Archive of Our Own

The city ain’t what it used to be.

Half of Sam’s old buddies from the club scene are dead. Another quarter are so stuck behind their eyes they can’t see all the way to the keyboard, can’t feel the tapered point of their bow, can’t tell a trumpet from a sax, can’t carry a tune without their voice cracking into a scream. Guttural. Tripping on crags of horror and hell, the tymphanies all round and stout glint the same shape of the moon on the great goddamn Pacific. The streets are quiet or torn to crap, homeless vets in tac pants or their pinks-and-greens colored brown with mud swinging baseball bats at each other, starving and furious and hysterical, it’s fucking miserable, it’s a miserable place.

Sam knocks back the dregs of his gin. The glass thumps against the abused wood of the upright that stands in the corner of Sharon’s Place—a crappy dive he’s been playing at since he was twelve and plucky enough to convince Sharon herself to let him inside. If he widened his eyes big enough and pouted his lip just so, he could reel a tip outta anyone. He drew crowds, his crowd and the other crowd, his dad’s guys from work and the rich white folk who liked the idea of oh so generously dropping a nickel in a Black kid’s pocket. Accordion prodigy who plays piano like a polka kid. He filled seats. Anyone could admit that about him.

He lays his fingers all careful on the keys, stinging from his mouth to his gut, and starts to play.

Audiences have been shit ever since he came back. Gigs are sparse, young kids stole his regular spots, but audiences used to be the point. To be seen and heard. To share a moment so personal it makes him sick to think about; to play is to peel the skin off his hands and say touch this, look here, this is the stuff I’m made of, you’re looking at everything I’ve got.

Audiences have been shit, but this one isn’t like the others on account of the fact that it comes to a hush like dusk settling purple on the spires and props of the skyscrapers’ silhouettes. It’s just Sam, his long fingers plunking crooked rows up and down the length of the Steinway, rolling out arpeggios that catch each other’s tails and layer, bigger louder faster like a train catching speed, it leaves the station at a quarter after five, that’s what Steve said quiet and fierce in Sam’s ear when the shells started busting up geyser bursts of sand, the train leaves at a quarter after five, Sam plays louder, and it’s direct, louder, from Union Terminal right there in Public Square, a quarter after five, Sam starts to sing, voice crackling the way a fire starts, he sings loud and he sings good and he tries not to hear the rush and thump of the pistons firing, of the train eating railroad tracks, he sings louder. He sings and he sings so good, and the audience stays rigor mortis stricken, the room is a corpse but Sam keeps giving it the kiss of life anyhow, a tender lover.

When the song ends, the room is still. A faded spotlight drapes over him like sun through a coffee filter. Candles flicker in glasses of wine and catch like caged spirits on the lenses of specs. Utensils sit forgotten on the tabletop. The wait staff stands, looking at him with trays on their forearms, like a salute. It’s a wake. The viewing of the plasticized body. Holding your breath before tears or bubbles of laughter or whatever it might be, fuck, the body is a letter and the message is ink-smudged like a lefty penned it down, the room is the body and the city is the body and Sam is the body and the body is dead as a fuckin door nail and has been for too long, it’s starting to fester, to stink, there is a train there is a train there is a train.

No one claps. They look at each other, and they see.

“You know,” Sharon says, snapping her fingers for Sam’s smoke, “there’s this radio thing going on. NBC, they’re doing a Tribute to the Troops.”

“Fuck’s that going to do?” Sam says, handing her the cigarette.

Sharon shrugs eloquently. She’s hardly eight years older than him, but she looks wrinkled in the half-light of the bar’s back door awning. “Something, probably. Raise money.”

“Who’s getting the money,” Sam says. “Not vets.”

“That’s for damn sure,” Sharon says. Smoke pillows in the cool air before her. “It’s a swing band contest. You write a song in honor of the troops, the winner gets a big-screen picture deal.”

“Huh,” says Sam.

She reaches up and runs a palm over his shear of short hair. “You should go for it. Pull a band together. You lead, and anyone will follow.”

Sam’s stomach contracts sharply. People ought not follow him. It’s a fucking lesson to be learned, he’s learned it, he learned it so good, arterial spurt paints his eyelids every time he blinks, there is a train there is a train. There’s a goddamn train.

“Sammy,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Where’s your head.”

“On the bandstand,” he says. He tries to see it in his mind. To wipe away the bloodstains with his sleeve and watch the crowd bopping their heads, guys spinning their gals, a swirl of skirts and soda-sticky floorboards and curls flying every which way. It’d smell like sweat and cologne and liquor, it’d smell so human, music is human nature and music is human itself. The whole room would be living, and he’d be up there playing his fingers sore, singing his throat raw, and that would be human, too.

“I know you missed playing,” Sharon says. “I just don’t have good hours for you anymore. You get it.”

“Of course I get it,” Sam says. “Doesn’t mean I accept it.”

“I do my best to wedge you into the lineup, you know I do,” she says. She picks up his hand and slots the cigarette between his middle finger and pointer. “Build yourself a band. You need something to do, you need people.”

“I’ve got people.”

“You’ve got me and Sarah and that’s it,” Sharon says. “Smoke that, you’re gonna burn your fingers on it.”

Sam takes a breath, smoke furling down his throat. “I guess I’ve got nothing planned for tomorrow,” he says.

“There you go,” Sharon says. A smile cracks onto her lips. “I’ll give you some phone numbers. Use em.”

“Naw, Sharon,” Sam says. He frowns at the cherry of his cigarette, tilting the scant length in his hand, watching it smudge against the dark spread of night sky. “It’s gotta be my thing.” Sharon’s brown eyes shift in the shadows like the bottom of a beer bottle, a thin layer of alcohol and a hearty slab of glass. “That’s what I do, that’s what I play for. A moment in the sun. To be remembered. The cream always rises to the top. I wanna be on top, just for a minute, I wanna feel on top again.”

“You deserve it,” Sharon says. “God knows.”

“I’m tired,” Sam says.

“I know,” she says.

“Gimme a bottle and I’ll head home,” Sam says. “You’ve gotta get back in there before that kid you’ve got waiting tables starts sipping at half-empty glasses, what’s her name again?”

“America,” Sharon says, bumping Sam’s elbow with her own. “You know that. It’s the most distinct goddamn name anyone could ever have.”

“America,” Sam says. “America, America, I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear. That’s fuckin’ Whitman, Sharon.”

“I don’t give a shit about Whitman, Sammy,” Sharon says. She rubs his upper arms, right by his shoulders, like making sure they’re there. “You on whiskey tonight? What’s the poison.”

“Gin,” he says.

“That shit makes you weepy.”

“It puts me to sleep.” A smile breaks on his lips like a blister. “Only thing that can, these days.”

She searches his face for a long moment. “Alright,” she says. “I’ll be back.”

Sam walks home with his half-bottle of gin in a paper bag. He jumps shadow to shadow like a ghoul, like a demon, like a castoff herded into the corner, then he heads northwards, north and north to the dilapidated apartment he and his sister inherited from their dead folks but only he uses, seeing as she’s got herself a husband now. Still, her fingerprint is all over the place: floral curtains dress the window above the kitchen sink, navy corduroy couch spread in the living room, fluffy grey hand towels in the bathroom. He smells her perfume, roses and something sugary, in the hallway. He can hear her voice warbling a neat melody over his keys, her dancing alone, hands raised like she was clinging onto some imaginary partner.

On the nicked kitchen table sits his stack of papers from the VA. Private First Class, Samuel Wilson. 37th Division. Solomon Islands and Bougainville. He met a Navy guy in the office while signing the docs who said it must’ve been holy hell out there. Sam said something like that and heard the train, heard Steve’s deep and slow voice, felt the jungle rock with the grenade’s thundering holler, felt a shot of molecular dread, no fear, just dread, just dread. The guy gave him one look, noticed he was taking cash over a trip to college, and said Find work quick. I’ve been to three funerals in a month, all guys looking for a way to make it stop. Sam had nodded, but now he thinks about bloodstains, he thinks about innocuous bathtubs or the warm trip vodka makes from the throat to the sternum to the stomach where it settles like sun on a forest clearing, all fairy-tale and perfect with wildflowers and cheery cartoon bunnies or whatever. He thinks about what Steve said, about making it home because he left his other half in Cleveland, having to make it home because the pair of them are on their own train and they plan on riding it to its last stop, to the end of the line. The line cut off short. That’s Sam’s fault.

The truth is he’s trying to find work. Sharon’s the only one who pulls for him, the only one forcing him out there, he’s trying to find work but she’s trying harder to find work for him. The other guys, the owners of the swanky bars he played at seventeen, they’re tossing him to weddings, asking if he still knows accordion, giving him the 1-a.m. slots. Sharon tells her regulars to hold on a minute because Sammy’s got a new tune to test out. Fundamentally, it’s different. Sam doesn’t take handouts, but Sharon is something closer to family.

He’s trying to find work. This band thing. It was probably the drink(s) that made him consider it, but he’s considering it, he’s considering the sensation of having guys at his back again, he’s considering turning the ghosts in his periphery solid, he’s considering the humidity, the hum of jungle and snarl of underbrush, the half-bottle of gin Sharon gave him out of pure fucking pity, and he thinks that maybe, maybe a band might pull more gigs. Maybe a band might make more sense than anything else he’s ever done. He’s good, he’s fantastic, he’s a fuckin prodigy, he always did his shit alone, he should do shit alone, but a band is different. A band ain’t gonna kill nobody, it isn’t built for bloodshed. Sam’s got his pipes and he’s got a Wurlitzer upright tucked into the corner of his living room under some empty bookshelves that he knows better than he knows his own head, Sharon is so goddamn smart sometimes. A band.

Sam stumbles to the piano bench and sits heavily, vision spinning, bile in his throat. A band. A band. Last week he stopped by Richards’s place, drunk as a fuckin skunk, drunker than he is now, and begged for a spot. Reed told him he’s got a baby-faced eighteen year old playing these days, that the ladies sit around all night to watch him, that he’s got no need for Sam now. Sam heard the unspoken, felt the up-and-down look, and shoved him hard. The security team pulled him away, blackened his eye, split his lip, all while Sam wailed some too-true bullshit about living to press keys and croon, needing the job, what the hell is the point of coming home if he can’t play anymore.

Sick of himself, he reaches up and flicks the radio on.

“—This is Andre Baruch for The American Songbook of Popular Music, brought to you by Bayer Aspirin. NBC Radio and Metro Goldwyn Mayer are looking for the next great swing band to write their very own song in honor of our boys in uniform. Yes, it’s The American Songbook’s Tribute to the Troops! A winning band from each state will compete in a nationwide broadcast, live from the Palace Theatre in New York on December 16th, to determine who will appear in a spectacular new motion picture musical and be immortalized in Hollywood history!”

Sam flicks the radio off, heart in his throat. He was never one for signs, for messages from God-or-whomever, but Steve—Steve was. Looked for fuckin fairy rings in the underbrush, talked about grave goods and how he wanted to be buried right in the dirt, he was a weird bird. He really was. Freckly and blond except for that ginger beard, muscular like nobody's business, a commander, dead. A band. A band. This feels like Steve pouring the sign into his cupped palms and telling him to drink up.

Sam could write a contest song in his sleep. A song about the war? His notebook is full-up with shit like a trek through knee-deep muck that sucks at his soles as he steps. But to win. Well.

Sam knows what tugs heartstrings, he knows what the people want, and it’s seeing vets get some reparations, whether it’s real or not. They like knowing VAs exist, they like hearing when vets find jobs, they like vets succeeding but turn away when vets on the street beg em for a couple coins. They don’t like sad vets. They like beautiful, strong ones with brave smiles and a bounce in their step. If Sam’s gotta round up boys to play for some radio contest, it’ll be vets. If it’s really for the vets like Baruch and Bayer Aspirin say it is, they oughta let the fuckin vets win. Get their faces on billboards, put their names in neon.

Let America see who lives and dies for them. Let America see what’s left of them.

Finally home! they say. It’s all just like it was before! It’s hilarious. Sam was Irving Berlin at age twelve, and now he’s a washup. He hasn’t slept in three days, nothing is the same, they’ll show everyone they can be just as normal and perfect as they want. Sam’ll show Reed Richards, he’ll show everyone, he’ll give them a real show. The cream rises, it always rises, that’s what Sarah has said since they were kids, watching Sam plunk out melodies of his own making worlds better than any of the older, richer guys with better time slots, but Sam’s proud and angry and his face is darker than ever. There was a time they only let him play when it’s so dark the audience couldn’t see him. Nick Cage’s, that’s where he plays now, that’s where he’s made his place, met his regulars, found some comfort. Sharon’s and Nick’s. But radio. Radio, huh. Sam feels it like a fire under his ass, it cauterizes something, it burns off the gin. Those guys they always play on WJW, Sam’s better than all of em with no contest, Frank Sinatra’s flat half the time, the bastard skipped out on the army but Sam carries every snag and curl of battle in his voice, he could be the fuckin posterboy for anything, for life itself, for keeping on keeping on. He can smile real pretty, he can convince anyone of anything, backed up by a handful of brothers in arms, a bandful, motherfucker, he’ll do it. A band.

Sam shoots to his feet, scrubbing his face with his fingers. Cream rises, cream spoils, he won’t let it. Cleveland, goodbye, goodbye fucking Cleveland, he’s hopping on that train in his head and riding it clean to Grand Central Station, Steve, he’ll do it, he’ll do it good. This is starting to look like a lifeline. Like a crack in the door and all the golden light streaming through. He’s got the authenticest words in the English language, he’s got gunpowder in his lungs and picks dried blood out from under his fingernails, he’s sweating off malaria under a tent that stinks of festering flesh and baked foliage, he lived four years of holy hell and he’s here and he’s the body he’s the city he’s the army he’s the cream rising. He’s rising. He’s rising.

Peter Parker plays sax. He’s hardly twenty, weedy and broken-nosed and distinctly a New Yorker. Moved up to Cleveland when shit went south with a paper he was working for, that’s what Steve told Sam, they met on a train ride and bonded over making the same move, Steve from Brooklyn and Peter from Queens, and Steve talked about him while they marched.

“Quick kid,” he said. “Earnest. A bastard. Probably deserves a second broken nose, but he plays like he was born to. Lied about his age on his papers and got sent to who knows where, who knows if he’ll even make it out, but he’s scrappy enough. I really think he is.”

Steve was always so sure about everything. It’s almost poetry that Sam finds the Parker kid so easily, just as easy as he lost Steve, ha ha lost and found lost and found.

Peter Parker directs him to Nat Romanov, a denim-donned bird who plays upright bass like she was born to. She’s mostly deaf in one ear from a factory accident while making bullets and Sam is damn certain that knights her a vet the same as the rest of them. Nat sends him to a Tony Stark who plays a hot trumpet but has the general temperament of a horny chihuahua on account of the fact that he liberated Dachau, or maybe he was born like that. Tony sends them to Clint Barton, whose drumming is genius but whose head seems to factory-reset every ten minutes or so on account of an accident in a Jeep, the story of which he tells three times before directing Sam to Carol Danvers, who served as an intelligence scout in England and whose trombone licks are somehow otherworldly.

It’s happening, it’s fast and it’s now and it’s happening like hell it’s really fuckin happening. Sam has got himself a band. He pulls a tune out of his ass and hands it out and they practice at Sharon’s after hours by candlelight, drinking her out of whiskey, Nat smoking the hell out of a pot cigarette and stinking up the shallow stage. Sam shouts himself hoarse and directs like the archangel Michael and they sink into some sort of groove, a good groove, a mad groove, these guys, these guys, Sam cannot believe it. A band. A miracle.

Their first show is a rousing fucking success. Ain’t We Proud is a hit beyond Sam’s imagination. The audience at Sharon’s cheers for so long Sam wants to tell them to shut the hell up. They have to whip another two minutes of riffing right out of their asses just to satisfy them. Sarah’s there in the audience with glimmering eyes, holding her husband’s hand in a death grip, and Sam blows her a kiss between numbers, she catches it, it’s perfect.

“Playing with you all was the best decision I ever made,” Clint says, taking down his kit. “No, no, I’m wrong. Best decision I ever made was hanging on to the steering wheel while my Jeep flipped three times. Three times, I’m telling you.”

“Three times, huh,” says Sam, hands shaking with adrenaline as he unplugs his mic.

“After the shell hit, yeah, three flips of the Jeep,” Clint says, too loud because his hearing is all but busted too, “three ops on my back, three flips of the Jeep, three pills I gotta take now. I didn’t take em before the show on account of they slow me down—”

“Any slower and you’d be going in reverse,” Nat mutters, but her lips are pulled into a grin.

“Oh, shut it, you,” Clint says, garbled around the pills, which he had apparently stored in his shirt pocket and now takes down with a gulp of whiskey some ballsy girl in the audience bought him.

“You sure do write a song, Wilson,” Nat says. She’s poking her bow into the bass bag, not looking at him—she hardly looks at any of em, but Sam doesn’t give a fuckin fig so long as she keeps shredding the way she does.

“A song, yeah, but is it good enough to win a contest,” Tony says, shining his horn.

“There’s plenty more where that came from,” Sam says. “Anyway, worry about your damn self, man. A solo’s a solo, but get off the ceiling. Play a couple more notes, you’re making us sound one-color and it’s selfish.”

“A solo is meant to be selfish,” Tony says, glaring at Sam from under his brows. “It’s called a solo for a reason.”

“Yeah, well, you’re out of fuckin line,” Sam says, wiping clammy palms on his slacks. “Alright?”

“There’s a singular thread of space,” Peter says, “between what’s jazz and what’s bad.”

“Aristotle’s got a point,” Sam says. “Stick to what we practiced, man, and follow my groove. All of you. We’ll keep practicing, we’ve got three weeks before the first round of the contest, but just fuckin follow me and you’ll be fine.” It’s so funny, saying follow me like it isn’t his nightmare. So fuckin funny. “I’ve got another few tunes, I think we should spend the next week trying them out. Sharon says we’ve got a slot on Sunday night, alright?”

“I have dinner with my kid every Sunday night,” Carol says, ever-stoic like knife-strong north.

“It’ll be after dinner, long after dinner,” Sam says.

“I’m not going out late at night either.”

“Then make it another night,” Nat says.

“We are booked for Sunday night at ten,” Sam grits, coming down hard from the excitement of the set, coming down like a tripped star or a pinecone or something. When he hits his own hips, he rattles. “That’s the spot Sharon gave us, I better hear you all telling her thank you with your whole hearts, she’s shoving younger guys aside, seasoned guys aside, her regulars aside, so we can get some traction. Alright?”

“I need more notice,” Carol snipes right back. “I got a kid, I live with somebody, we have plans of our own. I got other standing gigs I’m not going to ditch for this.”

“How much is this gig going to pay?” Peter says.

“When we win the contest,” Sam says, but Carol is already saying, like she knows, “This is your only fucking free show, Private. You hear? I got a family to feed, groceries to buy and shoes and clothes—”

“Alright,” Sam says. “Jesus Christ. Standard rate, I’ll make sure we get it. I’ll find something, just. Trust me. And follow my fuckin groove.”

They finish breaking down the set in stony silence. Bitter. They pick off one by one until it’s only Sam and Peter left. The kid comes forward and says, “If you’re gonna lead a band, you gotta learn how to talk to people, man.”

“Don’t you start on me too,” Sam says. “I’ve been playing longer than any of you, I’ve probably played more shows, shittier shows in shittier places—”

“I was on the Read when it blew,” Peter says, louder, sharper, looking more tired than any kid ought to. “I floated there in the freezing water with my friends dead around me, alright, I don’t want to think about it. I play so I don’t have to think about it.”

“So you’re saying my band’s a shipwreck,” Sam says.

Peter stares at him for a long moment. “Forget it,” he says, and Sam’s stomach plummets. “Just forget it, I’m trying to find another paper job anyway. Get someone else to play sax.”

“Wait,” Sam says, stumbling after Peter as he steps away. He grabs the kid by the sleeve, holding him in place, bearing the brunt of the scowl that’s sent his way. “Just,” he says. His breaths are coming faster, desperate. They were good, they were so good. Cream rising, doors closing, there is a train. “Do it for Steve. Not for me. Do it for Steve.”

“I hardly knew Steve,” Peter says.

“My best guy in the 37th,” Sam says. “We were always talking about everything, about everyone. He wanted to hear me play, he wanted me to check on his guy, the guy he left behind, if he didn’t make it back, and I’ve failed him on every fuckin front because I’m too scared do to either. I know the address by memory, I walk past his door like a ghost haunting and I can’t make myself knock. I just can’t do it.”

“How’d Steve die,” Peter says.

Sam’s throat is fist-tight. “Friendly fire,” he croaks. “Christ.”

Peter is looking at him with something like pity. “Don’t tell him that,” he says, and Sam would say no shit if he weren’t so breathless. “Check on him, you owe that to Steve, but don’t tell the guy unless you’re ready to deal with the consequences.” Peter shakes his head. Shakes his arm out of Sam’s grip. Sam—he just shakes. “See you Sunday,” Peter says, and then he disappears out the bar. The door slams shut behind him. Sam stands stock-still and can almost feel the 37th rustling through the jungle around him, smell sharp panic sweat and damp mud and all of it watered with blood like a twisted garden, he stands and he sees the shadows of his guys unpacking and swatting bugs and picking at vines with their Kabar knives, he sees the ground start to shake and his guys start to pray or sneak one last bite of their K-ration, begging their last moment to do them the decency of tasting like chewing gum.

Sam has walked past the door three times today alone. He’s got on his best clothes, a nice shirt tucked into his slacks and he spent the afternoon at the barber getting teased within an inch of his life by the guy who’s been cutting his hair since he had enough hair to cut, he smells good, he’s sober, he’s here. He’s trying. He stares at the door, black-painted with a bronze handle, and walks past it again.

He steels his nerve, sets his jaw, and walks up. He knocks three times. Stands there on the stoop with his heart in his throat. Turns on his heel and starts right back down the street, hoping to disappear into the crowd.

“Hey, you,” calls a voice that seems to chase him down the pavement. “Aren’t you a little old for ding-dong-ditch?”

Sam whirls around on his heel and sees the shouter at the top of the stairs. It’s a guy, thin and dark-haired with piercing light eyes and a dimple in his chin. He’s got slacks that sit high on his waist, belted tight like he’s a little underfed, and the sleeves of his shirt are rolled above the elbow. Sleeve, rather. It takes Sam a minute to comprehend the empty space, but the guy’s missing his left arm.

“You’re Bucky,” Sam says. “Steve’s Bucky.”

“Do I know you,” Bucky says, thick brows set low.

“I recognize you,” Sam says. His voice is hoarse. “From your picture. Steve’s picture of you. He schlepped it all over the Pacific front, tucked right into the pocket over his heart.”

“Buck?” comes a muffled voice from inside the house.

Bucky throws a look over his empty shoulder. “It’s—a friend of Steve’s, Beck.”

A girl materializes in the doorway behind Bucky, all but his double. Shorter, maybe, and lacking his scruff, but their coloring is the same, their square faces are mirrors, their triangle-noses are freckled like cinnamon spills and they both have a visible chip on their shoulder the size of a fuckin ship barge.

“Hi,” says the girl.

“I’m Sam Wilson,” he says. “I would’ve called first, I’m—I didn’t have your number. If the time is bad—”

“No, come,” says the girl. “Come in, we’re just getting ready for Shabbat.”

“I don’t want to intrude,” Sam says.

“In,” says the girl, hard, and there is nothing for Sam to say besides “Alrighty, then.”

He crosses the threshold and immediately smells braising meat and rising yeast. The place is small, smaller than his, even, and clearly inhabited by only the pair of them; Sam can see from the entryway right into the bedroom down the hall, which is populated by two defeated-looking twin beds and not much else. The walls in the hallway are bare, painted a plain grey. The kitchen is tucked into a corner, almost all oven and fridge, black appliances and white cabinets.

“Becky, have we got tea or somethin?” Bucky says, grabbing the handle of the refrigerator.

“Yeah, just a bit,” Becky says. She’s running her hands over a loaf of yellowish bread dough. “There should be a pitcher—”

“Yup, got it,” Bucky says, pulling it out. “Sam, here you go.” He smacks it down onto the kitchen table, then weaves around Becky to an overhead cabinet and grabs a glass. He puts that on the table, too, then looks up at Sam, frowning. “Why aren’t you sitting.”

“I,” Sam says, and then stops himself before admitting the easy dance of the siblings distracted him with pictures of his sister laughing, gutting a fish while oil spit on the stove and Sam sliced boiled eggs or stirred a pot of potatoes. “Yeah, alright. Sorry.” He sits, then tugs the tea close. Before he can lift it to pour, Bucky swoops in and pours the glass for him, hip leaning against the edge of the table. “I have some pictures of Steve,” Sam blurts. Bucky puts the pitcher down too hard. “I forgot, I didn’t think to bring them, I just… I can bring them around sometime if you want.”

Bucky wipes his palm on the front of his slacks. The look on his face is funny—faraway, like what his eyes catch on isn’t hitting his brain. “Yeah,” he says. “That’d be good.”

“You could come for dinner,” Becky says, half-grunted as she turns the bread dough. “How’s Tuesday, five o’clock?”

“Uh,” Sam says, feeling clobbered, feeling like he’s seven yards behind the Barneses, “yeah,” he picks up his glass of tea and drinks it too quick and coughs for a minute, eyes watering, face hot, but Bucky is looking at him and Becky is kneading her dough like it wronged her so Sam just says, “thanks, really,” and takes another sip of his tea, slower this time.

Bucky sits down in the chair across from Sam, heavy, with a huff. He rolls his empty shoulder, but gives the kitchen a sweeping look like Sam is a piece of the furniture. “Yeah,” he says.

Sam goes back over on Tuesday night. He’s shaking all over. He smoked three cigarettes in the shower so the smell wouldn’t stick. He’s got a little book of photos tucked under his arm when he knocks on the door, and he can smell something herby coming from inside.

Bucky opens the door quick, and he looks good. Really good, actually, with color in his cheeks, brightness in his eyes, he’s got this watch on his wrist and Sam keeps looking at it, the brown strap and gold face, because Bucky looks like a silver sort of guy. Silver would look good on him. But he’s got that watch with the gold rim, it catches the last strains of daylight on its face and makes them beam and Sam thinks it’s funny, a metaphor, lost time. Anyway, Bucky doesn’t wear shoes in the house so Sam slips his loafers off and they pad on sock soles to the living room, which Sam didn’t get a good look at last week, but now sees is full-up with pictures, pictures on the nicked-up coffee table and on the shelves, in stacks of albums and one or two on the wall, too, blown up real big. When he’s sitting on the couch beside Bucky, Steve glares at Sam from every angle. He was never one for photos, God, Sam knows it, he has proof in the pudding, but it’s really disconcerting to be given the stink eye when Bucky is tucked to the guy’s side in every photo grinning like he was born to, straight white teeth and crinkles by his eyes and dimples in his cheeks, smug like he’s gone and wrangled the best prize there is in that curmudgeonly grump.

“Hi, Sam,” Becky says, pushing a loose curl off her forehead. Her dress is dark blue, like Bucky’s shirt, like their parents used to dress them up matching and they never quite learned to stop. “How was your weekend?”

“Good,” Sam says. “Good, yeah. How was yours?”

“Good,” Becky says, squinting a little. “Why are you jumping out of your skin.”

Sam looks away. He feels so fuckin trapped here, like they’ve got him cornered, Jesus Christ. Steve is looking, Steve is expecting, Steve sent him here and Sam feels like he should be wearing fatigues.

“Sorry, shit,” Bucky says, leaping to his feet, “Beck, go on and hide, you’re making him nervous. Jee-sus, God forbid a guy have to sit for even a second on the other side of that look of yours…”

“No, you’re fine, don’t go,” Sam says, standing too, feeling like an idiot, “sorry, I’m just—” he gestures helplessly, “—Steve.”

“We… yeah,” Bucky says, slumping a little. “He was always here. He was a part of everything. So.”

“I can’t imagine,” says Sam.

“Yeah,” Becky says from where she still stands in the doorway, arms crossed, a cold front. “You can’t.”

Sam swallows heavily. He looks at what he thought was a desk in the corner and realizes it’s an upright, an abused and forgotten upright with a table-runner along the lid and stacks of books along the bench. “Which of you plays?” he says, a little desperate.

“I used to,” Bucky says, and Sam has never wanted to melt through the floor so bad. “Had a fluke factory accident when I was a kid, trying to scrape some extra money for the family when our Da croaked, you know.” Bucky rolls the empty shoulder like showing it off, he has this swaggering look on his face but it falls flat, Becky stands in the corner like stone, Sam’s stomach is churning. “Now I’m a professional draft-dodger.”

“Jesus, Buck,” Becky says.

“Steve told me you sing,” Sam says, grasping. Steve keeps staring at him from every corner, the room is the body, Sam is the body, Bucky and Becky are living in the mausoleum with the corpse and it’s starting to stink.

“Yeah, well,” Bucky says. He sits on the couch again, near the arm, leaving plenty of space for Sam. It feels like a peace offering. “A guy gets bored when he can’t play stickball. Or stack cans. Or knit.”

“He’s good,” Becky says. “Great, even. No one’s got pipes like him.”

“I’d like to hear you,” Sam says, drifting closer. Bucky pats the open cushion, and Sam takes it. “Where d’you sing?”

“Nowhere, these days,” Bucky says.

“The bus stop,” Becky says, finally striding into the room. She sits on a cracked leather armchair, legs crossed. “He makes a buck or two, with the arm and all. Might as well be Carnegie Hall, the way he gears up, slicking his hair, aw, Beck, lend me some rouge, won’t you?”

“I—do not,” Bucky sputters, and Sam feels a smile start to spread on his lips. “Why do you gotta make him think I’m all vain already, huh?”

“Maybe I’ll run past sometime,” Sam says. “I meant it, I’d like to hear you.”

Bucky is quiet for a moment, looking at Sam. “Okay,” he says.

Sam scoots an inch closer. “Do you want to see the pictures now?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, a lot of breath. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

Sam opens the book. “This is from the day we met, in bootcamp.”

“God, that’s Fiji, isn’t it,” Bucky says, leaning closer. “It’s so green.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, fervent. Fiji was before the fighting. It’s a good memory, almost. “Steve looked like a fresh tomato, he burned so fast.”

“And the freckles,” Bucky says, a smile spreading on his lips. “Every fuckin summer, he looked like pointillism, like a Seurat.”

They’re both starting to laugh. Sam hardly notices Becky slipping out of the room, because Bucky is close enough that their knees bump and he’s pointing at Steve’s nose and saying I broke that and asking what trees those are or who that is and Sam finds himself talking, really talking, and it’s easy, it’s pouring right out in a warm-day deluge, and Bucky is soaking up every word with wide, wet eyes and a breathless sort of smile, a curl dripping over his forehead like bird shit or a ribbon, Sam talks and Bucky talks and when Sam stops listening so hard, he can hear Steve laughing his big goofy guffaw, Bucky wipes impatiently at his eyes and says, “Did you all call him Steve? You wrote Steve under the pictures, it’s just I keep thinking of all the nicknames—”

“Ginger Rogers?” Sam says and Bucky crumples against the back cushions of the couch, laughing a hiccuped sort of thing, “Yeah,” he says, “Yeah, Ginger Rogers, only I called him Stevie, he was always Stevie… always fuckin Stevie, like a little cat, you know? A stubborn little cat that always picked through the trash or something, Christ. Ginger Rogers. Yeah.”

“Especially in the dance halls,” Sam says. “Whenever we had time off, every time we were in fuckin civilization again, Steve would bumble his way around the floor and we’d all laugh ourselves sick, it was madness.”

“Were you there?” Bucky says, and it’s so sudden that Sam just says “Hm?”

“When he died,” Bucky says, and Sam stops laughing so quickly it sounds like radio cutting off. “Bougainville Island. When he died. Were you there.”

Sam cannot do anything other than look Bucky dead in the eye. “Yeah,” he says.

“Dinner’s ready!” Becky says, bursting into the room with the bluster of hurricane season. Both of them jump with the noise. “Hope you like soup, Sam.”

“Yeah,” he says. He clears his throat. Wipes his hands on his pants. Stands, knees cracking. “Yeah, that’s perfect. Thank you.”

“Come on, Buck,” Becky says, looking Sam up and down, accusing again. “Before it gets cold.”

“Okay,” Bucky says. It takes him a minute to move. When he does, he seems newly bereaved.

Sam drills arpeggios, scales, closes his eyes and plays and gasps with something akin to sobs. He shook out of dead sleep with a shout, he cannot catch a breath like he is sand inside, rattling grains and no lungs, he is freespace he is falling into his head with every blink, he is begging at an altar and this is some sort of twisted atonement, he is bleeding from scratching dream-snakes off his chest, his knee is bruised from falling right off his mattress diving out of the range of a dream-shell dropping, it is not here but it is here, he left it all in the Pacific but he brought it into his room, he is a haunted house and he is haunting his house, he is giving his best Ave Maria to some twisted deity with better things to do than hear him, he is miserable and so deeply alone that it scares him, that he is sand and dust to dust and sand, he plays and he plays and he plays and he plays and he plays and he plays and he plays and he plays and he plays and

eventually the sun comes up and he is a ravaged tapestry, all loose thread. there was a picture once and now he is thread he is thread like a tapestry is made of but he is not the tapestry he is the shreds. he has three new songs and blisters on his pinkies. he needs to beg sharon for another bottle of gin.

Sam does good on his word. He drifts by the bus station closest to the Barnes’s place on Wednesday afternoon and there must be fuckin luck or some single shred of karma in this sad universe because Bucky is standing right there on the corner with his coat-sleeve pinned up and a hat upturned on the pavement before him, meandering through some bittersweet melody about trolleys, Sam can’t place it but it sounds sweet coming out of Bucky’s mouth, sweet and lilting and he sells it all, acting it like he was born for the pictures, wide eyes and a little grin playing at his lips, zing zing zing went my heartstrings / from the moment I saw him I fell.

When the song ends and pedestrians passing by start dropping quick change in Bucky’s hat, Sam approaches.

“You didn’t say you’re a fuckin ingenue,” Sam says. He’s grinning, and Bucky grins when he sees him, too, all dimples, like he’s pleasantly surprised. “Jesus, Bucky, you’re like a bluejay.”

“You’re flattering me,” Bucky says, but his cheeks are a little pink. “Did you ever see that picture? Meet Me in Saint Louis? It’s Judy Garland, really, but it’s a good tune, a crowd-pleaser.”

“I knew it rung a bell,” Sam says, “I knew it rung a bell, my sister made me watch it when I got back, when she was on a mission to catch me up on everything I missed, God, you sing it better than Judy did. Naw, don’t make that face, I really mean it. You sing like cane syrup, and with that face—”

“You’re out of your mind,” Bucky says, shoving Sam with just his knuckles to Sam’s shoulder, “Christ, you really know how to sweet-talk a guy, huh.”

“Do you sing swing?” Sam says. His heart is hammering with the thrill of getting along with somebody, Jesus, he hasn’t talked so easy to anyone new since Steve though he guesses that makes some sort of sense. “Don’t answer that. You gotta sing swing. Are you busy tonight? I’ve got a band, we’re playing Sharon’s Place, do you know it?”

“I—yeah, I know it,” Bucky says.

“Come,” Sam says. “Come listen to us, the set’s at nine, you’ll be home by ten, I swear. It’s all vets. You know? All of us are. So come, Sharon’s Place on Superior and West Third—”

“I know it,” Bucky says again, and the corner of his lip is starting to climb.

“Half hour set,” Sam says. “Really. You’ll love it.”

“Fine,” Bucky says, “fine, now screw off, will you? I coulda sang a whole other number just in the time you’re taking up—”

“Fine,” Sam says, hands raised in surrender, backing away, grinning. He digs around in his pocket, then flicks a pair of quarters into Bucky’s hat. “Yeah, whatever, man. I’ll see you tonight at nine.”

“I’m coming for the music, not for you,” Bucky calls after him.

Sam snatches his hat off his head and presses it over his chest. “You’re breakin my heart, Barnes, you’re a real tease!”

“Cry about it,” Bucky says, and then jumps into Moonlight Serenade so quick Sam feels his breath stumble as he listens to that melody wind. He turns on his heel and heads down the street, hat still in his hand, the last strains of Bucky’s clear baritone pouring over the pavement at his back.

Sam gets ballsy. He gets really ballsy because the audience is eating them up and Bucky is sitting right there near the center of the room in slanted shadow with his hand dancing on a glass and a grin on his lips as he bobs along to the melody, Sam can’t help getting cocky, he’s been cocky all his life because he has a special talent for knowing what’s good and what’ll work and then Making It Happen, he rolls the mic to his lips and says over the end-of-set applause, “Before we tear down, folks, give us a second to pull a real special guy with pipes like the fanciest bird you’ve ever seen outta the crowd, alright, we’ve gotta have him sing something—”

“Sam, Jesus,” Bucky mouths, face shuttering.

“What the hell are you doing,” Carol hisses, glaring at him. “You didn’t say a goddamn thing about this, Wilson, I swear to God—”

“We’ll play a standard,” Sam says, high, high through the roof, if they just hear Bucky sing, “they’re standards because everybody and their fuckin dog knows them, c’mon pick up your trombone,” he turns back to the audience, where Bucky’s full shoulder is raised by his ear.

“Sam, I can’t,” he says.

“C’mon, give em a hand, everybody, where’s your hospitality,” Sam says, and a new wave of applause breaks out, confused, half-hearted. “Bucky Barnes, c’mere you sly bastard, ain’t you gonna share a little sunshine with the world?”

Bucky sidles to the stage, glaring daggers at him, pink-cheeked and pretty like a righteous angel or somethin, Sam gestures to the mic and Bucky loosely grips the stand and Sam says, “How about First Steps, huh? There’s something good, easy and good, you can do that.”

“That wasn’t a question.”

“It doesn’t have to be. I know you can do it.”

“What key,” Peter says, fingering his sax.

“Throw it in C, why not,” Sam says.

“Wait, gimme a minute to transpose,” Clint calls from behind the drum kit, then cracks up laughing.

Sam doesn’t care. He’s flying. He’s rising. He counts them off and they pick through the standard chords, and Bucky comes in, Bucky comes in with this sweet sort of tenderness, “Pardon my brashness, dear / seeing you standing here / dancing’s more than customary / for a soirée / Isn't the band sublime? / and as it happens I’m / just in the mood to do a / two step / Do step out on the floor with me / I’m new here too, you see? / Might you be charmingly coerced?” He's starting to grin a little, there’s meat in his voice, he’s butter-smooth, a real crooner, and Sam just stares at him in the spotlight like this is his symbol, this is his sign, this this is what the band has needed. This is balance this is right they are finally, finally hitting a groove. “No need to be so shy / take reassurance I / know how to guide you through the worst steps / first steps first.”

Sam is laughing to himself as he plays. When Bucky turns and says, “I don’t remember the bridge,” Sam feels like nothing could knock him down, absolutely fucking nothing.

“Why be all alone when the music calls,” Sam leads, leaning into his piano mic.

But Bucky is backing away from his own microphone, hand flirting to his chest, shaking his head, “This—was a terrible fuckin idea, Sam—”

“Wait, wait, no—” Sam cuts the band off, and the bar falls into crooked, heavy silence, “—it’s my fault, alright, I’m dragging the tempo. Clint, you kick it up a few beats, alright? Buck, that’ll fix it, c’mon, just follow me, one-a-two-a-three-n-four—” Clint kicks them in and Sam layers a third under Bucky’s nervous tone, “Why be all alone when the music calls?” and it’s so seamless, the blend is so good, Sam laughs aloud between lines.

“I have nothing more or less to prove,” Bucky sings.

“He’s terrific, folks!” Sam crows, beaming.

“But unless we want a party full of flowers on the walls,” Bucky continues, giving Sam a death glare, and Sam jumps in for the next line, “Someone has to make the very first move!”

Sam grins at him as they finish out the song, easy as could be, so fuckin easy, Sam doesn’t know how he didn’t put it together sooner that an extra layer of harmony is what they’ve been needing, another voice, another fuckin story to make them all cohesive, there it is. Bucky fuckin Barnes.

The audience claps and they all take their bows and Sharon is herding them off stage, but Bucky comes over with armageddon in his eyes and says, “Your balls must hang halfway to the fuckin Rio Grande, hotshot.”

“You’re glad you did it,” Sam says, factual. “You had fun. You sounded fantastic.”

“Are you going to apologize?” Bucky says, face hot red.

“Nah,” Sam says, pushing to his feet. His knees feel like gelatin, he’s over the moon. “C’mon, let’s grab a table, a big table—” he turns to the rest of the band, still packing their instruments, “—guys, meet Bucky Barnes, angel of fuckin music. This is Nat Romanov—”

“Charmed,” Bucky says falsely, which makes Nat laugh and say, “Want a drink, you poor bastard?”

“Yeah, Jesus, an enormous vodka,” Bucky says.

Nat gestures to Sharon while Sam points out the rest of them, Peter and Carol and Tony and Clint.

“You should go pro, Barnes,” Carol says, trombone case in hand. “But I’ve gotta head home, so. Excuse me.”

“Family to get to?” Bucky says.

Carol hesitates. “Yeah,” she says.

“Kids,” says Bucky.

“Monica,” says Carol.

“She’s got a talented Ma,” Bucky says, and he’s honest now, almost cowed. “Have a good night.”

“Yeah,” Carol says, frowning a little as she backs toward the right wing. “Yeah, you too.”

“What was your name again?” says Clint all sudden and loud, doing that half-sign thing he does when he’s rattled. “I forget things quick on account of a shell hit my Jeep and we flipped three times, three times I’m tellin you, and it’s—yeah, it’s weird, I remember whole songs after hearing em once, but then the other stuff, sometimes weeks, uh, weeks at a time,” his hand is twitching while he shakes his head, “gone. But I’m one of the lucky ones, yknow.”

“Yeah, you made it home,” Bucky says.

“Nah,” says Clint. “Lucky cuz I don’t remember.”

“Maybe the guys who didn’t make it back are the lucky ones,” Tony says, this humorless grin on his lips. “They got nothing, and we got twitches and shit memory and—and bad ears, we got the dreams and the shells and they’re lucky. They got nothing. They got nothing.”

“Like Steve,” Bucky says, blunt. His nostrils flare, then he turns on his heel and hops off the stage, liquid movements.

Sam is following before he thinks about it. “Don’t, Bucky—”

“It was a pleasure to sing with you, all of you,” Bucky says, not looking back. “I’m leaving. Goodnight.”

“Wait, just wait,” Sam says, but Bucky holds up that one hand and it feels like Sister Catherine showing off the ruler before she whacked Sam’s knuckles. Sam watches silently as Bucky slips out of the bar.

Eventually he must go back to the stage, because Tony is standing too close when he says, “Who’s Steve?”

“You say one more ugly thing and I will rip your goddamn face off,” Sam says.

“I was gonna say you found a real winner with that kid,” Tony says, stony, “but you can fuck right off to hell.”

Then Tony’s sweeping off stage. Carol follows.

“I was gonna say the same thing, Sam,” Clint says, sticking nervously around, weight shifting. Nat hangs close to him, running a hand through her shoulder-length shear of auburn hair. “He oughta sing with us again. Harmonies or—duets. Or somethin. He’s real good.”

“Not technically a vet,” Peter says.

“Neither am I,” Nat says, signing along with the words. Both her and Clint watch her hands move.

“Steve was—” Sam says, and then he stops. “I don’t even know how to say it. There was obviously something huge there, his house is a shrine, Steve Rogers was my best friend in the 37th but he was something enormous to Bucky Barnes, so. Bucky’s got every right to be in the band. War left him bereft like everyone fuckin else.”

Sam watches Nat collect the double vodka Sharon brings for a now-gone Bucky. Seemingly without thinking, as soon as she’s got her fingers on the glass, Nat knocks it back in one. Almost like a eulogy.

Sam waits two hours at the bus stop for Bucky to come.

“Oh, fuck off,” Bucky says when he sees Sam standing there, but there’s almost sort-of a laugh in his voice. It is hope, it tastes like honey stuck to the curl of a spoon or cool vanilla ice cream with rainbow jimmies.

“Forgive me,” Sam says, overly dramatic, throwing his arms out. “Bucky Barnes, goddamn forgive me please, take mercy upon my tortured soul, see my good intentions beneath the seven-layers of fucked up I show you every time we cross paths—”

“You did your good deed, alright,” Bucky says. “That’s what it was, Steve told you to check on me, didn’t he? You did your good deed, you checked, now leave me alone.”

“You don’t want that,” Sam says. “Not really. You don’t.”

“I don’t?” Bucky says.

“Not at all,” Sam says. “In fact, you don’t want it so much that you’re going to come back and sing for the band. You’re going to come back to Sharon’s and rehearse with us tonight at seven and you’re going to love every minute.”

“I am?” says Bucky.

“Mhm,” Sam says, smug. “I’m gonna leave you with this.” He gives a bow, extending one arm, slip of paper in hand. Upon it is written the chord charts and lyrics for a piece Sam pulled out his head like wires out a radio or hair out of the drain or something else disgusting and derivative of harrowing pagan rituals.

Bucky takes the paper. “You’re out of your mind, Sam Wilson.”

Sam tilts his head up just enough to look at Bucky through his lashes. He’s pink-cheeked, he blushes so easy, and he’s got his hat all jaunty on his head and his shirt is the color of a clear sky, his freckle-nose is wrinkled and Sam just grins, he grins. “Yeah,” he says. “You like it though.”

“I want—something in return,” Bucky says, taking a step closer.

Sam deepens the bow, all but sweeping the pavement. “Anything.”

“Steve,” he says, and Sam shoots upright. “Tell me more. Alright? Just—tell me more.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “If that’s what—” the band, the train, the station, cream rising. “If that’s what you need.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, thick with relief. “Now fuck off, Sam, Jesus, I’m tryin to make money out here.”

They start rehearsal early, to run through the number a few times without Bucky. Carol spends twenty minutes complaining about the register she’ll be wailing in, Clint touches her muffler and she nearly wrings his neck, Tony gets scared out of his pants by a sudden bleat on Peter’s sax and spends ten minutes hyperventilating in the bathroom, Sam and Nat make eye contact over Tony’s head when he comes back and need to go outside to hysterically giggle because the entire thing is so fucking ridiculous, they share a cigarette and Sam thinks about a train that leaves the station at a quarter after five and is direct from Union Terminal right there in Public Square a quarter after five and where does it arrive?

“Grand Central Station,” Sam mutters aloud, and Nat says “You’re so fucking weird,” and Sam looks at her and says “Grand Central Station, baby!” and she throws her head back and laughs like she doesn’t mind baring her throat to him, and Sam is still hearing that hungry train but he’s thinking, now, about Sharon telling him he needed people. He is thinking about his people, too, and how they’re all twisted like damp fuckin towels, and it’s sort of beautiful, it’s horrible, they’re all horrible and Sam hates them but sometimes, like when Nat laughs or Peter makes one of his quietly judgmental faces or when Bucky looks at him all furious and all Sam can do is laugh or Carol pokes Tony in the ass with her trombone slide to scare him or when Bucky tugs his tie looser while he talks or Clint says anything at all in that head-cocked lip-curled way or when Bucky drops his hand on his stomach to feel his breath before he starts a song.

Sam’s got people, that’s the point. He’s got people, and it’s so weird and maybe just a little bit wonderful.

The rest of rehearsal flies. They fight and Bucky sings and the song sounds better than it has any right to, Bucky sits on a stool and hammers his heel in time and Sam watches it while he plays like a metronome, they’re all following Bucky’s lead and Sam can breathe a little easier, breathes through his fingers or something, it feels good.

Their first show featuring the vocal stylings of one Bucky Barnes is that weekend at Luke Cage’s place. Luke gives them a prime slot on account of the fact that Sam spends a solid fifteen minutes talking Bucky up like he’s Billie Holiday or something, he’s the next biggest thing in the world, maybe he is or maybe he isn’t but Sam sure makes him sound so and good God, the show goes good. It goes beautifully good, stupendously good, and You Deserve It is another hit, it’s nutzo. It’s all nutzo. Luke catches him while they’re tearing down their kits and knocks their foreheads together and says, “Man, you gotta come back and do that again this weekend.”

“Well—lemme talk to the guys,” Sam says, grabbing Luke’s shoulder and squeezing. “I’ll let you know?”

“Call me, yeah, whatever, you’re going to make me big fuckin bucks, Sammy,” Luke says, stoic as ever but with this glint in his eyes. “Good for you, man. Call me. Let me go grab you a round, on the house. I could fuckin kiss you.”

Then Luke is gone and Peter is grinning, smacking Sam’s arm. Nat and Clint are talking too-loud across the drum kit. Bucky is hovering near the mic stand, rubbing the empty shoulder, so Sam walks over grinning and then they’re both grinning and laughing a little, snickering really.

“Feels good, huh?” Sam says.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, fervent. “The Sam Wilson Band Featuring Bucky Barnes, huh?”

“Well,” Sam says. “Well, y’know, I was thinking about that, actually, and marquee-worthy names, which had me thinking about yours, your name, or names rather—”

“I am not putting fuckin James Barnes on a marquee,” Bucky says.

“Bucky sounds like a cartoon raccoon, man,” Sam says, still grinning, but Bucky is sharpening, he’s always sharpening like he whittles himself for every conversation, “Steve gave me the nickname,” he says, “Steve gave me the fuckin nickname and it’s all I’ve got left of him, alright? He’s buried in fuckin Manila, where I’ll never go, I saw nothing I know nothing Steve was alive one day and then I read the worst telegram of my life, all I’ve got left is the nickname, alright? Jesus, Sam, can’t you leave anything be.”

Then Bucky is shrugging on his coat and leaving the stage and Sam is following him, Sam is always following him, pushing through the crowd and sidestepping waiters, Sam says “Bucky, Bucky, wait, Christ, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it,” and Bucky must be getting used to him or something because he turns around and looks at him with this twisted face on his face and says, “Yeah, Sam. I fuckin know you didn’t.”

“You don’t want to go to Manila,” Sam says.

“Yeah, I fuckin don’t,” Bucky says. “Not now, anyway. Jee-sus. Let’s just tell the guys we got another gig, alright?”

“Yeah,” Sam says.

“Then you’re gonna walk me home, Sammy,” Bucky says, and Sam says “So that’s how you’re gonna be?” and Bucky says “I’m only what I am.”

Anyway. Sam does walk Bucky home.

Bucky and Tony, anyway, the latter of whom runs his fat mouth the whole time, who says “D’you really think You Deserve It is a winner?”

“It’s solid,” Sam says, head tilted back, eyes shut, feeling the autumn huff cool over his cheeks. “Blues, yknow, classic blues structure, you can’t go wrong.”

“Yeah, well,” Tony says. “I hear James Rhodes’s song might be better.”

“James Rhodes,” Sam says. He opens his eyes to look at Tony, a real searing look as something hot builds and bubbles in his gut. “And how would you know about James Rhodes’s song.”

“The contest doesn’t have any rules against playing with more than one band,” Tony says, and Sam yells outta nowhere like a forest fire or the blistered tree, “You fuckin rat,” voice echoing down the street, they’ve come to a standstill all three of them, Tony snaps back with “I need to win this contest, I’m making no fuckin money teaching horn lessons—”

“You’d do this to your brothers,” Sam says, blood thundering in his ears or else engine thundering down tracks there is there is a train, “to us, after everything, you’d betray us all like that.”

“It’s not about betrayal,” Tony says.

“I oughta knock your fuckin teeth out,” Sam grits, and is on Tony in a second, the front of his shirt bunched in his hand and a fist raised and ready to swing.

“Quit it,” Bucky barks, grabbing Sam’s attention, God, watching them with those ice eyes he stands there all righteous, “just walk me home, Sam, alright? Walk me home.”

It’s all train and tracks no it’s all train and Sam is the tracks the same way Sam is the rotted corpse and Bucky is the viewing room and the city is the funeral home, Sam shoves Tony off him with shaking hands. There is a train it leaves the station at a quarter after five. Sam is holding the fucking siding, he’s leaping through a gaping compartment door, let him on the train, let him on let him on.

Tony smoothes his shirt, disdain in every line of his face. “Contest is in a week,” he says. “I’ll be on the bandstand with the best song. Nothing more, nothing less.” Then he turns and heads down the street like that’s just fine. Like that’s what they all signed up for. Like they’re not all clinging to this one thing with every last sweating desperate strain of hope, Sam is a nerve, Bucky touches his elbow and he jumps a foot in the air.

“Sorry,” Bucky says. “Sorry, Sam, Jesus, are you even breathing.”

“Sometimes I think,” Sam says, “this city is like the fuckin rapture, I think the street is gonna split like watermelon rind and all the demons of hell are gonna come clambering over the cracked pavement and I wouldn’t even be surprised, they’d fit, right here they’d fit.”

“That’s a convoluted way to say Tony’s satanic,” Bucky says, and Sam gives a laugh gone quick and high with hysteria. “Come on, Sam.” Bucky squeezes Sam’s elbow tight in his hand, thumb pressing hard into the bend, and Sam comes plummeting into his head with a wet gasp, feels the cold air again and the shake of his hands, he can taste his heart like a rotten peach at the base of his throat, all pithy and mealy and too-sweet, “walk me home, huh?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, but he’s still watching Tony grow small in the distance. “Yeah, let’s—you lead, I can’t fuckin. Think. Do anything. You lead.”

Bucky tugs him along and Sam follows, listening to the scuff of their shoes and the legs of their pants hitting. Cars honk. Lights flicker and bars sing muffled as they pass. It smells like cigarettes and sewer and exhaust. The moon is bright. Bucky is shorter than him by a solid few inches, and Sam looks down on his cheeks all silver-sallow in shadow and sort of wants to shove him.

“Steve always said this thing,” Sam says, and Bucky looks at him so fast that it’s weird he doesn’t crack his fuckin neck, “about a train, yknow, a train I’d take when I made it big. He said he’d come with me to New York. The 515 to Grand Central, direct line, first class all the way. He’d say it over and over, whenever the shells were coming closer, every time we thought we were gonna—and I still think about it all the time, I hear it in his stupid voice, that’s what I can tell you, I can tell you this train runs circles through my head, constant circles, day and night.”

“That’s how they’ll send us to New York if we win this contest,” Bucky says. “That direct train, that’ll be it, like cosmic justice.”

“When we win,” Sam says.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “When we win.”

“Who am I fuckin kidding,” Sam says, pressing on his tight chest with one tremulous hand like a virtuoso, like he’s four taut strings and he’s also a taut bow and he’s getting ready to hum out a Pachabel arrangement of taut chords. “We’re not going to win, Bucky. We’re really not, I brought you into my mess of a fuckin band and we can’t even look at each other half the time, I want to choke that guy every day—”

“Rest assured you’re not alone in that,” Bucky says.

“The point is I’m sorry,” Sam says. “I’m sorry we’re always fighting and I’m sorry I’m a prick to you half the time but—”

“But you’ve got a train running circles in your head,” Bucky says. “Sam, I get it. Alright? I get it. It’s hard. It’s—” he reaches into his pocket and pulls out this little leather journal, from which he reads, “When I was young I had no need for compass nor for guide / A starry chart of instinct was imprinted here inside / And unaware that days of doubt and voss would soon begin / One—”

“One true course to follow was the one I found within,” Sam reads over Bucky’s shoulder. “Jesus, what is that? Shakespeare? A Hallmark card?”

“Fuck you,” Bucky says, scowling, light in his eyes. “It’s me. Bastard.”

“You wrote that,” Sam says, and feels something like glee. “Oh my God. Barnes, you wrote that. Gimme the book, I gotta read the others.”

“Eat my shorts.”

“Let me see. C’mon, is it a diary?”

“It’s just poems, God, fuck,” Bucky says, but his distress is all a show, it’s obviously a show, he’s fighting a smile. Sam can tell, now, what Bucky looks like when he’s hiding a smile. “You’ll make fun of me. You already did.”

“Are you that soft? Should I promise not to tease you?” Sam says. He sobers. “I’ll promise. Really, I’ll promise, I do promise.”

Bucky looks at him with his lips all pressed together. He slows to a standstill. Sam follows, then dimly registers they’re outside the Barnes’ door already; time fuckin flies. “Fine,” Bucky says, quieter. He slips the book into Sam’s hand. “But don’t stay up all night poring over my massively enlightened grief metaphors or whatever. Get some sleep. Let the train reach the station or whatever.”

“Gave up on that a long time ago,” Sam says, turning the book over in his hand. “Gave up on that the way you ought to give up on your hokey fuckin metaphors.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Bucky says. “Asshole.”

Sam grins, backing away from the stoop. “Night, Bucky.”

“Good fuckin night, Sam.”

Sam spends the night flicking through the pages of the notebook under the dim light of a shitty lamp, wastes a good long while unable to move because the first few pages are taken with a scrawl in Steve’s hand, grocery lists, got 2 pick up my asthma cigarettes and celery, Buck, don’t let me forget, it’s like plummeting through time to hangman rounds on the wrappers from a K-ration or a cigarette carton, Sam sits under the upright to protect from falling shells and giggles shrilly at himself and then drinks half a fifth of vodka and plunks out a melody to Bucky’s poems that feels like clouds parting, he tilts damn close to the keys so he can hear better and closes his eyes and thunks out a real fuckin song, it’s in Bucky’s sweet register, it’s got meat, it’s a goddamn love song and it’s the eleven-o’clock number to a show that never goddamn ends, not for them, not for them.

Sam doesn’t sleep, but he’s got seven copies of the charts and two of the lyrics written up by the time day starts crackling over Cleveland like icy water through a broken dam.

They take the table runner off the top of Bucky’s old upright. They move the books off the bench, they pile em on the hardwood floor and Sam sits and he plays the song through twice til Bucky’s eyes look less glazed and he says, small and hard and confused, “This is just. This is one of my poems.”

“Jesus fuckin wept, good catch,” Sam says. “Yale come after you yet?”

“It’s one of my poems.”

“Then you should have no trouble reading it down while I play, alright?” Sam rolls out the first chord. “Once upon a time,” he leads Bucky, who picks it right up, “I would wake beside a man / who would make me feel like nothing could take him from me.” Bucky looks up, shifts his weight, then drops onto the corner of the piano bench beside Sam. “Aren’t they… they’ll know. It’s a love song, Sam, they’ll know.”

“They won’t know who wrote it or about who unless you start feelin real brave,” Sam says, quieter. Bucky’s still sleep-rumpled, hair loose on his forehead in waves and curls and shadows well-deep beneath his eyes like maybe Sam ain’t the only one who can’t catch a full night, he’s wearing pajamas and his feet are bare and Sam doesn’t look much better, in last night’s slacks and shirt, with the remnants of vodka on his breath. “Were you and him…?”

“Never,” Bucky says, looking Sam dead in the face with those ice eyes, so close so close Sam wants to shove him backwards down the bench, “but I loved him since I was seventeen, I loved him the way any guy loves a gal—”

“I get it,” Sam says. “I get it.”

“—even when he was all scrawny and sick with rheumatic fever, even before he got his glasses, when we had no money in the world and he was drawing Tijuana bibles to afford his medicine and we stole onions and mealy apples from the grocer so we wouldn’t starve—”

“In sickness and in health, I get it, I get it,” Sam says.

“And that’s… you’re okay with it,” Bucky says.

“Yeah, I’m okay with it,” Sam says, and he laughs a little, which makes Bucky shove him before he can even manage to say, “I’m laughing, sorry, I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because I used to have this guy named Riley, alright? He looked like—a mistake, his face looked like a gargoyle broken off Notre Dame but he was the best cello player I’d ever heard. Met him in elementary school, loved him til high school, we kissed at the sock hop, we fucked after graduation, I thought we were gonna be together for fuckin ever like Snow White and that guy in the woods, I thought he was it for me, he died when we were nineteen and it feels like—like pressing a bruise,” Sam says, and Bucky has a handful of Sam’s sleeve like he thinks Sam needs to be held up or something, held down maybe, “talking about him is like pressing a bruise but it used to be like reciting Hamlet while drowning in battery acid, so. Jesus Christ.”

“It’s fine,” Bucky says, and Sam realizes he’s crying a little, so he says “Jesus Christ,” again, and Bucky laughs.

In the kitchen, the kettle starts wheezing. Sam flinches at the sound. Bucky’s on his feet, lyric sheet in hand, skimming as he walks towards it like a beacon call, shaking his head and muttering, “My fuckin poem on the page. Becks, have you checked the sky for flyin pigs today? Because I’ve got something crazy to show ya.”

It’s only over tea, after singing through the thing so many times it’s starting to feel like a standard, that Bucky grows quiet again, so Sam knocks their knees together.

“I want to use it for the contest,” Sam says. “We’ll win with this one. We need Tony on the bandstand if we want to make it to New York, and this will have him there.”

“It’s not about the troops,” Bucky says.

“The hell it isn’t,” Sam says. Next to him on the couch, Bucky’s hunched over his mug like a supplicant. “The hell it fuckin isn’t, Bucky. It’s your story. There ain’t no better tribute to the troops than that.”

“You don’t even get to sing in it,” Bucky says.

“The Sam Wilson Band Featuring Bucky Barnes,” Sam recites. “I don’t have to sing. I get to play, that’s where I’m good, on the keys. But your voice. We need that. I think the band would follow that voice anywhere.”

“Then,” Bucky says, and he laughs a little, fast, and takes a deep sip of tea. He swallows all heavy, it’s too hot, Sam is smiling at him and Bucky is smiling back when he says, “I guess we got our song, huh?”

“And there goes the James Rhodes Orchestra, ladies and gentlemen!” calls the announcer all dressed in navy blue, blond hair falling in ringlets over her shoulders. The spotlight is caught on her all glimmering and too-hot, Sam wants to shield his eyes, he wants to shake out of his skin, he doesn’t know why they’ve got them on a stage for three judges sweating in polyester suits and fifteen bastards getting paid pennies to serve as an applause track for the radio show, but it feels like a gig, like an enormous live gig, it feels like a promise. It feels like a train. “Once again, this is Sue Storm, your host for tonight’s broadcast, brought to you by Bayer Aspirin! Just in time for the holidays!” Clint gives a nervous giggle over the kit, knee hammering and toes set on the bass pedal. “Our last contestants for the Ohio seat in the competition are six guys and dolls that hail from all over Cleveland, who served all over the world in a dozen ways, headlined by one special guy crooning a song written with our gold star women in mind. This is The Sam Wilson Band Featuring Bucky Barnes!”

Sam gives a rolling chord to start, an E7#5/B, an insane tension in the notes as they layer. He meets Bucky’s eyes across a stretch of indeterminate space, he is a slip of grey in the stage shadows, and they give a half-nod together like cueing the heart to start beating.

“Once upon a time,” Bucky sings, and it’s like the room falls under a hushed curtain. It’s like Fred Astaire is up there, it’s like a faerie is up there and everyone is shouldering each other aside to get a good look at him, to see the magic twinkling et cetera, it’s one beautiful fucking moment and Sam knows, he knows they’re going to win. Sam cuts in and out in flashes, his head is so far from his head it’s almost miraculous, but he keeps time with the bounce of Carol’s slide, “And it's almost like time has stood still / Like a lifetime iced under the frost / And I don't try to warm from the chill / Although I know how much I've lost,” Bucky has them in his palm, he has them all in his palm, it’s like Sam can hear everyone in Cleveland, everyone in fuckin Ohio tuning their radios on to listen to them all this once, this one precious moment, “Trouble is the more you deny / The more you don’t even try / The more the world passes by in a haze,” Sam hammers out the chords like a saloon player, Bucky’s got the mic in hand and he’s looking at Sam and performing, he’s performing it like they’ve been on stage together for decades, “Lately I’ve been thinking it’s time to take a look at what I’m doing then / clinging to if only! / Heaven knows there’s more than one man / and maybe I should be planning for when,” Sam rolls the chords, rumbles the left hand like thunder, Cleveland holds its breath and Bucky professes like a beautiful fucking eureka, “love will come and find me again!”

The fake fuckin crowd is on their feet, clapping, hollering themselves red in the face, Sue Storm is back at the microphone giving them their tagline, Clint is standing behind his kit with a stupid grin on his face, Nat is hugging her upright to her, Peter and Carol have their arms around each other’s shoulders, even Tony looks pleased, but Bucky is looking right at Sam, he’s shaking his head with his hand held over his mouth and Sam can’t do anything but use two hands to blow him a loud kiss, because good fucking goddamn. They’re a band, huh.

“The song,” Sue Storm is calling, waving a piece of paper she snatched from the judges, “representing the great state of Ohio in the nationwide Tribute to the Troops competition is…” Sam knows it to his bones before she says it, he’s on his feet with his arms spread wide to pull Bucky into a spine-cracking hug, but hearing it, hearing her say “The Sam Wilson Band Featuring Bucky Barnes!” is like rain after a drought, like butter melting over bread, like a yellow flower showing its face. “Do you want to say a few words to the listeners?”

Sam is already grabbing the microphone, Bucky tucked under his arm, heart hammering in his throat. “Yeah,” he croaks, “yeah, golly, thank you, thanks for this, this is going to change every single one of our lives, all of us vets out there, this is for all of you. This is for all of you. Make it this far. Buck?”

Bucky laughs a little, and the tail end of it is caught and shouted by the mic. “Yeah, gosh, this is a helluva lot bigger—a lot bigger, sorry, sheesh, it’s a lot bigger than singing on the street corner by the bus stop! Thank you!”

Sue leans in to speak into the microphone one last time. “On behalf of everyone here in the beautiful Ohio State Theater, on the Rive Gauche of Lake Eerie, congratulations and goodnight one and all!”

“And we’re off the air!” someone calls, and the room breaks into cheers, Sam grabs a handful of the back of Bucky’s jacket and gives him a little shake, Bucky rubs his knuckles over Sam’s growing-back curls and they just breathe.

Sam gets the paperwork from a nice lady at a nice desk, which is why he doesn’t expect the news to be so shit.

He tells the guys that night. Rounds them up at Sharon’s, steals them a bottle of vodka, and hands around the blank forms.

“Fuck you, Sam,” Carol says, exhausted, head in her hands. “Fuck you for making me want this so bad and then ripping it out from under my feet.”

“I didn’t know this would happen,” Sam says.

“Can someone read this out loud for me?” Clint says, loud. “I can’t, my head hurts, it makes my eyes hurt—”

“Most of it is timing for New York,” Nat says, using her hands. “Instructions and shit. But this—Clint, this says that they’re not paying for our transit. We have to front the money to get to the city, for the hotel, for food, everything, and this page,” Nat flips, “Jesus fucking Christ, Clint, it’s saying we have another round of preliminaries to get through before the broadcast. So we have to do all of it again, another performance, before we find out if we even get to the final round. We could pay all this money to get to the city, then not even get to perform.”

“They didn’t say a word about it,” Sam says, ready to beg them to fucking understand. “They didn’t say anything about it beforehand. They didn’t.”

“Even if we go cheap, that’s close to a fat grand,” Tony says, chewing the corner of his thumbnail. “A thousand dollars, Sam.”

“We can’t afford it,” Peter says. “Of course we can’t afford it, who the hell can afford that?”

“Just enough bands to fill a two hour broadcast,” Sharon says, banging another bottle and a bowl of fresh ice onto the table. “God. Sorry, you all. It’s a little fucking miserable.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, watching her leave again, everything is a wisp, everything is slipping outta their sight. “God. The public thinks forty-eight states will be there, they lied to us, they lied to them, they lied to everyone.”

“Are these the type of people we want selling our Bayer Aspirin,” Peter says.

“That’s what we fought Hitler for, after all,” Carol says. “So they could sell painkillers.”

“So,” Tony says, shoving the papers away with a sick twist to his face, with a jumping nerve on his brow, “so we gotta raise enough money to get there, first of all. Then to put ourselves up, dress all nice, eat and drink. We gotta do all of that while also playing enough shows to survive off of. And then, when we get there, we might not even get to compete.” Clint goes to drop a hand between Tony’s shoulders, but Tony flinches hard and shouts “Don’t touch me!” before Clint makes contact.

Clint jumps. Nat jumps. Carol and Peter jump, Bucky jumps, they all fucking jump and Bucky is pinching his nose between two fingers and Nat is doing that thing where she smothers her mouth so they can’t hear her laugh. Sam jumped, or maybe he didn’t, he cannot feel his legs.

“Maybe,” Nat says, muffled against her palm, “maybe they’ll take suggestions, you know? Maybe they’ll let us march there. S’only gonna be December, what’s the worst thing that happens? We lose a few toes?”

“Drink outta the gutters, the rivers,” Tony says, scratching the side of his throat hard.

“What’s dysentery when it’s between friends, huh?” Peter says.

“Sam,” says Bucky. It’s the first thing he’s said. “Sam?”

Sam flattens his palms on the sticky floor of the bar. He—is on the floor like sinking, like sunk, knees and hands and there is a throat somewhere, when he blinks the wood is blood-saturated mud, there is a train there is a train. There is a train and there is a body and a brain and the two are swimming somewhere in the soupy nothingness of being sucked through the ground by some great and terrible sucking something, something is staring at him like a biblical angel with hundreds of blinking eyes in waves of iris and lash, it would be hypnotic, it would be horrible, this is horrible, it is heart-meat and train-grunt and the rumble, in some universe the snake strangled Hercules first and maybe it is this one, swallowing and swallowed, the pit and the roughage it leaves on the fruit, his pulse shoves its uncouth elbows against the narrow walls of his throat and says move make room can’t you hear it coming can’t you hear it coming, “There is a train,” he says aloud, and Bucky says, cracked, “Sam.”

“There is a train,” Sam says. “It leaves the station at a quarter after five, and it’s direct from Union Terminal right there in Public Square to Grand Central Station, the Cleveland Limited of New York Central Railroad has first class pullman cars for big time movie stars and we’re gonna take one.”

“Sam,” Bucky says. He is on his knees before Sam, leaning on knuckles on hardwood close enough that Sam can see his lashes fanning, Sam can hear the desperate craggy gasp of his breaths like downwind along ocean cliffs, the kind in the pictures, Brontean cliffs, the fuckin moors, the kind people of place people go to just to throw themselves off of.

“I see it all,” Sam says. “I see it, yknow, the leather seat, the steak we’ll eat, the train conductor’s gonna call Right this way. You hear? That’s what they’ll say. All for us. They reserved it just for us. We’ve been waiting for this. It’s the least they can fuckin do, Stevie, it’s the least they can do.”

“Sam,” Bucky says again, and Sam sits back on his heels, burying the heels of his hands in his eyes.

“No,” he says, “no, no, no, no, no.”

“Look at me, look at me,” Bucky says. “Open your fuckin eyes, Sam.”

“The hotel,” Sam says. “It’ll be outta a movie, it’ll be beautiful, the sorta place Ella sings and someday we will too, we will. We been fighting too long. That’s what they’ll say. Right this way, sir, let me take your bags, your bags, they must be—drilling you into the fuckin ground, sir, let me take em.”

“Yeah, Sammy,” Sharon says, and Sam opens his eyes to see she’s on her knees beside Bucky, both of em sickly pale. “What else.”

“They’ll take the bags,” he says. “They’ll just—they’ll take em, after—after cargo ships and trenches in the rain and—and all the blood, the shells, they took fuckin everything, Clint’s hearing, Tony’s—attitude—” someone laughs, “—they’ll take our bags because we been through hell, we been through—three years and eight months, three years and eight months fighting my way back here—”

“You’re right,” Nat says, white-faced in her chair like a ghost. She has one hand clapped over her bad ear. “You’re right.”

“I usedta believe in God,” Sam says, laughing, shaking his head so hard he hears it moving around in his skull, he hopes it bruises, he’ll wear it like a badge, “I used to go to church with my sister every Sunday morning, we busted our fuckin asses,” he shoots to his feet like a bullet, vision blacking, knees cracking, breath hitched, “we busted our fuckin asses,” he spits, “I think we are entitled. To travel first class.”

“How,” Clint says.

“Whatever gigs we can get,” says Peter, standing, meeting Sam’s eye. His shirt is wrinkled like tissue. “Whatever dates, whatever shows, we play. We take em all. We’re not finished yet.”

“There’s liquor dives,” Nat says.

“Party rooms,” says Carol.

“And VA halls, I bet,” Tony says.

“Right,” Sam says, and it’s a sob, “right, right,” he swipes his wrist under his nose, “we fight for ourselves now. Alright? Everything that went wrong. We’ll fix it. We’ll fix it for us.”

Bucky is standing real close. Like he can’t bear it. “Yeah, Sam,” he says, quiet, determined. “You’re right. We’ll do it right, we’ll do it this way.”

It takes Sam a whole fifth to sleep that night. Still, he dreams of the train pounding to the steady throb of Bucky’s vibrato, he wakes up sobbing, he wakes up curled over his knees, he pukes for an hour and when the sun rises Sarah is knocking on his door like she just knew.

“Sammy,” she says when he opens up. Sad. Disappointed, maybe.

“Things’re bad, Sar,” he says.

“I know,” she says. She takes his elbows and shepherds him outta the way so she can make her way inside. She bustles around, tossing the shades open, putting a pot of water on to boil, she’s opening the cabinets and finding no food, she’s checking the trash and finding beer cans, she’s looking at the way the sun catches through the xylophone scale of liquor bottles lined along the sink, “Sam,” she says, and she shakes her head. She stops moving just long enough to catch him in a hug so tight he thinks it realigns his spine. “I didn’t know. Alright? I thought you were getting along.”

“I am,” he says.

“Not well,” she says.

“No, not well,” he says. He drops his nose in the nape of her neck.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay. Well. We’ll make it work. I promise.” She is rubbing his back through his stained wifebeater. “Sam, it fuckin smells in here.”

“Might be me.”

“It definitely is,” she says. “Go. You go take a shower and I’ll make some breakfast.”

“Since when could you cook.”

“I’m multi-talented like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I’d believe,” he says. “I’d believe.”

He closes himself in the bathroom and cleans up. Washes his face, moving slow, a deep distance between himself and his body and his face in the mirror. He pokes his own cheeks. He doesn’t remember being this sallow. Skinny. Colorless. There’s no warmth under his skin, nothing. He’s corpse or swan or pumice. “Jesus fuckin wept,” he says to his reflection. “Who the hell are ya.”

His reflection laughs, twisted and pitying.

Sam strips and gets into the shower then. He feels no better when it’s done, but he stinks less. He smells like lye, he smells like rusty water and lye and a little like toothpaste. He needs a slice of bread. That’ll fix everything, thank God for bread, he missed good bread when he was away. (Away. That is so fuckin funny. Like he’s talking about a vacation, or getting sent away to boarding school.) He missed bread crust. The crackling kind.

He pulls on a pair of socks. Nice slacks. A nice shirt. Suspenders, a sweater vest, everything, he does the works, dressed in all browns and greens the way his ma used to say made him look distinguished, like a professor. Sarah is in the kitchen when he gets there, and he feels a little ashamed, watching her fry eggs. Thinking about his empty kitchen and thinking about the puke-stink that greeted her at the door, thinking about the guys in Sharon’s Place last night watching him bawl his eyes out, he just feels shitty. Bad beyond the hangover, it’s like post-coital guilt without any of the good parts, it’s just guilt.

“Hey,” he says, and she turns to him, all neat yellow dress and hair somehow wrangled into soft waves and rolls, there is no one he understands less and likes more in the world, “Sarah. Let’s go to the bakery, huh? My treat, I’ve been—saving some tips for a nice bottle of fizz or somethin but I just want bread. Nice bread.”

“With the crackling crust?” she says.

“Yeah,” he says, smiling halfheartedly, wincing with the contortion. “Bread, Sare. It’s the little things.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. She is frowning a little, then looks determined. She flicks the stove off. “Yeah, alright. Bread. Let’s go get some.”

They do get some. It’s like fucking clouds unfurling on his tongue, it’s a whole storm with thunder and lightning, it’s all of it, it’s more than that. Sam goes wild, picks up two swirled danishes with raspberry jam at the hearts and drags Sarah by the Barnes’s door to drop them off.

“I want to meet him,” Sarah says, rubbing Sam’s arm, and she’s always been good at making things happen just the same way Sam has, so the door opens.

“Sam,” Becky says, brows flicked high. “And—a girl.”

“My sister,” Sam says. “Sarah Wilson.”

“Sister, Sarah Wilson,” Becky says, starting to smile. “And a bag from Artucci’s place?”

“Danishes,” Sam says, holding it aloft. “A peace offering. A request to see Buck?”

Becky has already snagged the bag out of his hand and turned around, marching into the house to call her brother, who shouts something back, unintelligible, then comes limping into the living room, massaging his hip.

“I slept fuckin horrible, Sam, so watch how you talk to me today,” he says, blue t-shirt and blue eyes and blue work denims worn almost raw, there are freckles on his upper arm and Sam feels his whole heart spasm. Barefoot Bucky, Bucky with damp hair and coffee steaming sluggishly on the kitchen table, he’s somethin else. “Watch how you look at me, too. Why’re your eyes so red. What’s in the bag.”

Sam ticks on his fingers. “I won’t look at you at all, it's not like I’ll be missing anything. I spent a few hours painting the porcelain throne last night for—obvious reasons, but it’s a new day, we’re raring to go, Buck. And—danishes from Artucci’s.”

“You descend like a saint upon the premises, blessing us all with your generosity and, uh, grandeur,” Bucky says, snagging the bag from his sister, shaking it open, and holding it out to Becky, who extracts a pastry and sticks it in his open mouth for him. He holds it between his teeth, eyes fluttering shut with pleasure. “Mmm, rzzbry.”

“This is my sister, Sarah,” Sam says, dropping a hand on her back like presenting her to em both. Sarah stops gawping at the pictures of Steve real quick, like she thinks they didn’t notice. “Be polite, she’s a real fuckin lady, she’s a total bird.”

“Lvley tmeetchoo,” Bucky manages, removing the rest of the danish from his mouth. He chews, then takes another bite, freeing his hand to wipe clean on his denims and then present to Sarah, who shakes it, bemused. “Chrmed m’sure.”

“He has manners, I promise,” Becky says, depositing the bag on the table. “Sometimes he does, anyway. Are you staying for lunch?”

“Stay, stay, Sarah’s helping me make sandwiches,” Bucky says with a huff as he collapses onto the couch, tender with his sore hip, “with real nice crusty bread and all.”

“Crusty bread,” Sam says, wagging his brows at Sarah. “What d’you think.”

“I can’t say no to a selling point like that,” Sarah says, looking at Sam, starting to smile with all this light in her eyes, Sarah is sunrise on the lake, Sarah is a rare fresh orange. “If you want to stay, I do.”

“I do,” Sam says, and she grabs his hand, squeezing.

“You want to stay,” she says, nodding, and he nods along with her, “I do,” so they go sit on the couch and Becky flicks on the radio and they have themselves an afternoon, slow, nice. Sam is almost never as calm, as slow, as he is round the Barnes’s place.

By a strike of voltaic luck their next number is another hit, and it’s a song born entirely out of spite, it’s spite in three verses with tight harmonies, it’s spite in a yellow bow, it’s spite smiling so big her eyeteeth catch the light.

“Find somebody else who gives a fig what you say,” Sam and Bucky sing together, a tumbling melody line while Tony and Peter blare and Clint has his way with the kit.

“You know who tells me stop?” Bucky sings, delivering it to Sam, who makes a face like he doesn’t believe it. “Nobody!”

“The boys are back,” Sam says when the set is done, beaming. “The boys are back we’re back in style and everything is happening.”

“Good show,” Peter says, smacking Sam’s back on his way out.

“Where’re you running, kid,” Sam says, starting to grin. “Got a hot date?”

“Just hanging with a guy,” Peter says, shrugging one shoulder, but he gets all light behind the eyes like an ingenue and Sam thinks to himself that he must’ve rounded up the biggest band of secret queers in the fuckin country, didn’t he. There’s something in that Cleveland water.

“Tell him hi from us,” Sam says. “Tell him he better treat you good.”

“His name’s Johnny,” Peter says, like a secret, and Sam takes it for what it is: a gift. He waves Peter on, and Peter goes, hand raised, while Nat cat-calls him and Carol plays a bleating honk on her trombone.

“You wanna come over?” Bucky says, at Sam’s shoulder, pink-cheeked and pretty, sweat on his temples from the glare of stage lights. “Becky’s out on a date and I’ve got some new lyrics we can screw around with.”

“Perfect,” Sam says.

So they retire to the Barnes’s living room and Bucky pulls out a bottle of whiskey and everything is fuckin soggy, it’s laughing and leaning into the piano, it’s a big honking bowl of popcorn that tastes like the burnt bottom of the pan more than anything and it’s Sam saying, “So—so I’m already on stage, right, and the girls are in a line in their red white and blue—I can’t even call them outfits, the word outfit is too generous, they were bikinis, really, and ol Ginger Rogers is feeling gutsy, right? The way he got all gutsy and, and like he could do anything, right, so he steps up to the drum kit as if he had any fuckin idea how to play, and he just starts hammering on it.”

“Sounds like him,” Bucky says, smiling hugely, eyes wet, “God, that’s Steve.”

“And we know the troops, right? We are the troops, we know the troops because we’re the arms and legs, we’re the blood-soaked meat of the rotten heart or whatever—”

“Oscar Wilde?! Is that you?!”

“—and so Steve just starts drumming for his fuckin life, he’s hammering so fast he turns the ballad on the music stand into—into a, a, I dunno, a fight song. He’s looking at me and he’s going Faster! So I kick it up, and he says it again, Faster, and he pumps, and we’re sorta laughing even though we’ve never been more serious in our lives and he just says now sing. So I start singing like it’s, it’s, it’s breathing, it’s taking the place of breathing, I can’t breathe around the fuckin song, around the speed of it, Steve and his train, I’m always hanging on for dear life, he made it so it wasn’t a love song at all. There wasn’t love anywhere in it. It was just war, it was fury and shells and the jungle throwing us onto our asses, he turned the camp into a bandstand that touched the fuckin clouds, it was—”

“Sam, Sam.”

“No, I’m good,” Sam says, but he looks at Bucky and realizes, he says, “You’re not. Okay, that’s okay,” he reaches out without a second thought and thumbs a tear out of the well of Bucky’s under-eye bag, “hey, guess what. This’ll make you laugh. This’ll kill you dead. I got a job this week with some’a my dad’s old guys on the factory line, car parts or whatever—”

“Jesus Christ.”

“—and they see me on stage with you all and start to think of me as some big hot shot, you know? They think I’m a cool fuckin cat until I’m there on that line, you know, it—it—”

“Humanizes you,” Bucky says, mopping his eyes furiously. “Fuck.”

“Makes them feel like it could be them, I think,” Sam says. “On a stage, on—I don’t fuckin know, on the radio, on a TV screen, wherever they want to be. Guys who look like me and my dad, guys who work like he had to, we’re not in the fuckin pictures.”

“You’ll herald them in,” he says. “The new era. Cleveland’s own. Jesus, grab th—no, scoot over,” he shoves Sam down the piano bench and plunks out a simple three-note chord with his right hand. “I’ve got a theory when you are from Lake Eerie you’re better than the average Joe.”

“Though buried in snow,” Sam offers, and Bucky laughs, head falling forward.

“It’s time to let the whole world know,” Bucky sings, and Sam continues, adding a left hand to Bucky’s simple four chords, “I’ve got a theory it takes a place that’s dreary—”

“—to give a guy the right amount of drive to surmount,” Bucky says, leaning close to Sam, half-kidding, light in his eyes and tears on his lashes, “it’s time to tell the world we count.”

“We’re onto something,” Sam says, nodding.

“Keep going, keep going,” Bucky says. “Write it down, write it Sam and keep fucking going.”

I’ve Got A Theory is their headline song for the next week of gigs. Sam thinks it’s poetic that it came, somehow, from Steve. Seems like everything does.

“Hey, so I’ve got this friend from Chicago,” Tony says as they’re tearing down set, “and his band won the seat for Illinois.”

“Are they going?” Carol asks, tossing a look over her shoulder.

Tony nods. “Oh, yeah, they’re fuckin loaded. We, on the other hand? Nowhere near.”

“We’ve got time,” Carol says, shaking hair out of her eyes.

“Speaking of time,” Peter says with a grunt as he grabs his sax case, “don’t you have to hurry home? Your family is pretty strict with when you’re around, right?”

“My platoon scheduling, my—ah, my if you miss rendezvous you’re dead means of thought is, apparently, not the way to run a house,” Carol says, and Nat snorts. “Maria’s been, yknow, pushing me to take it slow, so.”

“Thought your kid was named Monica,” Clint says, frowning. “Is that my—sorry, Carol, my head—”

“No,” Carol says, “you’re right, Clint.”

“Oh,” he says. Then, “Oh!”

The next night, they meet Monica as she drops Carol off. She’s twelve, toothy, and wears a head of spiral curls like a doll. Sam winks at her and she winks back. Sam’s always loved kids. Just seems like the wrath of God that a hardass like Carol has such a cute one.

“Look at this,” Peter says, spreading that day’s edition of the Plain Dealer out flat on the table. It sticks to the leftover liquor on the surface. “Full page ad.”

“For faster pain relief,” Nat reads, “The Sam Wilson Band demands genuine Bayer Aspirin.”

“They took that picture at the contest,” Clint says, frowning. “I know I—I know memory doesn’t serve, but I think, I really think I would remember getting paid for this.”

“And without our permission, they published it,” Carol says. “That’s—irksome.”

“No, no, this is shitty,” Sam says. “Full-stop.”

“Especially while we’re scrounging for money to get to their stupid contest,” Bucky says, leaning one-handedly on the table, one knee bent like a model off some fashion magazine spread.

“We’ve got half the money raised, if that,” Peter says, knuckling his glasses up his nose. “Sam, have we got another plan yet? Greyhound bus, stay at the Y?”

“Not if I can help it,” Sam says staunchly, shortly. “We’ll come up with it, we will.”

“But if we can’t even get an on-air guarantee, why would we waste the cash?” Tony says. “We could drive.”

“All the way to New York?” Clint says. “And what, flip another car on the ice? Lose a few fingers in the cold?”

“So you’ve got a month left,” comes Sharon’s voice suddenly, and half of them startle.

“Yeah,” Sam says, looking over their hunched heads at her. “Comin up so fast I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“Well,” Sharon says, “I sure hope the weather doesn’t make getting there a pain in the ass.”

“Nah, well, NBC is sending us there first class,” Sam says, fast, before anyone else can say anything, and he feels their eyes on him, but he’s doing it for a reason. Because he doesn’t want another ounce of pity outta anyone, that’s why. “Pullman cars on the Cleveland Limited.”

“Really,” Sharon says, laying it on thick, like she believes him. “That so.”

“It’s the least they can do,” Sam says.

“Hey,” Sharon says. “Hey, you know, I had a band cancel on me for tomorrow night. Are you guys free? I know it’s short notice, I usually wouldn’t push, but I’ll toss in an extra fifty bucks for the inconvenience because you’d really be saving my ass.”

“Guys?” Sam says, turning to the band, who looks back with wide eyes.

“You know,” Sharon says, shifting her weight, “I mean, I’ll make it seventy-five—”

“Holy—hey, guys?” Sam says.

“You drive a hard bargain, Sammy,” Sharon says ruefully, “but for you, I’ll make it a round hundred. Alright? Usual fare plus an even hundred for the inconvenience. Help a gal out.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, swatting Sam’s arm. “Yeah, Sharon, we can do that for you. We can really do that.”

“Swell,” Sharon says, happy, rocking on her toes. “Well, that’s just swell. Thanks, all’a you. Hey, break a leg tonight!” She heads towards the kitchen in the back, and once the door swings shut behind her, Clint falls heavily into a chair, Peter laughs a breathless giggle of a thing, Nat shakes Tony by the arm, and Carol pinches the bridge of her nose like she might cry.

“Sam, what’s that bring our total to, Sam,” Bucky says, hoarse.

“Nine hundred thirty-six and change,” Sam says, and Bucky drops his head back and laughs.

They’re tearing down the kit and Sam is in his head, mostly, but he likes watching the guys talk amongst themselves, he likes it when they get along, so he listens a little, curious, pleased.

“You ever think about quitting that?” Bucky says, sitting at a table with Nat, watching her pour the remnants of three separate glasses into one and then knock it back.

“What, drinking?” Nat says, good ear tilted towards him. She’s shorn a short fringe over her forehead, wavy like the rest of her hair, and the sleeves of her oxford are rolled over the elbow, showing off a helluva lot of cream-pale skin and a smattering of old pinkish scars. “Bucky, honey, you know better than anyone that I can’t do that.”

“D’you hear it still?” he says.

“In the dead ear,” she says. “Only there. Like listening to the ocean in a shell, yknow.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “I mean, I was too young for it to really—hit me, other than—you know, literally—stop laughing at me, Natasha, would you? Jee-sus H.”

“I think,” Nat says, patting Bucky’s hand on the tabletop, and then she pauses. “I think there isn’t enough whiskey in the world to wash away the fear. The pain, in my—fuck you, my arm still hurts sometimes, I’ve got a shit elbow, I’m sorry to complain when you don’t even have—”

“It doesn’t bother me,” Bucky says.

“I owe it to myself to try,” she says. “Washing it away. Maybe someday it’ll feel muffled.”

“Like—like hearing through the bad ear,” Bucky says.

“Nah,” says Nat. “Like a full night of sleep.”

Sam stops listening, then. Partly because they depress him. Mostly because he needs to keep from saying Me too out loud or some shit, because he isn’t sure he’s earned it.

Everywhere, they wanna hear I Got A Theory. Everywhere. Sharon’s, Luke’s, Jen’s place farther south, everywhere, the Valkyrie, they all want them and that tune specifically is the one they want to hear.

“It’s my favorite song,” some gal tells Sam after the show, leaning against the stage on her elbows, mooning. “I follow you all around the city to hear it!”

“It’s people like you that keeps us going,” Sam says fervently.

Sharon’s been smug about something. Their success, Sam supposes, considering it was her idea that got them here. He owes her a lot. Everything. A leg or two. A couple grand. A night of peace.

“I got a theory / if God above can hear / he’s swinging to these tunes of ours! / Break out the cigars / 'cause Cleveland's got some brand new stars!”

“It’s fuckin freezing, Buck, it’s freezing,” Sam says, nailing their shoulders together, jabbing Bucky in the waist so Bucky swats him back, both of them tucked into jackets and mittens and scarves up to their mouths. Bucky’s got a knit hat on, Sam has a suspicion Becky made it by hand, and it’s hysterical. Really, it is. It’s got a God’s honest pompom on it. “It got cold. Look at you, your nose is all pink. That’s fuckin cute.”

“Shut your goddamn mouth before I knock all your teeth out and string em on a necklace,” Bucky grunts.

“A memento, he loves me,” Sam swoons, leaning into Bucky’s side. Staring skyward, he stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk, letting the crowd part around him, letting Bucky take another step, “Buck, Buck, stop, look.” Bucky comes back and looks up and the two of them watch white flakes collect like loose cotton against the black-velvet drop of night sky and slate-silver cut of building faces. “Snow, Buck. It’s fuckin snowing.”

“Ain’t that somethin else,” Bucky says, empty shoulder pressed against Sam’s arm, head bumping Sam’s shoulder. That pompom brushes Sam’s neck, the corner of his jaw over the edge of his scarf. “Sam, it’s like a miracle. Winter magic, a holiday present, ah-lay-loo-yah.”

“Should I get you a gift. For Hanukkah.”

“Bury me in mountains of gelt,” Bucky says, grinning. “No, you know what I need? Socks. New socks, all my socks got holes, Sam, get me socks for Hanukkah.”

“The finest socks in all of Cleveland,” Sam says, inhaling a big lungful of the white condense of Bucky’s breath.

“And for Christmas?”

“Gimme a break. You don’t owe me a goddamn thing.”

“Then I take it back. No socks for me, and nothin for you neither.”

“No, don’t say that, I wanna get you the socks now.”

“Then think of somethin you want back.”

“A postcard,” Sam says. “Your favorite postcard of Cleveland.”

“You goin somewhere?” Bucky asks, looking up at him through feather lashes.

Sam can’t breathe, looking at him. It’s all heart and something sharper, a Manhattan with a twist and the twist is straight guilt. “Straight to the top, baby,” he jeers, slinging an arm around Bucky’s neck and jostling him because he can’t help it. “You and me on that great big bandstand in the sky. Happy holidays, happy—how do I say it to you.”

“Chag sameach,” Bucky says, a little hoarse, hand on Sam’s lower back as the crowds continue to part around them, it’s them and the snow and the sidewalk and their white puffs of breath.

“That,” Sam says. “That to the nth degree, chag sameach, you bastard, what’s that face.”

“I don’t have a face.”

“You most certainly fuckin do have a face. That one, right there.”

“This one?”

“Yup.”

“S’just my fuckin face, you asshole, why are you fuckin lookin.”

“You kiss your ma with that mouth?”

“Used to,” Bucky says, cheeky, and they start to walk. Slow, a roll. “Why, you kissing anyone with that filthy trap of yours?”

“Me?” Sam says. “No. No, I’m not kissing anyone.”

“Alright, then,” Bucky says, looking at him, looking at him. “Guess it’s fine, then, how we talk.”

“No worries who these mouths are on,” Sam says, thinking they deserve each other.

“Mhm,” Bucky says. He’s got snow on his eyelashes.

They’re quiet until they’re all of five feet from the Barnes’s door, but it’s comfortable, it’s so easy, it’s city sounds and shared breath. Then Sam sees their front stoop, and Bucky says, “I need you to tell me how it happened,” and Sam comes down so hard and fast that he stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Buck,” Sam says.

“Don’t, don’t call me that,” Bucky says, rubbing his eye hard. “Steve called me that and, and Sam, I need to know, I just need to know. I need you to tell me, because I’m—we’re—and I can’t, not with Steve hanging over my shoulder.”

“Or staring down off your living room wall,” Sam says.

Bucky goes hard. “Fuck you, honestly.”

“I just. God. Do you understand,” Sam says, “what you’re asking me to talk about.”

Bucky is standing a good few feet away from him. It feels like a Mexican standoff or something. “No. I don’t. Because you got to be there. And I, I didn’t,” he gives a crooked, pained shrug of his empty shoulder, “I didn’t get to be there to hold him while he died or—”

“There was nothing to hold,” Sam says through gritted teeth, heart heavy in the apple of his throat. “Do you—no, of course you don’t get it, of course you don’t. You don’t want to get it, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do, I do,” Bucky says, half-hissed, leaning in. “All I’ve wanted for over a year is to know, that is all I have wanted, it’s all I’ve wondered, did he save someone? Did he pick a fight with the wrong bastard? Did he throw himself on a grenade, did he do something good, he was always doing something good, was his hair combed, was his suit pressed, were his eyes open—?”

“There were no eyes,” Sam roars, pressing a shaking hand over his mouth halfway through, gasping for an even breath, the street calls back with his voice in echo, in waves, “there were no eyes, Bucky, Jesus fuckin Christ will you—there were no eyes,” Bucky has grabbed Sam’s hand and pulled him onto the stoop, he is muscling the key into the knob and now the door is open and they are pouring inside, “it wasn’t like the fucking pictures, Bucky, there was no hair, there was no suit, there were no eyes to open or close, there was—nothing. Nothing.”

Bucky looks up at him in the dark shadows of the entryway, practically indecipherable. “Tell me,” he says. “Sam. Tell me.”

Sam doesn’t even brace himself. He falls into it like it’s dragging him through the floor, his knees feel slack, he opens his mouth and says, “Hill Seven-Hundred was this big hill that we had to keep from the Japs. Steve and I were in a trench on the side of it. At this point, we’re going on three days without sleep. There were these—these bunkers above us, and they were just. Firing down. Fish in a barrel, fish in a fuckin—we were trapped.” Bucky, it seems, is not breathing. “That night it starts raining. And Steve says one way or another, we've gotta make some headway, we've gotta toss some grenades, make a run at them, fall back, something, we couldn’t just sit there and—and wait to die. You know? So Steve throws first. Steve throws first, he always threw first, he throws first. And it musta gotten pretty close 'cause they started firing down again, doubly hard.” Sam presses the back of his hand under his nose, gasping wetly. It can’t fucking leave him it never leaves him he never gets a fuckin break. “It's dark, they're firing, it's raining, and I have my grenade in my hand and I pull the pin, I pull the pin and the grenade just drops, right into the mud at our feet. I know the spoon’s released and I start reaching for it and I can't see it, none of us can—can see, it’s dark and wet, it’s all mud and blood and we’re gonna drown in it eventually, Steve’s reaching down, trying to grab it—”

“Sam,” Bucky says.

“And I say get out, I say get out,” he is fuckin snotting, he is shuddering like he’s stuck out in the rain again and night is falling, like his body remembers how to be cold, “of course I say get out, and I jump outta the foxhole. I jump and I assume he’s right behind me, you know, he’s gotta be right behind me—”

“Sam,” Bucky says. “Sam, stop—”

“—he’s gotta be right behind me because I said it, I said get out, I said g-get out, he’s gotta be behind me, he’s about to thump into the next foxhole right behind me, right at my ass, he’s gonna be right there just any second now he’ll be there too close with his knees in my spine and his elbow on my neck—”

“Sam, Sam,” Bucky says, “Sam—”

“—and I feel the shell go off,” Sam is sobbing, every word hitched, he sinks to the hardwood, legs crossed, and Bucky goes with him. “But he wasn’t with me where he should be, he wasn’t in the mud with me, so I went back.”

“Oh, God,” Bucky says.

“I went back and there’s just, there’s just nothing,” Sam says, “it was just black and—mud and ash, and I sat there in the rain all night, Bucky, I sat in the rain all night I promise just trying to keep pieces of him from washing away—”

“Sam,” Bucky sobs, grabbing him by the chin and squeezing hard, “stop, stop, Jesus Christ, stop it. For the love of God.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sam heaves, shaking his head even as Bucky clings to him, “I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

“Go home,” Bucky says, “please go home, please go home—”

Sam scrambles to his feet and is out the door in a hair-breadth of a fuckin heartbeat. The lock clicks while he’s still on the stoop. He wipes his face, takes a gulp of cold air, and walks home.

All Sam hears is ringing, deafening silence.

“—don't know how much longer we can wait!” the hostess says. “The guests were told you'd begin at seven, and it's already fifteen after.”

“Table four just sent back the chicken,” a waiter informs them, spinning past, and still Sam feels nothing.

Peter comes jogging inside, swiping rainwater off his shoulders. “Another bus went by and he wasn't on it.”

The hostess winces. “Mr. Wilson, we have a full house tonight.”

Something snaps. Sam turns to her fast enough that she startles. “Can I use your phone?”

“Certainly,” she says, seeming relieved that he’s doing something. To Peter, then, she says, “You’ll open with the contest song, right? Love Will Come and Find Me Again?”

“Nah, we’ll save that til the end,” Peter says, bouncing on his toes. “A big finish, to remind them of the broadcast coming up.”

“If they’re still awake then,” the hostess says tightly.

Sam gives the number to the operator, clutching the phone with both hands. When the voice cuts in, Sam sags with relief.

“Hello?” says Becky, tinny.

“Hi, hi Becky, it’s Sam,” he says, feeling like he’s pouring himself through the receiver. “Is Bucky there?”

“Ah,” Becky says. “Well. No.”

“We have a show at the Lakewood Supper Club,” Sam says through gritted teeth, eyes stinging. “Please, just remind him—”

“He’s sick,” Becky says bluntly. "He’s not coming. He’s not getting out of bed. He’s not coming.” Then the line begins to beep.

“Fuck,” Sam says. “We’re—” his ears are ringing again, with a degree of numbness his arms fall slack, phone still in the curve of his palm, “—going on without him.”

“Is he out,” Peter says, heavy.

“No, he’s sick,” Sam says, lips clumsy. “I’ll sing everything tonight.”

“What about New York,” Peter says.

“It’s fine,” Sam says. “We’re fine. Come on.”

It’s over. Sam knows it is. It’s all over, and that’s that, and Sam just has to stomach it. He washes it down with a tall glass of watered-down orange juice because if he’s gotta go to the factory full time, he can’t be off his ass in the middle of the day no more. That’s the truth.

In his head, he starts saying goodbye to his people. Goodbye Peter and the broken nose he lugged into every room, the chip on his shoulder and the age in his eyes. Goodbye Carol and the family she infused into every note she ever played, the passion and determination to pretend all she is is a hardass. Goodbye Nat and her pixie build and construction-worker clothes, her helpless laugh every time the air was thick with discomfort, her callused left fingers from the unforgiving neck of her bass. Goodbye Tony and his terrible fucking personality, his fixation with money, his soulful deep eyes and the way he tracked them all in his periphery, keeping careful count. Goodbye Clint and his snicker over the snares, his nose-wrinkle smile and the way he pawed at his ears like he forgot, the buoyant glint in his eyes and the unfailing hammer of the bass drum.

Goodbye Bucky. Goodbye.

The end of a brief but beautiful era. Like nothing, Sam sinks into dreams again, every night. Into drink and ambled walks along the train lines, rubbing blisters onto his heels because he learned to bleed into his socks in Fiji and hasn’t quite quit at it yet. Like worrying a cuticle. Like tugging a loose threat and unraveling the whole fuckin sweater.

It’s been three days. Sam has slept maybe ten hours total, all of which were stolen in the mauve light of morning, the minutes before his alarm shook him up shouting. He had three meals, he had three days of work, he had three bottles of beer. And he’s. Well. He’s surviving.

Anyway, it’s then that Bucky blusters into him on the sidewalk with this look like Armageddon and tugs him under a bus stop shelter, he was nowhere and now he is right here and Sam feels rattled, Bucky clutches his elbow in a vice grip and he says, “I have something for you,” like he’s furious about it.

“Don’t,” Sam croaks, like Bucky’s holding his neck, his throat. “Don’t.”

“It’s a poem,” he says. “It’s—I didn’t get it. There was a whole war over there.”

“Yeah,” Sam says.

“I didn’t get it,” Bucky says again. “I thought about me, I thought about the war over here, I didn’t think about the blood and the, the loss, the fear, the mud—”

“The piss,” Sam says, trying to joke, but Bucky shushes him.

“Really,” he says. “I didn’t get it, and I still don’t, and I never will, I never will, but have this. It’s—a piece of my head. It’s a fuckin ode like Petrarch woulda wrote, it’s about all’a you, have it,” he is shoving his little notebook into Sam’s hand, closing Sam’s fingers around it, “take it, please, I’m sorry I pushed you. I’m sorry like hell, I’m sorry like—like you have been fleas to me, you have been fleas to me for the past few months and you drive me nuts and I—I—”

“I like having you around,” Sam says, pressing the notebook to his chest, over his heart. “I like having you around, Bucky.”

“You’re not letting him down,” Bucky says, and Sam drops his face into his hand, scrubbing his eyes. “I know who you’re raising the money for. I know why you’re doing it, all of it. But don’t do it for him, alright? Just,” he flicks the face of the notebook over Sam’s chest, “do it because you gotta. Because you don’t know what you’d do otherwise.”

“Okay,” Sam says. “Alright, Bucky?”

“Alright,” he says, quiet, staring hard at their shoes on the faded pavement. “Alright. See you later, Sam.”

“See you,” Sam says, and then Bucky dips into the crowd like Icarus swooping lower, like reprieve, like safety.

“Tony just survives,” Sam sings, holding the notebook open with one hand, pressing on the third pedal in the shadow of the moon-soaked living room, “means he never trusts. / Once you’ve seen the worst in men then how do you adjust.” He changes chords. “Jesus, Bucky. And I stand here, helpless / with my arm extended / knowing full well, darling / that your war’s not ended. Jesus. Jesus.” A modulation. “Welcome home, my boys. Welcome home, my sons. Welcome home, my hero. Welcome home, my heart. Welcome home,” Sam sings it again, a litany, “welcome home,” it builds to one final cracked-voice cry, like a prayer, like airing dirty laundry, like a promise with open borders, “welcome home!”

Sam lobs the notebook onto the couch and drops his face into his hands, hardly able to breathe.

“Welcome home,” Bucky sings, the last ringing supplication to something silent or deaf or else something with its head firmly up its ass, and Sam has to stand up and take a lap. “Sam. You weren’t supposed to set it to music. It’s not a song.”

“It clearly fuckin is,” he says, dragging his hands over the curve of his skull. “The point is, it’s—this is my gift back. Alright? It just happened. You’re outta your mind, writing that.”

“Which is why it’s not meant to be a song,” Bucky says. “We can’t perform it, not ever.”

“Of course not,” Sam says.

“It’s an apology to you and the guys, that’s it,” Bucky says. “Never meant to hit the bandstand. No one would sit still that long, anyhow. God knows.”

“It’d be our last booking for the rest of our lives,” Sam says with a breathless chuckle.

Bucky, on the stool he dragged into the living room from Sam’s kitchen, with his bare feet hooked around the bar connecting the legs, looks small. “I could rewrite the lyrics before our VA hall gig tomorrow,” Bucky says, staring up at Sam as he paces. “Make it about a—a gal waiting for her fella to come home. That way, it’s still Welcome Home. It’s still—but it’s not.”

“She’s at the door, he’s coming down the street,” Sam says, staring through Bucky, through the wall, seeing it all in sepia tones, a bird with curled hair and a big wide skirt swishing around her knees, the guy with his jaunty hat and chin held high, Sam only wants it in that he doesn’t want it at all, he’s got his homecoming right here on a wooden barstool, “like—like if Steve had come back.”

“That’s how I’ll write it,” Bucky says. “One last gift, you know?”

“It’s smart, it’s perfect,” Sam says, “Bucky, Bucky, that’ll be a hit, a massive fuckin hit, you’re a genius. A genius. I’ll put on some coffee.” And Sam all but runs into the kitchen so Bucky can’t watch his face scrunch up as he fights tears.

They sing it at the VA hall. At Luke’s. And their last gig before they leave, at Sharon’s Place, with Becky and Sarah in the crowd, Monica and Maria and Peter’s Johnny, with some blond gal Nat says she’s known forever, with Tony’s ginger valkyrie of a wife, they’ve got a full house and they play it like it’s being pulled out of them, from Peter’s fingers to Nat’s shoulders to Tony’s mouth to Carol’s elbows and into Clint’s stomach where the song swirls and spits into Sam’s headspace and gets caught in Bucky’s miraculous throat, spiritus mundi aeolian harp etc cetera et cetera, it’s the closest thing to a prayer Sam’s said in years, it sounds like the perfect high and a smooth come-down.

“You guys are gonna clean up hot in New York next week!” calls a soldier from the crowd, over the crush of applause.

“Thank you, thank you all,” Sam says, half-standing to talk right into his mic. “Really, it means the world to us all.”

“No, thank you,” someone else cries out. “Thank you!” They’re all saying it, Sam can’t trace the voices with the light in his eyes, they’re all tossed into soupy shadow, it’s brow-sweat and stomach-turning, “Thank you! Thank you all!”

“I gotta tell you, folks,” Sam says, snagging his mic up, turning on the bench to face the audience, something enormous in his chest shoving aside his heart into the hard picket fence of his rib-space, “when you tune into the contest, there's no guarantee that we’ll be on it. See, there's another preliminary that NBC's making us do, and even if we make it,” Sam gives a humorless laugh, all the guys are looking at him with this bare sort of fear, this guilt, he can taste it all like lemon pith, it’s all hell, it’s hell they’ve been through and they’re shined up on this stage like sparkly saints, “they get to claim that they have a bunch of genuine American heroes. That’s what they’ll say about us. And I hear Bucky sing that word, hero, and I wonder who that guy is. Cuz I dunno a single one of us that feels like one.” Sam looks out over them, they’re shaking their heads, he shakes his too. “That's just a word that someone—someone pins on you, it’s our purple heart, our gold star. I think that—most of the time,” the room is dead quiet and Sam feels like this is maybe a mistake, but then his mouth is the train and his words are the train and he is the train and he is constantly tricking himself into thinking he’s inside the car when he’s really just fuckin clinging to the open maw of a window, “I think that the wrong guy came home. You know? That’s—the wrong guy—”

And Sharon’s pulling his mic out of his hand. “Hold on,” she says, “that’s—you shut up, alright, Sam? Enough—sappy speeches for the night,” someone laughs in the audience and the silence starts to crack and fall around them in shards, “enough sappiness! We got something to say to you. We—the truth is, you don’t need NBC. Who needs NBC when you’ve got Cleveland, you know?” She is standing before him with her blond hair tucked behind her ears and her hard brow and her callused hands, in her pants and tucked shirt and heels she looks like that lady on all the advertisements, Rosie the Riveter, flexed arm and all, “you’ve all paid dues we’ll never have to pay, and we owe you for it! So the past few weeks, everyone coming around my place has been paying a few extra bucks on their fees.” Sam’s stomach drops into his ass. He looks out into the audience, desperate for a glimpse of Sarah, and notes her by the sheen of her teary eyes, the hands clasped at her chin. “Everyone at Luke’s, at the Supper Club, we’ve all been charging extra at entrance and some guys from the VA all chipped in—” there’s a hoot from the audience, “—and you’ve got it made, you guys, you’ve—this is from Cleveland with love. With all the love we’ve got. Four rooms at the hotel Astor, reserved and paid for, and—shut up, let me finish saying it!” The audience is going nuts. Sam can’t move. Clint has thrown his arms around Nat. Peter is sitting on his ass on the stage, head in his hands. “Seven tickets on the Cleveland Limited, Pullman car, first class, baby! Knock em all dead, knock em so hard they don’t know what hit them—!” And whether Sharon is done there or not, that’s where she stops, because she’s got a big armful of sobbing Sam, there is this feeling in his chest like hope, like sunsoaked Saturday afternoons, like holiness and the most beautiful carnation opening its face to the sky, it is wonderful, it is theirs. Cream fucking rises.

“We’re on a first class train,” Bucky says. “Sam. Hey, Sam.”

“I know, Bucky,” Sam says, bemused. They’re across from each other, both of em all but attached to the big window, watching the snow-brushed scenery fly by. Sam’s got sandwiches from Sarah in his bag, Bucky’s pressing the toes of his loafer down on top of Sam’s, there’s a helluva lot of grass between Cleveland and New York, that’s the fuckin truth.

“We’re on a train.”

“Yeah.”

“Dyou think they serve drinks.”

“I think they just might.”

“I’m going to get price-gouged by the shittiest beer on this train and I’m going to love every second of it.”

“I’m happy for you, kid.”

“Sam?” Bucky says.

“Yeah, Bucky,” Sam says.

Bucky chances a glance at him, and is grinning when he looks away, cheeks pinking. “Thanks,” he says. “For harassing me into being in your band.”

“Sure,” Sam says, heart throbbing. “Anything.”

“I’m never going to be able to sleep,” Clint says, head tilted nearly all the way back on his neck, hair gelled flat, he hardly looks like himself but then none of them really look like themselves, they’re tucked neat and clean and pretty into their suits and God knows they’re just envelopes of anthrax, “with all this light.”

In the hotel, it’s I’ve never seen windows so tall! Never touched a bed so big and soft! Check out these sheets, look at this view, put your head on that, listen to this shower sing! Everything is unbelievable. Bigger and brighter than life. Nat is quiet, holding Clint’s hand like an anchor. Tony presses his lips together and considers it all. Carol laughs on and off, tinged with hysteria. Clint and Peter take turns shoving each other off the sidewalk into the street until Bucky snaps at em to stop. It’s like touring Versailles. It shouldn’t be theirs. It shouldn’t exist at all, it’s opulent and insane, it’s funny with the ashy, stinking streets outside that it is so beautiful in here, everything is a juxtaposition like Oreos, like ketchup and mustard, like bacon with lots of fat in curled strips.

“Nightclub,” Tony announces, rubbing his hands together, “nightclub, we gotta get a taste of this.”

“Nothing stupid, please,” Sam says. “We got a big day tomorrow, a huge enormous day, don’t do anything stupid.”

“Brother, make the most of it,” Tony says, clapping Sam’s shoulder, a smile at the creased corners of his eyes. “There’s only one first time and this is it.”

“It’s a—a special occasion,” Clint says.

“An alien invasion,” Nat says, wagging her brows.

“Planned,” Peter says, looking so fucking at home on the streets it makes Sam sad for a life he never had, “with our military precision. Like—we’re living a Gershswin song.”

“We’re King Kong,” Clint says, hammering his chest, and they all laugh, “we’re the ape sky-scraping the very top of the place.”

“Hey,” Bucky says, quiet, and Sam falls into step with him. “Hey,” Bucky says again, and then, “Sam. We made it to New York City.”

“Yeah, we did,” Sam says, fervent. He tosses an arm around Bucky’s neck, pulling him close, needing to touch, unwilling to stop, not when Bucky leans into him with a big fat grin on his lips. “We did, didn’t we.”

The drinks that night hit like a truck. An enormous truck, packed to the brim with something heavy, some bricks, some saturated dirt, it’s a truck of salt or, or steel, something heavy, what’s heavy, Bucky.

“I don’t fuckin know,” Bucky says. “Um. Not feathers, that’s for sure. Mattresses are heavy.”

“So heavy,” Sam says. “And so inconvenient for carrying.”

“So inconvenient for carrying,” Bucky says, waving his one arm, and they both snicker. “God. This’s my room, Sammy, we’re already here.”

“Jesus wept, that last martinini made me—forget time,” Sam says, and Bucky is leaning against the wall to laugh. “Time’s weird, Bucky. Shit’s weird.”

“Let’s,” he says, and then he dissolves into snickers, crinkle-eyed and blushing to his ears and down his neck, “God, I dunno, I dunno.”

“We should do lunch,” Sam says, leaning against the wall across from Bucky, bobbing closer as he laughs, feeling light, all bubbles. His mouth tastes like his green olive. “Tomorrow, before the, the broadcast. Lunch. Where should we do lunch.”

“I don’t know, you fucker, Steve’s the one from here, not me.”

“What’s that place, that famous place,” Sam says, looking from one of Bucky’s eyes to the other, light, light. Light. “The—Soo, Sur, Sir—”

“Sardi’s,” Bucky says, popping upright with the thrill of knowing. “That’s—let’s do that.”

“That,” Sam says, looking at Bucky’s mouth.

“Th-that,” Bucky says, and he notices Sam is looking at his mouth, which makes him look at Sam’s. His breath hitches. “Hey, Sam?”

“Yeah, Bucky,” Sam says.

“Are you,” he says. “Is this.”

“Yeah, Bucky,” Sam says.

“If this were a picture,” Bucky says, voice going quiet, pulling like wool on a nail, “an MGM picture, we’d just… we’d kiss right now. You’d kiss me right on the mouth and I’d tell you to come inside, please, and you’d come.”

“But it’s life,” Sam says. “Is that how things go in life.”

“Do we get to choose,” Bucky says.

“I think we’ve earned it,” Sam whispers.

“I think,” Bucky breathes back, lashes low, he is so close Sam can feel his breath on his lips, breath ha ha he feels his breath and he wants to partake of it like fucking—holy communion, “I think we should…” he grabs Sam’s hand and starts to shake it, like hello-nice-to-meet-you.

“What, what,” Sam says.

“We’re shaking on it,” Bucky says.

“On what,” Sam says.

“On someday,” Bucky says. “On being nervous tonight, but wanting it. On being drunk tonight, but wanting it. On… wanting a chance, but knowing this is a little fucky.”

“A little fucky,” Sam says, and then they’re both giggling, bubbles, and it is just as light, and it is just as good. “Yeah,” he says. “Alright, Bucky. I’m shaking too. You and me, we’re shaking, on a promise. A dream or somethin.”

“Is it weird,” Bucky says.

“I woulda fallen for you no matter how we met,” Sam says.

“Me too,” Bucky says. “Me too, but you.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Sam says. “You and me, we got plenty of time.”

Bucky starts to smile, big and bright. “Yeah,” he says.

Sam takes a sharp breath, shakes his head, and leans in. He drops a kiss on Bucky’s cheek, right where the scruff starts to climb up his cheek like Harvard Ivy, and then pulls away, tucking his hands into his pockets. “See you for lunch?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, looking at him with this face on his face, it’s such a good face it makes Sam start to flush like a kid. “Yeah. Tomorrow.”

“Sam Wilson Band!” someone calls, and they pick up their instruments with sweating, shaking hands to set up for the last audition. “We’re running behind so just give us a verse-chorus-out or chorus-bridge-chorus-out, whichever you’ve got.”

“Sure thing,” Sam says, a little choked. “Guys, let’s take the last chorus to the end.”

“Two, three, four,” Clint counts, and then they’re lilting into the chorus, Bucky leaning into the mic with light on his lashes, “Trouble is the more you deny / the more you don’t even try / the more the world passes by in a haze…”

Bucky gets through maybe another five words before the crew, the collection of suits with listening devices in their ears and microphones in hand, starts waving them off. “Hey, hey, hey, hey! That’s good! That’s enough! That’s great. You’ve got a killer voice, man.”

“Thanks?” Bucky says, so stiff Sam might laugh aloud if he weren’t so fuckin nauseous.

“And you’re all really vets,” another suit says, flipping through papers.

“Yes,” they chorus. “Yes, sir.”

“And you—” he turns to Bucky, “—lost someone too, huh?”

“My best friend served in the 37th and died in action,” Bucky says. “He was my—best guy.”

“My condolences,” the suit says, frowning. “Shit. You all—I mean, we have a few vets in the other groups, but no other all-vet crew. It’s really, really something.”

“Which is why,” says another, louder, “we want you to be featured on the broadcast. Not just that, but we want you to be the final act. The grand finale, the military angle, it's perfect, they’ll eat you up.”

“God, man, thank you,” Sam says, rubbing a hand over his mouth, stunned. The guys hug behind him. Clint is laughing. “Thank you so much. Really. That means a lot to us.”

“You all just go have yourselves a good few days in the city,” the suit says, “then come back here and sing your asses off on Sunday. Alright? Someone call the next group in!”

They see everything. Lady Liberty. Museums. Art showings. Nice restaurants. Shit restaurants. Sticky bars where they dance their asses off. Greasy slices of pizza. Hot handfuls of street peanuts. Carol kicks a rat. Peter takes them to a deli in Queens he says he’s been going to since he was a kid, he visits his aunt and introduces them all at the stoop and then shuts the door with them outside and they all laugh, understanding it. It’s slushy with melted snow, sick and slick and loud, all packed with dames wearing fancy furs and guys in zoot suits, Bucky keeps on walking while looking up, Tony talks a mile a minute about every building they pass, Nat puts her hair in these fingerwaves and looks like a movie star, it’s nice. It’s really nice to have time to do whatever the hell they want, Clint keeps humming You Deserve It and Sam thinks You’re damn right we do.

Then comes the day of the broadcast. Sam spends all morning gussying up. He calls Sarah on the hotel phone and she says, quiet in his ear, “I’m proud like hell of you. You know that, right?”

“You’ll be listening in?” he says.

“Damn right I will be,” she says. “You playing for me?”

“Every time,” he promises.

They’re all in blue. Navy, dark blue, it’s sorta patriotic especially next to Nat’s red hair but it looks sleek as hell on the rest of them. They arrive in pairs, slip backstage one at a time, flexing their wrists and taking big diaphragm breaths and pressing their chests when the nerves get too big to fit.

“Tony’s not here,” Peter says for the third time.

“I know,” Sam says, tight, straightening Peter’s tie. “I know.”

“He’s coming, right?” Clint says, looking between them. “Is he coming? Did anyone see him this morning? Because I thought I did, but now I’m not so sure.”

“We checked all the other dressing rooms,” Peter says, all the color soaked outta his face. “He’s nowhere, he has to be here but he’s nowhere.”

“I don’t get it,” Carol says. “I don’t get it. Christ, what’d he say after sound check?”

“That he had to take care of something real quick but he’d be right back,” Bucky recites, massaging his right temple. “That’s what he said, so he ought to be—”

“Found him,” Nat says, half-growled, dragging him into the wings like a cat her disgruntled young.

“Jesus, Tony,” Clint says, angrier than Sam has seen him yet. “The hell were you playing at?”

“The forms they gave us yesterday,” Tony says, looking right at Sam. “I read em. I spent all morning reading em and then went to the New York Public Library and read em some more.”

“We have to tune, we have to—” Carol says, but Tony cuts her off, says, “Read this. Right here,” he comes closer to Sam, shoulder to shoulder so Sam can squint at the page in the half-shadow of the crowded wings, “this is signing away the underlying rights to your song. Whatever song we perform, it’s theirs.”

“Wait,” Sam says. “Wait, wait—”

“To be in this competition,” Tony says, “every group, every idiot here, we all signed our songs away. It’s theirs. If we go out there, MGM and NBC will own your song outright. Here—this part, this says they’re only obligated to use us as walk-ons in the picture. You know what that means?”

“That they can have dancing monkeys sing the thing, so long as we lip sync along with it,” Bucky says, stony.

“And,” Tony says, “here’s the kicker: if we ever want to play your song again, we have to pay them the royalties to do it.”

“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Sam says. “And we all signed this. Every band.”

“We must’ve,” Peter says. “To play, we had to. So.”

“I’m pretty sure no one has a fuckin clue what they signed,” Tony says. “Pretty sure that’s what they’re counting on, actually.”

“So what do we do,” Bucky says, blank.

“You can’t just give your song away,” Tony says. “That song? You can’t give that away. I don’t care anymore, we came saw conquered et cetera, we can throw in the towel now and I’ll be fine. It’s your song.”

“God,” Sam says. He grabs the papers from Tony’s hands, intending to read, but the words swim before his eyes. A shot of fury cuts through him like David’s slingshot and he crumpled the forms, “Dammit,” he throws them to the floor, balled, gravity-tugged.

“I say we walk away, Sam,” Peter says, arms crossed tight. “No one gets to have what we worked for but us.”

“To hell with them,” Clint says, loud, and someone, some suit in a headset, shushes them. “I don’t care, Sam. I don't care. All they wanna do is parade us around, that’s what they keep doing, waving us around like flags, giving us the finale of the whole fuckin show just to—to string us up and let everyone pass our hanging bodies, we’ve given them everything we’ve got, we’ve done it all, I’m finished. I’m tired of this. They wouldn’t know sacrifice if it slapped them in the face.”

“That’s what we’ve gotta do,” Sam says, staring at the crumpled forms by his shoes. He steps on them for good measure, then gives a look at the guys all spread out before him, faces swallowed by shadow, it’s poetry. It’s history. “We gotta give em a performance they’ll never forget. Bucky?” He's already looking at Sam. “How much of the original lyrics to Welcome Home do you remember.”

“All of them,” he says.

“You could sing it right now, word for word,” Sam says.

“Yes,” Bucky says, gaze setting Sam on fire.

Sam nods. He nods, fervent, something within him is rising, “Good,” he says. “Good. Okay. So we’re going to go out there and play something they’d never dare put in a movie. No Bing, no Sinatra, nobody got the balls to sing this like you will, Bucky. Nobody in the goddamn world has got your nerve, no one’s got nerve like any of us, in five minutes we could be in every living room in America. We’re going to tell them all the truth. Let all ye nations sing, whatever the fuckin poem is, let us sing too. Let us sing exactly what the hell we go through every day of our lives. Let the guys out there that made it home same as us know that somebody out there has got their backs. Someone’s like em, just like em. Welcome home.”

“So it’s a suicide mission,” Carol says, but she looks, maybe for the first time, like she approves of something he’s said.

“Blow it up,” Nat says, chin held high.

“We could be blacklisted,” Tony says, but the words aren’t even out all the way before he’s laughing. “God. Fuck. I don’t care. I don’t give a shit. Let’s do it. Welcome home.”

“We’ve been through worse,” Sam says. He feels hot in the face, he feels his heart flying in his chest, but he feels molecularly present, there’s no train, no corpse, no blood-washed mud. He’s here with his feet on the black planks of the stage. With Bucky looking up at him, with his guys all around him. His people. “We all have. We’ve crawled through hell, we’ve swum the high water, and we’re here. This is nothing. This is everything. This is—this is real life. It’s no war and it’s no story, it’s life, and we get to have it. We get to make choices and—and do what’s right, and,” Sam keeps looking at Bucky, who looks back like he’s waiting for orders with his proud brow and his set mouth and his freckled nose and Sam just cannot stomach it, all this feeling, he can’t stomach it, “and it’s gutsy but it’ll be—it’ll be good, it’ll be—I’m sorry, I can’t fuckin take this, I’m in love with you, if we’re being honest, if we’re going out there and singing this, I’m not doing it without saying this first, I’m in love with you and life is relentless enough as it is, I’m not doing this without you knowing you’ve got someone who loves you to fuckin pieces at your back.”

It’s like time is racing. The audience outside is applauding, they’re being shoved out of the wings, and Bucky Barnes has slung his one arm around Sam’s neck, has tugged him down just enough to reach to drop a humdinger of a kiss right on his mouth. It tastes like stale coffee and smells like nervous sweat and cologne, it’s all Bucky’s stubble and their noses pressed and Sam has no clue where to put his hands so he throws his arms around Bucky’s waist tight and quick enough that they start to lose balance. Nat shoves them upright, someone is laughing, someone is muttering grumpily, they’re inching onto the stage and Bucky is looking up at him like he’s the best thing he’s ever seen, or maybe like he wants to punch him, it’s a slim difference, it’s a damn good kiss.

“Our final band,” someone is announcing, and Sam wanders drunkenly to the piano bench, light-blinded and bubbling, “hails from the great state of Ohio. Featuring vets in every sense of the word, it’s the Sam Wilson Band Featuring Bucky Barnes with their gold star classic, Love Will Come And Find Me Again!”

A hush settles over the studio as they all raise their instruments.

“Okay, Clint,” Sam says, quiet, meeting his eyes across the stage. Clint starts to lay the beat, drum brush and stick in either hand. “Faster,” Sam says. Clint kicks it. “Faster.” It builds, a train hurtling down the tracks and Sam feels it from his firm seat inside, watches the scenery of song peel past, “faster.” Clint picks up, starting to grin. “Faster.” Sam closes his eyes, heart syncing with the pulse of it. He breathes, looks at Bucky, and says, “Now sing.”

And Bucky does.

Clint, he made it home / most of him, at least / had three operations but the pain has not decreased. / Tony just survives / means he never trusts / once you learn the worst in men then how do you adjust? / Nat, she cracks a joke / claims to be alright / drinks a fifth of vodka in her kitchen every night / and I stand here trying, my best friend buried / with my private burden of grief to carry.

Welcome home, my boys / welcome home, my sons / welcome home, my brothers / welcome home, my love. Welcome home.

Carol’s never free / schedules out her day / filling every minute just to keep the ghosts away. / She can never get to the life she had in mind / her kid’s four years older than the one she left behind. / Peter made it back to town four months ago / lived to tell the things no one could bear to know / keeps his guard up now, a lot goes undiscussed / focuses on writing what he finds unjust.

Sam, he does his best trying to pretend / what he doesn’t talk about won’t matter in the end. / Sam, he made it home but thinks it wasn’t fair / how he made it out but left his best guy there / Sam, he doesn’t sleep because the nightmares come / Sammy looks for answers, Sammy hopes for a solution / and I’d give up anything to get him some.

I stand here helpless, my arm extended / knowing full well, honey, your war’s not ended. / Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home.

In the end, they sure as fuck don’t win the contest.

Sam reckons they still did what they went there to do.

“Excuse me? Mister Wilson?”

Sam looks over his shoulder. It’s a girl, a teenager, with a vinyl sleeve in hand and a face all sun-tanned. “Hey, there,” he says, staring to smile. “What can I do for you?”

“Gosh, it’s really you,” she breathes, eyes bugging. The crowd parts easily around them, Cleveland sidewalks have always, always been good to them. “I’m—wow, and you’re Bucky Barnes, aren’t you.”

Bucky flicks his cap back a degree so he can wink at the girl. “Your humble servants.”

“Could I have your autographs?” she says. “If you don’t mind, I mean.”

“Absolutely,” Sam says, taking her vinyl and the pen she offers. He scrawls something, then extends the vinyl Bucky’s way and holds it aloft for him while he signs. “Anything special you want it to say?”

“Nah, that’s fine,” the girls says, beaming. “I’m coming to see you all at Sharon’s Place tomorrow night.”

“Aren’t you a little young to be out that late alone?” Bucky says.

“Nah, my folks’ll be there on account of they love you just as much as I do,” she says. “You appeal to the masses. My dad—he served, so hearing you all on the radio last winter, that meant a lot.”

Sam adds another line of scrawl to the vinyl sleeve, then hands it back to the kid. “You bring that with you to the stage door tomorrow night and I’ll make sure you and your folks get to come back stage, alright? I’d like to meet them.”

She smiles like sunrise. “Yes, sir!”

Then she’s off, and it’s just Bucky and Sam on the pavement, light in their eyes, early-October remnants of color in their cheeks.

“Hey,” Bucky says. He taps Sam’s elbow and they head down the sidewalk, slow. “Not a bad way to kick off a national tour, hm? Giving autographs before we even leave the city.”

“Yeah, well,” Sam says, slinging an arm around Bucky’s neck, feeling smug and pleased and present, sun-warm and content as a clam, “have you ever heard that the cream rises to the top? Cuz that’s us, pal. We’ve got our bandstand in the sky.”

“Deserved it, didn’t we,” Bucky says.

“Uh, yeah,” Sam says, grinning. “Yeah, I think we did. Think we still do, actually.”

“We do,” Bucky says. He squints at Sam, sun turning his eyes the grey-blue of worn wool. “Hey, I gotta new song for you. Wanna hear?”

“Right now?”

“Mhm.”

“Sing it to me good, baby.”

“You’re a pain in my ass,” Bucky sings loud enough that people look at them, or maybe they’re looking because Sam’s laughing loud enough to shake the pavement beneath their Chucks, “you’re the biggest pain in my ass alive, you’re such a pain in my ass you make me want to move to Mars, you pain in my ass.”

“You’re in love with me,” Sam says, beaming, with his causal arm around Bucky’s shoulders and the casual way they bump hips, half of Cleveland knows em by face anyway, maybe they’re not kidding anybody, maybe there’s some deus ex machina letting em have this one beautiful moment, “you’re in love with me, Bucky Barnes.”

“Have mercy.”

“It’s alright,” Sam says. “Really, it’s alright that you love me. D’you wanna know something. It’s a secret, it’s a well-kept secret actually, there’s no way you know it already.”

“Wanna fuckin bet?”

“I,” Sam says, “am in love with you, too. Stubborn ass. Ain’t that something.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, but he’s looking at their feet, hiding his huge, wave-crush smile. “Yeah. It really is.”