Raw
It was cold, obviously. Brooklyn, New York in the slim transition between winter and spring, when the frost is just beginning to lose ground against the thawing onslaught of the sun. Maybe it was the illusion of warm victory brought on by the sight of a bright and cloudless sky after nearly a week of greyer-than-usual prospects, maybe it was that Steve hadn’t actually marched past threshold of his room in just as much time, but when he happened to look through the window that morning and saw the blurred lines of dawn encroaching on the ranks of night he had formed the impression that the day would be a friend rather than an enemy. Friendly weather, he had thought, and the cold tendrils of winter were finally thinning, and so he left his coat—Bucky’s coat, actually, because Steve had refused to touch it no matter how often Buck reminded him that he would be furnished with a new one courtesy of Uncle Sam—and went to the only supermarket on the block armed with too-big pants and a pale cotton shirt.
The cold was retreating, but only just. There was warmth in the light of the sun, the kind that isn’t actually particularly warm but is rather like the brief press of a hand, definitely present until you pass under a bridge or into the shadow of a building but imparting no lasting warmth, and Steve felt the chill of the day all the more for the teasing attentions of the sun. He could have gone back for Bucky’s coat, but the idea caused an unpleasant twist in his stomach, paired with the fleeting thought that that would be admitting defeat. A ridiculous notion, of course. There wasn’t anyone there to defeat him but himself, and no one to cajole him back to his room with the use of words like cold, asthma, punk, and rheumatic fever.
He thought it would be warmer, but it wasn’t, of course. He should have gone back for the jacket, but he couldn’t. He ended up standing in the aisle of the supermarket farthest from the door and surreptitiously rubbing his hands together, huffing on them with already weakening breath in a feeble attempt to regain some warmth in his fingers. And that was fine—he was chilled, but he was shopping, and he wouldn’t have to struggle to find enough sugar to quell Bucky’s sweet tooth or risk watching him put butter in his coffee in the mornings to ‘take the edge off,’ and that was fine too. Steve started in on his list instead, which basically consisted of however much of whatever his ration stamps could get him.
Steve didn’t have to look for sugar, but coffee was still a must. All the time spent within the confines of his apartment had resulted in a dangerously low supply of coffee, mostly because the drink warmed Steve through almost without fail. Coffee procured, he turned his attention to where the canned meat was—at least, where it should have been. Instead, his eyes were met with a stretch of empty shelf that extended down two wide levels to his feet and up at least one more.
The only cans left in this section were situated on the top shelf well beyond Steve’s reach, unless he wanted to clamber ungracefully onto the empty shelves. He clenched his jaw and turned away, walking back through the empty aisle and telling himself that vegetables and broth were filling enough, and more than that they were warm or could be made to be so, and that was all he needed. Just the coffee, then.
Steve made his way around the back of the store to the register, where an older woman was getting ready to pay, chatting politely with the woman behind the counter. Steve paused a respectful distance behind the older woman and studied the worn brown wooden flooring at his feet where it clashed with the mottled tan color of his shoes. The women seemed to know each other if the girlish, twittering laughter that would usually be considered unbecoming for their ages was anything to go by. Steve didn’t mind, and in fact their cheerfulness and the promise of a fresh supply of coffee warmed him in a way that hadn’t happened in nearly a week, and so when the older woman’s blue skirt swished and she told Steve that “I’m sorry young man, please go ahead and pay, I’m really just talking now,” he smiled.
“That’s no problem ma’am. I can pay, and you can keep talking.” Steve handed over the coffee to the younger woman behind the counter and attempted to flash both women the kind of smile that made women melt when it came from Bucky, but it felt far too large and toothy for his thin face. They both smiled back, so it must not have been too bad—maybe he was getting the hang of it after all.
The younger woman’s smile turned apologetic when she glanced down at the coffee on the counter. “I’ll need your ration stamps for that.”
Steve nodded in acknowledgement and pulled his ration book out of his pocket, starting to flip through the tannish pages in search of the coffee stamps. While he searched, he heard the two women start up their conversation again.
“Now, when did you say he shipped out, dear?” The older woman questioned, unaware of the sudden tension in Steve’s shoulders.
The younger woman sighed heavily, and Steve started flipping faster past empty pages to get to his coffee stamps. “Last week. He’d been talking about it for months, and finally decided that it was his duty to enlist.” Meat, eggs, sugar, pages and pages that reminded Steve that he was getting rather low. “I just wish there was more I could do for him—I can’t even write him a letter yet.” The coffee stamps hadn’t been this far into the book last time. Steve flipped back to the beginning and started turning pages again, trying to keep the tremor in his hand from ripping any corners. “And I miss him so much, it’s just not the same without him there at home. Seems like I should be doing more—he’s going to be out there risking his life, and here I am just doing what I’ve always done.” Coffee, finally the coffee page.
“Well my dear, don’t you fret. You are right where you’re meant to be, doing the best for your country by keeping things running hereabouts.” There weren’t any stamps left on the front or the back of the page. That can’t be right—he had at least five left. “And he is doing just what he should be, too.” Bucky’s. This was Bucky’s book, not Steve’s, Steve’s was sitting on the table by the kitchen, and Bucky had taken the last of his stamps with him because they didn’t know if he’d need them on the way. “It’s a beautiful thing, a young man sacrificing the warmth of his home and family and fighting for his country, and all the praise in the world wouldn’t be enough.”
Steve abruptly turned away from the counter and marched tersely out of the store, the useless ration book crumpled in his hand, ignoring the confused calls of the woman behind the counter. It was still cold, but there wouldn’t be any warmth until he could get back into their rooms. His path over pavement and up the narrow steps of their building was fraught with the unfortunate implications of the women's conversation. Steve couldn’t be drafted, couldn’t enlist—and God knows he tried—couldn’t seem to do anything in the way of fighting for hearth and country. Steve wanted to and couldn’t, and Bucky hadn’t wanted to but had to anyways, and how was that fair?
A familiar tingle began working its way through his body, starting at the already almost unbearable tightness in his chest and shooting its tendrils out through the rest of his body, like shrapnel and salt scraping just under his skin. He knew the feeling, and Bucky for sure knew how it ended. Steve wanted a fight. Walking through the streets of New York and praying to see somebody, or a couple somebodies, doing something objectionable was almost pointless. You didn’t need to pray for it, you just had to look to the left or to the right and someone would be there, and if you looked a little closer there would be Steve, waving his fists and biting off more than he could chew, all blustering bravado and high-minded ideas. Then if you blinked there would be Bucky, pulling Steve away from the scene of the crime and calling him punk in that way that actually meant ‘you’re unbelievably ridiculous’ and something else just underneath that Steve could never actually put his finger on but always assumed was close enough to ‘don’t worry me like that.’
Even though it was useless, Steve was praying, but today nobody jumped out of the woodwork to get in his way. All too soon he found himself staring down at the discolored brass doorknob to his rooms, hesitating to open the door. It was like limbo, staring at the door, in that Steve was perfectly aware of what should be behind it but somehow felt that he couldn’t be absolutely positive of what was behind it. For all he could tell, Bucky would be there sitting near the door, waiting for Steve to come in so that he could half-force him into a coat and press the right ration book into his hands, laughing and saying that they’d have to go to the store together because Steve insisted on being such a punk.
“Jerk.”
To Steve the word seemed to echo so loudly in the cramped hallway that it took a few moments for him to register the click of shoes on the stairs. He turned the knob quickly, still too terribly on edge to handle a conversation, and stepped into the rooms, shutting the door behind him and staring out into the empty apartment. There couldn’t be any illusion anymore, because what he called ‘rooms’ in his head was really more a single room partitioned for different purposes, and unless Buck was hanging by his hair from the fire escape, then he wasn’t there. Steve turned away from the offending room and shoved the deadbolt into place, grinding the lock into gear below it. He did his best to avoid looking at the warm brown coat draped over the back of one of two chairs at the table, which was especially difficult as he was almost tripping over the table while he whipped open cabinets and slammed a pot on the stove in the kitchen.
Chopping vegetables and watching them roll violently through simmering broth kept his attention for a while, but eventually he had to take the pot off of heat and put the thin stew into bowls. He finally turned to the table, a bowl in each hand, and froze again at the sight of the brown coat draped over the chair. It felt almost like a joke to stand by the table with the sum total of their “fine china,” left over from his mother’s attentive care, cradled in his hands. For once, and wouldn’t Bucky call it a miracle if he ever knew, the fight drained out of Steve without the need for a beating and left him feeling chilled and a little remorseful for leaving the coat that morning. He set the extra bowl down in front of the coat and turned away, praying that the warmth from his own bowl would be a match for the lonesome chill of the fire escape.