I Loved You First | Not Easily Conquered ▸ [STUCKY]

Ch. 5

1969

Dumbstruck, Steve reads the papers on the morning of June 29th. There have been riots in Greenwich Village at some place called the Stonewall Inn. The West Village has always been alright, nicer than where Steve kicked around anyway, and he's surprised, but not as surprised as when he reads more and sees what they were rioting about. This is how Steve learns the word bisexual.

Like the electricity in the air before a lightning storm, there is change coming.

Steve does odd jobs for a while and keeps an eye on the news. He worries about Peggy and sends postcards to Kat. He does paint work in Pittsburgh and construction for a month in Nashville. From a motel in Little Rock Steve watches Stark put his men on the moon and is mystified by their slow and plodding steps on the grainy black and white television. Aldrin makes his speech and then plants down the American flag, as if it matters - as if, in this whole huge universe, the most important thing to do is show up the Soviets on a little rock that's out of everyone's jurisdiction anyway. He sketches the scene, the little men on the far-away rock in the sky, and draws Howard Stark's face on the flag instead of the stars and stripes.

When Stark has a kid a few years on Steve's surprised, because he was sure that the space program, that was it, that was his real baby, even if it was only one of a thousand others, discarded once it was done and filed. Howard's got no goddamn idea how to love people. All he loves are the things he creates.

-

The letters are worn now by Steve's constant worrying, the edges all frayed, soft and peeling where he's folded and re-folded them. By now he can recite them all almost word for word.

They fucked me up, but I don't ever wanna tell you just how bad. I won't even now, don't even want to think those things in your direction. But I will tell you - mostly because God willing you'll never see these - I will tell you that when you first came for me I thought, hand to the Lord, that I was finally dead. And then I figured it was just another trick. They did that, made me think you were there. They'd shoot me up with something, and after I felt it slide through my veins under my skin I would see you, or I'd hear you, and I'd say your name the way I used to. You know what I mean - that nickname you hated, the one I still sometimes say just to rile you up because you're amazing when I piss you off, your face all red like that, something about the fact that I can get your heart going.

But that name, I'd say it over and over. Up until I realized that they were back to their old drill, asking how's that feel, does it hurt when I cut here? How about the sole of his foot next? And then I'd go back to it, name, rank, serial number. You wouldn't believe all the German I learned on that table. It was a God damn language lesson.

And now I'm trekking around with you, killing anyone who's got a swastika on and looks at you wrong, and I'll tell you, my feet bled for three days straight after you came to get me, and I didn't once feel a thing.

It's like this. You were the best at mythology when we were kids, and I remember one day we were reading about Icarus. And you remember this, I know you do, but I'm going to tell you the story again anyway. Icarus made wings out of wax to escape a prison. But when he was outside for the first time in years there was the sun hanging up in the sky above him and he thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He flew closer and closer and his wings started to melt, but he didn't give a good goddamn. He kept flying up until he couldn't fly anymore, and his eyes were probably burning, and his skin was probably burning, but still he didn't care. And then his wings melted all the way and he fell miles and miles into the ocean and brained himself on a rock, that poor stupid asshole. And I'll tell you what: I'm no better. I'm no fucking better.

-

At the Grand Canyon Steve makes a campfire. It's a little cold, just the way Bucky predicted it would be, and by the flickering orange light Steve starts a sketch. It's not the portrait that he's got cut out from the newspaper and pressed between the pages in the back of his sketchbook, not even close. Instead it's Buck the way that Steve remembers him, those big heavy-lidded eyes, the cleft in his chin Steve sometimes thought about pressing his thumb into, his hair a little unkempt like it was after a night of dancing. He draws Buck with his mouth open on a smile, on a laugh, and shades in the crinkles around the corners of his bright eyes, and sketches the broad slope of his shoulders and even the loosened knot of his tie.

He looks at Bucky's face for a second, frozen in a laugh, frozen in time, and then he takes the sketchbook in one hand and holds it up and out so that Bucky can face the stars and the full moon and the Canyon itself, stretching and winding as far as Steve can see, and he hopes that Bucky knows, wherever he is, that they've made it; they've finally made it here, together.

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