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“Do you remember that,” came the voice down the line. It was a little tinny, and almost lost to the wind that bent the grass low in the field.
Bucky turned over his hands and studied them. Wheedled a bit of grass out from between the plates of his ring finger. “No,” he said.
The wind tousled the leaves over his head. Bucky leaned back against the trunk of the tree to watch the leaves shift and huddle above him. Everything was orange in the late afternoon light.
“’S’okay,” Steve said, but Bucky knew he didn’t mean it. He was a little distracted, some shuffling and clanking noise in the background occupying his attention. Washing the dishes, maybe. Radio on low. Steve always needed noise when Bucky wasn’t around. Always humming and bumping into things and swearing and calling defeatedly to report another broken glass.
Bucky was starting to think he was doing it on purpose. “How’s our glass count?”
“Same as yesterday.”
Bucky hummed. An unexplainably tiny field mouse was exploring the surface of his phone where it lay in the grass beside him. “Well done.”
“Night’s still young.”
“Not night yet.”
Steve pshawed in the way that meant he was ceding ground.
Bucky’s lips quirked, the smallest amount.
They let the breeze sing a little tune down the line.
“How’s work?” The clanking noises had stopped. Drying the dishes, then, maybe.
Something about this rankled him. Dishes and this field were worlds so dissimilar as to be utterly alien to one another. “Oh, you know,” Bucky began, and held his finger out for the field mouse to investigate. The mouse gave it a tentative sniff and bounded up to scale his arm. Ripples of a ghost shiver coursed up to his shoulder, but he stayed still as he could. The mouse had stopped in his elbow to examine the clover he’d forgotten he’d tucked there. A hot spike of annoyance coursed through him. He wished he couldn’t forget he’d left something in him. He flicked the mouse off his arm. “Killing time.”
It was an expression they both hated, Steve perhaps a little more.
The mouse landed in the grass a foot a way and lay still. The grass around it lay flattened in a little crater.
Bucky stared at it, chest tight. Move, he thought.
“Stop it,” said Steve.
“Sorry,” he said.
He leaned over, and touched his finger to the mouse’s delicate pink-tipped ear. The mouse flinched to fearful life and skittered away from his hand. Its little chest heaved and shuddered at irregular intervals.
“Sorry,” he said again, as his heart seized.
“It’s fine,” Steve said, even though it wasn’t, “when are you coming home,” he asked, even though he knew.
“Wednesday.”
Silence from the kitchen. Maybe Steve had gone to sit in the living room. That’s what he would do if Bucky were home. They’d curl up on the couch and Bucky would read aloud and Steve would draw or doze or rub Bucky’s feet.
A cloud passed across the sun, just above the copse of trees at the end of the meadow that hid the farmhouse from view.
“It’s too long,” Steve finally said.
Bucky squinted down the field, trying to see the window on the house that sometimes glinted in the sun through the trees. “You say that every time.”
Steve clicked his tongue. “That’s cause it’s too damn long.”
Bucky flinched as he felt something move on his ankle. Without his realizing it, the mouse had returned to tentatively climb his pant leg toward his knee.
What a view, Bucky thought, when the mouse finally reached the top of his knee and sat there, triumphant, his whiskers trembling in the breeze. They sat there together and watched the sun set behind the trees. As the warmth bled from the sky, Bucky saw another sky, just like this one, only—
—mud and white bone through Steve’s wrist oh God and bleeding through the tourniquet and shit, the moon bright as day—
“Steve?”
“Mmm?”
“You broke your wrist in, um, Austria.” The wind had a chill now, that it hadn’t just a few minutes before.
“Real,” Steve said, a hitch in his voice even over the phone. “Oh Buck, I’m sorry.”
“’s okay,” Bucky said, even though it wasn’t. “I’m gonna go in now.”
“Okay, honey. Say hi to Ruth for me.”
“I will. Bye.”
Bucky scooped the mouse up from his knee and deposited him very gently at the base of the tree. He stuffed his phone in his pocket and bid the mouse goodbye via a lopsided salute and began the traipse back to the house in the darkening grey. The grass shuffled about his ankles and he tugged his coat closer around him. He felt the cold more keenly these days, especially in his shoulder. Ruth thought that made sense and her husband Hallie had a prosthetic leg that acted up in the winter so Bucky thought there was probably some truth to it.
He hadn’t meant to stay out all day. He lost track of time so easily still. Even the conversation with Steve had felt elastic, seconds stretching and melding into minutes and maybe even hours. Steve never begrudged him this time, but Bucky wished fervently that he never had to lose a second of it.
Hallie had gone to bed, Ruth said, when he had latched the door behind him, but he’d saved Bucky a plate, and would he like it in his room if she heated it up for him?
By the time he’d eaten and stripped off his clothes and tumbled into bed, Bucky was bone-tired. But part of the deal about staying with Ruth and Hallie were the “reflections” he wrote during his stay, so Bucky scribbled a few sentences about his day and fell asleep still clutching the pencil in his hand.
++++
The rain slaughtered on, coming down heavy on the gutters and the double-paned windows of their living room. Steve’s socked feet— one striped sock and one blue woolen one— twitched in his lap as he dozed, and Bucky scratched his nose before turning a page in his book. In the corner, the radio murmured you grow up so strong, you’re so strong, but I wanna stay young, I wanna stay young with you—
Gunshots punched through the glass. Bucky dropped to the floor, dragging Steve with him. They crashed down between the couch and the coffee table. Bucky couldn’t feel his fingers. His ears rang and his fingers searched Steve’s body quickly and methodically for injury. He found none. He reached for his gun and Steve caught his hand in a vice grip.
“Stop.”
Bucky writhed, the plates in his arm singing. “Let me—go!”
“No. Buck,” Steve caught his shoulder and shoved him. Rolled them so he straddled Bucky’s thighs. “Stop.”
Bucky fought for his breath. “You took—my gun—where is it—”
“Where are we,” Steve panted. He pinned Bucky’s arms down at his sides.
—Steve’s face contorted against the overcast sky, oh there was something wrong, and his mouth saying Sorry, sorry for what, oh, that hurt like a bitch—
“We’re—I’m—” Bucky’s eyes shot wildly about the room, catching a dull glint off a TV, the faint movement of a few faded paper streamers hanging from the ceiling, and the lumpy shape of a raincoat draped over a straight-backed chair.
“Right.” Steve held him down until he stopped resisting. “What did you hear?”
“You heard it!”
“No,” Steve said. The rain tumbled on outside, oblivious to those petty dramas playing out beyond its domain. Steve squeezed Bucky’s wrists, and let go. “I didn’t.”
Bucky squeezed his eyes shut and let the tears roll silently down his face. He didn’t look as Steve’s weight lifted from his thighs, or when his steps padded off into the kitchen, or when they returned.
When the squall passed, he opened his eyes and took in the wobbly glass of water on the table and Steve, attentively sitting on the rug a foot away.
“Window isn’t broken,” Bucky observed, voice hoarse.
Steve hummed. “Right. But you thought it was, and it made you think of something?”
“You shot me.”
“Not real, Buck. Christ.” Steve reached out his hand, then thought better of it, and let it fall to the carpet.
“Saw it.”
Steve’s face did something upsetting, but he schooled it into placidity. “Can you see me? Now, I mean?”
Bucky scoffed, tossed his head away. The map of Reykjavik on the wall was lit only by a small yellow lamp, which tossed the whole city into shadows and shades that would have rendered it unrecognizable to even the most seasoned of locals. Bucky studied it. He could just make out the museum on the high street, if he squinted. He wished, fervently, that he could not.
When Steve took his hand, Bucky flinched. Steve held on. A car trundled past outside, splashing through the puddle that always gathered just past their driveway, even in the slightest rain. Driving through it always sounded you were speeding, no matter how slow you took the dip.
“I love you,” Steve said, “I’m so sorry.”
“I know,” Bucky said.
They sat there in silence so long that the church down the street toned one, its bells muffled by the rain but clear and sweet enough to be heard in the silence of their small apartment. Steve touched Bucky’s pinky with his.
Bucky heaved a shuddering breath.
“Thanks,” Bucky said.
Steve just squeezed his hand. “Shower?”
Bucky nodded, jerkily, and let Steve haul him up off the rug, push the coffee table back into place, and lead him away to the warmth and safety of the steam and the shower head that was set low enough that it couldn’t get his face wet.
++++
The high street was warm in the early afternoon sun, and the slight breeze that troubled the odd flag and the willows that lined the corners outside of shops and apartments was only strong enough to tousle the hair. The trees’ shadows cast refreshing constellations of shade to cut the sweat. Overhead, the birds muttered about whether the weather would hold.
“But do you really think he’d do that?” Steve’s voice pitched incredulous, and then indignant as Bucky threw back his head and laughed. “What!”
“You really think people would do that?” he asked, when he’d composed himself. “Go on the movies and tell lies?”
Steve scoffed, but his cheeks pinked. He twisted his hand out of Bucky’s grip and jogged ahead a few steps.
Bucky grinned, and pitched his voice regretful as a couple and their small child and large dog trundled past them. “Steve, wait, I love your youthful and naive ways—”
Steve whirled, murderous, nearly knocking over two ladies in nice dresses laden with shopping bags. He started towards Bucky, who spared an apologetic glance to the ladies before breaking into peals of laughter and scampering away, dodging out of reach of Steve’s vengeful grasp. They danced each other to the crosswalk where they doubled over at the edge of the little waiting crowd, wheezing.
“Is there any dignity left in this new generation,” remarked a woman as the cars came to a stop and the walk sign clicked on.
“Mom!” The teenager at her arm groaned, casting them a glance before hurrying along after her. “You can’t say that!”
Bucky snorted and Steve pouted, but caught Bucky's hand in his to wander across the street towards the park.
“Oh, look!” Bucky broke away from Steve to look on at a painter who had set up his easel under a tree near the low wall that marked the entrance to the park. “He’s painting!”
His easel was set up in the direction of the meadow, and he was just at the start, by the looks of it. No greens yet, only rough lines in deep, rich blues that stretched across a scraped, deep orange hue that suffused the small square of paper. Something about it was familiar, somehow—a warm, calloused hand in his and blue water turned gold as far as the eye could see, oh God, there was that feeling again, warm and full and bubbling up in his chest like good champagne—
Bucky stood, transfixed, and hardly moved when Steve caught up and caught a hand around his hip.
—warm water up to his knees and sand and little rocks beneath his feet and a sailboat blurring in the distance, sun getting low —
“Were we ever,” Bucky started, twisting to see Steve’s profile. He scrunched his mouth up—sailboat? Warm water? Day—“Hm. Well that wouldn’t make sense.”
Steve smiled. “Oh, well, this one’s gonna be good, then. That is pretty, isn’t it?”
“Right? I like the blue," Bucky said, distracted. "Anyway," he said, tapping his left fingers together. "So it’s like, there’s this beach, but there’s nothing wrong and the sun is over the water, like it's going down.”
Steve hummed. “Not real,” he murmured. "You've never been to the West Coast, as far as I can figure.
Bucky nodded, a little unsettled. He'd never known exactly where they'd sent him. One day he'd go through every sorry manila folder and cardboard box collecting dust in the ruins of SHIELD. “Hmm.”
“Sounds real nice, though,” Steve added, and tugged lightly on Bucky’s ear. “I’d like it to be.”
Giddiness welled up inside Bucky, spilling onto his face. The beach! Warm sand! Piña Coladas! “California here we come,” crowed Bucky, pulling away, twirling an invisible lasso, and breaking into a wide, goofy grin.
Steve laughed, eyes crinkling up at the corners, throwing his arm over Bucky’s shoulders to hold himself up. “Hey, mister!” He shouted over his shoulder as they traipsed away into the park.
The painter and a jogger glanced at them, brows furrowed.
“He likes your picture!”
The painter nodded in confusion and Bucky squawked in reproach as Steve erupted into giggles. They chased each other down the path at the peril of strollers and stray dogs and back into each others arms, panting and grinning with complete abandon.
Above them, the birds decided the good weather was rather likely to stay, after all.