Do Not Go Gentle
Set before CA:TWS but after The Avengers/Battle of NY, about a month after Steve moves into the apartment in Washington, DC.
All properties, except for Mr. Kelly and Mr. Thomas' poem, belong to Marvel.
Many huge thanks to Imbecamiel and Nefhiriel for the beta work and the bouncing-off-ideas work! I seriously doubt I'd even attempt writing Cap, Bucky, or any Marvel fics if it weren't for the two of you. *hugs*
-oOo-
Winter had D.C. on lock-down. Winds howled around the eaves, froze the Potomac, and pounded the city with an icy hammer that shut down all the government offices and just about everything else, except maybe for the Safeway over on Corcoran. As far as Steve Rogers could tell, nothing ever shut down that place, though he wondered how bare the shelves were right now. He had heard one neighbor call it the Soviet Safeway because it was always running out of things. Steve had smiled in sympathy, but he'd also had to bite his tongue.
"You shoulda seen the stores back in the 1930s. Some days all you could buy were beans and maybe a handful of stale crackers out of the bottom of the barrel, and we were happy to have even that…."
Yeah, he really needed to be careful he didn't actually sound like a 95-year-old man. If he didn't watch it, he'd be yelling at kids to stay off his lawn, even though he didn't actually have a lawn.
Mismanaged or not, the Safeway might very well be out of milk, bread and eggs today, if people had made their usual panicked pre-storm run on the place. Judging by the plinking hiss of the sleet against the window panes, those folks had been wise. This storm had teeth and wasn't holding back its bite. Steve shivered. There wasn't much to like about winter storms, except maybe that, just like the good guys, all the bad guys would be holed up where it was warm.
"… bad guys'll be holed up just like we are, Cap. Get some shuteye while you can," Bucky mumbled sleepily. He pulled his blanket tighter around his neck and laid his head on Steve's left shoulder. Soon his soft breathing changed to the quick little huffs that had always signaled his descent into dreamland, ever since he was a kid.
Dum Dum Dugan huddled just as close against Steve's right side. Wind howled and whistled through the gaps in the walls, but the old barn's roof kept off the worst of the snow, and blankets, jackets and body heat did the rest. "The kid's right, Cap. Sleep. Dernier's got the watch." He laid his head on Steve's other shoulder and tipped his bowler over his eyes. Soon his light snores punctuated Buck's quiet breaths. In the peace below the screaming winds, snugged down between two friends, Steve felt safe. He rested his head against Buck's and let his eyelids droop…
A rumble shook the building, startling him out of the past and back to the present. For a confused moment he thought they… damn it… he was under fire… then a flash lit the living room and a second rumble rattled the window. He shut his eyes and opened them again. Washington, DC. Not Italy, not the war…
Just thunder and lightning.
Steve chewed a hangnail as he waited for his heart to calm down. Where in Europe had that storm caught them? Must've been in Italy somewhere. That winter had been a real bastard. The memory was as fresh as if it were yesterday—hell, seemed like he could still feel Bucky and Dum Dum's body heat against his arms—but the place name eluded him. He wondered why, since he remembered nearly everything in painful detail. Besides, it wasn't like for him his past actually felt like it happened seventy years ago. More like three. He supposed he should be thankful for the blessing of forgetting something from…before. That's the silver lining of having a head full of new nightmares, he supposed. Swarms of screaming aliens bent on destroying New York City did a pretty good job of driving out the old horrors.
Almost.
He pulled the throw higher around his shoulders. It was a fleece blanket, a horrible red, white, and blue thing that featured his giant face, ridiculously square jawed (did his jaw really have corners?), plastered over a huge Captain America shield, with bonus fireworks blasting around all the edges. He was surprised it didn't play God Bless America. A terrible, terrible thing, really awful. Natasha had bought it for him as a joke, and dear lord he hoped she'd found it on clearance, marked down because no one else wanted such a monstrosity in their home. The thought of it draped across thousands of sofas and beds made him vaguely nauseous. He had laughed when she gave it to him, but he'd really wanted to immediately set it on fire, at least until he actually touched the thing. It was soft, and really, really warm (and oh how Natasha had smirked). Would have been nice to have had one back in the war, minus the spangles. God knows he'd had a hard enough time back then with the teasing about his uniform. He sure hadn't needed his equipment to be just as yankee-doodle dandified as everything else.
"You're a chorus girl, Rogers…."
He winced. It had taken rescuing the entire 107th all but single-handedly to get Colonel Phillips to show him even a modicum of respect. He couldn't begin to imagine the insults his C.O. would have hurled at him if he'd been dragging this thing around the European theater.
A gust of wind roared against the building and the hiss of sleet cranked up a notch. He stared dully at the floor. He ought to get up, get dressed. It'd been three hours since breakfast and he still hadn't bothered to change out of last night's flannel pajamas (green and brown plaid, not a spangle in sight), save to add a thick pair of wool socks to his slacker wardrobe. Day like this, guess there really wasn't a need to. He doubted Nick Fury would be calling on him for anything right now, what with the godawful weather. Steve had proven at the battle of New York that his mettle had held up just fine despite seventy years on ice, and though he earned himself a leadership role in the fledgling Avengers Initiative, Fury had told him it would only be at dire need that he'd call the team together again. For now, Steve was under orders to take it easy and get settled into his new home in D.C., close to S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters at the Triskelion. He remembered the surprising compassion in Fury's eye, though his tone had dripped with his usual sarcasm. "This is just a suggestion, but you might consider spending time at the shooting range or with the martial arts instructors. Save the poor janitors the job of cleaning up all that sand after you wipe out a battalion of heavy bags because you can't sleep." Steve got the message, though his cheeks had burned. He hadn't done a very good job of hiding his occasional need to break things.
So off to DC he went. Agent Hill had secured an apartment for him in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, an area so swanky he felt every inch the poor Brooklyn boy he had been before the war, when poverty was the order of the day and he and Bucky had sat on the fire escape looking toward Park Slope, dreaming about what the rich swells were doing in their fancy houses. But he could afford the rent, thanks to all that back pay, and it made sense to live in a quiet neighborhood where people came and went without much fuss, no matter how famous. After getting a load of the houses in the area, he had imagined the people of Dupont Circle to be snobbish old money types, but he discovered they were all pretty nice. There was even a dame… gal… damn it no one talks like that anymore and what is it with me and women… a nice-looking blonde lady in the apartment just down the hall, though he wasn't really ready to do anything about that situation just yet. Peggy was still…
He swallowed. Yeah, he wasn't ready for that.
He had unpacked the bare necessities and presented himself to the gym at the Triskelion and found out that martial arts were definitely a bigger deal now than back in the 1940s. Five times a week, he trained with grandmasters of Judo, Aikido, Muay Thai, Jujitsu, Krav Maga… all of the disciplines, just about, including something called parkour. He learned there was more to fighting than just bashing the enemy with the edge of his shield. He was breaking concrete walls with flying side kicks and tossing people across the room and learning how to land when he got tossed around, because these guys were good at what they did, and his super strength didn't stop them from using momentum and leverage against him. They even had him doing gymnastics training. He had to admit, it was all pretty interesting and kept him from thinking too hard about anything, at least during the training sessions.
It was when he came home to his apartment, with its bare walls and unpacked boxes, that the empty hours pressed down on him with a weight he thought might crush him. He rattled around the silent rooms, exhausted from training and longing for bedtime and escape in sleep, only to be robbed of any peace when nightmares of Bucky's fall or aliens killing his new-found friends shattered his slumber after only a few hours. No chance at sleeping after the super-sized adrenalin rush those horrible images gave him, so he'd spend the rest of the night watching movies on Netflix or surfing through Wikipedia or digging around the NASA or Smithsonian websites. So much to learn and catch up on. Filling in the gaps kept his mind focused, for a while.
Some nights, though, the distractions failed and loneliness swelled, black and choking. The only way he could chase it away was to sketch Peggy's and Bucky's faces with an almost obsessive repetition. He couldn't stand the thought that someday he might not remember the way her eyebrow arched or the corner of her mouth twitched when he'd done some stupid thing that she found endearing. He couldn't stand the thought of forgetting the bow of her upper lip, the perfection of her hair… or the way she filled out a dress. He couldn't stand the thought of losing Buck's wide smile or the hilariously guilty blush that colored his cheeks any time Steve caught him eyeing Peggy's legs. Those memories were all he had of the two who had come to be his family, and he couldn't lose them like he lost the names of places they'd hunkered down in during the war. He couldn't. He couldn't, he couldn't….
And so he drew. He drew until the pencil point broke and his hand cramped and the drawings wavered and blurred as the tears he could never hold back filled his eyes.
Sometimes he wondered if he was destined to go crazy from grief.
He shook himself. "Not today," he whispered. He chafed his upper arms. Sane or insane, this storm was threatening to put him back in the ice. He reached out with his socked foot and toed the thermostat dial on his space heater up a notch. For obvious reasons, he didn't care one little bit for cold weather, and this apartment building was drafty. Better than the old building he grew up in back in Brooklyn, but still, the frigid air outside defied all efforts at insulation and sieved through the windows to creep along the floor with an ankle-aching chill. The little heater's fan kicked on, and soon a comforting bubble of warmth soothed his poor feet. He flung both legs up on the ottoman and pulled an arm out from under the blanket to grab the latest Sports Illustrated. He absently flipped through the pages. Basketball, hockey, basketball, football, basketball, basketball, basketball… and very little baseball. Didn't the editors realize spring training was getting close? The Sporting News' baseball coverage was far better, but it was online-only these days, and he was too lazy to fetch his tablet from his nightstand or the laptop from the kitchen table.
Disgusted, he tossed the magazine back onto the side table. He slouched lower so he could lean his head against the chair back. He studied the ceiling. There were three ladybugs up in the corner, had been since last October. He had looked up ladybugs on the Internet—so handy, when it wasn't in the other room—and found out they liked to hibernate in warm houses during the winter. They weren't doing any harm so he left them there, and now and then on snowy days he looked up at them and remembered that warm weather and sunshine would return eventually.
Sunshine and green grass and leaves on the trees. His eyes trailed to his bookshelf and his tattered copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and his thoughts drifted back to his childhood, to simpler times and a simpler life and neighbors in his building who were an awful lot like Johnny and Katie and Francis and Sissy and Neeley. There had been a drunken lout of a husband in 2D, Harvey Jessup. He was twenty times worse than Johnny Nolan because he regularly beat his wife. Johnny might have been weak and idealistic and a drunken wastrel, but he wasn't cruel like that Jessup guy was. One day it was so bad that Steve finally just had to take him on. Steve had been coming up the stairs after walking to the corner to buy hot sweet potatoes for Momma from Mr. Perlman's cart, and he heard the Jessups yelling at each other. Harvey Jessup had come pelting out of their apartment and nearly ran Steve down. He knocked Steve's potatoes flying out of his hand to splat all over the floor, a hard-earned five cents wasted, and if that wasn't enough to get Steve good and steamed, looking up to see poor Mrs. Jessup bleeding from her nose and crying as she hung onto their door set him off like a rocket on the 4th of July. He'd turned right around to run after Harvey, trying his best to ignore his wheezing lungs. Jessup was drunk enough he couldn't run straight, which was the only thing that let Steve catch up with him. Steve had grabbed him by the arm and spun him around. "Whadya say you fight a real man, buster!" he remembered yelling, and he landed exactly one completely ineffective punch before the reprobate had clocked him but good above his left ear. He'd hit the dirt and heard bells and only dimly noticed that Bucky had showed up. Like always, Buck pulled his ass out of the fire, because that's who he was and what he did…
"Buck, come on! I had him. I had him on the ropes!" Never mind that he was flat on his back and there were two Buckys looming above him, and both were dancing in a slow spiral against the sliver of gray sky above the narrow alley.
"You mean I had him on the ropes," Bucky smirked as he thrust two right hands down toward him. Steve closed one eye and aimed for the hand nearest him and got lucky. Bucky hauled him to his feet and then the world really took a spin around the block. Steve's knees wobbled, but Buck caught him, like always…
… and suddenly Bucky wasn't smiling but screaming… reaching up with his right hand… falling…
Steve jerked his eyes open as a hot wave of sorrow knifed through his chest, locking his breath in a big knot somewhere just south of his Adam's apple. He sat up, his feet coming off the ottoman with a wool-muffled thump against the hardwood floor. The blanket fell away and he wrapped his hands around his knees and dug his fingers into the soft flannel and tried to drive away a vision of the one time he had to catch Bucky and failed, but the image burned and the knot grew and his heart thudded and he couldn't stop the tears couldn't stop them couldn't he couldn't… He let out a choked-off sob, more of a strangled moan, but he growled and clamped it all down and forced the grief back where it came from, somewhere behind and to the left of his heart.
He sniffed and stood up. He needed to move. Needed to find something to occupy his mind, to keep the grief from coming back in an even bigger wave. He still had stuff to unpack, pictures to hang… but he knew what was in those boxes, the photos and sketches and remnants of a life stolen from him. No. He couldn't do it. He stalked into the kitchen, trying to think of something to do that didn't involve destroying anything. Maybe he could make something instead.
Like cookies.
Yeah, cookies. That would work. He was out of them, and he loved them, so he'd bake some cookies. He set his jaw as he yanked open the refrigerator and pulled open one of the drawers. Nothing in it but a package of Kraft singles. None of those handy packages of pre-made cookie dough that you just spread out on a cookie sheet and baked. The shelf where he kept eggs was empty, so no use checking if he had flour or sugar or chocolate chips. He slammed the refrigerator shut.
He would make a grocery list, then. Surely nothing about buying food in a big, ugly, too-bright Safeway would trigger bad memories. But he looked out the kitchen window and saw that sleet had given way to snow, which was blasting sideways past the pane.
Wind-driven snow stung his cheeks as his boots thumped down on the speeding train. Steve heard Bucky land safely behind him…
"Stop it," he growled. He put both hands on the edge of the sink and bowed his head. "Stop thinking. Stop wallowing." It won't bring him back. It won't bring anyone back….
The cast iron sink made a creaking noise under his fingers, and he jerked his hands away. He stood, fists clenched hard enough to make his arms shake as he fought the urge to rip the sink out and throw it through the wall. He knew he could do it. He had the strength. Definitely had the rage.
But no.
He forced his hands open. Took some long, shaking breaths. Shut his eyes.
No.
"Damn it," he whispered, then turned from the sink and stared at the refrigerator and the cupboards, though he didn't really see them. His shoulders slumped. "Damn it all straight to hell."
Suddenly the simple chore of making out a grocery list seemed exhausting beyond anything he could imagine. Turning his back on the kitchen, he walked to his bedroom and crawled back under the blankets.
Maybe he wouldn't dream.
-oOo-
Momma hummed along with the radio. She was baking snickerdoodle cookies. It smelled like heaven as he huddled under the blanket. He had another stupid cold, but the sugary aroma somehow got past the congestion and made his mouth water and his stomach growl. Surely that meant he was getting better. Maybe later today he'd be able to go over to Bucky's. If Momma let him, he'd take two of the cookies, one for him and one for Buck…
The steam pipe inside the wall suddenly hammered, jarring Steve awake. He blinked, grimacing as he wiped drool off his cheek and chin. That dream had been so real….
Then he realized he actually could smell something sweet and spicy wafting up from the apartment below.
Mr. Kelly. God bless that old man and his love of homemade cinnamon rolls!
He tossed back the covers, shivering in the sudden wave of cold air. The bedroom's radiator was worthless. He had tried cleaning out the vent with a wire, but it still wasn't working, so there was a problem somewhere else in the system. He'd have to talk to the landlord about fixing the radiator, and maybe even ask about the possibility he might convert the building's heat now that the ducts and vents were in place for central air conditioning. But not today. Today his apartment could turn into a block of ice for all he cared. Today there were cinnamon rolls waiting for him in a friend's warm kitchen.
He hurriedly swapped out the pajamas for jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt (black with an Iron Man arc reactor image on the chest. Embarrassing, but it was his last clean shirt). After stuffing his feet into his boots, he ducked into the bathroom and brushed his teeth, grimacing at the way his hair was sticking up from being squashed against the pillow. He tried brushing it, but it still wouldn't lay flat. He finally licked his hand and smashed it down. A chiding voice echoed through his head….
"For God's sake, Steve, the Brylcreem's right there on the shelf. Use it, would ya? I ain't fixing you up with Susie Foster just for you to show up with spit all over your hair…"
"Shut up, Buck," he muttered, just as he used to back then. "Nobody uses Brylcreem in the new millennium." He smiled faintly, wondering what Buck would say if he saw what men used these days.
"Ginseng Grapefruit Biotin Organic Styling Serum Cocktail… what the hell kinda hair hooch is this, Steve? Am I supposed to put it on my head or drink it?'"
"It's a whole 'nother world, Buck," he whispered, and took himself and his messy hair into the living room to turn off the space heater. He snatched up the magazines and patted his pockets. Keys. Where… oh, kitchen, on the hook. As he retrieved them, he spotted his S.H.I.E.L.D. issue phone on the kitchen table. Screw that. If S.H.I.E.L.D. really needed the Avengers to crawl through blizzards and ice to save the world, Fury could leave a message. He hurried into the hallway, leaving his shield behind as well. He locked the door behind him and headed toward the stairs with a light step and a much lighter heart than earlier. He and Mr. Kelly, one of the first tenants to befriend him when he moved in a month ago, had met down at the mailboxes in the lobby. Mr. Kelly had been returning from bingo at the local senior center and was still carrying a cellophane-wrapped plate of cookies that Steve eyed with a little envy as he pulled three sports magazines out of his mailbox. The old fella eyed the magazines with a similarly hungry gaze, so Steve had introduced himself. Mr. Kelly invited him to his apartment, and they'd looked at the magazines over the remaining cookies and came to an eternally binding agreement: any time Mr. Kelly baked, Steve could invite himself downstairs, so long as he brought his sports magazines with him. It was a more than equitable tradeoff. Steve got his sweets, the old man got his magazines, and they each gave the other a chance to drive off loneliness for at least one afternoon.
Steve hurried past the pretty blonde gal's apartment—I really need to find out her name. Maybe I can ask her over. Wonder if she likes tea or coffee? I better get some coffee in case she likes it. Not everyone likes tea—then down the first flight. He swung around the corner landing and took the next set of stairs in a single leap, landing lightly on the balls of his feet. He stopped for a moment in front of Mr. Kelly's apartment #2, listening to the soft noises of the building. The walls were pretty solid, but his sensitive ears could hear the quiet goings on of all the lives hidden behind the closed doors. Today's world wasn't so very different from Brooklyn, after all, except that fortunately there were no wife-beating husbands in the building, so far as he knew.
He knocked. "Mr. Kelly, it's Steve. Steve Rogers." The old man was going deaf and, Steve suspected, a little bit senile, so Steve always made sure to use his full name, just in case Mr. Kelly was having a bad day. From the smell of the cinnamon rolls, he'd bet today wasn't one of those.
The peephole darkened for a moment, then a chain rattled on the other side of the door. He heard a series of clicks as the old man fumbled with all the extra locks Steve had insisted on installing for him after several tenants in the building next door had trouble with break-ins. Mr. Kelly had no family that Steve was aware of and rarely left his apartment except to buy groceries at the little shop down on the corner. No Safeway for Mr. Kelly; he always said trudging through that giant store was too hard on his arthritic hips. Steve usually picked up a few things for him every time he went, just as he tried to do little odd jobs the old fella needed, like installing the extra locks. Mr. Kelly had stood over his shoulder the entire time Steve worked on the door, fussing that he didn't need new locks, the old ones were fine, and besides he had his baseball bat. Steve ignored him the same way Bucky used to ignore him whenever he'd insisted he had some bully on the ropes.
"One more punch and he was done for, why'd you butt in, Buck, I can handle myself just fine…"
"Sure, punk. Because everybody makes their best moves after getting folded in half and stuffed in a trash can like yesterday's newspaper."
Steve smiled a little. He didn't get stuffed in too many trash cans these days. Blasted out of buildings to crash down on parked cars, maybe, but no trash cans.
The door finally opened and, accompanied by the soft strains of Glenn Miller's Little Brown Jug, a bent old man with a cloud of wispy white hair peered up at him. "Ah, Steven! When I looked out the peephole, I thought it was Iron Man." He cackled as he reached up and patted the bright blue emblem on Steve's chest.
He plucked at his shirt a little ruefully. "I'm down to my last clean shirt."
"Eh, don't be embarrassed. Stark probably wears a shirt with a Captain America shield on it when you're not around." He patted his chest again. "Ach, you're so tall, young man, all I can ever see is your chest through that peephole, but that's how I know it's you, even if you do come disguised as Iron Man."
"I wasn't disgui—"
"Now, now, don't take me so serious. I know you weren't trying to fool me. Captain America would never try to trick an old man, especially one who gives him cinnamon rolls."
"You're right, sir. Can't risk insulting my supplier." He stepped around him into the tiny, furniture-clogged living room. Because the first floor lobby ate into the floor space, Mr. Kelly's unit was about a third of the size of Steve's, which always made Steve feel a little guilty, though it wasn't like he could give the old guy half of his living room. Besides, Mr. Kelly seemed to like his clutter. Steve waited patiently, carefully keeping his elbows in lest he knock off some precious knick-knack, while the old fella carefully relocked every bolt and chain. Even with Captain America standing in his living room, he didn't take chances, once he'd finally resigned himself to the necessity of more locks. Smart man.
By the time he finished, Little Brown Jug had given way to String of Pearls. He gave Steve an assessing look. "It's just as well you came down. I can tell you haven't been eating enough. A strong breeze would blow you away." This from a man who was lucky if he broke 140 on the scale. Steve handed over the magazines. Mr. Kelly plopped them on the table beside his ancient recliner. "Any baseball in them things?"
"Not much. Good article about the Nats' prospects in last week's Sports Illustrated, but that's about it."
"Nothing about the Brooklyn Dodgers, eh, kid?"
Steve smiled a little sadly. "Nope."
"Eh, screw 'em for moving all the hell away to Los Angeles. We'll keep rooting for the Nats, won't we."
"Yes, sir, I guess so." He thought about the Mets cap languishing on his closet shelf. Out of respect for his new city, he kept his team loyalty on the down low. It wasn't like he had anything against the Nationals, so long as they weren't playing the Mets.
"You ain't one of them Yankee fans, are you? Because I can't give a Yankees fan any cinnamon rolls."
It was an old game, but Steve gladly played along because he was never sure if the old man was just teasing or had truly forgotten. Sometimes he did and Steve would be hard-pressed to convince him he hated the Yankees. One time he hadn't been able to and had to leave without a cinnamon roll. That had been a bad day for them both. "Absolutely not! I was a Brooklyn boy. My father was a Dodgers fan, and Momma would have kicked me out if I said I liked the Yankees."
"Good man. Now come into the kitchen where it's warm from the oven."
He led Steve into the tiny kitchen where he always felt like a giant trying to squeeze into a shoebox. He pulled out one of the two chairs at the tiny drop-leaf dinette set and gingerly sat down. The tabletop was made of white laminated stuff with a pattern of squiggly boomerang shapes that creeped him out a little. It looked too much like some kind of hoard of outer space amoebas. He could imagine the aliens in New York hatching from something like that. But the chrome chairs and table legs reminded him of Howard Stark's expo and the flying car that didn't quite fly. He had to watch he didn't cut his forearms on the jagged chrome edge of the table, though. Combined with the ripped turquoise-colored vinyl seat that poked him even through his jeans, it wasn't the most comfortable place to sit. Not that he minded. He'd lay down on a board of nails if it meant getting a cinnamon roll.
He pushed aside the little ceramic hen and rooster salt and pepper shakers to make room for the plate Mr. Kelly placed before him. It held a massive roll still warm from the oven and dripping with cream cheese frosting. Steve knew from prior experience that there existed in this new future world no more delicious creation; he didn't care what people said about Cinnabon.
Mr. Kelly added a large glass of milk. "I still think you should have coffee. Cinnamon rolls and coffee are designed by God to go together."
"You know I don't really like coffee."
"Bah. What grown man doesn't like coffee? You see a beautiful woman you want to ask over… like the gal in the apartment next to yours. You don't want to ask her over for cocktails the first time, so what, you gonna ask her to come to tea, like you're the Queen a' England or something? What a wussy thing to do!"
"All right, all right. I'll get some coffee to keep on hand, just in case."
"And fix it how? You got a percolator?"
"I have a Keurig. It makes everything."
"Bah. Those things don't make good coffee. You need a percolator. Or new taste buds. Was it too much to ask that the stuff they gave you to turn you into a giant should give you a liking for coffee? And Erskine called himself a scientist."
Steve chuckled. How was it he could joke and laugh about his past with Mr. Kelly, but when he was alone most of the time all he could do was cry? "Cuz he's your friend, stupid," Bucky's voice whispered, "Just like hanging around with me made you feel better after your ma died, he makes you forget the bad stuff for a while. Now quit mopin' and eat already."
Steve shoved a bite into his mouth. Was it also strange that when thinking about Bucky didn't drive him to tears, he seemed to constantly have a running dialogue with him in his head? No way he'd ask anyone. They'd probably lock him away in the loony bin and New York would have to fend off any future alien attacks without him.
That didn't seem such a bad prospect, actually.
Mr. Kelly had turned back to the stove where he picked up his giant chrome percolator and poured himself a cup. Steve pushed the sugar bowl toward him when he came back to the table. He sat with a grunt in the opposite chair. "Thank you, Steven."
Steve happily chewed his cinnamon roll while Mr. Kelly readied his coffee. Finally the old man slurped some down and sighed. "You don't know what you're missing, boy."
A beverage that smells and tastes pretty much like skunk, Steve thought, but he kept it to himself. "I have stunted taste buds, I guess."
"Them Vita-Rays didn't turn all of you super-dooper, obviously. So tell me, young man, what's new in the world of Earth's mightiest heroes?"
"I don't know. I'm off duty at the moment."
"Off duty! How do you figure? What if aliens show up?"
"Then I'll go back on duty, I guess. But I don't think spaceships can get through all this sleet and snow."
"Bah. They'll open up another one o' them holes in the sky and melt the snow and probably everything else with a laser beam. I read the comics, you know. I grew up reading all about you and Bucky."
"Don't believe everything you read in those things. We never fought aliens back then. Just Nazis and HYDRA goons."
"What about that Red Skull fella?"
"He wasn't an alien. Just a man destroyed by his own hubris."
"Melted him, didn't you?"
"He… more or less melted himself, I guess."
"Suppose he's really dead, or is he gonna come back through one of them wormhole things just like them giant space slugs did?"
Steve shook his head. "Heaven forbid."
"From your lips to God's ears." Mr. Kelly took another sip, smacked his lips, and smiled. "I know you don't like talking about that fella—and don't try to hide it, you're a terrible liar—so here's something a little more cheery: I have found a lady to court."
Steve sat up straight. "You didn't."
Mr. Kelly grinned. "I most certainly did. And she's not some hotsy-totsy dame but a real baby doll. Dances like a dream."
"I didn't know you danced."
"Oh, you better believe it, I dance! How do you think I stay so young?"
"This gal have a name?"
"Bertha Fischer. Bertie, she lets me call her. Lives up on the third floor."
"Tall lady, glasses?"
"The very one. She was a schoolteacher, did you know that."
"I did not. I'll watch my grammar next time I talk to her."
"You better. She can hear a misplaced semi-colon."
"She know you're a good baker?"
"Not yet. I'm moving slow."
"Not sure at your age moving slow is a wise idea."
"Oh, you oughta be in the funnies, Mr. Captain Smarty Pants America who's ten years older than me. I got more than enough time left in the meter, don't you worry."
"I was in the funnies," Steve said ruefully. "And I'm sure you have plenty of good years left. I guess if you start baking for her, you don't want me crashing your date every time I smell cookies."
"Call first. If she's here and things are really on the boil…"
Steve nearly choked on his milk.
"… I'll just let the phone keep ringing. But I'll keep some back for you. You're still a growing boy. Can't let my love life interfere with you getting some proper chow. Speaking of…" He got up and opened the refrigerator, then opened the little interior freezer door. The freezer compartment was in dire need of defrosting. He struggled for a moment but finally pried out a foil-wrapped rectangle that looked like he'd put it in there about the same time Steve went into the ice. "Made some meatloaf the other day. I put onions in it because I love onions, but they don't love me anymore. I was up all night." He thumped the frost-encrusted package on the table by Steve's plate. "You eat it."
Can super serum ward off food poisoning? Dare I risk it? He hoped he didn't look as dubious as he felt. "Thank you," he said. No sense insulting Mr. Kelly's generosity. He'd quietly throw it out once he got back to his place. "Be a nice change from my own sorry cooking."
Mr. Kelly sat back down and peered at him with a knowing gaze. "You're lonely. You need a woman."
Steve offered a half smile. "Does your Bertie have a sister?"
"Go on, make jokes. It doesn't change the fact that you need to get you a woman. A young woman. One like that pretty blonde next door to you. You're still a young man, even though your birth certificate says otherwise, and all young men need a woman. Unless of course you're one o' them that needs a man?"
Steve was well past being shocked by Mr. Kelly's blunt questions. "I'll stick with the women, thanks."
"So you and Bucky… that wasn't…"
"Nah. He was like a brother, not a lover."
"Well, you two living together in Brooklyn, there was a lotta that going around in that neighborhood in them days." Mr. Kelly was from Queens.
"It wasn't like it was catching, Mr. Kelly." What in the world. He could all but hear Bucky snickering. Shut up, Buck.
"Hey, I seen photos of your friend. I ain't wired that way, but I mighta caught it anyway, if I lived with a fella that handsome."
This time Steve did choke on his cinnamon roll. "Oh my god." He started laughing and had to wipe his eyes. Felt good. "If only Buck were here to hear you say that."
"Probably give me a knuckle sandwich."
"Nah. Buck wasn't like that. He got offers but he'd just smile and tell 'em he was like the YWCA—ladies only."
This time it was Mr. Kelly's turn to lose himself in laughter. He thumped the table with one stringy palm. The rooster jumped and the hen tipped over and spilled salt on the space amoeba squiggles. Mr. Kelly picked up a pinch and tossed it over his shoulder. "Wish I could have known your Bucky. He sounds like he was a real corker."
"The very best friend a guy could hope for. He got along with everybody, so long as they weren't bullies." His mirth faded. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't still miss him."
Mr. Kelly crossed his hands over his small belly and regarded him with solemn blue eyes. "It's only natural you feel that way. Been 70 years for me and the rest of the world, but for you it's only been, what, a year, maybe two?"
Steve might have replied, but his throat was suddenly knotted up. He just nodded.
"I lost a buddy, in Korea," Mr. Kelly continued. "My right hand man, Hank. I was always on his left, watching his flank, and he'd watch my right. We didn't grow up together like you and Bucky, but we hit it off in basic. Was like we was brothers separated at birth. He could finish my thoughts for me, and I could tell which way he was gonna shoot before he even aimed his gun. Gooks got him at Imjin River… sorry, guess we can't call 'em that nowadays, what with being PC about every little thing and all, but that's what we called them North Koreans on the front lines. Hank caught one in the gut right at the start. I shot the bastard that did it, but there wasn't nothing anyone could do for Hank. I had to just stay there and keep on shooting while he was laying there dying right beside me." He sniffed and ran a thumb across his eyes.
Steve swallowed hard. "Does the pain ever get better?"
"Better? Not sure that's the right word. But it does sort of fade a little. Or at least it did for me. Everybody handles it different, grief, so I can't say how it is for you. But for me… I don't think about him much these days, but I tell you what, if I were to set my mind on that day and drop my guard and really let the memories unfold, I'll end up curled up on the floor cryin' my eyes out, even after all these years. Most of the time I don't have any trouble but some nights, when a dream catches me off guard? Them's the worst."
Steve stabbed at the last bite of cinnamon roll on his plate. "Mine do that almost every night."
Mr. Kelly nodded. "They'll haunt you every time you close your eyes, at first. But then you'll suddenly realize it's been a week and you haven't had a nightmare. Then two weeks. Then a month. You'll realize you can think about him without feeling that horrible emptiness in your chest. Hell, it's got to where these days, living by myself with Esther gone, I even hold running conversations with him—and her too—in my head." He caught Steve's expression. "Ah, so it's like that with you and Bucky, I take it."
Steve shrugged. He didn't trust himself to actually speak.
"Well, that's all right then. Nothing wrong with that."
"I, uh," he cleared his throat. "I thought I was crazy, doing that."
"If you are, I am, too. Way I figure, it keeps his memory alive, if nothing else. So long as it brings you some comfort, what's the harm? The trick to really moving on, though, is to not let yourself wallow in guilt because you're not wallowing in the sorrow anymore."
Steve stared at his plate, thinking about the old man's words. "Did you feel guilty? About how Hank died?"
"Every time I think about it. I was his sergeant, see, and you know how it is. You replay every moment, torturing yourself with thinking, 'If only I'd moved faster, shot better, put him in a different spot.' Nothing to gain by that, but it's hard to turn it off."
"Friend of mine, back in the war, told me something, right after Buck fell. I was trying to get drunk and couldn't, the serum doesn't let me. I've never been one to get drunk, but I guess I was just sort of lost in guilt over letting Bucky fall and hurting so bad that I just wanted to drink until I could stop reliving that moment, stop feeling that guilt, just for a little while…" He swallowed hard and held himself tight for a moment, then went on, "A friend showed up right about the time I lost it and was finishing up a good crying jag. She tried telling me it wasn't my fault, but I didn't agree. Still don't agree. But she wasn't having any of it. She was a British gal, real straightforward, stiff upper lip, the whole nine yards. She got pretty stern, asking me if I respected him. Told her of course, and then she told me I needed to allow Bucky the dignity of his choice to follow me, because to him, I had damn well been worth it."
"Wise woman."
"Yeah, she was. But… I still… I dunno. I guess I still think that I had no right askin' him to follow me, to take on Red Skull. He'd been through torture already, see, and he shoulda been shipped stateside, but…"
"But that woulda killed him slow instead. Some men, like my Hank and your Bucky, just weren't meant for the quiet life. They rage against the dying of the light, as a poet said once."
"Yeah. That was Buck, all right. He was always there for me, watching out for me since we were kids. He never wanted me to join the Army. Not sure he ever really accepted that I wasn't still the little guy he had to protect all the time. Sending him home… yeah, that probably would have felt like a slap in the face."
"Damn straight, Rogers." Steve could all but feel Bucky's glower from beyond the grave.
"A man can't escape what he's put on the good earth to do, and those of us that live on have to find a way to accept it." He straightened in his chair and lifted his coffee cup. "To them who didn't go gently into that good night."
"Who raged against the dying of the light," Steve added softly, then swiped at his nose with the back of his hand as he raised his glass of milk. "To Hank and Bucky."
"And to you, son. I don't think you'll go gently into the good night, either."
"Neither will you."
"No sirree-bob. I'll go out doing a rumba with Bertie!" He winked at Steve as he shimmied his skinny shoulders. He shoved his chair back and stood. "Now come on, enough with the mulligrubs. Let's go look at them magazines you brought and chase away the winter blues around the hot stove. Speaking of, I watched Hot Stove League on MLB this morning and you wouldn't believe who those schmucks said would win the Series…"
The old man's voice faded as Steve heard another. "Listen to the old guy, Steve. I mean, I loved the toast and all, but heaven ain't got that newfangled cable stuff, and I wanna know who those schmucks say is gonna win the Series…."
Steve blinked away tears as he stared hard at the ceiling, then he shook his head with a little smile. "Sure thing, Buck," he whispered, and followed the old man into the living room.
-oOo-
Steve balanced a plate with two cinnamon rolls on top of the brick of circa-1944 frozen meatloaf in his left hand as he fumbled the key into his lock with his right. He pushed the door open and stopped.
Someone was in his apartment. He wasn't sure how he knew, but he sensed the place wasn't empty.
His heart rate ratcheted up a few gears as he immediately dropped the meatloaf and the plate of cinnamon rolls (damn it, I was going to eat those for breakfast!) and executed a shoulder roll into his entry hallway. He snatched up his shield and…
"Stand down, Rogers," a laconic female voice said. "It's just me."
Still kneeling, Steve peeked over the top edge of his shield and saw Natasha Romanoff sitting on his couch, curled up in the horrible blanket. The face on it… his face… was draped across her chest, the eyes right over…. He felt his cheeks heat up. He clenched his jaw. "Natasha. How did you—never mind. Why are you here?"
She shrugged. "It's sleeting."
"So… Fury didn't send you?"
"No." She stared at him with that calm, give-nothing-away gaze that always made him feel like she was secretly laughing at him. It also made think of a particularly aloof cat that had lived in the alley behind his building in Brooklyn. He had to bite back the urge to offer her some cat chow. Then he remembered the cinnamon rolls. He uncurled himself from behind the shield and looked behind him. By some miracle, they had stayed on the plate. He picked them up with his free hand and glanced over his shoulder at her. "Want a roll?"
An eyebrow quirked. "Why, Steve Rogers, are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting?"
He immediately felt his face go up in flames. "What? No! I mean… a roll… a cinnamon roll… my neighbor, he makes… that's all I meant…"
"Relax, Rogers," she said as she flipped the blanket off herself and stood. She was wearing one of his sweatshirts. "Yes, I would like a roll."
She's wearing my clothes. Why is she…but I don't have any clean clothes left…. "Did you pull that sweatshirt out of my dirty clothes hamper?"
"Yes."
He stared at her, wondering if she had anything else to add.
"Is that a problem?"
"Not for me. Not sure what it says about your sense of hygiene, though."
"Rogers, I'm a spy. There are times I've lived for weeks in the same outfit." She pinched the fabric on her chest and sniffed. "This still smells like freedom-scented fabric softener and apple pie. I think I'll be fine."
She sauntered past him toward the kitchen, flicking a fingernail against his shield. "You can put it down, Rogers. I won't bite you. Unless you want me to…" She smirked.
He stammered something that he hoped sounded like denial and put the shield down in its usual spot against the wall.
God, how he wished Bucky were here right now.
"Forget it, Steve. That one's too scary even for me. Although, you know, I always did have a thing for redheads…"
-fini-
Hopefully this will turn into a series of one-shots about life in Steve's Dupont Circle apartment building. The poor man needs some good neighbors.
This story is inspired in part by Owlet's excellent This, You Protect, which can be found on Ao3. I'd already begun thinking about Steve's apartment building neighbors, wondering who they were and what they thought of their famous super-soldier neighbor, and her take on Bucky and his 'olds' mission assists helped solidify my nascent idea of giving Steve Rogers a friend from his era.
Mention of Steve's fight training at the Triskelion is based on the MCU, where there is a clear arc of skill improvement between Captain America: The First Avenger and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. In the comic books, Steve Rogers learned martial arts in the 1940s, but he doesn't seem to have done any of that in the MCU. I tried to blend the two universes together a little.
Mr. Kelly's toast taken from the Dylan Thomas poem, "Do not go gentle into that good night", first published in Botteghe Obscure, 1951.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I can't read that poem without thinking about Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes.
The spelling of Steve's "Momma" is from the comics, as is Steve's preference for the Mets over the Yankees.
'Soviet Safeway' courtesy of an apparently annoyed shopper's Yelp review. I've never actually shopped there. Hopefully it's not as bad as all that.