Chapter 6
As the days wore on, Steve and Bucky were both becoming experts at pretending.
Bucky’s brave face and flat smile were becoming so commonplace that Steve was almost starting to buy into them. If he just squinted, things almost looked normal - and he certainly preferred to, the alternative being having to confront the same brave face and flat smile he’d been putting on in turn.
Because it was lonely living alongside this parody of Bucky, so plainly burying everything real beneath layers and layers of empty smiles - but two could play at that game. Steve could pretend just as well that the isolation didn’t bother him, that everything really was fine.
He was surviving well enough, at least, until one evening in the middle of April, when something in that well-worn routine of denial seemed to shift. Steve was curled up on the sofa in the living room, engaged in an unofficial staring contest with the still-closed sketchbook now sitting on the coffee table, when the sound of Bucky’s bedroom door opening interrupted him. He looked up to find Bucky standing at the end of the sofa, shifting from foot to foot and practically radiating nervous energy.
“Hey,” Bucky said, the nonchalance of his voice at odds with his anxious posture. “What’re you up to?”
Steve looked pointedly to the closed sketchbook and back up again. “Not much. What’s going on?”
“I was - well, I was thinking, I’ve been back long enough now. No reason for me to stay cooped up in here forever. We oughta go do something, y’know? Like we used to.”
Steve was used to Bucky relying on nothing more than empty assurances to communicate just how well he was dealing with his return to civilian life. This - the suggestion that they actually go and do something, make good on all those assurances - was markedly new.
Steve took a moment to look Bucky up and down. Despite all his insistences to the contrary, the past few months hadn’t been kind to him, and Steve hardly knew what to make of it all. When Bucky wasn’t withdrawn and silent, he was jumpy and on edge, and leaving the apartment had proven to only ever make whatever state he was in worse.
But Bucky’s mood now didn’t seem to fit into either of the usual categories. Instead of seeming spooked or sad, he appeared wired with energy, like he was set to vibrate straight out of his skin. The sheer newness of it all had Steve too curious to push back on his suggestion.
“What did you have in mind?” he asked.
Bucky shrugged, aiming for casual, but the motion came off jerky and unnatural. “Figured we could - go dancing, or something. Always used to love that. Y’know. Before.”
Steve bit his lip, running his eyes over Bucky again, watching him shift where he stood and compulsively clench and unclench his fist at his side. “Are you sure you’re… up for that?”
“‘Course I am.” There was that infuriating smile again. “Said I wanted to go out, didn’t I?”
Steve sighed, pulling on a smile to match. “Yeah. Yeah, you did.”
Bucky raised his eyebrows, looking Steve over. “You sure you’re up for it? No offense, pal, but you look beat. If you’re not feeling good, we don’t gotta -”
“No, it’s fine,” Steve said quickly, sitting up a little straighter on the couch. Sure, he was exhausted - picking up the slack left by Bucky’s lack of income still had him working far more than he ever had before, far more than his body wanted to handle - but this wasn’t about him. Bucky wanted to go out. It had to mean things were improving. It had to mean progress. And who would Steve be to deprive him of the opportunity to get better?
“Alright. So… dancing? You’re sure?”
“Yep,” Bucky said. “Was thinking dancing and drinks, just like we used to do. No point living in New York if we don’t take advantage of it, right?”
Steve shook his head, amused in spite of himself. “Right. Used to tell me that every weekend before you dragged me off on some godforsaken double date with a girl who wouldn’t even look twice at me. Some advantage that is.” Despite the more logical portion of his mind telling him that maybe going out and putting their fragile act of normalcy at risk wasn’t the best idea, he couldn't bring himself to say no, or keep himself from smiling. With Bucky starting to act even a little bit more like his old self, Steve was really starting to warm up to this idea.
“Fine,” Bucky said with exaggerated reluctance. “No dates this time. Just you and me. How’s that?”
Steve rolled his eyes, trying to ignore the way his heart had suddenly sped up in his chest. “Well, in that case, I think you might have a deal. I just - I’m not sure we’ve got the money to spare for drinks….”
Something almost like fear flashed across Bucky’s face, and Steve quickly amended his statement. “Guess it doesn’t matter. If this is really what you wanna do, we’ll find a way to make it work.”
Bucky grinned one of his practiced grins, pausing to pat Steve on the shoulder before retreating to his room, presumably to get dressed. But he left a tiny crack in the door, letting a sliver of light spill out into the hallway. The sight of that small patch of light made Steve almost irrationally happy. It meant Bucky wasn’t completely shutting him out. Maybe, just maybe, it meant progress. So, he decided, their evening plans were settled.
An hour later, Steve was in the kitchen fussing with their few clean glasses and the bottle of liquor he’d just picked up from the store, and Bucky was in the living room fiddling with the dials on the radio.
Bucky had managed to get his shirt halfway buttoned over a t-shirt, but it hung open around his neck, and his tie was draped loose and unfastened over his shoulders. He’d put gel in his hair, but it was already slipping a little, and a few strands of his dark bangs had flopped forward to curl over his forehead. He looked up from setting up the radio just as Steve stepped into the room with their drinks, and Steve almost had to do a double take. Bucky still had bags under his eyes and a few uncharacteristic little nicks on his cheeks, testaments to the difficulty of shaving with only one hand, but the whole tableau of him half-dressed up and ready for a night out was so familiar that Steve could almost imagine that the war had never happened, that they were both their old selves again and nothing had ever come between them.
“Hey,” Bucky said, reaching over to grab his drink from Steve’s hand, then giving him a once-over, running his eyes down to Steve’s shoes and back up again.
“What?” Steve asked.
“You look good, pal,” Bucky said simply.
Steve blinked, taken aback. He was sure he hardly looked any different than he did every day - his threadbare shirt had definitely been patched up one too many times, and his shoes had probably seen better days during the Hoover administration. But Bucky didn’t seem to notice or care. His eyes lingered on Steve’s freshly combed hair, on the pink spreading over his clean-shaven face.
Bucky tilted his head back and took a long drink, then resettled his eyes on Steve’s face. “You really sure you’re up for this?” he asked. “Don’t want you pushing yourself too hard and flaring up that asthma, or catching a cold, or -”
Steve grinned. This was more like the Bucky he remembered, protective almost to a fault, worrying about Steve even when he ought to have been worrying about himself.
“I’m fine, Buck. Really. You about ready to go?”
Bucky shook his head, long-suffering. “C’mon, Stevie, you know we never just go.” He set his drink down and reached for the radio again, cranking up the volume until the sounds of brassy band music filled the room. As sound permeated the apartment, Bucky drained his drink, then squeezed past Steve and headed back for the kitchen. He returned with another full glass and a smile that looked just a little easier than the forced and nervous ones he’d been putting on all evening.
“Getting ready’s half the fun,” Bucky reminded Steve, who had moved to sit on the couch, holding tight to his own glass simply to have something to do with his hands. Bucky flopped down beside him, further tousling his carefully done hair in the process. Up close, Steve could tell his eyes were a little glazed, the alcohol already taking effect. “Not like we’ve got dates to pick up or anything. Unless you’ve got someone you aren’t telling me about.”
Bucky’s tone was joking, but Steve could have sworn there was something weightier behind his eyes. He did his best to ignore it, keeping his own voice light.
“Very funny, Buck. You know as well as I do that’s not true. Girls don’t exactly line up to go dancing with me.”
Bucky scoffed, looking offended on Steve’s part. His familiar indignation sent something warm flaring up in Steve’s chest.
“Really?” he asked, a strange sincerity in his voice. “Whole time I was… gone, you never went out with anyone?”
Steve’s lips twisted into a grimace, and he shook his head. He’d only ever been out with girls when Bucky set the two of them up with double dates, so his romantic prospects had pretty much evaporated as soon as Bucky had shipped out. He’d attributed it to the fact that girls just weren’t interested in him, wouldn’t look twice at him when they could go dancing with a real soldier instead. If he was honest with himself, he’d missed those dates, a little - but lately he’d been realizing that the girls maybe weren’t the reason he’d missed them.
“Crying shame,” Bucky muttered into his glass. “You’re a catch, Steve. Any girl out there would be lucky to have you.”
Steve’s heart somersaulted. He did his best to laugh it off. “Hardly. And I can’t even dance, anyway. Even when you used to set me up with girls, they’d end up dancing with someone else all night.”
Bucky’s eyebrows went up, and something sparked to life in his face. “Well, part of that we can fix, can’t we?”
“What?”
“C’mon.” Bucky downed the rest of his drink, then stood up, setting down his glass and offering his hand out to Steve. “We’ve let this go on long enough, Stevie. It’s about time you learned how to dance.”
Too surprised to argue, Steve took Bucky’s hand, feeling the faint remnants of calluses on his palm as he pulled himself up to stand.
“I’m gonna step on your toes,” he protested weakly, but Bucky wasn’t listening. He clumsily tugged Steve by the hand until the two of them were standing face to face. Steve breathed in Bucky’s cologne, the spice of liquor on his breath, and his head spun. They’d lived their entire lives side by side, but somehow they’d never felt this close.
“Doesn’t matter,” Bucky said. “It’s fine.”
“What - what am I supposed to do?” Steve stammered, hating how small his voice sounded. He’d spent years trying to convince people he wasn’t as small or weak as he seemed, but somehow all it took was Bucky’s presence and all that effort was undone.
Bucky guided Steve’s hands, one by one, around his back.“I’m gonna follow,” he said. “You’ve gotta learn how to lead.”
So Steve did. Bucky had to nudge him a little to get him into the right position, had to steer him around until he grew comfortable with the movements, until somewhere along the line Steve stopped being sure who was leading anymore, him or Bucky. As a slow song played over the radio, their shared momentum carried them in fumbling circles across the living room floor, Steve holding his breath and predictably tripping a little over Bucky’s feet.
But all the hesitancy and awkwardness hardly mattered, because all Steve could feel was how incredibly close they were, sharing space and warmth and breath, so different from the months they'd just spent seemingly apart. He tore his focused gaze from his feet for just a second to look up, and all he could see was Bucky - his wide blue eyes, the familiar curve of his lips, the way his hair came tumbling over his forehead just right, and…
Something in Steve’s heart clicked into place.
He loved Bucky.
Not like a friend. Not even like a brother, like family. It was like nothing he’d ever felt before. Like he wanted more than anything to lean forward and press their lips together, damn the consequences. Like he wanted to stay here in Bucky’s arms forever. Like something awful would happen if either of them ever let go.
“You okay?”
At the sound of Bucky’s voice, Steve jumped, pulled back into reality. Only belatedly did he realize that he’d stopped moving. The slow song on the radio had faded out, the tinny voice of a radio announcer crackling in to take its place. Though their dance had drifted to a halt, Steve still had his arms around Bucky. He twitched, instinct telling him to let go, but he stayed put, forcing himself to meet Bucky’s eyes.
“What?” Bucky asked. The word rolled off his tongue easily, a match for the pleasant fuzz of alcohol taking up residence in Steve’s brain.
Steve said the first thing he could think of.
“I missed you.” It was true, in more senses than one.
For a split second, Steve could have sworn Bucky felt it too, the same strange closeness that had somehow made everything so much clearer. He was inclining his head just slightly down, and Steve was looking up, and in that moment he’d half-convinced himself to lean in and bridge the gap entirely - but it was too much. The radio started playing again, a louder, faster song cutting through the silence. Startled back to his senses, Steve realized the gravity of what he’d been about to do. He quickly pulled away, dropping his hands from Bucky’s back for good measure.
“We should go,” he said, mostly just to fill the uncomfortable pause.
Bucky ran a sheepish hand over the back of his neck. “Yeah. Right.”
“Can I…”
Steve braved closing the distance between them again. He found the ends of the tie draped around Bucky’s neck, giving him a questioning look. Bucky tensed his jaw a little but nodded, giving Steve permission to fasten it around his neck.
“You taught me that, remember?” Steve said as he did it, and some of the hesitancy in Bucky’s face faded away.
“Yeah. I do. Remember how it took you years to finally get it right, too.”
Steve rolled his eyes. “C’mon, I wasn’t that bad. See?” He finished up the knot, quickly dropping his hands from Bucky’s chest. “You finally ready to go?”
Bucky nodded, but rather than moving to the door, he moved to the remainder of Steve’s drink sitting on the coffee table.
“You gonna finish that?”
Steve shrugged. “Guess not?”
Bucky took the glass, working quickly to finish it as he made his way unsteadily towards the door to slip into his shoes. He turned to give a quick smile, offset by the redness creeping up in his cheeks. “Ready, then.”
There was something not quite right about that easy smile, about how long Bucky spent holding onto Steve’s empty glass before finally letting it go. But Steve didn’t have time to worry about it - things were good tonight, better than they had been in a long time, and he fully intended to hold onto that unfamiliar feeling of happiness for as long as he possibly could.
New York felt alive, buzzing with energy. Maybe it was the uptick in good news coming over from the front in Europe, maybe it was just the steady approach of spring, but whatever it was, the city was bright and exciting in a way it hadn’t been since before the States had joined in the war.
Rather than taking the train, Steve and Bucky walked down to the dance hall. Steve was half-worried that they were set to repeat their first ill-fated attempt at leaving the apartment together, but Bucky didn’t seem half so panicked as he had during that aborted trip to the diner months earlier. He still had a placid smile on his face, and he seemed largely unconcerned with the crowds of people on the street or gathered at the entrance of the dance hall.
In fact, he was a little too unconcerned, and was starting to put Steve on edge. Not helping was the fact that Steve, knowing he was a notorious lightweight, had stopped after half a drink back at their apartment, but Bucky hadn’t shown nearly the same restraint. So while Steve arrived at the dance hall already sobering up and intent on staying that way, Bucky arrived with his eyes still a little glazed and made a beeline for the bar almost immediately upon entering.
“You alright?” Steve couldn’t resist checking in when Bucky returned to the table he’d staked out, drink in hand.
“‘Course,” Bucky assured him, sliding into a seat. But Steve didn’t miss the slight tremor in his hand as he lifted his glass to take a sip. Steve frowned at the blatant lie, but chose not to point it out.
“You aren’t going to go dance?” he asked instead.
Bucky shrugged, casting a wary eye around the room. The hall was crowded with people, girls in red lipstick and curls and guys dressed in a mixture of pressed shirts and uniform jackets. They were packed onto the dance floor and squeezed between the tables scattered around the edges, filling up all the available space. Places like this had always been where Bucky felt the most comfortable, happy to command the attention of the room while Steve was relegated to the outskirts. But with the way he was sitting now, slouched over his glass and scanning the room with anxious hypervigilance instead of confidence, Steve could see clearly that Bucky felt the furthest thing from comfortable.
He opened his mouth again to ask if Bucky was really okay, but in the end he couldn’t make himself do it. He was too tired of hearing Bucky lie to him over and over again.
After running through a few slow songs, the band onstage started up something fast and upbeat, and people standing around the edges of the floor scrambled to grab partners to dance. Steve kept his head down, staring at the wood of the table. He was used to being invisible, to hanging back when people started to pair up. Bucky, however, wasn’t, and it startled Steve to look up and find him still sitting across the table as the dance kicked into motion. When he caught Steve’s eyes, though, Bucky abruptly shoved back from the table and stood up.
“What’re you…”
“Getting a drink,” Bucky mumbled over his shoulder, and he was gone.
The second time it happened, Steve nearly broke down and asked Bucky what the hell was going on. Instead, he asked, “don’t you think you’ve had enough?”
“Nah,” Bucky replied, slurring a little. “‘M fine.” But his hand was still shaking, and he was still looking around the room like any one of the dancers crowding the floor might be a threat. Steve may have been used to the lies by now, but he wasn’t used to them being quite so shameless. He felt something almost resentful start to simmer in his chest.
As Bucky worked on his third drink, a few girls passed by the table, vying for eye contact with him. The old Bucky would have preened under the attention, but all Bucky did now was try for a wavering smile that didn’t quite hold.
“Really think you oughta slow down,” Steve said once the girls were out of earshot, nodding to the glasses on the table. Bucky either didn’t hear him or didn’t care. Steve let out a long, frustrated breath, turning all his attention towards kicking idly at the leg of the table for the sake of having something to do that wasn’t grabbing Bucky by the collar and shaking some sense into him.
The band finished up with another of the quick songs they’d been playing all night. In the few minutes of ensuing silence, Steve sat and stared at the table, pointedly avoiding looking over at Bucky on the other side. Eventually the musicians came back and regrouped, this time starting up with something slow. The melody was familiar, and Steve sat for a second trying to place it.
“Hey,” he said. “That’s -”
It was the song that had been playing in their apartment just hours before, he’d meant to say, the one that had been in the background while he stumbled over Bucky’s feet and made slow circles across the living room floor. He finally looked up from the table to relay the message, but when he laid eyes on Bucky, his words died in his throat. Bucky was practically green in the face, staring dazedly down at the floor as his throat worked overtime to swallow.
“Bucky?”
Bucky made eye contact with Steve for one second, his face a mixture of illness and raw fear, like he’d only just realized what was happening to him. Before Steve could even think to do anything about it, Bucky was out of his seat, chair skidding back as he got his footing and stumbled over to the edge of the room. He found the bar’s side door, not looking back before leaning against it and quietly disappearing outside.
“Shit,” Steve bit out. For just a few seconds he sat still, alone amidst the low light and the music and the rush of bodies breezing past him. The smoldering frustration inside him had reached a burning point. This was always how things went with Bucky lately, and a bitter voice inside him was telling him that it was hardly his problem. Bucky had brought this upon himself, that Steve didn’t owe it to him to fix it.
But deep down he knew that wasn't fair. And even more intense was the pull he still felt to Bucky, the way he felt lost and unmoored in the crowd of people without him. He blamed his stupid, lovesick heart for propelling him out of his seat and over to the door before his mind could think to convince him to stay.
He brushed out of the bar and into the dingy alleyway that ran behind it. He was immediately affronted by the smells emanating both from the overflowing garbage cans piled up by the door and the stagnant puddles of old water that had accumulated on the ground, and he wrinkled his nose. The alley was dark and cramped, with noise from the street echoing off its crumbling brick walls. This was New York, Steve reminded himself grimly - not their perfect view from up on the fire escape or the bright lights and buzz of excitement that accompanied a night out, but the far more common, ugly other side.
Bucky was braced against the opposite wall of the alley, his visibly trembling hand pressed up against the crumbling brick. Steve scarcely had time to lay eyes on him through the darkness before Bucky was doubling over at the waist, narrowly missing his shoes as he vomited a wave of liquor all over the dirty ground.
“Damn it, Buck!” Steve’s legs carried him to Bucky’s side practically against his will. At his words, Bucky’s shoulders jerked forward in a wince, or maybe another retch, Steve wasn’t sure. Steve had the presence of mind to keep from touching him, but he couldn’t keep a barrage of angry words from spilling out of his mouth.
“What the hell? I told you to slow down. I’ve been telling you all night, but you wouldn’t listen. Maybe if you’d quit with all this ‘I’m fine’ bullshit for one second and just talked to me, you wouldn’t be so sick, you wouldn’t -”
Bucky’s shoulders twitched again in a painful-sounding hiccup, and Steve trailed off with a huff of frustration. Only when Bucky swayed a little and his knees started to buckle did a wave of guilt wash over Steve, and his heart kicked back into gear.
“Okay. Okay.” Steve grabbed Bucky under the arms, supporting him and steering him away from the worst of the puddles on the ground as he crumpled. Steve propped him up with his back against the wall, then sank down into a squat beside him. Bucky’s head dizzily lolled forward over his chest, and Steve winced as he hiccuped again and brought his hand up to cage it over his mouth in some futile attempt at controlling his nausea.
“Too much, huh?” Steve asked softly, once Bucky relaxed a little and no longer seemed to be in imminent danger of being sick again. Bucky gave a noncommittal grunt, clumsily tucking his knees up to his chest and resting his forehead against them. Steve sighed. He sat and titled his head back to lean against the wall, sending some silent prayer for answers up into the narrow strip of sky above him. He sat half-hoping for a response, for some divine intervention to show him what to do, but was only met with silence in turn.
“Steve.”
It wasn’t a voice from above - it was Bucky’s voice, soft and unsure beside him.
“Yeah?”
“I-I’m not… not doin’ so good.”
“Yeah. I know,” Steve sighed. “But we’ll get you home. You’ll start feeling better once you’ve had time to sleep it off.”
“No. I mean, ‘m not… okay.”
Steve snapped his full attention to Bucky.
“Thought ‘f I just kept saying it, I could fix it, but -” Bucky breathed raggedly. “I… can’t. I can’t.”
The words were jumbled and slurred, but Steve heard them loud and clear. His chest ached as it once again flooded to the brim with suffocating love and hurt in equal measure.
“That why you drank so much tonight?” he asked softly.
Bucky nodded miserably, eyes still trained on the ground between his knees. “Thought it might help ‘f I could just… pretend. I dunno. But… fuck. Steve, it doesn’t work, nothing works, I can’t fix it, ‘n I don’t know what to do, ‘n I just - I don’t feel good.”
Steve watched helplessly as Bucky’s lower lip started to tremble. Bucky hurriedly dragged his hand up to cover his mouth like he was afraid to let Steve to see, but his shoulders were shaking and his eyes were starting to water and it quickly became clear that he was going to cry whether he wanted to or not.
“Hey,” Steve whispered as gently as he could manage. The tone of voice felt foreign to him, and it took him a second to place where all that softness came from, so different from his usual defensive anger. It was Bucky. He’d borrowed it from Bucky.
After a moment of paralyzed hesitation, Steve wound his arm around Bucky’s shoulders, offering comfort the only way he could think to. Bucky went stiff for a second, but between the emotion and the alcohol and the pure fatigue of trying so hard and pretending to be okay for so long, he soon couldn’t help but give in. He slackened against Steve, leaning towards him with his whole body, desperate for contact as he choked a sob into his shirt.
“Please,” Bucky kept gasping. Steve couldn’t even hope to guess what he was begging for.
“It’s alright,” he whispered anyway, holding Bucky to him as his shoulders shook and hoping to god he was telling the truth. “Just breathe. I’ve got you. You’re okay.”
It took a few minutes for Bucky’s tears to begin dying down, a few minutes of shallow breath punctuated by sobs and hot tears soaking through the fabric of Steve’s shirt. When Bucky was breathing somewhat evenly again, Steve gently shifted so that his face was no longer pressed against his shirt, instead letting his head settle comfortably against his shoulder.
“God. I’m sorry, Buck,” he said after a moment of trying and failing to gather words. “I’m sorry you’ve been having a hard time.”
Bucky made a hollow sound of acknowledgement. Steve took a deep breath. It was now or never, he thought. He couldn’t tell Bucky exactly how he felt, but he had to do something. He had to try.
“I don’t know what you went through over there, but I know it was… a lot. And I wish I knew how to help you. I wish I could fix it. But you just, you can’t keep shutting me out. Please. You gotta talk about some of this before it - before it hurts you even more.”
Bucky groaned softly, head still resting against Steve’s shoulder.
“Can you do that? Can you talk to me?”
“I don’t…”
“Not now, I mean. Just… anytime. About anything. Please, just let me in.”
Bucky took a deep breath and slowly lifted his head. Steve looked over to him, watched him set his jaw in determination. Even though it looked difficult, even though he was clearly still dizzy and unsteady, he nodded. It took bravery, Steve realized. In the face of it, he loved Bucky more than he’d ever thought was possible.
“Good,” Steve said, unable to keep from smiling a little. It felt wrong, almost; Bucky had spent weeks forcing a smile, almost certainly for Steve’s benefit, but none of those smiles had made Steve nearly as happy as he felt now.
But he couldn’t help it. Bucky was talking to him, more genuinely than he maybe ever had, and it felt like the clouds were beginning to clear. After weeks and weeks of suffocating, Steve finally felt like he could breathe again.
“Okay,” he said after a moment. “You think you’re gonna be okay to walk home?”
He could hear Bucky working hard to swallow. “In - in a minute?”
“Yeah. Okay. Whenever you feel like you can stand, I can help you…” The words were familiar, and Steve smiled a little wider when he realized why. They, too, where Bucky’s, spoken every time he pulled a half-dead Steve out of a back-alley fight he’d been too small for, spoken every time Steve had tried to keep up with him on a night out and ended up drinking far too much as a result.
“Guess I owe you one, after all the times you’ve carried me home,” Steve said wryly. Beside him, Bucky actually laughed. The sound was wet and shaky, but it was still genuine.
“Good luck with that,” Bucky slurred. “Don’t think you could carry me if you tried, punk.”
“Keep telling me what I can and can’t do, I might just have to prove you wrong,” Steve joked. He met Bucky’s eyes, smiling, and was relieved to see Bucky smiling back at him, small and timid but real.
As they sat there together, listening to the sounds of the city as it moved on without them, Steve couldn’t help but speak up again.
“We’re gonna be okay, you know?” he whispered. “We’re gonna make it.”
Bucky didn’t respond. He looked sideways at Steve, like he was seeking confirmation, like he wanted to be sure the words were true. And Steve decided they would be. They still had a long way to go, he knew. But they’d make it.