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September 15th, 1944
“The fuck you want, Dugan?” Bucky groaned as the man unceremoniously shoved into his tent.
“Get your dress uniform on, asshole,” Dum Dum responded in kind, shoving the offending item toward him.
“What, the damn President came to see Steve again ? Doesn’t he have an actual job to do?” He grumbled but he stripped down, pulling on the more meticulous uniform without a care in the world of the other man still standing there. There was no privacy in war. And despite his whining, it was clear that, as ‘Captain America’s best friend,’ he was well aware he was the one most likely to accompany the man for his more formal assignments.
“Keeping an eye on the two of you seems to be a full-time job.”
Bucky socked him in the shoulder and Dugan laughed, nudging at his socked feet with his own. “Get your damn shoes on and come on.”
Bucky was still grumbling as he followed his friend out, glancing around their campsite for a sighting of Steve but he must’ve already gotten a ride back to base without him. He made a mental note to give him hell for leaving without so much as a heads-up, even if he knew sometimes these things were sudden. They started walking through the woods but when Dugan didn’t turn to head towards the clearing, he raised an eyebrow.
“FDR hanging around in the middle of the woods?” He asked, getting suspicious now but not on guard. Dugan was a friend - he wouldn’t try anything.
“You’re the one who decided you were important enough to go hang out with the President today. I didn’t confirm it,” Dugan pointed out with a shrug.
“I didn’t… oh fuck off,” he huffed with a laugh. “For your information, I’ve been important enough to hang out with the President twice.”
“You’ve been important enough to be Steve’s plus-one while he hung out with the President twice.”
“Same thing.”
“Is not!”
“How the hell is it not? I didn’t see you hanging around with us.”
“Wouldn’t hurt the two of you to play nice every once in a while,” Jim’s voice came from ahead of them. He became visible through the trees a few moments later and Bucky stopped short.
“Wouldn’t hurt the two of you to explain what the hell is going on,” he said, his voice firm. He’d been dragged out into the middle of the woods in his nice uniform just for one of their teammates to already be way out here?
“Hold your fire, Cowboy. You’ll find out in a couple minutes,” Dugan huffed, hand clapping him on the back.
Bucky only followed because he trusted these men with his life already and he figured he could afford to trust them in their bullshit as well. And if for some wild reason they were luring him out to kill him, well, he trusted Steve to get vengeance.
It was unnecessary, as a few minutes later, they wandered into a different clearing that was much further from their campsite than the first one. But there were people this time - Gabe, Jacques, Montgomery. And Steve, also in his dress uniform, looking just as confused and probably just as frustrated as Bucky did.
“We know you two went out and bought rings in the city a few weeks ago,” Gabe explained. “And probably did something already to exchange them.”
Bucky stared across the way at Steve and wondered if he looked as pale as the blonde did, losing all color at being caught. The guys had known they were together, they’d never seemed to have a problem with it before. They teased them, sure, but it had all been in good fun. Or so they’d thought. But maybe they’d gone too far now, upsetting their beliefs on the sanctity of marriage.
“You should marry me, Buck.”
“Stop fucking with me.”
“I ain’t! I mean it. Marry me.”
“What priest do you think is stupid enough to do something like that?”
“We don’t need a priest. Just me and you, maybe a couple of cheap rings. I don’t want to have any regrets.”
“...ask me properly.”
Steve grinned, easily slipping down to one knee in the middle of their tent.
“You gonna marry me, Buck?”
“Try again.”
“Bucky! Marry me, damn it.”
“Not a question,” Bucky pointed out.
They were both laughing hard at this point, Steve’s forehead pressed to Bucky’s thigh as his body shook with laughter.
“You gonna try that again?” Bucky asked, the first one to catch his breath.
“Oh Buck, I’ll ask over and over and over again.”
Montgomery walked towards him with something behind his back and Bucky took a few steps backwards until he was stopped by Dugan. But it hadn’t been a knife or a weapon of any sort - Montgomery pinned a flower to his chest before turning and walking towards Steve, presumably to do the same.
“But we couldn’t let you guys get married in secret - it’s supposed to be a celebration,” Gabe continued.
“So if you boys don’t mind,” Dugan said from behind him, throwing one arm around Bucky’s shoulders while he pulled out a small Bible. “We went ahead and planned your wedding for you.”
Montgomery produced a few more wildflowers and pretty weeds, spacing them out carefully to resemble two parallel lines for an aisle. Someone had carried a record player all the way out here and Jacques was holding the camera their photographer used to shoot their commercials and advertisements. Bucky raised an eyebrow at it and he shrugged with a smile.
“He ‘forgot’ it and will be back to get it first thing in the morning,” he explained. Bucky laughed quietly, at the camera, at the record player, at all the nonsense around them.
Steve was only looking at him though, as if trying to figure out how he was feeling about all this. He approached Bucky, keeping about a foot of space between them.
“We don’t have to do this, Buck,” he said quietly to him. It was clear Steve hadn’t been in on this. “It won’t change anything, we can just keep it between us.”
Bucky glanced around before shaking his head.
“Why not? They went through all this trouble already,” he pointed out.
“And the trouble of getting both of you a day of leave without you finding out about it,” Jim added, nobody even pretending to give the two of them a semblance of privacy. The couple both laughed even if it was the kindest thing they could’ve imagined their teammates doing for them.
“Well we can’t take a honeymoon without a wedding,” Steve pointed out with a smirk, slipping his dog tags off of his neck. He undid the clasp and pulled the ring off of it and Bucky quickly followed his lead, both of them swapping the rings back to their purchaser.
“You gonna marry me, Buck?”
“I’ll happily marry you over and over and over again.”
The ceremony was short and sweet, bypassing a lot of the fanfare. It wasn’t a traditional wedding, after all, and Dugan certainly wasn’t ordained. But they both said ‘I do’ and then explained that they’d already exchanged private vows so their vows to each other this time were quite short.
“I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, Buck,” Steve said quietly as he took Bucky’s left hand and slid his ring on.
“I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, Doll,” Bucky repeated, copying his motions of sliding Steve’s ring on.
The boys groaned at the common phrase between the two, having heard their phrase for ‘I love you’ way too often.
“Well what are you waiting for? Kiss your groom, dammit,” Dugan encouraged, stepping out of the way to join the boys. They’d never properly kissed in front of the team - maybe something quick and chaste when reunited after a particularly hard fight - but now, Bucky cupped Steve’s cheeks in his hands and eagerly kissed him. Steve’s hands wrapped around his waist, one quickly shifting up to the top of his back, and he dipped Bucky.
Steve publicly danced for the first time while Montgomery cranked the record player and Bucky had to snicker the fourth time his foot was stepped on. Steve was a bit pink as he apologized and Bucky shook his head, leaning in to kiss him once more.
“It’s worth it,” he whispered.
Later that evening, they were all settled around the fire. Steve sat on the ground with his legs spread, Bucky tucked against him with his back to Steve’s chest.
“Guys, I just, I wanted to thank you..” Bucky started, grabbing everyone’s attention. “For this, for everything, but especially for not letting Steve get married in that damn Captain America uniform.”
They all laughed and even Steve was a good sport.
Four photos were taken that day - one of the kiss, one of them dancing, one at the campfire laughing, and one of the two sitting side by side away from the group, Bucky’s head on Steve’s shoulder. They had carefully tucked them away with Steve’s stuff before they left for their thirty-six hour honeymoon and the rings were placed back onto dog tags and slipped under shirts.
Exactly four months later, to the day, Bucky ziplined onto a train and never made his way back to camp that night.
Exactly five months later, to the day, Steve’s plane filled with icy water with him still inside.
September 15, 2024
Exactly nine-hundred sixty months later, to the day…
A metal hand held the edge of a framed photo of them kissing. The photo was worn, torn at the edges and scarred with time. He must’ve been sitting there for a while because at some point, the bed dipped beside him with Steve’s weight and the man gently pried the frame from his fingers to knock him out of his daze.
“You good?” Steve asked quietly. Bucky nodded, leaning into Steve’s side carefully. They were both dressed to the nines in perfectly tailored three-piece suits and he didn’t want to hear it if they messed anything up. Bucky was also in a new multi- billion dollar arm, this one equipped with a tiny metal buffer on the left ring finger that could go up and down. If it was up, it’d be barely visible, but it would allow a ring to stay on with no concerns about it sliding off. It was a new feature to his arm, one last barrier to today being conquered.
There had been a million things in the way of the two of them and a proper, legal wedding. The law, first off. And then death. Steve’s loneliness, Buck’s brainwashing. Years in Wakanda, fighting Thanos, Buck disappearing for five years, fighting Thanos again. Steve had suffered being apart much more than Bucky had; first when he had fallen to his death only inches away from his hand then knowing he was alive but not being able to help him. Steve had been the one to suffer from Bucky vanishing, five long years without him. And Steve had again felt the loss when he spent so long trying to get the stones back where they belonged while Bucky waited five seconds. Five precious, short seconds until his lover reappeared on the same platform, a bit wobbly as he stumbled over to Bucky and held him for all he was worth. And then he kissed him breathless in front of Sam and Bruce both.
And in Steve’s opinion, Bucky had served his time and done his own suffering. He was a little fragile these days and eagerly accepted every ounce of attention Steve gave him. So Steve was grateful that if one of them had to feel the misery of being apart, it had been him and not Bucky.
And today was the last step. Today they got married in front of all of their friends for the second time. It was extravagant, Tony had made sure of that, but it was still private - there were no cameras other than the singular photographer they’d hired to document the day. After all, they were retiring and they needed some photos to decorate the walls of their new quiet home. But before they could do that, somebody had to walk down that aisle.
“Happy 80th Anniversary, Buck,” Steve murmured, kissing the top of his head. “You really gonna marry me?”
“Over and over and over again,” Bucky promised.