Fool
Bucky let the door to the apartment close without saying a word. What was left to say? He was a little unsure what to do, a little unsure how to react to anything to be honest. He just stood there and stared at the closed door, stomach churning, nausea starting to worm it’s way deep inside his gut and he was sweating now, he could feel the sweat beading just above his hairline and threatening to spill over and he finally tore his eyes off the entryway and looked down to see the white skin of his hands pulled taut over tendons as they continued their crushing embrace of the marble countertop.
Maybe the door would open again.
Maybe Steve would text him in a minute and say he was sorry.
Maybe he would grin bashfully at him and apologize for being a jackass.
Maybe the door would open again.
Maybe Steve would never speak to him for the rest of his life.
Maybe Rebecca would never speak to him for the rest of his life.
Maybe Steve would text him in a minute and say he didn’t want to see him again.
Maybe the door would open again.
Maybe their friendship was destroyed.
Maybe—
He pushed himself roughly back from the counter and stood trying to breathe. He inhaled deeply and counted to three, then slowly let it out and counted to ten. Then he did it again. And again. And he was still sweating and the nausea was working its way up his throat and god damn that fucking therapist they forced him to see when he was nineteen and spiraling out of control at school because fuck, breathing and counting to ten and three was shit.
He had to get out of the apartment. He had to leave it as it was last night—clean, and pristine, and like no one had ever been here, like he hadn’t just fucked up a lifetime of friendship in the course of a couple of hours and maybe Steve could forgive him, maybe they could move on from this,
Maybe the door would open again.
He started moving.
First he folded up the blanket from the couch and put it back in the closet he had found it in. Then he placed the throw pillows back on alternate ends. Pristine. Perfect.
He grabbed his jeans and quickly wiggled out of Steve’s pants and back in to his own. He had a moment of indecision as he sat there holding on to Steve’s sweatpants, and finally decided on just depositing them in the laundry bin that sat inside the bathroom before moving back to the living room. On second thought, he poked his head back in the bathroom and rifled through the laundry bin, moving the sweatpants down to a lower layer. Steve wouldn’t know. He wouldn’t remember. Perfect.
He walked back out to the couch and felt a brief stab of panic in his chest as he eyed the hundreds of pages of sketches and drawings and notes littered about the tiny room. There was no way he was going to organize this correctly. He had no idea where anything went, he didn’t know how to fit it all back in the closet, Steve was going to know, Steve was never going to speak to him again, maybe the door would open, Steve was going to know—
He smacked himself on the side of the head with his left palm and muttered to himself,
“Get it together Buck. Get it together.”
And he wandered the apartment picking up sheets of paper and stacking them as neatly as he could. Each time he saw his own face looking back at him his heart seized a little more in his chest and it became harder and harder to breath, and even the messy sketches done all in charcoal sent droplets of sweat off their course, dripping down his nose, in to his eyes, he couldn’t concentrate on anything because it just felt as though his young self was glaring back at him, screaming at him, ‘I told you so!’ nothing was going to make this better, Steve was going to know, Steve was going to remember all of it, the door wasn’t going to open and this wasn’t going to be.
He finally decided on sorting the piles into what looked like concept sketches, actual artwork, and notes. He placed each pile neatly on the marble dining bar and turned them over. No one should walk in and see them. They were private, this was a private thing, and the best he could do was to turn them over. And Steve would know, Steve would see them as soon as he walked in the door, so Bucky quickly walked back to the bathroom and reshuffled through the laundry and placed the sweatpants on top, because Jesus, Steve wasn’t a complete idiot he just liked to act the part. He almost smiled, then a gasping sob erupted from his chest and he quickly clapped a hand over his mouth and held the rest back, swallowed them. Then he grabbed his cell phone and both sets of keys and left the apartment, locking the door behind him.
Steve grabbed the two coffees and croissant from across the counter and looked back down at his phone.
Rebecca: That sounds amazing. I need it after last night. See you soon?
Steve typed back his response quickly with one hand,
Me: yup. :)
then hurried out the door. He gulped some burning coffee down—his mouth still tasted foul even after a thorough brushing and he hoped the coffee would hide some of the evidence of his hangover. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say when he saw Rebecca in five minutes. He wasn’t sure if there was any way to make this right, he didn’t know what to do. He wished more than anything that he could call up Bucky and tell him the whole insane story and Bucky would laugh and clap a hand down on his shoulder and say something like, ‘atta boy’ and he would come up with some genius plan to execute together, Cap and his sidekick again, and obviously the horse was out of the barn on that whole scenario and it was pointless imagining him and Bucky laughing at anything together anymore because he had gone and destroyed that in one night of debauchery.
He had used his best friend. His best friend who he knew had past feelings for him, and who he suspected still carried those feelings, and he knew Bucky would never say no to him, Bucky couldn’t say no to him. So he had gone at gotten trashed and let the alcohol do all the talking for him and he had used Bucky and then cast him aside the morning after like trash and Bucky was never going to forgive him for it and that simple fact was killing him.
It was killing him.
He walked in the front door of the office and placed the second coffee and croissant down gently on Rebecca’s desk, then made his way back to his own and sat down. He didn’t know what to do. He opened his desk drawer and rifled through it, finding what he was looking for in the very back corner, and he drew it out. A little box, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. He didn’t know what to do, but he knew he couldn’t be with Buck, and there was no chance Buck would ever stick around for him at this point, and he hated this line of reasoning because now it seemed like Rebecca was second choice and she wasn’t. She just wasn’t. Rebecca was smart and funny and amazing and beautiful and of course he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, he was just drunk and stupid,
he was still in love with his best friend
but that couldn’t be true, he couldn’t let that be true, he was just drunk and stupid,
The door swung open and he jumped in surprise—quickly burying the box back under the stack of papers in the desk drawer.
“Morning babe!”
She still looked glorious, even at 9am on a Saturday morning after a night of partying and craziness, he had no idea how she always managed to look so glorious. He smiled at her, and hoped it didn’t come across as sickly as it felt.
“So why on earth did you feel the urge to get this stuff done this morning? Not that I am not thrilled by your buoyant,” she shot him a sly look, “and frankly sometimes frightening supplication to my father’s campaign…”
Steve shrugged and stood up to move towards her. “Consider it punishment to myself for a night of being a total asshole.”
She laughed. “And you just had to drag me down with you hmmm?”
“Eh, I figured you deserved some punishment as well. No one should look as perfect as you manage to after a night of that much alcohol.”
She moved forward in to his embrace and he drew in a deep breath, inhaling the delicious cherry vanilla scent of her hair, and the faint floral notes from her perfume. “I love you,” he whispered in her ear and he ignored the shooting sense of wrongness that echoed in his ears. He could feel her smile against his neck and she looked up into his eyes,
“I love you too, Steve.” Then she pushed him away. “Now, show me what we need to get done before I start getting other ideas. You do realize that no one else is bound to come in to the office today? We could,” she motioned toward the large desk in the corner. The desk that was supposed to be Bucky’s, “we could try something a little new…exciting…” she looked him up in down, the intent obvious in her eyes, and he felt his chest squeezing again and his face flushing and he couldn’t do this,
“Oh my God Steve I am kidding. Jesus don’t have a heart attack you prude,” and she laughed, that pealing chime of laughter, and he sat back down breathing, thankful that she was attributing the flush in his cheeks to something besides…besides her brother, and he tried to focus on the polling numbers spread out in front of him,
“Right. So. Ummm, can you get on your computer? I can e-mail you the numbers we are working with,”
And she smiled and nodded and sat down at her desk, two spaces in front of his, and he looked at the back of her head and tried to concentrate on the scent of cherry vanilla.
The train ride home was a complete blur. Bucky’s leg kept shaking up and down at high speed and he was clutching his cell phone in a death grip, constantly hitting the call button to refresh the screen and see if he had missed anything. He kept glancing all around him, certain that everyone was looking at him, certain that everyone could see what he did, what he was,
Christ, he just slept with his sister’s boyfriend.
Oh God, what was he thinking? He knew he shouldn’t have been drinking that much, but really it had started to fade during the long walk back from the bar. He was the rational one, he should have been calling the shots, making the decisions, he knew he shouldn’t walk back with Steve, Steve was trashed, Steve had no business making any sort of choice at all, God—was Steve even capable of giving consent? Bucky was shocked as the thought flitted across his consciousness—why would he not even think about that last night? He should have known better, everything would have been different if he just used his fucking brain for one second.
He was so angry, and his leg was still shaking, and now people across from him in the train really were looking at him, with the looks passengers usually reserve for strung out homeless addicts who hop the train looking for a warm place to pass the time, and that was probably exactly how he looked right now, he couldn’t stop shaking and sweating and he was certain his eyes looked blown out and red and he was hungover as fuck.
The train finally stopped and he lurched out of his seat on to the platform and down the rickety wooden steps. His apartment was just a block down from the station, but he turned to the left and threw himself towards the concrete building on the corner:
Avenue Market
LIQUOR
BEER-WINE
LOTTO/ATM
He left the store, brown paper sack clutched in hand—brown whiskey sloshing languidly inside, and hurried back to his crap disgusting apartment, not pristine, not perfect, and let himself in.
Bucky stood in the entryway to the tiny flat, breathing hard, still trying not to cry, trying to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do now, what to do now that everything was ruined. He carefully peeled the bottle out of the brown bag and set it on the countertop—laminate, not marble—then shrank down to his haunches, head in his hands, and shook and pulled at his hair and he was going truly mad now, last night was nothing compared to this because now he was talking to himself on top of everything,
“Get it together Buck,” and “You fucking wreck,” and “Why?” and this became his mantra, “why? why? why?” and he built up in a crescendo and with a final shriek he shot up from his position and grabbed the bottle of whiskey then threw it as hard as he could against the far wall of his apartment where it shattered, it’s brown remains leaking slowly down the wall, like syrup, like blood,
he wasn’t going to be that person anymore, he wasn’t going to fuck up his life anymore, he was going to take a shower, he was going to get some work done, he was going to show up to work on Monday and he was going to smile and be a Barnes and
now he was crying,
he wasn’t going to be some disappointment to his family, and he was going to find Steve and tell him that he was so happy for him and Rebecca, because he was, Steve was perfect for her and Steve made her happy and she deserved to be happy.
They deserved to be so happy.
*****
He made it through the weekend. It certainly wasn’t one of the more immaculately glowing weekends he had ever experienced, but he made it solidly through. He made two more trips back to the Avenue Market, bought two more fifths of whiskey, dumped both, slowly, down his kitchen sink while he watched and swore to himself. He punched the drywall once so hard that his fist went straight through. He sat down on the floor directly under the evidence and watched the dark red blood leak slowly from his knuckles and spill over the raised bone down the back of his hand. He binge watched old episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. He went back to the Avenue Market for the third time and bought a pack of Lucky Strikes, then chain smoked half the pack back at his apartment. He binge watched four episodes of Orange Is The New Black. It sucked. He went back to Curb.
By the time Monday actually came around he felt like shit, his hair smelled like cancer, his entire apartment stunk of dried up whiskey, there were still shards of glass buried in his carpet, and he hadn’t showered in 48 hours. He groaned and pushed himself up to a sitting position on the couch—afghan and remote falling to the floor. Well Shit. Shiva lasted seven days to mourn a family member’s passing—two ought to be enough to bid adieu to a friendship. He stumbled into the small galley kitchen, put a pot of coffee on and headed back to the shower.
A full on spa experience, 3 enormous mugs of coffee and a short train ride later, Bucky was bounding up the steps to the office. He wasn’t really entirely sure how he was supposed to be acting around Steve at this point—the guy hadn’t texted or called him once since Friday night’s…apocalyptic string of horrible decisions, but he figured he would just smile and nod and act friendly and if all else failed, just avoid him like the plague. Then he rounded the corner and ran directly in to Steven Grant Rogers—as in, directly smack in to him—spilled his travel mug of the dregs from his earlier pot down the front of himself and all over the hallway floor, and all thoughts of acting with any semblance of normality dissolved to ashes all around him.
“Oh for fuck’s sake…” he muttered under his breath as he desperately tried to pull his coffee stained shirt from his chest.
“Oh jeez, Buck, I’m so sorry!”
Steve actually did look mildly apologetic, but his mouth was also quirking up in the beginning stages of a laugh and now he looked like he was just holding it all in as best he could, and Christ the guy was such an idiot,
“Why the hell are you laughing at me asshole?” Bucky sneered, and for God’s sake he didn’t mean to sound so vicious but all his cool cover was blown at this point and he was upset, of course he was upset,
“Shit,” Steve stammered and Bucky looked up at him, “I’m not laughing at you, I’m sorry, I’m just so…I was so nervous about running in to you and I didn’t know what I was going to say and then it figures I would just end up…attacking you, and spilling your coffee everywhere and I have already been such a jackass, so it figures,”
“It’s fine Steve,” Bucky sighed and tried to move past him, but Steve reached out a hand and caught Bucky by the arm,
“No, it’s not, and I really want to talk to you. Can I talk to you? Can we talk about—”
“Jesus Christ Steve not here!” Bucky gave a quick glance around to see if anyone was actually watching their conversation. “Jesus. Ok, let’s go for a walk.”
He steered Steve back to the front door and the exited the building to the friendly sidewalk, birds chirping, flowers blooming, summer air kissing their cheeks like it forgot to Goddamn read the memo—the Steven Grant Rogers/James Buchanan Barnes dynamic was fucked to hell and Bucky was already sick of dealing with it.
They walked slowly down the street and Steve was silent, of course Steve was silent, so Bucky broke the quiet.
“Ok. So what’s up?”
Steve looked over at him with a desperate look in his eyes.
“Oh Buck. I fucked up. I fucked up so bad, and I am so so sorry. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to not drag Rebecca through this. I don’t know what I am supposed to tell her, how I am supposed to tell her—”
Bucky put his hand up on Steve’s shoulder and sighed,
“Steve, it’s—”
“Just let me finish Buck.” He stopped walking. They were a block away from the house. He was fiddling with something in his pocket and he continued, “I need to show you something.”
They were a block away from the house, and the last time Steve needed to show him something it ended up being hundreds of sketches and drawings of Bucky and he couldn’t take any other revelations at this point because that one already fucked him up so badly, they were a block away from the house, and Steve pulled out a tiny box,
they were a block away from the house and Bucky was poised to run because he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t hear this right now—he was clean, he was clean and sober and he couldn’t hear this right now.
“I was going to propose,” Steve whispered brokenly, and he opened the box and the most perfect tiny diamond engagement ring sat there, propped up and sparkling in the summer sun.
“I was going to propose,” he said again, “I’m supposed to propose? And I don’t know what to do now. Tell me what I should do Buck.”
Bucky took a deep breath in, and he didn’t run. His heart had stopped beating and it was calcifying into charcoal only it wasn’t the good kind of charcoal, it wasn’t even a memory of charcoal, it was just going to keep hardening until it was dust. But he didn’t run. There was nothing to run to in this town. There was no point.
“Steve. It’s fine. I…I didn’t mean anything from last night you know? I was drunk. We were drunk. I was lonely…” he forced a smile out from behind his teeth and reached over to take the box from Steve. “It’s beautiful. She is going to love it. Don’t even worry about telling her about Friday night. There is nothing to tell.” He handed the box back. “You two’ll be so happy together. I’m proud of you man.”
Steve’s face looked…agonized. Bucky didn’t know what else to say. What else was he looking for? He was giving up everything right now—he ought to earn a God Damn award for his acting abilities because he was holding it together so well and Steve was sitting there looking agonized and it wasn’t fair.
It was not fair.
Steve closed the box and pocketed the ring again. “Oh.” he said. Then, “Right. It didn’t mean anything.” His eyes flicked up over Bucky’s face like he was searching for something, and Bucky schooled his expression into slate. “Well, I had originally planned to do it at dinner tonight. I think I probably still will?”
“Yeah man, sounds great.” Bucky shoved his hands in his pockets. “Is that all you wanted to talk about?”
Steve looked up again and now he just looked sad and lost, and he shouldn’t look sad and lost he was about to propose to Rebecca he should be happy, he should be happy,
“Yup. That’s it. Thanks for…well thanks.”
“Sure.”
They headed back down the block in silence.
*****
Back at the office, a memo sat waiting at his desk. He read it through quickly, set his coffee down by his desk, changed into a new shirt, and headed upstairs to see what George wanted from him now.
The secretary let him in with a smile this time—he didn’t do any of his customary barging and whining and yelling and she seemed grateful. But he wasn’t planning on doing that anymore at this point. He was a Barnes. He was here to stand up tall and look the part and smile and lend his support and worship the ground George Barnes walked on, and he was going to do it for the next eight months and then he was going to get the fuck out of D.C.
George was sitting behind his desk per usual and waived Bucky into one of the seats.
“Good morning, James.”
“Morning Dad. What’s up?”
George gave a little frown. “Please don’t talk to me like you were raised by wolves. You are still on the campaign staff—try to act it.”
Bucky rolled his eyes, then tried again. “Good morning George. I saw your memo stating that you needed to see me. Is everything alright?”
George narrowed his eyes a bit as though he were trying to spot the sarcasm, then gave a small shrug of his shoulders. “Better. Everything is fine, I just called you up here because Andrew should have all the reports from the week worked out for you. He is supposed to be here by now…”
He picked up the phone on his desk and dialed out to someone who Bucky presumed to be his secretary. “Find Andrew.” Then he put the phone down. “Everything going well in the trenches?”
Bucky tried hard not to gawk at him. He had been stripped of all of his office manager duties and for all intents and purposes told to show up every morning and just stand there looking pretty—not to actually do any work or touch any documents having to do with the campaign. “Uh…yeah I guess? I mean,” he stumbled as George’s eyes narrowed again, “yes sir, everything is going well. The interns have all been really excited about the outdoor speech you are giving this week.”
George smiled. “Ah, yes. Andrew and I have been prepping that one every waking moment. It will certainly be one to be remembered.”
He nodded along as the heavy door to the study pushed open and Andrew poked his head in.
“Ahh, Andrew,” George said, “So nice of you to grace us with your presence this morning.”
Andrew hurried in and set a stack of papers down on the desk by Bucky.
“Sorry George. There have been a few,” he glanced over at Bucky, “other concerns…”
“Christ, what is going on now?”
Andrew cast another long look in Bucky’s general direction and Bucky just stared right back at him. He wasn’t planning on leaving unless he was ordered to.
“Andrew. James is fine. What is going on now?”
The sudden wash of pathetic pleasure that erupted in his gut from being acknowledged positively by his father was enough to make him sick, and enough to make him almost miss the entirety of Andrews’ response.
“…the threats again. The west front of the capitol building would be a very easy place for terrorists to have access to…outdoors, easy sight lines to the podium from just about any building nearby, Dad, we really need to be taking this seriously,”
“I’m not concerned Andrew. It is a bunch of radical extremists—professional agitators, and they are just trying to see what kind of reaction they can provoke. The speech goes on as planned.”
“Wait,” Bucky spoke up, “there have been threats?”
Andrew held up his hand and glared at him. “Shut up James.” Then he turned back to George. “Dad, we really need to be taking this stuff seriously. There have already been protests that have turned violent at the other candidate speeches and that was with no warning before hand. I have e-mails and phone calls already threatening—”
“You have actual threats coming in?” Bucky said again. “Jesus, that is really bad…"
“Shut up James!” Andrew yelled at him, and Bucky glared back at his older brother with all the power he could muster,
“Both of you. Leave the office now. James, take the paperwork Andrew has kindly worked out for you. Andrew, our security detail is more than capable of handling a simple threat.”
“Dad, I really think—”
“Andrew!” George barked. Bucky froze in the act of standing up. That yell was usually only ever reserved for him. He couldn’t decide if it was nice to finally see his brother take some of the brunt of their father’s anger, or if the sudden familial upheaval scared the crap out of him.
“Leave the security to Pierce. If he is at all concerned about anything, then I will take his advice and not speak. Otherwise, the. Speech. Goes. On. Now leave the office.”
And he turned back to his computer, very obviously done with the conversation.
Bucky followed Andrew out of the office. Andrew was fuming, his fists clenched tightly around air.
“Hey. Andrew. What sort of threats are you getting?"
“Just leave it. It’s none of your business. Go back and sit in your comfy little chair by your desk and surf the internet, or play free cell, or waste more of your damn life doing nothing. It’s what you have always done best anyway.”
He huffed down the stairs leaving Bucky standing behind feeling angry and helpless and like,
he wasn’t sure what the point of anything was when he was even shit at pretending to be a good Barnes.