No Kind of Life - Speranza (original) (raw)

1939

Bucky knew him well enough not to give him too much time to think about it: instead he told him over a sandwich and a cup of coffee at Otto’s Luncheonette. “Look,” Bucky said, in a low voice, “it’s not fair but a girl expects a guy to know what he’s doing, so you’ve got to know,” and normally Steve would have argued, because who gave a damn what people expected, except he was roiled with unpleasant and untrustworthy feelings: shame, horror, fear. Bucky read them off his face, and immediately offered reassurance. “Trust me,” Bucky said with soft intensity, “I know a girl, she’s nice. It won’t be anything awful—or—you know, ugly,” and Steve looked into his open, honest face and read the sincerity there: impossible not to trust him.

It was like the words were all bricked up inside his chest, a familiar, hard, pressure, like asthma or the pneumonia. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I guess,” and so that was how he found himself climbing the stairs to the door of a tenement on the Lower East Side. The street around them was full of kids, playing, and there were a couple vendors at the corner: a fruit guy, a pretzel guy, and a guy selling tin pans. Steve curved his shoulders and jammed his hands into his pockets, wanting to disappear inside himself, but Bucky moved with confidence, opening the door and leading Steve through a dark hallway and out again into the back yard. There, across a tiny courtyard, there was a second building – a backhouse of three stories. Bucky led him to the front door and up two flights of narrow stairs to the top, where there was another door. Bucky seemed about to knock, then hesitated and gave Steve’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Okay?” he asked.

Steve didn’t reply, couldn’t reply, and Bucky took his lack of protest as a go-ahead. He knocked, and a moment or two later the door opened and there was a girl there. He sagged with relief; despite what Bucky’d said, he was expecting some terrifying spectre, a painted woman, hard-faced, some dime novel idea of a whore. The girl standing there wasn’t like that at all: she was smaller than him and with brown hair that went to her shoulders. She was pretty but not beautiful, and wearing a dress with little flowers on it and buttons up the front. No paint at all, and it was maybe only the faint dark shadows under her eyes that made Steve realize that she was a few years older than them: twenty-five, maybe?

She smiled at Bucky who smiled back and said, “Sarah, this is my friend Steve who I told you about,” and Sarah stepped back into the tenement, which was entirely visible at a glance: tiny kitchen table near the stove, sitting room beyond, and a kind of curtained alcove with a small mattress in it. It was all cheerful and clean, and Steve kind of wanted to paint it because of the vividness of the colors: the red cheesecloth covering the table, the blue knitted blanket thrown over the settee, the green train—

Bucky had shut the door behind them, and now he curved his arm around Sarah’s shoulders as he talked to her: this was a thing a person could do.

The green train was on a shelf fitted beneath the window. It looked handmade, carved by somebody, painted by somebody: bright green with a white smokestack. On the same shelf was a rag doll and a rocking horse and a toy ship and a wheeled duck on a string.

“Steve’s just the best friend a guy could have,” Bucky was saying to Sarah, and Sarah nodded and looked at Steve and said, in a kind, welcoming voice, “Yes, I can surely believe that,”—except then it was like whatever had been clogged up inside of him suddenly gave way, and the dam burst, a flow of words, and Steve said: “No, no, no; oh, God, Sarah, no; thank you but no.” His voice was deadened in the narrow room.

Sarah’s face was all sympathy, but Bucky said, “ Steve," like he was trying to gentle a horse, but Steve wasn’t a horse – not one that would run, anyway. “I’m sorry,” Steve told Sarah. “You seem a lovely sort of person, but—” and then Bucky was saying, in a slightly more irritated voice, “Steve, a word?” and dragging him onto the landing even as Steve said, “—I can’t, I just can’t.”

Bucky closed the door behind them and said, in a rough, pleading whisper, “It’s not scary, I swear – you’ll see when you do it. And she’s nice, and she needs the money.”

“So give her the money,” Steve said, already fumbling through his pockets; he thought he could maybe dig up another seventy-five cents on top of the nickel he needed for the subway.

But Bucky continued implacably, “And you’re a gentle guy, Steve, and a decent person, and all in all it doesn’t take long—" and Steve felt something else inside him giving way and took a deep breath, a really deep breath, because he had to kick up to the surface here, or drown.

“I don’t want Sarah.” Steve surged up, onto his toes, grabbed Bucky’s lapels, and kissed him. It was over, too fast – he held on and tried to live in the kiss for as long as possible, because he didn’t know what would happen after, and he didn’t think he could stand to lose Bucky: Bucky was all he had. He was braced for—well, there would be a shove, at least, wouldn’t there? Even if Bucky somehow restrained himself from actually punching Steve in the face?

But when Steve slowly sank back onto his heels, Bucky just stood there, looking flushed and a little up-ended. “Oh. Well. That’s something else," and then Bucky drew close and kissed him back. Bucky’s kiss was about a thousand times less awkward than Steve’s had been, but Steve just grabbed for Bucky’s shoulders and hung on: he thought he could get the knack of it with a little practice. And he’d be willing to practice, long as it took. Lord knew he wasn’t a quitter.

“Okay, wait,” Bucky said, a little breathlessly, when they broke apart. “Just—I gotta talk to that woman, give her some money,” and Steve hastily dug his quarters out of his pocket. When he looked up again, he saw that Bucky was looking at him with an expression that was fond…but troubled. “It ain’t no kind of life, you know,” Bucky said with quiet sincerity, and Steve maybe shocked him a little by laughing because that was the story of his life, wasn’t it? The story of the asthma and the rheumatic fever, the ulcers and the pains in his joints; the story of being five feet four inches tall with flat feet and still determined to stand up for himself and say his piece.

“Bucky,” Steve said, still helplessly smiling, “I mean, we’ve met, right? You know I have to do everything the hard way. It’s the fundamental fact of my nature.”

Bucky sighed. “Well, obviously," he said, and sounded just a little bit exasperated, but one corner of his mouth was tilting up.

2015

They closed the Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian some months after the helicarriers crashed into the Potomac: too much of its history had been revealed as apocryphal. Steve had felt compelled to do one last tour of the exhibition before they broke it down, and so had used what clout he had left to get into the museum after hours, once the doors had finally closed.

It hadn’t occurred to him that Bucky would feel the same impulse, the same need. But there he was: sitting on a wooden bench in front of the part of the exhibition that memorialized his death: A Fallen Comrade: Bucky Barnes 1917 – 1945. Steve definitely should have realized that Bucky wouldn’t need clout to get into the museum: he could just pass through the walls, like a ghost.

Steve hesitated for a moment, afraid that he’d maybe spook Bucky, and Bucky would leave. Except for how that was ridiculous: Bucky’s senses were sharp as razor wire, and they always had been. Bucky’d probably known he was there from the second he entered the building, let alone the hall. In fact, Bucky was sitting on one side of the bench, like he’d been expecting company. So Steve went over and sat down beside him, on the half that was clearly meant to be his half.

It was strange sitting there, in the half-light of the exhibition; the spotlights were on, but nothing else. It was strange sitting there, looking at his clothes in a glass case and a mannequin riding his motorcycle. Looking at his best friend’s face, and a relief map of the mountain where he’d died.

Bucky’s voice was a scrape, and what he said was even worse: “I wish I’d died when I fell,” and Steve wanted to argue but he had the terrible, choking feeling again; the asthma feeling. He didn’t have asthma anymore, hadn’t for years, but it was too late now: he’d been formed by it.

Besides, his argument was only selfish: You can’t feel that way, because what about me?

Bucky was staring up at himself. “Because this guy in the museum—he’s dead, and he’s got this heroic backstory, and everyone likes him.” He swallowed hard and muttered: “I hate him.”

“I love him,” Steve said.

A muscle twitched in Bucky’s jaw. He cut his eyes toward Steve but only for a second. “It’s just…I had to live through it and I had to do it,” he gritted out.

Steve stared down at his hands. “Yes, it’s—unfair,” he said quietly. “Everything that’s happened to us has been so goddamned unfair, Buck.”

“You’re the one who—” Bucky began, and then he stopped, face gone slack with surprise at his own words. He looked over at Steve and said, more slowly: “You’re the one who…always does things the hard way.” Bucky was still fumbling his way toward the rest of it: “Me, I… Me …” He hunched forward and looked up at the picture of himself – A Fallen Comrade – like he was only now understanding that it really was him up there: that he really and truly was James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes .

“You always tried to make things easy for me, Buck.” His voice echoed through the enormous, empty hall of the Smithsonian. “You always looked out for me, tried to take care of me. You were always so kind. I was the one who made things complicated, Buck. I still do. I’ve never been able to do things the easy way. It’s—”

“—the fundamental fact of your nature,” Bucky said slowly.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “But to look on the bright side of it, Buck, it’s served me well, all things considered. I don’t expect things to be easy…and they’re not, God knows they’re not. Best to be prepared for it, I think: to get used to living without anyone’s approval, get in the habit of fighting, and of enduring the fight. Because what choice is there?”

“It’s no kind of life,” Bucky said.

“You’re wrong. It’s the only kind of life there is.” Steve turned his hand and offered it, palm up, to Bucky, who stared at it for a moment and then took it, threading his metal fingers through Steve’s. Steve had expected Bucky’s fingers to be cold, but they weren’t, and they weren’t rock hard, either: there was some give there. Steve squeezed them. “Trust me. Buck, will you trust me?”

Steve held his breath until the answering squeeze came. “Well, obviously,” Bucky said, and awkwardly pulled him into a—new first kiss, with lips that were chapped and out of practice, but warm.