bakerstreet | Everybody dates everybody

[ ~~His life.~~ Pass on smut, fuelled by fluff. ]

[ooc: Not really too much into the smut thing, but fluff is adored. Open to cross-canon/aus.]

Steve has absolutely, 100% no idea what he is doing. It's not that he's never dated anyone before. He has. Well, he's double-dated at least. And, sure, none of those girls ever really liked him back, but Steve knows the general idea of how to date. Just. Not how to date Bucky.

It should be easy. They've already kissed, after all. They've talked about their feelings and their history and this date is more of a formality than a true date. But still, Steve can't help but feel as though he has to make this perfect. This is going to be his and Bucky's first date, after all. One that is seven decades in the making, as though Steve needed any more pressure on his shoulders. They've already agreed on a time and a place which makes it a little easier but there is still so many other things that Steve has to decide on. What does he wear? How does he do his hair? Does he wear cologne? Where do you buy cologne in Wakanda? Does he pick Bucky up or does he just leave with him, considering they're saying in the same room?

Steve doesn't know. He doesn't have the answers to any of this and the people he asks aren't as helpful as he would have hoped. T'Challa, Nat, and Sam have all pretty much given him contradicting advice: Nat telling him to just be himself, Sam telling him to just dress nice and let things go, and T'Challa giving him a list of places to get clothes, flowers, chocolates, and other gifts at since he'll be needing them all. In the end he takes a little bit from each of them and quietly panics in the middle of the flower shop when the florist asks him what he's looking for and Steve realizes he has no idea.

He ends up with roses. Red roses because, of course that would be what he'd get. However, somehow, when six o'clock rolls around, Steve is holding the roses, daisies, and has an aloe plant tucked under his arm as well with no real memory of how it all happened. At least he didn't have to make the decision about whether to leave together or pick Bucky up because he is barely on time after getting a new, blue button-down and slacks. His hair is cut and he's shaven with no cologne except the strange, musky deodorant he's been sharing with Bucky. Most of this is just how the chips have fallen as opposed to conscious choices and that leaves Steve just a little more nervous rather than less as he knocks on his own door for his date.

Date. Fuck. His date.

This will be fine, he tells himself. It will be fine because it's Bucky and of course it will be. Unless, of course, it's not.

God help him.

Bucky hasn't been on a date since the night before he shipped out to England. He remembers it was a double-date -- one that had gone down the tubes quickly in more ways than one. It had been a far cry of how he'd wanted to spend his last night before shipping off to war, but it's not like there's a way to go back and change the past. What's done is done.

That doesn't mean he hasn't spent the entire damned day with a serious case of nerves. He's not nervous because the date is with Steve. That's probably the only part of the whole thing he's not nervous about. No, he's nervous because since he'd come out of cryo, he hasn't left the apartment and now he's starting to think that maybe he should have made himself do just that, even if it had only been a few minutes a day.

He doesn't know what to expect once he steps out of the safety of the walls around him. It's not something the old Bucky would have thought twice about. The new one, however, has been anticipating every single terrible thing that can possibly happen, mostly involving blood and death. The fact that he doesn't have a replacement arm is both a blessing and a curse -- a blessing because it means his chances of hurting are somewhat diminished (and only somewhat. He's an assassin and he doesn't need to have a robotic arm to take out a target) -- and a curse because it also means he won't be able to protect Steve as efficiently if he needs to.

Still. He's been trying to calm his nerves all day since Steve had left (and where the hell had even gone? It's been hours).

He's dressed in a pair of black slacks and a button down white shirt that Shuri had acquired for him for the occasion. He's a little surprised by how enthusiastically she'd done so, insisting that she help him prepare for his date. She reminds him of someone, and he can't quite figure out who yet, but he's hopeful that in time he'll be able to place it. He'd even let her cut his hair -- it had gotten longer than he'd liked in cryo -- and now it's back to being the length it had been when Steve had found him in Romania. He's also trimmed his beard to the same length it had been then, too.

The knock on the door startles him and he frowns, because it's getting close to the time they're supposed to be leaving, and as uneasy as he feels about leaving the apartment, delaying things isn't really a thing he's interested in, either. He hopes it's not Sam or Natasha. They don't come by that often, which is fine with Bucky, who hasn't quite gotten used to being around many other people aside from Steve and Shuri. Still, he unlocks and opens the door, pausing in his tracks at the sight of Steve standing there.

He looks incredible and Bucky can't quite help the way his gaze trails over the other man, taking him in, and then he realizes he's holding flowers -- roses and daisies, and there's an aloe plant tucked under his arm. He blinks a couple of times, because this isn't something he'd considered, but of course, Steve had.

"You realize you live here, too, right?" His voice is light, teasing as he steps aside.

Bucky looks like a million bucks. The minute the door opens and Steve gets a good look, his jaw drops. How he managed to get someone who looks like this to fall in love with him when he looked like a blond toothpick is a mystery for the ages. Steve won't question it for fear of poking a hole in whatever cosmic mishap he owes the favor to. Instead he swallows down a fresh burst of nerves long enough to paste on a smile and give Bucky a wolf-whistle.

"Yeah," he answers, clearly still distracted as he walks inside. His eyes track Bucky from top to toe. "But I figured I could be a gentleman in case you weren't done curling your hair."

He smiles more genuinely now that he's on the familiar ground of teasing Bucky back. Of course it's then that he remembers the flowers in his hands and the reality of their impending date crashes over his head like a falling alien spaceship. Wouldn't it be funny if he got the heart attack now instead of when he had all the conditions? It would be hilarious.

"Here," he says, holding out the roses first. "The florist convinced me to get these. But then I remembered that stupid garden outside our apartment that kept getting those daisies in them. The ones you gave out on dates sometimes, so..." Those are handed over as well. Which just leaves the aloe plant. Steve looks at it and flushes red.

"And. Yeah. I saw this and...I just figured..."

Steve Rogers: the smoothest of them all.