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Cracked brow.
Split lip.
Bruised knuckles.
Sore ribs.
All in all, well worth the life of one tiny kitten. It’d gone down in the blink of an eye: dockyard workers believing that torturing a poor, helpless creature was an adequate way to spend time, but she’d shown them otherwise. She hadn’t intended to cause a ruffle – things had just escalated from snappy words to fists flying by in a flurry, three against one. But at least the kitten had escaped, a beautiful calico thing, and it was the only thing that mattered.
The cold bathroom reeked of alcohol. Next to the dripping faucet, the hill of used cotton balls was growing high. Goosebumps pebbled her arms, and she squeezed her eyes shut when Bucky pressed yet another drenched cotton ball against her cheek, cleaning the nasty cut there.
Drip-drip-drop. Even that was loud, the silence absolute between them. Bucky hadn’t said a peep since he’d shown up in the nick of time, putting those boxing skills to good use – not even when they’d gotten back to the hole in the wall they called home. He’d simply ushered her into the bathroom before he’d fetched the rusty tin where they kept all the medical supplies and started stitching her back into one piece with painful accuracy. Luckily, the needle and thread part was behind them.
There was quiet anger in the way he worked, in the way he touched. She knew that look on his face, even a blind man could see the ire knitting his brows tight, the fire lighting his silver eyes ablaze. But even that was worth it, even though they’d been here, doing this more than a dozen times over, because the kitten would live to see another day and the dockyard workers had been taught a lifelong lesson.
Never pick on someone smaller.
Still, she knew that Bucky wouldn’t see eye-to-eye on the matter. In fact, she could almost read the exasperated lecture in his steely eyes.
“Go on then,” Stephanie said as their gazes crossed for a mere blink, shoulders squared with how much she wanted to break the standoff. “I can see that you wanna say somethin’.”
A muscle jumped at the hinge of his jaw, and it felt like he purposely looked away. “You’re a damn ruffian, y’know that right?” he said quietly, the disappointment thick and undeniable. “I know I can’t stop you from being the hero, but could you at least pick a fight with one guy rather than three?”
He sounded tired toward the end, the fire in him lessening by each word that leaped off his tongue, and the bone Stephanie was ready to pick with him quickly faded. The silence stretched uncomfortably between them, and she knew she ought to say something, but even as she opened her mouth, it was as if there was a physical block there.
Bucky, seemingly unaware of her struggles, muttered after a moment, “I’m not crazy about the shiner I got.”
“Your date’s gonna love it,” Stephanie managed, the words suddenly there, albeit thin and wobbly, robbing the joke of all its humor. She tried to muster up a smile, but even she could feel how strained it was. Guilt squeezed at her insides as she eyed the bruising on his left eye, the red that had slowly bloomed into a mighty blue and purple. She’d always joked and said that Bucky looked heartbreakingly good in navy, but this wasn’t exactly the same.
“I could try and cover it up if you want,” she offered, wincing halfway through when he cleaned the scrape on her collarbone. “Still got some makeup left somewhere.”
Grimacing still, she averted her gaze, eyeing the pile of dirty clothes on the floor. Had she been with anyone else, she’d be ready to crawl out of her skin sitting in nothing but her chemise and ruined stockings, but it was Bucky. Her best friend, her other half, the man to whom she owed her life. It was a daunting thought, what would’ve happened if he hadn’t shown up because she knew—she knew that three to one wasn’t the best of odds.
“I’m gonna give her a raincheck,” Bucky said with a sigh as he added yet another ruddy cotton ball to the mountain by the faucet, reaching for the surgical tape and a square of sterile gauze. “I’m not leavin’ you alone tonight. We both know men like that don’t take too kindly to women kickin’ their asses.”
Dread washed over her like a wave rolling onto the shore, stretching far into her and touching something uncomfortable, heart skipping a beat at the thought of three vengeful brutes knocking on their door. But it faded, the rational side of her taking over. Whoever they’d been, they surely had better things to do than go after someone like her.
“Maybe not,” Stephanie muttered, not wanting to feed that thought any longer. Bucky’s fingers were cool against her skin as he taped the gauze in place over the scratch on her collar bone.
There was blood on his fingers, dried up on his cuticles and under his nails, and she could see the angry bruises blooming over his knuckles, too. As he picked up the roll of bandage to wrap her arm, it was evident that his hands hurt, and it was hard to tell what was worse: Bucky getting hurt because of her, or that she’d ruined his plans.
He’d been going on about tonight’s date for a week straight. Lorna-Jean, the girl on the floor above them was a bronzed goddess, all dark hair and long, seemingly endless lashes, and Stephanie couldn’t count how many times Bucky had elbowed her eagerly, leaned in and whispered that Lorna-Jean had looked his way. She was the most beautiful girl on the block, if not in Brooklyn, and Stephanie couldn't help but feel even guiltier that Bucky would cancel because of her.
She’d never liked Bucky going on dates, unhappiness always twisted in her chest when she watched him slick his hair back and put on his best set of clothes, but she wanted him happy, and happy wasn’t home stuck with her.
“You’ve been dyin’ to date this girl,” she murmured as she looked down to where he bandaged her arm, a fresh wave of goosebumps spreading down her neck and arms. “Those idiots barely know their own names—they wouldn’t bother goin’ after a girl like me.”
Bucky shot her an unconvinced look. “Don’t be so sure,” he murmured as he pinned the bandage in place before sitting back, hands bracing on his thighs as their eyes met.
While he’d softened, the worry was still etched into his features—into his very soul. Anyone could see it. She never regretted causing a ruckus, not when something so innocent as a kitten was involved, but now—
“—I could’ve lost you today,” he said, dragging her out of her head. For the first time in a long time, she couldn’t read his tone and that made her straighten, shoulders squaring as she dragged a reluctant smile onto her lips as if that would mend everything that’d happened.
“It wasn't that bad,” Stephanie assured. “I had them on the ropes.”
Bucky arched a brow. “Did you now?”
“You were there—you saw what happened.”
“I saw my best friend get the shit kicked out of her.”
The edge on his voice sent a chill down her spine, the smile on her lips dropping like a stone.
Bucky scrubbed a hand over his face, sighing. “Next time… just fight one guy, alright?”
“Aren’t you gonna tell me not to fight at all?”
Bucky huffed a breath, the corner of his mouth twitching with the hint of a smile. “We both know that would never happen,” he said and then he reached out, gently stroking a stray lock from her face.
Feeding off that small sliver of relief, Stephanie softened, too. Her skin buzzed beneath Bucky’s featherlight touch, heart pounding with a bit more vigor inside her frail chest. He was too good for her, a proper knight in shining armor, and he deserved someone who didn’t pick fights over things most people found petty.
Stephanie knew that his ma was onto him for not marrying, for them living beneath the same roof like husband and wife without being nothing more than amicable. People talked about them, too. Bucky Barnes and the sick girl, just like they’d talked about her ma. Sarah Rogers and her sick daughter.
She glanced down at his other hand, seeing that the bruising was worse there. Smile drifting, she quickly offered, “You look like you need some dustin’ off too, will you let me?”
Bucky’s smile widened a touch. “Yeah, sure, nurse Rogers.”
She scooted a bit closer to him, knobbly knees slotting between his, and drenched a cotton ball, the reek of alcohol tickling her nose yet again as she waited for him to take his shirt off.
She peered up at him through her lashes, gut swooping for a reason she didn’t want to name as she saw the reveal of milky skin stretched over hard muscle. There was a whisper from the shirt as it fell toward the cold tiles.
Bucky was without a doubt the most handsome bachelor in all of New York, but for as much as the girls saw him for that devilish smile and endearing eyes, he was so much more than just pretty to look at. For starters, he was sharp as a whip. Funny, too. But he had a heart of gold and the courage of a lion, and that was what she loved most about him: how nothing was ever too much, too difficult, too stupid when she came to him for help.
“They kicked you good,” she murmured as she ran the cotton ball around the scrape on his chest. It ran just below his collarbone, dark with dirt and oozing, and she made a mental note that she probably needed to mend his shirt at the same place later. “Does it hurt when you breathe?”
Bucky shook his head at her question, face strained with the sting from the alcohol seeping into the gash. “It’s fine.”
Seeing him hurt struck a chord in her chest and she managed a sorry smile, making sure to clean the wound as efficiently as possible.
“We’re lucky it’s Sunday tomorrow,” she murmured as she reached for another cotton ball, soaking it as well, nose scrunching at the smell. “Plenty of time to rest up.”
Bucky hummed in reply.
It’d been a long, long week. She’d drawn double the comic strips for The New Yorker to make do for a special edition, and now it felt like her wrist would fall off even without having fought off three drunkards. Despite her boss driving a hard bargain and only ever requesting redraws, she always found herself feeling a sense of pride every time Bucky brought home the newspaper and opened the last page to review her work.
All the critique, all the late hours suddenly became worth it when he cracked a smile or even a laugh over the comics. It didn’t matter that the pay was barely enough to cover rent, or the newspaper credited Stephen Wallace as the illustrator instead of her, they were still her creations and they could make Bucky light up even on a bad day.
“Unless your ma wants to drag us to church again,” Stephanie added in thought. She swept her fingers over his chin, cradling it gently as she urged him to tilt his head up to get a better look at a scrape under his jaw. Leaning in to get a closer look, she carefully dabbed it clean. “I bet if she sees us like this, she’ll definitely make us go. We’re gonna need an excuse, got any ideas?”
Bucky sighed, taking the moment to ponder. “If she asks, we... fell down some stairs. Since she already thinks we’re livin’ in sin I guess she’ll think it’s code for something.”
Stephanie arched a curious brow at his suggestion, pausing from where she worked the cotton ball over the hinge of his jaw. In the stale bathroom light, his eyes properly gleamed.
“Lucky us,” she mused but then her smile faded a hair as she continued, thumb caressing his chin absently. “You know... everyone thinks we’re livin’ in sin, and I’m sorry about that.”
She dragged Bucky’s name in the mud. When her mother had passed away and the landlord had been quick to evict her so that he could put the flat on the market, Bucky had said she could stay with him until she found a place of her own. For months she’d walked by flyers on notice boards screaming for tenants, but between drawing comics and helping out every other week at the bodega down the street, she didn’t have much to her name. Burying her mother had scraped her bare and it was a bill she was still paying off little by little, but after everything mother had done for her, it’d been worth every cent to give her a proper resting place.
“It’s alright,” Bucky said quietly.
“I don’t have many payments left on ma’s bill,” she said softly, willing her smile wider even though she felt something twist in her chest, “after that I’ll be out of your hair so you can restore your good name.”
A breath of silence settled in between them. Some old pipes groaned in the wall and the dog from downstairs barked, the noise barely muted. It took her a blink before she realized that Bucky was looking straight at her, silver eyes burning with something she couldn’t place.
“What if I don’t want you to leave?” he asked.
Stephanie froze mid-movement, reeking cotton ball suspended between them. “What?”
Bucky flashed a mirthless smile, the intensity in his gaze lessening some. “People already think the worst of me—that I’m a thug… and you stayin’—I… I just think we have something good here,” he confessed, and then he was already reaching out, calloused hand touching her face once more.
It felt like a brand against her face. Freezing like a deer in the headlights, his words trapped the air inside her lungs. There was something raw in his voice, in his eyes, in his touch, and she felt her heart quicken in her chest. The doctors had always said she had a frail one locked in there and now it truly felt like it lived up to their diagnosis as it beat out of rhythm. Too hard, too quick, missing a beat here and there.
Swallowing over a desert-dry throat, she simply looked at him for a beat, breath returning to her lungs with a stutter. They’d joked about her staying forever, but it’d always been just that. A joke. But now—now it sounded so much like he was speaking from his heart.
“They don’t think you’re a thug,” she assured softly, voice dangerously close to a whisper. She rested a hand on top of his where he cupped her cheek, and that small smile playing at the corner of her mouth stretched. “But fathers do talk about lockin’ up their daughters when you come walkin’.”
Bucky deserved someone who wouldn’t keel over at the first promise of winter. Someone who didn’t start fights. Someone that could take care of him, because that was her greatest fear – if something were to happen to him, she wouldn’t be able to care for him.
There was a slight pause before she continued, realizing that the joke hadn’t had the intended effect, and she softened. “I like what we have too, but what about all your dates? Is it gonna be me, you, and your fiancé livin’ in this apartment when you finally find the one? Your poor ma would die thinkin’ we’re not only sinners, but bigamists as well.”
Neither did the touch of levity do anything to ease the thickening tension. Bucky averted his gaze, lips settling in a thin line as he exhaled a heavy breath before looking up at her once more. “What if… what if there isn’t going to be another woman in my life?”
“We’re friends,” Stephanie said, suddenly, sharply.
It was all they would ever be. Mrs. Barnes had said those exact words the day Stephanie had moved in with Bucky. After that, whenever she’d gone to visit the Barnes family, it was all she ever heard from them. How she was a friend, a good one for sure, but still just a friend. Always emphasis on that specific word. But it’d started before that, too. How could anyone ever assume she was anything else when she was too thin, too sick, too unladylike? There’d even been a time where Bucky had ingrained the same belief as everyone else.
The summer after she’d graduated, Bucky had set her up with Dennis O’Hara. Manhattan kid, five years older, and he’d been a sleaze asking her to put out before she’d even got a kiss. It’d ended in a similar vein as today, and she hadn’t gone on any other dates after that, but not for the lack of trying. She was just friendship material, everyone saw that, but now as she stared into Bucky’s eyes, heart turning into minced meat inside her chest, she didn’t know what to believe.
María at the bodega had one day asked how long she’d loved him after Bucky had shown up one late night to buy smokes, smiling and chatting and disappearing out the door as quick as he’d arrived. Stephanie had wanted to sink to the ground, never once thinking it was that obvious, but perhaps it was. She’d loved him for so long and maybe, if the tales were true about people living more than once, then maybe she’d loved him even in a past life.
“What if we weren’t?”
“Why are you sayin’ that?” She barely heard herself over the rush of blood in her ears. “I don’t… We are friends. And you—you like datin’ girls... It’s what you do.”
If he’d smiled, she would’ve believed it to be a joke. A cruel one, but a joke all the same. She swallowed hard, instinctively reaching up to grab his hand, bringing it down from her face.
He brought their hands together, palms rubbing close, fingers interlacing. “We are friends.”
The chair creaked, an innocent sound if it weren’t for the fact that he leaned in closer, sending their breaths colliding. Stephanie felt her stomach twist into knots as Bucky’s familiar face turned blurry. His warm breath washed over her mouth, their noses rubbing together for a beat, lips touching so intimately she could feel every word that rolled off his tongue. The hair at the back of her neck rose, and it sounded like his voice came through a tunnel.
“But what if I want you?” he posed, lips still a hair away from kissing, and she—she’d never been kissed before, “what if I’ve always wanted you?”
She couldn’t believe what he was saying. Perhaps the drunkards had knocked her out—perhaps she wasn’t even here at all, but back in that alley, drifting from this life and into the next, because that was how surreal, how abstract everything felt. His hand against hers felt electric, skin buzzing, and she let out a breath she didn’t even know she held.
“Bucky—”
—he kissed her. The sick girl. The unladylike girl.
Shock sinking its claws deep, it took her a hot second to kiss back, closed lips slotting together perfectly. It was unhurried, gentle, the taste of something she’d wanted for so, so long. It was something ineffable, something she’d always dreamed about but never, ever had been able to imagine that it would feel like this.
It was the sound of ice breaking in the spring, the heat from the fire after being frozen to the bone, the sight of land after an eternity left adrift. Bucky gently tugged on her hand and she went with it, settling onto his lap, the shift sending her insides tingling in such a way that made her acutely aware of how bare she was before him.
The sensation filled her up wholly and she poured more of herself into the kiss, deepening it. She felt a twitch against the inside of her thigh, breath hitching with it, but it was Bucky that ended up pulling away, eyes dark and glossy.
“I want you to stay,” he confessed, “I want you.”
“Why?” she breathed, face and heart and soul so warm it felt like she stood before a fire. Perhaps she did. As she looked into his steely eyes, she thought of how her mother had once told her that the hottest fires always burn blue, and in Bucky’s case, it’d never felt more true.
But then Bucky’s smile wobbled, and something unhappy pierced her chest, hardening the words as she kept pushing. “Why me? Why now?”
“Is it that hard to believe that I want you? I like what we have here and I think… I think we can make it work.”
“Make what work?”
“Us,” Bucky said, but there was something—something in his eyes. A tremble in his voice as if speaking with his last breath and courage all at once, his heart not fully in it. “You, me, together ‘til the end of the line.”
Stephanie leaned away, hand covering her mouth as her glance drifted sideways back to the sink where the hill of cotton balls had toppled into the sink. “Are you just sayin’ this because of what could’ve happened today?”
“What? No!” Bucky must have heard it, too, the sharpness in his word that robbed it from sincerity, and he deflated with a heavy sigh. He brought her hand from her face, firm fingers gently pinching her chin to align their gazes once more. “And yes…” he confessed. “Look, I care about you—you know that I do.”
The magic of the moment had shattered into a disheartening clarity, the air between them brittle, doom already hanging like a dark cloud overhead.
“What about all your girls? What about Lorna-Jean?” Stephanie asked, voice bleeding the same way it felt like Bucky had reached into her chest and torn her heart out. “You’ve been daydreaming about her for months now.”
“In truth… all I want is you,” Bucky said, the grip on her chin slowly shifting so that it cupped her cheek instead, eyes never leaving hers. “I realized… I realized after I set you up with O’Hara that I didn’t want to see you with anyone else. I’ve just been too much of a coward to say anything.”
It wasn’t true.
It couldn’t be true.
There wasn’t a chance in hell or a miracle from God that could make him pick her out of all the ladies in Brooklyn. She’d seen him flirt and kiss and chat up enough girls to fill a classroom, and everything about this moment started to feel like a cruel joke.
Swallowing over a too-tight throat, she tried to lean away, but Bucky caught her, the hand on her face grounding her, silver eyes burning into hers, the fire bright enough to scorch her into squeezing her eyes shut.
“Please believe me.” The chair creaked lowly and in the next moment, Bucky nudged his nose to hers, the insistent touch carrying the shadow of his plea. “Don’t you want me?”
The growing tightness in her chest made it feel like she would burst out of her skin, breath leaving on a shaky exhale.
Love, her mother always used to say, should never go unspoken.
With the echo of her mother’s darling brogue ringing inside her head, Stephanie opened her eyes. Up close, he was nothing but a big blur with two glints for eyes. She leaned back with the storm inside her chest, his grip giving in.
For an ephemeral moment, the world was crystal clear, the wild rush in her ears growing distant as she studied the shadow of a man before her: Bucky looked like someone who’d put everything on the line, fear and desperation oozing into the very air around him, and it made it feel less like a cruel joke.
“Bucky,” Stephanie softened, hands finding his as the words came out even, “I think… I think I’ve had your name carved on my soul since the day I was born. I just want what’s best for you, and I don’t think that is me. Everyone would laugh, and tease, and talk behind our backs.”
“Since when did you start caring about what others think?” Bucky asked, but it hardly sounded like a question with the sudden edge, and then he leaned closer again, hands squeezing hers. “I don’t wanna lose you—I didn’t lie when I said that I think we have something good here.”
Shoulders slumping, her gaze drifted to the ruined cotton balls by the faucet. “We do,” she confessed, sounding so, so small.
They had made it work. She’d felt at home in his raggy apartment from the moment she’d put down her suitcase filled with what little she owned. They’d found their rhythm through stressful mornings and calm evenings, and if they ever butted heads, it was about who was in charge of the dishes this week or who drank the last of the milk.
She had come to love the way he looked in the morning, dark hair a tousled mess after falling asleep with damp hair as he always did, and then there was the way he woke up: the slow blinks and quiet grunts when she shook him for the umpteenth time. After months living under his roof, she could sketch his sleepy look from memory alone, even had half a sketchbook where she’d drawn him as a way to warm up her aching wrist.
“Yeah?” Bucky breathed. “All I’m askin’ for is one chance—for you to believe. Your ma raised you well, I know she made a believer out of you, so whaddya say, huh?”
There was a small, hopeful smile on his lips. She could hear the warmth of it even though she wasn’t looking; it set the thought of this whole thing being a cruel joke on fire, the heat filling her chest.
“I’m not pullin’ your leg or whatever you’re thinking,” he continued, sounding equally steadfast, and then he was touching her, a burning hand cupping her face and redirecting her gaze. “I love you—I always have.”
She heard—saw—felt how much he meant it. Hearing him say it aloud was balm for her aching soul, the words a confession as much as it was a promise. Doubting his love wasn’t something she could ever do. She knew with all her heart that without it, their twenty-something years of friendship would never have been possible, but it still took her everything and then some to part her lips.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered against his lips right before they sealed it with a kiss.