Renting a gray apartment
He really didn’t have anything to do when he arrived back to his apartment, it wasn’t like he had a job or a life outside of fighting. It was all he’d ever done. He’d always been a weapon, a soldier, although he supposed that was ironic.
Even after the war had ended, he’d still been a soldier, he didn’t fight on the right side, he was a weapon under their control and yet he still earned the name of a soldier. He didn’t like it, it felt like a slime settled on his skin, that all the Howlies, Steve, even Sam fit into the same category as the Winter Soldier. Afterall, a soldier was someone who put on a uniform and fought for a cause, no matter the cause or coercion that came with it.
He left the cab, paying the fare to a bored driver who did little more than grunt at the start and end of the ride, which suited James just fine. He didn’t want to talk anyway, he wanted to wallow in his own self pity.
The stairs were steeper than he remembered and there seemed to be more of the concrete blocks than ever. Tugging himself up them was an exercise in self control not to let himself run back down and demand the cab come back and take him home. The walls were bleaker than he remembered and it seemed like the world had turned grey without Sam’s pop of colour.
His slightly too bright suit and his buddy Redwing, who James cheered as he was snapped. His broken down boat that James spent time fixing up and had somehow become part of James’ story as well. Sarah’s colourful outfits and even more colourful language when she wasn’t with the boys, when they worked on the boat together. Sam’s nephews AJ and Cass, -who always woke him up by playing with the shield,- who reminded him a little too much of two Brooklyn boys he used to know during the Depression.
He picked up his brand new duffel bag that he’d taken to Sam’s place, he’d had to get all new things when he found out his stuff was in a museum and that his apartment had been turned into Steve’s memorial and museum. He tried to fight that and on late nights on the boat with Sam, with a little too much liquor flowing through Sam’s system and James’ inhibitions lowered in turn, he whispered about how unfair the government was and that sometimes he missed his little back alley apartment.
Although it wasn’t a back alley anymore. It had been turned into a very ‘trendy’ area where a lot of young adults spent the nights clubbing and the elderly went to the old theatres around. The back alleys of Brooklyn were now the pinnacle of being cool and James was often glad in some ways that he no longer lived there. It would be too loud, so he slept in an apartment, not much bigger than his old one, but much colder and greyer.
Well, it was colder in his old apartment. Low income made sure the heaters could never come on and having a fireplace was a hazard where they lived, but it was lived in. Steve’s ma made colourful blankets from whatever scraps of material she could find and Steve’s loud, albeit sickly laugh, travelled through the house.
There was always someone there and even if there wasn’t, their apartment felt lived in, alive. James’ apartment felt like a fancy jail cell, and he hated that comparison. A shiver went up his spine as he thought about being a prisoner again.
Just as it was getting too quiet in the silent apartment, and James thought he might go mad, his phone buzzed.
You alive?
Sam… Hi- eh, Sam’s Sam. Sam belonged to no one, least of all a broken super soldier. He knocked that thought out of his head, something about it being ‘unhealthy’ for him according to his frankly shitty therapist.
If you’re asking if I got home safely, you’d be correct.
James immediately regretted sending the text. It was too formal, only revealing that James was physically safe and to anyone else it would just have been his 40s habits, but Sam wasn’t just anybody. Sam wasn’t just anything. He’d be Captain America, James knew it. He was great with the vets, hell, if Walker- that vile creature -hadn’t butted in on his and Karli’s conversation when he did, they might have avoided this mess.
James, what’s wrong?
He sat staring at the message for far too long. What was wrong? Was Sam asking as a friend or counsellor? Did he care?
He tried typing out a response, but in the end nothing sounded right, so he clicked off his phone and ordered some takeout from a local restaurant. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was cheap and he could buy enough to feed a small army without anyone giving him an odd look, so it’d do.
He sat down on the couch, something he’d been doing with increasing frequency these days. Huh, it was comfortable, not as worn and loved as the Wilson’s but it’d do. Besides it might be good for his back, he didn’t know. He’d just hang his legs off the side.
He laid down on the couch, trying to get a few minutes rest before his food arrived, but he got lost in his thoughts. This couch wasn’t Sam’s couch, it didn’t feel the same, it was the wrong length and it wasn’t right.
While he should have been glad his intrusive thoughts for once, weren’t about his time as the Soldier, he couldn’t be, because it wasn’t right. Nothing was right, his apartment was too cold, the couch was too small, the world was too grey and Sam wasn’t here.
He’d once again been dragged from a safe and semi-stable place back to his apartment. An apartment that stunk of mandated therapy, odd looks and a guilty conscience. An apartment that felt like an admittance of his failure and brokenness as a person.
His breathing quickened and he wasn’t thinking straight as his brain went foggy, distantly he could hear a knock at his door and the muttering of a teenager, as a bag dropped at his door and a couple yelling too loud for the thin walls to handle. But he was too out of it to process any of that.
Without thinking he picked up the phone and dialled the only number he knew by heart.
"Hey J-man, miss me already? It’s only been a few hours."
“Help-” came a tiny, strangled voice that didn’t sound his own.