stucky + things you said when you were drunk

a/n; maybe i will @ you next time 👀 also this is my first time even attempting to write stucky so @ anyone some feedback on characterisation would be lovely and thanks @kurtwxgners for proofing this for me ur my fave

Sitting alone in a corner of the bar till closing time wasn’t how tonight was supposed to go. Not that Bucky had really had a plan for the night. Whatever he’d had in mind hadn’t involved Steve leaving so early on, though. Not that Steve has ever had any kind of regard for Bucky’s plans.  

He can’t entirely blame Steve for it. Agent Carter is beautiful and intelligent and ferocious and if Bucky didn’t know Steve better he’d say she was more than a match for him. He knows better, though. He knows Steve is more than a match for just about anyone else on the planet. Knowing that doesn’t make it hurt less, though.

The conversation is playing on repeat in his head and there’s nothing he can do to stop it, and it stings just as much as it did the first time every time he sees the faint smile playing at the corner of Steve’s lips, the way his eyes swept over her, following her as she left the bar. Bucky’s knuckles are white on his glass and he knows he has no right to be angry; not really. And he’s not angry, mostly. A little sad, a little bitter, a little betrayed, but not really angry.

Maybe at himself.

The door swings open and he hears a faint apology to the bartender and the rush of affection that shoots through him as he hears Steve approaching almost makes him dizzier than all the alcohol coursing through his veins. It always happened before, but there’s a certain smugness in knowing Steve will always come back for him. It happened in Germany, it’s happening now. It’s happened countless times before. They always come back for each other.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be tomorrow morning?” Bucky can hear the amusement in Steve’s voice and he wants to laugh, wants to play along with the joke, but it’s hard to laugh when all he can see is his best friend leaving him in the bar, following after Agent Carter. “C’mon, Buck. Let’s get you to bed.” He feels Steve’s arm slide carefully under his, propping him against his side as he all but lifts him out of the chair.

“Since fuckin when have you been this strong,” he mumbles, and he knows the answer but he asks the question anyway, because he knows it’ll make Steve laugh.

He’s right. It does make him laugh.

“Since I got shot up with some kind of chemical. Craziest vitamin any doctor ever tried giving me,” Steve replies, and Bucky glances up to catch sight of the small smile twisting the corner of his mouth, needing to see his friend smile. Needing to know he can still make Steve smile. It’s a strange insecurity, especially after spending so much of his life doing exactly that, but after watching the almost bashful smile he had given Agent Carter, the reassurance that not everything is completely different soothes some of the tight knot of worry at the back of Bucky’s mind.  

“Yeah. Right. Since then.” Bucky is blind drunk and he can feel Steve’s arm around his shoulders, helping him stumble down the street, and there are so many things he wants to say hovering so close to the surface of his mind. Feelings he knows he shouldn’t give voice to, lurking at the back of his throat, ready for him to loosen his grip on his impulse control. He doesn’t, though. He can’t, because Bucky is a lot of things, but selfish isn’t one of them. Not when it comes to Steve. “You’d be good together,” is all he says, words slurring slightly. “You’n the Agent. She’s like you, y’know. Stubborn. I think she’d have liked you before you were-” he breaks off, reaching clumsily over to pat Steve’s chest, gesturing vaguely at his body “-like this.”

Steve nods, and the small smile tugging at his lips is different to the one that was there a half second ago, and it makes Bucky’s heart twist painfully as he hears him murmur “maybe she would have.”

They lapse into silence for a while as they walk together, though realistically, Steve is doing most of the walking. A few blocks pass and Bucky’s chest is tight and he can’t help himself as he says quietly “y'know I love you, right?”

Steve glances down at him, a little surprised and it takes him a second before he says “yeah, Buck, I know. I love you too.”

It should make him feel better but it doesn’t. It doesn’t make him feel better at all because he knows they don’t mean the same thing. The ache in his chest is all too familiar as they continue down the street together and Bucky knows he shouldn’t be shocked that drinking to forget didn’t work for him tonight. It never has in the past.

It still hurts, though.