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Buffalo, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Chicago. Every city felt different. A different kind of energy running through the crowd, a different atmosphere to breathe in, a different set of people to learn. He had mentioned as much to Senator Brandt, but the man only clapped Steve on the back and laughed something about being green and wide-eyed. Still, standing in the wings and staring into the bright stage lights waiting for his cue, Steve couldn’t help taking a deep breath. Buffalo, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Chicago. Each one had been different, but each stage had made Steve feel excitable, on edge. Not this one. Steve let the air fill his lungs and felt strangely settled. This stage felt like home.
It was that sense of familiarity that had Steve marching onto the stage with a smile, where in every other city it had taken a few minutes to warm up to the performance and to his part in it. He felt his grin splitting his face when the audience started to applaud, a near deafening sound that had been almost totally absent in Buffalo but which had grown slowly just as the public had grown to love Captain America. Brandt was right, Steve mused as he paused at the end of the stage to salute the audience. He didn’t know what it was about him, but he awoke something in people. Maybe it was all the red white and blue, maybe it was the pageantry of the thing, but when people looked at the mask they were looking at their country, and they loved it. Finally, the girls parted and the lights followed Steve back to center, where he stood holding his shield confidently in front of him. “Not all of us can storm a beach, or drive a tank, but there’s still a way for all of us to fight!”
He didn’t have to consciously widen his stance, or convince his body to hold itself tall. He didn’t even have to focus on not moving his head while he tried to glance down at the back of his shield, because where in Buffalo there had been small slips of paper littered with halfhearted words pasted to the inside, in New York City there was nothing. “Series E defense bonds—each one you buy is a bullet in our best guys’ guns.”
It had taken a few months of resentful smiles and fumbling words and squinting into lights too bright to stand, but he finally felt like he had grown into this role, just as he had grown to fit into his body. It happened almost too gradually to notice, but one day Steve had woken up and hadn’t knocked his head trying to get out of a small hotel bed, and he had stared into the mirror as he got dressed and those filled out arms buttoning his shirt had felt like his, and then he had stepped on stage in Philadelphia and felt for the first time since accepting Brandt’s proposal that he was doing something useful. The realization caught him by surprise, and an even more startling seed of guilt had sprung up like a weed alongside it. He felt Captain America’s smile begin to crack. Steve Rogers was doing a good job of filling out the Captain America mould, but there were still gaps, and so he turned his thoughts instead to the audience. This was his favorite part, anyways.
“That’s where you come in, every bond you buy will help protect someone you love.” Steve loved this; the moment when all of the children in the crowd started to scream and point, too excited and too riled up by Captain America’s words to stand idly by as not-Hitler crept up from behind. He just smiled and paused, letting them jump out of their seats right before he tuned and swung.
Maybe this was his favorite part, actually. The joyful cheers from the audience, the approving nod from Senator Brandt and whatever military pal he had convinced to attend that day, the curtain slowly swinging closed over the final triumphant tableau. There would be work to do afterwards, a stage to take down because Steve never could stand not helping, and a line of people waving the posters and flyers and comics that Steve had designed because he needed at least one thing he had told Bucky to really be true, people wanting him to hold their children— and hadn’t that been the biggest surprise of this whole gig, people clamouring to get close enough to touch Steve Rogers because they thought something good would rub off on them. They thought Captain America—Steve—had enough of that to go around. There would be work to do when the curtains closed, but that moment at the end of the show when Steve stood victorious in the midst of a sea of red, white, and blue—that moment went on forever.
He carried that moment with him all the way to the hotel, alongside the peace that had taken root in his chest the moment he set out for New York from Chicago. When he was alone in his room, and Brandt had wished him well and congratulated him on another job well done, and he had peeled himself out of the suit and was wearing the kind of button-up and pants that had always made him look more like a twig before but now drew almost uncomfortable attention from the men and women around him, he was once again impressed by the level of difference that he was quickly growing used to.
Since he had been on tour, food had been more plentiful, if not better, which Steve was grateful for because he had quickly discovered that his usual meals of coffee, soup, and bread just wouldn’t be enough. He had learned to cook enough to sustain himself, and all of the ingredients were paid for, and he didn’t have to worry about being hungrier than he had been before. There had been warmth, too, without piling on old blankets and jackets and stealing socks or sleeping by the fireplace. And there had been space, enough that even with his novel mass he was never tripping over himself or something or someone else to get to the next part of the room, although that could’ve been partly because he’d never lived alone before.
Having a couch to himself and enough hot water whenever he wanted was all well and good, but he had decided his first night alone in a hotel room in Buffalo that he would rather be in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, taking bone-chilling showers and being told to shove over and make room on the couch, than be anywhere else by himself. He missed that apartment, missed the man who should be in it, and he absolutely didn’t want to go back. He had kept up with the rent, barely even blinking at the money disappearing monthly from his military paycheck, telling himself that he could still make use of it during breaks or when he was in New York. He had had someone’s secretary book him a hotel room for his first night back in New York City, just for one night, telling himself that he would be too exhausted to worry about airing out or dusting—not that dust was as formidable an adversary as it had been in the past—and that he would go the next day and attempt to settle back into the echoes of a life much smaller and simpler than that which he had grown into. Then, sitting on the couch of the hotel room that didn’t feel like home, staring at the place where Buck’s old coat hung still and quiet (some cities it was in the closet, by the bed, in New York City it must have been by the door), he knew with certainty that he wouldn’t see the inside of that apartment again. Not by himself.
Wasn’t that something to hold on to? Not alone, just that. Not by himself. He could see it in his head—somewhere across the city in an old beat-down neighborhood in Brooklyn, in a world where the war was done or had never started in the first place, a twig of a man had just thrown a punch and taken five and was now trying to slip through his apartment door and into his room without calling attention to the blood dripping from his nose through his fingers. Somewhere in Brooklyn, the waifish man groaned when his friend spoke and turned to see him leaning in faux disinterest against his own door frame. Now the friend, solid where the man was so scattered with fury and adrenaline and fear, was beckoning the bleeding man into his room, making him sit, trying and failing to be stern against the vivid red that by now is hitting the floorboards in soft splatters. They really did a number on him. He was bleeding and burning, but the burning was stuck inside, tearing him up and making him vibrate with the fettered flames. Did everybody feel like this? Now the friend would be kneeling in front of him, would touch his cheek and tilt his head to examine the wounds with a disapproving gleam in his eye, and the burning would stop, and the man would never know why or how, but now he was only bleeding. Oh. That’s alright then.
Not by himself. Either they walked through that door together, or else that part of them—the man and his friend and the blood and the burning—stayed there forever, a menagerie in memoriam. He would call the someone’s secretary in the morning and ask to have these rooms for however long he would be in the city, and he would sit on the couch at night, after the lights and applause and after all the looks , and think about how in an alternate reality, right that very minute, some man in Brooklyn was getting lovingly and frustratedly patched up by his friend. Why not? If Steve wasn’t there, it could be true. It might as well be.
So the hotel, despite its distinct lack of Bucky, was the better option by far. There was even a desk in the corner, he reasoned, which would be as good a place as any to respond to the latest letter. It had taken a while to get to him, found its way into his pocket a few days back in Chicago, and had stayed there. Perhaps it was a lack of time or will or perhaps it was something in the air, but either way Steve had felt utterly unable to peel the flap away from its sticky backing and see what kinds of words were awaiting him this time. The same forcedly light banter, or praise, or censure, sprinkled with the phrases that for reasons Steve couldn’t explain soothed the burning in his blood like nothing else but Buck ever had. When the envelope was in his pocket, or when he sat clutching it in his hand at a rickety desk in a lonely hotel room, it could be any of those. It could be any, but it couldn’t actually be real, not until he opened it, so he did.
Steve could never wish he hadn’t read something that Bucky— Bucky —had sent him, but he sure as hell could wish he had put it off for the next morning when he wasn’t so damn tired and already riddled with a guilt that each moment of reading, word by painful word, only expanded even more. The brief flare of indignation at Buck’s lack of sincere congratulations was doused when he read the final question, though it felt like a plea, asking him not to forget to write. The days he had spent keeping this fresh piece of Bucky crumpled against him in his breast pocket suddenly seemed so much more selfish than they had before, now that Steve realized he wasn’t the only one playing the waiting game.
Never again, he decided as he pulled out his own paper and pencil, he wouldn’t hesitate ever again. And if it killed him to turn and face the changes he had wrought on their orbit, and Bucky still without an idea of the destruction, it would be a deserved penance.
James Buchanan Barnes,
With all those high marks you got in school and the science books you nicked from the library (Yeah I knew. You always hid things under your bed, it wasn’t that hard) I’d thought you were a pretty smart one, but here you are proving me wrong. Forget to write—as if I could even if I tried.
I remember you helping me out that day when we were kids, and I remember you helping me out not even a year ago, and a million other times besides. Ain’t ever going to forget that, so I don’t know why I’d ever forget you either. And if I could come over there with some bandages and ice, I would do it in a second. Drop the job, drop everything, because you’ve gotta know that doesn’t really matter as much, Buck. I do worry about you, and I know you’re not alright. Don’t lie to me. It’ll be easier for you if you just come out with it, and you know it.
I used to feel so bad about getting you into those fights, you know? I hated dragging you into something that you didn’t really want, and I swear I went into every single one intending to finish it myself. I never intended for you to have to save my ass, but I was always glad you did. That’s the only time you’ll ever hear me admit to getting my ass beat, so you’d better save this paper.
I’m sorry for the heavy stuff, I guess this travelling has got me feeling sentimental. I haven’t been out with the tour for long, but I’ve already seen more of the world than I ever have before. Buffalo, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Chicago...And yet it hasn’t felt quite right till now, back in New York for a while. They’re definitely giving me the star treatment though, don’t you worry. I’m well fed, the pillows are soft, and I haven’t had a hint of asthma since winter ended months ago. People seem to like what I’m doing, too, which is nice. Amazing how many different ways you can spin red, white, and blue. Maybe I oughta send you one of my flyers? They’re supposed to be going around in Europe, comics too, but I don’t know when and I’d care more what you think about it than anyone else.
Steve hesitated, his large frame hunched slightly over the desk as he debated how much more to share. Should he talk about the people he’d met, how much he liked his job, how he missed Buck more with every drop of praise he got? And he wanted so desperately to ask him about the looks, about what they were and what to do with them, because over the last few months Steve had realized that he wasn’t the only one who burned. He could see it in the eyes of the women he greeted with as charming a smile as he could muster, a burning he had seen in every dame that had ever danced with Bucky but whose warmth had never before been directed at Steve. He had been shocked the first time he had seen that particular fire in a man’s eyes, a young doctor with whom he traded a handshake and a grin after his first show in Buffalo. He had almost convinced himself he had it mistaken, he had never been the object of any romantic intentions before after all, but he saw it in the faces of men at every show afterwards. Never all the men, only a handful, but it was enough to convince him that it was real. He didn’t know what to do with it, with them, and so he just kept shaking hands and grinning and telling himself it didn’t mean anything, and he didn’t want it to.
He wanted to ask Buck about all of the looks, from the men and the women, because the heat they imparted was uncomfortable and stifling. But he couldn’t ask about the men, not in a letter that’d be read and censored to hell, not when he didn’t even have the words to voice what he was seeing. He couldn’t even ask about the women, because then he’d have to explain why he had suddenly become someone people wanted to love, when it had only been Buck for all this time.
If I write much more I’ll just end up getting more sentimental, and I don’t doubt you’d love reading it but I doubt I’d love remembering it. So instead, I’ll just tell you this. As much as I’m enjoying myself here, I’d rather be anywhere else with you. There. Now you’ve gone and rubbed all your sap off on me—I hope you’re happy.
The pencil hung over the paper like a sword, and Steve thought back to Buck’s letter. Love, that’s how he ended it. Wasn’t anything wrong with that—sure there wasn’t—but Steve couldn’t bring himself to write the same. Love was meant to be honest, and clean, and Steve knew that he had been neither where Bucky was concerned. If this was what Steve’s love was, then Buck didn’t deserve that. He deserved the truth, he deserved better, but all Steve could give was a promise that he would try to give him both.
More later,
Steve