Patriotic
It was difficult to imagine yourself fitting into the world when your body wasn’t your own. It was Bucky’s jacket, draped bulky and warm over the back of his chair instead of dripping down to his knees. It was the look on the secretary’s face, so different from the annoyance when he had run in only to wave a letter in her face and politely demand that she post it that very instant. Now, even though he had run in and politely demanded to see Phillips and Brandt, she wasn’t annoyed. Steve couldn’t place the look at first, but it was much softer and sweeter than any he was used to getting—nobody stared at Steve Rogers all soft around the eyes except for Bucky, and then only because he was a sap.
Bucky, he realized. That’s the other place he’d seen the look the woman was giving him, on the face of every twitterpated, giggling girl that Bucky had ever asked to dance. He’d seen that look secondhand from across the dance hall, and he’d come to resent it because it always meant that Buck was about to get up and take pity on some sighing dame, leaving Steve alone, watching the dancing couples progress around the floor like some ridiculous human carousel. They spun in time with each other, cogs in a social machine, Bucky Barnes among them, moving too swiftly for a righteous slip of a man like Steve Rogers to find his way into their circle.
So no, Steve Rogers didn’t get that look, not from women or from men, and hadn’t ever gotten it from anyone but Buck. Bucky Barnes got that look, Bucky Barnes knew how to take that look and turn it into something. He knew what to do with it, all the right words to say and what look to give in return, but Steve Rogers didn’t know how to do a damn thing with it, so he settled for shifting uncomfortably in the chair that the body he was working with didn’t fit. It was the chair, narrow and rickety, that had his attention as he tried to convince himself that the press of his thighs against its sides was completely comfortable and that the way his hips were pinched into the seat was manageable for the next few minutes. And it would only be a few minutes, no matter who won out. The secretary had explained to him, eyes wide and blinking up a storm, that Phillips was currently in a meeting with Senator Brandt and a few others, presenting his plan for Steve and his new skillset, and that he wouldn’t be allowed in until a decision had been reached.
He almost wished he could get into a fight with Phillips for suggesting what he did over the phone the previous day, that Steve should be studied in some facility in New Mexico far away from any warfront or any place he could actually be useful, because even if he couldn’t sit comfortably he was sure throwing a punch would be worlds more satisfying with his newfound size. Still, he knew that he would go where they told him, if only because he would be going one way or another. Phillips had implied as much.
It was with some surprise and some difficulty that Steve stood when the lone Senator Brandt walked into the room, offering Steve a cup of coffee and an audience with himself somewhere blessedly removed from the mooning secretary. Steve, refusing to be distracted by a steaming mug, demanded that he be allowed to speak to Phillips, or to whatever board was letting him make decisions about where Steve would be. The silent laugh that briefly shook Brandt’s frame had Steve seething where he stood, and he might have found out just how satisfying throwing a punch could be had Brandt not recovered his seriousness and placed a steadying hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Son, do you wanna serve your country on the most important battlefield of the war?”
“Sir, that’s all I want.”
“Then, congratulations. You just got promoted.”
And so Steve left willingly, and so it was that when he saw a tan envelope lying in his apartment behind the mail slot he felt a grin splitting across his face. The smile only grew wider as he read. Despite the niggling feeling of dread at Bucky’s references to how ugly things can get and the gun on his back, Buck’s talk about the Grand Canyon and his concern—familiar as the well-worn coat that Steve was looking forward to returning with what Buck called his ‘trouble grin’ and a cheeky ‘sorry Buck, but I think you need this more than I do now’—had Steve almost shaking with anticipation.
He determined to write Buck as soon as he received more information from Brandt, who had said he would meet Steve at home to discuss his plans. Apparently he had wanted to prevent Phillips and Steve from crossing paths, if only because Phillips was frustrated at having his plans for research thwarted. Steve walked the letter over to the table near the fire escape where he had been keeping his sketchbook, now that he was able to sit outside to draw without fearing that he might not make it back in, and tucked it in between a half-finished drawing of a Goldfinch in flight and a charcoal drawing looking into the apartment from Bucky’s room.
When Brandt finally showed, it was with an unassuming box under his left arm and a thick stack of what appeared to be papers and posters alike under his right. Steve showed him in and offered up a spot at the kitchen table, the rarely used third seat for when Bucky’s sister used to come around.
“Thanks for hearing me out on this, Rogers. It’s an interesting position, unorthodox, but important.” Steve smiled and nodded for Brandt to continue. The Senator merely opened the box he had brought with him and drew out a length of blue material. No, Steve realized, it was red, white, and blue, and when the Senator stretched it to drape over both of his arms, Steve realized that it was some sort of suit. “Well, what do you think?”
Steve tried to quell the apprehension that had suddenly risen in his chest, and focused instead on the confusion that was its partner. “It looks very,” tight, shiny, ridiculous, “patriotic.”
The smile on Brandt’s face suggested that that was a very good answer. “Then it’s perfect. That’s what we want citizens to see when they look at you. When they look at you, we want them to see their country and to love it.”
“What do you mean when they look at me?”
The smile fell just a fraction. “Well, I suppose it’s not quite you they’d be looking at. It’s this.” Brandt reached into the stack of papers and slid out a large sheet of paper with a sketch of a man, wearing what looked like Brandt’s suit and a ridiculous mask to boot. The first thing that struck Steve was just how tight the suit really was—it certainly wasn’t hiding anything. “This is only the concept draft. We’ve had the plans for a while, but we needed someone who could look and act the part. After seeing you take down Krueger, I think you’re the man for the job, Rogers.”
“And what is the part, Senator?” Steve was reeling, but he could still notice how Brandt seemed to be edging around an explanation of what exactly it was that he was offering Steve.
“The part is Captain America.” Brandt leaned back and stretched his arm over the next chair, Bucky’s chair. “You’d travel around, talk to people, garner support for the military.”
“Senator Brandt, you asked me if I wanted to serve on the most important battlefield of the war.”
“Look Rogers, after that chase you put on, enlistment in the city went way up almost immediately. You inspired people, you brought out some love and willingness to serve that we just can’t. If that’s what you did with one chase through New York City, imagine what kind of a difference you could make if we took you to every major city in the country, put you in front of people for real.”
“What does that have to do with—”
“The home front. That’s the battlefield I mean. Nothing good is gonna happen in Europe unless we have enough support from home, enough young men enlisting without being drafted. We need to bring morale up, and that’s what I want you to do. Now you can reject me, take Phillips’ plan, and end up in some facility in the middle of New Mexico, but I think you’re more useful than that and I think you want to be more useful than that. Am I wrong?”
He wasn’t. Steve couldn’t deny that he wanted to be useful, he just couldn’t agree that this, this play-acting an American hero, was the most useful he could be.
It was better than being a labrat. At least, that’s what he told himself when he was escorting a contented Senator Brandt out with the promise that he would report in the morning for more in-depth planning. He stood staring at the newly closed door for he didn’t know how long before he turned back to face the apartment, his eye catching on the single concept drawing that sat on the kitchen table, on Bucky’s chair that had been jostled out of position when Brandt leaned on it to rise, on the space that he had been so carefully preserving for months. He had let Senator Brandt come in and disturb their rooms, the carefully curated mausoleum of the time before Bucky had been drafted, because he had thought that soon he wouldn’t need to be tiptoeing around the absence. He had thought that soon he wouldn’t have to relocate to Bucky’s room in the middle of the night just to convince himself that Buck wasn’t there and wasn’t going to be, no matter how much some part of Steve insisted that he try to stay awake in case he could hear the lock click in the early hours of the morning.
Steve thought that his Ma might have had something to say about his willingness to live with a ghost of his own making, especially when he had the option of sitting down to write a letter when the absence started to gnaw at him with a vengeance. If things had been different, Steve might have let his little time capsule fall into disarray, but as it was, he wasn’t a soldier. Not really. He wasn’t going to fight, let alone to fight with Bucky, and what he was going to be doing was only desirable in that it presumably didn’t involve being poked and prodded by scientists. What he was going to be doing didn’t sound useless, though it didn’t sound particularly useful either, but it was going to rip him away from their little apartment in the only home he had ever known without at least giving him the comfort of the person who had made it a home in the first place.
And wasn’t that a whole other can of worms—what to tell Bucky. Steve didn’t have to see him to know that he was hurting, and that he was choosing to worry about Steve so he didn’t have to worry about other things. Steve looked down at his own hands, large and filled with an unfamiliar strength. Amazingly, despite all that had happened that day, he didn’t feel particularly vulnerable. He just wasn’t the type. Before, he didn’t have a choice about physical vulnerability, and he didn’t have a choice about Bucky’s reaction to Steve being so compromised all the time. Hell, thinking back it seemed like their whole relationship had revolved around Steve getting hurt, and Bucky not liking that he did. The pattern was worn like a groove into the floor, where they just orbited each other over and over and over, never touching, playing the same parts. And they loved it, or at least, Steve had. As much as he had always wished for more, had wanted the world to turn on its ear for him, some quiet part of himself knew that he wouldn’t exactly be unhappy if Bucky was the world that turned for him. It felt like betraying himself somehow, but if being weak had brought Bucky to him then he couldn’t wish for it different then, but he had made it different now.
Buck was orbiting alone now. Steve realized it at the same time as he started to cry, the first shameful tears splattering against the wooden planks of the floor. Steve had changed it irreparably, the little routine they had followed since day one, that had been familiar and pleasing and safe and yet Steve had broken away from the only dance he had ever had a partner for and Bucky didn’t even know.
Couldn’t know, Steve decided. It was too much to think about losing that concern, and that genuinely soft look, and there were already too many lies to untangle in the first place. The best he could do was to tell some of the truth. Bucky deserved that, even if Steve didn’t deserve the concern it’d cause. He walked over to where he had left the letter, and on a whim decided to bring both it and the sketch of the apartment with him to the kitchen table. With the faceless visage of a patriot staring up at him from the other end of the table, Steve wrote.
Buck,
You’re still a sap, but I think I understand it a little more now. Things really can change quick, and as much as I’ve always wished they would, it’s hard to tell if the whiplash is worth it. If you aren’t sick of the idea of hiking around by the time you come home, of course we’ll go to the Grand Canyon. You owe me a chance to draw a brave soldier camping out somewhere, and you can bet I’m gonna collect on that, jerk.
And I know you were born to worry your socks off about me, but the asthma actually hasn’t showed up. Maybe I finally kicked this thing somehow—who knows, maybe soon I’ll be good enough to enlist myself. Bet those guys at the recruiting office would be glad to have me on a whole other continent.
You wanted details about me—I know you said New York but come on, you’ve been stuck on me AND to me since we were kids, no matter who says it’s the other way ‘round—and you’re gonna get them. I got a job, a new one, I mean. I mentioned enlistment, but I’m actually already working for the military, at least, technically. There’s this new project they’re running, some kind of touring show that’s supposed to promote war bonds and get more support for the military. They’ve asked me to be the artist for the show. Posters, flyers, ads, I’m going to be working on them all and they’re going to show my work all over. No one’ll care that it’s Steve Rogers that’s behind the new Captain America stuff (that’s the name they’re giving this guy), but that doesn’t change that it will be.
It’s going to be a big change, but I’m going to get to travel around a little bit (it’s safe and they’ll treat me right, I promise, you know I wouldn’t let them do anything else) and I’ll have to wear a suit to work and everything. I’d ask if I could take your old one, but we know it wouldn’t fit me.
About the travelling, I don’t know yet where I’ll be and when. When you write me, just send it back to the address on this envelope—that’s the place this project is run from, and they’ll know how to get it to me. We’ll just have to write a little more, I guess, to make up for the extra time.
Don’t stop being a sap,
Steve
Steve turned his attention to the sketch of the apartment, running his fingers over the painstaking lines of the wood, the excruciatingly detailed images down to the newspaper sticking out of two pairs of shoes that sat looking for all the world like they’d never sat anywhere else. He ran a finger over the single stripe of color—a scarf draped over the back of a sketched couch, the same one that right at that moment was hanging over the coat rack. It had the same deep burgundy as its knitted counterpart, softened from years of use, years of Bucky stopping Steve on his way out the door and winding it around his exposed throat with one of any thousand admonitions about his health. Years of Steve huffing, affecting a put-upon face and calling Buck a grandma for knitting the damn thing in the first place, and years of Bucky shooting back that lots of the guys down at the docks know how to knit, Stevie, it ain’t just me. With only a moment of thought, Steve folded the paper down the middle and slid it into an envelope.
P.S. I sent you something else. It’s just a little thing I did, not really finished, but it makes me think of you when I see it. Since I’ve got the real thing here, I thought it might do you some good.