meet-cute at a camping lot au ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
There was rustling from outside his tent. Steve had been on the very edge of sleep but then rustling had started up, and he was steadily getting more and more annoyed.
Someone was probably just rearranging something he told himself. It’ll stop soon.
Ten minutes later, and it had only gotten louder.
It wasn’t the sort of campsite that had a lot of wildlife visiting, even though it was technically “in the woods”. The real cabins tended to keep them away, the guide had told them, so it was safe enough to pitch tents. But, this rustling was awfully close to Steve’s tent, and when he’d crawled in for the night there hadn’t been a tent pitched on that side of him. So, he wasn’t entirely sure what else it could be.
Ever the dumbass, as Nat would call him, he crawled out of his sleeping bag, pulling his boots on before grabbing a torch and carefully unzipping his tent.
He shone the torch out first, then slowly climbed out, cool night air chilling his skin. He’s not sure what he expected, but the jagged remains of a tent isn’t it.
“uhh. Hello?” He said, mentally slapping himself for announcing his presence even though the torchlight was happily doing that for him.
“Shit” was the muffled response, and a human-shaped figure appeared from behind the broken spine of the tent. “Sorry, did I wake you? I didn’t mean to.”
The person’s voice was barely above a whisper, but Steve could hear him clearly, so he carefully edged around his own tent, ducking the guide wire as he did. “No, I was awake. Do you need a hand?” He shined his torch towards the man’s feet, then slowly up, so it didn’t blind the poor guy.
It did mean that the slow pan up revealed more about the guy than Steve probably should know about a stranger, like how well his jeans fitted and how good his arms looked with his sweater rolled up. He left the torch pointing somewhere to the left of the guy’s chest so he didn’t blind him, and when he responded, “Yeah, that’d be great”, Steve twisted the torch head, turning it into a mini lantern.
“Why don’t you have a lantern set up?” He asked, mildly amused more than anything as he walked around the tent, grabbed the other side of the canvas. With the guy holding one side, Steve could pull, let the rod snap into place, which he did before starting on the wall bracings. “Though I’m impressed you got this far without a light.”
“Didn’t want to bother anyone, I’m already showing up in the middle of the night,” the man replied. “I’m Bucky, by the way.”
“Steve, nice to meet you,” Steve replied on autopilot, and when Bucky snorted he realised what he’d said. “Or something like that,” he added, getting his side of the tent set up. He stood, started to unroll the guide wires attached to the tent canvas.
They worked in relative silence, and all too quickly the tent was set up. “I’ll leave you to it,” Steve said, standing and moving away from the tent pegs. He picked up his lantern-torch, lifted it a little as Bucky came over to him.
The light from the lantern cast the other man’s face into shadow, but Steve could see the smile on his face, smiled back. “Thank you,” Bucky said, sounding all-too sincere. “I probably wouldn’t have managed by myself. I was preparing myself to sleep in my car.”
“Glad I saved you from that fate,” Steve replied with a grin, before stepping back. “I’ll let you get some sleep.”
“Thanks again,” Bucky called after him as Steve picked his way to the front of his tent. With a last glance over his shoulder, he crawled in, diving back into his sleeping bag as soon as his boots were off.
When Steve woke up the next morning it all felt like a weird dream until he crawled out of his tent to see the tent pitched on his right. It was zipped up tight, silent, so Steve shook his head, skirting around it to get to the rusty campsite toilet.
He was on his way back, head turned to the side as he watched the edge of the forest, when he walked into something solid. Apologies were out of his mouth before he could even start to turn, but when he did he blinked, voice stalling in his throat. Then he blinked again, and in an attempt to play it cool, managed to get out, “oh, hi again.”
Bucky, because it had to be Bucky, tilted his head back a little to look at Steve, smile on his face. “You sure you’re awake?” Bucky asked, and Steve rubbed his face with a hand.
“Yeah, mostly, I was distracted,” he said in response, and Bucky snorts, looking amused.
“Do you think I could distract you some more and cook up something for you, as a thank you for helping me out last night?”
Steve blinked, but before he could protest, the you don’t have to on his tongue, Bucky added, “Plus it’ll be handy to get to know my neighbour,” with a warm smile, and Steve’s helpless to say anything but yes.