It’s JARVIS who sets the appointment up, in the usual way.
James is asleep when the text alert comes through, so as per protocol JARVIS gives him a ring ten minutes later. Like every other contact saved to his phone, JARVIS has his own tone so that James knows exactly who’s trying to get a hold of him. Unlike every other contact - save Steve, of course, and later Sam when James had asked him - JARVIS picked his own soundtrack.
“Mr Stark requests your presence this afternoon,” JARVIS informs him, when James cuts Thunderstruck off halfway through, and fumbles the phone up to his ear. “May I tell him you’re available?”
James frowns up at the ceiling, eyes still closed. He’s not due for his regular appointment for - he’s not really sure, but it hadn’t been snowing the last time so it couldn’t have been that long ago. He doesn’t think he missed one. That means -
“How did he know I was there?” James asks. There’s a pause on the other end of the line. It’s not a processing delay; it’s JARVIS trying to be tactful.
“I’m afraid I told him, Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS admits. “We were reviewing surveillance footage from the incident. You were quite difficult to miss.”
James runs his tongue over his teeth. That’s fair. He doesn’t like it, but it’s fair. “The arm’s fine, though,” he says.
“I’m sure it is,” JARVIS says delicately. “Although it’s possible your fall from the surveillance tower may have caused a short in your clavicle microprocessor. Have you been experiencing any stiffness in the elbow unit?”
James sighs, and covers his eyes with his hand. The metal is cool, and still smells like the mineral oil they clean it with at the lab. If he can still smell it, that means it hasn't been long enough since his last appointment to be able to deal with Tony Stark. But his elbow has been pretty stiff, and anyway he’s probably better off just finding out what the man wants.
“I’m available,” he says, and JARVIS says, “Wonderful. We’ll send a car for you. In two hours, let’s say.”
James sets the phone down on the table, and picks up his bong, poking a fingertip into the ashes to see if there’s anything left in it. There usually isn’t, and today’s no exception. He packs himself a new bowl, and relaxes by increments as he smokes his way through. Today’s a pretty good day. He hadn’t woken up in the middle of the night, and he’s still pretty low on the pain scale. A four, maybe. He rubs tincture all around the join of the prosthetic, and swallows his morning pills dry, choking a little bit on the last three like usual.
He looks over at the empty side of the bed, which these days only smells like tincture and all the other things James usually smells like: cigarettes, leather, weed. He traces one hand over the other pillow, unmussed by sleep. His fingers shake.
He picks up his phone, thumbs it open and types out, clumsily: Starks calling me in 4 an appt. not sure wht he wnts. cn we meet @ 3 instead?
He doesn’t wait for an answer, standing up and shaking his comforter out to make the bed. Every morning, every single morning he thinks about how he has two hands to smooth out the fabric with. His yoga mat’s curled up in the living room, leaning up against the wall, and he sets the music before he limps over and unrolls it on the floor. Marvin Gaye, today.
The phone chimes when he’s halfway through his routine, and James tenses all over before his brain catches up: that’s Sam’s tone. It’s Sam’s tone. The next breath he lets out is slow. His heart’s hammering at him, but he knows - it’s Sam’s tone. Shoulda just left the damn thing on vibrate.
He’ll feel better if he gets all the way through his routine, so he does - loses the shake in his brain in the shake of his muscles, the slide of sweat down his chest. The click and whir of his arm softer than breath: now I am breathing in, now I am breathing out.
He jerks off in the shower, like most days: thinking of Sam coming out of nowhere and kicking aliens in the face, the quick one-two of the shots he’d made, the look on his face when James had laid hands on him and dragged him back behind cover. He’d been focused like James had never seen him, his whole body ready for the war. The nice button up he’d worn for their date had been oily and torn a bit at the shoulder. Months James had fantasized about seeing Sam again, and the reality had been almost more than he could take. He’d seen himself, very clearly, yank Sam to shelter behind the taxi. Pressing him back against the cab door, pulling his jeans open and sucking Sam’s cock down. Both of their hands shaking with adrenaline, greedy for the fuck, for proof of life. The smell of greasy fire and molten asphalt laid over the smell of Sam’s body, the taste on James tongue as he chokes himself with Sam’s cock -
He washes jizz off the shower wall after, dispassionately. Maybe he’ll have to do it again before he sees Sam tonight, keep himself calm and able to focus. It probably won’t be a bad session; JARVIS hadn’t said anything about taking off the arm, so he’ll probably want it again by the afternoon. He laughs to himself as he gets dressed; who’s he kidding? He wants it again now.
He dresses nice. As nice as anything else he owns, at least. Dark jeans, the one Sam thinks his butt looks great in. A soft, long sleeved gray shirt his Ma gave him last year. Boots, to complete the look, layered with thick socks to protect the bandages still wrapped around his feet. He gives a sad look towards his leather jacket, hanging on the back of his bedroom door, but it’s too warm.
Smokes another bowl when he’s dressed. Frets about his hair for a while in the mirror, but it is what it is (maybe he should cut it again. Maybe he should keep growing it out. Should he ask Sam? Is that needy? He should ask Steve if that’s needy.). In the end he ties it messily back into a bun: good enough.
The little bag is sitting out on his bedside table. It’s velvet soft, the same kind of gray as the shirt he’s got on, and when he picks it up what’s inside clinks faintly against his metal fingers. Even as much as he’s smoked, his heart pounds hard enough to hurt.
He stuffs the bag in his pocket anyway. If he doesn’t do it soon - he’s gotta do it soon, before he loses his nerve. Before he fucks up again.
The car’s out front already, Hogan in the front seat. James gives him a nod, holds up two metal fingers: just a minute. He closes his own gate behind him, and lets himself into the yard next door.
He hits the buzzer for the basement apartment, listens hard for the sound of Miss Marie’s slippers against the wood flooring. She fell last year, same as Auntie Leba fell the year before, with about the same results: an increase in orneriness about all the damn concern. Shhhhff shhfffff pause. “It’s Jim,” he calls, knowing she’ll hear him through the always open inner door, and sure enough there’s another shhhhff shhffff and the front door opens just wide enough for her to peer through it.
“I’m going into the city,” he says, “you need anything?” His foot taps restlessly against her doorframe.
She works her jaw as she thinks it over. Behind her, the TV’s turned up loud enough that Ma can definitely hear it through her floors. “I’ll get the list,” she says, finally, and shuffles back into the apartment. Shhhhff shhfffff.
“ - spite of the assistance given freely to the city of New York by Stark Industries, all MTA and Metro North service from Grand Central is expected to be suspended for at least six more weeks,” the TV tells him. “Alternatives are being researched, including the reopening of west side Amtrak tunnels to commuter trains. Service on the 7 line will be routed through the E line from Court Square station, and the 4, 5, 6 lines will run as a shuttle in two sections, with service suspended from 28th Street to 59th. The MTA chairman is expected to address all station changes at tonight’s press conference, but without emergency funding from Albany the closures have been characterized as ‘indefinite’. With more than seven hundred and fifty thousand people who typically commute through Grand Central each day, potential loss to the city of New York is expected to be in - ”
“Here,” Miss Marie says, and hands a torn sheet of notebook paper through the crack in the door. Cigarettes, sugar, boric acid, lemons.
In the car, James asks Hogan, “What’s open in the city? Is everything all fucked up or is it like after Sandy?”
Hurricane Sandy had been - well, James doesn’t remember too much about it. It’d blown through more than a year after he’d been back but he’d been sick at the time, a bacterial infection that got in through the first port they’d put into his shoulder. Back in the hospital and three days in isolation all by himself, climbing the walls. Steve had taken shelter in Peggy’s apartment on 10th and B, and ferried himself back and forth to the hospital until the trains had been running again. Below 14th Street was a ghost town, he’d told James; a power converter had blown during the storm, and the city was dark. Above 14th was business as usual. The lights hadn’t even flickered in James’ hospital room.
“It’s pretty fucked,” Hogan tells him, now, as they turn up Atlantic Avenue. “You hear these sonsabitches got all the way over to Hell’s Kitchen?”
James frowns. “How the hell they get that far crosstown? My ma was watching that, that whaddaya call it show, the morning one.” He digs into his memories for the name of it, comes up absolutely blank. “Times Square seemed okay.”
In the front seat, Hogan shrugs. “Lucky for them, right?”
“Yeah, lucky.”
He rolls his shoulder a few times, absently. The elbow is stiff, and without proper rotation he’s been holding it in close to his side, sending aches and agonies up the side of his neck and down as his body tries to compensate for the weight. Can’t bring Miles in unless they take off the arm, though, and he’s not about to ask for that. Maybe his ma would rub the shoulder for him. Maybe Sam would, soon.
He shuts the windows as they cross the Brooklyn Bridge and make the turn up onto the FDR, to skirt the edge of the city and avoid street traffic. A week on and the city still smells acrid. It’s slow going even on the highway, detouring around the bits of rubble that no one’s cleaned up yet. The people they pass look blank faced and haunted, and he can see buildings even on the river are pockmarked and burnt. He feels, vaguely, like he’s come home. It takes him from Houston to 8th Street to chase the feeling: somewhere between Fallujah and the first few weeks after the Towers went down.
He startles badly when his phone buzzes. He fumbles it out of his pocket, squints at the screen. Rubs metal knuckles over the scar on his chest as he hits the button. “Hey, ma,” he says.
“Did you go out, Jim? You didn’t answer when I knocked.” Her voice is tinny, crackly through the receiver. Cell service hasn’t been right lately.
“Yeah, uh,” he says. “Stark called me in. He wants to take a look at the arm. He figured out I was, uh, you know. There.”
“We were supposed to have breakfast,” she says, but doesn't wait for him to say anything to that before going on. “Well, tell Steve hello for me. I had some books for you to take to him, but I suppose it can wait till next time.”
James tips his head back against the seat. It presses his bun up against his skull and he fiddles with it, careful not to let the plates catch in his hair. “I’m not seeing Steve today.”
“You’re not?” she asks. “You didn't go yesterday. And you’ll be right nearby. They didn't move him, did they?”
“I’m meeting up with Sam after this,” he tells her, and there it is: he rubs his knuckles harder against his chest, slow and deliberate. They tug against the scar, uncomfortable enough that his breathing slows and he can close his eyes. Even the metal fingers feel numb sometimes, when he gets a little panicky.
“Well, go see Steve first,” his ma says. “He’s so bored, poor thing. I’m sure Sam won't mind waiting. Or - have him meet you there!”
“Trouble in paradise?” Hogan asks, as he hangs up. James glances up, sees nothing but the smooth, broad expanse of the back of the man’s head, which gives as much away as the tone of his voice does.
“S’nothing,” he says. He sits up, leans both elbows forward into Hogan’s space; bites down on a smile when Hogan flinches. “Hey, whaddaya think they’re gonna do about the Mets, with the 7 down?”
Hogan flashes around a badge at the military checkpoint at the 53rd Street exit, then another one at the Stark Industries checkpoint on 47th and Park. Even with the windows rolled up Midtown smells like a warzone, the stink of it reaching down below James’ stoned haze and digging up dim memories he’s better off leaving be. He pulls the sleeve of his shirt down over his hand, breathes in his own smell and the smell of the mineral oil from Stark’s lab instead. He’s in New York. He’s home. He’s got a metal arm, for god’s sake. He knows where he is.
It helps, mostly.
They come in under the 46th Street garage, sparing James the sight of seeing Grand Central in ruins. He hadn’t paid too much mind to anything but killing as many aliens as possible during the invasion, but even on TV the ruins are enough to break his mother’s heart. Gone are the graceful statues keeping watch over Park Avenue. Gone is the world’s largest Tiffany clock, which would’ve turned a hundred this year. The news cameras show desolate streets, occupied only by officials and politicians stooping to add flowers and candles to the memorial.
Aunt Esther wanted to come this weekend, pay her respects. Actually, there’s a thought: maybe Stark can get them in past the public barriers on 35th. He’ll - ugh, he’ll have to ask.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS says as James and Hogan step into the elevator, and Hogan laughs. He tries to smother it behind his hand, and James’ shoulder twitches. The fuck is he laughing at.
“The fuck are you laughing at,” James says, sour. Just the smell of the place is enough to make his breath short. Steve came with him to his last appointment but this is okay, he can get through this one, they’re not gonna take the arm off so it’s fine.
“Nothing,” Hogan says. “Well, you’ll see."
James looks up, sidelong at Hogan, but the man keeps that smile fixed up at the top of the elevator doors, where the numbers would be if this wasn’t some fancy fuckin building run by a robot. He’s usually glad it is, though; the elevator ride is smooth and silent, and sometimes JARVIS pumps in a little lavender mist if he thinks James’ blood pressure is getting high - yep, there it is - he breathes in nice and deep, and does a little exercise in his head, and by the time they reach the 53rd floor he’s about as calm as he’s gonna get inside Stark Tower.
Thx he texts JARVIS, as he steps off the elevator, rolling one shoulder and then the other to try and loosen them up.
JARVIS texts back instantly. You’re quite welcome. If you need anything else this afternoon, please don’t hesitate.
James smiles down at his phone. Not at JARVIS, but at the message below that, which says: Sure 3 is fine. Can’t wait to see you.
And it’s that, maybe, that keeps him from catching on the instant he steps into Dr Diallo’s lab and sees Tony Stark arguing with some stacked blond guy standing by the window - except that Sam’s never done anything but sharpen James, make him faster and better and alert . Sam made him aware of every part of life he’d been content to let drift by until that night at the Bell House, when Steve had brought over the super hot black dude James had fervently been hoping he wouldn’t have to beat up on Steve’s behalf. Any time after that he’s been stupid it’s been his own damn fault, and this is too.
Because when the blond guy turns around, and James sees that it’s Captain Steven fucking Rogers, he loses his fuckin mind and snaps his heels together and throws the guy a salute.
Stark bursts out laughing, and so does Hogan, but Rogers -
“ - shouldn'a done that, Stark, I don't need to meet any -”
- Rogers bites off what he’d been in the middle of saying, and his shoulders go straight and stiff and his eyes go wide and horrified.
“Captain Rogers, sir,” James blurts out, his shoulders strung tight in the salute. He’s so fucking embarrassed, he shouldn’t be saluting anyone indoors and out of uniform, and Rogers is staring at him, jaw clenched so tight James can see it from across the room. James can relate; he feels like his heart’s about to explode. “I’m - I’m - Rebecca Barnes was my great grandmother, my name is -” fuck this is too weird, “- my name’s Jim.”
Abruptly, Rogers turns away. His shoulders draw up tight around his ears, and he says, muffled through his hand, “Jesus Christ.”
“Cap!” Stark says joyfully, like he doesn’t get it, like it’s a joke. “Let me introduce you to my good friend, Sergeant Barnes of the twenty first century! He’s a pretty handy guy to have around, let me tell you.”
A beat of silence. Slowly, James unsticks his fingertips from his forehead, shifts his feet a little on the tile. There’s the smell of lavender in the air. Rogers turns around and folds his arms across his chest. “Tony,” he says. “Thank you for -”
That’s it, he doesn’t say anything else, like that’d been a full sentence. James watches Rogers’ chest rise and then fall with two big breaths, but when he tries to meet Rogers’ eyes, the other guy looks away. Looks at Stark and says, “You mind giving us a minute?”
Stark shrugs and sticks his hands in his pocket, but on the way out he leans in close to James and says, confidential like it’s not Captain America standing there, who could hear Nazi spies whispering to each other at five hundred yards, “Don’t be fooled. He had all kinds of questions about you after he saw that footage of you falling off the tower.”
Over by the window, Captain America rolls his eyes. James looks back and forth between them, uncertain. “Okay,” he says, when it seems like Stark’s waiting for a response.
Stark’s eyes flicker over James’ face, considering. For once in his life, Stark doesn’t smell of booze. He smells faintly of cologne, but mostly like the acrid smoke of midtown. Yesterday Stark had been in the Iron Man suit, digging out tunnels under Grand Central. Without the suit, it would have taken the city months to do the same work. “It’s cool,” James tells him. “We’re family.”
Stark laughs, but it’s a harsh sort of sound. “I might’ve said the same thing, before I met him,” he says. “Have at it, Sergeant. How’s that microprocessor?”
“Elbow’s stiff,” James tells him, so grateful Stark’s not putting up a fight that he actually reaches up and squeezes Stark’s arm. Stark's expression softens, and he nods at Hogan. The two of them slip out the door. It closes soundlessly behind them, leaving James alone with the lingering smell of lavender - and the Steven Grant Rogers.
James is not high enough for this.
Rogers is watching him. James lets him do it, idly fingering the drawstring of the velvet bag in his pocket. What should he even call the guy? Captain? Steve? It’s too weird. This is all too weird. He wonders a little desperately if Steve Rogers had ever smoked weed. If he’d want to. That’d be a nice thing, right? Hey, sorry to scare you with the face of your dead best friend, let’s share a spliff and forget it ever happened.
“James Montgomery Barnes,” Rogers says. “You’re Becca’s grandson."
James winces. He says, “Great-grandson. My ma had me when she was real young. My grandfather was born in ‘45. His uh, his name was James too.”
Rogers tucks his chin into his chest. “Is Becca -”
“No,” James says, when Rogers doesn’t finish the sentence. “No, she died before I was born.”
“Oh,” Rogers says, and then doesn’t say anything else. He’s as still as a statue and twice as large, even in the get-up he’s got on. He’s dressed exactly like Grandpa Jim used to: pants high up on his waist, shirt tucked in. Looks better on Rogers than it does on the old men who play dominos out on Fulton Ave, but James supposes that’s what a whole lifetime does to a person.
He’s got the same kind of accent Grandpa Jim had, that Aunt Esther and Auntie Leba have, the same Brooklyn tones that linger in the way James and his sister speak too. Not a lot of New Yorkers sound that way anymore. It was a struggle for James to hold onto it in the Army, to keep himself from sounding like he was from nowhere, the way everyone else sounds to him. His hair is a pale blonde. His eyes are blue, the kind of blue they make crayons in. Cornflower blue. He’s got pale skin, and ruddy freckles across the top of his nose and his cheekbones. He’s in color.
The arm’s started up its cycle, and James rubs his other hand over it fitfully, like he can make it quit whirring and shifting just by wanting it bad enough. Rogers notices, of course; flicks an eye down and takes in the metal fingers. “That common, these days?” he asks.
“Nah,” James says. He curls his fingers into a fist, moves the wrist around a little and then works his sleeve up over his elbow, shows Rogers the goods. Rogers steps a little closer to look, his arms still tight over his chest. James can see the veins in his forearms. “Nah, there’s only one other guy I know of that has one of these.”
At Rogers’ questioning look he explains: “Navy SEAL, got hit with an IED. It’s a trial program that Stark’s company operates. Lower limb amputees are just, they’re more common.”
“How’d you lose yours?” Rogers asks, and puts his hands in his pockets. He doesn’t look bothered by the prosthetic and he doesn’t sound that interested either, even though he’s staring straight at it, eyes glassy. Up closer James can see his eyelashes, which are - ridiculously long and thick, like a mascara commercial, like some of the girls Steve dances with. No wonder Sam had been teasing James about him.
“I was a soldier,” James tells him. “Like Bucky.”
Rogers shudders and turns away. “Didn’t work out too well,” he says over his shoulder, and doesn’t say for who.
“Yeah, not so much,” he says. Rogers smiles when James does, like a reflex, but it drops off his face almost before James clocks it.
James looks down at his feet, biting his lip. It hurts to stand - his flip flops had shredded almost immediately during the invasion, and after he’d walked barefoot and bleeding through twenty blocks of rubble his feet had ballooned up with infection. He stays where he is, though, shifting his weight.
He should offer to go, have a breakdown in the parking garage for a while.
He digs his cigarettes out of his pocket. People used to smoke indoors back in the day, right? And Rogers doesn’t have asthma anymore, anyway. “You want one?” he asks, and takes two steps closer to offer up the pack - the spliff separated from the normal cigarettes by his thumb. Rogers shakes his head, but his shoulders relax a little as the smell of James’ cigarette mixes with the faintly lingering lavender.
There’s so much he wants to know. How did you survive the crash? Is it really you? How did they find you? Where have you been? Do you remember my family? When were you gonna come to see us? “So how long have you,” James asks, and then can’t think of how to put it, finally settles on, “been here?"
“Woke up three weeks ago,” Rogers says tightly.
“Do you remember anything,” James says, hesitates, “between?”
Rogers shakes his head. The Valkyrie had crashed on, what - March 4th? Yeah, March 4th. Nineteen forty five. Bucky Barnes had fallen to his death no more than a week earlier, depending on which account you believed. Sixty-nine years, or three weeks - no wonder Rogers had spooked.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know. Stark didn’t tell me what he was askin me in for - if I’d known -”
“It’s okay,” Rogers says, and sounds like he means it.
“So they told you about us, huh?” he asks. He takes a long drag on the cigarette, hoping he doesn’t sound too eager.
Rogers shrugs. “Not much. Personnel files on - ” He stops, and his throat works. “ - the men in my command. There was a list of living family members. It didn’t say you were a friend of Stark’s.”
“I don’t know about friend,” James says before he can think better of it, but Rogers actually laughs at that. He looks as surprised by it as James feels.
“Stark’s got that kind of effect on people, seems like,” Rogers says, and actually leaves that smile on his face long enough to share it with James, just a little. Steve had said something about that, once, at least - that nothing brings people together faster than the shit they can’t stand.
“We still got,” James offers, and the words trip over themselves as they come out of his mouth, because he just doesn’t know how to ask . “We still got all your stuff, like, your sketchbooks and shit, my aunt kept everything after you and Bucky, um.” Rogers looks stricken, and James fumbles, the word he doesn’t say (died, after you died) stinking up the air between them. “Like, they’re at her house if you want to - my great-aunt, I mean, Esther?”
“Esther,” Rogers says, like he’s never heard the name.
“Yeah, Esther,” James says. “Bucky’s sister? She lives out in Queens now, and she. She’d really love to see you.” She’d cried for hours after she saw Rogers on TV. For a few days after no one had known whether this Captain America was some kind of fake, some weird new Stark Industries invention, with a flag on his chest that looked more like he was repping Puerto Rico, but Aunt Esther had never wavered. “It’s him, it’s Steve,” she’d said, and cried herself to pieces in Auntie Leba’s arms.
Rogers shakes his head. Says, “No she wouldn’t.”
For a second James just looks at Rogers, who finally looks back, up from under those long eyelashes. His expression something strange that James can’t read. “She would though,” he says, and adds the same thing he told Stark: “We’re family.”
Rogers doesn’t say anything to that, just stands there looking James up and down, like he’s counting all the ways James doesn’t look like Bucky, not really . But he wouldn’t know, would he? How much more they have in common. James takes a deep breath, one that shakes when he lets it out.
“She has your letters,” James tells him. He tries not to look at Rogers when he says it. He looks at his boots instead, scuffed, the laces coming undone. “The ones that Bucky wrote you when he was in North Africa. She found them after the war was over. She never told anyone about - about you and him.”
Rogers’ face folds right back up like a paper napkin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.
What James thinks about, strangely, is Steve. His family used to tease Steve as a kid about that anger that was so quick to bubble up, that eagerness that flung him off every cliff he could find - but when they were kids it was just that, just teasing. It wasn’t until Steve and James got older that the joke got inside Steve’s head and became something real, something enshrined and sacred, and James has wondered sometimes what that temple would have looked like without Aunt Esther. Whether Steve would be Steve without the weight of Aunt Esther’s gospel, the wry curl of her smile as she watched Steve fumble around a lie.
He can’t tell if this Steve is lying to him.
He watches Rogers shift his back against the windows. His jaw is so tight it looks more like a grimace. “It’s cool,” James says. He holds up both hands in warning. The little velvet bag is crushed up in one palm, the drawstrings tangled up in his fingers when he’d taken his hand out of his pockets. “It’s alright, I’m -”
“I told Stark this was a mistake,” Rogers says, and turns away. He doesn’t say anything else, and after a moment James puts the bag away, lifts one boot and stubs his cigarette out on the heel of it, tucking it into his pocket for lack of a better option.
“Yeah,” he says, and sighs. “Guess it was.”
The elevator stinks of lavender when James gets in it, and it’s silent for fifteen floors until a soft voice says from the ceiling, “My sympathies, Sergeant Barnes.”
James feels the elevator slow. The numbers count down and then stop, letting him think. The only noise is the whisper of the air circulation system. “It’s cool,” he manages, and covers his eyes with both hands. Mineral oil. Cigarette smoke. Lavender.
“Would you like me to set up an appointment on another day, for Mr Stark to take a look at your clavicle microprocessor?” JARVIS asks.
“Okay,” James says, even though JARVIS can see it if he nods, and they stay like that, suspended, until James can drop his hands, wipe the tears off his face, and let the world back in.
He leaves out the Lexington Avenue side, joining a thin herd of Stark employees and city workers out along the narrow path cleared through the rubble, fenced in by NYPD barricades. They’re not released from the cattle run until 37th Street, and for ten blocks further the National Guard is posted on each corner. Most of them are staring up at the sky, and when the civvies pass by most of them look up too.
He argues with himself for twelve whole blocks without noticing where his feet are pointed. Head down, hands in his pockets. His hair’s coming out of its bun and he yanks the tie out, shoves the loose ends behind his ears without thinking about it. People walking uptown give him a wide berth, and he doesn’t notice that either. He’s stopped by a light long enough to notice the smell of spices drifting out of the open door of an Indian restaurant: his stomach rumbles painfully, and he snaps back into awareness like he’d been slapped.
His body feels like an unfamiliar thing, dragged off kilter by the weight of the arm whenever he quits thinking about it. For a moment all he can do is stand there, staring stupidly at the street sign and the numbers written uncompromisingly on it. Manhattan. Murray Hill. He checks his phone: it’s about the time he expects it to be. No missed texts or calls.
He pulls off the sidewalk to try and get his shit together, wedging himself in the narrow doorway of an apartment building. He’s shuddering all over. There’s a hurt deep down in his belly and for a moment he lets it be, lets himself feel it. That’s what Miles always says, just feel it, breathe into the pain. He says that himself all the time at the yoga studio, breathe into it , so he does, just breathes, matching breath to the cycle of his arm whirring and shifting underneath his jacket.
He has to tell Steve - and on the heel of that thought feels his stomach kick and his lungs tighten back up, and it’s mostly anger or at least sheer frustration that saves him from dissociating again. He used to be able to do shit like this - be a normal fucking person who could figure out their own fucking emotions - and it’s frustrating even though he tries not to think like that, “ normal,” to miss what was .
This is normal , says a voice inside his head, still sounding like Miles, who James always liked better than any of the shrinks JSOC had set up for him. A normal person would be fucked up by this. You looked up to this guy since you were a little kid, man. You can be upset by this.
But that wasn’t -
James growls, and digs his hands into his hair. A man passing close by flinches, hurries his steps to get past. He loses the thread again for a second, swallowed up by the thought of telling his family what went down, telling Steve : fuck, Steve had built his whole life in this guy’s shadow. He had to talk to Steve about it. Steve would know how to explain to Ma what Rogers said. He’d explain it to Aunt Esther and Auntie Leba. How could James do it by himself? How could he tell his family that Rogers didn’t want to see them?
But that wasn’t it either, come on bro, you can do this.
James chases his thoughts down, sets them in order. Scoops his hair up and puts it back in a bun while he’s at it, the motion soothing. Three weeks, Rogers had said.
When it had happened to him - well, James doesn’t remember a lot about coming home. He’d been mostly dead by that point. There were four surgeries before he even left Afghanistan, just to get him stabilized. Mostly what he remembers is a series of white rooms, and white-masked faces speaking a language he’d forgotten he knew. The clearest memory he had of that time was just a fragment, sitting in a hospital garden. He’d been in a wheelchair, barely able to move under the opiate fog and all the blankets they’d wrapped him in. The plants were mostly dead, bare branches, and there’d been snow on the ground. There’d been a woman with him, gripping the hand he had left. By that point he hadn’t felt the sun on his face in almost a year. He didn’t know that at the time, of course. Didn’t put the details together until months later.
Three weeks since Rogers got pulled out of the ice. Three weeks after evac, James hadn’t recognized his own mother - and he’d only been dead eight months, not seventy years.
Okay, then. Cut the dude a break. Rogers wasn’t expecting to meet you today either. Hit JARVIS up when the dust has settled, see if Rogers has changed his mind about seeing friendly faces.
But he should still tell Steve.
His stomach twists again. He sags against the wall behind him, the building’s letterbox digging into his ribcage. And that was it, right? That was the problem. There was a reason he hadn’t gone to see Steve yesterday, and meeting Rogers hadn’t changed that.
He had a whole plan for today. A speech written out and everything. But not one for Steve.
Put it off , the voice in his head suggests, but this one only sounds like himself. Call the whole thing off. Go back to Brooklyn. Give it a couple days. You gotta see to your family, now’s just not the right time. Or - or just wait it out. Rogers will come around in a few weeks, you don’t need to go throwing bombs at anyone. You don’t even know what Sam’s gonna say.
His fingers close around the little velvet bag in his pocket. He lets out all the air in his lungs, and fills them back up, all the way.
He sure as hell knew what Steve was gonna say. What Ma was gonna say too, probably. He’d told himself it’d be easier this way: see what Sam says first. You don’t need to go throwing bombs at anyone.
Three weeks. For James it’s been three years. And this is what he wants: wanting a miracle by itself, wanting anything, much less more. Wanting to be more. Wanting not to fuck this up.
“Fuck,” he says, heartfelt, and starts walking.
Beth Israel is contained chaos, still. Always. The emergency room is on the other side of the building but there’s still people in scrubs rushing around. The smell creeps up his spine, no lavender scent to distract him. He notices for the first time the wide circle around him, the way he’s getting clocked by the nurses and the cops, the way the old lady who gets into the elevator with him shrinks away into herself. He forgets sometimes that he’s big, that scary used to be part of his job and the other part was killing people, and sometimes people can tell.
He softens up his shoulders and tries smiling at her, but she stays with her eyes glued to the floor for all ten stories, and only looks up to hit the elevator closed behind him as he steps off.
The hallway is empty and cold and smells like antiseptic and old coffee. None of the rubble and ash stink that still haunts the ground floor. No one up here except those who came to stay a while - and Peggy, sitting shoulder to shoulder up on the bed next to Steve, her legs curled underneath her, the two of them scrolling silently through their phones. They look up when he comes through the door, and the smiles slide off their faces at the same time. Still looking scary then.
“Hey, uh,” he says, at the same time that Steve says, “Your mom said you were,” and then they stare at each other until finally Peggy says, “Why don’t I get us some coffee,” and squeezes James’ shoulder on the way out the door. He catches her hand, and squeezes it back.
She doesn’t expect it. There’s an awkward beat where momentum almost tugs her hand out of his, and she frowns, and he has to look down to make sure her fingers didn’t get pinched by the thin shifting plates, but - but she’s looking up into his face. Her mouth lifts uncertainly at whatever she sees there.
He closes the door behind her. Steve’s watching him with a weird little smile on his face, half bemused and half something else. “You okay?” he asks.
“No,” James says, and then says, confusedly, “yeah.” He’s not really sure.
He sits down in the chair next to Steve’s bed, right on the edge of it, and then it occurs to him to take Peg’s bag off the damn chair, which he does. Sets it on the foot of Steve’s bed instead of on the floor because his ma always told him that if you put a bag on the ground all your money’ll run out of it, which he didn’t realize was actually just a metaphor until he was in high school. Steve watches all this too with the same bemused little smile, which makes James feel even worse.
It’s on the tip of his tongue: “I met Captain America and you wouldn’t believe what a fucking asshole -”
But it’s not what he came to say. But Steve deserves to know, doesn’t he? Maybe, but he woke up with a plan. To not fuck this up. So don’t fuck it up, Barnes. Don’t fuck it up again. Make it right.
He takes a deep breath, and pulls the little velvet bag out of his pocket. Holds it in both hands. And then hands it over to Steve without looking at him, his eyes fixed on the shadows Steve’s feet make under the starched white sheets.
He hears Steve tug the bag open, and tip out what’s inside into his open palm. Out of the corner of his eye he watches Steve look at it, and then look at James. He can feel Steve’s eyes on him, boring into the back of his neck. “What the fuck is this,” Steve says.
When Steve’s pissed he gets this pinched quality to his voice that’s been driving James up the wall since the fourth grade. “You know what it is,” James says, mulish already.
“Are you serious?” Steve says. “Aren’t you not even back together yet? You wanna do something crazy like this?”
“It’s not crazy,” James says. He leans forward and snatches the bag and its contents out of Steve’s hand, putting everything carefully back into his pocket. “I love him. I really, really love him.”
“I know,” Steve says. He sounds pained. He sounds - he sounds like he does on the nights James said he was gonna go out and then can’t. That careful patience measured out in the way his family talks to him. James’ arm starts whirring and they both look at it, reflexively. “I know you do, but is this really smart? You guys were broken up for months, and there were a lot of reasons for it. Just cuz you fought aliens together doesn’t mean -”
“It’s not gonna be you,” James interrupts.
“What? I wasn’t,” Steve protests. The words trip and stumble out of his mouth. “That’s not what I was,” but it was , and he doesn’t try to say what it wasn’t .
James’ fingers clench around each other. The plates on his hand ripple. He says it again, looking down at the floor, “It’s not gonna be you. I thought it was gonna be, but it’s not. I’m sorry.”
Steve’s teeth click shut. The sheets draw tight as he clenches his fists in them and then slowly, deliberately relaxes them. “Look,” he says finally. “I want you to be happy.”
And it’s so hard to meet his eyes, but James does. Says, very quietly, “I want that too.”
Steve’s face goes all blotchy, eyes fixed on James. Even before he got on T it was hard for Steve to cry. When he was a kid it was like tears had to be pulled out of him. When they were kids - yeah, when they were kids they used to talk about getting married, or at least James would talk about it, spinning all kinds of romantic fantasies that Steve never really looked at directly, too busy keeping secrets he thought James wouldn’t understand.
Abruptly Steve laughs, glotty sounding. He yanks his sheets up and starts wiping his face and nose on them. “Ugh,” James says, unable to help himself, “come on, there are tissues right there.”
“Fuck you,” Steve mumbles, but takes the damn tissues James is holding out, and mercifully blows his nose there instead on the sheets. Sticks his hand out afterwards, and James takes it, laces Steve’s sticky, damp fingers between his own. The hand feels warmth, and pressure, and not much else: Steve’s free to grip as hard as he can, and he usually does.
Steve turns his other palm up, and says, “Lemme see it again.”
James hands the bag over. The gray of the velvet is almost the same shade as James’ hand, still and quiet now
“S’nice,” Steve says quietly.
“Got it in Chinatown,” James says. “You think he’ll like it?”
Steve makes a noise in his throat. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it’s real classy.”
They sit like that for a while, hand in hand, not really looking at each other, and eventually Steve says, “This is the first time you’ve broken up with me.”
“Kinda sucks, right?” James asks.
“Yeah,” Steve says. “I’m not too into it.”
“You’ll live,” James tells him.
Steve laughs again, scrubs at his face. He shakes his head, twice, like he’s getting rid of water in his ears. “You did.”
“Well,” James says, and lets go of Steve’s hand. “I’m trying, anyway.”
He doesn’t see Peggy in the hallway. He rides the elevator down alone. He slips unnoticed through the busy ground floor. The air outside smells like smoke but also like Manhattan, like stagnant puddles and car exhaust, the faintest sweet trace of soap from the hospital laundry. He checks his phone. He has enough time to walk but he feels quiet in his body, quiet all over.
He picks the train up at Union Square, takes it to 68th Street. Points his boots south on Lex and then west on 66th, heading towards Central Park. He sends Sam a text message at the entrance to the park telling him where to meet in case cell service is spotty, which it usually is. It’s sunny out, and warm on his shoulders, and the only sound in the park is the wind in the trees and the far off clopping of joggers and horse hooves, covering pavement at roughly the same speed.
He picks out a bench by the pond, with a good view of the little stone bridge, and smokes his spliff. He watches tourists take selfies, smiling up into the clean sunlight. He thinks of some new stuff he wants to say, and writes it down on his phone. Erases half of it. Writes some more, anxiety doing its best to crawl up his spine. Sometimes his memories brush against this morning, seeing Rogers, those tight shoulders, that shut up look on his face. He thinks about his mom too, what she’ll say. Whether she’ll be happy, or if she’ll ask about Steve first.
Mostly he thinks about -
He hears gravel crunch up the path, that quick step he’d know anywhere, and his heart beats furiously in his chest. He turns to watch Sam come toward him, overwhelmed already: by the soft smile on Sam’s face, the warmth in his eyes, the taper of his waist, the confident tilt of his head. He’s golden in the sunlight, and he makes James ache all over, from his stomach to his cock to his stupid, stupid heart.
“Hey,” Sam says.
“Hey,” James says, faintly.
He’s smiling down at James. God, he’s so beautiful. The damn sun is behind his head now, like he’s an actual angel. He’s got on a shirt James hasn’t seen before. It must be new. He looks real good. He’s waiting for James to say something.
“Um,” James says, and pats the bench next to him. His fingers clink dully on the worn, sunwarm surface. Sam sits, and draws closer, or maybe James pulls him closer, and they're kissing, finally, thank god. He smells so good, like that cologne that James had bought for himself, but it’d never smelled as nice on him. He’s holding himself a little stiffly, careful of the cast on his elbow. His other hand rests in James’.
“You okay?” Sam asks, when he pulls back.
“I am now,” James says, and Sam laughs, which was the goal, but he looks a little concerned. Or maybe nervous. That’s okay. James is pretty nervous too. “It’s been a really weird day,” he admits.
“Oh yeah?” Sam asks. His fingers are warm around James’. He looks down at their hands, rubs his thumb over the callouses on Sam’s palm. His heart is singing. There’s wind, and leaves to rustle in the trees, and new grasses sprouting up around their feet. Guess the aliens hadn’t made it up to Central Park, and on the heel of that thought he actually laughs, trying to puzzle out how to describe his day to Sam.
Instead of finding out Santa Claus isn’t real, you find out he is real but he just took a giant shit all over everything you cared about, and then lit that giant shit on fire. Okay, now imagine you’re also shitting -
“Nah,” he says instead, shaking his head. “It’s too long a story, and I got something to ask you first. Two things, I guess."
He studies Sam’s expression. Patient. A little amused. Willing to find out where James is going with this. “Go for it,” Sam says.
“What do you want?” James asks.
Sam’s head tilts back. It’s not the question he was expecting, James guesses. “In what sense?”
“You know,” James says. He shrugs. Waves his free hand between the two of them. “ This. Life. Relationships. Mostly this, though.”
Sam breathes out, holding James’ eyes. “So that’s the kind of conversation we’re having,” he says. “Didn’t know if we were gonna do that today.” He leans back a little on the bench, giving himself a bit of room to think it over. His therapist’s probably asked the same question, but God only knows if Sam has an answer ready, even just in his own mind.
He thinks Sam does. He waits for it.
“I want a partner,” Sam says finally. “I want someone I can trust to have my back. I want someone who will keep his promises. I want someone who will prioritize me.”
All that sounds fair, and James’ feet bounce a little when he hears prioritize. His therapist used that word too, but mostly in the context of recovery, and quality of life, and realistic expectations. It’s something James knows how to do. “When, uh,” he says, clearing his throat. “When did you start thinking this might turn into something real?”
“This the second thing you wanted to ask?” Sam says, a little wryly. James shakes his head. Sam thinks this one over too, looking contemplative. James listens to the birds splash around in the water, lets him work it out. “I - I don’t know. I don’t know that there was, like, a moment . . I wanna say it was when you came down and met my parents, but I think even then I didn’t …”
His eyes widen a little as he thinks of something. The muscles in his jaw tense. “It was when I told you about Riley,” he says finally. “When I knew I could trust you with that.”
James squeezes Sam’s hand. They’re pressed together from wrist to elbow, knee to knee. He likes hearing that. Part of him thinks, of course you could trust me, but he knows it doesn’t work like that. Sam had a hell of a mountain to climb to get even that far. Would probably be climbing it for a long time still. Of course isn’t the answer, so he says, haltingly, hoping Sam will get what he’s trying to say, “I want that. I wanna be someone you can trust. With anything.”
Sam’s eyes flick up to meet his. “Yeah?” he says. His thumb rubs intently over James’ knuckles. “Long way to go, for that.”
“Worth it,” James says. “Um. So. Where do you wanna be in like five years? What do you, you know, imagine your life being like, um, then?”
Sam actually laughs, tucking his chin into his chest. James’ heart lifts. Sam’s charmed by him. He thinks this is all funny and charming. He thinks James is funny and charming. They’re grinning at each other, sharing the joke. “This is starting to sound like a job interview,” Sam says.
“Nah, I mean,” James says, “not for you, at least. Maybe for me. We just, we never talked about this stuff. I never asked you what you actually want. We just sort of jumped in and -” he curls his hand into a loose fist and makes a jacking off motion. Sam laughs even harder at that, and leans over and kisses James again, the corners of his mouth still turned up.
He leans back after a long while and says, “Five years, huh?”
“Could be ten,” James says. “I dunno. Choose your own adventure. It’s all hypothetical. What do you wanna be?”
Sam makes a thoughtful noise and says, “Alive.”
“Oh,” James says. He looks down at his hands, their fingers still entwined. It’s not a surprising answer, but - “That’s deep, Sam. I was thinking more like, you wanna get a job as a counselor or as a therapist, you think you wanna stay in New York, like that kinda -”
“I know what you were asking,” Sam says. “But I’m being real with you. That’s where I’m at. You want the best for yourself, and you want to make these goals, but at the end of the day you just wanna be alive. I’ll be happy if I can - do better. Keep other people from feeling the way that I felt.”
“Yeah,” James says. Makes sense. But he was going for something there. He probes at the thought like a tooth, trying to make sense of his thoughts, why he’d asked Sam to come meet him. Should he steer Sam back to more stable ground? Or be someone Sam can trust, and listen - be glad to listen?
He rubs his hand over his face. The answer to that is uncomplicated, even for his scrambled brains.
Sam’s knee nudges at his own, and James looks up. Sam is watching him. A bemused little smile on his face. “I know what you really wanna ask,” he says. “You wanna know if my choose-your-own-adventure’s got room in it for you.”
“Um,” James says, a little breathless, “yeah. You wanna go fight manticores together?”
“Gear up,” Sam says solemnly, and leans in.
James meets him halfway, and they’re kissing again, Sam’s fingers tangling in the collar of his shirt. James’ hands at Sam’s waist, fighting himself not to push his fingers underneath Sam’s shirt, fuck, fighting the urge not to just fucking tear Sam’s pants off too while he’s at it. Everything in him wanting.
“That was kind of an epic way to ask if I wanted to get back together,” Sam says, after a long while. “Creative. I dig it.”
“What?” James asks, dazed. “Oh! Oh, yeah, fuck, hang on, that wasn’t,” and goes to one knee right there in the dirt. He fumbles the little bag out of his pocket, and the ring into his hand.
He holds it up for Sam to see it, gold held between three silver fingers. He watches Sam’s eyes go huge and round, and his lips part, and his spine straighten. The rest of the world drops away, and hope squeezes almost all the breath out of him. He’s got just barely enough air to ask.
“Sam Wilson, will you marry me?”
“Oh,” Sam breathes, and James breathes too: a long, slow exhale that’s more muscle memory than anything else, that soft sigh ringing in his head like the singing bowl he ends every yoga class with. Oh.
Yeah.