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It’s been a bad one.
It’s been worse; there was the time Steve got pneumonia two winters ago, or the time they thought he won’t fight his way out of the grips of the Fever. (Steve may not be able to fight for shit against one of the neighbourhood boys, but he sure as hell can kick illness’s ass, by some miracle. Leaves him just as weak, if not weaker, but it’s the only fights Bucky’s ever seen him win.) He hasn’t been able to keep his fluids down, though, let alone solids, and even though Sarah’s a nurse by trade, Bucky can see the cracks in her bedside manner.
She’s at her wits end. They haven’t got the coins to spare to get him some more medicine, even with the bit Bucky’s been adding to the pot the last week and a half. His ma didn’t have a bad word to say about it when he told her she’d only be getting a half check that week, she just nodded and handed him a dish of casserole.
“Even if Stevie can’t keep it down, you make sure she’s eating,” she told him, voice stern but her brow was pinched in worry as she spoke, “We don’t need both Rogers’ falling ill. Wouldn’t do the world a lick of good to lose either of them.”
The Rogers’ are not one to accept charity, never have been; they have too much pride. But Sarah knows that this is not that. Winifred and her have been as thick as thieves since they first met in the factories, Sarah’s stomach too swollen to remain on the wards, but her wallet too thin to stay prone at home.
Bucky managed to get her to eat some, even if it was only a small helping and she made him have some as well. He’s been here, in the tiny Rogers’ apartment, every second he’s not working, even skipped out on church the day previous, to make sure Steve was breathing enough for him to be able to breath himself.
That, in turn, sent some rumours flying; it’s one thing for Sarah to miss a mass, people will forgive her that with working night shifts and staying with Steve when his lungs are giving him some trouble, but another for Bucky to not be on his knees in a pew. Winifred isn’t a severe woman by any means, but she’s strict about her worship and her kids’ worship. If Sarah and Bucky ain’t there, then lil Stevie from the down the block must be in a bad way again.
Regardless of how many fights Steve picks, people like him. He makes sure all the fellas respect the girls, and carries groceries for little old ladies who are probably stronger than him, and is more polite than any Brooklyn boy has the right to be.
But people know that the Rogers’ are proud, so they don’t intrude on them. Mr. Barkov, who runs the Butchers, asked Bucky through the open door of his shop if Steve was really in the state the gossip seemed to tell. Bucky told him no, he’s just got a touch of the ‘flu again , even though Steve was peaking at his worst by that point.
But Steve’s breathing is finally letting up, at long last, and he managed to drink some tepid soup without it reappearing. He’s sleeping on his back, which will be hell on his spine tomorrow, but his lungs need to expand fully if he’s gonna shift the last of this bout.
He’s twitchy; his eyes flick as he sleeps. His eyelashes are a stark contrast against the paleness of his skin. His face has thinned out, making the recesses of his cheeks even more prominent. It brings out the dark circles under his eyes and the edge of his jaw, making it sharp and defined.
Bucky usually thinks Steve is beautiful; his soft kind eyes, and his long-fingered hands, his smile. But right now, all of those things are absent from view. His eyes are closed, his fingers are under the pile of blankets, some of which he brought from home, and his mouth is pinched into a frown which brings his brows downward.
“Bucky,” Sarah calls quietly from the other end of the room. “C’mere and have something t’ eat.”
Bucky looks back at the little clock mounted on the wall; 12:15am. He hasn’t eaten since noon, when he and the other stevedores ate bland sandwiches from their pails at the edge of the docks.
Standing and stretching, his back cracks loudly in the relative silence of the apartment, a row of clicks that would be more than satisfying any week other than this one. He knows they can still keep vigil over Steve from the scrubbed kitchen table across the room, but he still worries.
Sarah sets the bowl of warm porridge in front of him with little show, and tucks into her own bowl of the stuff. It seems like the last week has caught up to her, as she ravenously eats mouthful after mouthful in the most unlady-like way, but Bucky doesn’t care and apparently neither does she.
The clink of spoons on bowls is all they say to each other for a time. The peace is something well earned by the two of them.
Bucky washes out the bowls and puts water on to boil for tea - not coffee, even if they're both going to stay up into the wee hours, Bucky would rather they both get some sleep.
“It’s okay, y’know,” she says conversationally. Bucky doesn’t turn around, just hums a noise of question as he puts the bowl down and picks up a spoon, waits for her to continue whatever line of thought she’s decided to share.
Sarah thinks a lot. They can go hours watching Steve sleep under the pull of the newest bout, and say nothing to one another, and Bucky knows that every thought he thinks throughout his whole life will never be as intelligent as whatever she ponders idly while taking watch of her son.
“It’s okay that you’re in love w’ him.”
Bucky freezes.
He drops the spoon in his hand in shock, feels acutely how every muscle in his body tenses at the exact same time before the utensil has even hit the floor.
Steve shifts across the room at the sound, and Bucky’s brain works against him as he turns his head automatically towards him. Steve fidgets for a bit and then settles, face turned the slightest amount away from them.
Bucky turns back towards the wall, staring at the floral wallpaper as he tries to feel less like he’s been winded.
If anyone else said that to him, anyone else , he’d punch them in the mouth, because he can put up with so much slander and schtick from people, but he can’t take them knowing. Sarah, on the other hand, isn’t a bored John on the street looking for some adrenaline. She’s Sarah.
“Bucky,” Sarah says, voice soft.
“I’m sorry.” His voice quivers as he speaks, “It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. I didn’t want it to be this way.”
“I know, Bucky.” Her voice isn’t accusatory the way he thinks it should be.
He feels too hot, like he’s caught Steve’s fever all of a sudden. His hands are shaking where he’s clamped them against the kitchen counter.
“Bucky, sit down.” Sarah’s hand is on his forearm, he didn’t hear her getting up.
The chair creaks when he sits down heavily onto it. Sarah goes about making their tea, topping it with cold water because they don’t have milk. Bucky watches the way Steve’s chest rise and fall, because if he watches Sarah he thinks he might bolt.
He doesn’t look at her when she sits down opposite him at the table. “How long have you known?” he asks, barely above whispering.
Sarah is quiet for a moment. He’s still not looking at her, watching Steve breathe, notes how it's not quite a seamless rhythm.
“Since you were thirteen and you carried him home after he got in a fight wi’ Mrs. Brown’s lad -”
“Billy,” He supplies absently, staring unseeingly at Steve’s form on the bed.
“- Yeah, big fella, never had much respect for anybody.” Bucky can hear the disdain in her voice, which is surprising - Sarah’s always been the kind to say nothing if there was nothing good to say. Her mug clinks as she sets it back onto the table. “How long have you known?” she adds, after a spell of quiet.
Bucky turns towards her, but looks into the bottom of his tea. He still can’t meet her eyes.
He shakes his head, “I don’t know. As long as I can remember. I just didn’t know -” He cuts himself off as he puts hand to his forehead, then ducks his head so he can run it through his hair.
The strands feel greasy between his fingers, and he can feel the grime on his skin under his work clothes. “ - I didn’t know it was that until Rickie Johnson called us queer and I punched him in the mouth.”
“Never liked that Rickie much either.”
“I’m sorry,” he says again, puts his hand across his eyes. “I’m only making his life that much harder by mooning over him.”
Sarah doesn’t say anything, because he’s right. Boys like them are constantly in danger, even around here where it’s not uncommon to come upon two men together in that way. But Steve isn’t doing either of them much help by doing the same.
“The world isn’t gonna be kind to either of yah,” she says resolutely. “That’s how the world works. I go to the suffragette rallies, because I want the world to be better for the likes of your sisters, after I’m gone.” She reaches across and puts her hand over Bucky’s where it’s wrapped around his steadily cooling mug. “Maybe one day you two will be able to hold hands walkin’ down the road, and no one will bat an eye. Maybe I’ll be able to wear trousers to work and no one will say a damn thing.”
Bucky stays silent.
“People are horrible, we both know that. The war proved that people always find a way to destroy each other, even when they’re across the sea from yah,” she tells him. He’s looking into her face now, and at some point she took his hand off the mug to cradle between her own two. “I lost Joseph in the war, Mrs. Brown lost her husband, eldest son as well, Mrs. Johnson lost her brothers. Some got lucky, like your ma, and her husband came home but he’s never been the same.”
“I came here after the British killed my father during the Rising, to escape the fighting, and yet I landed right back into it here, and I lost everything I had left, but I gained not one, but two wonderful sons,” Her eyes look at him pointedly, and he feels a twinge of emotion in his chest. “And they have to fight to get anything good in this world.”
“One day, it won’t be like this.” Her voice is shimmering with promise and belief. “The world will be a better place, maybe in my lifetime, maybe in yours, maybe in your kids’. Won’t knock you down as often or as hard. But until then you always stand up.”
Bucky wants to ask her how she does it all. She loves so fiercely and cares so deeply and believes so unwaveringly. Bucky thinks that if he loved as forcefully as she did, for even a second, it would kill him.
Bucky guesses that’s where Steve gets it from. Sarah is much smarter about the battles she fights than her son’s ever been. Bucky figures a lacking of self-preservation is a Rogers thing, rather than an O’Brien thing.
Steve is a passionate fire, whereas his mother is slow smouldering embers. Steve can easily burn himself out, but Sarah can keep going for far longer and singe everything in her wake while no one is looking; she’s underestimated.
“You gotta take care of him.” She jerks her head to where her son is sleeping. “He’s stubborn, won’t ever ask for help. I think he thinks he’s invincible,” she chuckles in a sad sort of way before continuing. “I’m not always gonna be here to take care of him. He needs someone who’ll stick around.”
“I will,” Bucky is quick to promise, “I ain’t leaving him to his own devices, not for a second.”
Sarah smiles, looks at their joined hands. “I know the Bible says all of this is wrong, about men being together, but as much as I believe in Him above,” she looks up at the ceiling, at God, “I think we humans got a few things wrong.”
Steve shifts in sleep, face more relaxed than earlier, mouth gaped slightly as he moves. They both turn to watch him while he resettles, with more colour in his cheeks then there has been all week.
“You really believe all that stuff?” Bucky asks, unsure.
“Completely.”
He takes a deep breath, and blows it out quietly. “Okay.”
Sarah glances up at the clock. It reads 2am. “We ought to get to sleep,” she tells him as she stands. “Your mother’ll be fuming if she knew I let you stay up this late.”
As they settle in for the night, Bucky sitting up to resume his vigil over Steve for at least a few more hours, Sarah whispers into the dark of the room, “Oíche maith, a mhic.”
The flowers on her grave, and her husband’s, are still fresh. People only leave flowers out of their respect for Steve, and he’s not sure if he’s okay with that or not yet. He hasn’t brought flowers, but rather, something to tell her.
It’s weird to think that everything Sarah Rogers’ was is decaying under his feet. Her body and bones, yes, but also her smile and her laugh and her deep love for her son, her beliefs and her stories, her mind.
Her smouldering embers extinguished into dust.
Bucky doesn’t think about religion or souls much anymore; he lost his faith long before he was a weapon. Watching your fellow man get blown up by mines under his unsuspecting feet was enough to convince him there’s no real God above. But he hopes, for her sake, there is a heaven where she can see the amazing things her son has done.
He also hopes that there isn’t, so that she can’t see the atrocities he’s committed.
He squats down at the stone, runs his fingers over the weathered limestone engraving of her name.
“You were right, y’know,” Bucky tells the stone, flesh digits rubbing over the crevices in the surface. “Stevie needs someone to take care of him.”
The stone doesn’t answer.
“He jumped out of a plane without a parachute, y’know? Jumped on a grenade. Jumped out of an elevator 60 stories up. I still think a lack of self-preservation is a Rogers family trait. You O’Briens were much smarter.”
The silence of the graveyard presses down on him, compelling him to keep talking.
“And the world, you were right about that too,” he murmurs almost flippantly. “It got better. It also got worse in ways you wouldn’t imagine, especially with me in it.” He chuckles darkly with the stone. “Nothing like Buck Rogers.”
The stone is still quiet.
Bucky looks over it, and, resigned to it’s silence, he gripes the top of the headstone. “But honestly, Sarah,” he breathes slowly for a second, composing his thoughts. “It’s like you could predict the future. Me and Stevie walking down the street holding hands, no one says a goddamn thing unless they want a photo.”
“I’ll look after him. I promised you, and I broke it, and now I’m making it again.” Bucky sighs as he stands to full height. The stone looks smaller now.
“It took me three years to remember that conversation.” He looks out into the distance of the gravestones, as they become the size of his pinky nail. “I’ve been back three years and I only remembered it a few hours ago. So I had to come and tell you. Promise again.”
The stone says nothing.
“Thanks, Sarah. For everything.” Bucky squeezes the hand still resting on the tomb, the way he would squeeze a shoulder in reassurance.
Then he turns and walks away down the gravel path. As the sun continues to rise, he thinks of Steve, still wrapped up in bed where Bucky left him.
It’s been worse.