This might be vaguely familiar, as I posted a draft by mistake a couple weeks ago. Oops. Here's the finished product.

Have you heard, it's in the stars (@ AO3)
Captain America; Steve/Bucky, Rikki/Anya; pg; 3195 words
Telling the girls he's dating Captain America is the best idea Bucky's ever had.

This is for madeofglass, who suggested Steve/Bucky fake dating, and for allofthefeelings, who suggested Rikki and Anya be the catalysts for said fake dating. Thanks to angelgazing for reading it over. Title and cut text from Cole Porter.

~*~

Have you heard, it's in the stars

Rikki'd thought the aches and pains and bruises from gymnastics were bad, but that was before she and Anya started training with Bucky and Steve. Steve doesn't go easy on them, exactly, but she doesn't usually feel like a wrung-out rag after he's done with them, either, the way she does after sessions with Bucky.

"I know he's your uncle," Anya says (they'd all decided it was easier to drop the "great" from that pretty early on), "but I think he's trying to kill us."

Rikki frowns. "Anya--"

"I don't mean all the brainwashing or whatever," Anya says, flapping a hand. "I mean these endless workouts and surprise attacks. He knows you're not enhanced, right? Because, chica, if I'm hurting and I've got super spider powers, I'm surprised you can even get out of bed in the morning."

Rikki lets out a pathetic little moan. "Maybe he just needs a hobby."

"Or to get laid."

"Anya!"

"I'm just saying. When I first started coming here with you, I thought he and Steve were together."

"I don't think Steve even thinks about sex," Rikki says, slightly scandalized. Bucky and Steve are both hot, but it's like thinking about her grandparents. She can't do it. And besides, "He's Captain America."

"But the way they look at each other," Anya starts, but Rikki shakes her head. "Okay, so not Steve. Natasha? Sam? Ms. Papandreou from the guidance office?"

Rikki cocks her head and hums thoughtfully. "She did flirt with him when he showed up on career day."

"Spring Fling is coming. She always chaperones that. We could volunteer him and they can bond over the horror." Anya's got the cutest little smug grin on her face and Rikki wishes she were brave enough to lean over and give her a kiss.

Instead, she grins back and says, "Sounds like a plan."

---

Bucky spends an uncomfortable three hours in the high school cafeteria, making sure nobody spikes the punchbowl and flirting anemically with Rikki's guidance counselor. She's pretty and she makes it clear she's interested, but Bucky won't do anything to make Rikki uncomfortable at school. Well, more uncomfortable than being related to him already is. He prefers not to think about all the other reasons it'd be a terrible idea.

Between being friendly but not too friendly and making sure none of the boys try to take advantage of any of the girls, it's exhausting.

When he gets home, he gets his boots off and collapses onto the specially reinforced couch Stark made for them, swinging his feet up into Steve's lap. Steve glances away from the documentary on whales that he's watching long enough to raise an inquisitive eyebrow and Bucky kneads his heel against Steve's thigh in response.

Steve's mouth curves in a smile as he digs his thumb into Bucky's instep and Bucky sighs with pleasure.

"That bad, huh?" Steve asks sympathetically. "I could have gone with you."

"Nah, then we'd both be miserable. Though I guess if you put the Captain America face on, there'd be no heavy petting in the dark corners, or dumbasses trying to add vodka to the punch."

"Why do they even have a punchbowl anymore?" Steve asks. "That seems so old-fashioned."

"And unsanitary." Bucky shudders delicately, which makes Steve laugh. "I think it was part of the theme. The Fifties or something." Another decade they'd both missed, in diametrically opposite ways.

"Ah."

Steve turns back to his documentary and Bucky closes his eyes and enjoys the foot rub. When Steve gets up and goes to bed, Bucky follows him. He figures he'll sleep through the night, as drained as he feels, but he's in the habit of sleeping in Steve's bed now, even on good days, and sees no reason to change it. He always sleeps better there.

The next day, during their training session, Rikki asks, "So, how did it go last night?"

Bucky frowns in confusion. "You were there. Don't think I didn't see you holding up the walls all night, either. Anyone'd think you were related to Steve instead of me, the way you avoided dancing. Even when Anya asked you to."

Rikki looks at Anya, who shrugs and goes back to stretching. "I meant with Ms. Papandreou."

It takes Bucky a moment to place the name. "Your guidance counselor? Was I supposed to talk to her?" He gives her a little mock glower. "You're not in some kind of trouble, are you?"

"No," Rikki answers quickly. Bucky thinks it might be too quickly, but she's a good kid, and if she's in any trouble, it's probably like the kind Steve used to get into, wading in with fists swinging to protect someone before she thought twice. And it'd be for her parents to sort out, anyway. "We just thought maybe you and Ms. Papandreou might hit it off."

He freezes, just for a second, and then bites the inside of his cheek so he doesn't burst out laughing. Steve chooses that moment to show up, still taping his hands.

"What's going on?" he asks.

"Rikki was trying to set me up with her guidance counselor," Bucky says. He manages not to sound like he's laughing.

Steve blinks. "Oh."

Bucky turns back to Rikki and Anya. "While I appreciate the sentiment, I, uh," he casts about for an excuse that isn't, I'm a formerly brainwashed assassin who doesn't trust anyone and comes up with, "I'm already seeing someone." He reaches out and grabs Steve's hand and squeezes it tightly, hoping Steve gets it and goes along, the way he used to when they were kids. "Steve and I are--well, we're--"

"We're together," Steve says firmly, in that 'trust me, I'm Captain America' voice that gets him out of trouble all the time. "We weren't, before." Bucky has to blink in the face of the adoring gaze Steve turns on him at this point. "I wanted to, but I was never brave enough to risk our friendship. But once I got him back, I knew I could never let him go."

The girls look like they're both about to cry (hopefully in a good way), and even though Bucky knows it's not true, his chest aches a little, too, like maybe he wishes it were.

"Yeah, so," Bucky heaves a gusty sigh, "thanks but I'm all taken care of in that department." He aims his best smile at Steve, who beams back.

"Oh, gosh," Rikki says. "That's amazing." And then there's hugging. So much hugging. Rikki's crying a little and Steve's looking a little teary-eyed himself, and Anya mutters, "I told you," to Rikki but acts like she didn't say anything when Bucky looks at her. They all just keep grinning and hugging.

"Okay, that's enough," he finally says, because now he maybe feels a little bad about lying. He was definitely not expecting that kind of reaction. "Don't you two have some katas to practice?"

They don't complain much today, so he goes easy on them, and they're giggling with their heads together when they leave.

"I don't know why we're surrounded by matchmakers," Bucky says later, when Sam and Natasha have joined him and Steve for dinner. He sends a glare Natasha's way--setting Steve up on impossible dates was always his shtick. He's not sure how he feels about someone else doing it in his absence. "But telling them I'm dating Captain America was the best idea I ever had."

Natasha hums low in her throat, and he can't shake the feeling that she's laughing at him somehow.

"Man, you shouldn't lie to the kids," Sam says, shaking his head. "You know it's going to end badly when they find out the truth."

"I'm not in the market and Steve hasn't been on a date since 1943, so I don't see how that's going to happen."

"Hey," Steve protests.

"Sunday visits with Peggy don't count," Bucky says, and regrets it a little when Steve's shoulders slump. "Aw, man, don't look like that. I'll take you to dinner tomorrow, all right? That barbecue place you like with the fruit beers. We'll tell the kids it's a date. And we'll go visit Peggy next weekend."

Steve claps him on the shoulder, all signs of his pout gone. "Thanks, Buck."

Sam looks like he has more to say on the subject, but Natasha shakes him off. Bucky would thank her for that, but he's pretty sure she's going to cause trouble somewhere along the line. He corners her on her way out and says, "Don't tell Stark."

"I don't think I'm the one you have to worry about on that front," she answers. He can hear her laughing at him in her voice even though her expression is nothing more than fond.

And really, not a whole lot changes right after he makes the announcement. Rikki knocks now before she flings open the door to their suite in the tower, and the giggling seems to have reached new peaks, but that's about it. He's pretty sure Jarvis would stop her from getting in if they were actually having sex. And his mind shies away from that, because the thought of Steve between his thighs, all that supple golden skin gleaming with sweat and marked with little red blooms from his mouth and fingers--Yeah, he needs to stop thinking about that and pay more attention to the movie they're watching, though Steve's head on his shoulder is another distraction, his hair smelling like their shampoo and tickling Bucky's nose when he shifts.

Rikki and Anya are beaming at them from the other couch, though, so he doesn't do anything about it. But the truth is, it's not like he'd have shrugged Steve off if they were alone, either.

But then one day when he's having dinner with the girls after training (Anya's father sent over a tray of ziti), Steve comes home from his mission and presses a quick kiss against Bucky's cheek. "Missed you," he murmurs.

Bucky cheeks get hot, and Anya is practically cooing at them as Steve heads for the bedroom to change out of his uniform. Bucky doesn't even have to fake his dopey grin in response.

When Steve comes out of the bedroom he brushes his hand across Bucky's shoulders as he passes by, pausing just long enough for a brief scritch at the short hair on Bucky's nape. Heat slithers through his body, and he wants to press into the touch like a cat begging to be petted, but it's gone almost as soon as he processes the thought.

Steve sits down with a bright smile. "It's good to be home. What's for dinner?"

Anya puts a heaping helping of ziti on his plate, and Rikki hands over the gravy boat full of tomato sauce. "It's okay," she says. "Mr. Corazon cooked."

Steve digs in with gusto. "'S'good."

"My cooking's not that bad," Bucky says.

"It really is," Rikki answers, and they all laugh.

"I'd eat it even you cooked it," Steve says loyally, and Bucky reaches out and curls his fingers briefly around Steve's wrist. He kind of wants to lean over and kiss him, but maybe that's too much. It's the sort of thing his mother might have done to his father, if his memory is to be trusted, but he doesn't know what's appropriate in this day and age, and even more importantly, he doesn't know how Steve would react.

And then he thinks maybe Sam was right. Maybe this is a bad idea. Not because of the girls--they're thrilled--but because Bucky finds himself wanting it to be true and knowing it can't be.

---

Rikki's known for a long time that she doesn't like boys, but liking girls had really only been theoretical before she met Anya. (Her crush on Natasha doesn't count; she doesn't believe anyone who says they don't have a crush on Natasha, and that includes Bucky and Steve.) She'd worried that she was a freak, but she's just a late bloomer. Like Steve, she tells herself. Without the science experiment.

She thinks Anya might be interested, and not just because they spend so much time together. Anya has talked about crushes on boys, but she's never seemed serious about any of them. And she also has a crush on Natasha (she says it's a spider thing, but Rikki knows it's a Natasha thing), and they've both talked about how they'd like to be her when they grow up. And Anya's never dismissed it as a "girl crush" the way some girls at school do.

"'Girl crush' is the female equivalent of 'no homo,'" Anya says disdainfully when Rikki brings it up one day. "Having a crush isn't the same thing as being a fangirl."

"No," Rikki says, "it's really not." But she also fangirls Anya, even though they're partners, because Anya is awesome and Rikki doesn't even mind so much that she's always late and that she snores.

And then Steve and Bucky come out to them, and while Rikki still doesn't want to think about them and sex at the same time, she can't stop replaying Steve's words in her head. Because she knows exactly what he meant about being scared to ruin the friendship but always aching for more. And he always tells her that she's strong and courageous for standing up for what's right and helping people, so maybe she should be brave about this, too.

She finds it's easier to be brave after a night of punching bad guys, and as they wait in the shadows for the police to pick up their latest capture, Rikki grabs Anya's hand.

"I wanted to tell you," she says, and then shakes her head. Words aren't good enough. Adrenaline is pumping in her veins and she feels like she could take on the Hulk and win, so she leans in and presses her lips to Anya's. Anya's lips are chapped and they taste like Blistex, but she kisses back, and Rikki thinks her heart might explode out of her chest, it's beating so hard and so fast. "I've wanted to do that forever," she says when she pulls back.

Anya's smile is bright, and her teeth gleam in the red and blue lights of the police car that's pulling up. "Me, too."

---

The first time Steve brushes a kiss over Bucky's cheek when the girls aren't there, they both jerk away, startled. Steve's cheeks are pink and he pushes a hand through his hair.

"Just keeping my hand in." He glances down, embarrassed, and Bucky manages a laugh.

"Yeah, okay," he says. "I get it." He isn't too keen to meet Steve's gaze himself; he doesn't know if Steve would be able to see how much Bucky wants those kisses to be real, how much he wants that and more, everything Steve would give him, if he felt the same.

Honey-I'm-home kisses, good morning kisses, good night kisses, Steve gives them all, and Bucky stores them up greedily, even as he thinks he should probably tell Steve to dial it down, because the last time Steve had pressed an absent kiss to the corner of Bucky's mouth, Bucky'd thought he was going to explode with lust. Natasha had laughed and Sam looked like he was going to have an aneurysm. All of which just made Bucky want to kiss Steve back.

Sam's right. This is the stupidest thing he and Steve have ever done, and that's saying something.

He's still deciding whether to tell Sam that, whether to tell Steve to cut it out, and whether he can handle the results of that, when Rikki says, "There's something we need to tell you."

Bucky carefully sheathes the knife he'd been planning to train them with today and drops to the floor beside his grand-niece. He inhales and exhales slowly. "Good something or bad something?" They know he doesn't like surprises.

"We think it's good and we hope you do too," Anya says, joining them on the mats.

"We?"

Anya reaches over and takes Rikki's hand.

"We're dating," Rikki blurts out. "For a few weeks now."

Bucky grins, equal parts relieved and pleased. "That's great."

"Ever since you and Steve told us you were together," Anya says. She gives Rikki a sweet smile that Rikki returns.

"I realized Steve was right," Rikki says.

"He usually is," Bucky says, "but if you tell him I said that, I'll deny it."

Rikki laughs. "You inspired us to be brave."

"He has that effect on people."

"Not just him," Rikki says, bumping her shoulder against his. "You, too."

Bucky would like to believe that's true, but he knows what a coward he is when it comes to these things; throwing himself into a fight was always easier than talking about feelings, especially his feelings for Steve, and that's one thing that hasn't changed.

"Don't think you're getting out of training today," he says, getting up and unsheathing his knife again.

"No, of course not," Rikki says. She turns to Anya and mutters, "I thought you said getting him laid on the regular would make him go easier on us."

"Hey," he barks, biting back a laugh, "I heard that." He pauses and then asks, vaguely horrified, "I don't need to have a sex talk with you, do I?"

"Oh god, no," Rikki says, dropping into a fighting stance, her face bright red.

"Whew. Good," he says. "Let's talk about knife-fighting instead."

Now that he knows, he can see it in their body language, the way they're always touching and exchanging glances, communicating without words. He knows he and Steve do that, have always done that, but it's never meant the same thing. Even now, it's all for show.

But maybe, he thinks, it doesn't have to be.

When Steve comes home from his afternoon run, Bucky grabs his hand and stops him from heading straight into the bedroom to change.

"Everything all right, Buck?"

"Did you know Anya and Rikki were a couple?"

Steve's face lights up with a wide smile. "I didn't, but I'm so happy for them." His smile dims a little. "You're okay with it, right? Anya's a good kid, and they're already such good friends."

"Yeah," Bucky says. "It's just--Rikki says they were inspired by us. That we're together."

Steve's smile disappears altogether. "Oh."

"Yeah." Bucky bites his lip, a nervous habit that's come back along with his memories. "We can't break up now," he says seriously. "I don't want to set a bad example for them." He still hasn't let go of Steve's hand, and now he tugs him closer. Steve's skin is still flushed from outside, and he smells of sweat. Bucky's mouth goes dry.

"I see."

"Do you?" Bucky asks before he closes the distance between them and presses his lips to Steve's. He's never initiated any of their fake kisses, but this one's for real, and it sends shocks of heat through him.

"Yeah," Steve murmurs into Bucky's mouth. "I do."

Maybe one day they'll tell the girls the truth, but after Natasha's amusement upon finding out, Bucky thinks it might be a while before that happens.

---

Feedback is adored.

~*~