There is no preamble, no setting up or adjusting the atmosphere. It's a weeknight, there are no meetings or missions or obligations, Bucky has his tablet and Steve has his novel. They're both still comfortably full from the meal they had cooked earlier, teasing and hip-checking each other and getting too caught up in kissing every few minutes.

Bucky turns to where Steve is on the couch, bare feet propped up on the coffee table and his secondhand novel open on his thighs, and knows immediately, the way an animal knows to migrate, the way Bucky knew, even as a kid, what love at first sight felt like.

“Baby,” he says, the endearment making Steve turn, quizzical, because rarely does Bucky use them first, “come here.”

Bucky stands, then Steve, dog-earing his place and setting the book down on the coffee table. Bucky beckons him closer before stepping out into the open area of their small living room. Steve cocks his head but follows obediently, stopping a few feet away on the braided oval rug separating their living area from their kitchen. Once Steve is there Bucky pulls his phone from his pocket and opens Spotify.

“Bucky?” asks Steve.

“Do you remember,” begins Bucky, scrolling through his saved albums, “the first time we ever danced together? And how you were so bad you tripped over your own feet?”

It hadn't been a formal affair, and they'd had to close the meager curtains in their apartment, but the memory had come back to Bucky not long after the Potomac and hit him head-on.

“Gee, Buck, thanks for reminding me. Yeah, I do. Why?”

“I just wanted to make sure you still remembered.”

Finding the album, Bucky selects it and looks up, grinning slow and devious at the confused and distantly annoyed look on Steve’s stupidly handsome face.

A second passes before Steve barks out a laugh, shaking his head. “You gotta stop using the memory shit. It’s gonna get old soon.”

“Nah,” says Bucky, pressing play on the song he was looking for. As the first slow beats begin he tucks his phone into his back pocket speaker side up and wraps his arms around Steve’s neck.

“Is that…” Steve’s brow furrows, head tilting. “‘I Want To Know What Love Is’?”

“Yup.”

“Buck, I was asleep for seventy years and even I know that this is a cliche.”

“You don’t seem to mind it much.”

Slow, Steve’s hands come up to rest on Bucky’s waist, answering the unasked question. Steve huffs, tugs Bucky in a little closer. “You know I ain’t gonna pass up an opportunity to dance with you, even if it is to Foreigner.”

Bucky smothers his grin in the warm crook of Steve’s neck. Inhales the sharp spice of Steve’s atfershave, then lets himself go slightly limp in Steve’s hold. It’s nice. This is nice, being here, just the two of them, swaying in place while his phone pumps tinny music into their apartment. It’s intimate, and Bucky sure as hell hasn’t experienced much intimacy in the last handful of decades.

Gradually he lets himself get closer, Steve’s hands migrating to the small of Bucky’s back as the distance between them shortens. The song changes to “Growing Up The Hardway,” but Bucky can’t bring himself to move.

It takes a lot for him to feel comfortable anymore. Lurking at the edge of his mind are the dark thoughts, the persistent memories that trigger unwanted thoughts that keep him tensed and alert. Bucky wouldn’t say that he’s completely at ease, but it’s a close thing, especially when one of Steve’s hands is gently tipping Bucky’s chin up.

The look in Steve’s eyes makes Bucky a little unsteady on his feet; he stumbles slightly, catching himself. Locking his arms tighter around the back of Steve’s neck, Bucky closes the gap and presses their mouths together. He inhales sharply, unconsciously, at the warm softness of Steve’s lips against his. Christ. It makes him lightheaded. Bucky could go another seventy years and every single kiss would still feel the exact same way.

Bucky’s hands go up, metal and flesh curving around the sharp line of Steve’s jaw, thumbs pressing into the high arch of Steve’s cheekbones. Bucky tilts his head, changing the angle and deepening the kiss, curling the fingers of his flesh hand in Steve’s hair.

Steve sighs, and Bucky takes the brief opportunity to lick into his mouth before retreating. His heart is beating so fast. It’s like he’s a teenager again, like it’s that late summer night when he was seventeen and Steve was sixteen and Bucky finally mustered up what little courage he had to give Steve a perfunctory kiss on the lips.

Their foreheads pressed together, they continue to sway slow and steady, Steve’s hand sliding into Bucky’s back pocket as “Reaction To Action” starts playing. Hell, Bucky is pretty sure they could dance just like this to Metallica if the mood struck them.

“God, I love you,” says Steve, a little rough. He eases Bucky into another kiss, letting this one drag out slow and unhurried. The braided fibers of the rug are rough against Bucky’s bare feet and the apartment still smells faintly of the dinner they cooked earlier. Like a home. Bucky hasn't had a home in nearly a century and gave up any hope of ever having one again.

“Would you,” Bucky starts, clearing his throat. “I mean, I ain’t askin’ or nothin’, but, like, would you, in theory, marry me?”

It’s completely out of the blue, surprises even Bucky into silence after the last word leaves his mouth.

Steve stills. So does Bucky. Foreigner continues on, oblivious.

Bucky’s blinking sheepishly, owlishly, as Steve puts a little distance between them. His eyes are soft and wide, the apples of his cheeks flushed pretty pink.

It’s not like it’s something they ever really dwelled on, even when things became serious and the unspoken agreement that they were it for each other passed between them. Marriage wasn’t feasible, not back then. Not like it is now, either, given who they are. But at least it’s…accepted. And Bucky doesn’t feel the burning sear of shame low in his belly when he thinks about it.

“Do you mean that?” asks Steve after a lengthy pause.

Bucky wets his lips and nods, ducking his head and startling slightly when Steve pulls them flush together. He relaxes into the embrace, resting his forehead against Steve’s collarbone. Lets himself feel safe, and protected, and loved.

Steve’s hands are broad on Bucky’s shoulders, warm and grounding where they connect. This time, it’s Bucky who tips his head up and initiates the kiss. Time grinds to a halt. Here, they are ageless, suspended. They are not who they were or who they are now: they’re just them.

“I would,” Steve responds between the slide of their lips. “Jeez, Buck, of course I’d fuckin’ marry you. You’re it for me, pal. You’ve been it ever since I was sixteen.”

“I loved you even when I didn't know who you were,” Bucky says. “I—god, Stevie. I love you more’n anything.”

“Yeah,” says Steve, “me too.”

“If I had a ring, right now, would you take it?”

Steve holds Bucky’s face in his hands, presses kisses to his cheeks, his nose, his chin. Humming in affirmation he says, “I would. You wouldn’t even have to ask me, if you didn’t want to. You could just show me the ring and I’d let you put it on my finger.

The thought of that makes Bucky shiver.

“I would marry you,” Steve says as Agent Provocateur segues into “Blue Morning, Blue Day” without pause, “over and over. In a hundred different lifetimes. A hundred different ways.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky replies thickly, closing his eyes against the sting of tears. “I ain’t—I don’t deserve that—”

“Yes,” says Steve, kissing Bucky’s eyelids, “you do. You deserve so much. Buck. You deserve everything. You deserve to feel happy, and loved, and I wanna be the person who does that, as a boyfriend or a husband or however we decide. I would give you the whole fucking world if I could.”

Thing is, Bucky knows he’s not lying. Steve’s persistence is both an annoying and admirable quality, and Bucky goes into most arguments knowing he’s going to lose by sheer stubbornness alone. If Steve could literally fit the world into his hand he would. He searched all over it when Bucky went rogue after D.C. and never tired even with Bucky constantly giving him the slip.

“We could have something small,” continues Steve, swaying gently again now, hands on Bucky’s hips. Just us, Sam, Nat, Clint and the wife and kids.”

“Scott?”

Steve laughs quietly, then nods. “Yeah, even Scott.”

Bucky wraps his arms around Steve’s back, letting the swaying movement of Steve’s body propel his own. The hardest thing about learning autonomy and free will again has been getting himself to actually want things, to vocalize those wants and not think of them as insubordinations. Wants are a human thing, and he is human.

“That sounds nice,” Bucky eventually says.

“Yeah?”

Steve’s T-shirt is worn and soft under Bucky’s cheek, his skin warm and his heartbeat strong and steady. Bucky feels loose, stretched-out and relaxed, like the only thing keeping him up are Steve’s arms.

Bucky hums tunelessly against Steve’s neck. Shuffles his feet and laughs a little at himself as his toe catches on the rug.

“Buck?”

“Hmm?”

“Yes.”

Bucky lifts his head. Steve’s eyes are dark, focused, and he kisses Bucky like he’s never going to get another chance. When they part, Bucky is dizzy and panting as he asks, “Yes?”

“Yes,” repeats Steve, eyes moving over Bucky’s face, “I will. I’ll marry you.”

"You — " Bucky's voice cracks. "You will?"

The shy smile that spreads over Steve's face makes Bucky weak at the knees in more ways than one. He grins crookedly, boyishly, and repeats, "Yes."