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It’s been eleven months and he’s already put his fist through three TV sets.
Not even his metal one either, his flesh-and-blood hand shattering the glass, erupting the guts of the thing and silencing it for good. Three times he’s broken Steve’s TVs and the dumb shit has the nerve to apologize to him.
He finds all the programs so asinine, but it’s the commercials that drive him to it. The grating, constant drivel of call-now-next-week-on-education-conection-you-are-not-the-father-I’m-lovin’-it-only-$19.95 is like a song and dance routine mocking him for all that he’s missed, all that he’ll never know. He doesn’t understand and he doesn’t want to anymore.
Steve speaks low to him. Slow and soothing, or meant to be anyway, giving him words fed in by Sam, telling him how good it is to be angry. To want to lash out.
God, he’s so tired.
That’s the thing he can never convey to Steve, how he doesn’t feel angry. That’s the secret here. He doesn’t feel anything at all.
Pushing his hand through something delicate is an act of empty rage. He smashes like a child, with a sense of experimentation. If he breaks this phone (plate) (computer) (bone), does it mean he’s getting better? He’s been told how to feel for so long, he’s not quite sure he can trust himself to know, but unfortunately for them, that’s one piece of therapy that’s gotten through. The feverish voices assuring him he can determine what to think on his own.
He thinks people seem a lot better informed now but a lot less happy. He thinks it doesn’t make any sense to wait through a thirty-second ad to watch a video of screaming goats. He thinks it surprising that despite everything, they still air ballgames on the radio. He thinks he wants to die, the way Steve wants him to live. Desperately, violently, always.
But he doesn’t. It seems that every day, something else happens, there’s another new thing meant to distract him in the hopes that he’ll occupy himself instead of breaking. And sometimes he does. Today, he ties up his sneakers, zips up his jacket, and leaves the apartment. Steve likes for him to leave a note, which is exactly why he doesn’t. Maybe Steve will give up on him eventually. It would be such a relief.
The city is louder than ever, but it’s so quiet in his head anymore. He knows he’s supposed to be glad of that.
He wanders the dirty concrete, breathing in the hot, steamy mixture of garbage decaying, cheap fast food, and urine. He’s hit with an odd pang of homesickness, odd because this is his home, his half-remembered Brooklyn, but definitely a sickness of sorts judging by the curl of nausea rising in his throat. He makes himself spit, and a beautiful set of girls roll their eyes and pointedly step around his saliva shining on the ground.
The salt air of the docks helps some. He grips the steel barrier over the water with both hands, kneading the gritty tarnish with one. Staring down into the waves below, he remembers diving through the icy tide to pull up the man he didn’t know he hardly knew then.
Why does he have to keep trying?
For a while, he felt he owed it to Steve and the others to pretend their tactics were working. He can never redeem himself of everything, but he could give them that. How long can he keep up the charade, going through the motions of making headway only to ruin a few good weeks or days with another disaster? A few more months? A few more years? Steve will live a long, long time, maybe even forever.
He’s so tired.
His sneakers scuff on the pavement as he turns, defeated, to go back the way he came. Sam bought him these shoes. Steve lends him the jacket. The sharp-eyed, cocksure man who comes to see them sometimes, Tony Stark, brings the strong, thin t-shirts that never rip or tear. It makes them feel better to give him things. He has nothing else to offer them.
He steps down to cross the road, and it happens almost all at once.
A single sheet of paper plasters itself to his side in the wind, just as a man shouts, “Bucky, stop!” and the ground shakes underfoot as he looks down to the paper. He peels it from his side with his metal arm, so when the truck pulls him under, the last thing he knows is not his lungs crushing to pulp or the blood bursting from every one of his veins, but the feel of his fist releasing the stupid, pointless paper to the wind. The last thing he sees is his own shiny palm, outstretched and open and God, it could almost feel like relief at last.
He wakes up gasping most the time anyway, sucking down air that doesn’t seem to belong to him, thrashing through the cushiony sheets. Always on a blaze of muscle memory and raw, unfiltered instinct only to discover the enemy is still trapped within what used to be his mind. But he can’t trust his head any more than he can trust a flicker of emotion, and it’s all just another mess for Steve to clean up.
Steve is here now. He usually is, when the ordeal of waking comes, offering less and less over the months in the way of words, until finally Sam’s whole speech about the terror of PTSD (turns out they’ve got a name for just about everything now; ‘shell-shocked’ isn’t classy enough for pill bottles) can be condensed into just one phrase.
“Nightmare?”
Steve has this face he makes when he says it. Apologetic eyes, grim little grin, hands locked under his chin. On anybody else, he’d think it was an act, and a damn cheesy one at that, but this man, the one he sometimes remembers staring down litterbugs and line-jumpers, is all honesty.
He drags himself upright on the big, flouncy bed that he knows used to be Steve’s. He moves slow, taking in what he just heard and trying to match it to a set of horrors from the night. The paper, the truck return and he inhales quietly.
But no. He looks down at his metal hand and grimaces. It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a hopeful fantasy. He’s had too much experience with harsh awakenings, painful realizations that what was there moments ago was never there at all.
He was dead. And now he is not.
Steve notices his hesitance and like usual, interprets it to suit what he needs to believe.
“Bad one then, huh?”
He rarely knows what to say. For a bare moment, he thinks about telling Steve what’s happened. The words are half-formed on his tongue before they sour suddenly. He clenches his metal fist.
If he explained, there’s a chance Steve might be believe him, and making him carry that knowledge would be far worse.
He breathes out and when he speaks, he sounds like a cheap talking doll.
“Yes. A dream.”
“Wanna talk about it?” Steve asks automatically. The answer is a persistent dead thing.
“No. But.” He wavers. He has so little to give. “Breakfast. We should have some…breakfast.”
Steve’s hands drop in surprise, his eyes are wide. This is unprecedented.
“Sure, Bucks. Anything you want.”
Before today, they’ve had to work hard to get food in him. After so many episodes of near-starvation followed by force feeding, eating is just another dark thing to avoid. When his head and gut start to ache, he crumbles a dry, “organic” granola bar and swallows the crumbs as fast as he can. Or squashes a perfect kiwi or pear. Foods that are nothing like what they gave him go down the easiest.
He wets his lips and tries to command a memory of way back when, of what Steve liked to eat. There is nothing. He draws from a juice commercial instead.
“Toast and eggs with bacon. Um, orange juice.”
Steve nods, still processing his shock.
“We’ve got all that stuff. You…want to give me a hand or should I just bring you a plate?”
The look on Steve’s face is a hopeful, trusting one. Breakable. Especially in the hands of somebody known to smash. He pushes aside the sheets and stands.
“I’ll help.”
He follows Steve to the kitchen, and the tile floor is cold under his bare feet. He wiggles his toes, looks down in surprise. He’s never noticed before.
Steve hands him a bowl and eggs and a fork. It’s a simple task. He can do it.
“So I was thinking of running some files back to Stark’s place today,” Steve begins, and oh God, it’s such a delicate operation. He can practically taste the careful coaxing in each word, can sense Steve’s determination to get this right even as he faces the stove to line a frying pan with raw meat.
“Just some intel I’ve been catching up on. A priority one task, no, but it’s not like I’ve got anything else on for today.”
Then Steve turns, goes for a little smile, and he does know what to say.
“I could go with you.”
They make the food and sit down to eat it, and he just keeps stacking these small offering on Steve, one right after another. Yes, he’ll go. Yes, he’ll eat the eggs and bacon and burnt toast. Yes, he’ll comb his hair, put on one of Steve’s clean shirts.
He knows what he’s doing is almost too much. He doesn’t respond much to his treatment, but he understands how it’s supposed to go, gets that going for ten gold stars in a day after months of constant fuck-ups is suspicious.
But hell. He doesn’t remember a time when he and Steve could just walk through the city together without a hot current of panic running between them. Steve is cautious, sure, but doesn’t look like he’s terrified for everyone’s lives, like he regrets taking his monster out for a walk. And he’s too distracted by how okay that is to look for sharp things hiding in the shadows.
They used to do this a lot, way back when. He knows this because Steve narrates the entire journey to Stark’s. They’re two blacks from the subway and Steve remembers a fight he lost in that alley. They’re on the train when he reminisces about having to scrape together the pennies to pay for rides. They pass a deli and even the grimy window signals something to Steve, brings him to a time when they were so young and stupid and this babysitting thing went the other way around. Sometimes he remembers whole afternoons worth of shepherding Steve around their blessed city.
Stark isn’t home, but that doesn’t matter. Steve can hand off the files to the pretty redhead who runs this place and he can look at the shiny prototypes for something new and destructive in her office. It isn’t hard to believe this man is the son of Howard Stark. He wishes Tony was home then. He wants the chance to apologize, for taking his father away. He’s scanning the office for a blank sheet of paper, daring himself to go through with it, when Steve stands and says they have to go.
They end up at the deli with dirty windows. Steve orders them pastrami, extra sauerkraut, extra pickles, and regrets it as soon as the sandwiches hit their table.
“You’re gonna get sick, Bucks, that’s too much in one day. I should have known better, I’ll get you something else.”
But he yanks the tray free from Steve’s grasp and slaps it back down. He looks up at Steve and it is easier to get a message across without his hair in his eyes. He picks up the sandwich. Steve looks relieved as he slides back into his seat.
Another meal passes easy. Steve talks about nothing in particular and he listens and tries to keep his mind from wandering.
The thought of death itself doesn’t concern him. He knows the real version of himself has been gone over seventy years, the man Steve keeps checking for hopefully. It reminds him of a dog trying to nudge its dead owner back to life. The breaking of a partnership where neither can live without the other.
Fuck. Steve is the portrait of selflessness.
They go back to the apartment. On the train, two broad, braying councilmen’s wives smack into them with expensive shopping bags, knocking him off-balance even with the force of designer cashmere. He cycles through surprise then irritation then ingrained desire to reach for a gun that’s not there. He catches Steve’s eye, sees how white he’s gone, and blinks. Some wisecrack about livestock in lipstick slips through his teeth instead.
Steve gapes back at him for a second, before he’s busting up laughing. Not just a little snort to humor him, but chest-heaving gasps and chortles, so hard he has to grip his flesh shoulder for support. Somehow, he’s entertained Steve again, and it’s so good he wishes he’d never said anything at all. The simple beauty of this moment burns him, because now Steve believes it can happen again and it won’t.
Steve smiles all the way back inside, daring to brush against him in the halls and flop down into the sofa. He places himself in an easy chair, and before he has to time blink, Steve has disappeared and popped back up with his sketchbook, a thin pencil, doughy eraser.
And hell, it’s easy. He just has to sit there and breathe. Steve doesn’t talk, doesn’t expect anything of him, barely even looks at him, making him wonder what image is creating itself on the sketchbook. Not a portrait, but a memory? A record of what used to be, brought out by their day together?
The afternoon eats away at itself. He feels a stab of panic and then a strange rush of giddiness. He wants to speak now. Fear makes it sound like something funny: Hey Stevie, guess what? I’m gonna die today!
Steve’s phone rings. The silence is broken, taking down with it the want to speak. He watches helplessly as Steve sighs and answers the call, knows from the snap of the sketchbook flipping shut that they’ve run out of time.
He walks to the kitchen and fishes out a glass to fill with water so he doesn’t have to look when Steve comes in after him.
“It’s only a fifty-fifty shot it’s our guy and it’s just downtown. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Steve hesitates. Hell, maybe he can sense it coming.
“I’ll pick up some beer on the way home, and we can try to remember what it was like to get drunk. Just you and me, Bucks.”
He drops his head because he can feel Steve searching for a response, hoping he hasn’t ruined everything. He doesn’t move again until Steve gives up and leaves, clutching at the glass til it cracks.
For a little while, he wanders through the apartment, waiting. He touches the sketchbook, but leaves it shut on the couch. He makes up the bed that will belong to Steve again. The vast, fluffy blankets are harder to tuck and fold. The single pillow seems almost childishly soft.
He stares at the TV on mute, letting the burger ads and cleaner demonstrations run soundlessly until something in the evening sunlight is familiar and tells him it’s time to go.
This time, he flips over a bank statement from the stack of mail Steve rarely bothers with. Taking the thin pencil from the couch, he chooses something simple.
‘Gone to the docks. See you soon.’
He ties his sneakers. Zips up his jacket. Leaves the apartment.
Again, he thinks of Steve, but now he pictures the quiet concentration of his face while he draws, the tightness of his mouth and intensity of his blue eyes.
He almost smiles as he makes his way down to the water. He can let that be his last image of Steve.
He closes his eyes, breathes the sea air in deep. There’s nothing poetic about it, no deathbed fantasies or regrets, but there is a feeling of something on top of the boundless emptiness he’s known for so long. He doesn’t force himself to name it; doesn’t think he can categorize all the looping tendrils of loss and hope and fear and love with mere words, even within his own broken head.
His eyes are still closed when he turns and feels the pavement under his feet drop off. He knows he doesn’t deserve to spare himself the sight of Steve, but in these last moments, he can give himself a few more seconds.
Three…
Two…
“Bucky, stop!”
The paper sticks itself to his side, he feels it, and he feels Steve’s panicked eyes on him. He sees them, somehow simultaneously, the blood-drained face too accustomed to this horror and his own smudged handwriting.
Everything is cracking open, raw and red under the weight of the truck. There is no relief in the cadence of Steve’s boots and the feral curl of his mouth fading to black. There is nothing more owed or taken between them. And the pain he feels now is just…pain.
He exhales through the hollow straw threads of his lungs. Makes them free.