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It wasn’t long past midnight when Bucky finally turned the corner onto his street. Just long enough, he thought. And then he thought that a few minutes shouldn’t make so much of a difference, and tried to tell himself that it was all just artificial anyway. But the clock on the department store tower he was passing said that it wasn’t Sunday anymore. His last leave was over. Today was Monday, and today he was leaving for war.
Once upon a time, the night watchmen would have given him sideways looks, a young man walking alone down 33rd street on the wrong side of midnight. These days they looked his uniform and nodded respectfully instead. Bucky hated it. He wished he could go back to the ragged boy he’d been, take Steve with him into the past and hide there together. The stars seemed too bright in his eyes when he looked up, remembering childhood tales of wishes that came true, pausing on the corner by the barber’s shop and straining to see over the streetlights and the candles old-fashioned ladies still kept burning in their windows.
There weren’t any lights on in the little shoebox he shared with Steve. Steve would have long since gone to bed. For a moment Bucky felt guilty for leaving him alone at the fair, but then the feeling evaporated in a flash of anger and hurt. Steve had left him behind. Steve had seen that damn recruitment sign and just had to try, and Bucky couldn’t watch him do it again, he couldn’t. Not tonight. He’d wanted to have tonight as a memory to look back on when he was in Europe. Wanted to see Steve smile, maybe even laugh a little, like he hadn’t since his third attempt to enlist. And maybe Bucky had wanted to fill his memory with images of Steve safe in New York, half a world away from war.
Steve had never been big on going along with anyone else’s plans for him. Bucky really ought to have known that by now.
The door squeaked when he pushed it open, noise cutting in the still, quiet air. Bucky swallowed a curse, held his breath and hoped he hadn’t woken Steve. Any other night he’d be secretly pleased at the thought of getting to see Steve’s face and hear his voice again before falling asleep. Tonight he just didn’t want to think about any of it. Didn’t want to think about turning back at the fair, one arm each around two different girls, watching Steve walk away from him and into the recruiting booth. Bucky had always known that one day Steve would leave him behind. Steve was this wonderful guy, after all, and Bucky was just some punk. Eventually the world would realize its mistake and Steve would be gone, heading off into some amazing life like he deserved. Watching Steve head back into the recruiting booth had felt like a foretaste of that future.
Bucky tiptoed into their room as quietly as he could. He’d left his jacket in the hall and his shoes outside the door, and now he was just hoping to slide into bed without disturbing Steve. Catch however much sleep he could before he had to get up and catch the subway to the Fort. But halfway across the room, the silence really registered, and he knew he was doomed. Steve wasn’t a placid sleeper; he twisted and turned, his breathing turned erratic when he wasn’t consciously controlling it, and he had a tendency to steal the covers. One thing he definitely wasn’t was quiet. Bucky straightened up and sighed, not bothering to keep it quiet.
He heard the hiss and strike of a match, and the small kerosene lamp next to the bed flared to life. The light it cast was too red, wavering oddly and casting strange shadows, but it was more than bright enough to illuminate the small room. Steve hadn’t even changed for sleep. He was just sitting on the narrow twin bed, knees drawn up to his chest, watching Bucky with eyes that were huge and unreadable.
“Heya,” Steve said softly. The reddish light should have livened him up, made his cheeks ruddy and given him a healthy glow. It just made him look consumptive. Bucky shivered.
“Hey yourself,” Bucky answered after a moment. When Steve didn’t speak again, he cast about for something else to say. “I thought you’d be asleep.”
“I wanted to see you again,” Steve said, and it could just have been a trick of the lateness and the light, but Bucky thought there was something odd in the cadence of Steve’s voice. “Before you ship out.”
“Maybe you should’ve stuck around longer at the fair, then,” Bucky snapped before he could think. He wanted to catch the words back at the way Steve flinched. Stupid, stupid, what was he doing? This wasn’t what he wanted his last memory of Steve to be. “I’m glad you stayed up,” he added, trying to make up for it, even if he wasn’t sure at all that what he was saying was the truth.
“Yeah,” Steve said, which was no answer at all.
Bucky couldn’t understand the look on Steve’s face. He’d known Steve for as long as he could remember, or near enough, and he knew all of Steve’s moods, but this one was strange. Maybe it was the lateness of the hour and the unreality of the situation. Tomorrow morning Bucky was going to get up and put on his uniform again and get on a train. The train wasn’t going to take him to the newsstand or the grocer or any of the hundred other places he knew in New York. It was going to take him to Fort Greene, and then the army would put him on a truck and take him to Port Liberty, and when his ship sailed for England that’s the last he’d see of New York for a long time. And before that, before the ship and the truck and the train, would have come the last he’d see of Steve for a long time, too. Maybe ever.
“Come to bed,” Steve said finally.
Bucky huffed out a little laugh and sat down on the edge of the bed, fumbling with his belt, fumbling after some kind of normalcy. He shoved his pants off at last and fell back, too tired to do anything else, fighting off the longing that made him want to roll over and wrap his arms around Steve and never let go.
“Gonna turn the light out?” he asked. It’s not what Bucky wanted to say; he wanted to tell Steve he was sorry about the fair, sorry about himself, sorry about their whole goddamn lives. There were a lot of things he’d always wanted to tell Steve. Bucky thought suddenly that maybe tonight was the last chance he’d ever have to say any of them, and then he thought that if that was true, then they were never going to get said at all.
It almost made him feel relieved. Maybe some things were better left unsaid. Bucky had never had the right words, and he’d always been afraid of what Steve might hear behind the wrong ones.
“I’m sorry I left you,” Steve whispered, making no move towards the lamp.
“Don’t be,” Bucky told him. He wondered if maybe he had been wrong to try and make this last night about himself. Maybe he should have spent a little more time thinking about what Steve would have liked to do; maybe then Steve wouldn’t have left.
“I am,” Steve insisted. “I just…” he sighed. “I can’t stand the thought of you going without me, Bucky. That’s not how it’s supposed to work, we’re supposed to be…” he shrugged a little, wincing, and Bucky could see beneath the artificial redness of his cheeks how pale Steve had gone. “You gotta understand,” he finished, wearily. “Everyone was doing their duty except me.”
Bucky shook his head. “There’s more than one kind of duty, pal.”
Steve nodded a little, frowned, and Bucky could tell he didn’t get it.
"Look,” Bucky muttered, then stopped and swallowed and tried again. “There’s – they’ve got enough men already, all right? Someone’s got to stay behind. What if the Japanese try something in New York, huh? Who’s going to take care of it?” And it wasn’t even a lie to say that that scared Bucky, because the fear of Steve being dragged out of the rubble of New York kept Bucky awake at night. He was frightened of war – he wasn’t stupid enough not to be, whatever Steve might joke – but he was more scared of his own nightmares.
“But if I can’t be strong enough for the army – ”
“Ain’t about strength,” Bucky insisted. “’S about heart.”
Steve sighed.
Bucky stared at him, the curve of his jaw, the graceful arch of his fingers curled together, and finally gave up and crawled over to Steve, took him in his arms. He always wanted to touch Steve, whenever they were together, and until Bucky’s enlistment they’d always been together. He’d sling one arm around Steve’s shoulders to tug him in the right direction, or nudge him aside with a hand pushing against his back, or ruffle his hair a little when they were joking around. And Steve would just grin up at him, like everything was normal, and there would be that dropping feeling in Bucky’s stomach that made him remember all at once that he wasn’t supposed to feel this way about Steve. He’d swear to himself that he was going to get this under control, back off a little, try to resist. But tomorrow he was shipping out to Europe and he might never see Steve again, and Steve was looking anywhere but Bucky, like the sight of the uniform was too much for him. And somehow he just had to touch Steve, make Steve look. Because this was reality, whatever he might wish.
“Steve?” Bucky whispered into Steve’s hair. He hated himself for the way he sounded, desperate and needy. That wouldn’t convince Steve he was strong or tough or brave, the way Steve wanted to think. If Bucky was a better friend he’d find some way to make Steve believe all those things. But Steve was special and worthy and the best thing in Bucky’s life. And he couldn’t let Steve get himself killed when Bucky could perfectly well go in his place.
“What?” Steve asked.
“…promise me you’ll stop trying to enlist.” Because when Bucky went over there, when he was fighting to keep America safe and all the things it said on the recruitment posters, it was going to be Steve he thought about defending. And he wanted to be able to believe, even if it was just a story, that Steve was going be safe no matter what. “Promise me,” he repeated.
Lie to me. Because Steve was a good person, and he’d want to keep his promise, but he was also a stubborn bastard with a sense of duty he wouldn’t break, not for anyone. Certainly not for Bucky. But maybe Bucky would be able to make himself believe it, some of the time, and that would have to be enough.
Steve shifted a little, the top of his head nudging up against Bucky’s chin. He didn’t push Bucky away. He never pushed Bucky away. Bucky let himself feel this, Steve wrapped up in his arms, and prayed for one gift in exchange for all of the things the world would never give him.
“I promise,” Steve said finally. And somehow it sounded like he actually meant it. “I won’t try to enlist again.”
Bucky sagged a little in sheer relief, not letting go, and Steve let him, tipping them both sideways so they were leaning against the wall instead of each other quite so hard. He didn’t know when or how Steve finally learned to be able to lie to him, but if it had to happen at all he was grateful it happened tonight.
“But you gotta promise me something in return,” Steve went on. Bucky nodded before the words even finished rattling around in his head.
“Name it.”
Steve twisted around a little so he was hugging Bucky back, and Bucky sighed, feeling like he could bury himself in Steve and never want to crawl out again. “You gotta promise not to die,” Steve said fiercely. “Not without me, okay? Not before we’re together again.”
Bucky wanted to laugh, because what kind of a promise was that? That wasn’t anything he could control. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to do whatever was necessary to end the war, and then shake the dust of Europe from his boots and never go back. He wanted to be here, with Steve, for as long as possible, never mind the one room and the flaky gas stove and the running water that never ran. But wanting was all he had. He couldn’t promise anything more.
And Steve knew that. So what he really wanted was the same thing Bucky did: to be lied to.
Bucky took a deep breath and breathed Steve in, sweat and chalk and dust. He committed the feeling of arms around him to memory, and the sounds of Brooklyn outside their window, and the soft rise and fall of Steve’s chest against him. The feelings he kept trying to get rid of wrapped up and all around him and for once he let himself just feel them, and it was the best thing ever and he didn’t even care anymore that he was going to burn in hell because maybe it was worth it to feel like this.
And when it was all around him like the warmest blanket on the coldest day of winter, he made believe it would last forever, and he told Steve, “I promise.”
(They both keep their promises.)