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It took two months of going to the meeting every Monday for you to get up the nerve to talk to him. You knew who he was – Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier – everyone knew who he was. You liked his words, the way he spoke them, all low and soft and smooth, intentional with every syllable. He would sit so still, so small, and you wondered if he did that because of something done to him – the way you did – or if he did that so he wouldn’t scare everyone else.
You stared at him as he spoke, studied him shamelessly, and it was the third week when he finally met your gaze. You offered a fleeting smile, and he didn’t, but the hard lines around his eyes softened.
When you spoke, he studied you. The practiced motions of your hands, the trained lilt of your voice. You’d had a master, just as much as he’d had. You wore scars, just as terrible as his. Even though he couldn’t see them, he could hear them in your voice, in the careful way you chose all your words.
You sat small in your chair, pulling into yourself, but he knew from the intelligence in your eyes and the clever tilt to your head that you could be big. You could be magnificent and cosmic and brilliant, he knew it.
It took five weeks for you to greet him. A smile and a nod. That’s all you had to offer so that’s all he got. He accepted it with grace and understanding, nodding back. He didn’t smile, ever, at all, but those hard lines around his eyes faded, and you realised how beautiful that sweet, clear blue was. Did they sparkle when the cheap fluorescents of the old church basement hit them just right? You’d never been close enough to find out.
It took seven weeks for you to finally cave to the admittance of your disease, alcoholism, a dirty word, bitter and shameful in your mouth. The weight in your chest didn’t disappear when you said it out loud for the first time, there was no rush of relief, no sense of liberation. You were exhausted, more than anything else.
But Bucky was watching you in that soft, understanding way of his, and when you met his gaze, the corners of his eyes crinkled upwards slightly, as if he might have been thinking about giving you a smile.
It took eight weeks for you to talk to him.
A bad day followed you into the church and down the stairs to the basement, those horrid fluorescents highlighting the fact that you hadn’t been sleeping and had hardly been eating, and maybe they even cast light on the aching, whispering, alluring desire for a drink, just one drink, only one.
Bucky nodded greeting. You did, too, trying to smile, because it felt nice to smile, but your lips didn’t work, the bad day just a little too heavy.
It took eight weeks for Bucky to sit next to you. That close he could smell your perfume, not sweet but a scent that brought sweetness to his thoughts. He could smell the things you tried to hide with the perfume, like the sour tinge of days-old deodorant or the odd tack of dry shampoo. That close, he could see the make-up you wore just a little more dolled-up than your normal look, as if you were compensating. Hiding.
No, he wanted to say. You didn’t need to hide. You didn’t need to make yourself small. Magnificent and cosmic and brilliant, he could almost taste it when you would speak.
You give him a curious look from the corner of your eyes, and when he nods again, your lips twitch up into a reluctant smile. This close, you can see the awkward stuttering to his movements, as if he’s unsure if you’ll accept him. This close, you can see the depth of those blue eyes, old and tired and sad. This close, you can feel the easy softness that settles between you, the kind of connection that can only be formed between two comrades in the same fight, who know the battles and the lies and the cruelty intimately well.
Bravery is difficult, a new hurdle you’ve not yet felt the strength to overcome, but you swallow some with your next breath and turn to face him entirely. “Do you like ice cream?”
Blue eyes blink at you once, twice, startled, amazed, maybe even awe-struck. “I do.” His words, meant for only you, are different than when he speaks in the group, modulated to float beneath the hum of other conversation, a low rumble that’s as lovely as it is foreign.
You swallow a little more bravery – not courage, because the only courage you know from the past is the liquid form – and say, “There’s a soda fountain I go to after every meeting. I get a burger and a shake. They have a jukebox that kids sometimes use.” You can taste your adrenaline, feel the heady swirl of the ache that is your addiction’s craving. You force your question past all that. “Would you like to come with me?”
He blinks again. He’d never thought someone would ask him to a soda fountain. It’d been years, decades. He didn’t even know they’d still existed. But you’re here, in front of him, looking at him with that magnificence unfurling from your shoulders like wings of radiance, asking if he wants to go to one. Strong, the thought comes to him, cosmic, brilliant.
It’s your routine, your private moment, and he knows the gift you're offering with the invitation. His lips tug upwards slightly, the motion unfamiliar but not unwelcome. “Yes,” he says. “I would like to.”
The answering smile you give him, fuck it’s the most gorgeous thing he’s seen in a long time. A warrior’s smile, worn and ragged and unbroken. Unstoppable.
He wonders one day if he’ll be like you. What would it be like to have that tenacity, that wisdom ? How would it feel to face addiction’s battle every morning and come out the other end standing tall?
Because you make yourself small, but you’re not bent. You’re not cowed. He wonders if maybe you could teach him how.
It takes nine weeks for Bucky Barnes to finally smile back at you.