Work Text:
Year 2026
"Come on, man, the bride's supposed to be late, not the groom,"
Sam grinned broadly at the other guy in the hotel room, standing in front of the tall mirror, doing his staring thing...again. At least this particular stare was far from the brooding look he directed at people in the past.
"Wassup, with you any way? For an old white dude, at least you don't look like a waiter in that tux".
Bucky turned and looked at his co - worker, friend and soon to be brother in law.
"Just thinking", Bucky replied. smoothing his longish wavy hair with his flesh hand. He had grown it for the wedding, just for her. After telling him in passing his wavy hair made him look even hotter, he decided to cut back on trips to the barbers, leave the clippers for a while and give his lady what she wanted.
"You betta not be thinking of changing your mind, Buck, that contract with Carlos is still open," Sam grumbled, the twinkle in his eye betraying the fact he was razzing his friend.
"Fuck, never!" Bucky exclaimed, "I was just thinking, 80 years ago this, this would have never been allowed to happen. I would have missed out on..."
Bucky paused, choking up with emotion on the possibility of life without Sarah, the boys and even as annoying as he could be, Sam, in his life.
Sam completed the sentence out loud, "Missed out on your pale ass joining this great family, cos of fucked up ignorant folk, you mean?"
Bucky nodded his head.
The 21st century wasn't perfect, far from it, there were still a few dog whistles about Sam being Captain America but those folks were relegated to the usual websites for the dregs of society. If he wasn't busy working on the boat, saving the world and planning a wedding he would have used his old skills to shut them down and shut them up. But as Sam kept reminding him, they were like roaches, step on one site another would just pop up somewhere else.
Or as an exasperated Sarah once put it, when he was spending too much time at night shutting down websites and sabotaging twitter accounts.
"I prefer you spend your time fucking me instead of fucking with them"
His sweetheart was a wise woman.
Yes indeed 2026 was far from perfect, but compared to 1944, it gave him the moment of a lifetime and just for that, 2026 would become one of the best years of his life.
1944 (somewhere in England)
Bucky looked over at the group of new recruits who had joined the ATS. They looked like some of the women back home, except they spoke with those strange island accents. He stamped out his cigarette, self debating whether he had the stones to walk over and just say hello.
Just as he lunged forward to take a step in their direction, a hand tapped his shoulder.
"Time to go, Buck."
Bucky turned his head, and exhaled, another 'how to destroy the Nazis' meeting, was on the card.
Steve followed where his best friend's eye had targeted and sighed. They had this talk before, Europe might be less strict about these sort of things but one still had to be careful. There were lines they could not cross, scandals they had to avoid as the infamous Howling Commandos. Sure Bucky could have any woman he wanted, but there were some women that were out of his reach.
Steve shrugged, perhaps after they defeated the Nazis the world would be a better, less judgmental place. He really hoped so, if not what on earth were they fighting for?
ATS = Auxiliary Territorial Service was the women's branch of the British Army during WW2. It predated the Women's Royal Army Corps