5 and 51 Bucky/Jane please!
5. Bar/Restaurant AU + 51. Accidentally Married
Jane runs a space-themed bar that has everything: a Galaga machine, walls the color of the night sky that she painted herself, stargazing event nights, and a telescope that she only busts out when conditions are right and there aren’t too many rowdy patrons around. She’s got a great space and a great team. Darcy, her best-loved bartender and best friend, keeps the good customers happy and the heavy drinkers in check. Steve, the bouncer, sometimes does caricatures on slow nights and makes sure that nobody gets rough. And then there’s Bucky.
Bucky does the books, but he’s the one who convinced her to even open this place. They met when she was in grad school, and in between his work with the Veterans’ Center on campus and her astrophysics lectures, they became fast friends.
And Jane may harbor the slightest, least inconvenient crush on him of all time.
It’s hard not to feel things for Bucky. He’s smart and handsome and witty and kind, and even when he doesn’t understand the intricacies of her astrophysics studies and whatever article Neil Degrasse Tyson published recently, he listens and gives his two cents. He teases her over boys and girls she pretends to have her eye on, and he stays up late with her talking about the bar, the town, the time he caught Darcy and Steve in a compromising position in the broom closet after closing.
But while her bartender and her bouncer could afford to risk their feelings in a relationship that hasn’t been building for the last, oh, six years, she doesn’t dare go there with Bucky. If they don’t work out, it’ll break her heart not to have him in her life. If they do work out...that idea frightens her even more.
On the fifth anniversary of the bar opening, Jane decides to throw a huge party onsite, one where she hires caterers, extra bartenders, even a band dressed in all-silver spacesuits. The regular staff get hammered, and Jane and Bucky are no exception.
All it takes is one patron to put the moves on Jane for Bucky to get a little defensive, protective even. He slings an arm around her, calls her honey, kisses her so softly on the mouth that she nearly feels her legs turn to jelly. When the stranger, a tall, hulking blond apologizes for his misstep, Bucky explains that they’re eloping this weekend, and thought they’d have a bit of fun at this party before running off to the courthouse in the morning.
The stranger, Jane shits you not, laughs and announces that he’s an ordained minister. All they need is a witness who’s willing to join them at the courthouse in the morning to sign off on the paperwork.
The look in Bucky’s eyes dares Jane to back out, but with liquor as her courage, she tells the stranger she’ll do it.
With Darcy as their witness, James Buchanan Barnes and Jane Eloise Foster become husband and wife. Instead of a bouquet toss, Darcy nominates Jane to ride the mechanical bull at the bar down the street.
It’s not until they wake up the next morning in bed together fully clothed, Jane with a veil and a sash she can’t explain and Bucky in a bow tie that wasn’t there the previous night, that they realize something is terribly wrong.
Or, as Darcy puts it, when they text her to find out what the fuck happened, terribly, terribly right.
