Positive Regard

Chapter Nineteen

"You guys have got to get the hell out of here." Steve sighed. "I love you and all, but I don't wanna hear you, you know... going at it." He sipped his coffee, already looking exasperated and it wasn't ten o'clock yet.
"Stevie, how do you know we aren't already?" Bucky smirked as he came in the room, his hair wet and stringy from the shower he'd been in for almost an hour. Apparently it took a lot of time and effort to be that pretty.
"Because she—" Steve pointed at me. "She's stuck in the seventeenth century and insists on being pious."
I looked at Steve, eyebrows raised.
His eyes widened. "Oh my God. You don't."
Bucky kissed me. "Morning, gorgeous."
"Ew!" Steve said. "Stop. You're defiling my home. And my eyes. How am I supposed to sleep?"
"Steve, sweetie, he's kidding." I smiled, amused.
"Rose." Bucky sighed, pouring his third cup of coffee. "This could've been fun. Come on, Stevie. It's not the first time you've been in the house when I—"
"That's enough." Steve and I both said.
"Sorry." Bucky smiled and sat at the table with us. "So, doll, I was thinking. I think that for our wedding, we should do, like, Cheez-it box red—"
"Not working." I bit into a piece of bacon.
"Damn it. Okay. What about, like, a lavender?"
"No--Wait. Did you say lavender? I didn't know you knew that color existed." I raised my eyebrows.
He hesitated. "Isn't that your favorite color?"
"Would you look at that. The tin man has a heart." Steve grinned.
Bucky threw a piece of toast at him. "That's your favorite color, right?" He asked me.
"That's right." I smiled. "But I was thinking about, you know, not having a church wed—"
"What?" Steve and Bucky asked. Steve choked in his coffee.
"I mean, like, not having a normal wed—"
"What?" They repeated.
"Just signing shit." I said quickly, so they couldn't interrupt. "I know it'd make our mothers cry but I mean, we don't have anybody to invite anymore."
"So I'm not good enough? Is that it?" Steve raised his eyebrows.
Bucky threw another piece of toast, but otherwise ignored him. "Yeah, doll. That sounds great. So I don't have to dress up?"
"Yes you do."
"I don't think your uniform's gonna fit you anymore." Steve grinned.
"That a fat joke, buddy?"
"I think that was him saying you got..." I trailed off, because I wasn't sure what to say.
"A metal arm?" Bucky asked.
"Muscular."
He grinned cheekily. "Why, thank you."
"Anyways," Steve said. "Can I come with you?"
"Not if you're gonna cry." Bucky said gruffly, but he was smiling.
"Deal." Steve laughed. "You know we have to leave in half an hour, right?"
"Where are we going?" Bucky asked.
"SHIELD." I sighed. I'd only told him ten times. I was starting to think he was ignoring me.
"I don't need help adjusting." Bucky complained.
"Yeah, you do." We both said.
He sighed. "Nobody was assaulting me about my wellbeing in Wakanda."
"You were only there a couple hours, Buck." Steve said, eating one of the pieces of toast Bucky had thrown at him.
"I'm doing laundry when we get back. If you want stuff washed, put it in the laundry basket." I said as I got up to go get dressed.
"Will you do my laundry even when you move out?" Steve asked.
"Nope."
"Can I move in?"
"Definitely not."
I put on skinny jeans. I thought about how appalled Granny would look if she saw me dressed like that, and it made me laugh a little, but then I changed into a skirt. Granny hated when women wore pants, much less these. I'd actually wear them out one day, though.
Bucky laughed when I came out.
"What?" I asked.
"You look like you're from the forties."
"I am from the forties."
He smiled and stood up to kiss my cheek. "You look great, as always."
"Mhm."
Steve drove, and I tried to sit in the back, but Bucky made me sit up front.
"Hey, babe? Are you sure you don't want a normal wedding?" Bucky leaned up to stick his head between us.
Steve pushed him back. "Buckle up. It's the law."
"Screw the law." Bucky leaned back up.
"The law's the law, Buck." Steve pushed him again.
I raised my eyebrows. "Yeah, you can't say that."
"I.. what?" Steve glanced at me.
"You disobeyed direct orders from the government and knowingly went against the law, Steven. You can't lecture on laws."
"Ha ha." Bucky stuck his tongue out at Steve and leaned back onto the console. "Rose?"
"Yes, I'm sure."
"But you wanted to get married at Granny's church, in your mother's wedding dress, and—"
"I don't have my mother's wedding dress." I turned in my seat to look at him. "We don't have any friends or family. Do people even do church weddings anymore? Look at all this sin." I gestured out the window.
"They do." Steve said. "This is New York City. It's all sin."
"You didn't want a wedding." I reminded Bucky, then turned to look at Steve. "If it's all sin, why are you living here?"
"I live in Brooklyn."
"That's no better!"
"I did. I just wanted it, you know, after the war." Bucky leaned back in his seat. "I just wanted to sign the papers first."
"I figured you wanted to do that so we could have sex." I admitted.
"No, I wanted to do it so you'd be taken care of if anything happened to me. Sex was the second reason."
I turned around and raised my eyebrows.
"I mean the third." He said quickly. "The second was because I love you and wanted to spend the rest of my life with you."
I kept looking at him.
"The fourth—the fifth—okay, sex wasn't on the list. Didn't even make the top ten."
"That's better." I turned back around in my seat.
He huffed, like a child. "I haven't had sex in, like, eighty years because of you."
"It's called fornication, and it's a sin."
"Not to worst sin I've committed."
Steve sighed. "Do not make me turn this car around."
"I wanna go home." Bucky retorted.
"Too damn bad!"
"Steve, you sound like my mom." I laughed.