Standing in that crowd, seeing Walker holding that shield like he'd done what it was meant for, Bucky knew they had to get out of there. Having dragged Sam with him to a hotel room he'd already booked as a safeguard in case something like this went down, Bucky has no choice but to sit in a room with the way Sam was feeling about everything that had happened that day, and the way they were coming to feel about each other.
Back for another vacation down in Louisiana, Bucky brings explicitly to Sam's attention that, well, pretty much half of Delacroix thinks they're boyfriends, and well on their way to tying the knot, too. It takes Sam a little bit, and a fortunate accident, to figure out exactly why Bucky had decided to take it upon himself to start the conversation, but he gets there. A lot of banter, some fooling around in the old fishing shed, and a nice evening with Bucky and the other Wilsons later, and Sam finds himself on the date he hadn't known he'd been needing, with the friend he'd been too dense to figure out he was head over heels for.