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It’s October and it’s going to be cold out there. It’s going to rain soon.
He figures it’s time. It’s time, now that he sleeps, mostly, and he has a name again. He’s got a couple sturdy pairs of jeans, and a couple decent shirts. He knows Steve keeps his wallet in the left pocket of his jacket, he’s sorry to have to steal from him, but he does it. Cleans him out. Hard to know how much sixty bucks is worth when you haven’t really bought anything for half a century. But if it’s not much, it doesn’t really matter. He’s been poor before. It’s a skill, not the kind you ever forget. He leaves the note, Steve’s wallet with all its plastic cards, the dossier the doctor gave him on the Winter Soldier.
On his way out, he steals one of Steve’s coats. Didn’t really want to but it’s going to rain, and he’s not exactly sure just where he’s going.
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Steve drinks.
He never used to. Swore he never would. But he’s regular enough down at the little place on the corner that when he reaches for his wallet and finds it’s missing, the bartender laughs and says, “Don’t worry about it Steve, I know you’re good for it. Get home safe. See you tomorrow.”
He’s grateful and ashamed. Didn’t know the bartender knew his name. Hadn’t realized he’d been going so much. He pulls on his coat, says thanks and goodnight and heads out into the street, wondering where the hell he left his wallet. Must be back in the apartment. Maybe with his gym things. Didn’t think to check before he left.
Didn’t think he’d end up running a one-man psych-ward out of Stark Tower, either. Oh, there are lots of things Steve Rogers just did only to find out later that those were bad ideas. Trying to save Bucky might be the biggest one of them.
Sometimes Bucky looks at Steve like he knows him, and sometimes he looks at Steve like a dog waiting to be put down. Things have gotten better, so much better, in the course of the last year. He’s gone from an animal to a man, from something to someone. And in some ways, that makes it all harder. Now he’s started to hold up his hand and say, No, it’s ok, when he freaks out, when Steve wants to help. Like he thinks he’s got to do it all himself. Make it all go faster. Like he can’t wait to get out of the new cage that Steve’s put him in. As if he thinks that if he can only he behave like Steve says he should, he can go free.
If he’d known, if he’d listened to Sam who’d said, Man, you are not equipped for this and who, unsurprisingly, was right, he would have asked someone who knew what they were doing to take Bucky somewhere safe. There would have been doctors and nurses and therapists and sedation and safe rooms. Not an apartment with a fucking balcony and ceramic plates and paring knives. Not one occasional-doctor-sometimes-monster. Not Steve trying to keep Bucky alive.
Chalk another mark on the board under Captain America’s real bad ideas.
If he’s honest with himself he knows that he didn’t do it for Bucky. He did it for himself. He did it because he owed a hell of a debt and he’s proud. Never liked owing anybody anything. He did it because he failed Bucky when Bucky needed him most. He did it because those things bothered him more than all the screaming in the night, all the panic attacks, all the vomiting, all the bruises both hidden and observed. Everything that Bucky is, the shattered, sleepless, haunted thing, he is because of Steve Rogers. Sometimes knowing that makes his chest ache so much that he thinks there’s something in there, like the reactor lodged between Tony’s ribs. He thinks that someone’s wound it up too tight and if he moves wrong it’s gonna break. So yeah. Sometimes he drinks.
But he never goes back to the apartment intoxicated. He walks until he’s sobered up. Whatever else Bucky is, it would be fatal to underestimate him. He wonders, walking through the park with his hands in his pockets, if it’s always going to be like this. Like taking a stray off the street. Never really sure about anything. Always wondering if it was the right thing to do. Sometimes thinking you’re kind, and sometimes cursing your ego. He sits on one of the moulded-plastic benches and watches people go by while he sobers himself up. It’s not like it takes him very long.
When he’s like this he tries not to think about the past. But there’s a couple of young guys, punks Nat calls them, with their cockatiel hair and their leather jackets, walking hand in hand across the park and he can’t help wondering if it’s better to be in a time when your love is whole but secret, or in a time when you can be what you are, but your love is broken like a mirror.
He sits there till he’s sober and he’s cold, and the rain is starting to come sifting down from a bruised kind of sky. He sits there thinking, I should have listened to Sam, and hates himself for it, then drags himself home.
When he gets there, the lights are on, but the place is quiet. He shucks off the jacket and throws it onto the back of a bar stool, toes off his shoes.
“Buck?” he calls. No answer.
He goes into the living room where the Winter Soldier dossier is on the coffee table, and there’s a little scrap of sketchbook paper sitting on top of it. He shouldn’t look. He doesn’t like it when people look at his drawings before he’s done with them. But he picks it up anyway, and finds his wallet underneath. He unfolds the paper. It’s not a drawing, just words.
I’m sorry.
“Jarvis, is Bucky in the tower?” He doesn’t know why he bothered to ask, he already knows the answer.
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In the darkness New York shines, and it sounds just the same as it always did, busy and crowded and home. It’s late enough that the streets are in that end-of-day ebb, where some places are closing and some of them are opening and there aren’t so many people on the sidewalks and in the cafes.
He hunches into the coat as he walks. It’s never going to stop being strange the way that Steve is bigger than him now. When the bad weather starts up, he pulls up the collar and hunches down. It’s not so bad for New York. Just a soft, sifting drizzle that hangs like a veil in the streets. He walks in it and never feels too wet or too cold. After a couple hours of walking, he starts to wonder where the hell he’s going.
The answer comes to him when he recognizes the high, arched windows of the building that used to be the No. 2 firehall and now, it seems, is some kind of luxury condo thing. He’s going to Brooklyn. Some memory he doesn’t really have access to is sending him over this unfamiliar landscape, sending him home.
When he gets to where he’s going, or maybe just about, he goes into a cafe. The air is warm and humid and they’re playing some kind of music that crackles as if it’s being played from a record player, Oho the times they are a-changin’.
“You don’t know the half of it,” he mutters. He smiles at the girl who gives him his paper cup of coffee, spares a moment to wonder when everything became the sort of thing you threw away, and goes to the overstuffed chairs at the back of the cafe. Clear sight lines to the door, and a wall he can put his back to. Plus the chair is comfortable.
He drinks his coffee and soothes his tired feet. It’s been a long time since he went anywhere and he’s surprised to find how out of shape he’s become. All wasted muscle and half-healed bones. All that was strong in him is gone. He doesn’t like this used-up feeling.
When he feels like he can, he gets going again, looking around at the buildings and Christ how the neighbourhood has changed. He didn’t even recognize it. Had to check the street sign at two intersections. It’s the right place, or near enough to it. He can still see the bones of the place they once lived, knows it by the pattern of the lintels around the windows. This heavy-browed windows were outdated and Victorian back then, but now they’ve been carefully reconstructed, fresh red brick added where the old bricks crumbled. The big front door’s been painted green, and there’s an electronic box for calling the suites. Probably stops people sleeping in the stairwell. He remembers stumbling over the drunk and the sleeping in the dark. It was a slum back then, or near enough. He wonders some times how they ever made it, him and Steve.
We didn’t, he thinks, not really. Still not making it, all these years on.
There’s a bright little sign in one of the windows, FOR RENT, in the window of the place he and Steve used to have. He can’t help himself. He wants to see it. He goes up and rings the bell for the manager.
He lies, oh how he lies. When did he become such a good liar? Maybe he always was. After all, he always was less brave than he seemed. Never wanted Steve to know he was afraid. Afraid of the war, and afraid of poverty, and afraid of how Steve seemed sometimes to be dying in front of him. Afraid of what he would do if he did.
The lady who comes to the door is in her forties, her lip is pierced with a little steel stud that glints when she smiles. She tells him she carries a Taser and then shows him up to the old place. The stairs don’t creak any more. The dated old wood mouldings have been stripped of paint and shine now with polish. The door to the old place fits perfectly, someone must have planed it down where it used to rub against the jamb.
Inside, everything has changed. The pale green paper is gone and the walls are an inconspicuous not-quite-white. The place feels smaller than he ever remembers it feeling. A tiny tub, a bedroom with a view the alley and the trash bins. The rent, when he hears it, is breathtaking. Utilities not included.
“What do you think?” she asks him.
His throat is tight. He shakes his head. “Nah. It’s not for me,” he says. She shrugs and takes him back down the silent stairs, closes the door behind him when he steps out onto the street.
It’s raining hard now, so he goes back to the cafe. He charms a free coffee out of the girl at the till. The place is still empty, and he can take his coffee back over to the easy chairs. He settles there.
He supposes he was going to try to rent the old place again. He supposes he thought it would be like going back, but that time is country that has exiled him. He drinks the coffee down while the music plays and the cars go sighing by on the wet street. He closes his eyes for a moment and listens.
Maybe he dozes, because the next thing he knows he hears: “I’m looking for a dark-haired guy.” It’s the only familiar voice in the world, speaking with the clerk. “A little shorter than me. Long hair. Uh… weird arm.”
Bucky knows without having to look up that the clerk is going to be betray him to the enemy. When Steve perches down on the chair opposite his, he’s breathing heavily, whole body angled toward him. He’s scowling, water dripping off the ends of his hair and his nose. Bucky waits.
Steve draws a slip of paper from his pocket. He’s soaked, so the paper’s soaked, but Bucky doesn’t need to unfold it to know what it is; the stolen corner of a sketchbook sheaf, the words are written in charcoal.
He should have known better than to return to Brooklyn. Of course Steve would come looking here, of course he’d find him in the cafe nearest their old place. It occurs to him that maybe he hoped this was how it would all play out. But that doesn’t change the truth of the matter, which is that Bucky’s presence has cost Steve too much already. Sleepless nights and constant wariness will eventually grind anyone down. And that’s nothing to whatever it is that’s making him frown so much these days, making him rub hard at the bridge of his nose and sigh. Everything he’s done is more than enough; whatever is slipping away from Steve now, Bucky doesn’t want to take.
“You’re gonna get a cold like that,” Bucky says before Steve can get a word out. “You should go home and warm up.”
“You stole my wallet.”
“I left your wallet. I stole the money. And your coat.” Bucky shrugs out of the warm leather. He passes the coat to Steve but Steve doesn’t move.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
Bucky doesn’t answer. Steve’s always had a temper on him. When he gets like this, it’s better to let him run himself out.
“Maybe Hydra’s done, but maybe it’s not. You know people will be looking for you. Not just Hydra. You think there’s not a hundred little organizations that would love to get their hands on you? You think you’re just going to be allowed to retire or something? Get your old apartment back?”
Maybe. Maybe he had hoped that all of that was true.
Steve looks at the paper again, as if he’s never seen it before, then he looks at Bucky. “Why would you do this?”
After the question he waits. Bucky meets his eyes. “Because I’m ruining you,” he says.
Steve makes a noise, wordless protest.
“Shut up,” he says, not cruel, just brusque. “You know this isn’t how it’s supposed to work.” It’s a strange thing, being the one explaining something they both should know. “I look after you. Now you’re looking after me and you’re starting to come apart.” Bucky shrugs. He gestures at the note. “You never liked taking your medicine, Steve, but you gotta take it. This is what you need.”
Steve sits, staring, as if Bucky’s just punched him.
“Buck,” he whispers. He passes a hand over his rain-soaked face. He lowers his head and even with the rain and the cars in the street and the music playing he can hear the strangled catch in Steve’s breath. Asthma attack.
“Hey,” Bucky says, edging forward to reach across the coffee table and the sticky magazines. “It’s ok, breathe. Sit up straight and breathe, like the doctor told you.”
Steve raises his head again and stares, stares. His eyes are red. “What is wrong with you?” he whispers. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” It sort of trickles into Bucky’s awareness. No asthma. Not any more. Of course. A held-in sob. A shuddering breath. Steve rubs at his eyes but the tears fall before he can scrub them away. A deep, shuddering breath. “I can’t do it again,” he says. “I can’t.”
Steve needs a good night’s sleep. He needs to spend a day lying on the couch with his stupid sketch book rather than saving the world all day, and saving Bucky from himself at night. He’s worn out, exhausted. He shouldn’t have come out in the rain without his coat. He’s so damn stupid sometimes.
Bucky touches Steve’s arm. “Hey,” he says, “you’re a goddamned mess. Come on.” He tries to crack a smile. “You know I’m right.”
“Don’t,” Steve sobs. “You don’t… fucking…” more tears. “Not after… I just got you back… you fucking jerk.”
Bucky draws him in, so that Steve can rest his head against his chest. They’ve done this too, in the past. Took a week for Steve to have it all out after his mom went, but when he did it was a hell of a storm. Bucky smooths his hair until the worst is over and Steve leans against him, softly breathing, hardly shivering at all any more. Then he sits up and looks at Bucky.
“How long do you think you’re gonna make it on your own?”
Bucky shrugs.
“Doesn’t matter, really.” If you’re safe. If one of us can be alive.
“Yeah it does. Everything that happened to you was my fault. You spent your whole life looking after me and when you needed me I couldn’t…” He gulps in a breath. “I did all of this.”
“Steve,” he says, can hear the way his mouth is curving, it changes the timbre of his words, “You gotta at least try to stop being an idiot.”
“Stay.” Steve says into his chest. “You wanna know what I need? This. I need this.”
Bucky wishes he was a better man. He wishes he could do the right thing; go quietly in the wild, pass away from the world, be a legend, be a ghost until time finally catches up with him, until he’s grass and earth. He wishes he was not in love. But he’s never been the man he ought to be, and the world has lost its wild places. And he cannot remember a time before he was in love.
He puts his forehead against Steve’s.
“Being with me is gonna cost you,” Bucky says.
“Being without you already cost me plenty,” Steve answers.
“You’re such a little punk.”
He hears the exhalation that goes with Steve’s grin. Bucky passes a hand over his short hair again. Then Steve sniffs, sits back, rubbing at his face with his sleeve. “Oh man,” he says, softly, weakly, looking down at his soaked clothes. “You’re right. I am a goddamned mess.”
“You need to warm up. Since I’m the one with all the money, I’ll buy you a coffee.” He gets to his feet, goes to the counter and orders.
The clerk gives Bucky a long, long look before she gets one of the warm cups from on top of the giant coffee machine. “Look, I know it’s none of my business but I gotta know: Are you gonna take him back?”
Bucky laughs softly. “Uh, yeah, sorry about the scene. And it’s… it’s actually the other way around.”
She shakes her head, gives him the coffee and makes change for the twenty. “No, honey,” she says, “no, it’s really not.”
He takes the coffee and comes back to Steve, finds the jacket where it wound up on the floor, brushes it off and puts it around Steve’s shoulders. He’s not going to get sick any more, but he smiles a little when Bucky does it. And besides, it’s how things ought to be.