driftfleet | steve's luck with things that fly is nonexistent, really.

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steve's luck with things that fly is nonexistent, really.

Who: Crew of the Bloodsport, anyone who'd drop by!
Broadcast: N/A
Action: Anywhere on the ship.
When: 12/13/15 specifically, but you can really pick and choose as much as you would like as far as dates go. Get your mingle on!

ps: as an aside, the bit of media that Steve received was a 'Star-Spangled Man' USO performance so if anyone wants to have seen that so hilarity can ensue, feel free.

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[His expression gentles at the edges. He learned patience first from his mother and then from James Barnes, but he's still not its master. Yet using it here costs him nothing. He doesn't look away.]

How much've you learned about PTSD?

[ His jaw sets, and distantly, he thinks his metal fingers might be shaking, though they never do. Ice enshrouds him even now, always his armour. Yet, he doesn't need it. Steve doesn't need to fight through anything of Jim's to know how much he's bleeding, or for whom. ]

Enough.

[ It took him by the throat and tore until he admitted the weakness, even after Sam, even after knowing. That's what it feels like, the nightmares, the lost pieces, the new person he is. Defeat. ]

[Soft,]

Jim.

[ Quick, sharp, like every time Steve tried to ask about the camps — ]

Don't.

[It's like the sound before the impact of a shot. He doesn't flinch, his expression remains unchanged. Slowly, he takes the towel and dries the last of the dishes. What winter there is that enshrines them is still, the space between heartbeats is cold. He dries his hands with deliberation.]

Meeting you's just about the best thing that ever happened to me, you know?

[He loves Peggy. God and country, he loves her so much it's like a supernova, some compass point, some guiding star. It doesn't matter, he thinks. Four years or forty. Lifetimes. He will always love her, he will always want her, and there will never be a part of him that isn't wholly hers for the taking.

But Bucky was still the first person he had a choice in loving, and he was better than a brother to a lonely little boy once upon a time. Steve has gone to war for him and would follow him into any Hell. He lifts his eyes to meet Jim's.]

Doesn't have to be today, or tomorrow. Day after that. Doesn't even have to be me. Please promise me you'll talk to someone when you're ready.

[ It feels like confession, somehow, that no one asked for and Jim doesn't want to keep. But so was I love you, in the kitchen of the Heron, and maybe they're at that point now. There's pride in his pockets still, secrets, and the bottomless wrath he fears in himself. It exists. All he can do is accept it, and try to keep walking, day by day. ]

[ Steve looks at him with so much patience, and all Jim meets it with is something calm, frosted at the edges. No man ever stopped him like Steve Rogers, and for him Jim would crawl on his hands and knees through every fire the world has waiting for him. ]

[ Not this. Not this weakness. He's done with it. ]

I already have a shrink for that. Besides. This isn't about me.

[They weren't always kind to each other, but they were never cruel. This is a knife, twisted deep. Fire dances down the edge of the knife, it burns but doesn't cauterize.

Pain hurts. It heals. He stands it. It's never held sway over him.

He dropped his shield on the Insight hellicarrier. He doesn't have it to lay down here, but his posture reflects its lack somehow. There's no pride to the set of his shoulders or the hard line of his jaw. Just grief and understanding, yet overshadowed by boundless love.]

All right.

[All roads lead to Barnes, Buchanan J. And the Winter Soldier wasn't forged by Zola.]

[ A stab wound between the bones, with little blood. They both always knew where to aim. There's no apology in words, nothing he strings together. There is in the slant of the shoulders, the way he draws into Steve's space, sharing the same air, trying to bring back a world that's lost, just for a moment. ]

You were saying. What did you tell him?

[What I should have told you. He debates it, in a moment's bitterness. Cups it in his hands and lets it flow like water between his fingers to some deep reservoir, to which it's barely a drop in a yawning chasm. Instead:]

Ask him. Might help.

[It's not a reprimand or a rebuke, his tone stays gentle. It's merely an acknowledgement of the fact that anything he says will be taken as some furtherment of an agenda, his pushing the issue. What serves as a panacea to the ghost of a man may anger the similar shade and he doesn't want to fight. He's so tired of it. Better to drop it.]

You want pie? Co-pilot threw one together. Came out pretty good.

[ A moment's stillness, and the winter retreats, but nothing gives way to spring. Jim's no living thing, he's had barely two years in an empty world where Steve's had four, and he can't think of what that reservoir holds. There's too much and it yawns, cut open, never healing properly. ]

Some other time.

[Maybe a better man would let him go. Steve just gives him a tired look.]

What do you want me to say, Jim?

[ Take back the part about me being amongst the best things that ever happened to you. Jim's mouth twitches at a corner. ]

I don't know. [ soft, ] Maybe nothin' for you to say. I don't know how you stood this, when you were small. I keep wanting to break something.

[A wry smile is a fleeting shift in his expression.]

Broke a lotta things, if you remember.

[ The flicker is mirrored, for a brief second, as Jim leans on him, weary. ]

So what, we take turns now?

Ain't about turns, you dumb knucklehead.

[Steve wraps an arm around him. Less a shield, more a comfort.]

I stood it 'cause I had you.

[ God help him, he takes the shield. ]

You were strong enough on your own, you know.

[He draws a breath that walks the knife's edge of steady and sure. It catches in his throat.]

Sure I was.

[He closes his eyes. Swallows once.]

But there's a difference between existing and living. Buck-- you gave what I had colour.

[Which has meaning on more levels than he cares to draw immediate attention. Steve's always been an artist. Not a natural talent. One he worked at. One he earned. He poured months into sketchpads and notebooks and newspapers they'd rinsed the print off of. He's given years. He wore pencils down to nubs and his fingers black and raw from charcoal and India ink. It was the only thing he could offer the world. No one ever really looked at him and saw a great mind or a lionheart, but they could accept that he was an artist. Artistry was so rarely a threat. But when he needed to draw something with a full colour palette, he asked Bucky. Being colourblind had its drawbacks. He got good at differentiating between nondescript shades of army green, but it wasn't the same thing. Bucky gave him his first taste of red. And years later, his description of it was how he recognized the colour of Peggy's lips when he came out of the rebirth chamber, and moments after of Erskine's blood.]

Edited 2015-12-19 12:37 (UTC)

[ It's not his oldest instinct naturally, but comes so close it's second-nature. He closes the distance between them, runs his fingers lightly through Steve's hair, close by. Shoulder against shoulder, the two of them against the world. ]

[ Quietly, to Steve's ear, ]

And if I wasn't the man you thought?

[Tiredly,]

I'd live with it.

[Death is the only unfixable thing. Everything else they can work on, and Bucky's demons don't scare him. Never have, and not for lack of acknowledging their existence.]

[ Quiet, pained, ]

You shouldn't have to.

[His patience is not boundless. The thread is fraying, but it holds. He's petty enough to hope that somewhere out there in this universe of Jim's that Peggy gave him the third degree about his bloody theatrics. The set of his jaw turns stubborn at last.]

Whatever brush you're tarring yourself with, pal, I hope you realize you're paintin' me just the same. You've done nothing I haven't done or wouldn't do in your boots. You hear?

Edited 2015-12-19 13:00 (UTC)

[ He lets go, moves away like a man burnt. ]

I should get back to my ship.

[ Too much. It's too much, too loud. The world is not spinning, the frost has always held him in place, made the lines solid and real. They can't stand the fire, not when Steve doesn't understand and is going to keep insisting on this — whatever it is. ]

[Bucky fell once, for lack of an outstretched hand. Steve doesn't have it in him to let him slip away so easily, but neither does he move to block his way. Just looks at him.

Then,]

Whatever kind of man you are, [he doesn't say, you think you are.] it doesn't matter to me. James Barnes was what I needed in my life to get by. Still is.

[ Quietly, stilled by that look, ]

Good thing you have him, then.

[Except, he has ghosts and ashes and a headstone in Arlington that spelled his middle name wrong (how did that even happen? It's a Goddamned President) and someone who barely knows him, and the man in front of him to whom his every word seems an agony.

He looks down.]

Just so's he knows that goes both ways.

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redactions - 2015-12-20 00:34 (UTC) - Expand

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enshields - 2015-12-20 00:35 (UTC) - Expand

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