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“The water’s really warm today,” Bucky says, body bent halfway out of the boat so he can trail his fingers through the little ripples left behind by the boat’s gentle rocking.
“Mm,” was the only reply.
“You wanna get in? Swim around a little?” Bucky slides a little further out so that he can fully dip his hand in. The water is so clear he feels like he could see all the way down to the bottom.
“You can. Get eaten by a shark while you’re at it. Save me some trouble,” Sam says, voice muffled by the towel slung over his face to protect him from the sun.
Bucky scoots back into the boat and rubs his hand dry on his shorts. He’d taken his shirt off ten minutes after they’d left the dock and then never bothered to put it back on. Three days into their trip his skin was tanned down to an even gold that stopped abruptly at the line of his shorts and then continued half-way down his thigh.
“I think I could beat a shark in a fight,” Bucky says. He ambles over so he can stand over Sam and let his shadow completely cover him. Sam swats blindly at him, hand waving a good foot away from where he actually is.
“Oh? Prove it then,” Sam’s hand finally gives up on trying to hit Bucky and falls onto his bare stomach. Bucky likes how much darker Sam’s hand is than his stomach. He likes how soft his skin looks right above his belly button and the callous that’s formed right in the middle of his palm from catching the shield. Bucky likes so much about Sam it makes his throat feel dusty and tight.
“I punched a shark in 1975,” Bucky says with a deeply unearned conviction, “Everyone clapped, it was awesome.”
“No you didn’t,” Sam huffs.
“How would you know? You weren’t even there,” Bucky nudges at Sam’s hip with his toe, “And it was a Russian shark too, in the middle of winter, so it was really intense.”
“There aren’t Russian sharks, dumbass. And if there were, they wouldn’t be any different from literally any other shark. Now move, you’re in my sun.”
Bucky pouts, putting everything he has into it, but Sam’s towel is still covering his eyes so he can’t be swayed by how amazing Bucky’s puppy dog eyes are.
“Sam, please,” Bucky pouts harder, “Please please please please -”
“Ok! Jesus! If it’ll shut you up then I’ll get into the water with you,” Sam mutters something else under his breath and scrubs his hand through his short hair.
Bucky squints suspiciously, “What’d you say?”
“I said you’re like a damn child. Need a babysitter to sit on the pool steps with you ‘cuz you’re scared of the deep end,” even though Sam’s face is still hidden by the towel, Bucky can hear a smile coloring his voice and he feels something hot and bubbly in his stomach at the thought of white teeth biting against a full bottom lip. He kicks Sam a little harder.
“C’mon man, we’re only here for like 3 more days and all you’ve done is yell at me about sunscreen and lay around on your lazy ass. There’s literally a thousand miles of ocean with no one around and you won’t even touch the water,” Bucky throws his hands up in the air. What’s so wrong with asking his colleague/partner/friend/whatever to go on a swim? They’re already stuck on a boat together for a week, was it that weird?
“Barnes, have you considered that I might not be able to swim?” Sam asks, and finally pulls the towel off his face to look into Bucky’s eyes with an extremely serious expression. Bucky feels his heart drop out of his ass and sink down to the ocean floor. He didn’t even think-
“Nah, I’m messin’ with you man,” Sam cackles, “What kind of kid grows up on a boat and can’t swim? But the look on your face! Wish I got a picture of that.”
Bucky feels his cheeks heat in embarrassment, “I cannot stand you.”
“Admit that you’ve never punched a shark and I’ll get in with you,” Sam demands, propping himself up on one arm. Bucky’s so distracted by the way Sam’s shoulder shifts and flexes in this new position that he misses the question entirely, his mouth hanging open.
“Say it, and I’ll jump in right now, I swear,” Sam puts a solemn hand to his chest and bows his head.
Bucky finally manages to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth, “I’m not a liar, Sam,” his voice is a little hoarse so he coughs to clear it, “It was extremely epic. Too bad you were so busy being not born that you missed it.”
Bucky feels really good about using the word epic. He’d recently discovered the urbandictionary website and spent hours clicking the random word generator button until he’d fallen asleep on the keyboard and managed to factory reset his entire computer. He’d written a list of all his favorites in his journal and crossed out a word whenever he felt he’d used it particularly well.
Sam slowly shakes his head. “Then I guess I’ll just lie here until we head back.”
Bucky weighs his need to see Sam wet and gleaming in the ocean sunshine vs. his pride. “Maybe I exaggerated when I said shark. What I meant to say was large fish,” He smiles and spreads out both hands beseechingly, “can we get in now?”
Sam just gives him the look. Bucky would die before he admitted that he loved it when Sam gave him the look. There was something about Sam having a special face just for Bucky that made his chest hurt and gave him the sudden urge to punch a hole into the nearest wall.
“Okay! Okay, fine. I watched the Jaws movies like a hundred times last year and I dreamed the whole thing. Are you happy? Can we please get wet- I mean in! Can we please get in now?”
Sam graciously ignores Bucky’s verbal stumble and stands, “If we see jellyfish, I won’t be held accountable for my actions.”
Bucky, whose nerve endings are mostly completely dead from years of being frozen, just shrugs.
Bucky’s plan had been to cannonball off the highest point of the prow but Sam wanders around the sides of the boat, peering over the edge, shaking his head, moving to another point and shaking his head again. Bucky watches this process repeat for a few minutes before he finally bursts out, “What the hell are you looking for man! God? Just jump in!”
Sam looks over and cocks an eyebrow, “There a reason you’re waiting for me to go first, Barnes? I didn’t know it was illegal to take my time.”
Bucky huffs, and gestures broadly at nothing while he tries to think of a good response. The truth is he wanted to watch Sam dive in, see his broad shoulders and slim hips, the smooth curve of his legs and the pale underside of his feet as he slid into the water. But he couldn’t really say any of that, so he clambers over the railing and steps off the edge like a man walking the plank.
The water is much cooler than he expects, but it feels like heaven on his overheated skin. Bucky stays under for as long as he can, swimming the length of the boat and back twice before he finally comes up for air. Sam’s hands are clutching the rail and he’s staring down at him with wide eyes when Bucky emerges. Seriously, what was the guy waiting for? Permission?
“How long can you hold your breath for?” Sam asks, voice pitching oddly around the words.
Bucky thinks about it, “20 minutes, maybe? It’s been a while, though. You want to time me right now and see?”
“No!” Sam nearly shouts, “No. Let me just- can you move out of the way so I can jump in?” Sam’s toes curl around the edge of the boat and he wavers a little, like he’s still unsure. Bucky’s about to start yelling provocations when Sam takes a deep breath, pinches his nose shut, and steps off.
Well, it wasn’t the graceful dive Bucky’d hoped for but he couldn’t be that mad when Sam is here, wet and slippery and pulling at Bucky’s ankle until Bucky slips under the water with a strangled yell.
They grapple a little underwater. Bucky’s hands push down on Sam’s shoulders as Sam does the same to him and from there it mostly devolves into who can kick whose stomach the hardest so they have to come up for air before the other. Bucky uses this time to accidentally brush his hands across Sam’s smooth chest, reveling in the feeling of so much skin at once even as he tries to cover it by twisting Sam’s nipple until bubbles burst from his mouth.
Their dirty fighting eventually takes its toll and Sam ends up floating flat on his back, his stomach heaving for air while Bucky lazily backstrokes laps around him.
“Wipe that smug look off your face,” Sam gasps, not even looking at Bucky. The shit-eating grin that had been crawling up Bucky’s cheeks only spreads wider.
“You aren’t even looking at me, how-”
“I don’t need to look to know, man. Not all of us can be overpowered senior citizens with bionic arms,” Sam gives a weary sigh and makes an attempt to grab at Bucky who just barely dodges out of the way, “Weren’t we just discussing how you could beat a shark with your bare hands?”
Somehow Bucky’s smile only grows larger at that “Oh, so now you believe me? Why Mr. Wilson, I’m shocked. Hold on while I write this in my diary. Dear diary,” Bucky recites in a breathy voice, “today Sam admitted he is deeply in love with m- Ow! What the hell was that for?”
Sam’s fingers fall away from where he’d twisted Bucky’s ear, “Shut the hell up,” he mutters.
Their faces are abruptly very close. Bucky can’t help but notice how Sam’s cheeks are suddenly much darker than they were a few minutes ago. He wonders if Sam forgot to re-apply that fancy French suncream he’d been badgering Bucky to put on since they’d started the trip. The nagging had reached the point that Sam didn’t even bother trying to speak anymore, just came at him with cream-covered hands and a manic gleam in his eye.
“Are you getting burnt?” Bucky asks, reaching to touch Sam’s cheek. His fingers only barely graze the soft skin before Sam slaps him away.
“I’m fine! Really, I’m fine,” Sam says, “You don’t need to paw at me like that.”
Bucky scoffs but obediently keeps his hands to himself as he treads water. He tries not to feel disappointed that he didn’t get a little more time to touch the tender skin at Sam’s cheekbones; instead, he buries that desire deep deep deep down in a box labeled THINGS TO NEVER THINK ABOUT, which was mostly filled with things he thought a lot about.
They tread in silence for a while, not really looking at each other but not not looking at each other. Bucky feels something really weird going on in his chest. Like worms wiggling around over his heart and making his breath catch for no reason when Sam tilts his head up to the sun and closes his eyes; his long, inky black eyelashes brushing over the tips of his cheeks.
“Bucky?” Sam suddenly says, breaking the silence. Bucky twitches in surprise. He’d started floating on his back again without even realizing.
“Yeah?” Bucky replies after a moment.
“What are we doing?” Sam asks. Bucky looks around in confusion. He doesn’t want to sound like an idiot by stating the obvious - swimming - but he also doesn’t want to say the wrong thing and ruin whatever tentative peace they’d built up during their time away from everything. He settles for a vague questioning noise, hoping that’ll be enough of an answer.
“I mean, what are we doing?” Sam says again, this time stressing the we like that clarified anything.
“Um, swimming?” Bucky says, cringing at how stupid he sounds. Sam sighs like he thinks Bucky is doing this on purpose to annoy him. Which he isn’t, okay. Sometimes being a brain-washed super-villain stunts your emotional intelligence. And he’d never really been that good at reading people’s emotions to begin with, so Sam was just going to have to spell out whatever the question was that he actually wanted Bucky to answer.
“For the love of- Barnes. I mean Us. with a capital U. As in this whole working as team, taking a vacation together, thing. Are we friends now, or..?” Sam trails off and lets the sentence hang unfinished. Bucky kind of wants to know what comes after the or, but he has a part to play in their little dynamic.
“Friends?” Bucky laughs, a little harshly, “I thought we’d agreed on colleagues.” He feels like slime just saying it, like the words don’t even fit right in his mouth any more.
Sam hums and opens his eyes to face Bucky, “Sure, we can go with that. If you want.”
What Bucky wants is to escape this conversation as quickly as possible. He moves to swim towards the boat, but before he can get more than a foot he feels Sam’s hand close around his wrist. His metal wrist. He turns back.
Sam just stares at him, no, into him, eyes dark like an endless night under a new moon. Bucky feels something crack open in his chest. “I don’t- I don’t know,” is all he can say.
Sam drifts a little closer. Close enough that Bucky can smell him, smell the salt from the ocean water where it laps up against his chest and the strange sweetness from the chemicals of his sunscreen. It’s familiar and terrifying and all at once Bucky wishes he could just unzip himself from his skin and fly off into space so he could finally just stop feeling so much all the time. He was beginning to understand why his handlers worked so hard to purge any and all emotions from his body; all they did was mess him up until his brain felt like the overcooked oatmeal he’d choked down every morning as a child. It was completely debilitating.
Sam’s hand comes to rest on Bucky’s shoulder, right at the scarred junction where flesh joined with metal in an unhappy union. He feels himself get pushed until his back hits the cool side of the boat and then it’s just him and the boat and Sam’s hand burning a brand onto his skin.
“What are you- what is-” going on Bucky wants to say, but the words can’t seem to make it out of his mouth.
“I’m just- acting on impulse. You might know what that’s like,” Sam laughs a little to himself, “Well, it’s actually more like I’m coming to a decision on something. Feel free to let me know if I made the wrong choice, but I don’t think I have.”
Bucky can only manage a hoarse little wheezing sound as Sam’s hand slowly moves from his shoulder to come rest on the side of his neck. Bucky wonders if maybe he held his breath too long and now he’s suffering from some kind of hypoxic hallucination. There’s no logical explanation for Sam’s actions. He pinches himself just to check he’s not dreaming but nothing changes. Bucky isn’t sure how he feels about that.
“You need to relax, man. How are you even still alive with so much tension in your neck.” Sam massages the back of Bucky’s neck with firm fingers. Bucky’s brain feels like it’s melting out of his ears and floating off to be fish food the longer Sam works to ease out the knots. At some point his hands drift up to frame Sam’s ribs of their own accord and the skin there is thin and scorching hot, even under the cool water.
Fine. If Plan A (get the hell out and have a breakdown in the shitty little bathroom they both share until he can compartmentalize his feelings down to a manageable size) was no longer an option, then it was on to Plan B.
“I,” Bucky says in a wavering voice, “feel confused about what the hell is going on and I would like to know what you want. Please.”
Sam’s eyebrows shoot up and his fingers pause where they had started to dig in right at the junction between his head and his neck. Bucky kind of wishes he hadn’t said anything just so Sam would keep rubbing his fingers through the short hair at his nape. He forces his hands to drop back to his sides.
“Are you using I-statements?” Sam asks incredulously.
Bucky nods. His therapist had forced him to do worksheets on them the other week as practice for communicating better at ‘his workplace’ and Sam was technically part of his workplace.
Sam’s eyes flick around Bucky’s face like he’s searching for something. After a moment, he bursts out into laughter, “I’m not- I’m not laughing at you, I swear. I’m laughing at how stupid we both are.”
Bucky doesn’t really get what Sam is trying to say, too busy going cross-eyed so he can see the long line of Sam’s throat as he throws his head back in another round of laughter. He quiets after a moment and a serious expression passes over his face. Bucky feels himself go cold in anticipation of whatever Sam is about to say.
“This is all my- I think I’m going crazy, man. Being on this boat, working with you everyday, it’s broken my brain or something. Like I don’t think I can go another day without kissing you. And I thought maybe you might be feeling some of that too. Or at least, I hoped you might be. If I’m wrong, if I’ve read it all backwards and you actually want me to fuck off for the rest of forever then you better tell me now, ‘cuz I’m like ten seconds away from losing my damn mind over here.” Sam releases the words like they had been building up inside him for weeks, a volcano of emotion spewing forth and scorching Bucky with its fire.
Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. Bucky nods his head vigorously, hair scraping and catching on the wood of the boat.
“You want me to fuck off?” Sam says, finally looking as nervous as Bucky feels.
Bucky immediately changes his nodding to shaking, “Don’t even- please just- Jesus Christ, Sam- I mean- can you just,” Bucky’s words stutter and fall all over each other.
“Can I just..?” Sam asks, but there’s a teasing lilt to it, like he knows what Bucky wants but is going to make him say it.
“I fucking hate you,” Bucky finally manages. “Kiss me! The whole thing! Everything! All of it!” He waves his hands frantically in the air to emphasize how much he needs this right now, not caring as he splashes water all over the both of them.
Sam doesn’t seem to care, either. He leans in again until they are nose to nose, his thumb stroking right at the corner of his jaw under his ear. Bucky feels the worms in his heart start to go crazy, multiplying and spreading by the second until his skin feels like it’s going to vibrate off completely.
Sam shifts until their noses are side to side and no longer tip to tip. Bucky can feel the warm breath escaping from Sam’s mouth onto his lips, his tongue coming out to taste at the heat. They both swallow at the same time.
The touch of Sam’s lips to his own feels like a hundred thousand things all at once and also absolutely nothing at all, like he’d just been fed the secrets of the universe but his brain had overloaded and then wiped completely clean. Bucky can’t even begin to figure out what he should be thinking; too busy tasting the salt on Sam’s upper lip, feeling the smooth glide of Sam’s chest against his own in the water. Bucky’s hands scramble to find a place to hold on, but get lost wandering through miles of warm skin until they finally settle at his waist, pulling Sam forward until Bucky can curve both his arms tight around him.
Sam’s tongue is another burst of salt against his own. Bucky can’t help but suck a little at it, drawing out the rich flavors of his mouth until Sam pulls away to bite at the line of Bucky’s jaw. A sound punches out of Bucky’s chest before he even realizes it’s coming and he slams his head back against the boat as Sam starts to move his lips lower, to suck and bite at Bucky’s neck like he’s trying to find the place that’ll make Bucky moan the loudest, make him writhe and gasp and drive out noises he’d never once thought he’d make in his life.
He feels completely out of his mind. Nothing makes sense anymore and Bucky is perfectly okay with that. He could be hanging upside on Mars surrounded by aliens, but as long as Sam kept pressing tight against him, he didn’t care. He’d let the world end and restart a thousand times if it meant Sam would keep kissing him.
Sam’s hands work their way up into Bucky’s hair, curling and uncurling his fingers in the short strands, pulling once, and then again and again when Bucky gasps and bucks up against him. Each tug like liquid heat injected directly into his spine, making his legs twitch and his eyes go foggy. Sam is hard and solid against him, breathy, almost silent sounds falling from his parted lips every time they push into each other. Bucky craves to hear more. He’s on fire with it. He wants to pull every noise out of Sam until he’s sure there’s no more to discover, and then he wants to do it all over again just to check. His hands wander down to the waistband of Sam’s shorts, dipping into the silky hot skin of his hips, brushing through the short hair that bunches up right below his navel, moving down further until Sam gasps and jerks with a stuttered, “B-Bucky.”
Water froths and churns between them, getting into their mouths and up their noses until they have to pull away from each other, coughing.
“Can we-” Sam starts.
“Boat,” Bucky agrees.
They swim around to the ladder and climb up onto the dry deck of the boat. Bucky isn’t sure what to do now. Should he get a towel or something to dry off? Were they gonna fuck now? Should they talk about this, or something?
“Should we, like, talk about this, or something?” Bucky asks, tentative. It feels a little weird to be talking while he’s dripping wet and his dick is hard, but it’s probably an important step.
Sam just looks at him. Now that they’re out of the water, Bucky feels a ripple of excitement to see just how hard he really is, the fabric of his shorts now plastered wet against the thick muscle of Sam’s thighs. Bucky feels his mouth go dry and his knees go a little weak at the sight.
“Later?” Bucky tries. Sam nods, already lunging towards him.
They collide.
It’s different, now that they’re out of the water. The friction between their bodies feels like a match striking tinder. No longer reigned in by the cooling power of the ocean water, they ignite against each other into a blazing wildfire. Bucky feels dazed. Drugged out by the whisper of Sam’s lips on his chest, the feel of Sam’s hands sliding underneath his shorts to cup at his dick. Bucky’s head rolls back at the sudden spike of pleasure that burns up his skin. He clutches at Sam, clawing at his shoulder blades until Sam finally starts to stroke, thumbing at the head while Bucky makes a desperate choking sound.
Sam fits himself closer against Bucky’s body until their standing chest to chest with Sam’s arm trapped in between them as his hand keeps working his cock.
“What- what do you want?” Sam whispers against his neck.
“I- anything. Whatever you want to do I’m, oh God, whatever you want, just please,” Bucky isn’t ashamed to beg at this point. He can’t even keep his eyes open anymore. They flutter open and shut, catching only glimpses of Sam. The dark skin of his shoulder, the curve of his ear, a drop of water sliding down his cheek.
Bucky has the sudden urge to lick at it, so he does.
“Ew! What the hell man, did you just lick me?” Sam cries, head jerking back so their eyes catch.
Bucky’s jaw drops, “Your hand is literally on my dick and you have a problem with me licking you?”
“Yes!” Sam shouts. Said hand squeezes his dick threateningly. Bucky squeaks.
“My tongue was in your mouth five minutes ago! What is the difference!”
“Everything!”
“Are you fucking-” Sam squeezes harder, “I’m sorry, Jesus, I’m sorry, okay! I won’t do it again,” Bucky concedes, fearing for his life and also too turned on to think. Sam huffs and touches where Bucky’d licked with his finger, “You better,” he says. Then his hand goes back to what it was doing before and Bucky forgets what they were even talking about.
At some point in the middle of everything Sam takes his shorts off and suddenly there is a whole universe of places for Bucky to grab. The soft give of his ass makes for an excellent hand hold as Bucky gives into the urge to rut up against him like the messy, needy thing that he is.
Sam aligns them so the sensitive head of their dicks rub against each other perfectly. Bucky feels his knees give out a little at the sparks that explode out from the touch.
Sam laughs as he tries to catch him. They collapse together onto the deck of the boat, Sam flat on his back with Bucky on top of him, their legs interweaving. Bucky immediately takes advantage of this new position and grinds down onto Sam until Sam is writhing and tugging at Bucky’s hair like he’s operating on pure instinct. Bucky feels the exact same way, his brain hardwired to chase after whatever makes Sam moan the loudest.
Bucky gets so lost in the heat and the skin and the euphoria of Sam, that he doesn’t even notice when Sam flips them over.
“Taking too damn long,” Sam groans out, and then dives back to bite bruises up Bucky’s chest. Bucky jerks and shouts when Sam takes his nipple into his mouth and sucks at it mercilessly. He didn’t even know they could be that sensitive.
Bucky’s hands need to be touching. They grip everywhere, greedy in their freedom and encouraged by how Sam strokes his hand faster the harder Bucky scrapes his nails against his back. Bucky can’t get enough. He’s frantic with how much he wants to feel Sam on him, how much he wants to absorb Sam into him until their pleasure becomes a feedback loop, driving them closer and closer to the edge with every shift of their bodies and brush of their tongues.
He can feel the heat beginning to coalesce at the base of his stomach, everything in his body turning frantic and fizzy like shaken soda. Distantly, he hears the sound of wood crunching as he arches into Sam’s body, seeking that one final pull into ecstasy.
Sam gives it to him, taking them both in hand and twisting just enough so that Bucky can feel the scrape of that calloused palm ricochet across every nerve in his body like a crazy electric pinball machine. Bucky might say something as he comes but he’s too busy being sucked under by the tidal wave of pure heat that sweeps through him to care.
Sam follows him right after, clutching at Bucky’s thigh and making the most gorgeous sound Bucky’s ever heard in his life. Bucky knows they could do this a million more times and he would never get tired of hearing it.
His hand, the real one, ends up cradling Sam’s head to his chest, thrilled that Sam even let’s him do that much. They lie there in silence for a while, neither of them moving as they come down from their post-orgasm high. Eventually, Sam slides off to flop next to him. Bucky’s chest feels cold without his weight. The hand that had been holding Sam’s head flexes.
“Well,” Sam says.
“Well,” says Bucky.
“Have you-? Before? With another man?” Sam asks, very clearly regretting the question as soon as it comes out.
“No. I mean, not that I remember. Maybe,” Bucky says. He turns on his side so he’s facing Sam. His skin glows warm and dark in the sun. Bucky wants to put his face to it and breathe in, to taste the heat that still lingers there against his tongue.
“So not even.. With Steve?” Sam’s mouth pulls into a thin line.
Bucky shakes his head, “We might’ve, when we were kids. Can’t really remember much now, though.”
Sam lets out a long breath through his nose, “Not sure how to say this the right way but I’m not just a rebound for you, right?”
“Rebound?” Bucky asks, not sure what he means. That word hadn’t been in his urbandictionary deep dive.
“You know, like someone you use to get over your ex but don’t actually have any feelings for” Sam replies, closing his eyes against the sun, “‘cuz if I am, you need to tell me now.”
Bucky shakes his head, wanting to be honest, needing to be honest, “I’ve had this like thing inside me. Made me feel crazy whenever I saw you, like I had bugs under my skin or something. Didn’t really know what it was until we started working together and I’d go home and miss the sound of your voice in my ear.”
Sam sits up and looks down at Bucky, eyes wide, “Seriously? This whole time?”
Bucky nods.
Sam’s face lights up with the brightest, wildest smile Bucky’s ever seen. Bucky feels blinded by its brilliance; he feels bathed in its warmth. He feels his own cheeks stretch into a smile that’s just as wide. Their teeth clack together when Sam swoops down for a kiss.
“What about you?” Bucky asks, trying not to sound desperate but failing, “when did you know?”
Sam hovers over him, “You remember when we fought the spider-kid, at that airport in Germany? Probably started around then.”
Bucky squirms a little at the bubbles of joy that rise up from his stomach at that. He can’t believe they’ve waited so long.
“He has a name, you know,” Bucky can’t help but say, trying to cover how happy he is.
“Yeah, I don’t care,” Sam laughs and bends down to kiss him again. Bucky’s never gonna get tired of this.
“We’ve been a little stupid about this, haven’t we,” Bucky says.
“When are we not,” Sam laughs, and Bucky feels a primal need to find out what that laugh tastes like, effectively cutting their conversation short.
“This mean I can call you sweetheart?” Bucky asks when they finally break apart.
Sam rolls his eyes, “Try me again, Barnes. Now get something to clean us up with, this is disgusting as hell.”
“Yes, darling,” Bucky says in complete sincerity. The towel Sam had been using earlier was still lying crumpled nearby so he hardly had to move to grab it. Sam whacks him across the back of the head.
“None of that,” Sam warns, “I’m not some 1930s dame you’re sneaking to the movies. I won’t settle for anything less than an eight course meal and a long walk on the beach. And you gotta meet my sister and nephews.”
“Not a problem,” Bucky declares, wiping at Sam’s stomach, “I am beloved by nephews and sisters across the nation.”
“Well what we’re not gonna do is say that in front of her. Ever.”
“Then should I tell her about the shark? Or that time I saw you and Redwing-” Bucky’s interrupted by Sam’s hand covering his mouth.
“Enough! Enough. Just act normal and you’ll be fine,” Sam sighs and removes his hand when Bucky licks a stripe up his palm, “Probably.”
Bucky smiles widely. The sun shines down bright on both of them. The ocean’s flat expanse is spread out before them huge and filled with possibility and here, on this boat with Sam, Bucky’s life is truly wonderful.