sunshine boy

sunshine boy

STEVE ROGERS

— brooklyn, new york, 1938 —

It was three against one, and Steve got his ass kicked.

Logically, going into the fight, he knew he wasn’t going to make it out hunky-dory. The guys were from Bucky’s YMCA welterweight gym — trained and toned specifically to fight with their entire bodies. There was no way he was going to make it out of there unscathed and it was a miracle he even made it out of them without dying on the dirty alley floor behind Rosaline’s Bridal. It was something inside him that constantly rebelled the smart consciousness that told him to beware of danger, clawing and spitting blood in the face of those who insist on hurting their fellow man.

How was he just expected to stand back and pretend he didn’t see them harassing a young woman? To turn a blind eye as one of their hands kept trying to slip under her skirt? He was not going to ignore her pleads for help like so many on the sidewalk did, hurrying faster with their eyes trained on the sky as if it was somehow make it all go away. He balled his fists tightly, marching towards them with all the fury of a Valkyrie that he would muster, and just started swinging.

Remarkably, he managed to knock the leader out with a right hook that caught him in the jaw, sending him down in a heap on the floor while the girl stared in awe. His knuckles didn’t even tear from the force of the impact with bone against bone, yet there was a distinct bruise already forming on the cheek of the other man. The shock of it caught him off guard, and the next thing he knew, he was being held by two of the goons while his victim continuously wailed on him with  precise punches to the gut.

They only stopped because they recognized him as their three-time welterweight champion’s best friend. Called him “Jimmy’s pal”.

His eyes was almost swollen shut, a sickening mixture of blues and violets that expanded across his eye and onto his temple. Bony shoulders were mostly covered in grime from the alley floor, his prominent collarbones would cut glass as they stood out on his pale chest. One clavicle was crooked from being reset wrong a while back, a time after his Ma when no one else around him knew how to care for a broken collarbone.

Broken.

Everything about him was broken. Broken body, broken self-preservation, broken life, broken faith. Nothing felt whole in his life. His mother always spoke of him as if he was some kind of messiah — put on this Earth to bring light and goodness to a species that’s quickly decaying into nothingness as the days continue to pass. Standing in front of the mirror watching the colors on his eyes turn into more vibrant shades, Steve felt lied to. There was nothing special about him other than his list of illnesses being as long as his skinny arm.

It was like the King in his mother’s stories. He was fighting against people who only wanted to harm and bring ill-faith over the land, but he was too weak to fight them off no matter how strong his own core beliefs were. He can fight it as much as he wants, but without a magical swan to grant him the strength he needed to rebel and defeat those who bully the masses, he was just a normal man.

Steve rubbed vaseline into the mess around his eye, wincing and hesitantly prodding the swelling near his cheekbone. There was probably something broken in there, but he didn’t care at the moment. He could still hear the mocking of the men in his ear, calling him all sorts of slurs and half-truths that made him want to crawl into the deepest hole in the Earth and die.

It’s one of the reasons why he’s so terrified of what would happen if he confessed his feelings to Bucky. Being around the kind of toxicity that is bred from a sport so testosterone infused as welterweight, it certainly didn’t make it easy for someone to just accept the fact that their best friend and roommate was attracted to men, especially if Steve told him he was in love with him. It would tear their relationship apart and he’d lose the only thing keeping him from complete insanity.

No matter what happened, he couldn’t loose Bucky. Ever. They’ve been attached at the waist since they were five, it was near impossible for them to be seperated for any amount of time. He was positive that his heart would get thrown out of sync without Bucky’s next to his and kill him instantly. It’s all both of them really had, anyway. Besides welterweight and art, both of them were alone in the recovering economy that tried to keep them down as much as possible to elevate those with riches beyond imagination. It’s been a while since the Barnes’ started to drift away from their beloved oldest child, the invitations to Sunday dinner becoming scarcer and scarcer as the weeks dragged by. Steve can’t really recall the last time Mrs. Barnes had stopped by the apartment with her world famous latkes in a glass dish that she wrapped in newspaper to keep warm. He didn’t know what had happened, just that something did and now Bucky refused to even visit his parents on milestones that were important to the family for decades.

They really couldn’t lose each other.

The door of the apartment opened with a creak, the sound of work boots being kicked off lazily and the clank of a tin lunchbox being thrown onto the couch being heard all the way from the bathroom. There was heavy footsteps stumbling down the hallway, and Steve prayed to whoever would listen that Bucky was just going to assume the younger man was asleep.

“Steve? You home?”

“Yeah. ‘M in the bathroom, Buck, gimmie a minute,”

There’s a thud on the door of the bathroom, soft and gentle and it echoed in the room. Steve ignored it, apply more of the salve on his injuries until the skin around his eye was so numb that he couldn’t feel it if he punched himself again. His wrist was also covered in scrapes and points of dried blood shun in the yellow light coming from their shitty light fixture. The light gave him a pale and sickly color, draining him of all flushed and freckled skin, and it made him hate his reflection even more. He was too sickly, too small, too weak. No one would ever desire him, he wasn’t blessed with the effortless beauty that his mother had. The air in a room always grew more light and warm whenever she stepped into it — sweet perfume wafting around the noses of those who inhabited it and enchanting them. She had the likability that skipped a generation and left him utterly disgusted by those who walk the same streets as him. There was nothing human or otherwise that could look at him and think he would be a useful member of society.

The Steve in the reflection snarled, and a fist came at it so hard that the glass splintered into millions of pieces.

The door flew open as if on command to reveal a tired and worried Bucky, making the sharp pain in his knuckles all the more excruciating. He was gorgeous, charming circles around everyone in the neighborhood with just a smile, and working hard at the docks like any man would be. The poster child of the American man coming to life in the dingy bathroom, here to take in the huddled masses and promising a life better than that they so desperately wanted to escape from. Had it not been for the fact that Steve has known the young man since they were barely old enough to walk, he would’ve fallen onto his knees in the broken glass shards to worship at his feet like a God.

And a God-like wrath did the other man possessed.

“Are you okay?” he inquired, tugging the bird-boned wrist toward him to look at the damage. Steve went willingly, hissing when a finger prodded the skin around the embedded glass. “What the Hell were you thinking? You could’a got glass in your eye!”

Chocolate strands of the taller man’s hair fell over his face, mussed and rebelling against the pomade that the man generously piled on his head every morning. His cheeks were flustered, a slight tremble in his hands as he held the injured appendage like it was the most precious thing in the world.

“I wasn’t thinking,”

“Damn straight you weren’t! Fuck, we’re gonna need somethin’ more than vaseline. Stay still, I’ll go get some whiskey,”

The man turned to leave the room, but a sudden cold front whipped through Steve. He knew that Bucky was just walking an extra ten feet to the kitchen, yet the voice in his head told him to stop him at all costs, keep him close to him because what if he never came back? What if Steve stayed glued to his spot for all eternity, waiting for his love to come back despite waiting years and years to no avail? He’ll walk right out of Steve’s life just like the father he never knew walked into the war and told his mother he’d be back before she knew it. Bucky will disappear forever and leave him alone, just like his mother dying no matter how much he prayed and cried. Panic surged up inside him, and he grabbed onto the warmth radiating from his dear one to stop him.

Bucky looked at him with a raised eyebrow, asking silently what the younger man was doing. He willed his voice to no weaver when he spoke, swallowing the panic and the fear, “Don’t leave me here alone. I don’t trust myself right now,”

It was all the explanation that the older male needed. He turned around with a tsk, grabbing onto the forearm of the blonde to mimic his movements, and tugged him forward to jump over the worst of the mess. He should’ve hated how easy it was for Bucky to manhandle him over to him, snarl again at the ease of his movements, but it wasn’t until he was safely snuggled into the hard chest of the older man that he realized that it was for both their benefits. For Steve to avoid getting more glass in him, and for Bucky to check that nothing was broken in the frail body of his best friend.

“I ain’t goin’ anywhere, Stevie. Just me and you, ‘til the end of the line, remember?”

“What if you died? Like Dad and Ma?”

“Pal, there ain’t no grave that can hold my body down from crawlin’ back to you,” his hands were big and strong, rubbing the freckled skin on his shoulders and biceps to warm the cold that always seeped into his bones. Butterflies fluttered in Steve’s stomach, and he tried his best to avoid giving himself false hope. He was grateful when Bucky chuckled, “‘Sides, maybe if I come back as a zombie, it’ll scare you enough to stop getting into fights,”

Steve laughed. “Nah, I’d probably try to kick your ass too,”

Bucky rolled his eyes. Bringing his own hand up, the brunette used his fingers and thumb to move the blonde locks off of Steve’s face. His palm cupped the entirety of his face as he examined the bruise better, using his other hand on the other side of his face to keep it still. This close to his friend, Steve could smell the day’s cigarette and sweat on the other man’s body and tried not to lean in completely to surround himself in the scent. The smoke couldn’t be healthy for his lungs, often causing a fit from just inhaling it whenever someone around him sparked up, but he couldn’t pry himself away from it now as it lured him in. Bucky’s voice was quiet when he muttered, “What am I going to do with you?” — carding his fingertips in the ends of Steve’s hair near his temple absentmindedly as he moved the face in his hands to take in the extent of the damage.

Finally, Bucky grabbed the other man’s wrist and started tugging him to the kitchen table to seat him down. The kitchen was dark, though neither of them tried to turn the light one. The lights from outside the window illuminate the profile of the brunette, the vivid and never-ending city showing off the lovely plump lips that Steve only got to taste once. He can’t imagine what he would do just to feel them against his own one more time, to savour and relish in the tenderness that Bucky exuded whenever he touched Steve’s flushed skin.

The braces on Bucky’s legs creaked loudly as he moved closer to the injured man, bottle of half-finished whiskey in one hand and a box with a washcloth in the other. He clenched his jaw as if it would will the sound away, but Steve caught the sound before he could talk and mask it all together. “You should sit down, Buck. You must be exhausted,”

The older male shrugged, twisting the cap of the bottle with his teeth. The braces protest to him lowering down to floor in front of Steve, loudly echoing its screams into the darkness surrounding them. “I’ll take ‘em when I take care of your dumbass first,” he said, lifting the blonde’s hand with his own to inspect the extent of the injuries with a hawk’s eye that only Bucky could possess in these situations. Nevermind when the latter comes home black and blue from training at Goldie’s, seeing how the other man had decided for both of them that Steve was the only one of them that needed immediate treatment of his injuries. He was slowly growing both tired and accustomed to being treated like porcelain. “Gotta get these shards outta your hand first,”

“There should be a pair of tweezers in Ma’s old first aid kit. I think we put it under the sink,”

“Already ahead of you,” Bucky announced, digging into the box to retrieve the instrument. He got to work plucking out the smaller pieces of glass, his hand close enough that Steve can feel the other’s hot breath on his fingers. There was a comfortable and painful pause as he dug to get the worst of the glass out of Steve’s bruised knuckles, the only sounds coming from the street as fathers returned home to their eagerly awaiting families and cars honking at each other in the rush hour traffic. If he listened hard enough, he could hear Mrs. Batterman downstairs listening to the radio while she knits yet another pair of gloves she’ll no doubt give him when winter comes around. “So, you gonna tell me what happened or do I gotta force it outta you?”

“Nothing happened. Got into another fight on my way home with some of your friends from Goldie’s — nothing new,” Steve huffed, leaning back on the wooden chair while Bucky moved his hand around the fleeting lights. He hummed in reply, though it didn’t sound like he was one-hundred percent convinced. What did Bucky want him to say? That he punched out the mirror in their bathroom because he hated what he saw? The sight of him in any reflected surface was so revolting, he wanted to lock himself in a dark room forever? All that would get him was sympathy and feeble attempts from the brunette to comfort him just like everyone else did. He knew how he felt about himself, he didn’t need someone to try and convince him otherwise, thank you very much.

Thankfully, Bucky didn’t bring up the mirror at all when he replied, slowly dripping alcohol down over the cuts and bruises. “Who was it? I’ll kick their teeth in,” he growled. Steve shook his head.

“Don’t worry about it. Just some goons trying to cop a feel from a dame. Scared them off good when I fainted and they thought I was dead,”

“Gee, that makes it a whole lot better, Stevie,”

Steve chuckled. “You sound a lot like Ma,” he said, taking his hand back after Bucky wrapped it up in bandage and tapped the bone of his ankle to check for anymore glass shards. The other didn’t reply, just set to work on examining the sole of his foot with soft touches and rubbing certain parts that looked particularly susceptible to getting glass in them. When he was satisfied with his findings, Bucky passed the damp cloth over the balls and arches of his foot, wiping away any stray stains of blood or dust from them. The roughness of the cloth was a strange contrast with the soft pad of Bucky’s thumb following it’s trail across his foot to rub and soothe the skin. It was overwhelming — to be cared for in such a fashion by someone who wasn’t even close to a lover. It was intimate, and if there’s one thing he knows about himself, is that Steve ran from any signs of intimacy displayed by the other boy.

He moved his foot away from Bucky abruptly, clearing his throat as he stood up. The Bucky remained on his knees on the floor, looking up at him with a puzzled look. “I’m … I’m going to head to bed. Don’t forget about your medicine,”

“Don’t need it. Doc says that I don’t need ‘em anymore. I’m as fit as a fiddle,” Bucky stood up easily, something that had been a hassle from him since they were kids whenever his legs felt to brittle and weak to support his weight. The illness was something all too rare, only ever seen in about three cases every few decades. Not much was known other than that Bucky often experienced fatigued muscle, refusing to even have the strength to push the door open in the morning. Thankfully, they come and go every few months, never bothering him whenever he had a competition. It only really started to be a problem around the colder months, when both men were under the mercy of the New York winter where Steve’s lungs closed and Bucky’s legs faltered.

“Fit as a fiddle, my ass. I can hear your braces from here, pal,”

“Just bein’ cautious. I’m serious, Steve. I already promised Tommy down the street that I’ll let him have ‘em when I don’t need ‘em anymore,” Bucky paused, glancing down at the hidden metal under his trousers, “Only thing I’ll miss ‘bout ‘em will be your painting,”

How could he forget? The chrome metal upsetted Bucky when he first got them for his seventeenth birthday — shortly after his surgery to try and correct the nerves — and he cursed about how they made him feel like a robot. It’s dehumanizing,  he said, throwing them across the room with a violence that Steve never ever recalled the other ever possessing. He refused to wear them for the longest time, no matter how many times he’d fallen on the last few steps on the stairwell or on the sidewalk while running. It got to a point that it was growing all too customary to see his knees covered in scrapes and bruises that pained the blonde whenever he saw them. Eventually, he took matters into his own hands and decided to paint the braces with roses and stars, turning something so metallic into something more natural. It took him a few days to get the colors just right while he sat next to his Ma, listening to her cough and hum while she sewed up holes in an old pillow. It was one of the moments towards the end that Steve could never forget — a soft and gentle afternoon by his mother being one of the last they’ll ever get together.

He presented them to Bucky two weeks later, proudly thrusting them into his arms with a smile as he watched the other man's eyes grow to two times their size. He hesitated to touch them, asking in a small voice if they were really his.

Since then, Bucky wore them everyday to work.

“I can always recreate it. Who knows? Maybe this time it’ll be better,” with that, Steve turned his back to the gorgeous man in the kitchen and walked into their shared bedroom, stripping out of his trousers for the night and opting to sleep in his singlet and underwear. The air was getting chilly, yes, though his mountain of blankets were comprised of wool and knit. It would be alarming if Steve still felt cold snuggled under all of them. 

He closed his eyes, releasing all the tension from his limbs and shoulders with a sigh. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. He prayed silently that when he woke up, all his feelings for the other man would be dashed away into nothingness.

There’s a familiar yet new ache that came with loving someone you’re not meant to love. Every love story was different, and thus there were different ways of how people feel when enthralled with the powerful emotion. Some felt that love was dancing in the streets at midnight and declaring loudly the name of their beloved, others felt love as a battle that had to be won with teeth and nails.

For Ma, she described it as a Monet painting. Her love was soft and vibrant, full of life dedicated to the smallest of strokes on a canvas as each moment she shared with his father was etched into the grand magnus opus of a painter. Steve always imagined it filled to the brim with sunshine and saltwater, roses and golden arches. Sarah Rogers experienced the kind of love that completely uplifted the spirits of those in the presence of the young couple, mesmerized by the shine in their smiles whilst unaware of the horror that would befall the red strings of soulmates. It was a secret thought of his that his father’s last glance in a war-torn field — surrounded by bodies of his fellow comrades and retching from the burn of a gas burning him alive — was the lovely features of his wife as she sat by an open window, an unfinished sketch sitting in her lap.

Unfinished. Just like their life together.

Steve believed that love for him was melancholy. It felt like waking up in the early hours of the morning when the sun was just about to rise, and the world was quiet — knowing that you were the only one awake in a sleeping world and watching the empty streets of a busy city.

It was the color blue — the deep and cold tinges that hung on the sound of its name, the vast unknown that hinted at something extraordinary hidden within itself, bright and dark at the same time. He felt blue when Bucky called his name with a smile on his lips. He felt blue whenever Bucky’s skin brushed his on purpose to knock hips or elbows. He felt blue when smoke slipped out of Bucky’s mouth when he smoked on the fire escape and overlooked the twinkling lights in the midnight of Brooklyn. He felt his love when it poured from the heavens and casted them all in a gloomy existence, when it forced two young men to share a bed just to hold onto what warmth remained between the two of them.

Melancholy. It was the name for a sadness that had no cause or reason to exist; much like the love he felt for his best friend.

It wasn’t all sadness, though. It got a bad name, that poor word. In Steve’s eyes, melancholy could be just the goosebumps that filled him when Bucky smiled at him in a way that the younger man knew was just his. The chill that settled in his bones at the first sign of autumn. He felt the emotion, and chose to turn something used for heartbreak into heartthrob.

It was so powerful for Steve to have melancholy for the other man, that he barely noticed how he has conquered up the word to mean something so completely different that it warped the original meaning of the word. All his life, he sought out the dreary and calm desire that told him that this wasn’t just any other crush that he had experienced in his life. It wasn’t a flame that burned out just as quickly as it was lit, nor was it so passionate that he became blinded by what laid ahead for him. Steve preferred the tranquility in imagining breakfast in the morning with the brunette, to read the paper together in silence while the clock ticks down to the final minutes before they have to rush to work, maybe even one day discussing marriage if it were ever to be available. It was all in the details of a life not yet lived, but Steve couldn’t wait to jump headfirst into it.

But that’s the real kicker in living in a world of fantasy: it’s not real.

The reality was that Bucky would pack up his things and leave one day. He’ll spend those mornings with a pretty and sweet lady, reading the paper together before he rushed to work. Plant a kiss on her ruby lips while she cradled a baby with the Barnes’ signature cheekbones and her gorgeous features mixed in. It was only a matter of time before she came along, sweeping his soulmate out of his life in a swing of her skirt. It was only a matter of time.

At least, that’s what he always thought was going to take the brunette out of his life.