poppy can tell, because Ned doesn’t have hardly any family or a great passion for anything besides computer engineering or Sarah Barnes, so it’s kind of just what his Lola says she cares about him getting right, but Bucky doesn’t want to mess anything up, because, as he says, their Mom would strike him with lightning if he did. Despite the awkward vibe, Bucky and Ned’s Lola both manage to laugh a lot and holy shit, Ned’s family is going to be a part of their family in just a few hours and maybe Poppy should just call her Lola instead of Ned’s Lola and ain’t that something else.
Mr. Summers pulls up right then with the back of his pickup full of folding chairs he’s borrowed from him and Mrs. Summers’ church, so that’s the next responsibility all ready for them. Poppy starts pulling off chairs, and lets Bucky get back to getting to know his—well—whatever you call the grandmother of the guy your baby sister who you raised from age five is about to get married to. Lola for short.
Miles suggests putting the chairs in like an artistic wave, and Poppy agrees, which makes Ruth panic because she’s certain Sarah would want them in straight rows, and then Poppy has to let her know that, once again, sarcasm. Mr. Summers— call me Scott, he always says, but Ruth and Poppy can never bring themselves to do that — helps them put the chairs in a big boring square, facing the arch with a nice wide aisle down the middle, and then heads off to move his truck.
Once he’s gone, Poppy can’t stop laughing at the idea of them re-arranging half the chairs so they are facing away from the wedding arch as a kind of artistic statement, and Miles says maybe each chair alternating facing towards the front and the next towards the back, and for some reason that gets her going so hard she can barely breathe for cracking up. Seriously, Ruth and Miles need to stay together for ever.
The minute all that is done, Hannah arrives. Classic Hannah, Poppy thinks. Hannah had to work late last night, what with some huge case against Exxon Oil she's the lead on, and they got some kind of unexpected pile of documents or something. Poppy's not going to try and understand what the hell Hannah's job is. Apparently it's very time-consuming to stop oil companies from fucking over people, as oil companies are very stubborn when it comes to getting their way, which of course Poppy knows, as her entire childhood had a backdrop of lawyers quarrelling over the damn pipeline which is probably forever dead and yet may not be so they’ve always got to keep an eye on it, kind of like Great Aunt Benita’s cancer, which is in remission, but also she has to get checked every three months to make sure it stays that way.
She's glad Hannah's doing good work, but one can’t help but notice how convenient it is that Hannah turns up as soon as all the sweaty work is finished.
Sam rode down with her, because they are both based in DC for work now, and it was so logical that they would travel together that Poppy hadn’t had two thoughts in a row about it, but watching them climb out of Sam’s car…
"Do Hannah and Sam have, like, a vibe ?" Poppy asks, a wide teasing grin on her face. Sam is looking at Hannah some kinda way. To be fair, this is the kinda way a lot of men look at Hannah. She's nearly six feet tall and always looks like she just stepped out of a fashion catalog for very intimidatingly beautiful environmental lawyers, what with her elegant posture, flawless makeup, long glossy nails, and perfectly straight hair laying just so across her shoulders. The rest of the Barneses have wild misbehaving hair, especially Poppy, who has been compared to Merida from that damn Disney movie more times than she has ornery orange hairs on her head. Poppy strongly suspects Hannah’s somehow intimidated the entire atmosphere out of ever making her hair frizzy.
Poppy tries not to be jealous. Jealousy, as Bucky always says, is one of the least productive emotions, and everybody in this world has their own row to hoe, and you can’t know how hard anybody else has got it, so just focus on your own shit. But Poppy’s somehow broke off eight of ten of her fake nails and tore a hole in her dress and got her shoes caked in mud, and now the mud from her shoes is all up and down her calves. Naturally, she didn’t have to get all gussied up before doing the manual labor, so it’s nobody’s fault she didn’t think about it, though also somehow Ruth and Miles both still look perfectly fine, though they were literally all three doing the same things?
Anyway, it’s not like she minds looking like a feral cat stuffed into a dress compared to her supermodel of a sister. But.
She’s a little jealous.
But Sam! Sam is like. Poppy's not sure what the hell Sam is to Hannah. Poppy’s 19 and she’s pretty sure Sam was changing her diapers at some point. But Hannah is 28 and Sam's 36 so maybe that's not that weird, and they're both grown-ass attorneys living in the same city, but oh my GOD!
"What vibe?" Ruth asks. “I don’t do vibes.”
“There’s a vibe,” Miles confirms. “Isn’t Sam like…your uncle?”
"They're dating. Oh my god. Bucky's gonna lose his shit," Poppy whispers gleefully.
Ruth frowns. “He’s not really our uncle, though,” she says thoughtfully.
“I mean, I put it together that you aren’t genetically related,” Miles laughs.
They watch from a distance as a clueless Bucky hugs Hannah hi and then hugs Sam hi, and then Sam's hand brushes casually possessive along Hannah's lower back and Hannah gives Sam this sweet little glance, and Hannah has possibly never glanced that sweetly at anyone before.
Ruth gasps. "Yeah, okay, even the autistic scientist can read that vibe," she says wonderingly. "Bucky's gonna lose his shit."
“Becca is going to injure herself laughing,” Poppy predicts.
"Holy shit, they finally got together," Steve says, coming up behind Poppy and leaning his chin on her shoulder. Poppy leans her head affectionately against his warm steady presence. "Hannah’s been pining over Sam for ages, and Sam’s been having existential angst about lusting after his best friend's baby sister for about five years now.”
“Hannah. Pined? Hannah Barnes? Hannah doesn’t pine ,” Poppy says, because this is like, world-shattering intel.
Steve laughs and wraps Poppy up in a hug from behind. “Hannah pines. She just does it in a very elegant way no one else can see, and threatens you with death if you notice.”
“Does Bucky know about all this?” Poppy asks, and why does no one ever tell her anything interesting?
“Nope,” Steve says, popping the p. “I have been under a strict oath not to mention it to Bucky. And don’t get your back up, Poppy, you can’t keep a secret and we've been over it a million times that people stop telling you secrets if you’re always shouting them right back out after. It’s gonna be hilarious when Bucky puts it all together.”
"Every wedding needs a good scandal, right?" Miles muses.
"That's the spirit!" Steve says cheerfully and releases Poppy with a squeeze. He stands on his tiptoes to give Ruth a hug and a kiss on the cheek and does the same for Miles. "You look great guys, I haven't seen you yet today. I should probably go make sure Bucky doesn't have a panic attack now that people are getting here."
“That’s literally one of the jobs Saro gave you on her chore chart,” Poppy says, “How’s she doing?”
“Wanda and Natasha and Becca and the bridesmaids have it well in hand,” Steve says. “I’ve been released from the bridal preparation chambers. And I brought you a towel to wipe your legs and shoes off with Pops, not that I don’t love this wood nymph look you’ve got going on, but Sarah told me to make sure you weren’t dirty in the family photos.”
Poppy pouts at being called out, but she is actually filthy. Steve starts to crouch down like he’s going to wipe her shoes off for her—like she’s still a little kid. “I can do that myself.”
“Shit, you can, I’m sorry. I forget,” Steve says, shaking his head with a rueful smile. “Fuck, what am I gonna do with myself with only Bucky to take care of?”
“I never understood how Sarah always stayed so clean,” Poppy says mournfully as she crouches down to clean her shoes, then kind of wishes she’d had Steve do it, because her ass is about to fall out of this short dress and she didn’t really think about it when they were setting up and it was just family around to see her underwear, but there’s company all over the place now so she probably should care.
“Sarah never has as much fun as you,” Ruth says. “She’s more serious. Always wanted to be grown up.”
Poppy shouldn’t have a favorite sister, but. Ruth is her favorite sister.
They hug hellos to Hannah and Sam, and Hannah’s so full of excitement about her big case that Poppy can’t find a way to tease her about what’s happening with Sam.
Sam’s nephews roll up, and they have this high five game they always play when Poppy babysits them, so Poppy gets distracted with that. Before she knows it, they’re playing their made-up version of high five tag, running around all the grown-ups and Steve’s giving her a look and a wink and cutting his eyes over to the towel he’d brought out, and she realizes she’s taken off her shoes and gotten all dirty again and remembers that she, in fact, attends college and would be commonly considered to be a grown-up.
There’s a meet and greet with snacks before the wedding, so folks start rolling in left and right now, with Mr. Summers directing traffic for people to park without blocking the narrow road. Bucky's clearly flustered with introducing Ned’s small family to their own family and friends, but Steve has one hand on Bucky's lower back to calm him down, and Alpine is keeping watch on his other side. Steve leans up to give Bucky a kiss on the cheek. Bucky looks down at Steve with a fondness that makes Poppy beam. She always feels safe, somehow, when Bucky looks at Steve like that.
Monica shows up, finally , and instead of hello she says, “Damn girl, your waist looks snatched! Get it!” and starts arranging Poppy’s hair in some kind of way.
Poppy holds still because she trusts whatever vision Monica is working towards, and says, “Thank you, finally, no one else has commented on it! You look amazing, too!” because Monica does look fucking amazing, as always.
Monica then reminds Poppy and Ruth and Miles that it was their job to help people find seats and make sure everyone knows where the bathrooms are, so the four of them move to the backyard, where the ceremony is going to be.
“I need to send Sarah fucking flowers for breaking the glass ceiling on being the prodigal straight child in the queer parents club,” Monica says cheerfully as they walk.
“Our parents weren’t queer,” Ruth corrects with a frown, because it bothers all the older girls, and Bucky the most, when people forget their parents. For Poppy and Sarah, it’s like, well, honestly, she can’t actually remember her mom and daddy at all, and she understands why people assume Bucky and/or Steve are her dads.
“Well mine fucking are,” Monica says, “I thought Carol was gonna cry when I came out as liking boys. Sarah’s paving the way for me.” Monica sing-songs the last phrase, sweeping her arms forward like she’s opening the door in a musical. Poppy has heard this story a thousand times. She knows it’s not as simple as Monica is making it, but Miles doesn’t. She wonders if Miles is going to be offended by her friend’s flippant tone. But Miles just laughs, because Miles is, in fact, super chill and a really great person.
"I thought Hannah was straight?" Miles asks.
Monica scoffs. "Hannah eats men alive and picks her teeth with their bones. I don't think that counts as straight so much as fratricidal. Anyway, Carol approves of that way more than getting married to a man."
"Wrong about Hannah though!" Poppy eagerly sing-songs. "She's been pining." They see Becca has escaped the bridal preparation chambers and is laughing hysterically at a very uncomfortable Sam and a blushing Hannah by the drinks table, so yep, Poppy called that, and she eagerly captures Monica up on the fresh gossip.
...
Poppy's not been to that many weddings, but the time seems to do some kind of hurry up and slow down thing. They show people to their seats. Miles' parents show up—they drove down from Richmond, because Miles is super-close with their parents and wants them to be super-close with Ruth’s family, which is sweet.
Poppy sees Miles' parents greeting Ruthie with giant hugs and thinks, oh, because Poppy has never met them, but Ruth went and spent Easter and Memorial Day weekend with Miles’ folks, so of course they know her well enough for big happy hugs. For some reason that makes Poppy feel a twist of grief she wasn’t expecting.
It’s weird to think that Ruthie is getting this whole new family that isn’t about Poppy. Somehow it’s been easier with Saro getting married. She moved away to MIT for college, she’s been with Ned and visiting his family in Queens for years. With Sarah, Poppy’s had time to get used to the little distances that can appear between her and a sibling she once had memorized.
But Ruth went to Virginia Tech and commuted home as many weekends as she stayed on campus, and then Poppy followed her there, and they’ve been roommates all year, and Miles is moving in with them in the fall, and she realizes maybe she’s not ready to share Ruth.
But then Miles’ parents wrap Poppy up in a hug next, and seek out the rest of the family for big happy hugs, because they’re just big happy huggers, and maybe it’s okay. Just different.
The next thing they know, they’re being rushed into the family seats up at the front by Maria and Carol, and Ned comes out to stand next to the officiant, looking handsome and also intimidated as hell. He’s wearing a barong, the sheer white fabric and embroidery shimmering in the “magic hour” sunlight that Sarah was very insistent upon.
Bucky had tried to tell her that no matter how politely or how rudely she asks, the sky is not going to bow to her vision for her wedding. But it seems the sun, and the sky, and all the trees fluttering in shades of green, and the air itself, have agreed to behave. There’s just a hint of a perfect summer breeze, and Poppy thinks maybe it’s her parents' way of saying hi. It’s absolutely beautiful, and not just because of the arch that Poppy helped decorate. But that looks pretty damn good, too.
The music picks up, and Sarah's two best friends from college are walking down the aisle with Ned’s two best friends, and then the music changes again, and Bucky's walking Sarah down the aisle, and they're both a sobbing mess, though Sarah’s holding it together a bit better than Bucky. She looks like a vision in her white dress with her dark curls just so, and her waterproof makeup all perfect.
Sarah stops at Steve, who is sitting smiling at everything from the edge of the second row, and opens her arms up for a hug, and Steve looks surprised and starts crying too, and that gets Poppy going.
Somehow Steve's always surprised when they act like he's part of the family, even though she can't barely remember a time before Steve. She’d come home from school every afternoon to the sound of punk rock music coming from Steve’s studio/laundry room, and woke up most weekend mornings to Steve humming in that tuneless way he has in the kitchen, making them pancakes while Bucky tries to distract him with kisses on his neck. Everyone at school has pretty well always called Steve her stepdad, and she stopped correcting them in about fourth grade.
Anyway, it's a whole hug fest, and Mrs. Wilson leans up from her row and hands Poppy a box of tissues which get passed around, because even Becca's wiping her eyes by the end of it, and eventually, somehow, Sarah manages to make it up to poor Ned, who has been very patient about the Barneses’ claptrap disaster, and then Ned goes forward to get the parental blessing from his Lola by kissing her hands.
The ceremony is boring enough and also mostly in Tagalog, because it’s Ned’s Lola’s friend that’s a pastor is doing it, so they all manage to get their tears under control. After the talking part, they run through some traditions from Ned’s family, getting draped in a veil, dropping coins into Sarah’s hands, lighting candles, all of which, apparently, are extremely high-stakes because if they go wrong it means the marriage is cursed, so Sarah’s been nervous as hell about this part.
Poppy’s got all her fingers and toes crossed for her. The veil doesn’t slip off their shoulders, and the candles stay lit, and Sarah doesn’t drop the coins. Wanda plays a song on the fiddle and Sarah and Ned have to say their vows and everyone is crying all over again by the time Ned kisses the bride.
When it's time for the first dances, Ned and Sarah dance, and then Sarah dances with Bucky and Ned dances with his Lola, and then Ned dances with an Auntie and Sarah dances with Steve, and then Bucky goes and steals Steve away right at the end and everyone laughs, and everyone is spilling out onto the rented dance floor with the lightning bugs twinkling up all around them.
They dance all night, and moonshine gets passed around at some point, and Wanda gets the fiddle back out and Bucky gets out his guitar and Poppy pulls out her mandolin, and they all do a singalong, and Ned’s Lola sings the loudest on the chorus.
At some point, Poppy steps away from the crowd for a minute, just to be, just to listen, and she settles in the old wooden swing to watch the party through the trees. After a few quiet moments, she hears the soft flutter of an owl’s wings and catches a flash of cream feathers. She’s pretty sure it’s the barred owl that’s lived in the old pine tree for close to a decade now. Bucky named it Chef, because a barred owl’s call sounds like, “Who cooks for you?”
She catches a nearby lightning bug and lets it walk across her knuckles before it blinks at her and flies away. She wonders what it all seems like to Chef from above: a swirl of lights, of music and laughter, mixed in with the regular noise of the creek and the night chorus of bugs. What does an owl make of a wedding? What does the barred owl, which surely watches them even closer than they watch it, make of how their family has changed, slow, one step at a time, an imperceptible flow from a never-ending tumble of hollering kids to quiet evenings of just Steve and Bucky now when Poppy’s away at college?
It’s always seemed to Poppy that this place belongs to them as much as it belongs to the owl, to the crickets, to the red salamanders and the crawdads in the creek—which is to say that it doesn’t belong to any of them at all, and that instead they all belong to this place, lucky enough to be held and kept. It’s a kindness, a hugeness, a miracle of a gift, of a magnitude that Poppy wishes she could find a way to show gratitude for; but what on earth can you say to thank the earth?
“Poppy,” Hannah calls out, because somehow Hannah knows exactly where she is, and Poppy can tell she’s a little drunk, just based on how strong her accent is in that one word. “Saro wants someone to sing Pretty Saro, and Bucky says he cain’t sing that song on her wedding day without crying his eyes out, so we need you, if you’re done haunting around the woods feeling sentimental.”
“Maybe I was just going to the bathroom, Hanner,” Poppy says with a laugh.
“Steve said you looked like you needed a minute, but Bucky said not to give you too many minutes. That’s it’s better to mope with family than to mope alone.”
“Bucky and his words of wisdom,” Poppy says, and Hannah pulls her in for a hug.
“I’ve missed it here,” Hannah says, looking up at the broad sweep of stars. “I always miss it here,” she gives Poppy a kiss on the top of her head, “Come back when you’re ready.”
Poppy takes one more minute to gaze up at the long length of the universe, and follows her sister back into the light and the sound of the celebration.