winterhawkkisses:

“Bucky!” Steve yelled, poking at the eggs to see if it was time to toast. “Hey, Buck!”

“Shh!” Bucky hissed, closing his bedroom door careful and quiet behind him. “Can you keep your damn voice down?”

Bucky was not a stranger to crazy bed-hair, but this morning’s was particularly spectacular, and there were a couple of bruises along the line of his neck. Steve grinned, genuinely happy and a lot amused, didn’t even have to say anything to have Bucky scowling.

“You got someone in there?”

“Shove it, nosy,” Bucky said, but there was a little curl to the corner of his mouth that he couldn’t bite down on.

“Special someone?” Steve asked, tried not to sound too obviously hopeful. He was for anything that brought the smile back to Bucky’s face.

“Maybe,” Bucky said, and the little tease of a grin settled in and made a home for itself. Steve couldn’t help grinning widely in response, and Bucky folded his arms. “Don’t, Stevie, okay? We’re takin’ it slow.”

“Uh-huh,” Steve said, and Bucky batted away the spatula Steve poked at his neck. “Looks like it.”

“This’s been coming a while,” Bucky said, and his smile turned soft and kind of tender, and it wasn’t a smile Steve knew so well. “I don’t wanna mess this up.”

“Hey,” Steve said, abandoned the eggs for a second and hauled him into a hug. “She’d be crazy to turn you down.”

Bucky turned his face against Steve’s neck, took a deep breath, let it out slow.

“He,” he said.

“Huh?”

“He’d be crazy,” Bucky said, and pulled away to eye Steve’s expression. Steve tried to convey support through eyebrows, and Bucky laughed and punched him in the arm.

“He gonna be wanting breakfast?” Steve asked, all casual.

“I dunno,” Bucky said, and looked for a second unaccountably nervous. “Guess I’ll go ask.”

He snagged the coffee pot on his way into his room – the whole thing, didn’t bother stopping for mugs.

Steve gaped.

“Holy – it’s Clint?”