The days ran into each other until her life was, once again, wake up, go to work, come home...lather, rinse, repeat. There were so many times, sitting at either the diner or bistro, where she grabbed her phone to text either Steve or Bucky...but the uncertainty of what to say stopped her every time.

One day she walked up the stairs to her building to find a flower delivery man standing at her door knocking,

"Can I help you?" Drea called from three steps away on the staircase.

"Yeah...are you Cassandra Bryan?" Drea shot him a suspicious look but nodded yes. "Thank God because I didn't have instructions on what to do with these if you weren't home." He motioned to a small bouquet of delicate looking yellow flowers.

Drea hopped up the steps and unlocked her door before taking the bouquet. "Gimme a sec and I'll get a tip…"

"All taken care of. Oh and there's this." He handed her a small card. "Have a nice day!"

Drea shook her head as she went into her apartment. The flowers were Carolina jasmine, one of her favorite flowers. She hadn't seen any real jasmine since she'd moved and the bright yellow color was a welcome addition to her drab day. She dropped her bag and went to get the vase one of her roommates had left behind for the flowers.

For my Carolina girl.

Steve

Drea put the note, opened to the message, up on the fridge and went to text Steve a thank you.

The next morning, an incessant knocking woke Drea up long before she wanted to be up. A day off and she was awake when it was still considered 'AM' was not a good thing. Drea pulled her robe tight around her as she stumbled towards the door, yelling for whoever was unfortunate enough to be on the other side that she would be right there.

"Cassandra Bryan?" Drea grunted in the affirmative. "These are for you." Drea blinked at the sizeable bouquet of pink crepe myrtle. "And so is this," the lady handed her a small box. "Have a good day!" She honestly chirped as Drea shifted the flowers to make sure she held onto the box.

"What about a tip?"

"Already taken care of!" The woman was bouncing down the steps as Drea slid back behind her door and closed it in case the perkiness was contagious. This bouquet came in its own vase already and there was a card tucked under the ribbon on the package. She sat the vase down on the table and pulled the ribbon and paper off the box. Pralines. Only one person in all of New York knew about crepe myrtle and pralines where Drea was concerned.

Pralines and pink crepe myrtle.
I know it's not your grandmother's house but I thought you'd still like a bit of home.

James

The handwriting wasn't as fluid as Steve's was but it didn't matter. The fact that he remembered her stories of sitting in her Granny's front yard with the crepe myrtle bush and eating pralines...that mattered.

The gifts stayed relatively on par. A hydrangea plant (honestly what was she supposed to do with an actual fucking plant?!) was followed by gift basket with a bag of honest to God Southern grits, hickory smoked bacon, and fresh peaches. That was topped only by authentic Beacon sweet tea and the intimation that there was more where that came from.

"You can't just have a note saying that the tea was just to whet my appetite. That's a cruel and unusual thing to do to a Southern girl who's been this far away from home for far too long." Drea cooed into the phone as she carefully calculated how much tea to drink to maximize the time she'd be able to keep it.

"Just trying to keep you on your toes." Steve paused and Drea held her breath. "It's nice to hear from you."

Her breath rushed out as she smiled. "Yeah...sorry about the radio silence. But thank you for giving me time."

"You're welcome," a familiar voice said in the background and she couldn't suppress her nervous laughter.

"Didn't realize this was a conference call."

"Well it's kind of hard to do anything secretly when we both have extraordinarily good hearing. Besides, we have a question for you." The sounds of the phone being jostled precluded an answer from Drea. "We were wondering if you'd like to have dinner...with both of us."

Drea sat down a little too hard. "Ooof...umm...I dunno."

"Did we mention that we're getting takeout...from this Beacon place you talked about?"

"How...actually nevermind. I don't care how. Tell me when and where…"

"Our place your next night off." It was Bucky who answered and Drea sighed dramatically.

"Well I work midshift tomorrow. That too soon?"

"So who exactly are we bribing to run to South Carolina before tomorrow night?" Steve tried to sound serious but he was almost giddy and he knew Bucky could tell.

"Nat owes me one. Plus, she's already in Atlanta thanks to Clint being the celebrity judge of an archery competition." Bucky was already texting on his phone and smiling widely. "Apparently this place's reputation is well known. I didn't even have to send them the website."

"So...are we gonna talk about this or?"

Bucky stopped wandering around with his eyes glued to the phone in his hands. "Well I do have an idea but I don't know how receptive you'll be." When Steve didn't argue, he took that to mean he could continue. "I know you don't want to stop seeing Drea." Again, no argument from Steve. "And I know I don't want to stop seeing her either."

"And I don't want you to stop seeing her but…"

"But she's putting the ball metaphorically in our court to figure this out so how about this. There's this notion I ran across where we both get to keep dating her and she us but we all date each other." That got Steve's attention as he could feel Steve's blue eyes following him around even though he wasn't speaking yet.

"So we'd all just…" Steve made a circular motion with one finger and Bucky nodded yes. "Really? That's a thing now? Like an accepted thing?"

"I don't know how widely accepted it is but yeah. It's called polyamory and I just read an article that something like five percent of Americans are polyamorous." He sat down on the couch just outside Steve's reach and tried not to fidget nervously in the silence.

"And what if Drea's not a fan of this idea?" Steve's voice was quiet and calm but there was an edge of apprehension. "What if she's only willing to date one of us?"

"Then that decision is up to her and we just have to be okay with her choice." He slid the short distance to press himself against Steve. "But we at least give her this option in case she's game." He tucked his head into Steve's shoulder and sighed when he felt a kiss being pressed to the top of his head.