Who Am I? » [Stucky]

187. Pages and Paraphernalia

Bucky’s fingers unfastened Steve’s ruffled bowtie as they strolled through the apartment door. “’M sure gonna miss that ridiculous kid...” Bucky said with a sad smile and glossy blue eyes. “Beautiful wake though. But you should’a seen the look on his family’s faces as you read that eulogy... I know you were busy reading from the page n’all but there wasn’t a dry eye in the house...” Bucky rocked onto his tip toe and pecked Steve’s lips with wordless admiration for his compassionate fiancé.

“It was the poem that got me,” Steve conferred, standing around in the darkness undoing Bucky’s tie with nimble fingers dancing hither and thither in spritely manner. “I only just kept it together during my reading... Poor kid... So young... I just can’t stop thinking about it. About how maybe I could’a done something, y’know?” He separated the untwined strands of Bucky’s silk tie and pressed a tender kiss to Bucky’s rumpled forehead, furrowed sorrowfully.

“Hey, it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t any of our faults,” Bucky uttered with a clinch of his jaw to restrain his own tears. “I know that soppy tone and those big soppy eyes too well. Don’t let yourself go down that road. If it’s anyone’s fault it’s that Nazi bastard who’s now lying at the bottom of a canyon – alone, dead. Rather befitting don’t you think?” Bucky wrung his human hand around his metal bicep.

“Now you’re being soppy,” Steve reprimanded softly, voice alluring like the song of a nightingale. He nudged the door closed behind Bucky and took him by the hand; leading him to the window.

They gazed out on New York City, an array of splotches of light, splattered randomly in the night like a Jackson Pollock painting. A continuum of colours blazed, ruby reds all the way to royal purples, jewels chiselled into statuesque silhouetted buildings, engulfed in darkness under the silk jet black sky. The moon was a slither, a waning crescent peeking from behind a shading of grey clouds.

“But...” Bucky shook his head solemnly, hand mingling with Steve’s like two tangled balls of yarn. “Though this may be the end of something, the end of someone... It’s the beginning of something new...” He remarked, getting lost in the apogee of sirens on the horizon, the orchestra creaking of the floorboards beneath his feet and the clunking of pipes in the walls. “I spoke to Coulson in the church yard...”

“You did?” Steve smiled warmly at his other half, their rings chasing around one anothers, curved edges swivelling and rubbing as they playfully linked their hands.

“Mm... He said to me that from now on this is just another chapter in my story. And that got me thinkin-“

“God help us all(!)” Steve taunted, snickering to himself and receiving a punch to his pectoral. “Bucky’s thinking(!) Kind of a rare occurrence... Should we Facebook it or something?” Steve cringed to himself. “That’s a coupley thing right?” He gave a cringe-worthy smile to Bucky, wincing at the modern parlance.

“God, never say that again,” Bucky choked, spluttering out a mortified laugh. But his grin was just as beautiful as the starlit city shining out through their window. “It just sounds wrong coming outta your mouth, old man,” Bucky snarked, grinning at his polished shoes.

“Hey, excuse me. Sorry to break it to you, Romeo, but you’re actually older than me,” Steve retorted, face scrunched in discontentment. “Let’s not become one of those couples though...” Steve grimaced and shook his head whilst picturing clichéd scenarios. “Y’know the ones who constantly post pictures on their Facebook wherever they go..?” He gave a shiver of disgust.

“You mean like Pepper and Tony?” Bucky snorted, equally disgusted my memories of rolling through reels of coupley pictures in every tableau imaginable and in every pose possible for the human mind to conjure. “Aren’t they repulsive?” Bucky joked, trying to keep his face screwed up into a contemptuous frown but cracking a reluctant smile.