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Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
For as long as there was Steve Rogers, there was Bucky Barnes beside him.
That wasn’t strictly true. Bucky had existed eight years on the earth before he happened to pass an alley one summer afternoon and heard the thwap of fist hitting flesh, the grunt of someone in pain. He was a New Yorker, it was ingrained in him to walk on and mind his own damn business, but he turned into the garbage-strewn alley instead. When he saw the skinny blond kid take advantage of the distraction Bucky offered by staggering to his feet and leaping on the back of the bigger kid who’d been punching him, Bucky knew which side to be on. After they’d sent the bully running with Bucky’s footprint on the seat of his trousers and blood from Steve’s split lip in his hair, they’d sat side by side on the front stoop of Bucky’s building, sharing an ice cream cone that Bucky had bought with his last nickel. Each bite Bucky took tasted like copper and vanilla, Steve’s busted lip smeared messier each time he dragged his sleeve across it.
From that day on, wherever Steve went, Bucky followed out of mixed enjoyment of watching the smaller boy puff himself up when cornered and worry that the little twerp was going to rupture himself one day if Bucky wasn’t there to pull his nuts back out of the fire. Ol’ Mr. Sarkisian at the fish market said that since Bucky rescued Steve once, now he was responsible for making sure Steve stayed okay. Buck considered that to be a lot of damn work for a kid who threw himself at every bully in Brooklyn snarling and snapping like Mrs. Rodriguez’ little dog. Eventually Bucky decided he actually enjoyed Steve’s company outside a dust-up, the quick wit and wry humor that was a match for his own, and the endless arguments about baseball, radio shows, and whether they’d rather take Jean Rogers or Jean Arthur down to Coney Island for a ride on the Custer Cars.
(Bucky suggested Buster Crabbe would be more fun than either actress, to which Steve wrinkled his nose and squinted up his eyes and finally said that Eroll Flynn would be swell on The Squeezer. Bucky could respect that opinion.)
As they grew up, Bucky learned to define himself by comparison to Steve. Tall, dark, robust, full of aimless energy and bright cheer was Bucky Barnes, where Steve was small, fair, frail, for hours quietly still except for the scratching of a pencil as he did his homework or drew on the flyleaves of his books. Together they made a matching set, beloved of the neighborhood grandmothers — until Bucky grew old enough to be a menace to their pretty granddaughters with his rakish charm, handsome looks, and inability to understand the word exclusive as it applied to stepping out with a girl. All that saved him from being chased out of courtyards and shops all over Brooklyn was the warm, expansively good heart Bucky wore on his sleeve and the hope of the neighborhood mothers that maybe that nice serious Steve Rogers would remain a stabilizing influence on wild Bucky Barnes and keep him in check.
Little did they know how often Steve’s mouth got him into trouble that Bucky got him out of, that the placidity of Steve’s demeanor hid a thousand pounds of fuck you and fight me in a ninety pound bag of asthmatic, half-deaf, hotheaded package. Bucky honestly believed that half of the time Steve got into fights because he simply didn’t hear properly and assumed the other guy had said something shitty that needed correcting. The other half of the time had to be because Steve liked watching Bucky wade in and throw punches, because he always had a faint little smirk on his face when Bucky fought, like Steve was thoroughly enjoying the entertainment whether Bucky was in the gym boxing or in a back-alley brawl.
After Sarah Rogers passed on, Bucky decided loudly in Steve’s presence that he was tired of living in cramped quarters with his sisters and how he had to constantly clean their long dark hair off every surface, among other hassles. “And I gotta tell you, Steve, somehow they’re all on the damn rag at once, it’s like a week-long curse for everyone, God forbid you wanna listen to music or you walk around with shoes on when they all got headaches,” he complained cheerfully, lit cigarette dangling from his full lower lip. Early September in New York meant sweltering days still, and Bucky’s strappy white undershirt was stuck to his tanned skin, almost see-through along his chest and under his arms. The rickety electric fan oscillated rhythmically between them as they sat on the fire escape to catch the desultory early evening breeze, and Bucky watched the blades spinning until he felt half-entranced and languid with the heat.
“Mm-hmm,” Steve replied, only half listening as he scoured the paper for help wanted adverts. For some reason, demand was low for scrawny eighteen-year-olds who couldn’t haul freight without coughing up a lung or dropping dead of a heart seizure. He could read, write in a fair hand, and figure sums easily, but clerical jobs required good connections to get into, and no one was going to interview a poor Mick with no family to speak for him no matter how politely he approached grocers and landlords. It was coming on autumn of 1936, and unemployment was the highest it had ever been. “That your reason for wanting to move in here, huh?” he asked. “Get away from all those girls nagging you?”
“I mean, you’d be doin’ me a favor, pal,” Bucky replied with a wide grin. He propped his bare foot up on the rail beside Steve, his long leg bent and his trousers stretched tight across his thigh, and picked a piece of lint off his knee.
Steve looked up, bright blue eyes serious as taxes within the smudges of sleepless nights. “Got nothing to do with payin’ half the rent on this apartment so I don’t gotta move, huh?”
“Well, I mean,” Bucky said, leaning over to ash into the empty bean can on the windowsill. He flashed the disarming smile that got him into trouble and right back out of it on a daily basis. “Might as well kill two birds with one stone, right? You like this place, it’s comfortable, no reason to move if you don’t gotta. Seriously, Stevie —”
“Oh, here we go.” It was always bad news when Bucky started in with the Stevie. But Steve’s habitually serious pout curved into a warm smile anyway, and he pursed his lips and blew his long bangs off his forehead so he could meet Bucky’s eyes. He was too sticky with sweat for the move to work, so he wiped his hand across his face, leaving a smudge of newsprint on his pale skin.
“I need to move out,” Bucky said without dramatics. “I love the girls to pieces, you know that, but living with them now that Becca and Mags are old enough to get screamy every time I walk around in my undershirt is a royal pain in the ass.” He leaned forward to fix Steve with that earnest wide-eyed gaze that managed to be completely guileless even when Steve knew he was being manipulated. “What do you say, huh? Do me a favor?”
Steve looked up through the wayward lock of hair that tumbled back over his forehead at those airy blue eyes framed in long lashes dark as sin. He took in the sight of the blue-green bruise that spread across Bucky’s collarbone in the straight line shape of a heavy book spine. Another set of bruises circled Bucky’s right wrist, finger marks smudged but clear. For once, his handsome face bore no scratches or bruises, his lips unsplit, if chapped and bitten by nervous habit. When Bucky had offered his home up to Steve after Mrs. Rogers’ death, Steve had declined, saying he could handle himself. What he couldn’t handle was watching George Barnes drunkenly beat up on his only son for not being a a younger version of himself. Whatever James did never seemed to be what his father wanted, and Bucky had long grown out of trying to please the old man. It was why Bucky had found work delivering groceries during the day and bussing tables and washing dishes at an uptown jazz club at night: manual labor instead of the bookkeeping his father tried to force him into, and nothing related to the Barnes’ commercial transport business.
“Moving out,” Steve said slowly, eyes on the evidence of the elder Barnes’ drunken temper. “That gonna cause a problem?”
An ugly red flush creeped up Bucky’s neck and formed blotches high on his cheeks. Still, he smiled, taking a long drag off his cigarette and blowing it out towards their open window so it wouldn’t drift over Mrs. Kowalski’s drying bedsheets strung on the line. “Nah,” he finally said, eyes shading grey and inscrutable in the deepening twilight. “The girls’ll be fine without me. Better, probably.” Which was as close as Bucky would ever get to saying his pop’s temper would run cooler without Bucky there to antagonize him by existing.
The answer was never really in doubt, the whole conversation just Bucky’s way of saving Steve’s pride and Steve’s reluctance his way of saving Bucky’s pride. And if Bucky had other reasons for wanting to move in with his best friend that had nothing to do with girls — related to him or otherwise — or his father, well, he couldn’t even articulate those half-spun notions to himself and dismissed them as late summer fancies, the sort of insubstantial snatches of thought that disappeared with a puff of hot smoke on his breath.
“Yeah, Buck,” Steve agreed with a warm smile that made Bucky’s heart swell and ache, “it would be good to have you here.” So it was settled, and they were both happier for it.
Steve Rogers looked to the grandmas of Brooklyn Heights like a solid, upstanding, serious young man, but Bucky knew better. Steve was a goddamn madman, the sort of guy who’d jump in front of a streetcar to save a three-legged dog in the way without a moment to consider how bad the resulting accident would be. He wasn’t reckless, exactly, but when Steve saw a little guy getting stepped on it was like all ability to think just whited out of his brain, like nothing in the world mattered so much as making sure justice was done, and by fuck all he was going to be the guy to do it. Bucky admired the hell out of that, but he himself didn’t feel that way — or at least, not as strongly as Steve did. Bucky understood the concept of expedience. If kicking a guy in the stones was going to stop an asshole from tying a tin can to a cat’s tail, then Bucky was on it, but if that guy’s friends were going to then ambush him when he stumbled home drunk from the dance hall and rip up his second-best shirt trying to get some payback, maybe he needed another plan. If scooping up the cat and taking it back to their apartment where he could feed it scraps and listen to it purr on the windowsill on a sunny day worked better, he felt no need to also teach the bully a lesson.
Except sometimes he really wanted to, because Bucky liked fighting. He was good at it.
Bucky was good at a lot of things, honestly, and one of those rare people who took some pride in his talents but didn’t get a swelled head about it. He was top of his class in his second to last year at school, especially in science and math, and graduated in the top ten percent. He made good conversation on a variety of topics, and also knew how to listen. He sang like one of God’s own angels when he could be persuaded to really put effort into it; he danced with a natural grace and rhythm that was the envy of his peers. He was whip-smart and witty, but sensitive enough to charm anyone he cared to. But he was damn good at fighting.
The physicality of it called to him, the smooth movement of flexing muscles and the bone-deep impact of a connecting blow grounded his constant restlessness into his lean, strong body. The precise movement of his feet and the quick reflexes of evasion were as much of a dance to Bucky as the lindy hop, and he found himself relishing the back and forth of a good bout, the intricate steps of a dance where the other partner moved both with and against him.
His father hated it, of course.
Steve often wondered — though never aloud — if that was because George Barnes fancied himself a class better than the poor Scottish farmers his grandparents had been before hopping a boat to America, and anything his son James did that stepped closer to the dirty physicality of working with the land put a crack in George’s veneer of respectability. Steve also thought likely that George feared what would happen if his boy ever fought back when he drunkenly raised his fists. A trained boxer, Bucky could probably knock his father out cold despite his deceptively lanky build. Hell, Bucky could probably kill him with a well-placed punch.
Bucky would never do that, though.
It enraged Steve that Bucky would face down half a dozen street toughs with a fuck-you grin and some graceful moves, but when his own father came at him Bucky just went still and silent. Steve had witnessed it a few times growing up, until he started coming up with things for Bucky to do around the Rogers’ apartment as an excuse to not be at home when his pop staggered in from the bars. Moving out meant that Bucky didn’t get roughed up as often, but when Mr. Barnes did light into him, he got more vicious about it. Bucky never spoke of it, though, so Steve respected his friend’s dignity and left it alone.
Bucky and Steve usually ate supper with the Barneses once a week because Bucky’s ma insisted that they have at least one properly cooked meal even though Steve could put together a decent enough spread and Bucky could do a little better than decent on his day off. On this February night sleet pelted the windows while they ate roast chicken and carrots, laughing while Becca waxed dramatic about some gossip at her school. After supper and washing up, Steve and Bucky played that new Atlantic City board game with Becca and Margaret, while Ruthie colored a picture and Wendy Barnes took baby Ann upstairs to change her and put her to bed. Bucky had properties on a third of the spaces. He was in heated negotiations with Maggie over the terms of a loan and whether shortbread squares could be counted as collateral (Steve agreed they could and was prepared to arm wrestle Bucky for the deciding vote) when the front door opened.
It killed something in Steve to watch all three Barnes children tense at the sound of fumbling at the coat stand and indistinct grumbling. On the sofa Ruthie went utterly still, light brown eyes wide as saucers beneath a curly lock of dark hair. Bucky immediately unfolded his tall frame from the floor and sat beside her, one arm sliding around her chubby shoulders.
“Go upstairs and help Ma, okay, honey?” He took the crayons and paper and ushered her to her feet. “Mags, Becks —”
“Staying,” Becca whispered. Mags looked torn, and Becca poked her arm. “You go, Maggie. I’ll stay with Jimmy.”
“You won’t —”
“Staying,” she replied fiercely, tucking her hair behind her ear and scowling at her brother.
Maggie took Ruthie’s hand and tugged her towards the stairs. Together, they scampered up while Becca hunched over the game board and began to move the shiny silver top hat around the squares. Bucky slid back down to the floor, expressive mouth thinned into a white line. Steve touched his arm and Bucky flinched back, eyes wide. He shook his head once emphatically enough for dark strands to come loose from the rest of his pomade-slicked hair, then frowned fiercely at the board between their knees.
Steve opened his mouth to ask what the hell that was about, but shut it when Mr. Barnes appeared in the doorway.
“What’re you doing?” George demanded.
“Playing a game,” Becca said with forced brightness. Steve scooted a little closer to her and plastered on a smile.
“Hi, Mr. Barnes. Is the weather still real bad?”
“Steven. Yes, it’s coming down pretty hard. You want to be careful walking home,” George replied, weaving unsteadily around the sofa to peer at the game through wire-frame spectacles. “Jim, I see you appear to be winning.”
Bucky glanced up and offered a small smile that made Steve’s gut clench; a desperate hope for approval flared briefly in Bucky’s wide eyes before he forced it down. “Yeah, Pop, I’m doing pretty good.”
“He’s taking us to the cleaners, Mr. Barnes,” Steve said. “We didn’t stand a chance.”
“Hmmm. Figures he’d have a head for business when it’s frivolous,” George commented with deceptive mildness. An ugly flush crept up the back of Bucky’s neck and stained his face in bright blotchy patches, but he kept his mouth shut.
Steve, predictably, did not.
“Actually, Bucky takes care of all our financials,” he said. “He’s real good at it, keeps track of everything so we don’t go over budget.”
“Steve, shut up, ok?” Bucky murmured, but Steve didn’t hear him.
George took off his spectacles and polished them against his vest, then replaced them to blink slowly at Steve. “I imagine you have many expenses to track, hmm?”
“Yes, sir. The bills, the rent, food, my medicines, sundries, supplies…”
“Good to know my son —” a slight emphasis on the word had Bucky ducking his head and grinding his back teeth — “can manage a household, even one such as yours. Bachelors, I mean.”
Fair brows drew together over Steve’s bright eyes as he finally twigged to some deeper current beneath Mr. Barnes’ words. “Well, I mean, someone has to take care of it all,” he offered, glancing back and forth between father and son. Beside him, Becca looked too pale, her knuckles white where she clenched the top hat marker in her fist hard enough to imprint its edges in her palm.
“Indeed,” George said, his dark eyes fixed on the back of his son’s head. “Although I rather expected you to take on…that role.”
Now it was Steve’s turn to flush brick red, a mixture of anger and shame as he realized what his friend’s father might have suggested. George Barnes wouldn’t be the first to peg Steve for queer with his slight build and pretty face, but that Mr. Barnes assumed Bucky was too, and moreover that Bucky was the dame of the house, threw him for a loop. Bucky went out with a different girl every week, got pretty far with a few of them, not that Steve expected Mr. Barnes to know that, but it seemed ludicrous to think that Bucky would be…like that. Even if he was almost nineteen and never serious with a steady girl. Even if he preferred to live in a shitty tenement with only one real bedroom with his best friend rather than the nice brownstone his family had.
Even if Steve could sometimes feel Bucky’s gaze hot and focused on him, or his big hand lingered a moment too long on Steve’s chest when rubbing liniment on him, or his long fingers carded tenderly through Steve’s disheveled hair while Steve whooped for breath in the middle of the night.
Even if Steve returned every heated glance, every lingering touch, every soft caress with one hundred percent focus, hyper-aware of every movement Bucky made even when he pretended not to pay attention. Even if Steve waited, faltering heartbeat loud in his ears, until he heard Bucky’s soft snoring at night before he allowed his hand to drift low; if he imagined how that pretty mouth would feel, how it would taste, the muffled sounds Bucky would make if Steve touched him the way he wanted to. They had never dared, either of them, to speak of the sparks that sometimes flashed between them, or what it meant that they preferred each other’s company to anyone else’s.
Steve Rogers knew what he was, had known practically since that first shared ice cream cone that he loved James Buchanan Barnes in all the ways he shouldn’t, and didn’t give a fuck in a bucket about what anyone else thought about him. But he’d be goddamned before he allowed Bucky to be hurt because of it. Bucky had stood beside Steve every day for the last ten years, Steve was damn well going to make sure he stood beside Bucky when his friend needed him.
“Mr. Barnes,” he started with no idea what might fire out of his mouth, but he cut off as Bucky shot to his feet and hauled Steve up with him.
“Pop said it, Steve, weather’s bad. We should get going now before it’s too awful, right?”
“Not you, Jim,” Mr. Barnes said, “I’d like to discuss some things with you first. Steven, good evening. Becca, honey, go get ready for bed.”
“I need to put the game away,” she protested.
“Jim will do it. Go on, now.”
With the breadth of his shoulders, Bucky herded Steve out of the room and down the hall as Becca unhappily complied. “Steve, go home,” he said, voice tight and low, spine hunched to mask his height.
“Buck, I —”
“Stevie, go. Home.” Bucky left no room for argument, his brows drawn together and his nostrils flaring. When Steve scowled back Bucky grabbed him by the arm and propelled him towards the door. “It will go worse if you’re here,” he hissed. “It’s getting late anyhow. I’ll talk to Pop and be home in an hour or two. Wanna put the girls to bed and Ruthie gets a story. You should get going, and maybe you can heat up some water for me so I can take a bath. That always takes forever, and it’ll be cool enough to sit in by the time I get home.” With a final push that sent Steve stumbling back against the wall, Bucky turned and retreated to the family room. Steve rubbed his chest as though he’d been burned by the heat of Bucky’s palm through his shirt and sweater. Every part of him wanted to march back into the house and grab Bucky to haul him back to their apartment.
They weren’t children anymore, though. Bucky could handle himself; Steve’s presence couldn’t possibly help anyway.
He laced up his boots slowly, hoping to hear the familiar loping beat of Bucky’s distinctive walk heading back, but even with his good ear turned towards the study Steve could only pick up George’s voice and a muffled reply. He sighed heavily and shrugged on his coat, then let himself out.
He’d gone only as far as the end of the block before he patted his breast pocket and let out a muttered curse. Spinning on one heel, he tromped back to the brownstone, up the slippery steps, and opened the heavy front door again. A fraught silence pervaded the house, and Steve found himself tiptoeing back to the family room, keeping to the shadows along the long hallway. He was halfway there when he heard a grunt and a loud smacking sound.
The sound could have been anything.
Even so, Steve knew immediately what caused it, and felt like his mind turned to static, a radio frequency not fully tuned into, a cloud of rage that blurred the periphery of all his senses. He ran down the hall to the family room and swung around the corner, wet shoe soles sliding on the hardwood floor so that he had to grab onto the door frame to stay upright. He stared, jaw loose and eyes wide, at the tableau he interrupted.
George stood rigid, his belt doubled up in his hand and his shirt untucked under his raised arm. He’d taken off his spectacles and tie, and his dark hair fell in a disheveled curl over his brow in exactly the same manner as his son. Red stained his high cheekbones and sweat beaded along his hairline; a drop trailed down beside his sideburn to disappear in the rough stubble that coated his jaw this late in the evening.
Bucky knelt on the floor, knees wide and planted on the rug, his shirt and undershirt discarded on the back of the sofa; the Monopoly board shoved under the nearby armchair. His bowed head obscured his expression, but his hunched shoulders and the flash of his gritted teeth spoke of his pain even though his arms remained limp at his sides. A welt, blazing red already shading to bruised purple, cut across his upper back. Even as Steve watched in horror, the belt came down again, slashing across Bucky’s shoulders and rocking him forward on his knees, the long muscles of his thighs tensing as he tried to stay upright.
Neither man noticed Steve until he charged forward and grabbed the belt; startled, George let it slip from his hand. Steve hauled his arm back, teeth bared in fury, and Bucky lurched up from the floor to grab him around the knees.
“Stevie, don’t,” he cried, yanking Steve back. Steve lost his balance and teetered over Bucky’s crouched body, his legs tangling; Bucky shifted his grip to keep Steve from falling and shoved one arm in front of him to separate him from George.
“What the hell are you doing, sir?” Steve demanded.
George Barnes looked down his long nose at the sickly young man his son shackled himself to and sneered. “None of your concern. He may be grown, but he’s still my son and I’ll —”
“Beat him bloody? For what? For what?” Steve shouted, breath beginning to hitch painfully as his heart rate doubled in his fury. “Say it, you drunk bastard, say it to my face! Say whatever you think of me, of him, say it to us right now!”
“Steve, stop it,” Bucky interjected, rising to his feet and ripping the belt out of Steve’s shaking hand. “It’s not —”
“The fuck it isn’t!”
“Say to your face that an undesirable like you should have been taken care of a long time ago, Steven?” George sneered. “Or that I think it’s disgusting what you’re doing with my boy?” He swayed on his feet, red-faced and sweating heavily now, his eyes glassy and unfocused without his spectacles.
Steve snarled right back, “I’ve done nothing with Bucky in private we haven’t done here, in this house, under your goddamned in-the-air nose with you and God watching, so shove your judgement up your —”
“Stevie, shut up and go,” Bucky yelped and shoved his friend towards the doorway. “Go, I’m coming, just walk.” He tossed the belt on the sofa and grabbed his discarded clothing, struggling into his shirt and wadding his undershirt up to tuck in his back pocket as he walked.
“Jim, get back here,” George said, wavering on his feet and leaning against the arm of the sofa to grab his belt.
“Keep walking,” Steve growled, wrapping his arm around Bucky’s waist and hauling him to the front door. He reached out without looking and fumbled for Bucky’s coat, recognizing it by the vanilla-oakmoss smell of his aftershave, and thrust it at him. “We’re going.”
“I can’t—” Bucky stopped moving forward but got his arms into the heavy overcoat. “The girls —”
“They’ll be fine, right?” Steve urged, pulling Bucky’s lapels straight and buttoning him up. “You said he never touches them, it’s just you. Let’s go and he’ll go sleep it off.”
Bucky compressed his lips into a thin line and grabbed a scarf, which he wrapped around Steve’s neck. “It’s colder’n a witch’s tit out there, pal. Wear my hat.” Steve rolled his eyes at the coddling but didn’t argue; it gave Bucky something to focus on besides his own humiliation. Bucky jammed his hat down on Steve’s head, enveloping him in the scent of Brylcreem, and yanked the front door open. Steve took his arm and ushered him out into the wet night, letting the door close firmly behind them.
Bucky shivered and turned his collar up, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. Out of habit he shortened his long-legged stride to keep pace with Steve, who fought to keep from wheezing as he shook with residual adrenaline. Bucky’s mortification grew with every step they took; the cold kept him from feeling the sting as he chewed a strip off his bottom lip. He sucked it into his mouth and the bright taste of blood bloomed on his tongue. He kept his gaze trained on the sidewalk, ostensibly to keep from sliding, and remained utterly silent until they turned onto their own block.
Finally, he offered, “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
Steve grunted and didn’t reply.
“Really. I…”
“It’s fine, Buck. Don’t sweat it.”
As they climbed the steps to their apartment, Bucky asked in a small voice, “Why did you come back, anyway?”
Steve stopped in the hall and touched his breast pocket. “My cigs. Left ‘em on the table. Forgot to grab ‘em on the way out again.”
Bucky’s lips twitched. “S’ok. There’s room in the budget to buy another pack.”
Steve grinned. “You sure? You balanced the books that good?”
“Yeah, I put extra aside for you. The Punk Slush Fund. Saving your forgetful ass every month.”
Steve bumped his shoulder into Bucky’s arm as he unlocked the door. “Takin’ care of me.” As soon as he said it, he flushed, worried that he might be embarrassing Bucky further. He said nothing while they stripped off wet coats and outerwear and unlaced dripping shoes and toed them off in the entryway. Bucky headed over to the balky radiator to coax it into life, and Steve silently fretted while he worked, stripping off his sweater and folding it neatly to put in a drawer of the battered dresser. He sat on the end of the bed and smoothed one cold-reddened hand over the knitted blanket, picking at an unraveling piece of yarn and trying to weave it back in. The gas light sconce on the wall threw flickering shadows across the room, bathing Steve’s face in darkness.
Bucky got the radiator going and thumped it for good measure when he stood up. The reassuring clatter filled the space as he ambled back towards the bedroom while unbuttoning his shirt. He tugged it off and examined the back for any bloodstains before folding and putting it away. He tossed the ball of his undershirt onto his bed for laundering and sat beside Steve.
“I shouldn’t’ve said that, Buck, I’m sorry,” Steve said.
“No, it’s fine. I like taking care of you,” Bucky replied in a very quiet voice. “I know you don’t really need it, you’re capable on your own, but I like to feel useful to you.” He flushed and hung his head a moment, then picked it up and grimaced at Steve, his teeth very white in the low light. “Maybe that does make me the dame.”
“Buck —
“No, Steve, let me talk.” He twisted his hands together between his spread thighs, long fingers laced and pressing tightly against each other. “D’you know why he thinks I’m queer?”
Steve shook his head. He couldn’t see the blush that swept up Bucky’s neck to his face, but he could feel the heat radiating off the man and the tension in his bicep where it rested against Steve’s own shoulder.
Bucky smiled grimly and lifted a hand to shove that loose lock of hair out of his eyes. “It ain’t coming outta nowhere, I guess. I talk about you too much, maybe. I told my folks how I liked to model for your drawings. I mean, that’s just one of the things I’ve said lately. It’s just…” He pursed his lips and blew out all the air in his lungs, allowing the silence to gather weight before he broke it again. He shifted to face Steve beside him, eyes soft and grey in the gloom, handsome features pulled into sharp, serious lines. “He always made that little face, you know? Like a twitch of his mouth. He probably didn’t know he was doing it, but each time, it made my blood boil. Because he doesn’t know you like I do. He just knows you’re the skinny, asthmatic little guy with the heart murmur who can’t see right, can’t hear right, always sick, and he thinks you’re some kinda twerp that’s gonna drag me down.”
He made a bitter little sound of disgust deep in his throat. “You ain’t gonna drag me down, Steve. You’re fucking insane, that hard head of yours and that stubborn streak wider than the ocean, but you’re the best of men. And if seeing that, admiring it, makes me queer for you, then fine.” Bucky shut his mouth and a muscle in his wide jaw twitched in a way that told Steve he was holding down more words but wouldn’t ever take back the ones he’d already spilled.
And Steven Grant Rogers looked boldly into the face of the man sitting beside him, weak heart pounding wildly in his thin chest, and said as steadily as he could, “Well, what if I’m queer for you, Buck? What then?”
One thing Bucky Barnes was not good at was a poker face. Half a dozen emotions chased across his expression while Steve watched, each one leaving his pretty pale blue eyes a fraction wider and his gaze more intense. He didn’t think it a joke or pretend to misunderstand. He knew Steve too well, thought long and hard about those lingering looks and touches, the easy way they fit into each other’s spaces. He considered several replies while Steve’s embarrassment heightened, although those sharp blue eyes never once glanced away from Bucky’s face. Finally, his mouth stretched into a wide, happy grin.
“Well, so the old drunk is right about us both, then, imagine that,” he said. And Bucky reached out to tenderly run his fingertips through Steve’s soft blond hair, the way he sometimes did when Steve sat beside him.