[He turned, and not because he heard someone behind him but because he reached into his pocket and realized he had misplaced his phone, because keys and wallets are something he had back home but a phone in his pocket never was and he's not sure if he'll ever get the hang of it.
And he sees him and doesn't look through him, but he doesn't look at him for long, either.
Instead he looks slightly away, although his peripheral vision is still on him, and that's enough for Steve. He can make out details. They're not the only people in the street - it's never been that kind of street, not even when they were kids, dirty kneed and filthy nosed.]
You could have come in for breakfast.
[He knows that he was there, he knows that he was watching. He doesn't have to see him in the window to know that.]
[What Steve can see in his periphery is a mess. He doesn't look like he's eaten, though any lack of sustenance takes time to show on his frame. He's drawn thin and desperate in a different way, something behind the eyes.
Being told he should have come in for breakfast is, for a second, so absurd it almost cracks something in him. There's a lost and howling thing under the surface of him just waiting for the veneer to splinter enough to let it through. There. Behind the eyes, the stare he's fixed on Steve's face.
They're not alone on the street, but there's a pathway being edged around the two of them for reasons no one passing by really understands. People nudge into each other rather than break into that space.
Bucky lifts a hand, the one not gloved, and scrubs it over his face, and then he steps carefully around Steve and he starts to walk.]
[Steve isn't about to let him disappear - not that he's naive enough to think that if he wanted to disappear, he would, and there would be nothing short making a huge public scene that Steve could do about it. So he steps into line with him, half a step behind, hands in his pockets.
His voice is low because he know that Bucky can hear him, and he doesn't want anyone else to.]
I mean it. You look like you could do with meal.
[If he keeps on the food, maybe Bucky won't flee, as if talking about anything even remotely serious (what's your name) might make him just take off. He doesn't want the other man to take off, not when he just found him.]
[He hears him. He doesn't look round (it's still an absurd line of questioning and it occurs to him that Steve Rogers doesn't know what to say. That's jarring, in its way, against whatever he knows of him.
(What does he know of him?)
He knows these streets. He knows that Rogers would call it the old neighbourhood, but that in his own head its just Brooklyn, a grid of brownstones and high rises and redevelopments that won't unravel into meaning. But he's walked the streets, learned or relearned them, and he's sure there's something behind all the new glass veneers and under the cleaned up sidewalks. Something he just can't see.
He's learned these streets, or relearned them, spent whole nights crisscrossing through roads and back alleys. Over rooftops, down rows of rickety stairs. There are just a few crumbling places, grafitti covered and fly postered, where the air smells like something he might once have known.
He walks ahead of Steve, but he's not trying to slip away.
He turns down one of those alleys, and then he stops. It's one of those places where the brickwork's crumbled and old, and high up on the wall where the flat level of a fire rail used to be, there's a few letters etched in childish scrawl.
JBB |||||||| ||| SGR |
The man Steve's following stops. He doesn't look round.]
[He follows, of course he does, the map of Brooklyn overlaid with the shiny new storefronts and the retro one-off stores that line the streets now. It's so shiny (and expensive, it's expensive, he managed to get a nice apartment because it turned out that Howard had bought the building they lived in and renovated it and Tony didn't even know that Steve was in Howard's will as having $40 a month rent through perpetuity in that building) and different but they layouts are the same, the building are only painted and polished over.
There it is. A sign that they were there, once upon a time.]
We used to sit here, when we got more than two minutes without someone chasing us up and down. There was a fire escape.
[We used to sit here. We spent time together. It's not a question, it doesn't need a reply, not exactly.]
[Howard Stark registers in his memory primarily as a mission complete. One shattered window and a car run off the road. He'd stood over them until the woman in the passenger seat stopped gasping through the blood.
He looks up at that marks scratched against the brick. A tally. He'd found this days ago, and he's been back to look at it since. He's spent hours.
(Is there a marker for him, somewhere? Simple. Stone.)]
[There is a marker. It's in Arlington, but like Fury's, there's no one in the grave it marks. There's one for Steve, too, or there was before he woke up and they took it out. Side-by-side, one of the caretakers told him once when he went there, his cap in his hands as they stood in front of the grave of James Buchanan Barnes. The caretaker had been a teenager during the war, too young to enlist, and he remembered Steve's movies and the comics and the news when Captain America died. I won't leave this job until I die. I like being here. It's respectful, he had told Steve when Steve asked him why he was still working.
Steve thinks he has more to say to that man that he does to people who are supposed to be his age.
He takes a moment.]
Home runs.
We used to play ball, right around the corner. I managed one. One summer. We were twelve. You were a lot better at it than I was.
[He backs up as Steve walks forwards, until his shoulders are braced against the wall opposite. It keeps that gap, those three steps between them, but it does something else, too. It forces him to look.]
You were smaller than I was.
[That's how he thinks he remembers him best, when he thinks that it's memory at all. Having to duck to meet his eyes.
But it's a fact, too. Steve Rogers was small. He's seen the pictures, his measurements laid out at the exhibition. He knows that it's correct.
I was smaller than most everyone. Couldn't find a girl who would look at me twice.
[Especially when Bucky was around. What do they know anyway? You're twice the guy I am, three times, Bucky used to say, his head shaking in disappointment at another double date where both girls ended up trying to claim Bucky as theirs.
He wonders what would have happened if they had come back from the war together. If they were finally a matching set. If it would have mattered, then.]
[If they'd come back from the war, whole and intact, Steve Rogers would still have been twice the man Bucky was, with a frame that finally fit. They'd find a girl each and get apartments on the same block. Take the kids to church together on Sundays, where Steve's boys could teach Bucky's what good manners look like.
Maybe they'd move out of the city, somewhere with a tree dropping leaves in identical back years, and be buried together in the same churchyard, with flowers overlapping each other's graves.
Maybe life would never be so straightforward. These days there's little room for fairytales, but he closes his eyes and listens to Steve speak as though it's a lesson he should remember.]
Who was I?
[He leans a little emphasis on the was. Who he is is too fragmented to begin with.]
[Steve doesn't know if he even believes in heroes anymore, let alone fairy tales.
But he still believes in Bucky.]
You're the best man I've known. You're my best friend.
[There is no was, when it comes to this friendship, there is no was where Bucky is concerned. He's still Bucky. Battered and bruised and hurt, maybe, but still Bucky.]
[Wrong answer. Steve will hear it in the sharp catch of his breath, see the way his eyes narrow before he turns away again. The alley's a dead end, but brick walls aren't enough of a barrier if he decides to leave, now.
And he could.
It would be simpler than trying to be the man Steve Rogers thinks he is - wants him to be. Easier than trying to be a man at all.]
[He doesn't reach for him, doesn't move, like he'll dart if he does. Steve knows. He knows that he could leave, it wouldn't be hard, there isn't space but Steve knows that he could do it, and so Bucky could, too.]
[The question's snapped back fast, more desperate - frustrated - than angry. What can help him now? What does he even deserve? He doesn't know who he's supposed to be now, but he's not this friend Steve Rogers asks him for. Bucky Barnes died a war hero and all the shell of him that's left is capable of doing is making Steve watch him die all over again.
He'll figure it out, eventually. He has to. Figure out that he's hoping too much from something that's empty and hollow inside.]
Help you figure out how to be more than what you think you are.
[Steve knows better - saying something like I want my best friend back isn't fair, it isn't right, and it isn't accurate. Steve has his best friend. His best friend is right here. He's not trying to revive Bucky Barnes, whole and undamaged, the talk of every girl in Brooklyn and half the girls in Queens.
He just wants to help Bucky come to terms with who he is now. If anyone knows the challenges that poses it's Steve. When the world changed around him, when everything turned strange and different in what felt like seconds, he changed, too. And he had to remember who he is compared to who he was.]
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no subject
And he sees him and doesn't look through him, but he doesn't look at him for long, either.
Instead he looks slightly away, although his peripheral vision is still on him, and that's enough for Steve. He can make out details. They're not the only people in the street - it's never been that kind of street, not even when they were kids, dirty kneed and filthy nosed.]
You could have come in for breakfast.
[He knows that he was there, he knows that he was watching. He doesn't have to see him in the window to know that.]
no subject
Being told he should have come in for breakfast is, for a second, so absurd it almost cracks something in him. There's a lost and howling thing under the surface of him just waiting for the veneer to splinter enough to let it through. There. Behind the eyes, the stare he's fixed on Steve's face.
They're not alone on the street, but there's a pathway being edged around the two of them for reasons no one passing by really understands. People nudge into each other rather than break into that space.
Bucky lifts a hand, the one not gloved, and scrubs it over his face, and then he steps carefully around Steve and he starts to walk.]
no subject
His voice is low because he know that Bucky can hear him, and he doesn't want anyone else to.]
I mean it. You look like you could do with meal.
[If he keeps on the food, maybe Bucky won't flee, as if talking about anything even remotely serious (what's your name) might make him just take off. He doesn't want the other man to take off, not when he just found him.]
no subject
(What does he know of him?)
He knows these streets. He knows that Rogers would call it the old neighbourhood, but that in his own head its just Brooklyn, a grid of brownstones and high rises and redevelopments that won't unravel into meaning. But he's walked the streets, learned or relearned them, and he's sure there's something behind all the new glass veneers and under the cleaned up sidewalks. Something he just can't see.
He's learned these streets, or relearned them, spent whole nights crisscrossing through roads and back alleys. Over rooftops, down rows of rickety stairs. There are just a few crumbling places, grafitti covered and fly postered, where the air smells like something he might once have known.
He walks ahead of Steve, but he's not trying to slip away.
He turns down one of those alleys, and then he stops. It's one of those places where the brickwork's crumbled and old, and high up on the wall where the flat level of a fire rail used to be, there's a few letters etched in childish scrawl.
JBB
|||||||||||SGR |
The man Steve's following stops. He doesn't look round.]
no subject
There it is. A sign that they were there, once upon a time.]
We used to sit here, when we got more than two minutes without someone chasing us up and down. There was a fire escape.
[We used to sit here. We spent time together. It's not a question, it doesn't need a reply, not exactly.]
no subject
He looks up at that marks scratched against the brick. A tally. He'd found this days ago, and he's been back to look at it since. He's spent hours.
(Is there a marker for him, somewhere? Simple. Stone.)]
What does it mean?
no subject
Steve thinks he has more to say to that man that he does to people who are supposed to be his age.
He takes a moment.]
Home runs.
We used to play ball, right around the corner. I managed one. One summer. We were twelve. You were a lot better at it than I was.
[He traces his hand over the marks]
no subject
You were smaller than I was.
[That's how he thinks he remembers him best, when he thinks that it's memory at all. Having to duck to meet his eyes.
But it's a fact, too. Steve Rogers was small. He's seen the pictures, his measurements laid out at the exhibition. He knows that it's correct.
(What does he know about him?)]
no subject
[Especially when Bucky was around. What do they know anyway? You're twice the guy I am, three times, Bucky used to say, his head shaking in disappointment at another double date where both girls ended up trying to claim Bucky as theirs.
He wonders what would have happened if they had come back from the war together. If they were finally a matching set. If it would have mattered, then.]
no subject
Maybe they'd move out of the city, somewhere with a tree dropping leaves in identical back years, and be buried together in the same churchyard, with flowers overlapping each other's graves.
Maybe life would never be so straightforward. These days there's little room for fairytales, but he closes his eyes and listens to Steve speak as though it's a lesson he should remember.]
Who was I?
[He leans a little emphasis on the was. Who he is is too fragmented to begin with.]
no subject
But he still believes in Bucky.]
You're the best man I've known. You're my best friend.
[There is no was, when it comes to this friendship, there is no was where Bucky is concerned. He's still Bucky. Battered and bruised and hurt, maybe, but still Bucky.]
no subject
And he could.
It would be simpler than trying to be the man Steve Rogers thinks he is - wants him to be. Easier than trying to be a man at all.]
no subject
[He doesn't reach for him, doesn't move, like he'll dart if he does. Steve knows. He knows that he could leave, it wouldn't be hard, there isn't space but Steve knows that he could do it, and so Bucky could, too.]
Come on. Let me help you.
no subject
[The question's snapped back fast, more desperate - frustrated - than angry. What can help him now? What does he even deserve? He doesn't know who he's supposed to be now, but he's not this friend Steve Rogers asks him for. Bucky Barnes died a war hero and all the shell of him that's left is capable of doing is making Steve watch him die all over again.
He'll figure it out, eventually. He has to. Figure out that he's hoping too much from something that's empty and hollow inside.]
What do you want from me?
no subject
[Steve knows better - saying something like I want my best friend back isn't fair, it isn't right, and it isn't accurate. Steve has his best friend. His best friend is right here. He's not trying to revive Bucky Barnes, whole and undamaged, the talk of every girl in Brooklyn and half the girls in Queens.
He just wants to help Bucky come to terms with who he is now. If anyone knows the challenges that poses it's Steve. When the world changed around him, when everything turned strange and different in what felt like seconds, he changed, too. And he had to remember who he is compared to who he was.]