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He wanted to believe that his wedding day would be the happiest day of his life. But if he’s being honest with himself, he’s much giddier the day he signs his divorce papers.
“Not many people can say they were Captain America’s first wife,” Sharon says, sliding the documents across the tabletop to him.
Only wife, Steve thinks but doesn’t say out loud. Superstitious. Like it may be unreal if he speaks it.
“I am sorry,” he does say. Because, well, he is. Sharon didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, she was a bright spot in his life after thawing from the ice.
He signs on the line and slides the papers back to her. “I wouldn’t have proposed if I didn’t mean it.”
Sharon shrugs, tucking the papers away. “I know you meant it. You're nothing if not an honest man. And I could see how we could've kept each other happy in different circumstances but the circumstances are what they are and I don't want to hold you back, hold myself back. I think, in some way, I’m always going to be a little sad that it's over, but I understand, Steve.”
“I didn’t deserve you,” Steve says.
Sharon smiles at that. “You didn’t. That is naturally part of it to. I want someone who wakes up every day and can’t believe they are with me.”
“You deserve that.”
“I do, don’t I?”
Steve closes his eyes for a moment and really feels it all – their first date, the first time they fucked, the proposal, the wedding rings, the wedding, the white dress (the lingerie), the evenings together on the couch, the joint missions—the Winter Soldier.
Steve opens his eyes. “You deserve the world. I hope we can be friends.”
Sharon’s still smiling, it’s genuine but smaller. “Upon reflection, I think that’s what our marriage was – friends. Good friends. Best friends. Friends who delight each other to no end, but friends nevertheless. I’m not ready to scrap all of that but I also need some time. Like I said, I’m going somewhere tropical, gonna get really drunk, clear my head and we can talk when I get back.”
“Take all the time you need,” Steve says.
Sharon takes a deep breath and he watches her visibly hold back tears, take another breath and just like that, she looks fine. Perfect. Imperviable. Like the top secret agent that she is. “I really do hope he makes you happy, Steve. I know now that you’ve been waiting a long time for this love.” Her words are honest and her tone is light. She means it.
Steve nods. “Thank you, Sharon. For everything. I wouldn’t have survived without you.”
She gets to her feet, so gracefully, like a dancer, long limbed and sweet. She slings her purse over her shoulder. “I believe you. I’m glad I could be there for you. In spite of all of this, I had fun,” she admits. “Can I kiss you? One last time, before I turn the papers in, while I’m still your wife?”
“Yes,” Steve says instantly and then she’s leaning down to press her lips against his. Chaste, like a first kiss. Lingering, like a last kiss. Her hand cupped around the back of his neck, grounding but gentle. She smells sweet, like she always does. Feminine. It’s familiar – like everything about her at this point.
And it would be so easy to go through the motions, open his lips to press his tongue against hers, cup the curve of her breast in one palm, hold her close with his hand spanning the narrow width of her back—
But he doesn’t do any of that. It’s a reflex from a time now over, a place he never has to revisit and it’s somehow both melancholy and relieving.
She pulls back after a moment, meeting his eyes. “Don’t keep him waiting,” she says and then she’s out the door and gone—
He doesn’t go home right away. Too much to process. To think about.
About how lonely he was out of the ice. How Sharon offered him a connection to his past with her stories about Peggy. She was smart, sharp, funny. Beautiful.
The first time they made loved, he was shocked at how warm her skin was, how inviting. It was like he’d been cold for a long time and then coming inside and sitting by the fire. It was amazing, to be that close to another person, to feel wanted for himself, to feel connected.
But after a while, it became routine. Something they scheduled between missions and laundry and Sunday dinner with her mom—
One day they were watching something on Netflix and eating ice cream, pressed close on the couch and he’d checked his phone and realized—it was a date night. (And they only used “Date Night” to mean sex.) He turned his phone facedown on the coffee table and hoped Sharon said nothing about it as well.
He remembers all the mixed up feelings he had about it – enjoying that moment, with her close on the couch and the cold taste of chocolate – and not wanting—not wanting—
They’d had fun on their honeymoon. And they’d had had, well, a lot of sex, to put it mildly, but even thinking about it now, it was still more about the thrill of being alive to him. To have someone so delighted to touch him, so sweet and easy going—
But then Bucky returned from the dead and things started to get a little shaky around the edges.
It was hard to place at first, when he was still the Winter Soldier and kept in a lockdown facility with a long list of doctors tending his every need. Steve had to take his shoes off before he was allowed to visit. No belts, no shoelaces, empty pockets, wasn’t allowed to bring him gifts, or pictures, or books. Only finger foods in Styrofoam packaging that all had to be accounted for when he left the room.
That was a hard time. And he was glad to come home to someone who loved him. Sharon would wrap him in her arms and he would tuck his face into her hair and just stand for a while, letting all his grief and hope wash through him. Letting Sharon comfort him, her fingers slipping across his back to press on the knots that formed in the muscle. Take him to bed and let him get lost in the sheets for a little while.
He was worried Bucky would never remember him.
And then one day he did.
And things only began to improve.
Bucky put on weight and got his Brooklyn accent back and started to care about things like personal hygiene. He had less doctors to visit and he slowly began to gain more privileges – like shoes with laces and books and time outside to lay in the grass—
It took damn near two years but the day Steve got to bring Bucky home was, perhaps, the happiest day of his life.
Up until it wasn’t.
Tony had agreed to house Bucky in the tower, in an apartment that could be locked down in a hurry. There were lots of conditions up on Bucky’s release, like the tracker embedded in his metal arm and he had to request to leave the city but otherwise! He was free to come and go from the apartment and walk the streets of New York like he’d done so many years ago.
Steve helped him unpack his meager belongings. Took him shopping to buy cheap art for his walls and mugs with fun prints on them and soft sheets and warm blankets and big towels—
Bucky’d smiled at him, so bright, at the end of that day, resting on the couch. “I can’t believe we made it this far,” he said.
Steve’s chest went tight and warm. “I’m so glad you’re here, Buck.”
Bucky looks up at the painting hung over the fireplace. “Were you just living here with blank walls before? That’s kind of sad, Steve.”
It was like being socked – the icy realization that even though Bucky was mostly free, Steve was still going to leave. He had his own place, back in Brooklyn. A sweet, little townhouse with two bedrooms and a tiny backyard and a wife.
“I don’t-,” Steve began but that was hard to explain because holy shit, in all the time he’d been visiting Bucky in the lockdown facility, he’d somehow managed to carefully avoid mentioning his spouse. The guilt hit him all at once. “This is your apartment, Bucky, not mine,” he settled on. “I don’t live here.”
Bucky snapped his head to look at Steve, his lips falling open and skin paling. He was visibly crushed by the news. But in front of Steve’s eyes, he collected himself. “I just assumed. I remember we lived together before—before the war.”
“We did,” Steve agreed. “For a long time. We took care of each other. And I’m still going to take care of you, Bucky, I promise. I just—I live with my wife now.”
Steve looked down at his hand and realized—realized that he didn’t have his wedding ring on. He’d taken it off to be let into the secure facility when he was signing Bucky out for the final time. He’d collected his ring and keys from the locker as they left the building and dumped the whole handful into his pocket without even thinking to put his ring back on—
What the fuck was wrong with him?
“You’re married,” Bucky said. His voice was so carefully measured. Flat.
“I, jeeze Buck, I have no good excuse. You didn’t remember me, you didn’t remember you, I didn’t want to drop more changes on you than you already had. I guess I was trying too hard to be like my old self so you would remember me, and I forgot to tell you about the new stuff.”
Bucky nodded. “That does make sense.” He then forces a smile and says, “Well, I’m happy for you. Glad a lady finally saw how great you are. Unless she’s just settling for all that muscle—Steve, I kid. You gotta bring her around so I can meet her!”
He promised he would and left that night, took the subway back to his townhouse, the whole way hating himself for having to leave Bucky.
Leave him alone on his first night as a free man.
He did bring Sharon around, the very next day in fact. They had lunch in the kitchen of Bucky’s new apartment. The conversation was stilted and awkward but Steve just assumed it was due to Bucky’s trauma and the unfamiliarity of Sharon to him.
In retrospect, he should’ve known better.
It crept up, how he began to spend much of his time with Bucky, how he dreaded leaving him in the evening. Sharon started to focus more on work, it seemed. Around the house less often. Off on missions, or still in her SHIELD office when he got home. The date nights growing fewer and far between.
It was on one of their dates – a day trip out to the Jersey shore – that Sharon settled her sunglasses more firmly on her face, sipped her ice coffee, looked out over the waves and said, “It’s okay if you love him.”
Steve had been absentmindedly fiddling with his own drink, trying to drag up literally any topic of conversation and coming up dry. He damn near knocked the cup over when he said, “What?”
“Bucky,” Sharon clarified. “Look, I’m not—I’m not dumb, Steve. And I’m not angry either. I’ve been thinking about it for a little while now and I can’t figure out if you just don’t realize how you feel about him or if it's just because it wasn’t okay to feel that way about him before. But you don’t look at me the way you look at him. And you never did.”
“You think I’m in love with Bucky?”
Sharon shrugged. “I think, maybe, you’ve been in love with Bucky for a long time. It was always there, a fact of life, as normal and ordinary as breathing so it remained nameless and then he was gone and now that he’s back, it’s hard not to see.”
Steve swallowed the lump in his throat. “I never thought about it.”
“Am I wrong?”
“I couldn’t say,” he replied, thinking about it now. About his best friend. About shared flats and shared beds and how often he'd reached for Bucky, as a teen, a young man, a soldier, a living deadman. It was so normal and natural at the time. He had no one else and longed for no else. He didn't need anyone at all, but he certainly didn't need anyone other than Bucky. He almost didn't realize how much Bucky meant to him until it was too late, but he'd never thought-- he'd never thought about kissing him.
But then that thought crawls into his mind and it's not-- it's not unwelcome.
“Are you leaving me?” Steve asked, instead of dwelling on any of those thoughts any longer.
“Not yet,” Sharon said. “I think you should think about it. I think you should talk to Bucky. I love you, Steve. You’re my best friend. But sometimes I have this quiet little voice in my head wondering if this was the real thing. Big love. True love. You never gave me butterflies. I was never so giddy to see you that I could hardly speak. You’re a good man. You care about me. But when I talk to my friends about their partners, they always say, when you know you know. And I realized that maybe I was never entirely sure, but I never let myself dwell on it because we had fun together, and we could make a life together, and you’re special, not in a Captain America way but a Steve Rogers way. Being married to you has been good, but I have this nagging feeling that there could be something out there that's better for the both of us."
That night, when they returned to the city, Steve left Sharon at home and went to see Bucky.
The desire, the need, to see him was too great.
Bucky was running the indoor track in the Tower gym when Steve showed up. He had his shirt off, glistening with sweat, his long hair waving out behind him as he went. Steve had to pause and watch him, the way he looked still unreal in the future, unbelievable, and yet, he was back, alive.
Bucky rounded the corner and came to a stop in front of Steve.
“Hey,” he said, smiling so quick and bright that it was blinding.
Steve felt like the air was sucked out of the room with just a look from Bucky.
“What are you doing here? I thought you had a date with Sharon today," Bucky said, smoothing his hair back from his face.
“I did,” Steve replied, heart clenching in his chest with the realization that she was right—
Maybe he was in love with Bucky. Because all he wanted was to touch him, his fingertips itching with the desire to trace the sweat down his chest, tuck his face into the curve of Bucky’s throat.
“We cut it short. I had to see you,” Steve said.
“Why?” Bucky asked, looking perplexed. “Is everything alright?”
“Yes. Everything’s fine. I just—I needed to talk to you.”
“Okay, we can talk.”
It occurred to Steve than that he should’ve thought about what he wanted to say, rehearsed it a few times. But he’d been too knocked-off kilter to come up with a plan beyond getting to Bucky. So, instead of explaining the conversation he’d had with Sharon, he simply blurted out, “Do you love me?”
Bucky’s face fell and he took a step back. “Do I love you?” he repeated.
“I, I mean,” Steve started. “Sharon was—suggesting that maybe we had more than just friendship.”
“Oh,” Bucky said, his voice flat, controlled. “Your wife thinks that I am a threat to your marriage.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was trembling. Steve wanted to hold him.
Bucky carefully let his breath out and opened his eyes again. They were shining with tears. “I knew, someday, you would find a wife and I was terrified you wouldn’t want me in your life anymore. I’m sorry, I can—I’ll take up less of your time. I know you spent a lot of time helping me break the Winter Soldier programing. And I-- I'm so damn thankful, Steve. I owe you everything. But I know you have a family now, shit. I'm so sorry. I kept taking up your time like a selfish fool. I always wanted what was best for you. I wanted you to get married, have a family, be normal, be happy. But, Steve, you’re the only thing I have left. Please don’t cut me out of your life. I’ll do whatever you want, whatever Sharon wants, just—there’s no point in me being alive if I can’t see you.”
“Bucky,” Steve gasped and then he was grabbing at his best friend, tugging him in by the hand, wrapping an arm around his waist. “Bucky, no, it’s not like that,” he said, right against Bucky’s ear, pressed close like he never let himself before. Touching Bucky's skin was like being brought back to life, and Steve Rogers knew firsthand what that was like.
“I love you too,” Steve said. And then held Bucky while the former Winter Soldier shook and cried.
He didn’t return to Sharon until the morning. There was much to be said – after he’d gotten Bucky to calm down, after Bucky had showered and Steve made him eat something for dinner.
They stayed up half the night talking, then Steve slept on the couch while Bucky went back to his bedroom.
In the morning, Bucky stood over him with a small smile. “I like you being here when I wake up,” he said.
The warmth that blossomed through Steve at that—the way it felt right, felt like home, like nothing had since he’d come out of the ice.
"I like being here when you wake up," Steve murmured back.
Sharon was right.
“I’m not kissing a married man,” Bucky said as he cooked eggs and bacon. “I ain't a homewrecker,” he went on. “You gotta make sure Sharon is okay first. You made a vow to her."
“She’s not a wilting flower,” Steve replied. “This was—her idea!”
Bucky glared at him. “Your Ma wouldn’t like to hear you talking like that. Marriage is a serious thing. You get things right with her and then we can talk about the future.”
“Our future?” Steve asked, hopefully.
Bucky smiled, depositing a plate in front of him. “Our future.”
Sharon had clearly just gotten back from a workout when Steve returned home, sitting at the kitchen table in her sweats with her hair pulled back. She raised one eyebrow at him as she carefully asked, “Well?”
That was all it took for Steve to blush bright pink. “You were right,” he said. “How did I not know before?”
“Internalized homophobia,” Sharon replied.
“What?”
She laughed. “Nevermind. You still have so much to learn about the future.”
“That’s true,” Steve agreed, sitting across from her. “What are we going to do?”
“We are going to meet with a lawyer and file for divorce,” she said, matter-of-factly. “You are going to pack up your belongings and take them to the Tower. You are going to, very kindly, gift me your half of the house and we will amend the deed. I am going to meet up with some friends, drink wine, and have a good cry.”
“Sharon--,” Steve began.
“I’m not done,” she cut him off. “I am going to take a long vacation, somewhere tropical, and then I will be fine. You’re still my friend, Steve. You get to be with the love of your life and I get to find the person who can’t believe they get to be with me. I'm a damn catch, too, so I'm sure I will find him. It’s okay. We had a great marriage and now it’s over and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Life happens. We're both good at rolling with the punches."
He wanders the city letting the feeling sink into him, till it feels real-
It’s official. His divorce is official.
He finds Bucky in the kitchen of the apartment they now share. Steve has been sleeping on the couch for the past month while he and Sharon got their affairs in order. Bucky was no homewrecker and Steve understood the boundaries he had, they were important and Steve wasn’t going to be one more person in the long list of people who belittled Bucky’s boundaries.
But today, today everything was as it should be. He grins so hard when he sees Bucky, crossing the room to draw Bucky into his arms.
“Are you a single man?” Bucky asks, with a laugh, his smile as wide as Steve’s.
“I am a single man,” Steve says.
“Are you going to kiss me?”
“If you let me,” Steve asks.
“I’ve only waited seventy years,” Bucky says and just like that—Steve leans down and their lips touch and it’s everything he never knew he always wanted.
(It doesn’t take him a week to propose.
The marriage is long and happy.)