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"Which do you think, red or grey?" She smiles, tilting her head. She's just making conversation, including them out of friendship rather than actual need. He likes her and her no nonsense approach to just about everything. Setting stuff on fire is a bonus, too. However, irritation bubbles up, but before he can tell her Steve wouldn't know the difference, a stranger with Steve's voice blurts out the latter, shrugging.
"You look good in grey. I think Tony would suggest the red, though, you know him." A memory wells, unbidden, of his tired gaze watching in wonder and suddenly it's the same stranger but there's nothing but trees and cold winter around them.
"I never knew they were blue, Buck, gosh. You're like an arrow collar ad."
"Can it, you sap. Can't have that lady friend of yours hearing you say stuff like that, she'll think you moved on."He shoves the stranger he knows in the shoulder, so gently it's barely an impact at all.
"I just... never knew. Everything's so different now."
"Except you." Especially you.
"Now who's the sap?" Steve shoves back, harder. He laughs and he feels like yelling instead. He is yelling, in his head. The colors come back and there is no winter air and the blue blue blue of Steve's eyes is so worried. He doesn't smile at Steve, he doesn't know how to, not without worrying him more. He feels uncomfortable sitting on Steve's left side, worried he won't hear. He feels uncomfortable seeing him sprawl, worried his back will hurt later. He hates coming from behind when Steve's sitting at the couch, but approaching any other way feels too vulnerable. When he approaches from there all he sees is gold and pink overlarge ears, Huh, dumbo? Gonna fly away with those? He doesn't have to think too long to remember the angry response, something about his own head being too big for him to carry with him. He laughs, one day, but this startles Steve and the six-foot-four frame springs to his feet and the illusion isn't just broken it's destroyed.
He feels like they forget, when he watches footage of every fight from Manhattan to Wakanda. He has to remind himself they never knew in the first place. He would try to talk, to put Steve at ease, but painful memories make poor conversation and he doesn't have anything else. At night when everything is disjointed and his own room is suffocating he silently slips into Steve's room. He doesn't bother to crawl into bed like they used to, he doesn't want to wake Steve by freezing in terror at his new, not new, shoulders and his deep, flawless breathing. He shouldn't want it back, this is everything Steve could have hoped for. He should be happy Steve is healthy and whole and doesn't need to drink liver juice they can't afford. He can afford many things now, many more than he even really knew existed, but it feels unnecessary. He sleeps there, in the corner He means to wake before Steve does, to spare both the wounded expressions and the flinching, but he sleeps so well here, only here. He's close enough to watch over Steve, far enough he won't hurt him when-not-if he lashes out.
Steve knows better than to touch him when he's asleep, but Steve reaches reflexively all the same. He doesn't know if the air shifting or a sound woke him, but he's instantly awake and alert all the same. Steve tries not to look concerned, Steve's still a terrible liar. It makes him smile, which makes Steve relax. Steve asks about breakfast and it takes a silent nod and Steve's departure to the kitchen to remember he should have made a joke about burnt johnnycakes with cheap sausages. Steve's shoulders still slump before he's had a cup of coffee, his hair still looks like someone poked him with a cattle prod. He tries to reclassify everything else, make it new instead of wrong.
Nothing is easy anymore, he thought he might feel that soft home feeling but he doesn't know if he can even fit that in his vocabulary between Пистолет Макарова and the exact amount of force required to snap the average human neck. He wants to shed the restless, caged tiger feeling like snakeskin and curl up warm forever in sleep like a normal goddamn human being but in the uneasy feeling he'd just be running from his own mind if he even pretended makes him stop and just try to exist for a while. He eats, even though he didn't see Steve prepare it. He thinks Steve should know how much trust is in that but he realizes that would never even occur to Steve, to poison someone's food.
Food was too precious, too scarce. If someone had it out for someone else they shivved them or beat the sauce out of them or dumped them off the docks. If Steve couldn't holler them down from whatever fat-headed scuffle he'd managed to kick up, he'd go right to his fists and come home with only a black eye if he was lucky. Suddenly the frail, levelest guy in Brooklyn filled out a double-extra-large shirt and nearly busted out of it at the shoulders. Suddenly the guy he only had to worry about keeping it together back home was staring at him in wonder and terror and towering above him, charging off to punch some maniac chrome dome who spent too much time out in the sun. He still looked down at his drawing the same way, still ran his thumbnail across a bushy eyebrow as he squinted at what he wanted to draw, he still bundled in the covers like a caterpillar. That sly look through his eyelashes wasn't quite new, but it was tenser. He blinked, the plate was empty, so was Steve's. Never waste food.
So why were they still sitting here? How long had they been sitting here? Steve's eyelashes stuck together and they were wet- in a panic, he jumped up, his metal hand making an ugly sound against the table. He checked the windows, checked Steve, checked the doors, and paced back. Now Steve's head was in his hands and he'd done something wrong. Everything bled together and he looked at the clock once to find himself looking at a different clock twenty four minutes later in the room they let him have. He finds the stack of old pictures, things they hoped would help. They didn't help. They helped him remember, but remembering didn't help.
Remembering he never touched Steve how he suddenly realized he had always wanted didn't help. remembering the soft breathing with Steve's head tucked beneath his own didn't help. Remembering to hope for a maybe in Steve's feelings that he had the grace to be ashamed for wishing for in the first place. Remembering the brittle newspaper bleakly announcing SEARCH FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA ENDS, AMERICA'S GREAT HERO SURELY DEAD; the sickly sweet taste in his mouth when he woke from his steel coffin-bed with frost still clinging to his hair; screaming Steve Stevie help me and the angry Russian commands he hadn't understood then to shut his filthy mouth; the roar of a saw and the dull ache of his gonegonegone raw and gone arm; that soft, tired smile in that old wrecked out bar; that last goodbye embrace with someone who fit against him like no one else; a crooked, sarcastic smile.
Remembering didn't stop his world shaking apart into flashes of pain and terror, and it didn't stop the dull warmth of too-strong arms wrapping around him. He was crying, he didn't realize when he'd started. What happened to his black shirt? What day was it? He couldn't tell. He wanted to know, but if he said as much the pain in Steve's face would break and he'd run away rather than see that again. He stays, he shouldn't. This is just making it worse. He can't put a bullet in his brain, he's not even sure if that would work anymore, but it might cut out that part of him that wants so badly to stop caring that Steve looks at him like that. He can't piece together what he wants, if he wants to stay here forever with Steve until it doesn't hurt anymore- if that can even happen, if he wants to leave and disappear and walk until he can't move anymore. He wants to matter to Steve again, even if it means he'll never matter the way Steve matters to him. He wants them both to forget so nothing feels anymore.
He wakes up in a strange bed, there's a man with close cropped black hair and a book open in his hands. Fit, holds himself like military, or at least combat trained. A mental image of the man wearing flight goggles wedges in his brain. The man's a lot more relaxed than someone should be around him, but at least the man is alert.
"Where's my arm?" The man doesn't move, but glances up at him.
"You took it off." Ripped it off, tore the cables out of the inside. At least he hadn't hurt anyone. "Tony almost cried, that was pretty great." He tries to smile at Sam, his mind belatedly provides. Sam isn't affected by it, he knows it's a horrible smile. He can't remember how to smile right when he has to think about it, not yet.
"Steve?"
"Fine, he's visiting Peggy today."
"Oh." A perverse urge to flee flares white hot in his mind. It's the perfect time, no arm with hidden trackers, Steve's gone, but the instant he thinks it he knows he can't. He's tired of purgatory. He closes his eyes and vows to sleep. He's got a feeling he isn't fooling Sam, but Sam seems to be humoring him. He thinks of flashes of the past months, the sinking tiredness and apathy after physical therapy, the silent, tense meals. The small scraps of friendly, brotherly warmth intended for him. He shifts queasily in the bed, remembering staring too long at Steve's pink mouth.
"Tell him not to stay out too late, it's going to rain." The unbidden worry about him catching cold feels so suddenly horrible and foolish and useless. He regrets speaking. Sam doesn't say anything. Instincts tell him to claw into Steve and never be pried from him again and the depths if his conscience tell him to run far, far away and let him have happiness in a time and place without the broken pieces of the person he used to be clicking together with every step he takes.
"I'll let him know, unless you want to." Sam offers a phone, he recognizes it as his own. He suddenly hates it, frowns, and nods, reaching out to take it. He stares at the letters telling him which string of numbers will reach his- 'friend'? He feels the word in his mouth without opening his lips, and it tastes like half of a lie. He stares at the screen, frowns harder, and hopes he manages to send his message. He doesn't know if he will be here when Steve returns. He's not sure of his own name most days, but he knows more ways to say I love you than English and Russian allow. He knows how to cuff Steve and tell him to button his coat, to tell Steve to check if he locked the door, to feel the air displacement of a shot that takes out the asshole on Steve's six, to scrimp and save and bring home a bundle of brown paper, clean and ready for Steve's pencil, to yell and shout when Steve picks a fight with three guys come the hell on Steve, to punch those same three shmucks in the head and chase them right out of the neighborhood, how to rub the knots in a back that isn't crooked anymore.
going to rain, be safe
He thinks he won't get an answer, thinks about rolling over to go to sleep faster with his unprotected back to the wall and his eyes on Sam, and how it's easier to slide his fingers across the keyboard when he only has one hand.
You got it, Buck.
He blinks at it.
You do the same, okay?
Do you need anything?
Do you want anything?
no
Okay. I'll see you soon.
Can I see you when I get back?
yes
Thanks.
dont need to thank me dummy just come back
I love you too, you jerk.
He stares at it, distantly realizing Sam is saying his name, asking if he's all right. He does't know if he can crack a joke about stupid being left in the States after all, he doesn't know if he can handle Steve meaning it like he wants Steve to mean it, with a chasm of years and pain between the last time anyone had said that to him, or even meant it without saying it. He sends one last message before putting the cell back in Sam's reach and turning with his back to Sam instead. He folds it up and puts it in his mind so he can hold on to it, even if he never touches Steve again. He's asleep before the response even flickers on the screen.
love you
I know.