[fic] When Lilacs Last (Captain America, Bucky and Eli, Civil War)
Title: When Lilacs Last
Summary: "I hear your notes, I hear your call, I hear, I come presently, I understand you": War makes brothers. Kills them, too.
Characters: Captain America, Bucky Barnes and Eli Bradley [ pairings]
Setting/spoilers: Truth: Red, White, and Black, Young Avengers, and Cap v.5, through Civil War and its immediate aftermath.
Disclaimer: Marvel, not me.
Warning: Bucky Barnes is not fit for modern consumption.
Notes: See below for full pairing lists and source notes, should you need them. Thanks to rubynye, thete1, and thenotoriousg for assorted inspiration, information, and support. This story was aided immeasurably by jubilancy; she edited this, well beyond the call of duty, and cheered unflaggingly for a good two months. All the remaining flaws are my fault, but she's more than likely responsible for any virtues you may see.
1. Patriot
He intended to win this thing.
For Eli, joining the resistance had never been in question.
"Think it's going to be as big as the last one?" Teddy asked early one morning. He and Eli were on rooftop sentry duty, savoring the fresh air as they scanned the sky and street.
Eli adjusted the focus on his binoculars.
Sighing, Teddy tossed aside the Post the headline said 68% for Iron Man, 31% for Cap, and wasn't it just the way of the world that both sides got boiled down to the rich and the white? He knocked Eli's side with his shoulder. "Civil war, dude. Civil *war*."
"Undeclared conflict," Eli said and pulled away a little. Teddy grew up on the freaking Upper West Side, but hadn't seemed to ever hear of a little thing called "personal space".
"Answer the question, man, or I'm nodding off."
"You say that like it's a bad thing." Eli stretched out one leg and rubbed his eyes.
They'd only just moved to the safehouse in Inwood. Across the street, where there should have been wavering TV-glows and noise, there was only the park, full of blank shadows and silence. He was still getting used to that.
His grandparents' apartment was only fifteen minutes away on foot, north-northeast. It might as well have been in Mobile. In Alaska. Eli knew it was the same for Sam and Luke. They lived thirty blocks south, but Harlem was the moon for all they saw it.
"I'm just saying, it's really freaky. Civil War, like we're fighting to free the " Teddy shrugged. His form shimmered until he looked a little like Abe Lincoln, a little like Rhett Butler. Stovepipe hat, movie-star face. "You know."
"I do," Eli said.
*
Back when he had quit the team, Eli spent most of his time alone. I don't know what foolishness you've been up to, his grandmother had said. She curved her hand around the back of Eli's skull before dropping a kiss right on the crown. But you take this time alone and sort yourself out.
"Yes'm," he'd murmured in response.
Eli was used to being alone; there was no sorting to do.
He was the late-model, surprise baby when everyone, his mother included, thought she was long past conceiving. All his siblings were old enough to babysit him, never young enough to really *play*.
All his life, he was skinny and knock-kneed, smart-mouthed and liable to get in over his head. Kids didn't befriend the Urkle. Even when he placed in the 99th percentile for the tests at both geek havens Bronx Science and Stuyvesant, even when he went off to the former with a stuffed knapsack and calculator in his pocket, he'd remained alone.
His whole life, his best friend was a six-three, massive and shuffling man with sad eyes and hands big enough to crush basketballs. His grandfather was a good listener, a better stickball partner, but not exactly a peer.
Isaiah spent seventeen years in Leavenworth on bullshit charges. In itself, that was not all that unusual for any Black man; Eli's grandmother made sure he understood that. The injustice was not unique. Taken on its own, it did not make Isaiah *special*, any more than the fact that he had somehow survived the serum experiments.
The measure of a soul is what it does with its pain, she said.
Isaiah survived seventeen years in solitary. Eli had always figured he could get through a little loneliness.
*
People came in and out of the safehouse at all hours.
Cap was always up, always waiting for another piece of news, some hint that tide was about to turn, more shreds of hope. No one had seen him sleep, least of all Eli.
"The man needs some good news," Sam said, closing the door to the conference room with a quiet click, "And that would be why we're running the errands."
One advantage to the high number of brothers in the resistance: Errands could be run by guys no one would remember.
"Sure." While Sam shushed Redwing's bitchy squawk, Eli tried to resist touching the stupid wig on his head. He looked like George Clinton in this spongy monster. "Sure."
Reaching for the front door's locks, Sam shouldered him out of the way. He wasn't as big as Luke Cage nobody was but he was big enough that Eli felt crowded. Sam reminded him of Josiah, except Sam was here. Not gone. "You got your addresses memorized?"
"Done." Eli nodded. He had six dropboxes to check, nothing he couldn't handle. "You?"
Sam shrugged extravagantly and tapped his temple. "All in the brain, kiddo."
"I'm not "
Sam backed right off. "Easy, easy. 'Course you're not a kid."
"Yeah," Eli said and made his shoulders relax. "Yeah, all right."
They left the safehouse ten minutes apart. On the subway platform, Eli slouched as much as he could, never acknowledging Sam's presence fifteen away. If his grandmother saw him now, saw his posture and the streetwise pout on his lips, she'd tan his ass in nothing flat.
When he switched to the express at 125th, Sam elbowed him and said, "Gray's, seven?"
Eli nodded and didn't look back.
When the errands were done, he and Sam met back at 72nd street to split a papaya shake and five-dog order.
*
His bed was more than a cot Cap told lots of stories about the cots at Camp Lehigh, about sleeping in the rough in the Black Forest or in the holds of subs. He made sure they knew that this might be war, but it could have been worse.
It could always have been worse.
Eli's bed was no cot, but it was hard, narrow, and cold. He never slept so much as dozed.
Then again, he had not slept well in a long time. Not since the SHRA and going underground, maybe even since he got the blood transfusion. Since Iron Lad, if he were being honest. Or Kang, whatever they were supposed to call him now.
Restless dreams, though, had nothing on trying to ignore the whimpers and whispers coming from the other bed. When Eli got up to leave, Billy crackled, electricity filling his open mouth, glowing over Teddy's bare shoulder.
"Eli?" Billy whispered. "I want "
Eli shook his head. "You two do your...thing. I'm good."
The safehouse was, for once, relatively quiet. Cage was passed out in the dining room, one arm curled protectively over his face as Eli padded through.
As he passed Vision, just outside the girls' room, he patted the robot's elbow. Must be nice, being able to power down, just plain turn off like that.
Eli cracked open the girls' door and peered inside. Kate was sitting up, fumbling for her bow.
"Okay if I sack out here?" he whispered as he closed the door.
In the other bed, Cassie stirred, lifting her head up and peering through her hair.
Kate glanced at her, then back at Eli. "Just don't let Cap catch you again."
"Man, I'm not doing anything "
There'd been no way he could possibly explain to Captain freaking America that he wasn't sneaking *into* the girls' room. He was sneaking *out of* the Kaplan-Altman Love Hotel.
Kate snickered. "You're really not. But he's an old-fashioned guy. Got to respect that."
Eli grabbed her extra pillow nice and soft, expensive foam stuff. "Greatest generation, my ass."
Cassie inhaled sharply, getting that deer-in-headlights look she always got when one of them said anything against the Avengers. Kate tossed her teddy bear at Cassie's chest and made her laugh.
On the floor Eli pulled the pillow half over his face and shushed them. Cassie threw the bear his way, but it went wide and bounced off the door.
"Don't know about you, but some of us're trying to sleep," he said, rolling onto his side, his back to Kate.
"Cranky face Bradley," Kate said. Her mattress creaked a little as she shifted around. "Sweet dreams, dumbass."
"Night, John-Boy!" Cassie said.
Eli grunted.
Waiting for them to drop off, he ended up rolling onto his stomach, arms crossed on the pillow, chin digging into his wrist.
When Billy got really worked up, he gurgled, half-cast spells flickering around him like St. Elmo's fire. Teddy, on the other hand, went quiet. All except his breathing, and that speeded up, deepened. Eli shifted against the floor, spread his legs a little. Tried to pretend he wasn't getting a little hard all over again.
Kate would use a rusty arrow to slice off his balls if she knew what he was doing here, almost rubbing against the floor.
She'd enjoy it, too.
He pressed his body flat as he could, flat as a board, and told himself to suck up the ache.
It wasn't that he was interested. Not in Billy and Teddy, not really. It was physiological, his body's reactions to the sounds, the *thought*, of them fooling around. His enhanced senses teased out every murmur, each salt-rich scent, drowned him in their reactions.
The fact that it was probably just chemical didn't make him feel much better.
If he were interested, he might maybe, if he ever lost his damn *mind* answer those hooded glances Billy gave him, acknowledge their red cheeks, grin back at Teddy. They might open up a space between them. He might slip in, he might enjoy.
If, but not. Doing anything remotely like that would be bad, unforgivably bad, leadership. He was stupid to entertain the thought in the first place.
Eli had read Sun Tzu and Clausewitz, Du Bois and Malcolm, Drucker and goddamn *Trump*. None of them would ever dream of what he was imagining.
He was in charge. He'd do well to remember that, even if his dick refused to take orders.
Eli grinned, painfully, as he sat up, then made for the door. He made for the bathroom as quietly as he could to take care of business.
*
Eli took stock regularly, quietly, toting up who was where, and why. He listened all the time. To hallway greetings, huddled conferences, spat-word arguments across the big table. It wasn't like on the streets it wasn't that he blended in here. More like everyone was part of the scenery.
He listened, and learned.
Everyone was uprooted here. Luke Cage missed Jessica and his baby daughter; everyone knew that. After the first big fight, Teddy missed Billy.
Everyone knew *that*, too, even if it made their eyes dart and their voices splutter a little. Teddy slumped around, four inches shorter than his average, hair two shades darker. Cap took to squeezing his shoulder even more than usual.
"He's coming back," Eli told Teddy after dinner. They were back on the roof. Teddy kept shivering between his gargoyle Skrull face and human one.
"Yeah," Teddy said. He wrapped his arms around his knees. "He *has* to."
Eli needed to learn how Cap did this kind of thing. He patted Teddy's shoulder, even squeezed, but Teddy just looked away and sniffed.
How did Cap make himself so certain that he *believed* the comfort he offered?
"It's like like there's a hole in my chest," Teddy said suddenly. He yanked up his shirt as his skin shifted and went transparent over a deep, black hole, squared-off and bottomless as an elevator shaft.
"Shit, Ted, I " Eli withdrew his hand. "He's coming back."
"Yeah." Teddy tugged on his shirt-hem and looked down. "Yeah, I know. It's just..."
Eli swallowed. "You miss him."
He knew that he was lucky to be alone. Watching out for his teammates was more than enough responsibility right now.
He was glad to be alone; he really was. He missed his grandmother and Isaiah, to be sure, but what he was doing here was much more important.
He knew Cap would agree.
*
Cap, after all, was alone. It didn't seem to bother *him*. They had their priorities.
Eli liked being around Cap, if only because it kept his mind on those priorities. So he joined the planning conference for liberating the prisoner transport.
He must have been early, however, because he found Cap alone in front of the big table, poring over streetmaps and biting his cheek.
"Elijah, good," Cap said without looking up. He pressed his index finger on the map right over, Eli noted as he joined Cap's side, the intersection of Lenox and 125th Street.
"That's not too far from here," Eli said. "Huh."
Words no longer made much sense, not these days. They were underground on the top floor of an eight-story building. They were fighting a war in their own neighborhoods.
"Home soil," Cap said, then smiled. "Home asphalt, I suppose."
"Just different," Eli said after a moment. "Not like parachuting into, whatever. Vichy France. Used to go to the mosque around the corner."
He stroked the intersection with his index finger. With his scarlet glove. The territory might as well have been foreign; he had to see the neighborhood as a grid of escapes and traps. He had to treat it like a chessboard, put his memories aside.
Cap might have been looking at him, but Eli focused on his glove and tapped the map. "Doesn't matter now. Just territory."
Cap spread his fingers over half of Central Park and the Hudson. "Don't say that. It's never just a map."
Eli snorted softly. "Always somebody's hood?"
"Yes." Cap leaned in to Eli's line of sight, then smiled and nodded. His eyes looked sad; tired, at least, red as Eli's gloves. "What happened to the mosque?"
"Nothing. Still there, far as I know." Eli gave Cap a smile. "Grandma, though. Argued with the imam and we never went back."
"Ah, well." Cap scratched at the stubble on his cheek. Now that Eli was looking, Cap appeared thinner than he had, like there were more shadows on his face. "She's a formidable woman. Admirably so."
Eli nodded and moved his hands to his side. He didn't, quite, know what to do with them. "She packed my bag *days* before you called, you know. Knew I was joining up before I did."
Cap laughed at that, loudly enough that, over in the corner, Redwing shifted on his perch and snapped his beak at them. Cap laughed a little louder, like a kid, almost, like Teddy or someone.
Eli had tried, now and then, to imagine what it must be like to be as *old* as Cap older than his grandmother, but looking much younger than his mom. He always gave up, his thoughts shying away like sheets of newspaper caught in the draft between buildings. Part of the problem was that Cap just didn't *look* old.
Barring decades in an iceberg, Eli still wondered if he'd look half as good when he was half Cap's age. He didn't care, really, about his looks. What he couldn't wrap his mind around was how Cap was outside of time like he was. Outside, young and energetic even if, right now, he needed a weeklong nap and gallons of matzoh-ball soup but with as many memories as any old person, as many gravestones to visit.
"Still with us?" Cap touched Eli's elbow. For a moment, before he forced himself to concentrate on the map again, Eli wondered why Teddy got the shoulder-squeezes, but he only got two fingers, light as the breeze from Redwing's wing.
"Yes, sir." Eli bent back over the map. "Where were we?"
*
Billy came back, but Cassie left. He didn't know what to make of that.
Amid the errands and occasional scuffles, trips through sewers and swinging across rooftops, there was far more downtime than Eli would have expected, let alone preferred.
As big as the safehouse was, these were still close quarters.
Funny, though, how so many people could pass in and out, yet he could go entire days without speaking to anyone if he didn't want to.
*
During yet another lull, Kate announced that she wanted to teach them to play bridge.
"Count me out," Eli said.
He held himself apart. Hiding the MGH from his teammates *and* at home had been good experience in maintaining the safe and appropriate distance. Cap did the same thing; so did Luke and Sam.
Eli was accustomed to this this quiet in his head, observation and evaluation over participation.
"Don't be such a *grumpus*," Kate said. Billy nodded while Teddy thumped Eli's shoulder. "We're not running away or anything. It's just us."
Eli nodded. "I can see that."
Kate huffed out her breath, making her hair lift off her forehead. "Right, so all I'm saying is "
"I have surveillance reports to check."
" we should be together," Kate said, loudly, speaking over him.
Eli could hardly blame her for her renewed insistence on teambuilding and quality time. In the wake of Cassie's defection, gathering the wagons was only natural.
He missed Cassie, too. Not simply for strategic reasons, either.
"Later," he said and slid out from under Teddy's heavy arm. Kate started to shake her head. "Later. Promise."
Later came and went.
When Eli emerged from the makeshift archives, the apartment was dark. The windows, to a one, appeared as black rectangles floating against charcoal walls. The floorboards sighed beneath his sockfeet.
He stopped just outside the kitchen, just opposite the window that opened on to the fire escape. He and the others frequently used the fire escape to get to the roof to take watchpoint, but here, tonight, two figures occupied the ledge.
Just sentry duty, Eli told himself, and rubbed his eyes.
The pair could have been Teddy and Billy given their closeness, the slope of their shoulders, touching arms, the matched tilts of their heads. Like they were looking at something small, something vulnerable, located just between them.
Except the sizes were all wrong to be the Altman-Kaplans. These figures matched in size, broader and a little *thicker* than Teddy, even at his Hulklingest or all Skrulled-out. They were definitely big enough to swallow Billy up as an hors d'oeuvre.
Eli turned to go. No, he *considered* going, as he might abstractly consider the MTA map when his train got stopped between stations. Leaving was as vague an idea as tracing the various junctions and stretches of different lines he couldn't follow through in either case.
The figures inclined together, closer, faces turning, and kissed. Dim light, diffused and directionless, settled over the napes of their necks, across blond hair and the twist of a tendon beneath dark skin.
The light slid around them, tracing a conical shape perched on the ladder. It swivelled, shadows resolving into a head and body that sliced the light with the vicious curve of its beak and beat its wings.
Eli stumbled backward. His arms swung heavily at his sides, his palms itched emptily.
The kiss persisted, dark fingers in light hair, pale hand on dark neck.
Cap and Falcon, fitted together, remained in his mind's eye.
Eli swung at empty air, slapped a wall and doorframe, before stilling himself. His knuckles ached, but his palm continued to burn.
He'd been mistaken Cap wasn't alone. Being wrong, making a mistake, was the worst thing he could do to himself.
*
After the sun rose and another day came, the kiss lingered, their *closeness*.
Anger ran through his body, clenching his jaw and twisting his shoulders. He was angrier yet at the fact that he didn't know whom, or what, to blame. He felt the anger, its steel-coils and sharp barbs in every muscle, but it had no object save himself. Save his own pigheaded, blind-eyed, *stupid*-ass mistake.
He needed to hit something, but, more than that, he needed to *learn* something. He followed Kate to the jury-rigged gym and asked her to teach him some katas.
He might as well have come right out and asked her to hit him. A lot. After half an hour of playing human sparring dummy, the anger had not lessened, but it was stuck beneath a haze of dizziness and pulsating aches.
"Give it to me again," he said.
Kate tugged her ponytail tighter. "You'll train, but you won't play cards? Bradley, you're a *freak*."
"Priorities." He squared his stance and raised his hands. "C'mon. Again."
"You're an idiot," Kate said and wiped her face with a towel. "You don't miss home? Your own bed? Anything?"
"Not important."
She snapped the towel at him and danced out of reach. "Not trivial, either."
Eli loosened his shoulders and checked his balance. "Says you."
"Says me, and I *also* say you're an idiot." Kate circled him, her steps quick and distractingly dainty.
"Who's in charge here?"
"Cap is." She laughed, running backward on tiptoe, only to dodge left while faking right and knock his feet out from under him. She planted her fists on her hips. "And, right now, *me*."
Eli landed face-down and remembered being in her room, hard and lonely. He steadied his breathing against the memory's stab as Kate stood over him.
Her face shone, skin pink and eyes narrowed. "Ahh, want a hand up, baby?"
He ignored her. Back on his feet, Eli tucked his chin down and blinked away the surge of vertigo. "Do that sweep again."
"Idiot *and* a masochist!" Kate dropped one shoulder, spun, and this time, only one of Eli's legs gave way. As he dove, he knocked her in the ribs, then rolled free, springing back up.
This was more like it, fighting as hard as he could.
He couldn't help but *try* to win. You could say it was bred into him.
You could, but he'd have to take you down for that.
"Break," Kate called after an hour. She sank down on the mats and patted the space beside her. "Doing anything for lunch?"
"Jeez, I don't know." Eli wiped his face and head with the towel. "Eating?"
"Ha, *ha*." Kate smirked up at him. "I'll let you sit at the cool kids' table."
*
Given the weight of evidence, both welcome and not, Eli had to revise his estimations of solitude. No one was alone here, not even Cap. Maybe not even himself.
He didn't have to be happy about this state of affairs; he just had to be careful not to make any more mistakes.
Then he met Bucky.
On Christmas Eve, flanked by Kate and Vision, Eli saw a different, a *truer* kind of loneliness. There was Cap, dislocated from time, Isaiah in his cell, even Eli himself.
But, somehow, all of *them* found a connection or two.
One figure, black against the graveyard snow and busy gray sky, hands driven deep into his pockets calligraphy's penstrokes, like a haiku, brief and solitary.
That was Bucky, and he really didn't have anyone. He really didn't *want* anyone.
Kate took his hand on the walk home, her trench coat flapping in the wind. On the train down to Borough Hall the safehouse had moved yet again her head rested on his shoulder and her lips curved in a smile as she dozed.
The car was empty, their reflections vague on the scratchitti'd window opposite.
In a rush of adrenaline scarier than any fight, Eli rocked against the seat.
He hadn't ever been alone. Not like *that*, not like Bucky.
*
A day or so later, Eli passed Cap in the conference room. He stopped when he thought he heard Cap speak.
Cap's eyes were caught in the lamp's light, wide and bright. Then he shook his head, and said, "Forgive me, I thought " He passed his hand over his face. "Your costume took me aback. Must be more tired than I thought."
"No doubt," Eli said, He smoothed down the front of his jacket, then stopped when he realized he was mirroring Cap's gesture.
Cap was looking at him. Not critically, although Eli was simultaneously fixing his posture and telling himself he shouldn't worry about pleasing *anyone*, but calmly.
"How is he?" Cap asked.
"Who, Bucky?" Not that Cap could have meant anyone else, but Eli refused to make any more mistakes.
"Yes."
"He's " Eli cleared his throat. He'd been avoiding Cap for several days. The kiss may have faded a bit from his mind, but it had not wholly vanished. He doubted it ever would. "It was an honor. Seeing him."
Cap smiled a little. "A monument, then?"
"I don't follow," Eli said and pursed his lips. "Sir."
"Nothing." Cap rubbed his cheek and smiled again. His expression this time was friendlier. Warmer. A little phonier, too. "Elijah, about "
There was no way they were going to talk about Captain America and The Falcon playing tonsil hockey. Not if Eli had any say in the matter.
Eli took two steps back and held up his hands. "None of my business, sir."
The phony smile evaporated; Cap swallowed and tilted his head slightly. "If you'd hear me out?"
He sounded Cap always sounded *earnest*, but now his tone was earnest and a little nervous, all at once. Eli moved back and nodded. Cap gestured him closer.
They stood together at the window, shoulder to shoulder. The room's light, behind them, reduced their reflections to the details and texture of their costumes the scales of Cap's jersey, the weave of Eli's coat.
"Sometimes," Cap said, and his breath came shallow against the stitches on his cheek, "we find ourselves in situations beyond our...control. Not of our making. You see, son?"
Eli shifted his weight back onto his heels. When he realized Cap was looking at him, blue eyes steady as the sky in his shadowed face, he nodded quickly. "Yeah, sure."
"But we always have a choice. Even if it's hard to see, it's always there."
In the silence, Eli nodded again. "Yes, sir."
"I wouldn't want to think that you are doing this because..." Cap trailed off, squinting at his reflection. "I'm a man. Just a man. Your choice in these matters, your discretion, those are entirely your own."
Eli bit the inside of his cheek as he worked through Cap's words. He might have been talking about the kiss with Sam, asking Eli, however obliquely, for his discretion. But the way his eyebrows were drawn down and together, the tension in his jaw and hoarseness to his voice suggested that Cap meant something else. Eli suspected he meant something more important, something about the war itself.
Frustration burned at the back of Eli's throat, pounded at his skull. He would not admit twice in five minutes to not following, even though that was the case. He drew a deep breath and held it while he went back through his analysis. Bucky, and decisions, circumstances out of control, Falcon (or maybe not). Decisions and discretion.
Cap squeezed Eli's shoulder, drawing him closer. Even through the jacket, Cap felt solid and warm. Eli started to twist away, then relaxed, exhaling slowly.
Cap *was* just a man. Eli'd spent his whole life loathing someone who didn't exist, a poseur and fraud to be hated and resented, the recipient of all the acclaim and aid that Isaiah deserved.
Cap was not the enemy, not that fraud. He never had been.
Now, he was waiting for something. Looking at Eli, steady and earnest, handsome and haggard, his cheek rough with stubble and hard with tension. Now, Eli needed to tell him. Tell him all these thoughts, decisions and epiphanies, and *more*.
He failed to find the words; there were no words. Eli's mouth worked on its own, shaping air in search of thoughts.
He pressed closer, mouth working, and Cap's eyes fluttered shut for a moment as Eli kissed him. Anxiety bolted through him, followed immediately by a rapid, tingling flow of relief at the feeling, at the taste, at the *rightness*.
No words, but actions, just like his grandmother said.
Cap's mouth was soft, then hard, welcoming; his chest felt about a mile wide against Eli's.
"Oh," Cap said softly, hand on Eli's neck, thumb stroking Eli's cheek slow and sure. "Oh, Eli, I "
The surge of pleasure and relief boiled over and vanished. It left Eli's face flaming, his hands clenching at his sides, as he stumbled back. *Stupid*, stupid .
"Elijah." Cap's voice was quiet. Despite himself, Eli went still. "Please, don't . Don't go."
"I *shit*." Eli scrubbed at the back of his head, rolled his shoulders until they popped, and still nothing helped. "*Fuck*, I'm sorry."
Cap winced at the cuss, but touched Eli's hand as gently as he'd stroked his cheek. "Don't be."
Eli snorted. "Right."
"Never apologize for affection. Love." Cap was looking out the window now, addressing someone who was not Eli, was not present. Someone long gone, probably dead now. "It's a gift, a precious one."
Eli worked his jaw back and forth. There had to a few shreds of dignity he could wrap himself in. "I wasn't thinking, Cap. I'm sorry for that."
"Call me Steve," he said, and glanced back at Eli, as if from a great distance. "And I will accept that particular apology." He squeezed Eli's shoulder one more time, adding, "Thank you."
"You're welcome," Eli said, and heard his voice crack a little, uncertainly. "Uh." He shifted his weight from foot to foot and Cap *Steve* chuckled. "Can we talk about something else? Anything else."
"Certainly. If you wouldn't mind telling me more about young Mister Barnes, I'd be obliged."
Steve's arm around Eli's shoulders felt like Isaiah's then, warm and strong. Like family, a brother's. "Right, well . He fights *amazing*..."
2. Bucky/ies
The newest of the voices in Bucky's head was named Fury. Its avatar may have resembled the sergeant he'd known once, whose ass Bucky'd handed to him at poker. Bodiless and electronic, it managed to be novel *and* nostalgic.
The name alone should have made him smile. Bucky'd been notorious once for his temper.
Someone else would've found it funny. At the very least, Steve would laugh and smile. The good, real kind of smile, in his eyes as well as on his lips. He'd probably chuck Bucky under the chin, chide him for his hot temper, then turn back to work.
«Go to Spuyten Duyvil,» Fury told him. Fury was the one who'd set up the meeting; Bucky just followed the directions. «Spuyten Duyvil, heh. Know what that means, bright eyes?»
"Mouth of the devil," Bucky said.
«Maybe,» Fury said, then read a series of subway directions. Bucky only knew the old IND and BMT names, so Fury used those. After the long, rattling subway ride to the Bronx, there was a long walk west, skirting the reservoir, through hilly streets and deserted avenues.
He remembered this area. Once, on furlough, Steve took him here for Sunday dinner with his cousins. Back then, the area was home to what Steve had called "lace-curtain Irish". Bucky still didn't, quite, know what that meant. The signs over the businesses now were in Spanish as often as not. The Irish had gone, taking their curtains with them.
He kept his hands thrust into his pockets, collar turned up to his jaw against the wind. The January thaw wasn't warm so much as damp; the reservoir and, later, the river were pleated crisply, steel-gray two shades darker than the sky.
He made good time. He could walk for days if he had to.
«You're early,» Fury said. «Don't fret, though. He'll be along.»
Bucky was nearly certain there was no video-feed of his reactions, but he bared his teeth in a parody of a smile as he dropped to a crouch. Occasionally, not often, if he stayed still and quiet, Fury went away. The other voices tended to follow.
*
The commuter train from Grand Central lumbered to a halt. Four cars away, three figures disembarked.
Bucky continued to wait.
When Patriot appeared, he was out of uniform. Undercover, he said, though to Bucky he looked like any kid on the street knit cap pulled low over his brows, pants that looked big enough to fit three. Perhaps that was what passed for "undercover" these days.
"Eli," Patriot said, slapping Bucky's hand twice, then again with his knuckles. "Call me Eli."
Bucky looked at his palm. "Winter Soldier."
"You're *Bucky*," Eli said. His chin lifted on the last syllable as if he'd offered proof of something significant.
"You were the one wearing Bucky's jacket," Bucky replied.
Eli remained impassive.
Bucky remembered that fact quite clearly; he was sure of it. This young man had crouched on the roof, stood in the cemetery, wearing a quilted version of the old double-breasted costume.
"You're *the* Bucky." The definite article sounded like gravel.
Inside his pocket, Bucky flexed his metal hand. "Winter Soldier."
"Bullshit!" Eli rocked on his heels and shook his head. "Damn, that's "
«Language», the memory-of-Steve said. Bucky's lips moved with it.
"Language? Mr. Commie Super Assassin's lecturing *me* on language?" Eli yanked off his cap and waved it. "Oh, that's *nice*."
"Commie assassin?" Bucky brushed the hair out of his eyes. "Thought I was Bucky. *The* Bucky."
Eli paced half the length of the platform, then turned and flung out his arms. "For Christ's sake, you *are*. Winter Soldier, man? The hell is *that* shit?"
Rolling his cybernetic arm, Bucky heard to the faint grind of metal against bone. He knit his fingers together, metal on skin. When Eli stepped closer, asking for a response, Bucky shrugged.
"That's a that's your fucking slave name, you know?" Eli licked his lower lip and glanced away. His eyes, when he looked back, were narrowed. A few stray raindrops snagged on his lashes. "You don't even know what I'm talking about, do you?"
"No," Bucky said.
"Of course you don't." Eli slung his knapsack off his shoulder and sat down heavily on it. Tipping his head back against the platform wall, he eyed Bucky. "Civil rights, Black Power? Any of this ringing some bells?"
New York City, 1972. In Central Park, Bucky saw Negro men and women with big, puffed-out hair. They wore printed cotton shirts, long as tunics, and wide-bottomed trousers. High-heeled shoes and combat boots. A speaker on stage shrieked into the microphone and the crowd raised their right fists as one.
"Black is beautiful," Bucky said slowly. Translating the memories took some effort. "Soul Brother Number One."
Eli shook his head, but he was grinning at the same time. "Something like that, sure."
Bucky's shoulders dropped slightly. When they did, he realized he had been tense. No longer, not so much.
"Slave name," Eli continued. "Like...Cassius Clay. LeRoi Jones."
An athletic man, dark as coal, batting boxer's gloves at the camera. The film was black and white, jumpy as a Movietone newsreel. Perhaps it *was* a newsreel.
"I know Cassius Clay."
Eli snorted. "Yeah, but do you know Muhammad Ali?"
While living with Karpov wiping his mouth at meals, shooting his enemies for sport he had met several men, in Kabul and, later, Tehran, with that name.
Bucky swiped the remembered heat from his forehead and shrugged again.
"Exactly," Eli said. "Winter Soldier's not your name. It's what *they* called you."
Karpov sang to him. Not frequently, and most often while the Soldier hung in stasis. Those memories were diffuse, more sensory shifting colors and the vibration of sound than verbal, but Karpov sometimes sang when Bucky was awake, too.
Bucky hummed the simple tune. He heard Karpov's hoarse, scratchy voice as clearly as that of Fury or Steve. Or, for that matter, Eli.
«A sly brigand crawls along the bank
Sharpening his dagger;
But your father is an old warrior
Hardened in battle;
So sleep, my darling, undisturbed...»
Eli stared at him. The fall of sleet quickened, then slacked, before Bucky stopped.
"They really did a number on you." Eli's voice was gentler now, closer to the kid Bucky thought he remembered from the cemetery, awestruck and not doing a very good job of hiding it.
Bucky did not ask "who". He moved his metal hand back into his pocket. "I'm not brainwashed. Not any more."
Rising to his feet, Eli grinned. "Might be because there's nothing left *to* wash."
He feinted left and threw a wide uppercut to Bucky's good shoulder. Bucky danced right and caught Eli around the waist, driving him back against the wall. Eli slipped free, still grinning, and dropped one shoulder, leading with the other hand.
This mode joking, punching, wrestling was something that Bucky knew much better than conversation. It predated any of his training. He learned it in the schoolyard and at the barracks, practiced it thoughtlessly years before he ever met Steve. Well before Toro.
Eli had trained with Captain America. The evidence was in his movements, clean and guarded. But when Bucky grabbed Eli's wrist and twisted his arm behind his back, it became clear that Eli had never trained with *Steve*. He did not shake himself hard, laughing harder, and wiggle free, kicking backward the way that Steve always did. Instead, he went still, cheek pressed to the billboard. His breath whistled through his nose.
"Can I ask you something?" Eli's voice was nearly a whisper.
Bucky could have loosened his hold. He gripped harder and leaned his torso against Eli's back. "Sure."
Eli squeezed his eyes shut. "Cap *Steve*. He always liked the brothers, or what?"
Kid brother Bucky had been that. It was not the same thing as partner, though he'd been that, too. Neither meant the same thing as Bucky, whispered in a groan, Steve's mouth tight on the back of his neck.
Sometimes, he had trouble distinguishing the memories from wishes.
They all felt equally true.
"Sobrat po oruzhiju," Lukin said, but never met Bucky's eyes, across the black mound of Karpov's grave. "Brothers in arms. You and me."
Bucky's hands were empty, his chest heaving against nothing. He found himself standing at the edge of the platform, staring down at the tracks shining with rain.
Sometimes the voices grew loud enough that he'd be in another state before he could think again. This time, he had only moved two meters.
"...'cause, him and Falcon?" Eli said, making it a question, sounding younger than was possible. "You know ?"
If Bucky backed up, he could leap down to the tracks. Vault onto the roof of the platform. From there, it would take a good swing, knees tucked up, to grab the girders underpinning the bridge above. He could be gone within 75 seconds.
The sensors in his metal arm recorded Eli's touch just above the elbow joint.
"He misses you," Eli said. Those words were strong and clear. Rehearsed. "He needs "
"I'm not," Bucky said and drew another breath before continuing. "Not what you think."
"Who? Or what?"
"Falcon," Bucky said and tried to remember. "That's the Negro with wings?"
Eli's laughter hung in the air, steam after sound. "You got a problem with *Negroes*, Mr. Barnes?"
"I don't "
Snickering, Eli jabbed Bucky's metal shoulder. His gesture might have been an invitation to another wrestling match. "You got a problem with me?"
"You're " Bucky tilted his head and scanned Eli's face as carefully as he would read schematics or decode his instructions.
"What? Not attractive?" Eli's expression caught between a sneer and something even uglier.
"Lots of people " Bucky gentled his tone. He remembered this; this was neither wrestling nor fighting, but something like flirting. He gave Eli the grin he had once used for publicity shots and loosened his posture. "I've found lots of people attractive. You, too."
Eli's chin lifted, the tendons in his neck standing out. His eyes were steady.
Bucky knew that look. Steve's look, late at night, and Cap's, too, on every poster.
He didn't blink, tried not to feel the shiver rolling down his back at that implacable stillness, but something happened. Something, because Eli's face softened, went private for a moment. Bucky would have bet dollars to donuts the kid did not have the first clue about the change.
Doubt softened the kid, and that was more like Steve than anyone else could have known.
"C'mon." One-handed, Bucky vaulted over the barrier at the end of the platform and landed in a crouch amid broken glass and shreds of newspapers. He backed up against the cement piling and closed his eyes. Tracking Eli's arrival through the crunch of glass and crackle of dead leaves, Bucky reached out when the steps hesitated.
"I " Eli said, and swallowed. He had his jaw set, hands loosely balled into fists; the shiver returned to Bucky's skin, faster now. Anticipation and expectation shifted together with muscle memory. *Sense* memory. "What are you going to do?"
He was a brave kid, but Bucky already knew that. There was no need to answer, and he was stronger, his metal arm as strong as any serum. He spun Eli around, pressed him up against the piling, and held him there to kiss.
Eli's lips were wide, full and soft as a woman's, but the angles of his body were sharp and lean, masculine and familiar. He made a small sound when Bucky licked open his mouth.
"Anything you want," Bucky replied, later, metal hand on Eli's shoulder, human one pushing under his shirt. Eli's skin was damp with sweat and very warm.
Eli was a handsome kid, eyes almost black, glowing in the shadows under here. His hands skated restlessly over Bucky's shoulders, down his arms, uncertainly. "I wanted to "
When Bucky slid his palm over Eli's crotch and sucked on the side of his neck, Eli's head cracked back into the piling as he made a series of soft, birdlike sounds.
He was *alive*, hot-skinned and agitated, under Bucky's touch. This sort of thing took no planning, no strategy, no directions from any authority. Bucky had always known what to do, how to make it just right, what to enjoy just as he made sure the other guy felt better than he ever had.
Some things would never change the arch of a man's back when Bucky's fingers first grazed his penis, the breath that caught in his teeth when Bucky palmed the shaft, weighed and stroked it as it swelled for him. Bodies, like this, bodies and pleasure, were well outside history, all its wars and cemeteries.
Bucky realized that he was smiling, rolling his hips forward as he dropped to his knees amid the litter.
"You, oh " Eli rolled his head back and forth, lip caught in his teeth, and thrust his hips. Bucky smiled more widely. "You don't, that's not what I meant "
"Want to," Bucky said and realized it was true. Better than memories, because it was *happening*.
Eli went still, staring down at him.
Bucky rolled his shoulders and brought Eli's hands big ones, with long fingers, promising another growth spurt or two to his face, then back into his hair. Those fingers dug in, tangling the hair and scraping at the scalp, as Bucky folded his metal arm over Eli's stomach and took hold with the human one of the shaft again. His head moved, his mouth watered and stretched the burn, how could he have forgotten the filled-full *burn* of this in his cheeks? as Eli trembled and moved. Bucky flattened his tongue and took him all the way in.
Down to the root, and Eli's tightly whorled pubic hairs scraped Bucky's hand and cheek. His testicles mashed up against Bucky's chin, wet with saliva, and Eli pulled his hair, pulled him down and forward. Bucky heard Eli's voice, but he wasn't listening, he was doing this, tasting rushes of sticky heat, swallowing around the head. It was going to be over soon. Bucky's metal arm dropped to his side, its fingers rasping over his own fly, scraping his erection.
Eli cried out, broken and brave, just before he shuddered and ejaculated.
Bucky licked him clean, carefully and thoroughly, then sat back on his heels. There, he thought. That's that.
He could hear Eli's breathing, irregular and open-mouthed, somewhere above him.
"Bucky, man " Eli touched his cheek with two fingers.
Bucky tipped his head toward the tracks. "Train's coming."
Eli was just a kid again, shoving his shirt-tails into his pants, shifting from foot to foot as he tucked himself back in and zipped up. "And...?"
Bucky shrugged. "And nothing."
Eli's face twisted, his mouth opening. Back on his feet, Bucky chucked Eli under the chin. "Til Niagara falls, buddy. Call if you get work."
The train's brakes screeched as it slowed around the final curve. The noise drowned out Eli's retreat.
Bucky waited until the train had departed, then leaned against the piling and unzipped his fly. He pulled himself off, spurting over his hand, into the broken glass and rest of the garbage. The scent of Ivory soap and male sweat filled his nose and mouth, cut through and sharpened the taste of sperm.
«Nice,» Fury said when Bucky finished and re-zipped. «That was...very interesting.»
"Thanks."
«Your talents just continue to multiply.»
"Quiet," Bucky told him and pulled himself up one-handed onto the platform.
«You realize you probably broke that kid's heart?»
"Nope." Bucky hurried up the stairs to the overpass and across, then back down to the street. "I couldn't help him. Different."
«Blowjobs as apologies. That's a new one. I'd say I'd try it, but we both know that's never gonna happen.»
Bucky dodged through green-lit traffic on 227th. "Shut the hell up, Fury."
«Cap teach you that, or just benefit from your...giving nature?»
"If I answer, will you shut up?"
The mechanical laughter trilled. «Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point?»
Bucky could not recall learning French, but he understood all the same. "Sure. Whatever you say."
3. Captain America
Neither Bucky nor Eli attended Steve's funeral.
After all, the casket was empty and the eulogies done by rote. The ceremony was a formality, intended to salve the public and the survivors, not honor the deceased himself.
He had passed the point of mere honor decades back.
After the funeral, after the official cessation of hostilities that had never formally been commenced, well after the flags left their position at half-mast, the two met again.
This time, Fury had nothing to do with the meeting though, if it were successful, he would probably try to take credit.
This time, it was in a grotty Greek diner in the nebulous No Man's Land between Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen. Spring had sprung, instantly, overnight, on New York, sudden as a smack in the face. The sky was brilliantly cloudless, the sunlight scalpel-sharp; refracted off every surface, skyscrapers to cops' shades, the light shattered and scattered, again and again, dazing the city. Yellow buckets, stuffed with stalks of forsythia and pussy-willows and conical bunches of lilacs, sprouted outside every deli and bodega. Women wore filmy skirts, men rolled up their sleeves.
In the diner, Bucky sat away from the windows, his back to them. He spooned avgolemono soup into his mouth as he methodically demolished a stack of buttered white toast. Absorbed in a meal as intricately precise as a laboratory experiment, he did not look up when Eli slid into the booth's other seat.
First off, Eli said, "Don't go."
Bucky pointed his spoon at the bowl, then at his toast. "I'm not done."
"Good." Eli sat quietly for several minutes as Bucky continued to eat. Finally, when Bucky showed no signs of speaking further, he cleared his throat. "Two things, then I'm gone."
"Stay, go, either." Bucky dipped a piece of toast in his soup, then sucked on it as he shrugged.
"First, I . Got something for you." Eli wore a light canvas jacket, olive-drab and unbuttoned. He drew a small package, wrapped in newsprint, from the front pocket.
Eli held the package over the table, but Bucky did not move.
"Take it," Eli said. When Bucky instead lifted another spoonful of soup, Eli knocked the spoon out of his hand and pressed the package into his palm. He curled Bucky's fingers over it. "Jesus."
"What is this?" Bucky turned the package over in his palm.
"It's yours." Eli slid a little down in his seat, making a show of his casualness. "I mean he hadn't changed his will. Not in a while. So it went to me."
Bucky handed the package back. "So it's yours."
Eli pushed Bucky's hand away. "Would you open the damn thing? It's not a bomb."
Bucky showed his teeth. "I know that."
"Then open it."
Bucky stayed still.
"That's not a request." Eli's voice carried, steady and *certain*.
Bucky's eyebrow lifted. "Who're you, Captain America?"
"Getting to that," Eli said. "Open it first."
The newsprint was wrapped in cello-tape, stickily wound around it in layer after layer. Bucky paused in tearing it free to ask, "You wrapped this, didn't you?"
"Yeah."
"It's a mess, you know."
Eli grinned. "I'm not Martha Stewart, man."
Bucky worked through three sheets of the front section of the Amsterdam News and one New York Times crossword puzzle, completed in fountain pen. Finally, he came to a lace napkin wrapped around what felt like a coin. He tossed the napkin at Eli and exposed a brass medal and its ribbon. The medal was as big as a silver dollar, still shiny. The ribbon's fabric was soft with age, but its stripes' colors were unfaded.
On the medal's face, a woman in a toga held a broken sword, standing against the words World War II. Bucky read the inscription on the reverse aloud. "Freedom from fear and want?"
"He would've wanted " Eli said and then stopped. "It's yours. The will said so."
Bucky flicked his metal index finger against the brass face. "Why would I want this?"
"Because you earned it," Eli said.
Bucky snorted. "You really do sound like him."
"That's the plan." Eli raised his chin and narrowed his eyes. "Which brings me to number two: You're going to train me."
Bucky tipped the crumbs off his plate into his soup bowl, then wiped up the rest, crumbs and smeared soup, with the last piece of toast. He chewed for a bit, then asked lightly, "Why should I?"
Eli cupped his cheek in his palm and rested his elbow on the table. He echoed Bucky's casual tone. "Things are different now. Worse. World is different."
"I read the papers," Bucky said. "None of this is news."
Eli's tone continued to be friendly and conversational. "Get your head out of your ass, okay?" By the time he was finished speaking, they were smiling at each other. "For once in your life, *make* something. Something good."
"I've done good." Bucky grinned more widely as he dangled the medal from his pinky. "Got a shiny medal for it, see?"
Eli did not mean more fighting, defending and killing all over again, still and always. They both knew what he meant; the mutual knowledge was reflected in their smiles. Making was harder and rarer than fighting. It always had been.
Steve had known that. It just took Bucky and Eli a while to learn.
The quiet between them stretched as long as a riverbank.
When the waiter lumbered over to the booth, Bucky asked, "You want anything?"
"I'm good, man." Eli passed him a five-dollar bill. "Get yourself a milkshake."
"Fattening me up," Bucky told the waiter, who shrugged. "Gimme an egg cream."
"On second thought " Eli leaned out of the booth to catch the waiter's apron as he moved away. "I'll have the same."
[end]
Pairings
This isn't a shipfic. It does include, however, these romantic and/or sexual pairings: Billy/Teddy, Bucky/Steve, Bucky/Eli, Sam/Steve, Eli/Steve, Steve/Justice, Tony Stark/profiteering, and Luke Cage/Jessica Jones.
Further Notes
1. Title and summary from Whitman, which I'm sure is obvious. I *hope* so, anyway.
2. This story deliberately employs some elements from the excellent glossary of racist terms and memes because Bucky is, among everything else, an anachronism.
3. The lullaby Bucky remembers is Lermontov's "Cossack Lullaby", c.1837. Russian-language advice from C.-without-an-LJ.
4. Bucky's medal.
Summary: "I hear your notes, I hear your call, I hear, I come presently, I understand you": War makes brothers. Kills them, too.
Characters: Captain America, Bucky Barnes and Eli Bradley [ pairings]
Setting/spoilers: Truth: Red, White, and Black, Young Avengers, and Cap v.5, through Civil War and its immediate aftermath.
Disclaimer: Marvel, not me.
Warning: Bucky Barnes is not fit for modern consumption.
Notes: See below for full pairing lists and source notes, should you need them. Thanks to rubynye, thete1, and thenotoriousg for assorted inspiration, information, and support. This story was aided immeasurably by jubilancy; she edited this, well beyond the call of duty, and cheered unflaggingly for a good two months. All the remaining flaws are my fault, but she's more than likely responsible for any virtues you may see.
1. Patriot
He intended to win this thing.
For Eli, joining the resistance had never been in question.
"Think it's going to be as big as the last one?" Teddy asked early one morning. He and Eli were on rooftop sentry duty, savoring the fresh air as they scanned the sky and street.
Eli adjusted the focus on his binoculars.
Sighing, Teddy tossed aside the Post the headline said 68% for Iron Man, 31% for Cap, and wasn't it just the way of the world that both sides got boiled down to the rich and the white? He knocked Eli's side with his shoulder. "Civil war, dude. Civil *war*."
"Undeclared conflict," Eli said and pulled away a little. Teddy grew up on the freaking Upper West Side, but hadn't seemed to ever hear of a little thing called "personal space".
"Answer the question, man, or I'm nodding off."
"You say that like it's a bad thing." Eli stretched out one leg and rubbed his eyes.
They'd only just moved to the safehouse in Inwood. Across the street, where there should have been wavering TV-glows and noise, there was only the park, full of blank shadows and silence. He was still getting used to that.
His grandparents' apartment was only fifteen minutes away on foot, north-northeast. It might as well have been in Mobile. In Alaska. Eli knew it was the same for Sam and Luke. They lived thirty blocks south, but Harlem was the moon for all they saw it.
"I'm just saying, it's really freaky. Civil War, like we're fighting to free the " Teddy shrugged. His form shimmered until he looked a little like Abe Lincoln, a little like Rhett Butler. Stovepipe hat, movie-star face. "You know."
"I do," Eli said.
*
Back when he had quit the team, Eli spent most of his time alone. I don't know what foolishness you've been up to, his grandmother had said. She curved her hand around the back of Eli's skull before dropping a kiss right on the crown. But you take this time alone and sort yourself out.
"Yes'm," he'd murmured in response.
Eli was used to being alone; there was no sorting to do.
He was the late-model, surprise baby when everyone, his mother included, thought she was long past conceiving. All his siblings were old enough to babysit him, never young enough to really *play*.
All his life, he was skinny and knock-kneed, smart-mouthed and liable to get in over his head. Kids didn't befriend the Urkle. Even when he placed in the 99th percentile for the tests at both geek havens Bronx Science and Stuyvesant, even when he went off to the former with a stuffed knapsack and calculator in his pocket, he'd remained alone.
His whole life, his best friend was a six-three, massive and shuffling man with sad eyes and hands big enough to crush basketballs. His grandfather was a good listener, a better stickball partner, but not exactly a peer.
Isaiah spent seventeen years in Leavenworth on bullshit charges. In itself, that was not all that unusual for any Black man; Eli's grandmother made sure he understood that. The injustice was not unique. Taken on its own, it did not make Isaiah *special*, any more than the fact that he had somehow survived the serum experiments.
The measure of a soul is what it does with its pain, she said.
Isaiah survived seventeen years in solitary. Eli had always figured he could get through a little loneliness.
*
People came in and out of the safehouse at all hours.
Cap was always up, always waiting for another piece of news, some hint that tide was about to turn, more shreds of hope. No one had seen him sleep, least of all Eli.
"The man needs some good news," Sam said, closing the door to the conference room with a quiet click, "And that would be why we're running the errands."
One advantage to the high number of brothers in the resistance: Errands could be run by guys no one would remember.
"Sure." While Sam shushed Redwing's bitchy squawk, Eli tried to resist touching the stupid wig on his head. He looked like George Clinton in this spongy monster. "Sure."
Reaching for the front door's locks, Sam shouldered him out of the way. He wasn't as big as Luke Cage nobody was but he was big enough that Eli felt crowded. Sam reminded him of Josiah, except Sam was here. Not gone. "You got your addresses memorized?"
"Done." Eli nodded. He had six dropboxes to check, nothing he couldn't handle. "You?"
Sam shrugged extravagantly and tapped his temple. "All in the brain, kiddo."
"I'm not "
Sam backed right off. "Easy, easy. 'Course you're not a kid."
"Yeah," Eli said and made his shoulders relax. "Yeah, all right."
They left the safehouse ten minutes apart. On the subway platform, Eli slouched as much as he could, never acknowledging Sam's presence fifteen away. If his grandmother saw him now, saw his posture and the streetwise pout on his lips, she'd tan his ass in nothing flat.
When he switched to the express at 125th, Sam elbowed him and said, "Gray's, seven?"
Eli nodded and didn't look back.
When the errands were done, he and Sam met back at 72nd street to split a papaya shake and five-dog order.
*
His bed was more than a cot Cap told lots of stories about the cots at Camp Lehigh, about sleeping in the rough in the Black Forest or in the holds of subs. He made sure they knew that this might be war, but it could have been worse.
It could always have been worse.
Eli's bed was no cot, but it was hard, narrow, and cold. He never slept so much as dozed.
Then again, he had not slept well in a long time. Not since the SHRA and going underground, maybe even since he got the blood transfusion. Since Iron Lad, if he were being honest. Or Kang, whatever they were supposed to call him now.
Restless dreams, though, had nothing on trying to ignore the whimpers and whispers coming from the other bed. When Eli got up to leave, Billy crackled, electricity filling his open mouth, glowing over Teddy's bare shoulder.
"Eli?" Billy whispered. "I want "
Eli shook his head. "You two do your...thing. I'm good."
The safehouse was, for once, relatively quiet. Cage was passed out in the dining room, one arm curled protectively over his face as Eli padded through.
As he passed Vision, just outside the girls' room, he patted the robot's elbow. Must be nice, being able to power down, just plain turn off like that.
Eli cracked open the girls' door and peered inside. Kate was sitting up, fumbling for her bow.
"Okay if I sack out here?" he whispered as he closed the door.
In the other bed, Cassie stirred, lifting her head up and peering through her hair.
Kate glanced at her, then back at Eli. "Just don't let Cap catch you again."
"Man, I'm not doing anything "
There'd been no way he could possibly explain to Captain freaking America that he wasn't sneaking *into* the girls' room. He was sneaking *out of* the Kaplan-Altman Love Hotel.
Kate snickered. "You're really not. But he's an old-fashioned guy. Got to respect that."
Eli grabbed her extra pillow nice and soft, expensive foam stuff. "Greatest generation, my ass."
Cassie inhaled sharply, getting that deer-in-headlights look she always got when one of them said anything against the Avengers. Kate tossed her teddy bear at Cassie's chest and made her laugh.
On the floor Eli pulled the pillow half over his face and shushed them. Cassie threw the bear his way, but it went wide and bounced off the door.
"Don't know about you, but some of us're trying to sleep," he said, rolling onto his side, his back to Kate.
"Cranky face Bradley," Kate said. Her mattress creaked a little as she shifted around. "Sweet dreams, dumbass."
"Night, John-Boy!" Cassie said.
Eli grunted.
Waiting for them to drop off, he ended up rolling onto his stomach, arms crossed on the pillow, chin digging into his wrist.
When Billy got really worked up, he gurgled, half-cast spells flickering around him like St. Elmo's fire. Teddy, on the other hand, went quiet. All except his breathing, and that speeded up, deepened. Eli shifted against the floor, spread his legs a little. Tried to pretend he wasn't getting a little hard all over again.
Kate would use a rusty arrow to slice off his balls if she knew what he was doing here, almost rubbing against the floor.
She'd enjoy it, too.
He pressed his body flat as he could, flat as a board, and told himself to suck up the ache.
It wasn't that he was interested. Not in Billy and Teddy, not really. It was physiological, his body's reactions to the sounds, the *thought*, of them fooling around. His enhanced senses teased out every murmur, each salt-rich scent, drowned him in their reactions.
The fact that it was probably just chemical didn't make him feel much better.
If he were interested, he might maybe, if he ever lost his damn *mind* answer those hooded glances Billy gave him, acknowledge their red cheeks, grin back at Teddy. They might open up a space between them. He might slip in, he might enjoy.
If, but not. Doing anything remotely like that would be bad, unforgivably bad, leadership. He was stupid to entertain the thought in the first place.
Eli had read Sun Tzu and Clausewitz, Du Bois and Malcolm, Drucker and goddamn *Trump*. None of them would ever dream of what he was imagining.
He was in charge. He'd do well to remember that, even if his dick refused to take orders.
Eli grinned, painfully, as he sat up, then made for the door. He made for the bathroom as quietly as he could to take care of business.
*
Eli took stock regularly, quietly, toting up who was where, and why. He listened all the time. To hallway greetings, huddled conferences, spat-word arguments across the big table. It wasn't like on the streets it wasn't that he blended in here. More like everyone was part of the scenery.
He listened, and learned.
Everyone was uprooted here. Luke Cage missed Jessica and his baby daughter; everyone knew that. After the first big fight, Teddy missed Billy.
Everyone knew *that*, too, even if it made their eyes dart and their voices splutter a little. Teddy slumped around, four inches shorter than his average, hair two shades darker. Cap took to squeezing his shoulder even more than usual.
"He's coming back," Eli told Teddy after dinner. They were back on the roof. Teddy kept shivering between his gargoyle Skrull face and human one.
"Yeah," Teddy said. He wrapped his arms around his knees. "He *has* to."
Eli needed to learn how Cap did this kind of thing. He patted Teddy's shoulder, even squeezed, but Teddy just looked away and sniffed.
How did Cap make himself so certain that he *believed* the comfort he offered?
"It's like like there's a hole in my chest," Teddy said suddenly. He yanked up his shirt as his skin shifted and went transparent over a deep, black hole, squared-off and bottomless as an elevator shaft.
"Shit, Ted, I " Eli withdrew his hand. "He's coming back."
"Yeah." Teddy tugged on his shirt-hem and looked down. "Yeah, I know. It's just..."
Eli swallowed. "You miss him."
He knew that he was lucky to be alone. Watching out for his teammates was more than enough responsibility right now.
He was glad to be alone; he really was. He missed his grandmother and Isaiah, to be sure, but what he was doing here was much more important.
He knew Cap would agree.
*
Cap, after all, was alone. It didn't seem to bother *him*. They had their priorities.
Eli liked being around Cap, if only because it kept his mind on those priorities. So he joined the planning conference for liberating the prisoner transport.
He must have been early, however, because he found Cap alone in front of the big table, poring over streetmaps and biting his cheek.
"Elijah, good," Cap said without looking up. He pressed his index finger on the map right over, Eli noted as he joined Cap's side, the intersection of Lenox and 125th Street.
"That's not too far from here," Eli said. "Huh."
Words no longer made much sense, not these days. They were underground on the top floor of an eight-story building. They were fighting a war in their own neighborhoods.
"Home soil," Cap said, then smiled. "Home asphalt, I suppose."
"Just different," Eli said after a moment. "Not like parachuting into, whatever. Vichy France. Used to go to the mosque around the corner."
He stroked the intersection with his index finger. With his scarlet glove. The territory might as well have been foreign; he had to see the neighborhood as a grid of escapes and traps. He had to treat it like a chessboard, put his memories aside.
Cap might have been looking at him, but Eli focused on his glove and tapped the map. "Doesn't matter now. Just territory."
Cap spread his fingers over half of Central Park and the Hudson. "Don't say that. It's never just a map."
Eli snorted softly. "Always somebody's hood?"
"Yes." Cap leaned in to Eli's line of sight, then smiled and nodded. His eyes looked sad; tired, at least, red as Eli's gloves. "What happened to the mosque?"
"Nothing. Still there, far as I know." Eli gave Cap a smile. "Grandma, though. Argued with the imam and we never went back."
"Ah, well." Cap scratched at the stubble on his cheek. Now that Eli was looking, Cap appeared thinner than he had, like there were more shadows on his face. "She's a formidable woman. Admirably so."
Eli nodded and moved his hands to his side. He didn't, quite, know what to do with them. "She packed my bag *days* before you called, you know. Knew I was joining up before I did."
Cap laughed at that, loudly enough that, over in the corner, Redwing shifted on his perch and snapped his beak at them. Cap laughed a little louder, like a kid, almost, like Teddy or someone.
Eli had tried, now and then, to imagine what it must be like to be as *old* as Cap older than his grandmother, but looking much younger than his mom. He always gave up, his thoughts shying away like sheets of newspaper caught in the draft between buildings. Part of the problem was that Cap just didn't *look* old.
Barring decades in an iceberg, Eli still wondered if he'd look half as good when he was half Cap's age. He didn't care, really, about his looks. What he couldn't wrap his mind around was how Cap was outside of time like he was. Outside, young and energetic even if, right now, he needed a weeklong nap and gallons of matzoh-ball soup but with as many memories as any old person, as many gravestones to visit.
"Still with us?" Cap touched Eli's elbow. For a moment, before he forced himself to concentrate on the map again, Eli wondered why Teddy got the shoulder-squeezes, but he only got two fingers, light as the breeze from Redwing's wing.
"Yes, sir." Eli bent back over the map. "Where were we?"
*
Billy came back, but Cassie left. He didn't know what to make of that.
Amid the errands and occasional scuffles, trips through sewers and swinging across rooftops, there was far more downtime than Eli would have expected, let alone preferred.
As big as the safehouse was, these were still close quarters.
Funny, though, how so many people could pass in and out, yet he could go entire days without speaking to anyone if he didn't want to.
*
During yet another lull, Kate announced that she wanted to teach them to play bridge.
"Count me out," Eli said.
He held himself apart. Hiding the MGH from his teammates *and* at home had been good experience in maintaining the safe and appropriate distance. Cap did the same thing; so did Luke and Sam.
Eli was accustomed to this this quiet in his head, observation and evaluation over participation.
"Don't be such a *grumpus*," Kate said. Billy nodded while Teddy thumped Eli's shoulder. "We're not running away or anything. It's just us."
Eli nodded. "I can see that."
Kate huffed out her breath, making her hair lift off her forehead. "Right, so all I'm saying is "
"I have surveillance reports to check."
" we should be together," Kate said, loudly, speaking over him.
Eli could hardly blame her for her renewed insistence on teambuilding and quality time. In the wake of Cassie's defection, gathering the wagons was only natural.
He missed Cassie, too. Not simply for strategic reasons, either.
"Later," he said and slid out from under Teddy's heavy arm. Kate started to shake her head. "Later. Promise."
Later came and went.
When Eli emerged from the makeshift archives, the apartment was dark. The windows, to a one, appeared as black rectangles floating against charcoal walls. The floorboards sighed beneath his sockfeet.
He stopped just outside the kitchen, just opposite the window that opened on to the fire escape. He and the others frequently used the fire escape to get to the roof to take watchpoint, but here, tonight, two figures occupied the ledge.
Just sentry duty, Eli told himself, and rubbed his eyes.
The pair could have been Teddy and Billy given their closeness, the slope of their shoulders, touching arms, the matched tilts of their heads. Like they were looking at something small, something vulnerable, located just between them.
Except the sizes were all wrong to be the Altman-Kaplans. These figures matched in size, broader and a little *thicker* than Teddy, even at his Hulklingest or all Skrulled-out. They were definitely big enough to swallow Billy up as an hors d'oeuvre.
Eli turned to go. No, he *considered* going, as he might abstractly consider the MTA map when his train got stopped between stations. Leaving was as vague an idea as tracing the various junctions and stretches of different lines he couldn't follow through in either case.
The figures inclined together, closer, faces turning, and kissed. Dim light, diffused and directionless, settled over the napes of their necks, across blond hair and the twist of a tendon beneath dark skin.
The light slid around them, tracing a conical shape perched on the ladder. It swivelled, shadows resolving into a head and body that sliced the light with the vicious curve of its beak and beat its wings.
Eli stumbled backward. His arms swung heavily at his sides, his palms itched emptily.
The kiss persisted, dark fingers in light hair, pale hand on dark neck.
Cap and Falcon, fitted together, remained in his mind's eye.
Eli swung at empty air, slapped a wall and doorframe, before stilling himself. His knuckles ached, but his palm continued to burn.
He'd been mistaken Cap wasn't alone. Being wrong, making a mistake, was the worst thing he could do to himself.
*
After the sun rose and another day came, the kiss lingered, their *closeness*.
Anger ran through his body, clenching his jaw and twisting his shoulders. He was angrier yet at the fact that he didn't know whom, or what, to blame. He felt the anger, its steel-coils and sharp barbs in every muscle, but it had no object save himself. Save his own pigheaded, blind-eyed, *stupid*-ass mistake.
He needed to hit something, but, more than that, he needed to *learn* something. He followed Kate to the jury-rigged gym and asked her to teach him some katas.
He might as well have come right out and asked her to hit him. A lot. After half an hour of playing human sparring dummy, the anger had not lessened, but it was stuck beneath a haze of dizziness and pulsating aches.
"Give it to me again," he said.
Kate tugged her ponytail tighter. "You'll train, but you won't play cards? Bradley, you're a *freak*."
"Priorities." He squared his stance and raised his hands. "C'mon. Again."
"You're an idiot," Kate said and wiped her face with a towel. "You don't miss home? Your own bed? Anything?"
"Not important."
She snapped the towel at him and danced out of reach. "Not trivial, either."
Eli loosened his shoulders and checked his balance. "Says you."
"Says me, and I *also* say you're an idiot." Kate circled him, her steps quick and distractingly dainty.
"Who's in charge here?"
"Cap is." She laughed, running backward on tiptoe, only to dodge left while faking right and knock his feet out from under him. She planted her fists on her hips. "And, right now, *me*."
Eli landed face-down and remembered being in her room, hard and lonely. He steadied his breathing against the memory's stab as Kate stood over him.
Her face shone, skin pink and eyes narrowed. "Ahh, want a hand up, baby?"
He ignored her. Back on his feet, Eli tucked his chin down and blinked away the surge of vertigo. "Do that sweep again."
"Idiot *and* a masochist!" Kate dropped one shoulder, spun, and this time, only one of Eli's legs gave way. As he dove, he knocked her in the ribs, then rolled free, springing back up.
This was more like it, fighting as hard as he could.
He couldn't help but *try* to win. You could say it was bred into him.
You could, but he'd have to take you down for that.
"Break," Kate called after an hour. She sank down on the mats and patted the space beside her. "Doing anything for lunch?"
"Jeez, I don't know." Eli wiped his face and head with the towel. "Eating?"
"Ha, *ha*." Kate smirked up at him. "I'll let you sit at the cool kids' table."
*
Given the weight of evidence, both welcome and not, Eli had to revise his estimations of solitude. No one was alone here, not even Cap. Maybe not even himself.
He didn't have to be happy about this state of affairs; he just had to be careful not to make any more mistakes.
Then he met Bucky.
On Christmas Eve, flanked by Kate and Vision, Eli saw a different, a *truer* kind of loneliness. There was Cap, dislocated from time, Isaiah in his cell, even Eli himself.
But, somehow, all of *them* found a connection or two.
One figure, black against the graveyard snow and busy gray sky, hands driven deep into his pockets calligraphy's penstrokes, like a haiku, brief and solitary.
That was Bucky, and he really didn't have anyone. He really didn't *want* anyone.
Kate took his hand on the walk home, her trench coat flapping in the wind. On the train down to Borough Hall the safehouse had moved yet again her head rested on his shoulder and her lips curved in a smile as she dozed.
The car was empty, their reflections vague on the scratchitti'd window opposite.
In a rush of adrenaline scarier than any fight, Eli rocked against the seat.
He hadn't ever been alone. Not like *that*, not like Bucky.
*
A day or so later, Eli passed Cap in the conference room. He stopped when he thought he heard Cap speak.
Cap's eyes were caught in the lamp's light, wide and bright. Then he shook his head, and said, "Forgive me, I thought " He passed his hand over his face. "Your costume took me aback. Must be more tired than I thought."
"No doubt," Eli said, He smoothed down the front of his jacket, then stopped when he realized he was mirroring Cap's gesture.
Cap was looking at him. Not critically, although Eli was simultaneously fixing his posture and telling himself he shouldn't worry about pleasing *anyone*, but calmly.
"How is he?" Cap asked.
"Who, Bucky?" Not that Cap could have meant anyone else, but Eli refused to make any more mistakes.
"Yes."
"He's " Eli cleared his throat. He'd been avoiding Cap for several days. The kiss may have faded a bit from his mind, but it had not wholly vanished. He doubted it ever would. "It was an honor. Seeing him."
Cap smiled a little. "A monument, then?"
"I don't follow," Eli said and pursed his lips. "Sir."
"Nothing." Cap rubbed his cheek and smiled again. His expression this time was friendlier. Warmer. A little phonier, too. "Elijah, about "
There was no way they were going to talk about Captain America and The Falcon playing tonsil hockey. Not if Eli had any say in the matter.
Eli took two steps back and held up his hands. "None of my business, sir."
The phony smile evaporated; Cap swallowed and tilted his head slightly. "If you'd hear me out?"
He sounded Cap always sounded *earnest*, but now his tone was earnest and a little nervous, all at once. Eli moved back and nodded. Cap gestured him closer.
They stood together at the window, shoulder to shoulder. The room's light, behind them, reduced their reflections to the details and texture of their costumes the scales of Cap's jersey, the weave of Eli's coat.
"Sometimes," Cap said, and his breath came shallow against the stitches on his cheek, "we find ourselves in situations beyond our...control. Not of our making. You see, son?"
Eli shifted his weight back onto his heels. When he realized Cap was looking at him, blue eyes steady as the sky in his shadowed face, he nodded quickly. "Yeah, sure."
"But we always have a choice. Even if it's hard to see, it's always there."
In the silence, Eli nodded again. "Yes, sir."
"I wouldn't want to think that you are doing this because..." Cap trailed off, squinting at his reflection. "I'm a man. Just a man. Your choice in these matters, your discretion, those are entirely your own."
Eli bit the inside of his cheek as he worked through Cap's words. He might have been talking about the kiss with Sam, asking Eli, however obliquely, for his discretion. But the way his eyebrows were drawn down and together, the tension in his jaw and hoarseness to his voice suggested that Cap meant something else. Eli suspected he meant something more important, something about the war itself.
Frustration burned at the back of Eli's throat, pounded at his skull. He would not admit twice in five minutes to not following, even though that was the case. He drew a deep breath and held it while he went back through his analysis. Bucky, and decisions, circumstances out of control, Falcon (or maybe not). Decisions and discretion.
Cap squeezed Eli's shoulder, drawing him closer. Even through the jacket, Cap felt solid and warm. Eli started to twist away, then relaxed, exhaling slowly.
Cap *was* just a man. Eli'd spent his whole life loathing someone who didn't exist, a poseur and fraud to be hated and resented, the recipient of all the acclaim and aid that Isaiah deserved.
Cap was not the enemy, not that fraud. He never had been.
Now, he was waiting for something. Looking at Eli, steady and earnest, handsome and haggard, his cheek rough with stubble and hard with tension. Now, Eli needed to tell him. Tell him all these thoughts, decisions and epiphanies, and *more*.
He failed to find the words; there were no words. Eli's mouth worked on its own, shaping air in search of thoughts.
He pressed closer, mouth working, and Cap's eyes fluttered shut for a moment as Eli kissed him. Anxiety bolted through him, followed immediately by a rapid, tingling flow of relief at the feeling, at the taste, at the *rightness*.
No words, but actions, just like his grandmother said.
Cap's mouth was soft, then hard, welcoming; his chest felt about a mile wide against Eli's.
"Oh," Cap said softly, hand on Eli's neck, thumb stroking Eli's cheek slow and sure. "Oh, Eli, I "
The surge of pleasure and relief boiled over and vanished. It left Eli's face flaming, his hands clenching at his sides, as he stumbled back. *Stupid*, stupid .
"Elijah." Cap's voice was quiet. Despite himself, Eli went still. "Please, don't . Don't go."
"I *shit*." Eli scrubbed at the back of his head, rolled his shoulders until they popped, and still nothing helped. "*Fuck*, I'm sorry."
Cap winced at the cuss, but touched Eli's hand as gently as he'd stroked his cheek. "Don't be."
Eli snorted. "Right."
"Never apologize for affection. Love." Cap was looking out the window now, addressing someone who was not Eli, was not present. Someone long gone, probably dead now. "It's a gift, a precious one."
Eli worked his jaw back and forth. There had to a few shreds of dignity he could wrap himself in. "I wasn't thinking, Cap. I'm sorry for that."
"Call me Steve," he said, and glanced back at Eli, as if from a great distance. "And I will accept that particular apology." He squeezed Eli's shoulder one more time, adding, "Thank you."
"You're welcome," Eli said, and heard his voice crack a little, uncertainly. "Uh." He shifted his weight from foot to foot and Cap *Steve* chuckled. "Can we talk about something else? Anything else."
"Certainly. If you wouldn't mind telling me more about young Mister Barnes, I'd be obliged."
Steve's arm around Eli's shoulders felt like Isaiah's then, warm and strong. Like family, a brother's. "Right, well . He fights *amazing*..."
2. Bucky/ies
The newest of the voices in Bucky's head was named Fury. Its avatar may have resembled the sergeant he'd known once, whose ass Bucky'd handed to him at poker. Bodiless and electronic, it managed to be novel *and* nostalgic.
The name alone should have made him smile. Bucky'd been notorious once for his temper.
Someone else would've found it funny. At the very least, Steve would laugh and smile. The good, real kind of smile, in his eyes as well as on his lips. He'd probably chuck Bucky under the chin, chide him for his hot temper, then turn back to work.
«Go to Spuyten Duyvil,» Fury told him. Fury was the one who'd set up the meeting; Bucky just followed the directions. «Spuyten Duyvil, heh. Know what that means, bright eyes?»
"Mouth of the devil," Bucky said.
«Maybe,» Fury said, then read a series of subway directions. Bucky only knew the old IND and BMT names, so Fury used those. After the long, rattling subway ride to the Bronx, there was a long walk west, skirting the reservoir, through hilly streets and deserted avenues.
He remembered this area. Once, on furlough, Steve took him here for Sunday dinner with his cousins. Back then, the area was home to what Steve had called "lace-curtain Irish". Bucky still didn't, quite, know what that meant. The signs over the businesses now were in Spanish as often as not. The Irish had gone, taking their curtains with them.
He kept his hands thrust into his pockets, collar turned up to his jaw against the wind. The January thaw wasn't warm so much as damp; the reservoir and, later, the river were pleated crisply, steel-gray two shades darker than the sky.
He made good time. He could walk for days if he had to.
«You're early,» Fury said. «Don't fret, though. He'll be along.»
Bucky was nearly certain there was no video-feed of his reactions, but he bared his teeth in a parody of a smile as he dropped to a crouch. Occasionally, not often, if he stayed still and quiet, Fury went away. The other voices tended to follow.
*
The commuter train from Grand Central lumbered to a halt. Four cars away, three figures disembarked.
Bucky continued to wait.
When Patriot appeared, he was out of uniform. Undercover, he said, though to Bucky he looked like any kid on the street knit cap pulled low over his brows, pants that looked big enough to fit three. Perhaps that was what passed for "undercover" these days.
"Eli," Patriot said, slapping Bucky's hand twice, then again with his knuckles. "Call me Eli."
Bucky looked at his palm. "Winter Soldier."
"You're *Bucky*," Eli said. His chin lifted on the last syllable as if he'd offered proof of something significant.
"You were the one wearing Bucky's jacket," Bucky replied.
Eli remained impassive.
Bucky remembered that fact quite clearly; he was sure of it. This young man had crouched on the roof, stood in the cemetery, wearing a quilted version of the old double-breasted costume.
"You're *the* Bucky." The definite article sounded like gravel.
Inside his pocket, Bucky flexed his metal hand. "Winter Soldier."
"Bullshit!" Eli rocked on his heels and shook his head. "Damn, that's "
«Language», the memory-of-Steve said. Bucky's lips moved with it.
"Language? Mr. Commie Super Assassin's lecturing *me* on language?" Eli yanked off his cap and waved it. "Oh, that's *nice*."
"Commie assassin?" Bucky brushed the hair out of his eyes. "Thought I was Bucky. *The* Bucky."
Eli paced half the length of the platform, then turned and flung out his arms. "For Christ's sake, you *are*. Winter Soldier, man? The hell is *that* shit?"
Rolling his cybernetic arm, Bucky heard to the faint grind of metal against bone. He knit his fingers together, metal on skin. When Eli stepped closer, asking for a response, Bucky shrugged.
"That's a that's your fucking slave name, you know?" Eli licked his lower lip and glanced away. His eyes, when he looked back, were narrowed. A few stray raindrops snagged on his lashes. "You don't even know what I'm talking about, do you?"
"No," Bucky said.
"Of course you don't." Eli slung his knapsack off his shoulder and sat down heavily on it. Tipping his head back against the platform wall, he eyed Bucky. "Civil rights, Black Power? Any of this ringing some bells?"
New York City, 1972. In Central Park, Bucky saw Negro men and women with big, puffed-out hair. They wore printed cotton shirts, long as tunics, and wide-bottomed trousers. High-heeled shoes and combat boots. A speaker on stage shrieked into the microphone and the crowd raised their right fists as one.
"Black is beautiful," Bucky said slowly. Translating the memories took some effort. "Soul Brother Number One."
Eli shook his head, but he was grinning at the same time. "Something like that, sure."
Bucky's shoulders dropped slightly. When they did, he realized he had been tense. No longer, not so much.
"Slave name," Eli continued. "Like...Cassius Clay. LeRoi Jones."
An athletic man, dark as coal, batting boxer's gloves at the camera. The film was black and white, jumpy as a Movietone newsreel. Perhaps it *was* a newsreel.
"I know Cassius Clay."
Eli snorted. "Yeah, but do you know Muhammad Ali?"
While living with Karpov wiping his mouth at meals, shooting his enemies for sport he had met several men, in Kabul and, later, Tehran, with that name.
Bucky swiped the remembered heat from his forehead and shrugged again.
"Exactly," Eli said. "Winter Soldier's not your name. It's what *they* called you."
Karpov sang to him. Not frequently, and most often while the Soldier hung in stasis. Those memories were diffuse, more sensory shifting colors and the vibration of sound than verbal, but Karpov sometimes sang when Bucky was awake, too.
Bucky hummed the simple tune. He heard Karpov's hoarse, scratchy voice as clearly as that of Fury or Steve. Or, for that matter, Eli.
«A sly brigand crawls along the bank
Sharpening his dagger;
But your father is an old warrior
Hardened in battle;
So sleep, my darling, undisturbed...»
Eli stared at him. The fall of sleet quickened, then slacked, before Bucky stopped.
"They really did a number on you." Eli's voice was gentler now, closer to the kid Bucky thought he remembered from the cemetery, awestruck and not doing a very good job of hiding it.
Bucky did not ask "who". He moved his metal hand back into his pocket. "I'm not brainwashed. Not any more."
Rising to his feet, Eli grinned. "Might be because there's nothing left *to* wash."
He feinted left and threw a wide uppercut to Bucky's good shoulder. Bucky danced right and caught Eli around the waist, driving him back against the wall. Eli slipped free, still grinning, and dropped one shoulder, leading with the other hand.
This mode joking, punching, wrestling was something that Bucky knew much better than conversation. It predated any of his training. He learned it in the schoolyard and at the barracks, practiced it thoughtlessly years before he ever met Steve. Well before Toro.
Eli had trained with Captain America. The evidence was in his movements, clean and guarded. But when Bucky grabbed Eli's wrist and twisted his arm behind his back, it became clear that Eli had never trained with *Steve*. He did not shake himself hard, laughing harder, and wiggle free, kicking backward the way that Steve always did. Instead, he went still, cheek pressed to the billboard. His breath whistled through his nose.
"Can I ask you something?" Eli's voice was nearly a whisper.
Bucky could have loosened his hold. He gripped harder and leaned his torso against Eli's back. "Sure."
Eli squeezed his eyes shut. "Cap *Steve*. He always liked the brothers, or what?"
Kid brother Bucky had been that. It was not the same thing as partner, though he'd been that, too. Neither meant the same thing as Bucky, whispered in a groan, Steve's mouth tight on the back of his neck.
Sometimes, he had trouble distinguishing the memories from wishes.
They all felt equally true.
"Sobrat po oruzhiju," Lukin said, but never met Bucky's eyes, across the black mound of Karpov's grave. "Brothers in arms. You and me."
Bucky's hands were empty, his chest heaving against nothing. He found himself standing at the edge of the platform, staring down at the tracks shining with rain.
Sometimes the voices grew loud enough that he'd be in another state before he could think again. This time, he had only moved two meters.
"...'cause, him and Falcon?" Eli said, making it a question, sounding younger than was possible. "You know ?"
If Bucky backed up, he could leap down to the tracks. Vault onto the roof of the platform. From there, it would take a good swing, knees tucked up, to grab the girders underpinning the bridge above. He could be gone within 75 seconds.
The sensors in his metal arm recorded Eli's touch just above the elbow joint.
"He misses you," Eli said. Those words were strong and clear. Rehearsed. "He needs "
"I'm not," Bucky said and drew another breath before continuing. "Not what you think."
"Who? Or what?"
"Falcon," Bucky said and tried to remember. "That's the Negro with wings?"
Eli's laughter hung in the air, steam after sound. "You got a problem with *Negroes*, Mr. Barnes?"
"I don't "
Snickering, Eli jabbed Bucky's metal shoulder. His gesture might have been an invitation to another wrestling match. "You got a problem with me?"
"You're " Bucky tilted his head and scanned Eli's face as carefully as he would read schematics or decode his instructions.
"What? Not attractive?" Eli's expression caught between a sneer and something even uglier.
"Lots of people " Bucky gentled his tone. He remembered this; this was neither wrestling nor fighting, but something like flirting. He gave Eli the grin he had once used for publicity shots and loosened his posture. "I've found lots of people attractive. You, too."
Eli's chin lifted, the tendons in his neck standing out. His eyes were steady.
Bucky knew that look. Steve's look, late at night, and Cap's, too, on every poster.
He didn't blink, tried not to feel the shiver rolling down his back at that implacable stillness, but something happened. Something, because Eli's face softened, went private for a moment. Bucky would have bet dollars to donuts the kid did not have the first clue about the change.
Doubt softened the kid, and that was more like Steve than anyone else could have known.
"C'mon." One-handed, Bucky vaulted over the barrier at the end of the platform and landed in a crouch amid broken glass and shreds of newspapers. He backed up against the cement piling and closed his eyes. Tracking Eli's arrival through the crunch of glass and crackle of dead leaves, Bucky reached out when the steps hesitated.
"I " Eli said, and swallowed. He had his jaw set, hands loosely balled into fists; the shiver returned to Bucky's skin, faster now. Anticipation and expectation shifted together with muscle memory. *Sense* memory. "What are you going to do?"
He was a brave kid, but Bucky already knew that. There was no need to answer, and he was stronger, his metal arm as strong as any serum. He spun Eli around, pressed him up against the piling, and held him there to kiss.
Eli's lips were wide, full and soft as a woman's, but the angles of his body were sharp and lean, masculine and familiar. He made a small sound when Bucky licked open his mouth.
"Anything you want," Bucky replied, later, metal hand on Eli's shoulder, human one pushing under his shirt. Eli's skin was damp with sweat and very warm.
Eli was a handsome kid, eyes almost black, glowing in the shadows under here. His hands skated restlessly over Bucky's shoulders, down his arms, uncertainly. "I wanted to "
When Bucky slid his palm over Eli's crotch and sucked on the side of his neck, Eli's head cracked back into the piling as he made a series of soft, birdlike sounds.
He was *alive*, hot-skinned and agitated, under Bucky's touch. This sort of thing took no planning, no strategy, no directions from any authority. Bucky had always known what to do, how to make it just right, what to enjoy just as he made sure the other guy felt better than he ever had.
Some things would never change the arch of a man's back when Bucky's fingers first grazed his penis, the breath that caught in his teeth when Bucky palmed the shaft, weighed and stroked it as it swelled for him. Bodies, like this, bodies and pleasure, were well outside history, all its wars and cemeteries.
Bucky realized that he was smiling, rolling his hips forward as he dropped to his knees amid the litter.
"You, oh " Eli rolled his head back and forth, lip caught in his teeth, and thrust his hips. Bucky smiled more widely. "You don't, that's not what I meant "
"Want to," Bucky said and realized it was true. Better than memories, because it was *happening*.
Eli went still, staring down at him.
Bucky rolled his shoulders and brought Eli's hands big ones, with long fingers, promising another growth spurt or two to his face, then back into his hair. Those fingers dug in, tangling the hair and scraping at the scalp, as Bucky folded his metal arm over Eli's stomach and took hold with the human one of the shaft again. His head moved, his mouth watered and stretched the burn, how could he have forgotten the filled-full *burn* of this in his cheeks? as Eli trembled and moved. Bucky flattened his tongue and took him all the way in.
Down to the root, and Eli's tightly whorled pubic hairs scraped Bucky's hand and cheek. His testicles mashed up against Bucky's chin, wet with saliva, and Eli pulled his hair, pulled him down and forward. Bucky heard Eli's voice, but he wasn't listening, he was doing this, tasting rushes of sticky heat, swallowing around the head. It was going to be over soon. Bucky's metal arm dropped to his side, its fingers rasping over his own fly, scraping his erection.
Eli cried out, broken and brave, just before he shuddered and ejaculated.
Bucky licked him clean, carefully and thoroughly, then sat back on his heels. There, he thought. That's that.
He could hear Eli's breathing, irregular and open-mouthed, somewhere above him.
"Bucky, man " Eli touched his cheek with two fingers.
Bucky tipped his head toward the tracks. "Train's coming."
Eli was just a kid again, shoving his shirt-tails into his pants, shifting from foot to foot as he tucked himself back in and zipped up. "And...?"
Bucky shrugged. "And nothing."
Eli's face twisted, his mouth opening. Back on his feet, Bucky chucked Eli under the chin. "Til Niagara falls, buddy. Call if you get work."
The train's brakes screeched as it slowed around the final curve. The noise drowned out Eli's retreat.
Bucky waited until the train had departed, then leaned against the piling and unzipped his fly. He pulled himself off, spurting over his hand, into the broken glass and rest of the garbage. The scent of Ivory soap and male sweat filled his nose and mouth, cut through and sharpened the taste of sperm.
«Nice,» Fury said when Bucky finished and re-zipped. «That was...very interesting.»
"Thanks."
«Your talents just continue to multiply.»
"Quiet," Bucky told him and pulled himself up one-handed onto the platform.
«You realize you probably broke that kid's heart?»
"Nope." Bucky hurried up the stairs to the overpass and across, then back down to the street. "I couldn't help him. Different."
«Blowjobs as apologies. That's a new one. I'd say I'd try it, but we both know that's never gonna happen.»
Bucky dodged through green-lit traffic on 227th. "Shut the hell up, Fury."
«Cap teach you that, or just benefit from your...giving nature?»
"If I answer, will you shut up?"
The mechanical laughter trilled. «Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point?»
Bucky could not recall learning French, but he understood all the same. "Sure. Whatever you say."
3. Captain America
Neither Bucky nor Eli attended Steve's funeral.
After all, the casket was empty and the eulogies done by rote. The ceremony was a formality, intended to salve the public and the survivors, not honor the deceased himself.
He had passed the point of mere honor decades back.
After the funeral, after the official cessation of hostilities that had never formally been commenced, well after the flags left their position at half-mast, the two met again.
This time, Fury had nothing to do with the meeting though, if it were successful, he would probably try to take credit.
This time, it was in a grotty Greek diner in the nebulous No Man's Land between Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen. Spring had sprung, instantly, overnight, on New York, sudden as a smack in the face. The sky was brilliantly cloudless, the sunlight scalpel-sharp; refracted off every surface, skyscrapers to cops' shades, the light shattered and scattered, again and again, dazing the city. Yellow buckets, stuffed with stalks of forsythia and pussy-willows and conical bunches of lilacs, sprouted outside every deli and bodega. Women wore filmy skirts, men rolled up their sleeves.
In the diner, Bucky sat away from the windows, his back to them. He spooned avgolemono soup into his mouth as he methodically demolished a stack of buttered white toast. Absorbed in a meal as intricately precise as a laboratory experiment, he did not look up when Eli slid into the booth's other seat.
First off, Eli said, "Don't go."
Bucky pointed his spoon at the bowl, then at his toast. "I'm not done."
"Good." Eli sat quietly for several minutes as Bucky continued to eat. Finally, when Bucky showed no signs of speaking further, he cleared his throat. "Two things, then I'm gone."
"Stay, go, either." Bucky dipped a piece of toast in his soup, then sucked on it as he shrugged.
"First, I . Got something for you." Eli wore a light canvas jacket, olive-drab and unbuttoned. He drew a small package, wrapped in newsprint, from the front pocket.
Eli held the package over the table, but Bucky did not move.
"Take it," Eli said. When Bucky instead lifted another spoonful of soup, Eli knocked the spoon out of his hand and pressed the package into his palm. He curled Bucky's fingers over it. "Jesus."
"What is this?" Bucky turned the package over in his palm.
"It's yours." Eli slid a little down in his seat, making a show of his casualness. "I mean he hadn't changed his will. Not in a while. So it went to me."
Bucky handed the package back. "So it's yours."
Eli pushed Bucky's hand away. "Would you open the damn thing? It's not a bomb."
Bucky showed his teeth. "I know that."
"Then open it."
Bucky stayed still.
"That's not a request." Eli's voice carried, steady and *certain*.
Bucky's eyebrow lifted. "Who're you, Captain America?"
"Getting to that," Eli said. "Open it first."
The newsprint was wrapped in cello-tape, stickily wound around it in layer after layer. Bucky paused in tearing it free to ask, "You wrapped this, didn't you?"
"Yeah."
"It's a mess, you know."
Eli grinned. "I'm not Martha Stewart, man."
Bucky worked through three sheets of the front section of the Amsterdam News and one New York Times crossword puzzle, completed in fountain pen. Finally, he came to a lace napkin wrapped around what felt like a coin. He tossed the napkin at Eli and exposed a brass medal and its ribbon. The medal was as big as a silver dollar, still shiny. The ribbon's fabric was soft with age, but its stripes' colors were unfaded.
On the medal's face, a woman in a toga held a broken sword, standing against the words World War II. Bucky read the inscription on the reverse aloud. "Freedom from fear and want?"
"He would've wanted " Eli said and then stopped. "It's yours. The will said so."
Bucky flicked his metal index finger against the brass face. "Why would I want this?"
"Because you earned it," Eli said.
Bucky snorted. "You really do sound like him."
"That's the plan." Eli raised his chin and narrowed his eyes. "Which brings me to number two: You're going to train me."
Bucky tipped the crumbs off his plate into his soup bowl, then wiped up the rest, crumbs and smeared soup, with the last piece of toast. He chewed for a bit, then asked lightly, "Why should I?"
Eli cupped his cheek in his palm and rested his elbow on the table. He echoed Bucky's casual tone. "Things are different now. Worse. World is different."
"I read the papers," Bucky said. "None of this is news."
Eli's tone continued to be friendly and conversational. "Get your head out of your ass, okay?" By the time he was finished speaking, they were smiling at each other. "For once in your life, *make* something. Something good."
"I've done good." Bucky grinned more widely as he dangled the medal from his pinky. "Got a shiny medal for it, see?"
Eli did not mean more fighting, defending and killing all over again, still and always. They both knew what he meant; the mutual knowledge was reflected in their smiles. Making was harder and rarer than fighting. It always had been.
Steve had known that. It just took Bucky and Eli a while to learn.
The quiet between them stretched as long as a riverbank.
When the waiter lumbered over to the booth, Bucky asked, "You want anything?"
"I'm good, man." Eli passed him a five-dollar bill. "Get yourself a milkshake."
"Fattening me up," Bucky told the waiter, who shrugged. "Gimme an egg cream."
"On second thought " Eli leaned out of the booth to catch the waiter's apron as he moved away. "I'll have the same."
[end]
Pairings
This isn't a shipfic. It does include, however, these romantic and/or sexual pairings: Billy/Teddy, Bucky/Steve, Bucky/Eli, Sam/Steve, Eli/Steve, Steve/Justice, Tony Stark/profiteering, and Luke Cage/Jessica Jones.
Further Notes
1. Title and summary from Whitman, which I'm sure is obvious. I *hope* so, anyway.
2. This story deliberately employs some elements from the excellent glossary of racist terms and memes because Bucky is, among everything else, an anachronism.
3. The lullaby Bucky remembers is Lermontov's "Cossack Lullaby", c.1837. Russian-language advice from C.-without-an-LJ.
4. Bucky's medal.