Chapter Text
It was well and truly pouring at that point, but somehow Bucky remembered to turn of the rental car — I can’t believe you stole it, Buck, the keys were literally just inside the room —before they tracked half the water in Texas into the house.
Ashleigh/Kayleigh was back at the front desk, perking up as they came in. “You found him!”
“He didn’t find me,” Bucky said grumpily. “I came back.”
She nodded. “I had a cat like that. But she always brought back dead birds instead of flowers.”
Sam snorted, which earned him a half-hearted glare from Bucky. He turned back to the desk. “Is there a way to extend our stay one more night?”
“Of course!” She clicked a couple times on the computer. “Actually, the room you originally booked is free, the two-bed, if you want to move…?”
Bucky looked at Sam, which was so unfair . “Um…” he said, floundering. “I mean…we do like the decor.” Bucky looked like he was trying not to laugh, which was so mean and not helping at all. “Let’s just…not bother with moving our stuff, don’t you think?”
“Okie dokie!” Ashleigh/Kayleigh said brightly. “Makes my job easier. What are y’all up to tonight?”
“I was trying to figure that out,” Bucky said. “What’s the nightlife like here?”
She blinked, and now it was Sam’s turn to try not to laugh. “Um. Well. Me and my classmates usually just pile into the bed of Bradley’s truck and go out to the field, you know. Get drunk. The guys do donuts or whatever. Maria did get alcohol poisoning last time, though, which was less fun? I don’t know if that was what you were asking?”
Nice to know nothing about being a high schooler in a small town had changed since Sam was her age. Though he was starting to think there was a decent chance his tip earlier was going to go towards paying off an MIP ticket. “We’re not in Brooklyn anymore, Toto,” he said dryly. “You asked me out without planning anything?”
“I was busy,” Bucky muttered.
“Doing math and stealing cars.”
“Oh!” she said suddenly. “I know what’s going on tonight. The high school jazz band does this end-of-year swing dance fundraiser thing!”
“There!” Bucky said triumphantly. “Date planned.”
The fundraiser wasn’t until dinner and the weather didn’t seem to want to clear up at all, which would usually make Sam feel a little stir-crazy. Now, though, he was perfectly content with staying in the stupid bluebonnet-themed room forever, cycling through board and card games, the rain tapping gently on the window.
He had also found out that the best way to keep Bucky from winning every game was to sneak a kiss every time he was trying to decide which card to play, which was not cheating, thank you very much. Wasn’t his fault it completely reset Bucky’s brain for a good five seconds. He was just mad Sam came up with the idea first.
The downpour slowed to the occasional sprinkle by the time they walked to the high school. Sam wondered when would be a good time to bring up that he didn’t exactly know how to swing dance. And considering the Wilsons were Louisianan born and bred, it seemed like too much to hope that he had some long-lost ancestor from Harlem that could guide him through it, maybe briefly possess him so he didn’t make a fool of himself.
He could two-step. That was just fast-fast-slow, fast-fast-slow, all around the dance floor. Simple enough. He remembered the girls at the country dance halls were always more likely to say yes to the guys who knew how to dip them, which he tried exactly once (it ended in a trip to the ER).
Any time he saw a video of swing dancing, there were always dips. That seemed to be, like, half the dance. He didn’t want to go to the ER. He didn’t want to send Bucky to the ER. Who even did the dipping in this relationship, anyway?
“What are you thinking about?” Bucky asked, a smile in his voice like he knew it was going to be something he knew he could make fun of him for.
“Where the nearest UrgentCare is.”
“Aw, Sammy, you don’t trust my dancing skills?”
“That you’re going to be dusting off after, what, a century?”
He could hear Bucky doing the mental math. “Three quarters of a century?”
“Wait, you actually haven’t gone dancing since then?”
“Oh, no, you’re right, I actually went all the time when I was in HYDRA,” he deadpanned. “You know, for team building. We went line dancing.”
“Why do you sound dead serious?”
“Because I am.”
Sam was spared from having to express his skepticism when they stepped inside the school and the joys of small town life made themselves known — everybody they met cleaning up the morning before were at the fundraiser. He immediately caught the eye of Shay, who of course immediately grabbed her wife, pointed at them, and started making her way towards them.
“Do we have to talk to them?” Bucky complained.
Sam squeezed his arm. “You chose this event. There’s literally nothing else to do in this town. Obviously there are people we know.”
“If this was New York…” he muttered.
“One conversation, one dance, and one round at the silent auction, and then you can go back to beating my ass at gin rummy,” he promised.
“I’m not that antisocial.”
“Just embarrassed you thought they had husbands?”
“I was a little distracted with you clinging to me, trying to trip over every possible piece of furniture.”
Okay, no, Sam distinctly remembered being the flustered one. “Wait—”
“Hey, y’all are still here!” Shay declared. “Welcome!”
“I didn’t know gay marriage was legal,” Bucky blurted in lieu of “hello”.
Sam winced. “And by that he means ‘hi, how are you, sorry I made things awkward not realizing you were married.’”
“Yes,” Bucky confirmed helpfully.
“Oh, no need to apologize,” she said easily. “I just misread the room, you know. It happens.”
“We know some people were raised differently,” Laila added, whatever that meant.
“I’m not homophobic,” Bucky tried to clarify.
“Just out of the loop,” Sam added.
“We have gay friends,” Bucky said.
The jazz band picked up again, and suddenly a potential trip to the ER was a lot less scary than the prospect of digging themselves deeper into this conversational hole. “Wow, Buck, this music sure has a nice swing to it,” he said, too loudly.
“Yes, y’all should dance!” Shay said graciously. “Don’t let us keep you!”
“‘Yes, Bucky, let’s be normal, talk to people,’” Bucky hissed as they turned away. “‘It’ll go great!’”
“We have gay friends,” Sam said flatly.
“We have lots of friends. I’m sure we do! Statistically!”
“Shut up and show me where the hell I’m supposed to put my hands.”
It turned out Bucky was the dipper in this relationship, and he did it damn well.
It also turned out that waking up spooning was not only something that happened in the movies. He was pretty sure two-days-ago Sam would have a heart attack if he saw him now, laying pressed up against Bucky fucking Barnes like it was the most normal thing in the world.
If Bucky was marveling at the novelty of it all, he certainly wasn’t showing it, muttering about how early it was as he rolled out of bed. Complaining about how we should’ve driven down to the base last night , as if he wasn’t the one who booked the room an extra night.
And maybe he was crazy, maybe it was the post-successful-first-date afterglow, but he was looking forward to spending an hour in the car with a grumpy uncaffeinated Bucky.
(He was pretty certain the complaining was mostly for show, anyway, if the smile tugging on his lips as he threw their clothes in the duffle bag was any indication).
Neither of them had a shot at drinking enough coffee during the drive to match Torres’s energy bright and early at seven in the morning, however, a fact proven when they picked him up in Killeen.
He wasted no time with small talk. “So, Cap, how did you like the flowers?” he asked, innocent as can be.
“Oh, so everyone knows all our business now, huh?” Sam said.
Bucky buried his face in his hands. “I didn’t tell him anything.”
“He called me in the middle of the night, asking me to hack into your American Airlines account,” Torres supplied, “which was weird enough but not super telling, but then he asked me if you ‘seemed like a flowers kind of guy’, so…”
“Middle of the night? You said it was, like, 9pm! Because of time zones!”
“Well, I wasn’t in Hawaii, was I?”
“How am I supposed to know where it’s nine o’clock? Sorry for trusting you!”
“Okay, well, you just sounded so sad when you thought you woke me up, so I had to come up with something, and I definitely thought you had figured out that it was impossible for it to be that time unless I was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and was just being nice about it.”
“In my defense,” Bucky said, “this was drunk me. Regular me knows how time zones work.”
“Really?” Sam said, skeptically. “What time is it in New York?”
“Eight.”
“You hesitated!”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
“I hate you,” Bucky said, voice laced with affection.
“Love you, too.”