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“So, who all wants a postcard?” Bucky turned around from where he was flicking through a rack of glossy pictures and raised a questioning eyebrow at Steve who was dreamily staring out the window, “Hey, punk,” Bucky poked Steve in the shoulder with a metal finger, trying to get his attention, “who wants a card?”
“Huh?” Steve turned around, eyes bright and sunny, but with a bashful look on his face, “what’d you say, Buck?”
Bucky smiled at Steve. It’d been a while since he’d seen Steve look so relaxed and at ease in his own skin, and seeing him like this, well, that was just the cherry on top of the shake, “I asked, who all wanted a post card.” He cocked his head behind him at the rack of glossy cards before looking back at Steve.
Steve rolled his lips between his teeth and hummed for a second or two, “Sam, Nat, Clint by default because they don’t know how to share- uhh,”, he put his hands on his hips and studied the floor, “Bruce, I think, and we should send one to Pepper and Tony out of common courtesy. Maybe Hill, too. Don’t know how we’re gonna’ get one to Thor but he wanted one..”
“So,” Bucky said, drawing out the ‘o’ and turning back to the rack of cards, “all the Avengers?”
Steve chuckled, nice and rich that warmed up Bucky’s insides, “Pretty much, Buck.”
He felt Steve move next to him as he sifted through various cards; the other man’s warmth radiating off him like a furnace, “How about this one?” Bucky picked up a card with a view of the Eiffel tower and a badly edited Santa hat on the tower’s point.
Steve snorted a laugh and nodded before turning to show Bucky his own choice of a fat Santa sitting on at a lakeside restaurant with a baguette in his hand, “How ‘bout this one for Clint?”
Bucky smiled down at the card and nodded. They took a couple more minutes, picking card for each Avenger and laughing whenever the image was funny- or even when it wasn’t-, bought the cards, and wrote their own sentence or so on each before slipping them in the box to be sent across the ocean.
As they walked out the store, Bucky took Steve’s hand and laced their fingers together, both of them walking in sync out to the snowy, Paris sidewalks. It was a nice night, snow fluttering softly down, the stars and moon visible because of the dim street lights.
It had been a while since they got a vacation away from the US. Both of them were busy with missions, and idiots trying to take over the world through New York.
After Bucky gained his senses back from HYDRA’s mind washing, and blew up a couple HYDRA facilities, he went to find Steve. At first he tried searching high and low through DC, but no Steve Rogers or Sam Wilson was to be found. With a heavy heart, memories flooding his brain like a broken dam flooded a city, and a strong will, he continued his search. He went as far as going back to their old apartment in Brooklyn (which is now a bakery), but Steve wasn’t there and it felt like he was going crazy because he needed Steve, needs him, and he just let the man slip out between his fingers because he didn’t remember. And when he finally did remember, boy, did that hurt.
He’d get flashes of childhood visions throughout the day, teenage stumbling through warm afternoons when the sun was lowering, and soft kisses and touches sent through his dreams. It was like he was punched in the gut each time he remembered, like a cruel reminder from God that he messed up.
And then he thought about who Steve was other than Steve Grant Rogers, the skinny kid from Brooklyn that he’d follow till the end of the line, he was Captain America, the one he followed to the jaws of death, the one who he fished out of the Potomac, the one who Steve had to become and has no way out of being.
An Avenger.
So, he went to New York City, tracked down the tower, and got friendly with a couple of security guards that didn’t want to let him in the front door.
It wasn’t all peachy after that- after they let him through the door and he found his way up to Steve’s floor. Steve cried on him for who knows how long, while he held the man and whispered things from their past in his ear. The rest of the team didn’t trust him, it was mostly Natasha, though, because she knew the him from before and was something of Steve’s best friend, but she eventually came around- only took her a couple months of watching and studying, but that was better than her not trusting him at all. He was forced by the other Avengers- minus Steve- to get a psych evaluation, which he passed by the hair of his teeth, and rode out the rest.
Now, two years later, they were on their first real vacation. Not some “vacation” that was part of a mission on some tropical island, but something that was just them two, on their own time, on Tony’s dime, and not giving a fuck about anything but sightseeing, trying new things, and loving each other.
And it was nice.
“It’s been decades since I’ve been in Paris.” Steve said, sighing, and stopping the both of them in front of a frozen-over lake.
Bucky hummed, his breath visible in the cold air, and squeezed Steve’s hand, “We came here during the war, right? Had ourselves a little break?”
Steve nodded, “Yeah, found a standing hotel and spent a quiet night in while the other Howling Commandos got drunk at the downstairs bar.”
The memory itself was a little hazy, but Bucky remembers it. Him and Steve warm and sated under soft blankets, whispering promises of what they were going to do after the war, hands unable to stop touching the other man because it had been so long since they’d been intimate, and smiles on their faces.
“You think they knew?” Bucky asked, eyes on a crack in the lake’s ice.
“Think who knew what?”
He looked up at Steve before looking back out to the frozen lake where snow was starting to dust over, “The Howlings, you think they knew about me and you?” He remembers not being too subtle with Steve back during the war days but he was never sure if he was that obvious. If he could have gotten them discharged for unorderly conduct.
“I think they knew,” Steve said quietly, him too looking out at the lake, “if they didn’t they must have been too pigheaded or blind.”
Bucky let out a small chuckle, “I couldn’t help it.” He shrugged and leaned into Steve’s warm arm, “Had to have them know you were mine.”
“I don’t think there was a person in the 107th that didn’t know we belonged to each other.” Steve said, leaning back into Bucky.
“Shoulda’ gave you my Ma’s ring and dogtags to make it official.” Bucky said, wincing. A flock of birds flew out of a tree across from them and Bucky kind of wanted to go fly with him because this was not the way he wanted to propose to Steve.
Steve nudged him with his arm and smiled, “Could always give ‘em to me now.”
“Don’t got them on me.” Bucky muttered, wishing he was up with the birds.
“Well,” Steve started, sounding slightly hesitant, “I guess we’re just gonna have to trade rings and tags when we get back to New York.”
“That a promise, Captain?” Bucky pulled his eyes off the lake and looked at Steve whose cheeks were flushed with cold and, probably, embarrassment, snow sticking to his knit hat. He thinks if it could, his heart would beat out of his chest.
Steve looked down at him and smiled, one of those 1000wat ones Bucky loves, too, “You bet it is, hope you’re ready to be tied down to little ol’ me.”
“Steve,” Bucky said, mocking exasperation, “i’ve been ready to be tied down to you since the 30s.”
They were both quiet for a moment, smiles on their faces as they looked down at each other, before Steve broke the silence, “I guess this means we gotta’ send the group a card sayin’ we’re practically hitched?” Steve asked, eyes back on the lake, shoulders relaxed.
“Eh, there’s always tomorrow. Right now,” he said, giving Steve a salacious smile, “right now I think you owe me a little ‘just got hitched’ sex.”
Steve looked back down, eyebrow raised, and cheeks definitely flushed out of embarrassment, “Oh, do I now?”
“Ya sure do.”
“Well,” Steve snorted, “you better start walking back to the hotel, then.”
Bucky gave Steve a wide grin and a sloppy salute, “Ey, ey, Captain’.”