6.
STEVE: Hey you up?
SAM: About 2 go 4 a run, wat up
STEVE: Nothing, just checking in
SAM: …
SAM: …
SAM: …
SAM: come on man what
STEVE: It's nothing, it's just Bucky being Bucky I guess
SAM: well that can either mean he's picking up strippers and stealing tequila, or plotting to assassinate the mayor and overthrow the local government, which is it?
STEVE: very funny ha ha
SAM: I mean it man, what? He feel off to you?
STEVE: …
STEVE: …
STEVE: maybe a little? But also I'm distracted so it might be me
SAM: lemme guess that sculptor you were telling me about? ;-)
STEVE: …
STEVE: Maybe?
SAM: ok so what is he doing? Or is it something you can't put your finger on, just a bad vibe?
STEVE: He's forgetting things, goes blank, almost beat some asshole up yesterday
SAM: …
STEVE: you know what, never mind, it's nothing, he's just being himself, I'm overthinking
SAM: Don't diss your instincts man. Traveling can be triggering for vets with PTSD. Support system minimized, crowds, unfamiliar locations, different smells and sounds
STEVE: No, he seems fine with all that, just being paranoid, sorry I bothered you
SAM: …
STEVE: Enjoy your run, I gotta go, he's done with his shower
SAM: u sure? Better safe than sorry man
STEVE: we'll be fine thanks, tell your family I said hi
SAM: …
STEVE: g2g
SAM: …
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The morning breeze was erratic, puffing warm and cool by turns, scents from the ocean alternating with damp sand and greenery. Crows squabbled in the hoary live oaks hung with moss, pale sun slanting through the leaves. A ray glanced off Bucky's arm, flashed briefly in Steve's eyes, then was occluded when Bucky pulled the sleeve of his green sweatshirt down and hooked his thumb in the hole in the cuff. Steve pretended not to notice.
"Gorgeous morning," he said instead.
"Better coffee, at least," Bucky conceded. They had stopped at a local coffee shop on the way, eschewing the "free coffee" in the motel office that tasted, so Bucky averred, like brown crayon water. How he knew what brown crayon water tasted like, Steve didn't know, and didn't ask. He had enjoyed his cup of joe, and grimaced a little as Bucky downed his quadruple shot three pumps hazelnut full cream latte with mocha sprinkles. Steve wasn't sure if Bucky's new metabolism could have enhanced his sweet tooth. He'd have to ask Dr. Cho.
"So that's the house," said Steve, looking down at his pamphlet. "This is where the lighthouse keeper would live with his family."
"Be a pretty boring job," said Bucky with a grimace, looking around. "Get up, go up the stairs, put out the light, go down the stairs. Sun sets, go up the stairs, light the light, go down the stairs. Bet his quads looked like ham hocks."
"You mean like yours?" grinned Steve.
"Nothin' wrong with my legs, pal," said Bucky, flexing his knees. "I'm a fuckin' Adonis." He glanced down at Steve's jeans. "I mean, not compared to you, but still. Never heard any complaints."
Steve blushed. He had sent a selfie to blonde-and-green-eyes just that morning, not realizing he had captured the naked bulge of his bicep and shoulder, and she had said something similar. He was still unused to peoples' reactions to his body, still unused to how it had changed, and how people changed when they saw him. Granted, it was a plus when dealing with a pretty woman, but it still knotted up his stomach a little, and he wasn't exactly sure why.
He followed Bucky through the live oaks to the house. Bucky gave the museum a cursory and disinterested glance, and sauntered instead down the sandy path directing them to the lighthouse. His sunglasses, pushed up on his head and keeping his untidy hair out of his face, caught the light and flashed briefly. Behind them, a tour bus ground to a halt in the parking lot, disgorging a herd of white-haired tourists. Steve caught the tail end of a conversation: "Help me with this camera strap, Mabel, I don't want it to get damaged." "Why you brought this expensive camera, I have no idea, Hank!"
Steve's stomach flipped, and he looked closer at Bucky. His sweatshirt had no pockets, and the pockets in his rather tattered jeans were smooth except for the tell-tale squares of his wallet and cell phone. His hands were empty, the flesh one hooked casually in one pocket, the metal one half-hidden in the ripped sweatshirt cuff.
Bucky hadn't brought his camera.
It was probably nothing. Maybe he'd forgotten it. Maybe he'd gotten tired of it, bored with dragging it around. Maybe he didn't think the panoramic view from atop one of the most iconic lighthouses on the Eastern seaboard worth a few snapshots.
Yeah, right.
Steve fought the urge to text Sam, ask him what if anything this might signify. He slipped his hand into his pocket, slid his fingers around the cold slim metal and glass. What would he say, anyway? That it was nothing? Because it was most likely nothing. Just Bucky being Bucky, and Steve overthinking, as usual. How many times had Bucky dived head-first into an interest, only to abandon it a couple of weeks later? And how often had he simply forgotten something of relative importance?
Even something one of his friends had given him?
His fingers tightened on the cell phone. Bucky had paused under a large, twisted live oak and was watching a couple of school-age children play on its low, fat branches, swinging up around the trunk and chasing each other around the tree like a couple of awkward monkeys. Bucky was smiling, pale eyes soft, shoulders relaxed. That was a good sign. Likely forgetting the camera was nothing. A blip. An anomaly. Insignificant. Bucky was fine.
Really.
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The Castillo, Bucky decided, was a mistake.
It had looked so innocuous. A monument to man's ingenuity and stubbornness, pock-marked, dusty blond coquina stone, old Spanish flag snapping in the fresh breeze. The sun was bright in the cloud-streaked sky, and tourists rubbed shoulders with park rangers, parents with strollers, bored teens, a scout troop. They milled about together, peered at informational plaques, poked heads in dark cool holes, defied rules by standing on the high balustrades and looking out over the Matanzas, white-capped, snowy gulls hovering on boomerang wings, sailboats cruising past.
Bucky was comfortably full of beignets and espresso from a little free-standing breakfast kiosk, breathing in fresh cool air and bathed in sunshine, but the Castillo unsettled him. It was a relic of a violent past, damaged but still standing, unused, haunted by death and treachery, a thing to be stared at, a curiosity. His mind flicked back to the restaurant the previous evening, and his stunted thoughts there, and he again pushed it back. Steve was a rock. Just look at the sonofabitch, chin lifted, breeze stirring his dumb perfect hair and plastering his thin tee shirt against that ridiculous physique. No wonder girls stared. That artist back in Sarasota had better get moving.
The cannon demonstration was unexpected; he should have been paying attention. But Steve was swept up in the reproduction uniforms and Castilian dialect, and Bucky didn't dare object, though he clutched his metal hand tight and held his breath so long that spots danced before his eyes. He could tell Steve was fascinated by the formality of the ceremony, every once in a while murmuring the translation of the shouted orders that were whipped away in the breeze.
Bucky knew it was coming and braced himself as best he could, squeezing his eyes shut and putting his fingers in his ears, but the boom and report of the cannon fire jolted through him like a surge of electricity and rattled him down to his bones. His sobbing intake of breath when it was over was fortunately drowned out by the applause and cheers of their fellow tourists.
Steve was clapping, eyes narrowed a little and lips compressed. Bucky wondered if the sound of cannon fire was one of the things that haunted his dreams, too.
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The Red Train dropped them in front of the Lightner Museum. Bucky's brain was still humming from the aftershocks of the cannon demonstration, and he couldn't concentrate on what the driver was saying about the building or the statue of the grotesque little man in front of it. After they had hopped out and stood staring up at it in the sunshine, Bucky said, "Those are weird pants."
"That's Menéndez," said Steve with a chuckle. "Yeah. Not a fashion mogul."
Bucky peered at the plaque under the statue's feet. "Pedro Menéndez de Avilés," he read. "So what's the big deal about this guy?"
"He founded St. Augustine," said Steve patiently. Bucky was pretty sure at least four of the Red Train tour guides had already explained this at length. "Enriched the Spanish throne. Slaughtered the French."
"Oh," said Bucky. He knew he would probably forget this, too. "Did he build the castle thing?"
"No," said Steve gently. "That was a hundred years later."
Bucky looked up at the statue, wondering if it was a city requirement for statues to look arrogant and condescending. Considering the city's age and history, he supposed it was justified. "This his house?" he asked, gesturing to the big white building. "No," he said, before Steve could reply with a pained look on his face. "It's a – it was a – hotel, right? This was a hotel," he decided hesitantly, pieces snapping together in his brain. "Yeah. This is one of Flagler's hotels, the Al – the Al something – not the Alamo, I'd remember that." He flashed an impish smile at Steve.
"You dork," said Steve, cuffing him on the shoulder, his eyes fond. "The Alcazar." He gestured with his chin at the building, imposing and white, topped with red crenellations. "You remember what's in it, Mr. Historian?"
"Collections of collections," said Bucky confidently. He strolled past the statue, Steve on his six, and walked toward the front arches.
Bucky did not share Steve's love of historical monuments. Things were just things; old things were only images of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, because in the passage of centuries they could have been used for either good or evil. It was just stuff – amoral at best, utilized by humanity to forward its own disparate agendas. Nothing was inherently valuable, not even gold bars, because their worth was artificial, granted by fiscal laws and the fluctuation of economic markets.
So he was completely flummoxed by his reaction to the courtyard.
It was lovely – lovely in a way that made his heart ache a little. Formal flowering shrubbery and vivid annuals waved him in around shiny green boxwood brakes and geometric ponds, the glittering fountain bright, stately and genteel. The midday sun flickered through the ornamental trees and warmed the old stone. Bucky felt welcomed, as though the violent spirit of the city's founder had been pushed decorously aside in favor of a peaceful, more ecumenical greeting. He stood for a moment, taking it in, wondering if the museum had anything lovelier to offer than this spot.
A flash in the water, bright orange and white, caught his eye, and he crouched next to the edge, peering in eagerly.
"Koi!" he exclaimed happily. He grinned up at Steve, who was watching him with a soft, fond expression. Right next to him was a little feeding station filled with what looked like cat food. Hung beneath the spigot was a sign: "25¢ FEED THE FISH!"
The fish blurbled and swished, opening and shutting their suctiony mouths expectantly. Bucky narrowed his eyes.
"Steve," he said firmly. "I'm gonna need all your quarters."
Steve sighed, and dug out his wallet.
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.
"I can't believe you let Mr. Dimmesdale have all our marbles," said Bucky for the fifth time. The marble collection in the Lightner had made him first excited, then disappointed when he realized that all of the marbles he and Steve had played with as boys in Brooklyn were irretrievable.
"We were adults," Steve argued. The displays in the museum had both intrigued and slightly disturbed him. People spent their whole lives collecting things, only to die and have their relatives thoughtlessly auction them off. How was it worthwhile, keeping anything at all, when you just passed on and left everything behind? "You were in Italy, getting shot at. His grandkids were visiting."
"Shitty little kids," complained Bucky. "I remember those fuckers. Spoiled rotten. Shoulda slapped 'em silly." He sniffed. "Didn't deserve my marbles. Especially not my blue ribbon Lutz."
"True," sighed Steve. Their landlord's grandchildren had been horrible examples of procreation. "Hey, maybe one of 'em got it stuck up his nose."
Bucky snorted. "Woulda served 'em right," he grunted.
They swung off the Red Train in front of a white-walled house. The plaque on the front confirmed that it was, as the driver had promised, the Ximinez-Fatio house. Steve was a little disappointed. It looked exactly like every other house in Old St. Augustine, despite the accolades heaped on it by the pamphlets and websites. He glanced at Bucky. Bucky was scowling at the house, looking very unimpressed.
"Come on," jollied Steve a little desperately. "We can at least look around."
"What're you trying to do, get me all house-trained and shit?" muttered Bucky, hunching his shoulders. The front entryway was choked with tourists, mainly families, peering in windows and walking around the flower beds. "God, all this domestication. Let's go back and look at the marbles again."
"Give it a rest, soldier," snapped Steve, and then cringed, going cold. He ought not to have called Bucky that. He glanced over at Bucky, but his friend only gave him a dark look, and stalked stiffly towards the house.
"Goddammit," muttered Steve. Eggshells; why did he always feel like he was walking on eggshells with Bucky nowadays? Everything with Bucky had always been so easy before, when they were boys and young men; Bucky's easy smile, light laugh, twinkling, winking eyes, solid camaraderie. Steve could say anything, do anything, and Bucky would just sigh, wade in, and save his ass, over and over again. Things were so different now, and Bucky could be such a bastard.
Steve hated change. But watching Bucky walk away, head sunk between his shoulders, left hand curled protectively into his sweatshirt sleeve, Steve's heart turned over. He didn't want things to go on like this, always on edge, wondering if Bucky was going to snap – or worse, if their friendship would fade, the gulf between them widening slowly over time, drifting apart.
Steve set his jaw. That was not going to happen. Not on his watch. Bucky was all he had left. He'd fly another Valkyrie into the Arctic before letting Bucky go again.
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Bucky didn't believe Steve when he said there were no open tours, but really, he didn't care. The house had bothered him. It was so peaceful, so homey. People had lived and loved and died there. It had survived war and famine and neglect, but still stood, charming and secure, mocking him with its comfortable serenity.
Fuck that. It didn't always work that way. Sometimes you survived war and famine and neglect and ended up a clusterfuck of chaos and regret.
Like Steve, for example.
He was happy enough to put the old white house behind them. Steve was looking dubiously at the soft-sand, timbered building in front of them, frowning. "A hospital, really, Buck?" he said, sounding puzzled. "You want to see an old hospital?"
Bucky wanted to snap, "It beats your Better Homes and Gardens tour," but instead muttered, "Yeah." He couldn't really tell Steve that anything would be better than forcing himself to come to grips with the fact he couldn't get his shit together. Misery loved company, and he might as well hear about all the soldiers who'd tried to keep the city safe, and gotten wounded for their efforts. He could at least relate to that. "Military hospital," he added, gesturing to the sign in front of the ancient building. "Spent enough time in those places."
Steve glanced at him. He looked uneasy, which made Bucky feel bad. He dug around in the morass of memories of mud and antiseptic and needles, desperate for a bright spot in the shitshow that had been World War II, and found one: a brown-haired, blue-eyed beauty with contraband cherry lipstick and a smart, starched hat. "Mavis," he mused, grasping after it, careful of pulling any threads that might send him spinning in the other direction. "Mavis?" He frowned. "Was that her name?"
This startled a laugh out of Steve. "Nurse Mavis Kushner," he said, eyes softening and going distant with the memory. "Pretty. Smart. Yeah. I remember her."
Bucky's mouth slid into a grin. He could remember the feel of her beneath his hands, her breath on his neck and her hands in his hair. "She was a beaut, wasn't she, Stevie?" he said with an appreciative sigh. "God, glad I remember something good."
"Me too," said Steve. He smiled again and said dryly, "Though most of what I remember about Nurse Mavis Kushner is catching you feeling her up in the medic's tent in Ancona."
Bucky sifted through the shattered pieces in his mind. There was something tactile there, warm and giving, and the brief flash of curves beneath stiff white fabric. "Buddy, did she have a nice rack," said Bucky softly.
Steve snorted. "Such a romantic," he teased. He gestured with one massive shoulder. "Come on. Let's see how many more beautiful Army nurses you can remember feeling up."
"There weren't that many," Bucky protested, then paused, one foot on the lintel. Was he sure? His memories of that time period were clearer than most, but still heavily damaged by Hydra's whispers. "I think," he said slowly. "Were there?"
"Like I was following you fellas around while you sniffed after WACs and nurses," said Steve, making a face. "I had – " he paused, flinching a little, and Bucky almost cursed aloud. Steve had Peggy.
God fucking dammit, why couldn't Bucky keep his goddamned mouth shut for once in his life? Bucky knew Peggy was still alive, languishing in the Memory Care ward of a private retirement home. He didn't need to bring it up. He watched Steve set his jaw, and knew what that meant. That was Steve Not Thinking About It. And usually when Steve would Not Think About It, it was because Bucky was there and he didn't want to interrupt whatever the two of them were doing.
Bucky's insides twisted wrong and he felt a little sick. Why couldn't they just have a good time? Huh? How come the past kept creeping up behind them and stabbing them in the back? Fuck the Army, fuck SHIELD, fuck Hydra, fuck all those guys. Why couldn't they just leave two broken Brooklyn boys alone? He was going to go into this museum, this Spanish Military Hospital, and he was going to gawk at the old tools and thank his lucky stars he was living in the 21st Century with things like vaccines and penicillin and try to remember more about Nurse Mavis Kushner, and then he and Steve were going to go have lunch and eat seafood and drink beer and hopefully meet each other somewhere in the middle, because he couldn't stand the constant frayed and stretched-out tension between himself and the only man in the world he trusted.
He stepped into the cool, dim building, looking around curiously. Plaques and display cases adorned the walls, and two smiling docents in period dress greeted him. He waved Steve forward, still too rattled to deal with things like saying hello and handing over money for the inevitable tour and pamphlet, and shuffled aside, gauging the room. Solid walls, small windows, curved ceilings, smells of dust and wood, the low drone of tourists, the flash of glass casings. He felt Steve move into the room behind him, his warm, solid presence, comforting and exasperating all at once, and tried to look casual as he strolled further into the room, looking at the glass cases.
The glass cases filled with surgical tools.
The panic heaved up from his belly to his throat, and he tasted bile. He pinched his right arm with his metal hand, willing the sharp pain to force the terror down. He could hear Steve behind him, speaking with the docents, his voice calm and unknowing. He sounded interested – him and his history – he had so few hobbies, always worrying about Bucky – he didn't even have any artwork on his walls, god - Bucky couldn't ruin this for him. He'd already ruined his tour of the Ximinez-Fatio house. He needed to get it together.
He needed to get the hell out of this room.
He found a door and passed through it, his ears hazed with static, sparkles throbbing at the edges of his vision. The next room was smaller and filled with more glass cases. Bucky's eye was drawn to a crooked, dark piece of metal, and he looked.
It was jagged-edged, cruel. Beneath it was a small placard that read, Sixteenth Century Amputation Saw.
Bucky stumbled back, and the world went white.