The Grumpy Sunshine Series

Originally Posted: 06/11/2022

"Please?"

"No."

"Please?"

"No."

"Please, please, please, please, please?" he desperately begs, his voice loud enough to be heard from underneath your thick comforter. It's so excessive that you have to use your hand to start counting exactly how many 'pleases' leave Bucky's mouth. "Please!"

"No, no, no, no, no, no," you begin, counting down with each of your raised fingers. "And one more for good measure, no."

"But why not?!" he dramatically groans, flipping the blanket up so it no longer covers his face.

"We have to go," you firmly state, grabbing his hand in a futile attempt to pull him out of bed. You're momentarily successful as he sits up, only for him to carelessly flop back down when you let his hand go.

"No, we don't," he whines, tightly cocooning himself back in the comforter. "We hung out with them last week."

"That was three weeks ago," you correct, pulling the blankets off of him. "We skipped the last two Fridays."

"I don't want to. Please?" he begs, sticking out his lower lip as a desperate last ditch effort to get you to skip the weekly team get together. Most of them were fine, but this particular night he'd been dreading - karaoke night.

"No, we have to go," you repeat.

"But it's karaoke. I can't even get drunk."

"So what?" you shrug.

"No one sober has ever enjoyed karaoke!"

"Well, you should've thought about that before you talked me out of going to movie night last week."

He thinks about that for a moment, and you're probably right, but he can't concede without being dragged to a karaoke bar. He'd made his way through denial and anger, now was the time for bargaining, "We could stay here. Watch Tangled. Order a pizza. Build a fort?" he offers, taking your hand in an attempt to lure you back to bed. "Me and you. All alone."

"You drive a hard bargain, but we have to go," you say, unwinding Bucky's arms from your waist. "It'll look bad if we miss a third week."

"Who cares?"

"I am a compulsive people pleaser. I care. And that means we're going."

"Well, I'm not going," he huffs, childishly crossing his arms.

"Okay," you sigh, dramatically shrugging as you move away from your bed to grab your bag. "I'll go to that bar all by myself, have a few drinks. Maybe I'll take a nice, long night-time walk afterwards. Take a few shortcuts through some dark alleys. Just me, all alone. Or better yet, maybe I'll make some new friends. Yeah, I think that's what I'll do."

"And I'm up!"

"Can we go home now?" Bucky whispers in your ear.

"We've been here ten minutes," you chuckle, playfully pushing him away.

"And no one's here yet. We'll tell them we waited, and they can't prove it otherwise. That'll fulfill our duties as good teammates for the next three weeks. No one will ever know," he insists, intertwining his hand with yours.

"I'm literally right here," Sam scoffs, sitting on the other side of you in the booth. "I can hear you."

"You don't count," Bucky snarkily replies.

Sam makes a strange, smug expression, and with narrowed eyes he nods once at Bucky. "Okay."

"It's not as much fun when he doesn't bicker back," Bucky tells you.