"Do you have anymore lights?" Nat's holding a string of party lights, creating ambience, as she calls it, by draping them around the rooftop.
"Not my department," Steve answers, setting down a pair of kegs into a couple of buckets of ice.
It was Bucky's idea for the party. Clint asked what the various Avengers were doing for the July 4th holiday, and Bucky was damn near apoplectic that Steve hadn't told people it was his birthday.
"I mean, we knew it was Captain America's birthday, but like, I thought that was just a PR thing," Scott said.
Once the team realized that it was Steve's actual birthday, they'd insisted on a party. Steve demurred, but Bucky shouted the loudest, and Sam sealed the deal by promising several dozen of his mother's famous peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. ("And Steve," Sam said, in all seriousness, "you do not forgo a chance at Pam Wilson's peanut butter cookies.")
Which is how Steve and Bucky find themselves lugging rented tables and chairs up to the rooftop patio while Nat strings lights. Sam is bringing cookies, cake and various sweets, and Clint and Wanda arranged for the food, which makes Steve vaguely nervous.
"Just…is he going to get things other than pizza?" Steve asks.
"If he values his life," Nat replies, so Steve tries not to worry about it so much.
As evening falls and people arrive, Steve takes a moment to look around. There are tables laden with food from all over – pizza and spring rolls, nachos with Marta's famous green salsa, something called "larb" that Steve picks at and turns out to be delicious, what looks like an entire raw tuna artfully arranged on a platter of ice, kebabs, falafel, and of course, shwarma.
He's taking it all in, the warm feeling of having all of the people who are important to him all in one place, when he feels a hand at his shoulder.
"Steve," Tony says, eyes earnest and subdued.
Steve finds a soft, fond smile for the man who had been his friend, his enemy, his ally, and greatest frustration. "I wasn't sure you'd come."
Tony shrugs, and they both look over at Bucky.
"He's -" Steve starts, then shrugs. "He's everything, Tony. I'm sorry."
And he is. And he hopes it's enough, because it's sincere. There's no one that will ever mean more to him than Bucky. Steve can live with the idea that maybe he's a little blind when it comes to Buck. He can't repair the past. He hopes he can build up the future, and he knows that Tony's trying. It might be more than he deserves.
The worst of his nightmares, the ones he won't even share with Bucky, are the ones where he doesn't change the arc of the shield, where he gives in to his most basic instinct and Tony pays the price.
Steve is grateful to have Tony standing here today. It's more than he thought he'd have, even a year ago.
Tony nods, and claps Steve on the shoulder. "Happy Birthday, Cap."
Something in Steve's heart twists at that. It's Tony's gift, and it might be more than Steve deserves.
"I'm glad you came, Tony."
"Well, you know, you're officially a centurion. Not often you get to go to a hundred and first birthday bash where the honoree isn't in a diaper. You're not wearing a diaper, right? Wait, nevermind. I don't want to know what you and Barnes get up to."
The laugh that bursts from Steve is deep and sincere. He throws his head back and one arm over his chest, eyes closing and breathing deep, letting his happiness bubble up from within. It feels good to feel this good. It's been a long road.
When his laughter has died down to mere chuckles, he glances around and finds Sam studying him. Steve quirks a brow, but Sam just smiles and shakes his head, tipping his dark bottle of beer in Steve's direction.
Later, when Steve is moaning over a chocolate chip peanut butter cookie, he catches Sam grinning at him, again and again.
"You were right, man. These cookies!"
"Yeah, I know," Sam says, a soft smile on his face.
"What?" Steve asks.
Shaking his head, Sam says "nothing."
"No," Steve says, straightening. "What is it?"
Sam shrugs. "You figured it out. It's good to see."
Cocking his head, Steve looks at Sam, puzzled.
"What makes you happy," Sam says. "You figured it out. Gotta tell you, man, it's a good look on you."
Steve beams, thinking about a response, when Bucky slides his arms around Steve's waist from behind. Pressing a kiss against Steve's neck, he pulls Steve close, tight. "What are you two talking about?"
"Oh, you know," Sam says. "Life, the universe, everything."
Bucky laughs and Steve feels the vibration tickle through him.
"That was such a great book," Bucky crows, releasing Steve to come around to his side. "Did you read the sequels?"
Sam nods and Steve leaves the two of them to talk sci-fi books, again.
He takes a seat on one of the couches, sipping his beer and watching the darkening sky as his friends – his family – chatter around him.
"Great party," Nat says, taking a seat next to him.
"Thanks. Thanks, Nat. For everything."
Nat smirks then flashes one of her rate, open smiles. "Philanthropy looks good on you," she says, still smiling.
"I love it, yeah." Steve replies, because he does. Under the guise of the Makepeace Foundation, he's able to tag along on most of the Avenger's missions, ready to work the op with Maria, and then ready to help rebuild with the locals, when needed. Having a billion dollar checkbook has made Steve incredibly popular in the relief aid circles, and celebrities and corporations have all followed suit, choosing the foundation as their number one charity when they're looking for tax deductions. When Steve isn't helping to rebuild war-torn landscapes, he focuses the foundation's efforts on getting and keeping arts in the schools, as well as setting up multiple micro-loan organizations in an effort to both help people achieve their dreams as wells putting some of the more usurious paycheck advance companies out of business. In all, it's work he can feel good about. He's proud of who he is, what he does.
"Babe, they're getting ready to start!" Bucky comes over with a fresh beer and plants himself in Steve's lap, eyes to the sky.
When the first burst of fireworks light up the sky, Steve's still looking at Bucky's face, at his wide smile and apparent ease. He brings his arms around Bucky, holding him tighter, and looks up toward the night sky, once dark, but now brilliant and bursting with color.
.
Fall gives chase to the dog days of summer with cool breezes that twist into the warm sunshine. The color begins to bleed from the trees and at night, they close their windows. Deep inside of Steve, the soldier stills. Like a glimpse of something from the corner of his eye, he can't put his finger on what changes, he only knows that he feels solid, settled, in a way that he never has before.
The new feeling is strange and catches him off guard. There are days when he is anxious, nervous that he's forgotten something, some detail or task, and he paces through their apartment, waiting for something to blow up in his face. But then the feeling slinks away, and he is calm again.
He still reaches for Bucky almost every night. The way the moonlight slants through their window, it casts a glow in their bedroom and sometimes, most times, Steve is so taken by the man who's chosen to share his bed that he can't not reach for him, if only to press his mouth to Bucky's skin, his fingers pulling, touching, stroking. The desperate need doesn't drive him any longer. Bucky is here and he's real. He is flesh and bone and Steve takes his communion, there, in Bucky's skin, and he gives back his own until they are one, once again. He takes this quiet joy, thinking sometimes of the ways they'd been in the past – those first frightened, shameful kisses. The guilt and fear that swallowed that first trembling union. The desperation when they'd finally found one another once again – both of them feeling that if they could only just get inside of the other, crawl into their very skin, that they could somehow hold the other safe.
Now he takes his joy in Bucky's pleasure. He smiles against his lover's skin, all nimble fingers and teasing mouth, coaxing whines and pants and gasps, and watching Bucky surrender, watching as he becomes lost to it, and those are the moments that Steve treasures, almost as much as the mornings, when he is slow to wake and instead curls sleepy into Bucky's arms, listening to his easy breathing, feeling the warm, damp of it on his neck.
He came into his life fighting. He fought sickness and illness and grief. He fought his own nature, his own heart. He's fought monsters and men, oppression, fascism, he's fought what feels like a hundred wars.
But now, the soldier lays down his shield.
Now, the soldier is at peace.
.
.
AN: This was written for the Captain America Reverse Big Bang. All thanks go to the mods of the RBB, SulaSaferoom who created some gorgeous art that inspired this fic, and the RBB Slack, for hand-holding, cheerleading, and general awesomeness.
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