A/N: I actually wrote this for Christmas last year and posted it on Ao3. It was moderately successful there, so I decided to post it here as well! It's a modern AU with the fake/pretend relationship trope. No angst or pining, just two idiots who're in love but don't even know it. There will be smut! It's basically just a really fluffy fic with a few smut scenes thrown in. Rated T for now, when I get to the chapters with smut, the rating will go up.

Cover image credit goes to whoever did the manip!

There are 9 chapters in total, and I'll be posting them once a week :) Enjoy!

1. The Plan

It was Halloween night and Bucky was at Sam's party when he received the text from his sister, his drunk fingers fumbling to unlock his phone and read it. Then he realized he couldn't actually use his touch screen while wearing gloves. He cursed, using his teeth to pull them off, all the while wondering why he decided to wear gloves with his vampire costume in the first place.

Oh yeah, because Natasha had told him they made the outfit look sexy and sophisticated. He snorted, reading the text now that it was open.

Becca (11:43pm): Just a reminder that you only have a month or so to find yourself a boyfriend, or you'll owe me $$$ and the honor of bleaching your hair

There was a string of emojis at the end of the text that Bucky rolled his eyes at, while he quickly thumbed in his reply without really thinking about what he was saying. They say that drunk people can't help but tell the truth, except for Bucky, who tended to do the opposite.

Bucky (11:44pm): ur out of luck iv already got one

He definitely didn't have a boyfriend, not since the guy he dated for a few weeks during the summer turned out to be a complete tool. Maybe if Bucky wasn't so drunk, he'd have thought out his answer a bit more. He certainly wouldn't have told Rebecca that he already had a boyfriend. Honestly, he didn't know why he said that in the first place, but he tended to bullshit a lot when he was drinking, and didn't really care at the moment either. He was drunk and happy and simply wanted to find that cute blonde guy dressed as an elf he'd been making out with earlier.

Hey, maybe they'd start dating and he'd take him home for Christmas to meet the family.

But it was Bucky who was out of luck, not Rebecca.

The cute blonde guy was leaving the party early with someone else, which left Bucky feeling sour at the missed opportunity. Then he figured he probably shouldn't meet a potential boyfriend to bring home to his family at a party anyway, and decided to go drink some more. He pushed all thoughts of the bet to the back of his mind, heading over to where Steve, Clint, and Natasha were starting to do some jello shots, and joined in.

It wasn't until he was nursing a hangover the next day that he started to panic.

Bucky had been going through his social media accounts for evidence of what happened the night before. His snapchat story featured way too many shaky videos of his friends doing shots, playing beer pong, and drunkenly acting as whatever they'd dressed up as. There were two pictures on his instagram: the first of him and Sam, with a poorly spelled party shoutout, and the second was of him and Steve, arms wrapped around each other's shoulders and cheesy grins on their faces. The caption on the picture was just a bunch of thumbs up emojis.

He didn't bother deleting the pics, instead just fixing the spelling on the Sam one, before exiting the app and saving what was usually the worst for last. He went into his texts, breathing out a sigh of relief when he saw that Rebecca was the only person he messaged. He didn't remember it though, and went to see what he wrote.

"Oh, fuck," Bucky groaned, rubbing a hand over his face. "Shit."

Because he didn't have a boyfriend, Rebecca was right - he'd only have a month to find a guy that'd be willing to meet his family so soon. And there was the possibility that he'd need to convince the guy to pretend that they'd been together for longer than they actually were. Would anyone actually be willing to do that? Maybe he could bribe them somehow.

Bucky groaned again, rolling out of his bed and stumbling towards to kitchen. Steve was already there, slumped at the table with a coffee and looking every bit as hungover as Bucky.

"Coffee should still be warm," he mumbled, pointing at the pot on the bench.

Thanks." Bucky grabbed a mug and poured himself a cup, sitting down across from Steve when he was done. "I feel like death."

"Ugh, me too." Steve nodded, then winced at what the movement must've done to his headache.

Bucky grimaced sympathetically. "I barely remember anything from last night."

"Neither," Steve agreed. "Not even the pic you tagged me in on instagram."

"I don't even remember posting it. But you know what else I don't remember?"

"What?"

"Telling Becca I had a boyfriend so I could win a bet we made when I was 20."

Steve raised an eyebrow. "You're single."

"Yep," Bucky sipped at his coffee. "And if I lose, I'll owe her $200 and will have to go blonde for a year."

"A year?" Steve raised both his eyebrows now, eyeing Bucky's dark brown hair.

"I tried talking her down to a few months, but she wouldn't budge."

"So what was the bet, anyway?" Steve asked after a moment. "And why?"

Bucky sighed. "Ever since I moved out, mom and dad would always pester me about my love life every time I visited. They kept saying they wanted me to bring someone home for the holidays, but I never have. When I was 20, Becca said that if I didn't have a boyfriend to bring home by the time I was 25, I had to give her $200 and let her bleach my hair and keep it that way until the next Christmas."

"I can understand the money part," Steve started, staring into his coffee with his brows drawn together in confusion. "But why the blonde thing?"

Bucky grinned at that. "Because she went blonde when she was 15, and it looked so bad it was hilarious. She told me she'd get back at me for laughing one day, and a year later the bet was made."

"What happens if she loses?"

"The same thing for her, but at least I know she definitely doesn't suit blonde hair."

"Well, you we can't let her win, then." Steve grinned.

"Nope," Bucky replied, popping the 'p'. His phone beeped with a message from Rebecca, and Bucky rolled his eyes when he read it. "She wants to know who my boyfriend is."

"What're you gonna tell her?"

Bucky smirked at his best friend. "Just that it's a surprise."

Towards the end of November, Bucky was not only running low on cash after all of the Christmas shopping he'd been doing, but he was also just as single as he was a month ago. Steve had been trying to help set him up with potential boyfriends, but every failed date just reminded Bucky of why he hadn't actually brought anyone home for Christmas yet. He was good at casual. One night stands were his specialty, he had the numbers of a few guys in his phone who he knew he could hit up every now and again, and he tended to not date people for more than a few months at a time.

Bucky was a flirt, and a good one at that, but nobody he dated ever really held his interest enough for it to get serious. Honestly, the only constants in his life were Steve, Sam, Natasha, and Clint. He'd been fine with that, but obviously it needed to change if he didn't want to be short $200. And if his shifts at the cafe where he worked kept going to the holiday casuals, he wouldn't even have that money in the first place.

"How was last night's date?" Steve asked when he got home from work that evening, plopping himself on the couch next to Bucky.

"Horrible," Bucky sighed. "The guy insisted on having the date at some seedy bar, then he kept checking out the bartender all night."

"What a jerk. Sorry, I thought he seemed nice. And interested."

"Nah, not your fault." Bucky shrugged him off. Steve couldn't have known the guy would be like that. "But as if that wasn't bad enough, Becca keeps asking me who my boyfriend is, and I've been using the 'it's a surprise' excuse to death."

As if on cue, his phone beeped with a message from his sister.

"Speak of the devil," Steve laughed. "What does it say?"

Becca (6:07pm): Is Steve your secret boyfriend?

Bucky raised his eyebrows, and showed Steve the message, who laughed again.

"Why would she think we're together?"

"I don't know, but we're about to find out."

Bucky (6:07pm): What makes you think he is?

Her answer didn't come through immediately, but when it did, they weren't expecting the wall of text.

Becca (6:11pm): You've only posted 4 photos on insta in the last month, and Steve is in 3 of them. There's the one of Steve playing with Clint's dog, the Halloween one of you both the night you told me you already had a boyfriend, and you posted one of you both last week to celebrate some Harry Potter marathon. Nerds. Not to mention he's always on your snapchat story. I know he's your bff and you guys live together already, so of course he's gonna feature in your pics and shit, but if I'm wrong about Steve then your actual boyfriend must be pretty jealous of him anyway. That and you're pretty good at hiding him.

Maybe Bucky was good at hiding his boyfriend because he didn't actually have one, but telling her that was out of the question, obviously. But she did have a point. Even though he loved all his friends, Steve was the one he was closest to and spent the most time with. They'd only known each other since they were 18 when they met at college, after he'd already known Nat and Clint for years, but they'd instantly become friends and been basically inseparable ever since.

Bucky stared at the text, unsure of how to respond to it, then let out a long groan. "I don't know what to say. Help me."

"Well you've got two options," Steve said. "Keep up with the ruse of having some secret boyfriend and hope you can find one in time. Or you can tell her she's right and that you've been dating me all along."

"You'd be okay with that?" Bucky asked skeptically, wondering if Steve knew exactly what he was offering.

"Yeah, of course." He shrugged. "She already thinks we're dating, so it wouldn't be hard to convince her she's right."

"You realize that you'd have to spend a whole week during Christmas with my family, right? Because that's how long we're gonna be there."

"I've met your family already, Buck, they're not that terrible. A week is nothing."

Bucky rolled his eyes. "But you'd have to pretend we're in a relationship in front of my mom, Steve. Can you really do that to her?"

"It'd be fun. What she doesn't know can't hurt her." Steve shrugged again. "I'm serious. I don't mind doing this. You're most likely not going to find a boyfriend before Christmas, and I don't particularly want my best friend to have bright yellow hair from a shoddy bleach job."

"You're absolutely sure about this?" Bucky asked earnestly, electing to ignore the fact Steve basically just insulted him because he knew it was the truth.

Steve put his hands on Bucky's shoulders. "I am. I'm completely, 100% sure about this."

"I'd prefer 110%, but okay." Bucky slowly smirked. "Steven Grant Rogers, will you be my fake boyfriend?"

"James Buchanan Barnes, I'd be honored." Steve smirked right back.

"Well, now that that's settled, I've gotta break the news to Becca." Bucky stared down at his phone, before looking back up at Steve. "What the fuck do I say?"

Steve grabbed the phone, opened the camera, and pulled Bucky against his side. "Just let a picture do the talking."

Bucky grinned widely, the same smile he did in the photo with Steve from Halloween, and Steve kissed his cheek as he took the photo. They sent it to Rebecca, who instantly replied with "I knew it!" and several heart-eyes emojis. Well, at least they knew she approved.

For the next few weeks, Bucky and Steve found that pretending to be boyfriends simply for Rebecca's sake was quite easy. Their social media patterns didn't change, with Bucky only needing to snap random pics of him and Steve to her every so often, usually while they were already doing something together. They'd told their friends of what was going on just as a precaution, but also because they knew they'd find the whole situation hilarious.

Which they did, and couldn't stop teasing them about, but Steve and Bucky didn't mind.

Leading up to the week with Bucky's family, they were determined to get their facts straight. It was decided they would pretend they'd been dating each other since August after Bucky ended it with that guy he'd been seeing, growing romantic feelings for each other while Steve comforted him, but decided to keep it casual at first in case it didn't work out. In October, when it seemed to be going well, they told their friends, but didn't want to involve family yet. Now that they'd been together for a few months, they thought it was time they knew. But they didn't intend on telling Bucky's parents just yet. He'd made Rebecca swear not to tell them who his boyfriend was, instead wanting it to be a surprise.

He couldn't wait to see the shock on their faces when he brought Steve home to them.

Winifred and George loved Steve. They first met him at Bucky's 21st, and it wasn't long before they were instantly smitten. They adored Steve, always going on about how he was such a nice boy and how they were glad Bucky had a good influence in his life (they'd never quite forgiven Clint for streaking through their backyard when he was seventeen). But they didn't know how much of a little shit Steve could be. He had to be, if he agreed to bullshit Bucky's parents into thinking he was dating their son.

"How loved up should we be?" Bucky asked after they'd gone over their story for the hundredth time, the night before they were due to leave. "We've only been together for, what? Four months? But we were best friends before that, and seeing as this 'relationship' is going well now, we might be moving along faster than a normal couple."

Steve thought about it for a moment. "We could act like we're in love, but not at the point where we've actually told each other yet."

"Yeah, that's good. They'd believe that if they asked."

"What about PDA?" Steve asked now. "I know you're pretty hands-on with guys you're dating, and I guess I am too, but would your family be expecting that?"

"They would," Bucky nodded, thinking about his high school boyfriends. "Mom and dad were really supportive after I came out, so I didn't feel like I needed to hold myself back when I was around them. We'll have to share a bed in the spare room, and expect lots of hand-holding, cuddling, and lots of kisses."

"Making out?"

"Maybe, just to be safe." Bucky laughed, thinking about all the times his mom's habit of never knocking made her walk in on him sucking face with his first boyfriend. She'd eventually learned her lesson, but still forgot sometimes.

Steve raised an eyebrow. "You know how you see two people kiss, and you can tell it's their first time?"

"Kind of, I guess."

"Do you think that'll happen to us?" Steve questioned. "Because what if you're a horrible kisser and I make a face or something and then they know we'd never actually kissed before?"

"I'm a wonderful kisser, thank you very much." Bucky pouted, before an idea popped into his head. "In fact, I'll prove it to you right now."

Before Steve could react, Bucky grabbed his face and kissed him. He didn't mean for it to be any longer than a few seconds, but when Steve's hands settled on Bucky's waist and he began kissing him back, he couldn't help but deepen it. And oh God, it was good. Their lips moved together perfectly for a few moments before it ended too soon.

Steve had a little too much color in his cheeks, but he shot Bucky a dazzling smile anyway. "You're right, you are a wonderful kisser."

"Not so bad yourself," Bucky replied, removing his hand from Steve's face while Steve took his from Bucky's waist. "Seriously though, that was great. Why haven't we ever kissed before?"

"No idea." Steve laughed, resting back against the couch they were sitting on.

"Like, as far as I know, we haven't even kissed when we were drunk. We've been missing out." He turned to Steve and slowly grinned. "This week is gonna be great."

"It is," Steve agreed. "Have you finished packing?"

"Mostly. You?"

"Yeah. Wanna go over our story one more time?"

"Sure."

So they did, as if they didn't already know it well enough. Dating for four months. Their friends had known for half that time. They hadn't said the L-word yet. It was basic stuff, not hard to forget, even if they were to get nervous or feel under pressure.

A/N: I hope you all like it so far! If you did, let me know :) Like I said, next chapter out in a week!