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There was an unplaced calm in his body as Steve sat out on the fire escape of their apartment. At 3 am in the morning, Brooklyn had a stillness that belied its chaos of day. Steve could faintly hear a couple arguing in one of the apartments across the street and one of the cats Ms. Goldstein two floors below kept feeding was in dire need of a partner but other than that the night was quiet with a listless mid-spring breeze rolling cans on pavement and the faint buzz of street lights Steve was somehow able to hear even when Bucky said he never could.
Steve pulled his blanket tighter around him and crossed his legs, tucking his socked feet under his thighs for added warmth. The earlier adrenaline rush had seeped out of him, leaving him in a strange sense of numbing equilibrium. His hands had shaken for two hours after leaving the Stark Expo, his heart beating in an uneasy disarray that usually preceded an asthma attack but through sheer willpower –Bucky would say stubbornness– Steve had kept it at bay.
Now he watched the eastern end of the street with quiet eyes, his heart steady and hands lax around the blanket.
They had said goodbye. Not in a way Steve would have wished, right after an argument, but it was genuine and true. As true as anything when it came to Bucky and Steve. They would write letters and spend every day of any leave Bucky would get and he knew nothing would change between them.
But Steve knew Bucky so he wasn’t surprised when he spotted him appearing at the east end. Uniform’s cap in hand, collar undone, hair falling in his eyes. The uniform wasn’t nearly as sharp and sleek as it was hours ago but maybe that’s what having two dames on a date did to a man. Bucky didn’t look up but he did hesitate before entering the apartment, fingers trailing the edges of his cap and the night was quiet enough for Steve to hear the sigh that whispered through his lips.
When he went inside, Steve didn’t move from his perch out on the fire escape. He listened to their apartment door being opened, the soft shuffling of clothes as Bucky removed his jacket and the faint thud of his boots landing on scratchy floorboards by the door. He heard the sound of water and guessed that he was probably washing his face. Water ran for nearly 4 minutes as Steve watched a puff of cloud elongate across the sky. Connie or Bonnie –maybe both– must have left a lot of marks on him.
It took Bucky less than ten seconds to realize where Steve was after leaving the bathroom. He walked to the kitchen window left ajar, climbed out and sat next to Steve, lightly bumping his shoulder as he did so. He smelled like soap and booze. His hair wet and collar open, shirt sleeves rolled up. A whiff of womanly perfume hung about him. Faint trace of cigarette smoke, probably a lucy he bought while he was with the girls. He never smoked near Steve.
“Thought you’d be asleep, pal.”
“Didn’t feel like it.”
“Golly, it’s cold. How’s your coolee not frozen?”
“I have a blanket.”
“Gonna share?”
Steve didn’t answer and instead simply reached around Bucky’s shoulders with his right hand and threw the blanket around him while scooting a little to the left. Bucky budged up right away, pulling the blanket close at the front of their bodies to keep the heat in.
“Thanks, buddy.”
“Hmm.”
Silence fell around them like snow on a windless day. Quiescent and easy. You didn’t have much to say when your best friend for the past twenty years was three hours away from being shipped across the world for a war he could very well die fighting and you couldn’t tell him you may have found a way to follow him there, despite possessing a list of ailments that took three minutes to read off paper, despite four times crunching up your enlistment form with a 4F stamp on it. Despite all your best friend’s objections.
But Steve hadn’t lied his way in this time. He was given a God honest chance and he intended to take it, yet, he wasn’t delusional either. He knew there was a likely possibility he wouldn’t last a week in basic training. Sent back home after some CO saw him there and ordered whoever made the mistake that got him there to fix it right away. There was no need for Bucky to know what Steve was up to if all it got him was a week of humiliation at the training camp.
Steve’s gaze slid to Bucky’s profile. He had his pale eyes fixed on the street below them, clearly staring at something other than pavement and stone the color of tar at 3 am darkness. The clench of his jaw and the set of his brows were enough tells for Steve to know he wasn’t thinking about his date earlier. The immediacy of his departure and the nature of its unusualness stretched tight between them. They had not been apart for longer than a few days since they were kids. Never more than a day since after Steve’s mother had passed.
Dark bangs shivered against his pale forehead in the nipping night breeze. A decade-old urge, always suppressed and pushed at the bottom of Steve's mind’s senseless inclinations tingled on his fingertips as he watched his best friend. He nudged his shoulder with his own instead.
“You oughta sleep a little. Even if it’s for a couple of hours. I’ll wake you.”
“Nah, don’t feel like it.”
“Stomach knots?”
Bucky exhaled, long and slow. Steve felt his body deflating against his own as air passed through his lips. Bucky shook his head.
“No. Not nervous.” He met Steve’s gaze. “Sorry ‘bout what I said earlier.”
Steve looked down at where his feet were crossed beneath the blanket.
“I wasn’t really being agreeable either.”
Bucky chuckled.
“I doubt the word’s in your vocabulary, you pill.”
Steve shoved a shoulder to his.
“Hey now, I can be agreeable.”
“Yeah, pal. Sure you can.” Bucky only laughed more. The sound stirred the night like droplets on calm water. Bucky always added a certain animation to stillness. He was kinetic, electric in the way he moved, surge of vitality, sound in silence. He snored when he slept, made their neighbors take to clubbing pipes in protest when he laughed at 2 AM in the morning, danced in way that stirred others to join in. His rivals grinned at him with fondness when he boxed, seamless movement, power distilled. Steve smiled without realizing. When Bucky’s quiet laughter eased into a soft smile, they stared at each other.
“Just didn’t wanna ship like that, buddy.”
“I know, Buck. Why do you think I am sitting out here?”
“Could have waited inside. Don’t want you catching a cold.”
“’m fine, told you. It isn’t that cold.”
Bucky reached under the blanket and grabbed his socked feet, eyes narrowing into slits under wet bangs.
“This here feels cold to me.”
“I’ll kick you if you don’t let go.”
“Here I am, selflessly going off to war in about three hours and you want to give me the leather.”
“I want to kick you real often. Not gonna change now just cause you're going to war.”
And Bucky was laughing again. Steve smiled, consciously this time, knowing Bucky needed this more than he needed sleep tonight. He would have laughed along if it didn’t feel like they were making memories to remember. As if they needed an extra night out in the cold, bullshitting on the fire escape to remember the other by. Just two apartments down, where Steve and his mother used to live, the cement on the stoop of the apartment had their footprints from when they were kids. The burst Johnny pump they had played with, soaking wet in the summer of ’27 was still there across the street . The bathroom threshold was riddled with scratch marks of their heights. In every corner of every nook of the apartment they shared now, were memories neither needed help remembering. The bubbly circle of molten plastic on their kitchen table when Bucky had put a pot of stew on it without a holder. The broken corner of their second-hand radio from when Steve had accidently smacked it on the floor during a particularly vicious Dodgers game they had listened to together. Sketches drawn on corners of newspapers laid inside drawers. Now brown stains of blood on the corner of the threadbare carpet from when Steve had his nose broken the second time and Bucky was so angry he had almost punched him as well. Memories of words exchanged, arguments had, ground held, ground left, tunes sang, comfort given, comfort taken… couch cushions, chipped tea cups, newspapers in shoes, rosary on the bedside table… memories of two lives lived, inseparable and interwoven.
By the time the ashen grey of dawn started pooling into the eastern horizon, they were no longer talking. They just sat side by side, huddled under the blanket, leaning against each other. Easy as ever, effortless and unquestioned. Steve drew a breath and released it looking towards east. Bucky followed his gaze and his jaw stiffened. He swallowed once, then gave Steve a small smile, pale blue steady on pale blue.
Steve held his gaze, longer than he ever dared. Even when it stopped feeling like a gaze between two best friends and started feeling like something not quite that. He cursed his skinny frame the most in times like this because he felt he had no meat on his bones to muffle the sound of his heart thudding against his ribcage. It made him feel almost naked, exposed and laid bare in a way nudeness didn’t make him feel.
If Bucky could hear him, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t look away either.
Eventually Steve gave him a small nod and Bucky nodded back. The both of them stood up. Bucky wrapped the blanket around Steve, ruffling his hair as Steve tried to punch him through the blanket. He climbed in through the window, holding it open for Steve while giving his shit-faced grin that had every dame within twenty mile radius melting at the sight of it.
Steve sat at their kitchen chair, the blanket still around him, while Bucky went to their room to get ready. He listened to him change shirts, shuffle through drawers for a new pair of socks, mutter a curse when he smacked his elbow against the doorframe, wondering if it was the last time he was listening to Bucky getting ready for a dress smart occasion. He watched him go into the bathroom and come out with his hair slicked and fixed to perfection, tie made, jacket buttoned. His duffel bag was already by the door, all he was allowed to take packed two days prior. Steve had helped.
Bucky walked to the kitchen while checking his cuffs and Steve stood up, facing him.
“So?” Bucky asked with a smile, blue eyes tired, sleepless.
Steve stepped closer, trailing the blanket with him. He reached to his neck and secured the lapel of his jacket over the olive green collar of his button up. Hands trailed down his jacket, gaze following and he slid the end of the strap of his belt through the loop of his jacket on the right side. His fingers skimmed over the hard fabric and found his left chest pocket, fixing the folded corner straight against his chest. His hand lingered there for a moment before Steve dropped it and looked up.
Bucky’s eyes were transfixed on him, insatiate.
“Now you are set.” Steve nodded, feeling goosebumps on his skin.
Bucky swallowed again.
“Thanks, pal.”
Twenty years of shared life knotted time into suspension. They stared, listening to the pounding against Steve’s ribcage.
And Steve, with a curse that would require half a rosary of Hail Mary’s hissed through his lips, took a step forward, wrapped an arm around Bucky’s shoulder and hugged him. The blanket slid off his back and pooled at his feet.
Bucky’s arms closed around him at once, allowing Steve to press closer with cheek against his shoulder, arms meeting solid at his back. Steve held tight, hands grabbing fistfuls of his uniform, feeling Bucky’s chin resting against the back of his head and he exhaled, the breath leaving him in a shudder and all at once, became acutely aware of the searing pain in his chest.
He wasn’t about to despair and burst into tears in Bucky’s arms, sending him off like young Mrs. Hudson from the print shop Steve worked at had sent Mr. Hudson off when he was drafted. But he didn’t have it in him to lie to himself it was any different. Not tonight. Not when he hadn’t been honest with him, preparing to fill another duffel bag the next day without him knowing. Not when he didn’t know if he could see him again.
A sharp intake of breath in his ear and Bucky gathered him tighter in his arms, closer than they have ever been.
“Steve-“
“Buck,” he gulped helplessly, shaking his head. And Bucky’s hand squeezed his shoulders, head bowed into the crook of Steve’s neck, trying to sooth him.
“Steve, I’ll be fine.” Hot breath fell against the side of his face, so close, Steve could feel the moisture.
“I promise. I promise I’ll be okay.”
“Bucky..”
The name passed his lips without intention, without calculated measure and intonation, raw and bare and utterly exposed. It didn’t sound like his own voice, didn’t sound like the way he had said Bucky’s name for the past two decades. It was a sound out of a fever dream, tucked in the doorless rooms of his mind, breathless and urgent. Frantic. Selfish.
It was a lover’s calling.
Steve felt Bucky draw in a tremulous breath and then there were lips on his hair and fingers curling at the back of his neck and when Bucky exhaled, as shakily as the breath he drew in, Steve heard the beat of his heart against all the muscle of a boxer stretched taut over his ribs and all the hard fabric he was dressed in, as exposed as his.
He pushed away slightly to raise his head and found Bucky’s eyes and there was surprise in them. Fear. Electric blue, static for the first time, cracking with the intensity of intention held back. He looked at him like he had looked from the foot of his bed when Steve had had pneumonia and the priest was giving him his last rites.
Steve lifted both hands from his shoulders, palms found his face, fingers digging into his hair slick with fresh pomade and kissed him on the mouth. He pressed so hard, the shock of his movement made Bucky step back and his back hit the wall, cap slipping askew, arms suspended in mid-air, a gasp punched out of him. It didn’t even take two seconds before Steve was crushed back into him with an arm at his waist and a hand at the back of his head, fingers carding into his hair. Bucky took his mouth with trembling lips that parted against Steve’s and Steve felt himself pouring into him.
The first one was the breathless gasp after spending a minute under water; hard collision and desperate inhalation, brush of skin against skin, hot friction. Bucky lost his cap.
The second one lingered, an instinctual rhythm flowing in, angles mirroring, a tidal surge of searching for more reach, more taste, more of everything. They were both panting when their lips parted but Bucky gave him only a single breath’s time before taking him again, tilting Steve’s head and sucking Steve’s bottom lip into his mouth. Then he pulled away a fraction and he kissed him again, and pulled away and kissed him again, both hands holding his face and he muttered between kisses.
“You… you goddamn twit… you… blue tomfool.” He was still kissing him and he was panting, trying to pull him even closer. “I’ve got one foot out the door and you kiss me now?” he asked desperately and Steve gave himself a moment to trace his tongue across his and then barely managed a gasp, his bangs sticking to Bucky’s forehead, “If I hadn’t… you weren’t even gonna.”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Steve,” Bucky muttered against his lips. His eyes were closed, tie and collar and lapels all in disarray, hair sticking in every direction. He grimaced, shaking his head, “All these years…” he didn’t finish, couldn’t finish because Steve was kissing him again. With Bucky pressed against the wall and knees bent, they were almost the same height and when Steve was flush against him, they both gasped with the sensation, slick lips trembling against one another, chocked groans echoing. Steve couldn’t stop his hands from wandering. They ran down the sides of Bucky’s clean shaven jaw, feathered against the flush warmth of his neck, skimming down his jacket and he stilled them at his hips when Bucky caught both of his wrists in his hands, words rushing through his lips.
“Steve, Steve wait. Stop. Stop.” Mere slits of blue glinted beneath lidded eyes and he reached for his lips again, drawn, helpless and completely lost. Bucky’s mouth slid over his, paused and pressed again, tongue pushing in and he whispered to him, into his mouth, almost pleading. “Steve, if you touch me now… if I touch you, I can’t leave.” He kissed him with reckless abandon, “God help me, I can’t leave, Steve. I gotta go. Please, you know this. I know you get it.” He kissed him again and again, bringing Steve’s hands up over his chest, palms flat against his heart. “Please, Steve.”
And Steve did know. It was the same reason he had tried four times to enlist. It was the same reason he was following Bucky into the second greatest war the world had ever seen, even without him knowing. They stilled against each other, foreheads pressed, lips brushing, breathing each other in. Bucky, wrapped his arms around him again and pulled him closer.
“I love you bad, Buck” Steve rasped against the shell of his ear and Bucky visibly shuddered and cursed between gritted teeth before taking his lips again. He kissed him long and slow and languid and when he pulled away, his thumb was brushing against Steve’s bottom lip and there was less than a breath’s space between their faces and when he spoke, his voice was off, croaked and hoarse, his breath fluttering against Steve’s eyelashes.
“I’m dizzy with you, babe.”
The sear in Steve’s chest burst into hellfire and he buried his face in Bucky’s neck, trying his damnedest to keep from falling apart before sending him off.
“Better not get your dumb ass in trouble there.”
“Mmhmm.”
“I swear to God, I’ll come find you across the goddamn world and pin your stupid ears back.”
“I know you would.”
“I will.”
“Steve.”
“What?”
Bucky tilted his face up and their gazes met. Both looked a little shaken, a little desperate and a whole lot of determined.
“I’ll come back to you,” he promised. “I’ll always come back to you.”
- - -
Bucky turned only once.
He looked up at the fire escape where Steve was and gave him a soldier’s salute with the softest smile playing on his lips. Encroaching dawn couldn’t hold a candle to the life it spilled into the grey he was standing in.
Steve held onto his mother’s rosary and nodded at him, recognizing the bittersweet pang of a memory made.