Chapter 1
i. brooklyn, 1930
You’re twelve years old when you realize.
Jack O’Hare wants you to meet his older brother, who works down at the docks, for some reason you can’t really remember. You don’t much see the merit in meeting the guy - sixteen-year-olds always seem much too self-possessed to you - but Jack’s a real swell guy, and a good friend (although nothing like Stevie, who’ll always be your best pal), so you agree - what the hell, anyways. So you and Jack cut class one Friday to go watch his brother Tommy do whatever it is he does at the docks. The first twenty minutes or so, you’re real bored, shifting from foot to foot in the cold while you watch nondescript men hauling crates. You and Jack can’t even tell which one is Tommy since none of the men are looking up from their work, and you’re about to tell Jack you’re gonna go home when the guys go on break, and then a boy who must be Tommy looks up at you - Jack, probably, but you’d like to think it’s you - and smiles.
Tommy is tall for his age, gangly if you’re being uncharitable; he’s tanned and on the leaner side, with slight muscles you can see under his tight shirt. His smile is so white, and his eyes are dark in his face, skin wet with sweat, auburn hair falling in his eyes, and all you can think is that he’s real swell-looking - no, that’s not it; Tommy O’Hare is pretty.
You blurt out something about your Ma wanting you to get home soon, and before Jack can even protest you’re speed-walking away from the docks, your skin burning underneath the blush that you just know is forming on your cheeks.
In bed that night, you lie awake for a long time, tossing and turning and unable to sleep. It’s strange; you’ve seen plenty of guys in your short lifetime who were handsomer than Tommy O’Hare, but there’s something about the way his bangs flopped into his face, something about the shine of sweat on his biceps, that stirred feeling in your gut, feeling you’ve never felt before. So you lie awake, mind on Tommy, and you don’t end up getting much sleep that night.
You avoid Jack for the next week, unable to take the risk of seeing Tommy again, until Gracie Katz tells you that Mary Anne Abernathy told her that Jack doesn’t wanna be friends with you anymore, not since you’ve been steering clear of him, and anyways Jack’s got a dame now, he’s going steady with Lizzie Collins, you know, and he don’t have time for playin’ around like little kids with you, yeah? You nod numbly as Gracie continues her prattling on; it’s a relief, sort of, and that’s the worst part: Jack wasn’t your best friend, of course, but he was your friend, so why are you so relieved? And part of you is devastated, too: this means you probably won’t get the chance to talk to Tommy, ever; your heart sinks at this news, and you cut class the rest of the day to mope. You even end up avoiding Steve; he’d be able to tell exactly what’s wrong, and you can’t tell him, you can’t tell him what you’re beginning to suspect about yourself. So you mope, picturing Tommy’s wiry frame while the words grow louder in your mind: Fairy. Faggot. Queer. You can’t be one - you’d never be one - but then why do you spend your days avoiding boys and your nights dreaming of them?
It comes to a head one afternoon when you and Stevie are hangin’ around together. You want to sneak onto the rides in Coney Island; he’s looking for something quieter, “maybe drawin’ or somethin’, Buck, I dunno, just goin’ down to the docks and lookin’ at the people,” and your mind freezes.
“Why would ya wanna go to the docks, of all places?” you drawl, to cover up your panic.
“We don’t gotta go there, I was just throwin’ it out as an idea…anyways, I like goin’ there. You used to, y’know, too…what happened? You get too old for it? You know, Buck, just ‘cause you’re almost thirteen don’t mean you’re too good for people-watching.”
“I ain’t too good for people-watching, I just don’t wanna go to the docks,” you snap. “It’s kinda weird, y’know? Just…buncha guys haulin’ shit around. Not much exciting stuff going on after about ten minutes of the same thing.”
Steve shrugs; you end up compromising and going to the park so he can sketch and you can contemplate the real reason you avoid going down there: You don’t want to see Tommy again (you desperately want to see Tommy again.) Besides, you’ve learned recently, through schoolyard gossip, that the docks are where fairies hang out to find a fella looking for a good time; you know you’re too young for any of them to take a look at you, but you still can’t risk any of your pals thinkin’ you’re like that, especially when you know they’d be right. Because you do know they’d be right: Tommy isn’t the only guy to catch your eye; there’s Ben Lipsky from your synagogue, and Frankie Caruso down the street, and Daniel McMillan in your math class…you’ve even caught yourself looking at Steve from time to time, admiring his long eyelashes, the curve of his fingers, his skinny shoulders, before immediately chastising yourself: he’s Steve, he’s too good for that shit, you won’t drag him down with you, you won’t. So you know you’re a queer, but there’s no way in hell you’d let Steve know that. He’s your best pal; you couldn’t lose him, not for anything.
Still, it doesn’t hurt to imagine, right? It’s a free country; you can have your thoughts, and as long as you don’t slip up you’ll be fine. So you enter adolescence dreaming. By the time you turn thirteen, you’ve gotten over Tommy and Ben and Frankie and Daniel and all the other boys you see around you who catch your eye momentarily; it’s Steve who’s captured your attention, and while you pal around with him like everything’s the same as it’s always been, you can barely look at him without thinking of what it would be like for him to kiss you. You’ve never been kissed before, except by your Ma, which doesn’t count; you’d like to be kissed - you’d like Steve to kiss you. He’s got a real nice face, and how in hell did it take you so many years to notice how pink his lips are? But you’ll never have him, not like that: no matter what some folks might think, Steve ain’t a fairy; he’s too bold, too fierce for that. And eventually, although your attraction to him never really fades, you learn how to package it up, shelve it in a place where it’s a little less painful to look at him, a little easier to act the way you’ve always acted around him.
ii. brooklyn, 1934
On the eve of your seventeenth birthday, you’re looking for thrills. So many boys you know have kissed and told; while some have to be exaggerating, you’re no stranger to the knowledge that most of them have had their first fucks, when you’ve never even had your first kiss, let alone anything more than that. It’s not the stories themselves that interest you; you could care less about girls, and you’ve known that for a while now. It’s the fact that you’re inexperienced. And yet, the thought of makin’ it with a gal makes you feel a little sick to your stomach. You’ve tried picturing it, both with girls you know and with actresses you see in movies, and every time you either end up feeling physically nauseous or your fantasies drift to thoughts of men, which drift to thoughts of Steve. So you rule out the idea of finding some girl to spend the night with. Instead, you decide to head to the docks. During the day, they’re innocent enough. But you’ve known since you were twelve or thirteen that at night, queers tend to hang around there to pick up fellas passing through. Well, you’ve saved up a few dollars from your job at the grocer’s; you’re sure you could find someone real good-looking to lose your virginity to. And while you won’t be able to tell anyone about it, at least you’ll have had the experience.
You sneak out of your apartment that night with your cash stuffed in your pocket and your heart nearly beating out of your chest. You find your way there on blind instinct, and sure enough, there’s a fella in lipstick loitering in the shadows of a streetlamp. You make a beeline towards him.
“Hey, sugar,” he drawls. “Lookin’ for a good time?”
You nod mutely, the lump in your throat too big for you to make a sound. The man frowns.
“How old are you, hon? You look a little young for me.”
“Twenty,” you lie.
“Uh-huh. Listen, hon, a word of advice: you’re what, sixteen? There’ll be guys out there who’ll take ya, because you’re cute or innocent or you’re payin’ them for their time. Don’t go for them. Keep yourself safe, because sooner or later you’ll get taken’ advantage of, or the cops will arrest you, or you’ll get fuckin’ beat up by someone who doesn’t understand people like us. Fly under the radar. Don’t seek out queers in lipstick hangin’ around the docks at night, because your luck’ll run out someday.”
“For the record, I’m about to be seventeen,” you say defensively. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“Call me Rouge,” the man says with a wink. “Now you have a good night, honey. Stay safe out there.”
“You too,” you say. He laughs, deep in his belly.
“Thanks, hon,” he says through his laughter. “Thank you.”
You can’t quite muster up the courage to go home yet. You wander around Brooklyn for a little while, visiting some of your old haunts you used to visit when you were just a little kid. Eventually you end up bumming a Lucky off the street, smoking it as you meander back to your apartment. Your Ma will be pissed when she smells the tobacco on your breath – she thinks you’re too young for cigarettes – but it’s worth the lecture to feel the sweet ache in your throat as you slip back home, trying to sneak back into your bedroom without waking Ma. (You’re not slick; later, you’ll remember the clumsiness of teenagerhood with bitter nostalgia, but now, in 1934, you’d give anything to avoid getting caught out after your curfew.)
***
It’s Stevie’s sixteenth birthday, and you’ve got something good for him. You saved up for a month and a half, and you had just enough left over from your meager job at the grocer’s to buy him a new set of pencils. You hope he won’t be too sore about the colors; you know he’s not real good at picking apart the reds from the greens, but that doesn’t matter – he’s got you there to pick the right one for him, doesn’t he? The two of you spend the evening on his fire escape, you with your Luckies and him with a fading black eye, as he watches the fireworks and you watch the colors flash across his face. You don’t go inside until the sky’s gone completely dark; Steve stays still for a moment after, face still upturned towards the sky, and you watch him, paralyzed, thinking, oh, this is love, this is love, and he’s right next to you, half of a smile turning his mouth up, and you bite the inside of your lip to keep from kissing him, but damn it, what you wouldn’t give to have him, what you wouldn’t give for him to kiss you back.
You’re quiet for a little while, even after you’ve both gone back in and you’ve given Steve his gift – he looks at you with a strange sort of awed expression, raw and tender, and fuck it, you can’t keep this in any longer. You’ve got enough sense not to tell him you love him – but you’ve gotta tell him you’re a queer, you can’t hide that from him any longer.
So you do.
He looks at you for a moment, head-on, after you say it, stumbling over words spilling too-fast out of your mouth, then nods and claps his hand on your shoulder, smiles crookedly, and says, “You’re still my best pal, Buck, ain’t nothing changed about that,” and that’s that.
iii. brooklyn, 1942
Damn it. Damn it damn it damn it all to hell, fuck this, fuck, fuck, this is bullshit, you can’t do this, you can’t do this –
You hold the letter in shaking hands:
GREETING:
Having submitted yourself to a local board composed of your neighbors for the purpose of determining your availability for training and service in the armed forces of the United States, you are hereby notified that you have now been selected for training and service in the Army…
You have a wild, half-formed thought of burning the fucking thing, just tossing it on the damned stove and pretending like it never happened, but then you think of facing Stevie afterwards, not saying a word, dodging the draft while he got rejected yet again…you can’t bring yourself to do it. So when Steve gets home that night, you smile bitterly at him, hand him the letter, and don’t say a damn thing.
***
Basic is…not easy, exactly, but not as bad as you were expecting. The men in training with you are all typical, boasting about their strength and the girls they’ve fucked. You join in half-heartedly, never mind the fact you’ve never touched a dame in your whole short life, and you think maybe one or two of them might be as scared shitless as you, but you never ask, and neither do they.
You’re home on leave for a couple nights before shipping out to Europe, so of course you want to go on a double date with Stevie – not that he’d ever be the one to look at you the way you want him to, but it’s easy enough to charm a couple girls into going with you two and pretend it’s him you’re taking out instead of Connie and Judy. You go to the Stark Expo, of course; there’s no chance you’d miss seeing it, not when it’s your last time in New York for who knows how long. (In the back of your mind, you wonder if it’ll be your last time home ever, but you stubbornly refuse to acknowledge this thought until you’re lying on a cold metal table in Kreischberg, screaming your ass off until your throat is raw and you can’t make sound anymore, and you don’t think much for a while after that.)
The Expo is swell, up until Steve disappears. You eventually find him at another damn military recruitment center, and he sends you back out to the fair while he tries his luck for the fifth time. Somehow it’s not the same without him there to chat to; Connie at least is interested in the science, and good conversation besides, but all Judy seems to care about is making time with you as you pretend not to notice the increasingly blunt hints she drops. When Steve doesn’t show by the end of the Expo, you take Connie out dancing on a whim – you might not care much for dames, but you sure like dancing, and it ain’t exactly like you could take Stevie for a spin on the floor without raising a few eyebrows. So you and Connie dance the night away, and you drop her off at her apartment with a quick kiss on the cheek goodbye, a perfect gentleman. You return home flushed and exhausted from your night out, and see that Steve’s back too, thank G-d.
“What’d they say this time?” you say, pretending not to know the answer.
“…4F,” Steve says, looking shifty. You chalk it up to disappointment at another rejection and clap a hand on his shoulder sympathetically.
“Didja have a good night at least, Buck?” he asks.
“Yeah, Connie and I had a swell time. Wasn’t as good without you there, though, I wish you woulda stayed and at least gotten Judy off my back. She didn’t really seem to get that I wasn’t interested, you know? But Connie was fun, at least. And she didn’t get upset when I didn’t want to do anything with her. Didn’t seem to want much of it either, matter of fact. We just danced. It was…it was real nice.”
“Do you think you’d want to see her again?” His voice is quiet as he says it.
“Nah, you know me. If I keep taking a girl out, sooner or later I’ll hafta put moves on her, and you know that’s not really my thing…”
“You’re gonna have to, you know. People are gonna talk. Handsome guy like James Barnes, you can get away with taking out a bunch of different girls now, but sooner or later you’ll have to settle down. Get married, and all that.”
A chill runs through you. Sure, you knew people talked already – mostly about Steve, what with his small body and artistic tendencies and inability to keep his damn mouth shut when he sees something wrong going on, but you’ve been implicated a couple times given the fact that you share an apartment. But it’s true that dating around has kept the heat off your back, and it’s also true that sooner or later, you’ll be too old for that kind of thing. You’ve been ignoring it for now, but Steve’s right.
“Yeah, I know,” you say, keeping your voice light. “But do we have to think about that now? I’m about to ship out, anyways. Maybe I’ll be able to say I fell in love with some tragic British dame or something. It doesn’t really matter right now, does it?”
“No,” Steve says after a while. “I guess it doesn’t.”
You look at him dead-on, now, for the first time since this conversation started. “It doesn’t,” you say, slowly, all traces of brevity gone from your voice. “It doesn’t matter right now, Stevie, so just drop it, okay? I’ll – I’ll figure it out. I will.”
It almost doesn’t feel like a lie.
iv. europe, 1942
“Barnes…James Buchanan…3255 – 325570…7038…”
Everything is grey and blue and black and blurring together, hot flashes of pain the only thing interrupting the monotony of greyblueblack, time doesn’t exist anymore, it’s all the same, all existing at once, and you think you can see it all from a distance, you think you see yourself, lying there, flayed open, and you scream but it doesn’t make a sound, and then you stop thinking for a while, until it starts again, greybluePAINblackPAIN, is this death, you’d think it was Hell if Jews believed in that sort of thing, so maybe the goyim were right on that one, but if this was Hell then why was a golden angel standing over you wearing Stevie’s face? You let the angel pull you to your feet, even though He’s made a mistake, you sure as shit don’t deserve Heaven, not with the blood on your hands, not with the foul taste of vomit on your tongue, not with the burning in your chest and stomach when you look at Steve, Steve, he’s too good for you, too damn good to be hangin’ around with a queer and a killer like you, but there’s an angel here with his face so you follow him out of Hell, fading in and out of lucidity, and by the time you’ve walked back to base you’re sane enough to know – even if you don’t really believe – that this is your Stevie, same as always, except he’s not, even if he talks the same and has the same face, the same big hands, he can’t be your Steve, he can’t be, but he is, and you know what? Whenever you close your eyes you feel phantom pains, you feel that cold metal table underneath you, you see a Nazi pulling the fucking flesh off his face, and if that fucking Nazi’s red skeleton was real then maybe Steve’s new too-big body is too.
v. europe, 1945
You’re about to get him.
Arnim Zola. His name has been burned into your mind ever since you learned it, ever since you had those two words to match to the face that haunts you every day and every night. You’ve killed more men than you can count, now, many of them barely older than boys – some of them still boys, and damn it if they don’t follow you in your dreams too – and while you don’t exactly like killing, you’re not too proud to admit that you want to be the one to tear the bastard limb from limb. You know the mission is capture, not kill, but part of you is hoping that he puts up a fight, if only for you to get the chance to get some payback.
You and Steve and the Howlies are at base the night before the op, and you’ve got a whole night with Steve – someone decided to have the two of you bunk together for conveniences’ sake, and you didn’t exactly complain. It’s sweet agony to lie there in the same room as him, and it’s only the years of practice of sharing an apartment that stop you from getting up and straddling his massive chest right now. You lie in silence for a while – and that bit is new, even if the agony isn’t; you’re used to the Howlies never shutting up, even when they probably should be quiet, and even before that you and Steve used to spend hours staying up at night talking into the dark. But Steve seems to sense that something is different about this upcoming op – you haven’t told him anything about Kreischberg, but he knows how much catching Zola means to you, and he’s witnessed you gasp your way back to life almost every night since then, even if you still refuse to talk about what happened, and he’s given up asking. You lie awake together for a while, just breathing, and it’s…nice. Peaceful. The calm before the storm, you think, and huff a laugh into the air. It’s as if breaking a spell; you hear Steve shift onto his side, feel his eyes on you, probably curious about what you were thinking about.
“It almost doesn’t feel real,” you say, without even realizing you meant to say it.
“Hm?” Steve’s voice is soft, but he’s wide awake now.
“This. Being…so close to him. It feels like it should be harder. Not that I want to jinx it, just…it feels too easy.”
“Hey, be grateful for the easy stuff,” Steve says. “Besides, once we get Zola, Schmidt won’t have his right-hand man. We’re so close to taking him out too. And without Schmidt, Hitler will fall soon after.”
“G-d, I can’t believe we’re talking about the damn war. Our first night alone in who knows how long, and you want the conversation to be about politics? Bad move, Rogers.”
“What do you want me to talk about, then?”
There’s a pregnant pause.
“Shit, I don’t know. What the hell did we talk about back home? It all feels so small now. Jobs, school, dancing…who the hell cares about that now?”
Steve’s sitting up now; you can tell by the shift of his sheets.
“Not like you to talk like that, Buck,” he says. His voice is mild, but you know him well enough to hear the worry underneath. You sigh.
“I dunno,” you say again. You’re quiet for a while. He’s on the verge of sleep, just starting to snore, when you can’t stay quiet any longer.
“I’ve killed people,” you burst out. “Lots of people. Some of them might’ve even been good people. I mean, they were Nazis, so how good could they really be, but still. They had families. Wives, kids, parents, siblings. And I killed them. And now I’m gonna kill more, and then when the war is over, I’ll go home and what’ll I do? Shit, Steve. I can’t go home. I’ll have to be nice, respectable, gentlemanly James Buchanan Barnes again. I’ll have to brag with the men and flirt with the girls and hell, I’m famous now too, I’ll have to have fuckin’ fancy dinners with other famous people and all that shit and talk about all my heroic fuckin’ exploits and at the end of the day, I’ll have to find a nice girl to marry and settle down and have kids and all that nonsense. I can’t do that, Steve. Even if I coulda married a girl ordinarily, I can’t now. Who’ll take me? Sure, I’m fuckin’ famous. I’m Captain America’s right-hand man, yadda yadda yadda. But at the end of the day, I’m a killer who can’t even sleep through a g-ddamn night, a killer who’s barely holding it the fuck together, a murderer, Steve, who’d take me with all this g-ddamn blood on my hands? Huh? You tell me, Steve, who the hell would want that?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Fine,” you say. “I’m going to sleep. Sorry that – sorry you had to hear all that.”
“I’ve killed too,” he says hollowly. “Christ, Bucky, you’ve seen me kill. You know damn well I’ve got just as much blood on my hands as you. You think anyone would want me? ‘Course not. They want Captain America, maybe. They want the fucking golden boy, America’s savior. They don’t want Steve Rogers. They don’t want that skinny punk from Brooklyn who couldn’t breathe right or see colors well or hear outta one ear and who got beat up near every week because he couldn’t stop runnin’ his mouth. They don’t want me.”
“Agent Carter wants you.”
“Agent Carter deserves better than me.”
“Like hell, Stevie,” you say, and you’re angry now, because how dare he say some dumb shit like that? “Like hell. You’re the best g-ddamn fella I’ve ever met, and don’t you dare let anyone else tell you otherwise, huh? Don’t. You deserve her, Steve. You deserve to have a girl look twice at you. You deserve to have a girl like Carter fall in love with you. You deserve to fall in love, Steve, don’t you see? You deserve – you deserve – you deserve everything, Stevie, don’t you get it? You deserve the house and the wife and kids and the steady job, Steve, you deserve the whole fucking world and I’m just sorry I wasn’t ever able to give it to you.”
“I didn’t realize it was like that for you,” he says.
You laugh, bitterly, and you can’t stop laughing, because it’s always been like that for you, always, since you were thirteen years old, since before you were fucking born, and you tell him this, you tell him through laughter and through tears, because it’s true, he deserves everything you could never give him, and you’re going to die a sinner and he’ll live as an angel and that’s exactly the way it should be.
You don’t talk about it in the morning. You don’t talk about it the whole way to the op, and you don’t talk about it on the zipline, and you don’t talk about it on the train, and you don’t talk about it as you fall into the wind and the cold and the white, white snow.