December 7, 1941
December, 1941
Bucky wakes up to the sound of screaming coming from the tenants above his flat. That would make it the third time this month the Henderson’s were going at it, and I was only a week into December. Kitty was yelling at her husband about once again spending his pay on hooch, and Bucky would be impressed at how loud she was, if her shrill voice didn’t scratch at his eardrums and if he didn’t know their baby was about three seconds from waking up and screaming the rest of the tenants awake-
Without fail, baby Bridget let out an ear-piercing cry. Well, she certainly got her vocals from her mama.
Bucky would be angry, but Bridget was the cutest little thing, with big grey eyes like Rebecca’s, and Kitty was a nice girl and her husband (James? Joshua? Joseph?) wasn’t. Besides, Steve’s hacking throughout most of the winter definitely kept their neighbors up throughout the night, and they never once complained. Still, the girl was only 21, and her and her babe were saddled with Brooklyn’s most useless, smelliest, and inconsiderate Irish drunkard of all time, according to Kitty. Bucky sat up and leaned over to the end of his bed to look for his wool sock in the pile of blankets at his feet, and was just a bit relieved he didn’t have a Kitty or baby waiting for him in the kitchen. Here he was, 24 years old, living across from his ma and Becca (George had died two years before, prompting the two Barnes women to move into the flat next door) and sharing rent with his best friend. All of his friends either had a steady or were hitched, but Bucky couldn’t find it in him to be angry at the current state of his life, or want to change it. His ma made him and Steve dinner at least three times a week, he had been promoted at the docks to an office job, where he was being taught how to keep and balance books, just like his pa, he was close enough to chase off any active duty boys who got too handsy with Becca, and Steve was always just around the corner. Bottom line, Bucky liked his life- he was happy, and he thought himself lucky to be able to say that. So, he didn’t see the harm in carrying on any differently than he had for the past few years, even if his ma’s desire for a grandbaby or two or seven were being increasingly voiced (with more direct force behind the hints as well).
After he has regained possession of his own sock, he put on the extra jumper he had slung around the back of the chair beside his bed last night and walked into the shared kitchen to put on hot water for tea. One of Steve’s sketch books was abandoned on the little table next to the battered armchair in the living room at the front of the apartment. As the kettle heated up, Bucky picked up the book and flipped through it. It was obviously for one of Steve’s art classes, as it had a heavy brown paper cover, was inscribed with Property of Steven G. Rogers inside the front cover, and was full of what Steve called his “character practices” and pictures of trees and dinners drawn in different styles.
(When Steve left his sketchbook out, it meant it was okay to look and flip through it. But, if Bucky ever dared open one of Steve’s personal sketch books, like the blue leather one Steve had saved up six months to get, Bucky would most definitely get the verbal thrashing of a lifetime.)
When the kettle whistled, Bucky got up from the chair and, after peeking into Steve’s open bedroom door, determined that he was not home. It was not unusual for Steve to be out on a Sunday morning, as he still went to mass most weeks, after which he would go say hello to Sarah at the conjoined cemetery. Sometimes, Bucky will go along with him- not because he holds God in any high regard, at Church or Temple, but because Sarah Rogers was one hell of a woman, and just as much a mother to him as his own ma is. Sometimes, during the spring and summer, he met Steve at her grave after church with a flower or two in his hand.
However, most Sundays in the fall and winter were dedicated to football. In fact, after he ate lunch with Steve and checked on Becca and his ma, he’d go over to the complex across the street to Jim’s apartment to listen to the game with some of his friends from the docks. Sure, he and Steve had their own radio- an ancient little thing you sometimes have to give a good whack to dispel the static- which Steve used to listen to Eddie Duchin and Sammy Kayes’ shows while painting or sketching. But, at Jim’s, Bucky was free to drink and smoke and yell and cheer in a way that didn’t feel right next to Steve.
Bucky made his cup of tea and walked back to the living room, only to place it down on the table to spin the chair around to look out the small window above the kitchen sink. He grabbed a smoke out of the pack on the table and lit up. With his tea cup in one hand and cigarette in the other, Bucky watched small flurries of snow fall between from the grey sky and tried to tune out the crying baby from upstairs.
Bucky was making himself a sandwich when Steve came through the apartment door, bringing with him a gust of cold air. Bucky turned to lean his back against the bathtub turned kitchen table, sandwich in hand, to watch as Steve leaned down to unlace his shoes, old and wet around his toes from dragging his feet through icy slush, noticing how Steve’s hair fell forward off of his forehead. When he stood up after kicking his shoes off to take of his coat, his bangs were so long that they almost came forward to brush his eyelashes.
“Sweet Jesus, Steve. Ya need a haircut. Can’t have ya hiding those baby blues. Best you do it yourself soon, or ma will take a pair of scissors to you, and she’s never been a gifted barber.”
Steve just huffed and threw himself down on the armchair, quickly bringing his knees to his chest and pulling his large sweater over his legs. He then stuck his arms back in through the sleeves, leaving only his head and sock-clad toes visible outside of the pilling blue jumper.
“Well, I ain’t doin’ anything until I figure out how to draw hands in motion. I need to pass human figures, but the professor says my drawings are too still.”
Bucky paused mid chew. “The fuck does that even mean?”
Steve let his head fall forward onto his knees. “It means I ain’t good enough- hey! Come over here for a second.”
Bucky put his sandwich down, and sat down on the stool in front of the armchair, which placed him eye level with Steve.
“Can I practice drawing your hands?”
Big, blue eyes met Bucky’s, and he found himself agreeing immediately. Besides, he had nothing better to do until he left five minutes to 2 to go listen to the game at Jim’s. (Bucky could never say no to Steve anyways.)
“Sure. Can I smoke while you do it though? That way my hands can be in motion.”
“Of course,” Steve said, “but we’re gonna need to move into the kitchen so you can smoke out the window.”
For the next hour, Bucky found himself leaning against the sink next to the open window, while Steve and his sketchbook sat in front of him on the stool from the living room. While Steve watched Bucky’s hands move to and from his mouth, the way index and middle finger gently held the cigarette, and how his thumb would tab the filter of the smoke three times after every few inhales, Bucky kept his eyes firmly fixed out the window. While Steve tried to capture the movement of Bucky’s hand and fingers around the cigarette, Bucky watched how his fingers wrapped around the pencil, how his ring fingertip was used to blur and soften charcoal lines, and how his eyebrows furrowed under dark blond hair. By the time Buck got up to leave, the crease between Steve’s brows has disappeared and he even had the beginning of a smile on his lips.
Jazz music, soft and smooth, played through the radio Steve had retrieved from his bedroom about twenty minutes in. When the clock read seven minutes to 2, Bucky snubbed out the last of his cigarette and flicked it out the window. Noticing how Steve’s cheeks and nose had turned pink with the cold, he shrugged his own sweater off and offered it to Steve, who quickly threw it on top of the two he was already wearing. Bucky picked up the empty carton of Luckies and tossed them into the waste bin on his way to the coat rack.
“Wait! I picked another pack of smokes up for you at the store after I went to see ma. They’re in my coat pocket, along with two packs of matches. Toss one here, and take the other with you.”
Bucky went over to Steve’s coat and fished through the pockets for the matches and cigarettes.
“And people ask me why I don’t got a steady yet. Why would I, when I got you, right sweetheart?” Bucky tossed the second pack of matches over to Steve, who didn’t even bother looking up to try to catch them.
“Keep talkin’ like that, I’ll change the locks so you gotta live with your mama. Then you won’t have a steady ‘cause you can’t bring home dames back to your bed in your ma’s apartment.”
“Yeah, fuck you too, baby!” Bucky left the apartment and walked down the few levels to the street, hands buried deep in his jacket pockets to fend off the cold. After crossing the street and entering the tenement, Bucky found himself outside of Jim’s apartment in just a few moments. He didn’t bother knocking at the door, as he could hear several of the guys already talking inside. He strode in, clearly interrupting Johnny and another one of his unfortunate stories.
“So then I go, ‘heya sugar, are you rationed?’ cause I ain’t looking for a share crop, ya know and then- hey! Looks like Barnes made it! Just in time, too, the game's about to start.”
Bucky rolled his eyes at Johnny, a younger dock worker who, dare he say it, had even worse luck with gals than Steve did, but with good reason. Johnny was the type of fella who wanted to put his hand up some dame’s skirt, but also talked shit about any girl who let any fella who wasn’t him touch them before they were married under the eyes of God.
“The reason you don’t got a dame is because you sure as hell don’t know how to speak to them. Hey Jim, is your wife around? I could give Johnny some lessons here.”
Jim came out from the kitchen area, beer in hand for Bucky. “You know Barnes, I would be offended if I didn’t know that you ain’t a-shoeing for my wife, but you just seem happy to sweet talk your way through life.”
Bucky took the beer from him with a smile.
“Please fellas! James here has a gift. He once charmed crazy Old Union Tom down in Hells Kitchen into not beating his ass. If James can get to him, he can get to anyone,” a voice called over from the sofa. Bucky nodded solemnly at Jim.
“Besides, I have a personal stake in your relationship with your gal. I was one of your groomsmen, after all.”
Jim smiled to, and patted him firmly on the shoulder. “That’s right pal. Come on, turn it up. It’s the Giants against the Dodgers today. We gotta make sure our boys can hear us!”
The radio sat on the coffee table, surrounded by the couch, a stool, and the chairs from the kitchen table. The eight men huddled around the radio, each with a bottle of beer in their hands. Bucky pulled out the pack of cigarettes Steve had given him, and offered a smoke to Johnny and Henry, who had settled into the chairs beside his. Quickly, the room became filled with the noise of WOR broadcasters, often lost under the angry shouts and the cheers of the men.
Twenty five minutes into the game, the Dodgers were leading, and Bucky could feel his cheers getting louder. He loved Sunday football, with the warm beer giving him a slight buzz, smoke clinging to his skin, and the boys cheering all around him. He loved winning even more, especially when the Dodgers came out on top another New York team- it just made going into work the next day so much more enjoyable. (It also made going into work for a lot of the annoying pricks in the office downright painful, which made Bucky’s day even better.)
“…the twenty-seven yard line. Bruiser Kinard made the tackle- We interrupt this broadcast-”
“Oh what the fuck!”
“The hell is that?”
Bucky startles up from his slouched position and reaches up to his mouth to snatch the cigarette that had been dangling carelessly between his lips. Next to him, Johnny’s knuckles turn white around the neck of his beer bottle. Jim leans in to turn the radio up louder while shushing everyone in the room.
“-to bring you this important bulletin from the United Press. Flash- Washington- the White House announces Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor-”
Bucky’s ears started to ring, and he felt, rather than heard, Johnny’s beer slip from his hand and shatter on the floor, splashing up onto his pants. Jim was staring at the radio, not having moved an inch since reaching over to turn up the nob. The smoke Bucky had been holding slipped between his fingers and tumbled down his shirt, scorching small holes into the fabric as it went. For a few moments, the room was absolutely silent- then, the men started shouting.
Bucky jumped up from his chair, catching the back of his hand on the end of Henry’s lit cigarette from where his hand dangled off the side of the arm rest, and bolted to the front door. Despite the shouts of Jim and the others, Bucky threw open the door, leaving his pack of Luckies on the table and his coat on the rack.
He didn’t know why it was so important to him, but Bucky had to get to Steve before the news did. Not like there was anything to know, except that the Japanese had bombed the US, which was an act of war, which meant that the US would join the war, which meant that a draft would be instituted, and Bucky was sure that he would not survive the draft, because unlike Steve, he was not a student, unlike Steve he was healthy-
Unlike Steve, he didn’t want to fight. Bucky knew the second Steve heard that the US had cause to finally enter that God forsaken war, he’d be the first to sign up, and of course they wouldn’t take Steve, not his Steve, with his broken lungs and heart and ears and stomach. But Bucky also knew that Steve would not take no for an answer, and that scared him even more that the prospect of his number coming up in the draft.
Bucky liked his life the way it was, and as he ran down the stairs, out of the apartment complex, and across the street, he wished (and prayed to a God he didn’t believe in) for just a little more time for the life he lived. Just one more dinner with his ma and Becca. Just one more smoke with the guys. Just one more smile from Steve, before they became each other’s worse nightmares.
Bucky raced to the door of his tenant building and up the rickety old stairs to his apartment door. One hand went to the nob, the other to jam the key into the lock, and Bucky was in the apartment before he knew it. He stumbles in, and looks up to find Steve, eyes wide with alarm and lips parted, looking over at him from his place in the kitchen, pencil and sketchbook still in hand, radio playing from the table.
“Bucky! What the hell? Good Lord- why is your sweater smoking? And your hand, its-”
Steve puts his pencil and sketchbook down, and moves to get up, one hand already reaching out to Bucky, who lets the door slam behind him. Bucky rushes across the room, and pushes Steve’s hand away from where it lands on his chest, but doesn’t let go of it. With his other hand, he makes a desperate grab for the radio, and almost topples over on top of Steve.
“Just turn the radio off for a second- Jesus, how do you turn this piece of shit off-“
In the back of his mind, a voice tells Bucky he must be scaring Steve, because the hand not held in Bucky’s vice grip comes up to grab Bucky’s jaw and to turn his head to look at Steve. “Sweet Jesus, Buck, what’s gotten into you? What’s goin’ on-”
“Just fucking listen to me and turn off the goddamn radio, Steve!”
Steve drops his hand from Bucky’s face and backs away enough that his chest is facing Bucky’s arm, with their clasped hands between them, so that they are no longer face to face, but doesn’t try to break away. (As if he could, with how tightly Bucky is gripping his hand.) Instead, he stares at Bucky’s profile for a moment, eyebrows drawn together.
The radio makes a static sound, as the program Steve was listening to ends, and a new one began, “Go ahead New York.”
Bucky resorts to hitting the radio, quickly trying to find the off switch, or at least the volume nob, while Steve pulled at his sweater and tried to calm him down. Then, all at once, whatever hope Bucky had for just a few more moments of normality vanished.
“The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor by air, President Roosevelt has just announced.”
Bucky dropped his hand from the radio and threw his fist down against the plywood surface of the table and hunched over. His other hand still firmly held one of Steve’s hand. Steve’s other hand stilled against Bucky’s back and gripped the wool of his sweater tight. Bucky could hear Steve’s breathing pick up slightly and start to wheeze, just a little, which caused him to turn his head to the side and look back at Steve, whose eyes are fixed blankly ahead of him. Bucky grinds his fist into the table one last time before pushing up and away, dropping Steve’s hand as he goes. He walks back out to the door, grabbing and putting on their only spare jacket at the door.
“I have to run out a grab a few things. I’ll be back, I promise.”
“Buck-”
He closes the door behind him.
He comes back three hours later, with yet another pack of cigarettes in his pocket. When he opens the apartment door, Steve isn’t in the kitchen or living room. He isn’t in his bedroom either. Wherever he is, Bucky hopes he had enough foresight to bundle up. With a heavy sigh, Bucky at the kitchen table. He grabs the sketchbook and flips through to Steve’s work from this afternoon. Bucky has always thought that Steve was an amazing artist, but as he flips through the later works, he begins to understand what Steve’s professor was talking about. The later drawings of his hands look like they are in the middle of moving right off the page compared to some of Steve’s earlier works. He continues his way through the book, but stops at the last page, which isn’t focused on his hands. Instead, the center of the drawing is Bucky’s lips, with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, jawline sharp and shaded with stubble. He leans forward to brace his elbows on his knees, sketchbook in one hand, and allows his fingertips to gently glide over the image.
Bucky didn’t know what to think. Is this what Steve spent his afternoon doing- perfecting Bucky’s cupid’s bow and laboring over the small scar on the left corner of his upper lip he got when he was seven?
A lot of questions floated around Bucky’s head, but one thing was clear- his boy was a marvel. Bucky jumped up from the chair, immediately set on finding Steve, on apologizing to him- but then the front door creaked open slowly and Steve entered the room. Bucky let the sketchbook fall from his hand down onto the wood with a dull thump. Before he can say anything, Steve talks first.
“I was at your ma’s. We missed you at dinner. Ma was so pissed she threw your dinner out. Also, Jim came over with your jacket and smokes. They’re in your bedroom.”
Bucky ducked his head and nodded. When he lifted his head, Steve was looking up at his face, anger coloring his eyes dark. After a few moments, he threw his hands up and turned away from Bucky.
“Fuckin’ hell! What was that all about! You tryin’ to keep the war from me? Do you know how many people they are reporting died? You had no fucking right to pull that shit.”
Steve storms away, making his way towards his bedroom.
“I know. I’m sorry Steve. I just- I’m sorry. Baby- Steve, please.”
Steve continues to his room, leaving Bucky alone in the kitchen to look up at the water damaged celling, blinking furiously. He turns around and stalks over to the sink to throw open the window. With his hands braced on the sink, Bucky takes deep gasps of the cold December air. After a few moments, the sound of shuffling causes Bucky to turn away from the window, and he watches as Steve dumps the blankets from his bed onto the arm chair and places the radio on the stool.
“Well? I imagine we both want to hear the updates as the come in.”
Bucky spends most of the night by the kitchen sink, chain-smoking out the window, while Steve sat in the armchair, bundled under all of the blankets they owned. The radio droned on between them, sometimes playing soft music, sometimes repeating the same bulletin over and over again. Around 11, Steve’s breathing slowed and evened out. Bucky walked over, and gently brushes his hand through Steve’s hair, stopping once he saw the burn on the back of his hand from earlier, which had blistered over and was weeping. He leaves to go wrap his hand in clean cotton, and turns the radio off on his way back to his bedroom.
The next day, Bucky is eating his lunch at his shared desk when a commotion out in the main lobby of the office draws him out. All of the office workers, along with some of the dock workers are gathered around a radio. Bucky stood in the doorway, listening to the President speak.
“…I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire...”