James the Vampire
October 18th, 1941.
The telephone was on its third ring, and Steve was starting to hope nobody would pick up, even if that meant losing his nickel to the machine. At least getting on the phone had brought him out of the rain. He picked at the string he pulled from his soggy sleeve and leaned back against the wooden walls of the payphone booth. The phone rang again, the fourth ring, and Steve started to think about all the other ways he could’ve spent five cents instead of this crapshoot.
The telephone clicked. “Hiya,” a voice chirped. Steve, surprised, shuffled to stand up straight. “You’ve got the Barnes residence, this is Rebecca.”
“Hey, Becca,” Steve started.
Becca cut him off, “Oh, hey, Steve,” She dropped the tone she’d put on to answer the phone and returned to her usual pitch, “How’s it going?”
“Oh, you know,” He paused as a car sped by with a great ‘woosh,’ creating a tidal wave of grey, mucky rainwater that crested the curb and soaked into his socks, “Decent. Is Bucky home?”
“Wow,” Becca held out the word; it crackled through the long line as she marinated it in sarcasm. “I don’t even get a ‘how’s it going’ back? Some way to treat a lady, Steve.”
“Only so much time on a payphone, Bec.”
“Right, sure, that’s what it is.” Becca leaned on the word that’s like she would one of her girlfriends, heading home from the dancehall, ice cream parlor, or wherever young women spent their evenings, with their arms and shoulders balanced in tandem over the pavement. Steve wasn’t surprised by her congeniality, not after a childhood spent between Becca and Bucky, but he noticed an extra note of understanding pass beneath the sheen of familiarity. “Yes, he’s home. Hold on a minute.”
“Thanks,” Steve looked down at his water-logged feet and pushed his toe into the ground. Little bubbles formed where water attempted to squeeze through the stitching of his shoes, and he knew the hole-patching job he’d done with newspaper lining was surely ruined.
He faintly heard, from the other line, “Bucky? Steve’s calling. Yes, ‘Steve like Steve Rogers.’ How many other ‘Steves’ do you know? C’mere, he’s waiting. He’s only got so much time on a payphone, Bucky.” He smiled at the words, eyes still stuck on the bubbles erupting from the seams of his shoes. Becca spoke into the speaker again, “He’s on his way, bye, Steve.”
“Bye, Becca.”
Steve looked up and watched the rainy world move around him as the line went quiet. Summer was long gone. Now, they had crossed the invisible line between early and late fall, from brilliant yellow and red into stoic greyness, the inevitable depression that October and November heralded—frosty mornings with no sight of the sun. People hustled by, opening umbrellas, pulling on raincoats, and dipping under any available awning. Even with soaked shoes and a growing feeling of cold, cold-in-your-bones cold, he figured himself lucky to have found shelter in the telephone booth; the rain was picking up.
Rustling from the earpiece, then, “Steve!” Steve found instantaneous comfort in the consistency of Bucky’s voice; a perpetual reminder of summer’s certain return. It was as if a great hand had reached through the eaves of the phone booth, grasped his shirt collar, and plucked him from the rain, leaving him fresh and dry as a spring lamb. “What a great surprise. What’s goin’ on, punk?”
“Hi, Buck. It’s rainin’ hard, huh?”
“Sure is,” Bucky replied. Steve imagined Bucky, warm in his family home, sitting next to the decorative table that housed their nice little black-dial phone, the one they’d bought on a party line, and the lamp next to it. It wasn’t too late in the day, but the swirling rainclouds overhead had made things preternaturally dark, so he wondered if Bucky had the lamp on. He thought of the little strings that dangled from the lampshade and how the light shone orange. Bucky looked good in orange light. “Where are you calling from? You’re not out in it, are you?”
“Eh,” Steve shrugged, even though Bucky couldn’t see through the telephone wire. Another car spit cold water his way. “I’ve got a roof over my head.”
“Steve, you’ll catch your death out there.”
“I’ll be fine, Buck.”
“Famous last words, pal. See me in a week when you’re sick as a dog.” Bucky replied, getting a smile out of Steve. “Anyway, I know you’ve got limited time. Why’d you call? Just wanted to hear my voice?”
“No,” Steve blushed, “I have a question for you.”
“A question?” Bucky asked. Steve could hear his intrigue. He imagined Bucky leaning closer to the telephone, blue eyes bright. “What?”
Steve felt wholly ridiculous in asking, “Do you have Halloween plans?”
He could hear Bucky smile, “I do. You’ve beat me to asking you the same thing.”
“Oh?”
“I’m throwing a party,” Bucky said quickly, “And before you make up some excuse not to come, I already wrote you an invite and everything, so you have to.”
“How’d you know I was thinking of an excuse?” Steve asked, leaning back against the booth wall again, wet clothes sticking to his skin.
“‘Cause I know you, Steve.”
Despite being cold and uncomfortable, Steve smiled, “Yeah?”
“Yes,” Bucky replied, “I know parties ain’t always your speed, but you have to come to this one.”
“Well, what if I’m sick as a dog?”
“Then I’ll get you a pack of tissues. You have to come.”
“I’m not sure if I’m getting this right,” Steve teased, “I have to go?”
“Yes, asshole,” Bucky whispered. Hell would first need to freeze over before Bucky could let himself be heard cursing in his good Catholic mother’s home. “You do.”
“Fine,” Steve replied, “Maybe I’ll come, then.”
“Good. You should. And you should dress spooky.”
“Spooky? Costume spooky? We’re not ten years old, Bucky.”
“Hey, plenty of people dress up on Halloween. What were you going to say we should do?”
Steve blushed again, “I was going to ask if you wanted to carve Jack-o-Lanterns. I was thinking we could roast the seeds.”
Bucky laughed, “And you say dressing up is childish.”
“Hey, Jack-o-Lanterns are an Irish thing, not a childish thing.”
“Right, yeah, that’s why your ma used to make us carve those turnips; they were turnips, right?”
“Right.” Steve closed his eyes and inhaled, seeking the scent of an old memory, the smell of earth from the turnips, his mother's steady hand holding a thin paring knife. He could only smell rain.
“Those always terrified me,” Bucky admitted.
Steve opened his eyes again. He wrapped the telephone cord around his finger. “Me too.”
“But remind me, Steve, what age were we when we did that?”
“Well, we were children.”
“Exactly!”
“But that’s tradition.”
“So’s dressing up. So dress spooky, punk.”
“Fine, jerk.”
“Alright, I'm glad it’s settled. You’re coming; you’re dressing spooky.”
“I suppose I am.”
“So, a payphone, huh?” Bucky turned the conversation as easily as he turned the steering wheel to change lanes on an open road. Steve thought back to the heat of the July sun, warm yellow light, and the green leaves of trees overhead, fleeting summer escapes. Bucky’s voice pulled him back to the present. “How’d you know I was here to pick up?”
“I didn’t,” Steve remembered the dull noise of those four miserable rings, “But it’s Saturday, so I figured it was a fifty-fifty shot you’d be at your folk's house.”
“Mm,” Bucky hummed, “Yeah, decent odds. You used a slug, right? Not a real coin?”
“No, I didn’t use a washer, Bucky.” Steve laughed, “That’s illegal, and I don’t even think it works.”
“Oh, it definitely works; never waste your change on a payphone, Steve.”
Steve flicked at the spot of cool metal where he’d inserted his nickel, thinking of his coin sitting in the belly of the machine. "It's a bit too late for that.”
“Well, use a slug next time. I’ve got some good payphone-sized ones I can give you.”
Steve knew he’d never try to use a washer. With his luck, he’d be caught. Still, he said, “Alright, Buck.”
“Alright. Now get outta the rain,” In a whisper, Bucky added, “dumbass.”
Steve smiled, “Alright. See you on Halloween.”
“See you then.”
Steve dipped back into the world, head bowed to keep the rain from whipping against his face. His golden hair wetted until it was limp and brown, and water rushed into the fabric of his coat, but he wasn’t bothered. He thought of Bucky the whole way home.
October 31st, 1941.
Another frigid day. Steve stood at the threshold of his front door, leaning his weight into the wall, watching a flock of birds gather on the gutter of the building across the street. He dully wondered if their feathers kept them warm, or if the thin skin of their wings, stretched over hollow bones, was cold like his. Leaving his apartment and stepping out into the cold was the last thing he wanted to do.
“Steven!” A woman’s voice called out. Attention diverted, like a doctor asking their patient a conversational question as they administer a shot, he took the moment to finally make his exit. He jumped out onto the landing, cold straightening his spine, and turned his head to face where he’d heard the voice.
A few doors down, an old woman stood on her rickety wooden porch, waving a fistful of wet laundry at him in greeting.
“Hi, Mrs. Lucia,” Steve called back, returning her wave, “How’s Romeo?” He had ignored his allergies to watch her cat a few times, an ancient scruffy tabby unsuitably named after the famous lover-boy Romeo.
“Oh, you know him. He’s fine,” She waved her laundry again; the edges of her white bedsheet caught late-day light from a stray sunbeam. For a moment, the sheet shone red, like Mrs. Lucia had managed to harness the sun itself. Steve tossed the image into his back pocket; it would make for a decent sketch. “Are you going out? Why haven’t you dressed for Halloween?”
“I am,” Steve responded. He’d shaken the initial shock of cold out of his system, so he took a few steps her way and rested his forearms along the splintery wood railing of his landing. “I’m going to a costume party, but I don’t have anything to wear.”
“Oh, Steven,” He’d told her many times that it was ‘just Steve,’ but she always called him ‘Steven’ anyway. “That’s no excuse! You could make a mask.”
Steve had already thought of that, “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“It’s an easy costume,” Mrs. Lucia responded, pinning her laundry to a chicken wire line between two posts. “That’s what my son always did.”
“I’ll have to remember that next Halloween.”
“Yes, good idea,” Even from a ways away, Steve could tell her gray hair was tucked into rollers. Mrs. Lucia lived in rollers. When he’d told Bucky about cat-sitting the mangy old Romeo, he’d mentioned how he’d never seen Mrs. Lucia with her hair out of rollers. Bucky had said, only half joking, ‘Hey, she’s got it right. Hair is everything.’ Now, on his landing, Steve ran a hand through his flat hair.
“Alright, well, Happy Halloween, ma’am,” Steve said, turning to lock his door.
“Happy Halloween, Steven. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”
“I won't, ma’am.” Steve was already hustling down the stairs, “Have a good night.”
“You too!”
It wasn’t dark yet, but that hadn’t stopped children from going out to trick-or-treat. The streets were scattered with kids costumed in ornate masks or covered in bedsheets and the odd parent or older sibling who’d been forced to tag along. Steve weaved through the clusters of trick-or-treaters, tucking his fingers into his sleeves as the sun went down and the day grew colder still.
Steve had never been a huge fan of the holiday. Growing up, he’d liked certain traditions, such as carving Jack-o-Lanterns with his ma or the annual plea from Bucky to wrangle him into some group costume with Becca, but that was it. If he wasn’t sick, he would usually skip community-wide parties, and he was practically never invited to any house parties. In school, he’d had a reputation for being a no-show to just about any event. But doing things for Bucky had always been the exception.
Though Steve didn’t know the exact names of the streets marking the end of the previous neighborhood and the beginning of Bucky’s, a profusion of magnificent old brownstones helped clue him in. It had been an uphill trek to Bucky’s. Brooklyn was relatively flat; Steve’s area was pretty much at sea level, but of course, Bucky’s nice neighborhood just had to sit atop the plateau of a high bluff. For Steve, that meant the walk to Bucky’s place forever included breathing hard and taking breaks to sit down when his joints hurt. He walked as fast as he could through the cold October wind and thought about nothing except the next steps he needed to take.
Eventually, he turned a corner and coasted; the incline became a decline as the sky darkened around him. The bare limbs of trees, the details of their bark lost to evening light, loomed overhead. Leaves crunched underfoot. By the time he reached Bucky’s street, he had become aware of a strange feeling that fate was propelling him forward, a morally neutral and inscrutable force. He wished he’d taken Mrs. Lucia’s advice to heart and brought a mask or costume jacket to protect his skin from the yet-unknown events of the evening. Steve did not consider himself superstitious, but on this Halloween night, he felt the collective hopes and fears of the revelers around him reach an almost supernatural pitch.
A mummy was smoking outside Bucky’s building—not a real mummy, of course, but a man wrapped in paper and smoking a cigarette. The bright white costume made him a highly visible figure. Steve could see him from down the block, nothing but contrast against the rest of the dark blue fall street. The orange flame of his cigarette was like a ship's light on an ocean night, beckoning. When Steve was close, the mummy looked his way and said, “Happy Halloween, friend.”
Steve looked over his shoulder to see who the mummy was speaking to, but no one was there. “Happy Halloween,” Steve responded.
Steve stopped. He stood flat-footed, arms crossed, and looked up. Just a few floors above, light poured from Bucky’s bay windows, making the outlines of the building fuzzy from the blown-out luminosity. Abandoned drinks dotted the fire escape, and silhouettes of Bucky’s party-goers and friends passed the window, faces shrouded by distance and darkness alike.
“Are you here for the party?”
Steve hadn’t expected the mummy to speak again. He tore his eyes away from Bucky’s window. “Huh?”
“The party? At James’s place?”
“Oh,” Steve said, pausing to register Bucky’s name as James. He found it strange to think anyone could be removed enough from Bucky to know him only as James. “Yeah.”
The mummy took a drag of his smoldering cigarette. Steve watched the smoke lift, and the mummy asked, “What’s your costume supposed to be?”
“It’s not a costume. These are just my clothes.”
“That’s no fun.”
Steve shrugged. He then watched the mummy’s brown eyes flicker about, a little window into the fact that there was a human being in there under all the faux bandages. He was looking for a place to put out his cigarette. The ground was strewn with loose paper from the costume and dried leaves from the fall wind, and they both knew it would simply be uncouth to accidentally set the street alight. Steve offered his hand to the mummy-man, grasped the cigarette, and squashed it beneath his shoe on the pavement. The mummy’s eyes locked to his in the blue darkness.
“Thanks. I’m Gio,” The mummy, Gio, extended a hand for Steve to shake.
Steve took it. “Steve.”
“No,” Gio smiled, voice pitched up and tinged with disbelief. He crossed his mummified arms across his chest and stood back, “You’re Steve? Jamey’s Steve?”
Jamey. Nobody except Bucky's mother ever called him Jamey. Steve’s brow furrowed, though he knew the expression would be lost on Gio in the dark. “I suppose.”
“No damn way,” Gio laughed. In an exaggerated fashion, he moved his whole head as he sized Steve up. “I thought you’d be taller.”
Steve didn’t know what to say to that, but he found an odd kernel of defensiveness budding in his chest. Who the hell was this guy? He shrugged to avoid saying anything he would later regret.
“I don’t mean it in a bad way,” Gio’s hand slashed through the air, strings of paper lagging behind the motion, “I’m just, I don’t know. I’m surprised you’re real, I think.”
“I’m surprised you’ve heard of me.”
“Are you kidding? Jamey’s told me all about you.” The mummy’s words were cordial, but Steve couldn’t help but feel ill at ease. He’d forgotten the street and window above them; he only cared to unravel the mystery of this strange character. “You and your asthma are the reason he gets so aggressive about me smoking in that damn apartment.”
An image of the fight at Ebbet’s Field flashed through Steve’s mind. “Yeah, he can get that way.”
“Tell me about it.” The mummy paused awkwardly, leaving Steve wondering if the guy genuinely wanted him to say more. Steve was about to take the breath that precedes speech when the mummy smiled and said, “Come on, let’s go tell him I met you.”
“Alright.”
Gio took the stairs in Bucky’s stairwell two by two, just as Bucky would. Steve trailed behind, watching Gio’s bright costume move through the dark like a flashlight moving over a field. If Steve squinted, it almost felt like seeing afterimages of Bucky. A strange sensation of deja vu washed over him, and with it came a quiet but desperate longing to arrive at the party and find he had come too late or too early, and instead of meeting music and people, Bucky would be there alone and still invite him in.
Bucky’s door was ajar. The same light Steve had seen from the cold street was closer now, still blown-out and beautiful as it peeked into the hall. The sounds of Glenn Miller’s record, the one they had danced to all those months ago, drifted down the corridor. Steve watched as the mummy, Gio, whoever he was, strode up and pushed the door open further.
“Jamey!” Gio shouted, disappearing into Bucky’s apartment. Steve idled in the hallway for a minute, suddenly considering taking his heritage seriously and making an Irish goodbye. His gaze drifted down the hall. A little carved turnip sat outside Bucky’s neighbor's door, staring at him. Over the muddled sounds of the party, he could hear Gio again, “You’ll never guess who I met!”
Steve was still in the throes of prolonged eye contact with a turnip, of all things, when the stillness of the hallway broke, and a vampire came to meet him.
“Steve! You bastard, I was beginnin’ to think you’d made other plans!” Bucky’s Brooklyn accent was thick and wholly welcome to Steve’s ear.
“Hey, I told you I’d come.” Steve tore his eyes away from the turnip and smiled, cheeks going red. The relief he felt in seeing Bucky was not unlike the relief he’d felt stepping in from the cold.
Bucky hustled over and swept him into a hug. “Good to see you, punk.”
“You too, jerk.” They pulled apart, and Steve added, “I like your costume.”
Bucky had dressed up like a vampire, with a homemade black cape and a smear of obviously fake blood on his chin and neck. While Steve knew he would’ve looked like a dunce in a costume, Bucky looked like a film star, devilishly handsome in his vampire attire. “Yeah?” Bucky asked, grinning, “Where’s yours, huh?”
“Eh.” Steve shrugged, “I know you told me to dress spooky, but I didn’t have one, Buck.”
“Oh, come on,” Bucky said, tossing his head back in feigned and over-dramatized exasperation. “I told you about this weeks ago! You could’ve made something.”
“You only told me about it a week and a half ago.”
Bucky raised his head and looked at Steve again, “Semantics, sweetheart.”
Steve didn’t roll his eyes; he only blushed harder. “Not even.”
“Even. But it’s alright, you know, I figured you might be a square.”
“Alright, ouch.”
“No, it’s fine, I planned for this,” Bucky’s tone was perfectly taunting; Steve knew he had something up his sleeve. “You’ll just have to make you take the spare.”
Steve smiled an apprehensive smile, “The spare?”
“Uh-huh.”
Steve had been so caught in the allure of Bucky’s company that when he tracked his friend's gaze and looked over his shoulder, the sight of the chummy-mummy, Gio, standing in the doorway nearly made him jump out of his skin. Embarrassingly, Bucky didn’t share the fright; he instead threw a casual arm around Steve’s neck and said, “I heard you met Gio.”
Gio didn’t allow Steve time to respond, “Steve here helped me put out my smoke.”
Bucky raised an eyebrow and turned his head to look at Steve, “S’that true?”
“Yeah,” Steve admitted, shrugging. His shoulder only pressed closer to Bucky, and he felt that odd spot of defensiveness spike in him again. He was intensely and irrationally grateful Bucky’s arm was around him and not around Gio.
Bucky turned them both and looked at Gio, “I thought you knew not to smoke around Steve.”
The spark of gratefulness Steve felt from the act of possession by Bucky, an arm around him, was smothered. He didn’t know why it stung to have Bucky’s affection feel like protection rather than possession; it had always been protection, but in that moment, the comment cut like a knife.
“Hey,” Gio responded, smiling like a Cheshire cat. Steve couldn’t tell whether Gio was unaware or uncaring about his discomfort. “You told me to smoke outside, so I did. I can’t save your friend from the sidewalk, James.”
Bucky kept a cool smile. “Fair, I guess.” Steve found it uncharacteristically passive of Bucky to roll over and let something go that easily. Bucky was stubborn about him, always, but that fact seemed to lose footing around Gio. “But I don’t like it.”
“I was fine, Bucky.”
“See?” Gio must’ve raised his eyebrows because the whole of his paper-covered forehead shifted upward. “He was fine.”
“Still don’t like it, G,” Bucky responded, smile growing. He pulled Steve, still tucked under his arm, toward the door.
It was then that Steve noticed Gio smiling at Bucky like a girl would, that daring, wanting smile people seemed to put on around Bucky. He couldn’t help but watch it, Gio’s smile, how his lips barely showed due to the costume, how his exposed teeth gleamed in the low light of the hall. He was suddenly overcome with an odd feeling that there was an impossible moment ahead, a vision of his reflection shining in the teeth of whatever creature stood opposite him.
The mummy stayed in the doorway when they got close, defiant and unmoving. He was asking Bucky to move him, and Bucky knew it. Much to Steve’s surprise, Bucky answered the call, pushing Gio back into the apartment with a playful shove.
“Hey,” Gio said softly, holding his smile. Party noise, chatter, laughter, and music were louder now. “Careful.”
Steve watched as Bucky’s hand, his thin but strong fingers, lingered on Gio’s chest for a beat. When he finally dropped it, he shook his head and said, “Come on, Stevie. Let’s find you a costume.”
The apartment was packed with party-goers. Steve didn’t know many people, but as he looked around the living room on his way to Bucky’s bedroom, he realized he didn’t know anyone there: no old schoolmates, none of Bucky’s many cousins, no Becca. The realization of isolation left him feeling like an interloper, and in one passing thought, he likened entering the party to waking up in an unfamiliar room.
Scenes of Halloween, candles and paper decorations, costumes, and a kitchen island stocked with snacks and drinks did little to help Steve feel more grounded. He’d known Bucky had other friends, so that wasn’t any shock, but surrounded by strangers, he couldn’t surface from a sinking feeling that he didn’t know Bucky as well as he thought he did.
“Sorry that you had to meet Gio without me,” Bucky said, his words echoing the closing of his bedroom door. He moved quickly to his closet. “He’s,” Bucky paused, grabbing something off a shelf. “Uh, well, he can be a lot. Do you think this will fit?”
Bucky spun around, holding a shirt toward Steve. He had a specific look about him, nothing Steve could pinpoint, no action or expression explicit enough to give it a name, but something was there. He was off his mark, frazzled, his eyes a little wider than usual, his movements a little less calculated. It was something more than just drink.
“Probably not,” Steve took the shirt anyway. He ventured further into Bucky’s room. This space, the bedroom, had been left untouched by decorations. There were no cups, bottles, or discarded bits of loose costume; there was comfort in knowing he was the only one invited in there. He sat on Bucky’s bed and grabbed the cotton tag of the black t-shirt, “Yeah, large will be too large, Buck.”
“S’the smallest I’ve got, just wear that.”
“Alright.”
Steve started unbuttoning his overshirt. He could feel Bucky’s eyes on him until he reached the bottom button, and then, in a movement that had a palpable feel to it, Bucky turned to face the closet again. Steve removed his undershirt and quickly pulled Bucky’s shirt over his shoulders. It was impossible to think that Bucky filled the shirt out. He looked down at the fabric hanging around his skinny arms and remembered the sight of the hem pulling around Bucky’s bicep.
“What did you and Gio talk about?” Bucky asked, digging through a pile of clothes that had dropped to the floor in his closet.
Steve didn’t think before asking, “Why?”
“Just wondering.’’
“Uh,” Steve reached out and absentmindedly raised a book on Bucky’s nightstand until he could see the cover (a shirtless strong-man adorned it; something sci-fi, it was not a title he knew). He thought back to the street, “Not much. He said you’ve told him about me.”
Bucky looked over his shoulder, flashing a smile, “Did he?”
“He did. I’m surprised you hadn’t told me about him.”
“Oh?” Bucky said, turning back to his pile, “Well, Gio’s just, Gio. I don’t know him well.”
“Yeah? He calls you ‘Jamey.’” Steve’s words could’ve been spoken by an animal cautiously crawling along a thin tree limb, and they would’ve sounded the same.
“‘Lotta people here call me that,” Bucky spoke again before Steve could, “Ah! Found the spare. Here we go.”
It hadn’t been a subtle way to change the topic of conversation, but Steve didn’t mention it. “Nice.”
“Becca made it.” Bucky straightened up and walked toward Steve. He held up a massive swath of black fabric. "It ain’t gonna be as good as my costume, but it’s somethin’.” He peeked out from behind the cloth, smiling. “You like it?”
“What is it?”
Bucky’s drew his eyebrows in, “Can’t you tell? It’s your cape.”
“My what?”
“Your cape,” Bucky grinned. He threw the cape at Steve; it fluttered through the air and landed on him in a heap. “I’m changing you, Steve. You’re gonna be a vampire.”
“Buck,” Steve welcomed the return to putting on playful exasperation at Bucky’s antics; it made him feel closeness with Bucky again. “There’s no way. We can’t match.”
“We can, actually. And we’re going to. There’s no spare for the spare, sweetheart.”
Steve nearly rolled his eyes out of his head, getting a laugh and a pleading ‘come on,’ from Bucky. He held the cape up and looked at Becca’s craftsmanship. It was obviously made as an afterthought. “Fine.”
Bucky grinned, “Good. You’re gonna look great.”
“Am I?”
“Yes, you are,” Bucky replied with a bit of laughter on the edges of his voice. He took the cape from Steve’s hands and sat beside him on the bed. His voice dropped to a whisper, “Here.”
Steve watched Bucky’s eyes, strikingly blue, focused on finding the tie on the end of the cape. He thought of, or more felt, a strange longing around how Bucky looked at him. There was nothing more, nothing to add beneath a surface-level look, no more stones to be overturned. They had outgrown the labels of friendship and brotherhood, but there was no language to describe the new territory they had stumbled upon. It was no man’s land; they were together in it, and that was a comfort, but it was still blank, stretching, and undefined. He wanted there to be more. He didn’t know what that meant. He wanted there to be more. It was like a tired child, that feeling, pleading for another hour awake even when sleep would always win. He could not stay up all night, and he could not find something that wasn’t there.
Bucky’s hands found the edge of the cape, and he raised it to Steve’s neck. Steve felt his hair stand up as Bucky’s hands briefly ran along his skin, moving to tie the tie. When Bucky removed his hands, he smiled softly, “There. Now you almost look spooky.”
“Almost?” Steve was surprised to find he could not raise his voice from a whisper.
“Almost.”
Their eyes locked as Bucky raised his hand to his lip; it was coated in fake blood. He ran his thumb along the corner of his mouth, unbroken in his eye contact with Steve, and reached out. Steve craned his neck to look. The heel of Bucky’s thumb pressed into his shoulder, the pad of the finger brushed against his neck. Once, twice.
“There.” Bucky left his hand on Steve’s shoulder as he admired the two little dots of fake blood he’d left on Steve’s neck. A mock bite mark. In a theatrical steely voice, Bucky said, “Now, you will live through the centuries to come, as I have lived.”
“Did you just quote Dracula at me?”
Someone had changed the disc on the phonograph—a slower record to replace the fast-paced big-band sound. Steve didn’t recognize the album and was surprised to learn that Bucky owned it; he didn’t know Bucky as someone who listened to slow songs. This meant that dancing had paused, and party-goers no longer felt like outlines of people in motion but true, whole, and complex individuals—Bucky’s friends, Bucky’s people. Every piece of furniture, Bucky’s sofa with its matching cushions, the wooden chairs and kitchen table his folks had given him, and his too-low-for-comfort little coffee table, had someone either sitting or leaning on it. Costumed people draped over one another, drinking, talking. One small group had congregated in the kitchen.
“James,” A man with a thick reddish-blonde mustache and what looked to be a paper bunny mask resting on his head hissed from the couch, “C’mere.”
Steve watched from his station outside Bucky’s bedroom as Bucky smiled and sauntered over. “What?” Bucky asked, dropping to the floor and sprawling comfortably in front of the man. At that moment, he looked beautiful and confident, hedonism personified.
The man nodded in Steve’s direction, “Who’d you take into your room?”
“That’s my boy, Stevie,” Bucky grinned, “I made him into a vampire.”
“That’s Steve? The Steve?”
“That’s Steve,” Bucky replied, unchanging in his grin. He lazily threw his head onto his shoulder and looked at Steve. He called over the music, “Steve, come on, you gotta meet my pal Ed.”
Steve held a shy smile as he made his way through the tangle of party-goers, many of who now had eyes on him. He shook hands with the man across from them before sitting cross-legged next to Bucky, who patted his knee.
“S’nice to finally meet you,” Ed smiled, a chipped front tooth on display. The little triangle-shaped hole left between the middle of his front teeth was boyish and instantly endearing, and unlike Gio, Steve felt like he could trust the man within seconds. “I’m Ed.”
“I heard. It’s nice to meet you, I’m Steve.”
“Yeah, I heard,” Ed parroted, still smiling. He took a quick drink from the beer he’d been keeping balanced on the arm of the sofa, “James says you work in news?”
Steve flushed red, “Oh, I used to,” He thought back to his daily tasks of sweeping and stacking and added, “Well, kinda. I worked in printing for a while, but, uh, I got canned.”
“Oh, shit,” Bucky’s buddy looked genuinely apologetic, “I’m sorry, man. Damn. I don’t mean to salt the wound or nothin.’”
“No, s’okay. That’s life, you know.”
“Sure.”
Steve felt a pang of insecurity shoot through his chest. He knew he could let the feeling govern his mood for the night, but instead, he flipped the conversation back to Ed, “What about you? What do you do?”
“I’m helpin’ build ships for the Navy. I think I might wanna be a sailor.” Ed explained with a not-so-subdued pride. He took another swig of his drink before adding, “You know what, I actually met Jamey over there, by the shipyard,” Ed looked at Bucky, who was distracted by something across the room. Ed looked back to Steve and smiled. “I was at work. I thought he was too, but he wasn’t. I don’t think he ever gets up to anything good over there. Besides meetin’ me, I guess.”
Bucky resumed his role in conversation to ask, “Are you talkin’ about me?”
Ed casually sipped his drink and shook his head. “Not everything is about you, Jamey.”
Bucky looked at Steve.
Wanting to hear more from Ed, Steve lied, “No, Buck.”
“Alright,” Bucky mumbled, “I’ll be back.” He patted Steve’s knee one last time before pushing himself up and heading to the window.
“There he goes,” Ed mused, his eyes briefly tracking Bucky. He returned his attention to Steve and asked, as if there had been no break in the topic of conversation, “So, no more news work for you, yeah?”
Steve nodded.
“Do you do art full-time, then?”
“Art?”
“You’re the one who draws, right?”
“Bucky told you that I draw?”
Ed’s chipped tooth peeked through his smile as he said, “Yeah. I’ll tell you, Steve,” He paused, wrapped his hand around the neck of his beer, and shifted to lean in closer to Steve, “James tells everyone about you. Didn’t you see he’s got that drawing you did of Ebbet’s put up?”
“I didn’t see that,” Steve responded, reeling, “Where’d he put it?”
“S’in the kitchen.”
Although small, the sketch wasn’t hard to find. Steve had made it months ago, back in July—sitting in a patch of grass upstate, he’d drawn Ebbet’s Field from memory. It was a sloppy sketch; outlines had been left behind, a few areas were unintentionally smudged, and it had creased where he’d folded it, but he could admit it had some charm.
What Steve enjoyed most about the drawing was not the content of the picture, but the two words Bucky had pressed flush to his wall when he tacked it up. ‘Yours, Steve,’ written on the back, a move, a nod, a secret, shared between only them. He could remember how his hands had trembled when he’d written the words, how emotion had made its mark. He wondered now about the chances of reality tearing away just enough to let the paper become translucent and let him peek at the other side.
“Are you Steve?”
Steve spun around, instantly blushing as his foolish dreaming was interrupted. “Yeah.”
It was a girl who had asked. There were only a few dames at the function, a fact which had only settled into Steve’s awareness not long prior, and now two of them were in front of him. A blonde and a brunette, both dressed as witches.
“I’m Mary,” said the brunette, smiling. She stuck a hand out for Steve to shake. Once Steve had taken her hand, she nodded toward the blonde girl beside her, “This is Clara.”
“Hi,” Clara smiled and waved.
“Hi.”
Steve’s eyes had meant to fall on Clara; they really had, but he couldn’t help but let his focus drift over her shoulder. The mummy, even easy to spot in low light, was out on Bucky’s fire escape, sitting back and waving his lit cigarette as he spoke. It was Bucky he was talking to, so it had to be Bucky’s hand that was resting on the mummy’s leg. He watched as Bucky leaned forward, the dark shadow of his arm slipping around Gio’s waist.
“Did you draw that?” Mary asked, pointing at the drawing of Ebbet’s behind Steve’s head.
He instinctively turned, “Yeah, I did.”
“I like it a lot. Great composition.” Clara said.
“Thanks.” Steve turned back around. He tried to peer over Clara’s shoulder again, but the crowd of party-goers had obstructed his view.
“Bucky told us you were coming, by the way; that’s why we knew your name.” Clara pulled Steve’s attention with the name ‘Bucky,’ he’d been hearing ‘Jamey’ all night. “He says you guys are close.”
“Yeah,” Mary nodded enthusiastically, “He always talks about you. And I’m not pullin’ your leg, I mean it, he always talks about you. He really likes you.”
“Mary,” Clara whispered, smiling as she threw a playful elbow into Mary’s side.
“What?” Mary laughed, “It’s not a lie.”
Clara’s eyebrows raised as she held a finger to her mouth and pretended to shush Mary. Mary rolled her eyes as Clara looked back to Steve, “Don’t mind her. She’s been drinking.”
“Ah!” Mary exclaimed, “Hardly!”
“Enough,” Clara teased in a sing-song voice. She turned back to Steve and said, “Sorry. We’re just happy to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you both, too,” Steve responded, still distracted by the sight of Bucky on the fire escape with Gio. He remembered to attempt polite conversation and asked, “How do you know Bucky?”
“Oh, we live down the block,” Mary answered, barely getting the words out before rushing into her next question, “You grew up with him, right?”
“I did. He’s my oldest friend.”
“Friend,” Mary echoed. The other girl, Clara, elbowed her again. “What?” Mary asked, smiling as they exchanged a glance at one another.
“Uh, yep,” Steve answered, thoroughly confused, “He’s my friend.”
“So you aren’t best friends?” Clara asked.
“I mean, I guess we’re best friends.”
As if the words were a cue, the girls turned and smirked at each other. Then Mary seemed to remember Steve was there, so she said, “That’s cute.”
The girls might as well have spoken a language he didn’t understand, but he still smiled and replied, “Thanks.”
“Are you two done interrogating Steve?” Bucky emerged from the crowd behind the girls, seemingly appearing out of thin air. He wrapped his arms around both of their shoulders and said, “Whatever you’re accusing him of, he’s innocent, I promise.”
“No,” Clara laughed, wrapping her arms around Bucky in a quick hug, “We were just getting started.”
“Oh, yeah?” Bucky asked. He was smiling wide, a half-drunk beer hanging loosely between the fingers of his left hand, which rested over Mary’s shoulder. He smelled like cold air and smoke. “You like his costume?”
“It’s somethin’.” Mary laughed.
“Hey, it wasn’t my idea,” Steve pulled the cape out from behind him and briefly examined it, “Bucky’s the one who made me wear this.”
Mary looked up at Bucky, grinning, “Did you make him wear your clothes?”
With a confident nod, Bucky met Mary’s look, “I changed him.”
“You are so–you know what, never mind,” Mary shook her head and looked at Steve, “How do you put up with him?”
“It ain’t easy,” Steve played into the joke, earning a wink from Bucky. He felt his face get hot.
“I’m not that bad,” Bucky said, “You all willingly came to my party, after all.”
“I agree. You could be worse,” Clara joked. “You could be a real vampire.”
Mary took Bucky’s beer from his hand, drank a single sip, and returned it to him. She said, “Bucky, you did promise this party would include dancing.”
“Well, you know, you could always just start dancing,” Bucky teased, smiling as he playfully knocked his beer bottle against Mary’s shoulder.
“To this music?”
“Then how about you two go put somethin’ good on?” Bucky offered, removing his arms from around the girls, “We’ll meet you over there.”
“Come on, Mary,” Clara tugged at her, “See you later, guys.”
“Nice to meet you, Steve,” Mary called as Clara pulled her away.
“You too,” Steve said, watching Mary finally turn to face Clara and wander into the living room.
“Would you like to dance?” Bucky asked, smiling at Steve. He looked beautiful in the dim light of the kitchen, his dark hair a little more disheveled than previously.
“Do I have to?”
“You do know the steps, now,” Bucky could tell Steve wasn’t convinced, so he added, “And it would make me happy if you did.”
Although Bucky had intended to dance, he hardly got the chance to do so. Instead, he was pulled into countless conversations, each time greeting whoever it was who’d grabbed him with a smile. Steve watched the interactions from the sidelines, admiring the cosmic spotlight that seemed to follow Bucky wherever he went. He looked ethereal as he moved.
Mary and Clara put on another record, and soon, Steve found himself dancing. The girls spun one another, laughing as they did so, and Mary even spun Steve once. He loosened up as more people took to the dance floor, Bucky’s living room, and his limbs seemed to move in time with the crowd's sway. At one point, he caught Bucky smiling at him from across the floor.
“Steve,” Clara grabbed his arm, breathlessly pulling him to the side. They dropped onto the couch, and once Clara caught her breath, she said, “Bucky told us you were cute, but he undersold you. You’re great.”
Steve couldn’t help but smile, “I can’t believe you can say that after seeing me dance.”
Clara laughed, “You’re a fine dancer.”
“Bucky’s a better one.”
“Yeah, fair,” Clara’s laugh was finished, but she still grinned. She was a beautiful girl with curly blonde hair and a genuine smile. Steve wondered just how well Bucky knew her. “Mary is a better dancer than me, but I don’t mind. I like watching her.”
“I like watching Bucky.”
Eventually, Mary pulled Bucky onto the dance floor. Steve and Clara watched from the sofa as Bucky and Mary danced, their strong movements complementing one another. At the song's close, Bucky performatively dipped Mary, and she laughed as her hands grasped his biceps to hold close to him. The sight made Steve’s chest clench.
“They’re both such flirts,” Clara laughed.
As the night wore on, Steve enjoyed the party more and more due to his budding friendship with Clara. They talked about art, danced, drank, and watched Bucky and Mary. It wasn’t until late into the night that Mary and Clara left, hugging both Bucky and Steve goodbye. The party dwindled, and predictably, Bucky spent his time saying his goodbyes to friends.
Excluding Steve, Gio was the last to leave, taking Bucky into the night with him for half an hour. Now adequately addled by drink, Steve did not have any coherent thoughts about Bucky’s extended absence but instead started cleaning up the place.
“Sorry, Stevie,” Bucky called into the apartment as he returned, bringing a lingering cold that seemed to have worked its way into the fibers of his clothes. The fake blood around his mouth was mostly gone now; only a residue remained. “He talks forever.”
“S’okay,” Steve responded, still moving toward the kitchen to throw out the bottles he had collected, “I was waitin’ to say goodbye.”
“Oh, come on,” Bucky said, flopping onto the couch and closing his eyes. “It’s cold out. You live far away. Stay here.”
Steve had expected the offer, but still, he asked, “Can I?”
“Always, Steve. Yes.” Bucky sat up abruptly, “Fuck,” He whined, “The couch smells like beer. Come sleep in my room.”
Steve dropped off the bottles and returned to the living room. He had not expected that offer, “Really?”
“Yeah,” Bucky clumsily moved upward, “Come on.”
Steve watched as Bucky stripped down to his boxers in front of him with no reservation. His heart beat fast, but he told himself it was just the alcohol they had both consumed influencing their actions.
Bucky was out cold the second his head hit the pillow. Steve curled up at the foot of Bucky’s bed, and without a thought about the odd events of the night, he slept.