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By now, Bucky should really know better than to go to parties with Steve.
Okay, yeah, Steve is an art student, and he weighs about ninety pounds soaking wet; nobody’s gonna look at him and think ‘party animal’, much less ‘voted most likely to start a brawl on the balcony three semesters running.’ Problem is, Steve has the attitude of a guy three times his size, and once he gets a couple of drinks in him he forgets that he doesn’t have the bulk to back it up.
Or, well, he does. In the form of Bucky, who has gotten into more fistfights in the six months since he met Steve than in the previous twenty years combined.
“You’re a pain in the ass,” he tells Steve, who is slumped bonelessly against his side as the subway tunnel rushes past outside the window.
For a moment, Steve doesn’t answer. Bucky pokes him to see if he’s still alive, and he looks up, blinking blearily, and says, “How much gum do you think gets stuck under the seats in here?”
“A lot,” Bucky says. “How much gum do you think I’d have to cram in your face to get you to stop mouthing off to linebackers?”
“I mean,” Steve waves a hand. “They clean it, but it’s got to be a lot. A truckload. A boatload.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Bucky groans. There’s a soft snort to his right, but when he looks up, the man three seats down from them— the only other passenger, thank God— appears immersed in his book.
“A shipload,” Steve adds, and actually giggles.
“Don’t expect me to be nice to your hungover ass tomorrow morning,” Bucky says. “I’m going to wake you up bright and early. With cymbals. Pay you back for the headache that last goon gave me.”
“Cymbals,” Steve snickers, and then his face turns abruptly serious. “You didn’t tell me you were hurt.”
“You were busy getting your face pounded.” Bucky ducks away when Steve reaches for his head. “Knock it off, I’m fine.”
Steve ignores him, prodding none too gently at his scalp, brow furrowed. “You have a goose-egg,” he pronounces finally.
“Feels like I got a whole nest of ‘em,” Bucky says, and bats Steve’s hand away. “It hurts plenty already, leave it alone.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve says solemnly. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”
“Given that the other choice was a couple of goons dropping you off the fourth-floor balcony, I’m okay with it,” Bucky says. “Just try not to make a habit of it.”
“I won’t,” Steve says, which is a bald-faced lie that Bucky very kindly doesn’t call him on. Then, thoughtfully, “Do you think I would have bounced?”
“What?”
“There was a canopy roof over the deli on the first floor. Do you think I would have bounced if I hit it?”
“What are you supposed to be, Wile E. Coyote? No, I don’t think you would have bounced. I think you woulda broken every bone in your dumbass body. I would have had to scrape you off the pavement like a pancake.”
The man three seats down makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a snicker, but when Bucky looks at him, he’s tucking his book away, his face composed and blandly innocent.
Good-looking guy, Bucky observes, idly. Nice body under the USAF t-shirt, killer cheekbones. Definitely worth checking out if he was alone.
“Wile E. Coyote,” Steve snickers, and Bucky looks back at him. “Hey, what d’you think the ‘E’ stands for?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
“‘Cause it’s funny, if you think about it. It’s on his business cards. For one thing, why does a coyote need business cards? And another—”
“This is my punishment, right,” Bucky says. “I get it. I did something terrible in a past life, and this is my punishment.”
“—and another thing,” Steve continues, grinning. It’s not that he isn’t drunk, because he is. Plastered, even. But it’s not just that he’s drunk; it’s also just Steve, being an aggravating little shit. Probably trying to distract Bucky from his headache with the force of sheer irritation. “I don’t think they ever said what it is. It’s just funny, you know?”
Bucky drops his face into his hands and groans. “It’s a pun, you jackass. He doesn’t have a middle name. It’s just a pun.”
“What do you think it stands for, though? Edward, Edwin, Eugene…”
“Ethelbert,” says someone else. Bucky looks up, blinking, to meet the amused eyes man in the third row. His mouth is curled like he’s trying unsuccessfully to press the grin out of it. It’s really pretty cute. “It stands for Ethelbert.”
Steve beams at him, then turns a triumphant look at Bucky. “See? He knows.”
“Thank you,” Bucky says. “Please excuse my friend, here. He’s an idiot.”
“No, I’m not,” Steve retorts, with great dignity. “I’m drunk.”
“He’s a drunk idiot,” Bucky amends. He twists to lean over the seat and hold out a hand. “I’m Bucky.”
“Sam,” the guy says, taking it. His grip is warm and firm, and he doesn’t even blink at the nickname— another point in his favor. Usually when Bucky is trying to flirt— or at least considering trying to flirt, challenging as that is with Steve hanging all over him like a cuddly, albeit regrettably heterosexual, octopus— he tries to go by Jim. It’s at least slightly more dignified.
Reluctantly retrieving his hand, Bucky nods at Steve. “And the drunk idiot is Steve.”
Steve snorts into his neck. Dignity is probably a lost cause at this point.
Sam is smiling at them like they’re cute instead of a pair of freaks, at least. “So, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but what the hell happened to your faces?”
“Something wrong with my face?” Bucky asks lightly.
“Nothing at all,” Sam says, laughing. “Not every guy could manage to look that pretty with a black eye, believe me.”
Bucky touches his eye, feeling the tenderness there, and grimaces. “Couple of goons tried to throw this idiot off a balcony.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.” Sam is looking at Steve now with the kind of sympathetic expression that Steve seems to inspire in most people before they actually sit down and talk to him for five minutes, so Bucky adds, “He started it.”
“No, I didn’t,” Steve says.
“You threw the first punch.”
“He had it coming.”
“Right, because you gotta punch every mouthy asshole in New York.”
“He was being homophobic,” Steve says, very primly for a guy who looks like he went ten rounds with a meat grinder. “And rude.”
“You’re not gay.”
“No,” Steve says stubbornly, “but you are. And it’s still not right.”
Bucky rolls his eyes. “Sweet as the sentiment is, it doesn’t count as defending my honor when I’m the one who has to save your ass. Especially if I get a black eye in the process. You see what I have to put up with?” he adds to Sam, hoping that he hasn’t misread this whole situation entirely and they’re not about to get in another fight. His head already hurts plenty.
To his relief, Sam is grinning. “At least he’s cute.”
“There is that,” Bucky agrees, letting out the breath he was holding. “For all the good it does me.”
The train is slowing now, the lights sliding lazily by as they approach the Court Street station. Bucky pokes Steve in the side. “Hey. We’re here.”
“I’m up,” Steve says, listing heavily against him as he stands. Sam is standing as well, and when Bucky looks over at him, he tilts his chin a little, smiling.
“What? It’s my stop.”
“You live in Brooklyn?” Sam raises his eyebrows, and Bucky jerks a chin at his t-shirt, blushing. “Sorry. Saw the shirt, figured maybe you were stationed at Fort Hamilton.”
“Oh, I am. For now, anyway.”
“But you don’t live on base.”
“Nah.” Sam’s smile turns rueful. “Was dating a musician out here for a while. Next thing I know, he runs off to Memphis and sticks me with the lease. Could be worse, I guess. I’m a little too old to be babysitting the jarheads.”
Bucky blows out a breath, steadying himself on the seat-back as the train car lurches to a halt. Boyfriend. So that’s… encouraging. “Tough covering the rent out here all by yourself.”
“I get by,” Sam says cheerfully. “Besides, it’s a dump. You wanna come by sometime, I’ll show you.”
“Careful,” Bucky says hopefully. “You wouldn’t want me to get the wrong idea.”
“Or maybe the right one,” Sam says, smiling, and turns to go. Grinning, Bucky follows him out the door into the cool, fluorescent-lit darkness of the platform.
Steve is listing heavily by the time they hit the sidewalk, humming a meandering little tune to himself. After the third time he nearly wanders out into traffic, Bucky loops an arm around his waist and uses it to steer him. Steve goes compliantly enough, which means that he really is hammered and it’s finally starting to kick in. Which probably means that Bucky will be spending some portion of the night holding his hair back while he pukes. Not exactly how he was hoping to spend his evening.
Oh, well. Such is college. Not like Steve’s never done the same for him, and it’s hard to hold it against the guy when four beers will knock him sideways.
“You guys got far to go?” Sam asks, slinging his bag over his shoulder and falling into step beside them. “He doesn’t look like he’s got too much steam left.”
“I can hear you,” Steve mumbles.
“Not too far,” Bucky answers. “You?”
“I’ll walk with you guys for a little bit. If you don’t mind, anyway.”
“I don’t mind,” Bucky says. He jostles Steve a little bit. “Steve, you mind?”
“Nah,” Steve mumbles. His eyes are at half-mast. “But take it easy on the flirting, would you? Way I feel, I might puke and ruin the mood.”
Heat flares in Bucky’s face, but he still manages to shoot Steve a venomous glare. “Thanks a lot, pal.”
“Welcome,” Steve says sleepily. “He’s nice. Probably outta your league, too, but I’m still rooting for you.”
Bucky sighs, and glances over at Sam. “I’m so sorry. Ignore him.”
“I can take it easy on the flirting,” Sam says, grinning. It really is a very attractive grin. “If it would make you feel better.”
Bucky laughs at that, startled. “I don’t mind, trust me,” he says. “But I gotta admit, Steve’s right. You’re definitely out of my league.”
“Nah, I doubt that.” Sam says. “But hey, if you wanna check it out for sure, maybe we can meet up for coffee sometime.”
“You ask out every drunk with a black eye you meet on the subway?”
“Nah,” Sam says. “Just the cute ones. How about it?”
Bucky opens his mouth, but Steve beats him to the punch. Swaying slightly, but with a determined expression, he steps up to Sam, fixes him with a glare, and says, “What’s your baseball team?”
“Seriously?” Bucky asks, exasperated.
“Yankees,” Sam answers easily, and Bucky’s gotta hand it to him— his deadpan is almost perfect, other than a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. He groans anyway, just on principle.
“I take it back,” Steve says seriously to Bucky. “You can’t date him. That’s a travesty.”
“I could convert him,” Bucky says. Then, to Sam, “Right? I could convert you to a real baseball team.”
Sam laughs outright at that. “Never let it be said that Samuel T. Wilson does not have an open mind. Especially if somebody else is buying the tickets.”
Bucky grins, ducking his head. “Maybe we could start with coffee. You busy this weekend?”
“I think I can probably clear my schedule,” Sam says, digging in his pocket for his phone. Bucky catches a glimpse of the lock screen before he puts the passcode in— an aerial shot of a man, parachute ballooning out above him against a stark blue sky.
“That you?” he asks, accepting the phone and pulling up the contacts to type his number in.
“Yep.”
“Overseas?”
“Yeah,” Sam says, accepting the phone back. “Vacation, though. Skydiving’s a lot more fun when nobody’s shooting at you, believe me.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Bucky says. “You’d have to pour at least another three drinks into me before I’d jump out of a plane, parachute or no parachute.”
“Maybe on the second date,” Sam laughs, and thumbs the contact list to call Bucky back. His phone buzzes briefly in his pocket. “I’ll let you get him up to bed. You free Saturday?”
“Yep.”
“Cool,” Sam says, claps him on the shoulder, turning to head back the way they came. “I’ll call you, we can figure out where to meet up.”
“Awesome,” Bucky says, and then, as a second thought occurs to him, “hey, where are you heading?”
Sam pauses, looks back at them, and shrugs. “So, I might have been a little less than honest when I said this was my stop. I got a ways to walk.”
His smile is sheepish, a little less confident, and Bucky can’t even help the sharp bark of laughter than escapes him. “How far is a ways?”
“Not too far. Ten blocks or so.”
“So this was all just…” He can’t finish the sentence. He’s laughing too hard.
“No, come on, it’s not like that,” Sam says, but he’s laughing too, laughing and looking relieved. “I was just hoping, you know.”
“Yeah, well,” Bucky admits. “Me, too.”
The smile that breaks across Sam’s face at that is wide and lovely. He lifts a hand in farewell, then turns and heads back down the sidewalk. Bucky watches him appreciatively for a moment, then turns and elbows Steve in the ribs.
“Ow,” Steve grumbles. “What was that for?”
“Cockblocking, that’s what.”
“You got a date, didn’t you?”
“No thanks to you.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Steve says, very smugly considering that his eyes aren’t quite focusing. “I think I’m an excellent wingman.”
“You’re a jerk, is what you are,” Bucky says, and slings an arm over his shoulder. “Come on. I got a date this weekend, I need to get my beauty sleep.”
“There’s no amount of sleep that’s gonna fix your looks,” Steve says amiably, but he allows Bucky to steer him into the building.