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Steve really enjoyed Fridays. A bag full of day old pastries and the promise of a lazy Saturday morning had him in high spirits as he exited the bakery. Steve had worked at the Finnish bakery for a month and a half; his longest job since that bout of pneumonia last spring. It was a good job, even if he only managed to get it through a favour to Bucky’s uncle’s friend and it entailed sitting in the back all week pouring over the bakery’s ledgers. Steve had always been good with numbers, even if he didn’t particularly like them.
Bucky could complain all he wanted about the strain it put on Steve’s already curved spine, but Steve tried to waylay him with old loaves of pulla once a week. It usually worked.
“You’re too skinny,” the shop-owner chided. “Be careful walking home tonight, Steven. It is windy.” The man tucked extra sweet old flake buns into the paper bag and wrapped Steve’s fingers around it.
Leave it to a large Finnish man to think the most dangerous thing to Steve would be the wind.
It was darker than usual when Steve exited the bakery. The dark clouds and east wind made him pull his collar closer to his cheeks. It was an old jacket, threadbare at the elbows and barely long enough at the sleeves. Maybe with another month’s pay he could afford to replace it. Bucky needed a new pair of work pants too.
Steve managed to walk five minutes before he was accosted. A man was smoking on the stoop of a brownstone across the street as he passed by.
“Hey, kid!”
Steve didn’t want to stop. He had already missed supper, Bucky had planned for them to go out that evening and he didn’t want to be late, no matter how little he actually liked stepping out and watching girls sidle up to bat their eyelashes at Bucky.
“Fucking potato eater, I’m talking to you.”
Steve stopped walking. “Can I help you?”
“If you’re passing through the neighbourhood, you have to pay the toll.”
Steve wasn’t sure if he heard him correctly: “Toll?”
The man slipped off the steps, an evident swagger in the way he held his shoulders, and crossed the street. Steve could see as he approached that the man wasn’t much older than Steve was, if at all. Dressed in shiny shoes and pants still showing creases, his smile was lit by the bright red pinprick of the cigarette. What did this kid want?
“You want to pass through, you have to pay up. What’s in the bag?”
This wasn’t the first time Steve had been shaken down walking home. It hadn’t happened in a while, so he supposed a scuffle was due. The usual gang of jerks thought they deserved a coin or two just for letting people’s feet touch the pavement. Steve didn’t usually pay; partly by principle, mostly because he was broke as a lame racehorse. Most often he took the long way home.
“I don’t want any trouble.” Steve wasn’t sure why that seemed to be his go-to line when dealing with these mooks. Clearly they wanted the trouble, no matter what he did.
“I’m not going to ask you again: what’s in the bag?”
Steve had no idea what possessed him to answer with ‘potatoes.’ It was that kind of sass that made his ma roll her eyes and the preacher pile him with psalms to learn for next Sunday, an attitude he had never quite grew out of despite the trouble it inevitably brought him.
The guy stared like he wasn’t quite sure if Steve was touched in the head, but he sobered up pretty quick when Steve couldn’t help but let out a laugh.
“I don’t like being made fun off, you pansy.”
Steve decided to go for broke: “How about you fuck off.”
The man took a swing, his cigarette smoldered forgotten at their feet. Steve stumbled back and tripped on a cracked sidewalk slab. The man recovered quicker than Steve and managed to pop him in the jaw.
“I’m going to teach you a lesson.”
Music to Steve’s ears. “And I’m gonna teach you some manners. You think you own the block just because your grandma makes cookies in that house?” He gestured to the rows of homes around them.
“Don’t you talk about my Oma.”
Steve sighed, it seemed no matter where these mooks hailed from or how tough they talked from behind their big fists, they all loved their grandmas. It made Steve uneasy.
The man’s next hit split Steve’s lip. It stung. A small voice in the back of his head that sounded suspiciously like Bucky’s told him to cut his losses. So Steve took a blind swing, felt it connect, heard the guy’s breath rush out with a satisfying “whoosh,” then turned tail and ran. He doubted the man would follow him but Steve ran until his cough got too bad to keep going and stumbled the rest of the way.
Limped up the stairs, shoved the key in the lock, kicked the bottom left of the door to unstick it from the warped frame.
Bucky was doing laundry when he walked in, his back to Steve as he scrubbed at his church shirt. The small remaining green shard of soap was pinched between his fingers as he worked at a stain.
“It’s late,” Bucky greeted as Steve turned the deadbolt. “Hope they’re not keeping you to lock up shop.”
“No,” Steve answered, wincing as the words pursed his lips. “I just stopped to talk to someone on the way home.”
Bucky groaned.
“Don’t start, Buck.”
“Don’t start what?” Bucky turned around and groaned again at the sight of Steve’s swelling face. “Stupid, with lumps the size of baseballs, you’ll have everyone talking come Sunday.”
“Those men don’t have any right to be taking from good people. I told you about them before. I just wanna try and stop ‘em is all.”
Bucky wrung his shirt of and laid it on the back of the chair. “You at least get a good punch in?”
Steve grinned. “Sure did.”
Bucky tugged at Steve’s lapels, pulling him close. He stared at Steve’s face critically. “It’s not as bad as last time.”
“It barely hurts.”
Bucky rolled his eyes. “Yeah sure, Stevie, ‘cause we all know a split lip barely smarts.”
“Course we do.”
Bucky smiled, closed lipped in the way that made it clear he was still mad. Steve leaned close, rocking up on his tiptoes. Bucky tipped his face down towards Steve’s.
“I brought pulla,” Steve whispered.
Bucky laughed.
Steve pulled the crinkled bag from between the two of them. “I hope they aren’t too squished.”
“I’m sure they’re fine,” Bucky placated as he took the bag from Steve and placed it on the chair.
He gently pressed his lips to Steve’s cheekbone, avoiding the bruise that was blossoming just under his pale skin. “Please be careful, Steve.”
“I will.”
But they both knew it was a pretty useless request. Steve was always going to call out people for doing the wrong thing, Bucky was always going to chastise him, they were always going to end up falling into each other with various bumps and bruises and doe-eyed looks.
They cared too much for each other. Someday it was going to get them into serious trouble. Until then, Bucky tightened his fingers in the scratchy fabric of Steve’s coat and kissed him on his forehead, trying to avoid hurting Steve’s bloody lips. Steve huffed.
“Let’s eat, okay?” Bucky moved away to set the plates on the table. “I’m starved.”
“What about the dance hall?”
“Let’s stay in,” Bucky suggested. “We could go out tomorrow.”
Steve tried not to let his relief show, but he saw Bucky’s smile.
“There better be some liquorice candy in that bag, Rogers.”
“A whole handful, Barnes, just for you.”