II. in the morning, I'll call you
July — 2013
Steve hates his apartment.
It’s nice, he supposes, but it doesn’t mean he likes it. What Stark-turn-Avenger’s Tower gives in opulence, it lacks in character and comfort. His apartment walls are bare, and the only spot of color comes form the shield he keeps propped up at his counter.
He’s spending his birthday on the balcony of his suite with a six pack of bottled beer, watching fireworks color the black sky.
“How are you holding up?” Natasha asks, stepping out onto the balcony next to him. She is very cat like in that way — coming and going as she pleases, and quietly too. She almost startled him, since he was so deep in thought.
Steve sets his beer bottle down on the ground next to him and shrugs.
“Thought you couldn’t get drunk?”
He shrugs. “Maybe I’m drinking for atonement. I never really did care for the taste of alcohol, you know?”
Natasha laughs. “I’m Russian, so no, not really.”
Steve bites back a smile.
“I found something,” she says after a moment. “I went digging through the old S.H.I.E.L.D. archives for it.”
He turns to her, and she’s carrying a wooden crate with the old S.S.R. logo burned into the wood. She places it down next to him, careful to avoid the ring of condensation from where his drink is resting. “Happy Birthday Steve.”
Natasha turns to leave, but Steve grabs her hand, honestly surprising both of them. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Stay? Please.”
She raises an eyebrow, but there’s no judgment there. She sits on his other side, letting her slender legs stretch out in front of her. Steve remembers being her size, and some bittersweet, clawing grief strikes him and he misses himself before the serum.
“I don’t know how to make friends,” Steve says, mindlessly picking at the wooden corner of the box and feeling the woodgrain under his finger tips.
“What?”
“I genuinely don’t know how to make friends.” Steve repeats. “I’m twenty-nine years old, I think, and all my friends are gone, and I don’t know how to make new ones.”
“I’m your friend,” Nat says, glancing sideways with her green eyes.
“You’re a spy.”
“And you’re Captain America.”
“But I’m not. Not entirely. I’m not the person people think I am.”
“Neither am I,” she quirks up an eyebrow.
Steve turns back to the box. “What’s in the box?”
Natasha chuckles. “You know that’s from a movie, right?”
Steve shrugs. “I probably haven’t seen it. But really, what is it?"
“There’s a lot of different stuff in there, all stuff from the Howling Commandos Era.” She pulls her legs up to her chest and wraps her arms around them, resting her head on her knees.
“And S.H.I.E.L.D. is just giving it to me?”
“Let’s call it lending,” she says almost too quickly. “Technically. No one’s going to go looking for it, so I figure it’s better served in your possession than locked away.”
“Natasha Romanoff, a sentimentalist?” Steve says between a smile.
“If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it. When you’re ready, come find me.” She gets up and departs, just as quietly as she came.
The box has weight to it, and not just physically. He doesn’t know if he can open it, but he needs to.
The latch is still closed, but the lock has since been removed. There’s markings in the metal that leave Steve to imagine that the lock had to be sawed off. As he opens the box, it’s like he can feel the ghosts of his friends sitting with him, patting a hand on his back, on his shoulders, and even Dugan rusting the front of his hair like he did during the war.
It smells like aged wood and plastic. Steve can’t quite make out the contents of the box, given that they’ve all been stored in sealed plastic bags, an attempt to ward off damaging change. It’s like a time portal, enveloping him back into the age he misses so very much.
The first bag he pulls out makes him smile. It’s a notepad. There’s some of Gabe’s neat and slanted handwriting across the top lines, all old coded tactical plans. Then there’s rogue tic-tac-toe games, and a few Kilroy’s drawn along the bottom — a call sign adopted by Bucky after he saw it appear on American tanks.
Bag after bag, memory after memory. It’s almost too much for Steve.
At the bottom of the box, Steve’s fingertips brush something fuzzy. He reaches inside tentatively and pulls out the Bucky Bear.
It almost doesn’t feel real, and he’s so in shock from it that he just sits with it against his chest. He feels for the thick and crooked stitches he left in the bear. Mama Barnes may have taught him to sew, but that doesn’t mean he was particularly good at at, especially after the serum.
For the first time since he emerged from the ice, Steve lets himself feel something other than anger. Everything other than anger.
He feels the happiness from the good times, from the small bonfires in enemy territory, to singing around the their table at the whip and fiddle, and dancing around the bunk with each other, practicing for the ladies in town. He remembers what it’s like to laugh unapologetically. To feel the warmth of joy radiate out from his chest, even from under the pressure of wartime.
He remembers the sadness. The feel of the cool London rain and the smattering of water on his face from the Thames. He remembers what mourning feels like, more acutely now because there’s no rush to it. The longing, the missing he feels, it’s been stirred up inside of him like soot at the bottom of a pool. He never got to say goodbye to any of them.
And he embraces it all. Anything and everything is better than the immovable apathy he’s felt for nearly a year.
Holding the bear near his chest, and holding the memories of his friends closer, Steve looks up to the fireworks in the sky. A beautiful gradient of red, white, and blue.