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Bucky stepped into the apartment, wincing around the creaking door before it clicked shut. A lock, a bolt and several equally loud floorboards later, Bucky shrugged off his coat, shirt and scrubbed his face with water from the bowl on the bureau.
Towelling his face and neck dry, he flicked the flaking paint at the estradous edges; one of the only pieces of furniture from Sarah's old place that Steve had been able to wrestle from their former landlord, and even that debacle had only been resolved by coughing over 2/3 of his charcoal budget. When they had a bit of spare cash they'd have to repaint it. Bucky laughed to himself, internally. When.
After toeing off his shoes, he stepped through to the second room, and saw the hunched, skeletal figure of his best friend since childhood buried under three layers of threadbare blankets. One had been scrounged from a concerned neighbour and another, after perfuse washing of course, had been swindled from the dumpster. He would have just bought another, then the idiot had stayed out in the rain all night fighting off some cat-callers at the other end of Brooklyn. By the time Steve'd trudged home, his old boots were filled with water, newspaper filling soaked; he'd caught an ear infection as well as the head-cold that sent his asthma into the ritz. So there went two weeks wages on medication, and Bucky had to beg Mr. Kanipsky down at the docks for extra hours. The union workers hollered, so he had to pull a second job at the refinery on Baker's. He came home stinking of pig-iron, but then Steve would make tea like his Ma used to, with a draught of whisky, and they's share a good laugh. "Like the old country" he called it.
Bucky regarded Steve now, blond hair yellowed in the gaslight from the street outside. He slept turned away from Bucky, facing towards the wall, as Bucky learnt against the doorway.
Wiping his eyes, and setting his head against the frame, it settled into his bones how dog-tired he was.
Despite the late hour, the apartment building hadn't been bereft of curious eyes through door-chains or wall-muffled complaints to "keep it down" as he trudged up the stair-well earlier. Dot, one of the couple of working-girls who shared an apartment below Steve's and his, had stopping him on his trek, offered to share the cigarette that dangled between her over-painted lips. The shade of red didn't suit her complexion, but it sure brought out the bruises.
"Nah, gotta head in. Early start tomorrow."
"Ya' gal gotcha workin' like a dog huh? Must be nice." She squawked, taking a drag.
"Y'know you’re the only gal f'me, Dot," Bucky joked with a wink, a re-button of his coat an awkward attempt to move past without seeming rude. She was a nice girl, didn't mean any harm. Usually.
He threw a casual "g'night" over his shoulder before reaching for the stair banister.
"I don't know what ya messin’ around with him for. Crippled fag like that's knockin' on death's door ever u'dder night."
Bucky glanced over shoulder, appearing frozen in place, as his knuckles whited over his grasp on the banister. His reaction was clearly what Dot had wanted, because her overpainted lips began stretching over her yellowing teeth, leaving a streak of waxy red in their wake.
"Y'don't know whatcha talkin' about," Bucky said through gritted teeth.
Dot shrugged, flicking the cigarette ash onto the hallway carpet nonchalantly, as she pointed "Ya got circles under ya eyes darka' than a minstrel show. Ya clearly work hard, honey. All ah'm wonderin' is if the fairy upstairs is worth it."
She took another drag of her cigarette before butting it out on the damp-bubbled wallpaper.
Bucky was ashamed of himself for the rest of his days for what happed next, because for a white-hot flaring instant, as Dot turned to go inside, Bucky had wanted to add to the litany of bruises just to shut her laughing mouth. It wasn't the first time even that week he'd heard that kind of talk.
Every time Steve got sick, the guys down the dock had mocked him when he told them the reason for pulling extra hours. Harking "that guy lasts the winter and I'll eat my hat." The shaking heads of concern from teachers and priests as he slipped grades and got last rites no less than 8 times. But Steve had kept lasting, had kept pulling through every bout of pneumonia, every bronchitis flare-up, even a near-miss with Scarlet Fever. Steve was so much stronger than the idiots of the world made him out to be.
Strong enough to not let petty insults goad him into nearly hitting a woman, with a shit enough life as it was. That was the disgusting irony of his best friend. He was so willing to stand up for others needs, would leap to rescue in a heartbeat. But it was water off a ducks back, if some idiot who couldn't see past their nose insult his height, his geight, his anything. Steve was a more honourable man than the world deserved, especially given how it treated anyone like him.
Remembering this cooled Bucky's boiling blood, and pushed him up the final flight of stairs.
The emotion of the recent memory spurred Bucky across the room. He carefully sat on their bed, carefully not to wake Steve. His eyes worried behind closed lids, furrowing his brow and small shifting turbulences caused his hair to flop across his eyes. Bucky guided the stray locks behind his ear, clearing his face to the strip of light from their un-curtained windows. Bucky smirked as Steve muttered gibberish angrily in his sleep, turning deeper against the wall and from the draft of the front door. Even in sleep, Steve was fighting the world's ills.
He had been that way since they were kids. Bucky's own ma had gently chastised Sarah that it wasn't good for a boy that young, they had 6 or 7 back then, to be so serious. Sarah had laughed it off, Bucky remembered, while the two or them whispered of Bucky's copy of the time machine. Sarah had said he got it from his father, which had made Steve's jaw jump and bright blue eyes turn grey as storm clouds, which had made Bucky shove a penny candy into his pouting mouth.
Bucky suspected their ma's did that often, together and in separate. Worry about Steve. No one had ever worried about Bucky, not in that way. Bucky's bones weren't fragile, his lungs weren't temperamental and his heart didn't flutter in palpitations at the barest run. Bucky didn't take months out of school to recover from illness thought to have been resigned to medical history books.
Bucky's childhood had been steady. His future, at least before the crash, had been certain. Steve's, at least in the minds of doctors, nurses, a couple of priests and his mother, had always been in question. Not so much if you'd asked Steve himself of course. The answer was a single word: artist. He didn't care where or how, he'd be drawing, creating masterworks 'till the day he died. But the great artists in the galleries came from money, student advisors would lament, or had wealthy patrons. He should think of something more realistic. Bucky didn't think Steve had ever learnt the meaning of the word, at least not the way he would pace and rant, and on occasion throw stuff, about how dreamers built this great nation and blah, blah patriotic shpeel. That's the stuff that worried people. Not that he took the hit, not that he got knocked down and was resentful, angry about it. That was normal for people that circumstance had kicked in the rear.
What worried people, was that Steve Rogers kept getting the fuck back up. For someone of his stature, his station, his circumstance, the folk that looked down on Steve from the start couldn't imagine that kind of tenacity. Because they didn't have a drop.
But what Bucky found worse, and probably in retrospect, pushed him to his breaking point with Dot, is when worry or disapproval over Steve turned to condoling on him. Luckily the latter never came from Sarah, but his own Pa had early on been disquieted by Bucky's sticking by Steve.
Nothing had yet to make Bucky's stomach drop more than hearing his Pa say
"Loyalty is like a river son. What appears to be rushing on day, can by no fault of its own be dry by the next. You don't pour buckets from the well into he river hoping it will come back." Bucky had argued Steve was stronger than people gave him credit for but it was brushed away at the behest of chores.
The old Hebrew proverb burnt in Bucky's throat as bile rose behind his nose, causing him to choke down tears silently.
Tears dripped down his face in anger and bitterness at the world’s refusal to see through Steve's eyes, to pursue justice and beauty as blindly as he did; at the refusal to see Steve through Bucky's eyes, to be capable of moulding that change if only given the chance. At only other people trusted Steve to stand up like Bucky knew he always would.
At himself, for, in his most selfish moments, wondering if all those people were right.
If guilt was an emotion Steve had ever felt in his life, and given the righteous way he held himself Bucky sincerely doubted that, he hid it well. And Steve was terrible at hiding his feelings. That's why he got beaten up so often.
God, other people were shit.
He looked at Steve, still sleeping, while now hushed tears stung wet on his cheeks.
“I am so tired of people telling me you ain’t worth the trouble. And no one ever worried about me till I started taking care of you. Now I get these looks, like pity.” He spat the word from his mouth like bad gin. “As if you weren’t the strongest person in the whole fucking universe just for hanging on as long as ya' have. So much stronger than I could be.”
Steve curled his fingers tighter into the bedsheet, trying not to make a sound, but not quite able to quiet the hammering in his chest that flared with those last words.
You are strong Buck.
"I'm so weak, for not being able to just tell you all of this, for not being able to just say how I feel. 'Cause I'm afraid of a world that you never wavered in giving a piece of your mind." He sighed in hollow, shuddered breathes; trying to keep his voice below a whisper, trying not to wake Steve, even as the hot wetness in eyes and nose coated his throat and made every utterance a sound like a hoarse-throated prayer.
Steve heard Bucky sigh deeply and slowly, until his breathing levelled out. He recognised that technique from when Bucky would help him through a particularly bad asmar attack until Steve got a hold of the reefer cigarettes the doctor prescribed.
Eventually, Bucky burrowed under the blankets of their shared bed with him, gently rolling Steve over to make room for himself.
Presumable still thinking Steve was asleep, Bucky leant over him and planted a chaste kiss against his temple and fell asleep pressing his skin close to Steve's, seeming unperturbed or unconscious of its clamminess. Steve couldn't think, after knowing this burdened man for his near whole life, of anything more natural in the world. He just wished Bucky would move closer.
-
The fight had been brutal, a wake up call to how entrenched in violence their lives had become since Bucky first got the draft letter. Since before. A before he was recalling only in glimpses; feelings, fuzzy round the edges. Best not to dwell.
But, not once since they'd boarded the quin-jet had Bucky's mind been as still as his body.
Even among the serenity of the clouds, the two of them weren't safe. The moment they touched down in Siberia they had to be on alert. After that...he didn't know. Despite Steve's resolute forward gaze and energetic knob turning, button pressing and guidance programming, Steve seemed to be floating; running on pure adrenaline. And fuck, he looked tired, and worried.
Bucky remembered those feelings like they were in his DNA.
For all of Steve's bravado, his "star-spangled man with a plan" persona, Bucky knew a facade when he saw one, especially on Steve. As steadfast as he could be, anxiety and uncertainty, when they appeared, were painted onto his earnest face with colour as bright as that stupid uniform.
But that persona and his willingness to be other people's anchor, or shield, when they needed it, was etched into Steve's soul. The people that needed that most from Steve right now, were left behind in Germany. From the brief interaction Bucky had observed, Steve regarded his Avengers team as more than a leader, with a closeness and confidence Bucky only recollected amongst the Howling Commandos. A simple but powerful word came to mind: trust. And the team had more than reciprocated; the greener members beamed up as the legend Steve had been written into history textbooks. Even their opponents seemed to waver around him, respect laced into every regretful punch. Him and Tony were clearly more paternal figures than mere commanders.
This was Steve's family. And though Bucky may not have instigated it, he was partially responsible for wearing down the fractures that tore it apart.
Steve looked to recognise Bucky's guilt, throwing back a soft "You alright back there?"
"I'm just not sure I'm worth all this to you." He gestured back, still staring absently, exhaustedly, past the clouds they flew through. Steve knew what he meant, the situation with the Avengers, but he looked at the dark circles under Bucky's eyes, and knew it must go deeper than that. Always did with Bucky, even 70 years later he overthought everything.
Steve's brow knitted together in resolution, after throwing a concerned look over his shoulder, the tension in his shoulder set his entire square. Bucky smirked a little, knowing the small muscle in his cheek would be jumping as his set his jaw tight.
“Y'know Buck," Steve said through barely repressed anger, that caused Bucky's eyes to flick up with interest. "I'm getting real sick and tired of people telling me you ain't worth the trouble." By this point he was jamming every button of the quin-jet control panel to set the ship to autopilot, unbuckling from the healmseat and stepping steadily over to the ex-Soviet assassin. Crouching in front of Bucky's seat, seeing the bright blue of Bucky's eyes blown wide in the light of the atmosphere around them, as he carefully regarded where Steve was going with this.
"'Cause frankly Buck, you mean too much to me, for me to give a shit about what anyone else thinks. Especially, you."
Bucky's eyes suddenly widened with recognition.
"Bucky Barnes, I love yo-"
The sock to the shoulder came as a surprise and he looked up incredulously at his now standing friend, from where he was sprawled on the cockpit floor.
"Bucky, what-"
"You were listening! You were awake through that entire thing?!?" he bellowed through a wide grin, creasing the tear shining eyes bursting with sardonic joy.
"You remember?" Steve said carefully.
“Of course I remember y'little shit." Bucky hauled Steve up, off his ass to his full hight, looking slightly up to meet his steady gaze and a small, warm smile.
"I can't believe you heard that."
"Well, you were kind of hard to miss, hollering in at 2AM."
"It wasn't my fault!" Bucky blustered, sending Steve to clutch his sides. "Those damned floorboards used'ta creak to high heaven. And I though you were asleep snoring you ass off with a head cold!"
When Steve finished doubling over for a second time, after a dramatic eye wipe, he turned to Bucky's unimpressed face and took in his hands. They felt calloused in a way that disoriented Bucky, confused as to whether they were something acquired during the war or the half decade of super-heroing since he awoke from the ice. God, their lives were weird.
"Seriously, Buck you mean everything to me. And whatever’s waiting for us, we'll face it together." Bucky covered the hands either side of his face with his own and leaned his forehead against Steve's, letting his eyes fall closed and savouring the moment for what it was: a rare grasp of peace.
"'Till the end of the line." The both smiled into the kiss.