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

Ch. 18

1943

Steve's red pencil is worn down almost all the way to the nub, but he only needs a little more to shade in the space just between the building across him and the beginning of the sunset. He takes a moment to shave at it with his pocketknife before bending back over his sketchbook, kicking his feet into the empty air below him.

There's a commotion at the front door as Bucky gets in. Steve snorts to himself when he hears Buck step on the loose nail in the floorboard and let out a colorful string of curses for what must be the sixth time in as many days. Barefoot, Bucky climbs out the window Steve's left open and joins him on the tiny fire escape.

"That was a new one," Steve comments.

Bucky hums and leans over to see Steve's drawing. He smells like he always does after work, a mix of sea-salt and sweat-salt and cigarette smoke, his arm pressed damp and warm against Steve's. He looks at the sketchpad in Steve's hands for a second and then out at the sunset, squinting. Steve flips to the next page and scratches down, fast but precise as he can, Buck's profile, illuminated by the dying orange and pink light of the sun.

"So what's your story, morning glory? Wanna go out tonight?" asks Bucky. He glances down at the sketchpad again, smiling a little when he sees what Steve's switched to drawing. He always wants to go out.

Steve raises an eyebrow, still focused on getting down the line of Bucky's brow. "Shouldn't you be getting ready for tomorrow?"

Bucky leans back on his elbows and shrugs. "I don't think there's a better way to get ready for Basic than dancing."

"Well, guess I wouldn't know," Steve replies, before he can check himself. 

Bucky looks at him sharply. "Hey," he says. "None of that."

Steve sighs. If they've had this argument once, they've had it a million times. "Buck-"

"It's only Basic," tries Bucky again. "Steve."

"Buck."

"Will you look at me? Jesus."

Steve huffs and glares at him.

"What's got you all worked up?" asks Bucky quietly. He's leaning in so close that their foreheads are almost touching. "I know you want to get out there, and I know that you're - you're sore, about me gettin' in and you not, but you gotta hear me, it's like I keep telling you -"

"It's not just that," Steve says. He looks at Buck helplessly, wishing for the words to come. The truth is that he and Bucky haven't been apart for longer than maybe a week in the last decade and he's not entirely sure what he's supposed to get up to without him. Bucky's his only real friend in the whole entire world. The only thing he has is Bucky. And if Bucky goes out there, if Bucky dies out there, Steve has no goddamn idea how he's supposed to forgive himself for not being right beside him the whole time.

First and foremost Steve wants to fight for his country. But now that the future is coming up to meet them, Steve thinks more and more about Bucky alone out there, about letters that could get lost so easy in the mail; about, ridiculously, how cold Bucky's feet get at night.

It's a weird role reversal, Steve worrying about Bucky this way. Their balance has been upset by it, but Steve can't help himself.

"Then what is it?" pushes Buck, clueless asshole that he is. His voice is a little reedy. "You gotta tell me, Steve. You gotta tell me. I can't fight with you tonight."

Defeated, Steve shakes his head, looking at Bucky and summoning up a smile for him. "It's not you, Buck. I just had a long day. It isn't you, huh?"

"You're better off here," says Bucky, quiet and firm. "You hear me? Someone's gotta hold down the fort until I get back." He pauses for a second, and Steve can hear the joviality in his voice, even if it's faked, "Who knows, maybe you'll even learn how to cook me a decent meal without burning the whole complex down first. And you can write me letters so I won't get bored."

"Smartass," says Steve, softening. "Like hell I'm cooking you dinner; I'm not your girl, Barnes."

"No," Buck says, looking at him. He smiles, but it comes out strange. "No, guess you aren't."

Silence falls over them. Bucky looks back out at the sunset, just the last strains of it, and Steve finishes up his sketch by the light he has left, drawing the sharp, strong line of Buck's jaw, the bulge of his Adam's apple, and then shading in the five o'clock shadow which he'll have shaved off by tomorrow.

Bucky appears to decide to drop it, because just then he rummages in his discarded jacket pocket. "Saw you were runnin' low," he explains, handing over the new pencils he must have just bought on the way home. "So. Just in case."

Steve thinks for one horrific, embarrassing moment that, honest to God, he's going to cry.

Their balance is upset. Bucky, much as he'd never admit it and Steve would never, ever say it, is the crier out of the two of them: Steve remembers Buck's frustrated tears two winters ago when Steve almost died in the night, spilling warm and wet over Steve's hand while Buck thought he was sleeping. He cries when he's scared.

And now, right now, Buck's scared.

He does a hell of a job of hiding it, but he can't hide anything from Steve. He's been saying goodbye to Steve in little ways for weeks now: stuffing all his cash under the ratty couch cushions, sorting his civvies into clothes that might fit Steve and clothes that are falling apart at the seams, and now this, giving Steve pencils before he leaves because he knows damn well that Steve's not going to buy them for himself while Buck's gone.

And it's all because Bucky's got this idea in his head that his ticket out of Brooklyn is one way only.

Steve takes the gift, and because he doesn't know how to do anything but wear his heart on his sleeve today, Buck's brow furrows. "They the right ones?" he asks, concerned.

"Jesus Christ, James Buchanan Barnes," says Steve, shoving hard at Bucky's shoulder, angry and disbelieving and somehow suddenly elated all at once. Bucky laughs and grins that grin that could start a riot.

"Goddamn, they must be perfect if you're saying that," Buck teases.

"You better be planning to scrub all that smug off if you want a single dame to look at you tonight." Steve moves to shut his sketchbook, but Bucky catches his hand by the wrist and stops him, looking down at the half-done sketch of himself on the page.

"Hey, why're you drawing me? I'm not even shippin' out yet," Bucky says, sounding a little rough. "It's only ten weeks, anyway. You're not getting sentimental on me, are you?"

"You wish," Steve says, kicking Bucky's bare foot with his own. But he doesn't move away, and Buck doesn't either, and so they end up with their legs tangled together. Bucky is the subject of about eighty percent of Steve's sketches anyway, Steve almost tells him, but he stops himself and says instead, "I'm just documenting your ugly mug so I can show all the girls how handsome I am in comparison."

"I keep tryin' to convince them that you're the looker," Bucky says, absent and honest. "You sure you don't mind dancing tonight?"

"Nah," says Steve, if a little despondently. "Go get scrubbed up, I know you want to go out."

"Aw, c'mon, don't be so serious," Buck cajoles. "Not like there won't be plenty of time for me to bug you night and day between Basic and the war, right?"

Steve looks over at him. "Just want you to be careful, is all," he says, echoing a statement he's heard from Bucky a thousand times.

Bucky stands, brushing off his pants and heading back inside. Over his shoulder he calls, "None of that, now. I'm your bad penny, Rogers! I'll be turning up under your shoe until the day you die, wait and see."

From the sketchbook Buck looks out at something in the distance, his eyes squinted against the sunset, the light long gone by now.

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