Major League (Captain America)
“You’ll like him,” Dugan had said. “He was Special Forces and his degree’s in something pretentious.”
“Right, I’m a well-known fan of pretension,” Bucky said. “It really feels like you picked him out special for me.”
“I don’t know, pal, we’ve only met a few times. He’s got muscles and a face and a boner for dudes. He’s from New York,” Dugan offered, in his best facsimile of generosity.
Bucky considered this. “Where in New York?”
“City.”
“Like for real or—”
Dugan gestured, evoking the time at the bar that Bucky had failed to name a single city in Alabama.
The facts were these: Bucky was newly at loose ends, well-provisioned materially but emotionally dependent on the kindness of friends who, while perfectly suited for bosom companionship in his past life, were being forced to reckon with the fact that they didn’t have much in common with Bucky when they weren’t all wearing matching uniforms every day. He was almost thirty. And he was seeking a date. This meant, in sum, that it was Bucky’s responsibility to accept any and all interpersonal lifelines that were extended to him.
“Fine. Give me his number,” Bucky had said. Then, more fool he, he’d gotten hopeful—not unreasonably so, he’d thought, but he’d let the little bubble of maybe inflate behind his sternum through the initial hi, this is tim’s friend james/nice to meet you james, this is steve, then tended it throughout the subsequent selection of a coffee shop that was neither shit nor pretentious. He’d done his hair and worn a nice shirt, and he hadn’t worried at all when ‘Steve Dugan Friend’ let him know ten minutes ahead of time that he’d be five minutes late. He just told him who to look for, put in his lunch order, and got them a good table.
When Steve Rogers walked through the door, stopped in surprise, and said “Bucky?” it took Bucky almost a full minute to realize what was happening.
“Stevie,” Bucky said. He’d gotten huge—bigger than Bucky, bigger than Dugan, even. Too big, if anything—trying-too-hard muscle. He was wearing an extremely stupid scarf. “What are you—”
“I’m meeting,” Steve said, scanning the room, and then stopped on Bucky’s sweater, which was green. “Uh.”
“Oh, god,” Bucky said, the bubble popping, the void where it’d held space sucking at his lungs. “No way.”
“James, now, then, I guess? It’s good to see you.”
“Jesus fuck,” Bucky said, regretting ordering a cup of soup for here, which meant he couldn’t walk out with a paper bag and his dignity. “Why the hell couldn’t you Facebook stalk me ahead of time like a normal person?”
“I don’t have Facebook,” Steve frowned.
“I know, you can still— fuck. Well,” Bucky said, mentally wishing his bowl of broccoli cheddar well, “bye, I guess.” He stood up from the table—it had been such a good table—chair scraping horribly, and Steve moved to block him, which was effective now that he was built like Mr. Universe.
“Hey,” he said, “can we still have lunch? Or can we at least take five minutes?”
“Why?” Bucky demanded, hating the feeling of being trapped. There was a woman nearby who’d been checking him out earlier and was now looking at him like he was the kind of person who caused problems in public. “It’s been—”
“I know, but we’re already here, Bucky. If we’re here, we’re supposed to at least fucking talk.”
Steve’s sense of cause and effect had always been cosmic and unfounded. Bucky used to love his confidence. “Five minutes,” he said. It was just enough time to finish his soup without burning his mouth.
“Thank you,” Steve said, and took a seat. He moved like a big man now. “So, how are you, James,” he said, testing the name out carefully.
“Still Bucky when I’m not on a date,” Bucky told him. “I didn’t— Stevie, what the hell do you even want me to say.”
“Just Steve,” he corrected. “I don’t know, like— what are you doing? Tim said you were at U.S. Steel? So I guess you got out and got your degree? And your sisters, are they— where are they?”
“Chemical engineering, yes, yes, and London, still at my parents’, and SUNY Rochester, respectively,” Bucky said, and ate a deliberately large spoonful of soup. Steve waited for him to swallow, and filled the space when he didn’t continue.
“Wow, London is—”
“Can we skip to the part where you pretend to care about what Becca’s doing and apologize?” Bucky asked. He knew the chances of that were infinitesimal, and sure enough, Steve leaned back in his chair, irritated.
“I have always been invested in your family’s well-being,” he said, which was true to the extent that you could be invested in anyone you hadn’t seen in almost ten years.
“Well, they’re well,” Bucky said. They weren’t entirely. “And unless you have amends you want to make—”
“It’s frustrating watching you try to dump all of it on me again,” Steve said, his mouth tight. “After—”
“It’s frustrating to watch you sit there across from me making polite conversation when you’ve never once apologized.”
“Neither have—”
“‘I’ll leave you if you join the Army,’ is what you said to me. And then you joined the Army.”
The guy at the table behind Steve looked like he'd been teleported to the Super Bowl mid-game. He was texting furiously. “That’s an oversimplification,” Steve lied.
“That’s a direct quote.”
“There were extenuating—”
“The extenuating circumstances were that you’re think you’re fucking special,” Bucky said. “Which were the extenuating circumstances of every single day of my life until I walked out the door.” There was a long pause, during which Steve flickered through a number of different expressions, none of them contrition.
“I’m sorry that I made you feel that way,” he said eventually, revealing nothing but that he’d taken at least one useless conflict management course since 2010.
“Well,” Bucky said, “me too,” but when he moved to get up, Steve closed a hand around his wrist. Bucky looked down at it, thinking about making a scene. Steve’s hands were so big compared to his body, and then they weren’t.
“I know I’m a piece of shit or whatever you’re thinking right now,” Steve said, “but it would mean a lot to me if we could be on speaking terms.”
“Why?” Bucky asked, startled by the realization that Steve had lost the ability to read his mind.
“Honestly?” Steve said, lowering his voice for the first time in the conversation. “You’re the only person left who really remembers Mom.”
It was, objectively, a low blow. The thing was, people aimed low for a reason. Steve, like everyone, was a house built on top of himself. Whoever Bucky was talking to, he was also talking to the kid who’d taught him how never to lose tic-tac-toe, and the boy he’d lost his manual virginity to on a pile of red dirt behind a Little League fence, and the young man who'd stick his tongue out to the side while learning how to chop an onion. Bucky’d heard Steve’s mom was gone. He hadn’t thought much about what that left him keeper of.
“Let go of my wrist,” Bucky said, and when Steve did, he sat back down.