Fic: "To Have and to Hold" ¤Captain America:TFA ¤Steve/Bucky ¤PG/PG-13 ¤Slice-of-life.Romance. Angst
*twiddles thumb* This...didn't go exactly the way I had intended, 'm fraid. Hopefully, I managed to stay true to the prompt over at capkinkmeme ; and I did so perusing my own personal kinks of: writing slice-of-life snapshots; AND sprinkling easter-eggs everywhere. Cookie to whoever finds all the comicverse reference in this one. X3
I hope it's still to your liking, OP!. :)
Title: To Have and to Hold.
Author: Nemesi.
Fandom: Captain America: The First Avenger
Genre: Slice-of-life. Romance. Angst.
Word Count: A little under 5200.
Characters: Steve Rogers (pre and post serum), Bucky Barnes.
Pairings: Steve/Bucky.
Rating: mostly PG-13.
Disclaimer: Marvel owns my soul, and also all the characters and themes herein portrayed. I'm putting everything back inside Marvel's sandbox as soon as I'm done playing with their toys.
Warnings: Self-betaed. Slash. Character-death (canon events).
Continuity: Movieverse, definitely.
Summary: The little moments where one fell deeper in love with the other.
* * * * *
for better
“Come outside with me,” Bucky whispers, low and urgent and happy, so much so that Steve's mind goes, irrationally, to pirates and treasures and digging gold from the mud with their own bare hands.
He sits up in his bed, gingerly. Coughs once, his chest rattling like a tin can filled with pebbles, and rubs the sleep from his eyes. The orphanage is dark, so quiet the silence seems to stretch into all directions like a physical thing. The other kids must be all asleep, Steve surmises, and rubs at his eyes a second time.
“Come outside with me,” Bucky repeats, still quiet; still urgent and happy, like he were bursting at the seams with emotion. His hair is matted to his forehead, not just damp but dripping, curled haphazardly and darkened to a shiny black.
Steve wakes up a bit more, and the sound of rain finally registers to his ears. Beyond the glass window, the night is black as pitch, water falling in silver sheets that ping and beat and draw all sorts of music from the cobblestone streets, the wooden shutters, the steel and glass of the lampposts, the brick walls. When he looks back at Bucky, his eyes have sharpened a bit, loosing the last residue of sleep; but the look in them is still open and trusting, if only a bit dubious.
“It's raining.”
Buck nods solemnly, and a single raindrop drips from the tip of his nose onto Steve's bed.
“Pouring,” he corrects. “Come on. We don't have much time.”
His hand is splayed open, inviting. A little damp with either rain or sweat, and much paler than Bucky's tanned, grinning face.
“I ought...” to stay in bed with this weather. Steve wants to say, and internally frowns. He doesn't like to concede defeat to his fragile health, and he already had to do so once today, when the other kids had gone off on a hike that cost them the best part of the day.
Steve's not the kind to begrudge someone their fun; but he had been the only kid at the orphanage who hadn't collected a treasure in the surf, or had an adventure at the docks, played tag among the giant crates or went diving from the boardwalk. It stung, if only a bit. He doesn't want it to sting anymore.
“...to tell on you,” Steve says at last, with no real bite to his words, and pushes the blankets from his legs.
The floor is cold under the bare soles of his feet, and his toes curl instinctively. He begins to fumble with his clothes, blinking when Bucky huffs and envelopes him in a coat, something warm and sour-smelling and much too big to belong to a child's.
“What? Like I'd let you catch a cold,” he answers to Steve's confused glance, and Steve feels hard-pressed not to grin.
Bucky is the best friend he could ever hope for; he neither underestimates nor coddles Steve. He doesn't tease him for his shortcomings, but neither does he pretend that Steve is right as rain when it fits his own agenda. He trusts Steve to know what his own body can and cannot endure; he lets Steve fight his battles, taste his victories and his defeats, but he's always a step behind him, supporting him, backing him. Always, always.
He's always there to save Steve from a pinch, and to get a few punches in for him; he's always there to play cards when Steve is bedridden and everyone else is shrieking after a ball. And the best part of it all, is that nothing of what he does for Steve looks like a burden, but rather something he wants, even enjoys.
For Bucky to be up and about at such an ungodly hour, it means he must have concocted something to cheer Steve up after the beach-trip fiasco. Something strictly Steve's-weak-health friendly, too, because Bucky might get careless with his own safety every now and then, but never with Steve's.
His consideration makes Steve's heart swell, each and every time. Mama would've been happy to know his child had found such a good match, wouldn't she? He can imagine it, sometimes - his mother standing with her apron at the stove, letting Bucky taste a spoonful of the soup she's cooking; instructing Steve to put a third plate on their table for his friend, and pinching Bucky's cheeks until they're as pink as apples.
“What's the emergency?” Steve asks, as soon as he's dwarfed in the coat and holding onto an umbrella wide enough to cover the whole of Madison Square. Under the monstrosity, Steve is already sweating a bit at the nape of his neck and the inside of his elbows. He doubts one single drop of rain could get on him, and he sort of pities the ones that might succeed, because Bucky looks like he might make them evaporate through sheer-will alone, he's so intent.
Bucky inspects Steve's attire one last time, nods, pushes a hat on his head as an afterthought, and then grasps onto Steve's wrist and tugs him out and onto the rain.
Steve has to duck his head against the wind, but Bucky presses Steve's face onto his neck and off they go, running towards whatever wonders Bucky wants to show him.
for worse
The punks of Tenth Avenue call him many things.
Shortie. Shrimp. Bag of sticks. Nosy beanpole brat whose breathing sounds like a freight train. Steve is all that, so he doesn't mind. Not really. He can't deny he is an underweight, asthmatic teen, with a perchance to butt in when he sees someone being cornered or mistreated.
Bucky, on the other hand, does mind the name calling, and he minds that Steve doesn't mind, because, “you're not a stick-skinny shrimp or a loud-mouth or whatever those sleazy cats call you. You're--” he rakes his fingers down his hair at this point, eyes wide and forcing a frustrated puff of air between his lips. “--you're Steve. You're not your asthma, or your weight, you're more than that, you're better than that, better than them, and--” Bucky's hair is standing at all directions now. His hands flee his head to curl around Steve's arms, mindful of his injuries, shaking him as if he could somehow push his meaning into Steve through contact.
There is a cut on his lip he acquired when he stepped between Steve and a bully's punch, and a drop of blood sits round and shiny on top of the wound, utterly distracting. The side of his face looks tender and hot, as thought it is about to swell and turn purple. Steve feels an urge to touch it, something sharp and crisp like lightening; but he aborts the motion at the last moment and ends up fingering his own swollen cheek, instead.
“--and if they don't see that, then they're just stupid. Got it?”
Steve offers a dutiful nod. He looks sullen and thoughtful, as if the injuries don't hurt but just make him tired, weary.
Bucky echoes Steve's sigh with one of his own, shakes his head and then straightens purposefully.
“You,” he says gently, crowding against Steve and helping him to his feet, because this is what Bucky is, essentially - a warm and larger than life presence that wraps itself around Steve and keeps him steady when he falters, that has his back with faithful efficiency, so Steve's eyes don't have to stray from his goals, and he can keep moving forwards. “You have more guts in a single pinky than all those idiots combined. They wish they were as special as you are, Steve.”
And then his fingers are on Steve's face, on his cheek and forehead and the tipe of his nose and tracing the curve of his bottom lip, and Steve's chest sort of expands, filling with air like a balloon. His heart trips over itself like a clumsy colt, trying to run and ending up shaking on the ground. He nods again, unsteadily this time, wondering distantly at the fluttery tightness in his chest that ought to feel like asthma but is anything but.
They link arms, each supporting half the other's weight, and amble down the smelly alley towards the orphanage, their hearts pounding steady and loud in the encroaching darkness.
for richer
“What'cha got there, Steve?”
Bucky drops down beside him, cheeks flushed pink with cold. His breath is fogging in the air, tracing glyphs of vapour, but his body radiates a sort of sweaty heat were it presses against Steve's side, shoulders brushing.
The Coney Island boardwalk is steep and long, crowded even this late into the evening. Bucky has been dashing to and fro along the wide avenue to collect sodas and spun sugar, to cajole a nickel from Steve's pocket, and bring him the stuffed bear he'd won at the range with it. They're here to celebrate Bucky's first salary, and if Bucky resents Steve for his aching lungs and his need to sit still and away from the shrieking crowd, he doesn't show.
He smells of sugar and sea-salt, and a bit of clean sweat. His face is so close Steve fancies he can see every speckle of gold and blue in his ice-green eyes. The sea is murmuring incessantly below their dangling feet; somewhere else, one of the rides is humming with electricity and a little girl is laughing softly and the seagulls are calling to someone lost. Steve frowns, put-out and feeling a little silly as he scrambles to hide his hands from view.
“Nothing,” he lies. He shakes his head so quickly his hair flops down over his eyes. He has to unlock one hand from behind his back to push them back. He smiles, disarmingly and oh-so!Steve.
Bucky catches his eye and grins, wide and sudden, and Steve should have expected the move, but he's still caught of guard when Bucky leans over and reaches with both arms around Steve to grab the--
“--that's not me. No way.”
Bucky's eyes are blown wide as he looks over the sketch. It's one of the first things Steve has ever done in colour, and the tones he used are all wrong, Steve thinks regretfully. He managed to scrap a sweet deal downtown, and grab an handful of Hardtmuth crayons for half their price. But even so, he couldn't quite get Bucky's eyes right. Too much blue, he thinks. Not enough green. And gold and silver simply don't come in a crayola box. Ever.
He paws at the sketchbook, feeling low and foolish, frowning a bit around the mouth when Bucky keeps it out of reach and leans away, sea-smell and tingling heat and all.
“Bucky...”
“No, truly, Steve. This isn't me. I ain't this...” he fumbles for a word, then shrugs. “...nice.”
Steve scowls.
“Of course you are nice-“ Steve closes his lips abruptly.
Bucky begins to grin, earnest, but there is a twinkle in his eyes, soft and telling. He shrugs, not quite casual enough.
“Yeah? Tell that to those Hogs and Champ cats downstreet, will you?” he pauses. “But I don't look this nice, Steve-oh.”
No, you look better, Steve wants to say, but somehow he knows the words won't sound out loud the way they do in his head.
“I know it's not good enough.”
Bucky scoffs.
“Steve, this is amazing. That's the point. It's too good - I'm not...”
“You are not,” Steve informs him, closing the distance between them, pressing in until Bucky's elbow is digging in his side and his own knee is against Bucky's thigh, “going to end that sentence. Or I'll be forced to sock you.”
He shakes a bony fist for emphasis.
Bucky cocks an eyebrow. Lowers the sketchbook until it lays between them, sketch-Bucky's face grinning up at them with eyes rendered in a myriad of tones.
“Why, resorting to violence now, Mr. Rogers? I'm appalled.”
Steve makes a low sound, thumps a fist against Bucky's shoulder.
“Someone ought to keep you in line, Mr. Barnes.”
“Well then, I'm glad I've got you with me.”
Waves crash underneath them, their voice soothing and low. Spray glints in the air, moistens the hem of their pants, the darkened fabric clinging cool and soft to the bare skin of their ankles. The breeze stings their cheeks, but they feel warm inside, deep under their ribs, and through their blood.
Their fingertips brush together, and they grin at each other.
It looks like it might light up the night.
for poorer
They never have a lot of presents on Christmas Day.
Once upon a time, they used to get chocolate and peppermint from the ladies of the orphanage, though not each year, and not after they turned fifteen. From each other they would get something smaller but truer: they'd wrap yellowing newspaper pages around silly little things, pieces of charcoal for Steve to draw with; that small rubber ball of Steve's that Bucky loved to play with; a nice sea-shell or rock; a piece of molten glass from a fire that had solidified itself into a strange and fantastic shape the light glinted through beautifully, and that, if you put it against your eye, let you see the world distorted and funny.
This year is no different. The Christmas tree is small, stripped of most of the foliage, and with little ornaments hanging from the wizened branches. Rusty candy boxes, broken sea-stuff, ribbons of coloured paper, nuts and orange peel. It smells better than it looks, like fruit and sweets and with a hint of the ocean clinging to it despite all odds, reminding them of sunshine.
Steve has saved enough this year to make Bucky a scarf and gloves (a set to match his own, and if there is a deeper meaning to it, Bucky needn’t know). Winter in New York can be bitter, and the last thing he wants is to watch his friend go around in those threadbare shirts of his and catch pneumonia.
Bucky sits stunned beside him, fingering the coarse material with obvious delight. He wraps the scarf around his mouth, eyebrows wriggling and making a cowboy impression that has Steve chuckling, no matter how old it gets. Bucky senses the relief through the obvious mirth, and doesn't hesitate to say: “Love it, Steve-oh. Thanks a bunch,” for the sixth time in a row.
Steve shrugs, smiles, tries not to look eager now that it's his turn to unwrap a present. Bucky doesn't fail to pluck that particular vibe either (then again, Bucky never fails to read Steve like an open book). He turns sombre, perhaps a little hesitant. He reaches for the inconspicuous little box sitting under the tree, and hands it over to Steve a bit more forcefully than warranted.
“I - uhm - was a bit on the broke side this year,” he explains as Steve turns the present over and over in his hands, trying to gauge its content by weight and feel alone.
“You mean to say there was ever a time we were not broke?”
Bucky punches him in the shoulder (and really, what does it say about Bucky that the bump is so feather-like Steve barely feels it?), mouth caught between a frown and a grin.
“Fair warning, that's all.”
“I consider myself warned,” Steve answers, and sets to unwrap his gift, careful and methodical. Bucky makes an aborted sound when Steve reveals a little booklet under all that paper. Steve glances up curiously before he opens it, and then freezes.
Bucky cringes.
“I knew this was a bad idea,” he mutters. Then, louder: “Steve, look, I'm sorry if--”
“This is my father.”
Bucky's mouth clamps shut.
There, on the first page of the little booklet, there's the charred remain of an old army photograph, taped at the angles. Steve turns the page reverently, and this time he is met with a newspaper clipping, a blurry picture of the one-oh-seven infantry. Bucky didn't do him the disservice of circling out his father's face among the crowd, but he did list, on the bottom of the page in a neat, slanted writing, the name of the other soldiers he's managed to discover.
Next comes a series of pictures Bucky must have flirted out of the orphanage archives, things he thought lost after his mother's death, some army propaganda posters, a few articles about his father's unit, plus a nice little sketch of his mom Steve remembers drawing (and throwing away) something like five years before.
He is speechless.
“Bucky...”
“Look, I'm sorry. I thought... but if you don't like it, I can...”
“It's perfect,” he says, chocked up for more reasons than the obvious. He's touching his father's face in the first picture, and he can't believe (he didn't remember) he looks so much like this mountain of a man, didn't remember (can't believe) that they have the same kind-hearted cornflower eyes, the same jaw and nose (though Steve's mouth is all his mother's).
He doesn't quite kiss Bucky for his efforts, though the impulse is there, sharp and bubbling like alcohol, and has been for far longer than Steve would like to admit. He reaches out, wraps his arms around Bucky's shoulder and presses his nose into Bucky's neck, nuzzling into the warm, musk-smelling hollow of his shoulder.
It's not the first nor the twentieth time he thinks I love him, but it still takes him off-guard when he realizes that he loves him more than he did five minutes before.
He doesn't think that it'll ever stop growing, this feeling.
He's completely all right with it.
Next half →