BUCKY

It wasn’t the first time we had walked in on Indy crying over a book; she teared up during any mildly emotional movie. She usually tried to hide her face in her pulled-up knees, but she wasn’t fooling any of us. It was, however, the first time we’d found her a drunken, sobbing mess.

Kate and Yelena had decided to do some “single girls” vacation in lieu of Thanksgiving and Sam had invited me back to Louisiana. It had been a welcome breath of fresh air, the warm, familiar shouting of the locals. Everything down there felt relaxed, less tense than here in the city. The company had been good, and the food - somehow - was even better.

Kate and Yelena weren’t due back until next week, but I knew Indy had planned to stay in the city; something about plans with her mother. The group chat for the compound was flooded with pictures from Kate as soon as she and Yelena had gotten in the air, and Indy had requested hopes and prayers from us all. Apparently, Kate wasn’t the only one who had a strained relationship with her mom.

I was thanking Sam for a fifteenth time for lugging me along back home when we stepped off the elevator onto the fourth floor. Most of the lights were off in the kitchen and dining room, but a soft white glow lit the walls. A sniffle from the living room made Sam and I meet each other’s eye curiously. We dropped our bags at our feet.

“Indy? That you?” Sam asked as we entered the living room, where a slightly lopsided Christmas tree had been erected, horribly crooked lights strung around it.

Indy was sitting on the couch with a book propped up on her lap. She had a blanket wrapped around her and her face behind her glasses was red and splotchy, tears dripping from her chin onto the pages below. A short, nearly empty glass of mystery liquid sat on a coaster on the edge of the table next to her.

As Sam stood in front of her, I lifted the glass from the table and sniffed at it. Whiskey. Sure enough, on the floor in front of her was a brown bottle, the plastic cap a few inches away. Empty.

She looked up at us and immediately wobbled to her feet, tossing her glasses onto the table as the blanket fell back onto the couch. She wore a tiny (and I mean tiny) tank top that really only covered… well, what needed to be covered. A gingerbread man smiled at us from the top of her chest. Her shorts were better… and worse. The plaid print matched the overalls the gingerbread man wore, but they hugged her in ways that I shouldn’t have lingered on the way I did.

Sam raised his eyebrows, but seemed to have no other reaction to her skimpy PJs. Maybe this was another this-century thing. She tottered forward and threw her arms around his neck.

“I missed you guys! I had to go and see the devil without moral support,” she muttered, drunk and suddenly grumpy. Then she turned to me and reeled me in by the back of the neck, standing on her toes to hug me.

I tensed instinctively, but didn’t move. She felt… soft, pressed against me like this. I patted her back awkwardly, and she backed away, apparently unaware of how unsettled I suddenly was.

“The devil?” I asked after clearing my throat.

“Maybe ‘the devil’ is harsh,” Indy slurred, waving a hand and slumping back down onto the couch. She wore cropped shirts now and then, but I always avoided looking lower than her shirt on principle. I didn’t realize she had a bellybutton piercing. A tiny purple stone caught the light coming off the Christmas tree. “She’s just mildly evil.”

“Your mom?”

Her hazel eyes were bleary when they met mine, but I could see sadness in them. “Yeah. My mom.”

“Having a pity party, were you?” Sam asked, lifting the whiskey bottle from the floor and eyeing the tree with a smirk.

With the amount of liquor she’d gone through, I expected a belligerent and clumsy fist to connect with Sam’s face - I’d have hit him. But Indy just giggled a little unintelligibly and nodded.

“And you were crying because…?” I asked gently.

She stiffened for only a second before lifting the book next to her and wailing, “It’s such a good book!” The freckles on her cheeks were now awash in tears.

My fingers twitched against my leg.

Sam frowned and put a hand on her shoulder. “You put up the tree and didn’t turn on any Christmas movies?” He admonished her softly, jokingly. “That’s where you went wrong, girl.”

She looked up at him, tears ringing her lower lid and her full lips quivering.

“How about we fix it?” Sam continued quietly, taking his hand back and grabbing the TV remote. In quicker time than I could’ve made it happen, a motley group of brightly colored clay models was singing and dancing on screen about the magic of Christmas.

Indy sniffled again, and I thought I heard a sob, but when I looked over at her, she was smiling through her tears. Sam sat the remote next to her and turned to the tree, frowning over the twisted wreck she’d made of the string of tiny white bulbs.

I felt useless, standing there with my arms at my sides. I didn’t know how to comfort people; I was a soldier. But something about the sadness in her normally smiling eyes, the helpless sound of her sniffles, made me feel like I should be doing something. My eyes locked on her whiskey glass.

While she zoned out on the flying reindeer, I slipped the bottle, the glass, and the tissues that littered the area away from her, getting it all put away silently. I hesitated in the kitchen. This was my chance to pay her back for everything she was always doing for me. What would help her feel better?

I considered making her some hot chocolate, but didn’t figure that would mix too well with a stomach full of alcohol, so I grabbed a water bottle instead and took it back into the living room. Sam was still re-stringing the lights and Indy was still on the couch.

Her cheek rested against her fist, eyes drooping as she tried to follow the movie. With each blink, her eyes became more and more unfocused. Her breathing was deepening.

I smothered my smile and leaned down in front of the couch, holding the water bottle out to her.

Her eyes drifted vaguely over to me and she gave me a sleepy smile as she reached out to take the bottle. Why was it so warm in here?

“This for me, Sarge?”

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “But you probably need sleep more than anything. Think you can walk?”

“I guess we’ll see.”

She sighed and stood slowly, wavering a little so that I had to grab her by the arm to make sure she didn’t fall. I’d used my right hand, so I could feel the goosebumps along her cold, thin arm. I released her quickly, but had to grab her elbow to make sure she didn’t crash into the table.

Sam glanced over, a coil of lights wound around his left arm as he worked out a kink in the cord. “Get her to bed without any serious injuries, Bucky.”

“I’m doing what I can,” I grunted, rolling my eyes and bending to swing her up into my arms. I swallowed whatever discomfort or tension I was wrestling with and ignored the way her exposed back felt against my hand. It would be easier than half-dragging her down the hall by the arm.

Sam grinned. “Night, Indy.”

Indy’s head fell back over my arm so she could look back at him, her long hair swaying back and forth with every step I took. “Night, Sam,” she yawned, resting her forehead against my shoulder.

I cleared my throat again and turned toward her bedroom door. She weighed next to nothing for a super soldier, so it was simple enough to hold her up with one arm and open the door with the other. Her light was off, but enough moonlight flooded in from the open curtains to see.

To the right, a puffy-looking duvet covered her bed. An alarm clock with glowing blue numbers sat on the bedside table next to another book and a pair of headphones. The rug beneath the edge of her bed looked gray, but maybe that was from the lack of light. A full-length mirror reflected my own side profile as I walked over to her bedside and set her down against her pillows.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, setting her water bottle on the table next to her.

I nodded, unsure what to say or do now. I straightened up and was about to make my way back out when her voice called me back.

“Bucky?” She sounded very young and uncertain.

I turned back and looked down at her. “Yeah?”

She was lying on her side, looking over at her alarm clock like it held the answers to all of life’s mysteries. 2:27 a.m. The blue glow shined eerily against her glassy eyes. “What do you think happens when we die?”

My mouth dropped open a little in surprise. I’d known men back in the army who were prone to this kind of existential philosophizing when they got drunk. But those were men in the trenches of war.

She was kind of all over the place tonight. It was odd for Indy; she normally held herself together better than this. My face relaxed, features softening in sympathy. I didn’t know what kind of answer I planned to give her, but I was spared having to respond by her continued rambling.

“Do you think it’s easy? Like walking from one room to the next?” Her voice dropped to a whisper so quiet I had to step closer to hear her. Her eyes flickered over to me, tears dripping onto her pillow. “Do you think they can hear us from this room?”

My heart squeezed in my chest. There was so much pain in her voice. I leaned down and put my hand on her shoulder. She shivered lightly at the touch of cold metal, but didn’t move away.

“I hope so.”

She gave me a watery smile and put her hand over mine on her shoulder for a second then sighed and shifted further over onto her pillow. I glanced back at her one more time before shutting her bedroom door behind me.

“She alright?” Sam asked without looking up as he wrapped his arms around the tree, feeding the lights between limbs.

“Yeah, I think so.” I went to the couch and picked up the book she’d left sitting on the arm. It was surprisingly familiar. The printing was formatted differently, the cover now more cleanly designed than when I’d read it as a young man.

Death is Nothing At All by Henry Scott-Holland.

INDY

I woke up feeling like an ice pick was being shoved through the front of my skull. I lifted my blanket up and peered out at my alarm clock.

Jesus, I slept past noon?

“I’ve got to stop drinking,” I groaned to myself, knowing no such thing would happen. I didn’t normally drink often, but when I did… it was usually for a reason.

I allowed myself only a few more minutes of laying in the dark beneath my warm blanket, then I dragged myself to my feet and slumped into the bathroom that adjoined my room.

Once my mouth no longer tasted like stale alcohol and my hair was less raggedy, I stared my reflection down. Dark circles made my eyes look tired, helped along by the bloodshot whites that surrounded my irises. Dragging a hairbrush through my hair had tamed the worst of the half-curly caramel-colored waves that spilled down my back, but I didn’t have the energy to put it up like I usually did.

I grimaced at my reflection, remembering Thanksgiving with my mother.

We hadn’t had an actual home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner since dad died, so we’d met at a restaurant and sat awkwardly across from each other, making obligatory small-talk, catching up on major life changes. The kinds of things you did with an old acquaintance, not your mother.

“These were dad’s favorite,” I said idly, smiling as I stabbed a sweet potato on the end of my fork.

Mom’s hand tightened on her wineglass across the table. She cleared her throat and picked up her napkin, carefully placing it over the side of her plate that was still loaded with untouched sweet potatoes.

“I don’t recall,” she intoned emotionlessly.

I sighed and sat back slightly in my chair, not caring that it rumpled the fabric of my nice orange blouse. She was always doing this. Pretending she doesn’t think about dad, doesn’t remember him. Pretending he never existed.

“Why can’t we just… talk about him?” I asked quietly, toying with the edge of my napkin.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her green eyes met mine with a lack of warmth that shouldn’t have come as a surprise. “We talk about your father plenty.”

She spoke with such conviction that I almost believed her. Except for the slight hitch in her voice on the word ‘father’.

After that, I’d huffed and dropped the attempt at substantial conversation.

The drinking had started the next day, after I’d had a solid block of time alone to brood over what remained of my family. I remembered pouring a few glasses of whiskey and deciding that one day past Thanksgiving was the perfect time to put up the Christmas tree.

A fuzzy image of Sam and Bucky returning and finding me absolutely smashed swam in front of my mind’s eye. I put a hand to my head and groaned, heading toward my closet.

I was too hungover to be mortified by the fact that I was wearing my smallest pajama set. Sam and Bucky had certainly gotten an eyeful last night. It’s not like I was wearing lingerie, but the shorts were short and the top was cropped with spaghetti straps. At least it was Christmassy.

I pushed embarrassment into the furthest corner of my mind and changed into a gray sweatshirt and some jeans before leaving my room.

A single step into the hallway and my stomach was trying to flip over on me. The smell of cooking food was drifting to me from the kitchen. I held a hand to my mouth. I was either going to be very sick, or I was going to devour every bit of whatever was making that smell.

I stumbled into the open dining and kitchen area, squinting in the light that rained in from the windows.

“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” Sam called way too loudly.

I scowled at him. “Morning. How was your Thanksgiving?”

He chuckled as I shuffled over to the counter across from him. “It was good. Had some good food, got to see my family. Even got Bucky to smile once or twice.”

“It was once,” a deep voice responded from behind me.

I turned to see Bucky emerging from the hallway as well, possibly from his room. He immediately held out his hand, fingers curled around whatever was in his palm.

I raised an eyebrow at him, but held my hand out in return, open beneath his.

He released his fingers and dropped a few tablets into my hand. Aspirin.

“Thank you,” I whined desperately, popping them into my mouth and washing them down with the water Sam slid across the counter to me. I ran my tongue over my teeth in hesitance, but finally had to ask. “How bad off was I when you guys got here last night?”

Sam and Bucky shared a look, then Sam grinned. “Well, we all flew out to Vegas and you and I got married in a drive-thru. Bucky was both best man and maid of honor.”

I gave him a flat look, sitting on one of the stools that lined this side of the counter.

“Beautiful ceremony,” Sam shrugged, turning back to the grilled cheese sandwiches he was stacking onto a plate.

Bucky shook his head at Sam, a hint of a smile in the corner of his mouth. Then he turned to me, his eyebrows pulling inward in concern.

“You were crying,” he said quietly. “A lot, it seemed like.”

My mouth dropped open before I clamped my jaw shut, face red. I didn’t like crying in front of people. It made me feel needy, like I was seeking out attention and comfort.

“You left this on the couch,” Bucky continued, grabbing a familiar book I hadn’t noticed from the dining room table. He held it out to me and I took the thin thing with shaky fingers, staring hard at the cover.

“Do you think they can hear us from this room?”

“I hope so.”

I looked up and had to fight the urge to shift uncomfortably at the worry that was clear in his blue eyes.

“Thanks.” My voice was weak, a little hoarse, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just nodded, giving me a polite smile before turning away.

“Lunch anyone?” Sam asked, holding up a plate piled high with grilled cheese.

“Oh no,” I groaned, slapping a hand over my mouth as I bolted up from my seat and sprinted down the hall toward the bathroom. Behind me, I could hear Sam chuckling.

“You’ll think twice about that whiskey next time!”

“Shut up!” I roared into the toilet bowl, hoping it echoed back to him before I kicked the door closed and started retching.