Drawing Lessons

Drawing Game

"Um, hey." came a voice from Bucky's open bedroom door, rising above the swing music that danced out of Bucky's radio. He looked up from his book and practically jumped out of his skin.

"H-hi." He recovered shakily, forcing the unwilling corners of his lips upward and into a smile. All the blood was rushing to his brain.

"Your sister let me in." Steve said, a shadow of a smile flickering across his face as his small frame stood in the doorway, sketchbook tucked under his arm, "You wanna draw?"

"Yeah. Sure." Bucky stood up and turned away from Steve to pull out the card table he usually drew on. Steve plopped down where Bucky had been seated on his bed. Bucky was overly aware of Steve and found himself too caught off guard by Steve's sudden appearance to open conversation immediately. The sweet sound of Tommy Dorsey's trombone drifted between them from Bucky's radio.

"So, uh..." Bucky floundered about, trying to think of something to say before he let his opening phrase fall flat, "What are we drawing?"

"I don't know," Steve said, plopping down happily on a folding chair and setting his sketchbook on the table in front of him, "I figured we could just draw whatever. You're pretty good, so I don't really need to teach you anything. I don't know why you even wanted to take lessons from me in the first place."

Bucky smiled, more to himself than to Steve. He knew why he'd wanted to take lessons, and it actually had very little to do with drawing. He had seen Steve and just immediately wanted to get to know him. Steve was so bright, and bold, and dumb, and brave. Bucky had been immediately drawn in.

Steve smiled and opened up his sketchbook, which was really just an assemblage of scrap paper which had been haphazardly bound together with spiral binding. Held within were the most imaginative and thought-out drawings Bucky would never have thought to be possible. Truly amazing, what came from the little blond kid sitting opposite Bucky, drawing with a cheap pencil that was never meant for art. It didn't matter what he drew with, Steve's drawings were always amazing, but it did sting a little when Bucky remembered the circumstances that had separated Steve from his coveted drawing pencils.

Pulling out his stack of unbound papers, Bucky used his own no. 2 writing pencil to begin a drawing of... something. He wasn't entirely sure what he was going to draw. Chewing the eraser end of his pencil, he sat and waited for inspiration to strike him. He could hear the singer begin the song 'Polka Dots and Moonbeams' as the trombone solo ended.

It was hard for Bucky to concentrate on the piece of paper set before him. He didn't know why. It might have had something to do with the fact that Steve was bouncing his foot and every few seconds it gently bumped Bucky's shin. Or perhaps it was because Steve was humming softly and Bucky couldn't for the life of him figure out how Steve just knew how to harmonize to this song. No, it was probably just the single lock of hair that had fallen onto Steve's face and shifted a little farther down his forehead every time Steve exhaled. It could be any combination of those things, really.

Just past Steve's right shoulder, Bucky caught sight of his sister. She raised an eyebrow at him, pausing to peer into his room. She grinned at him, wiggling her eyebrows up and down like the annoying little sister she knew she was. He scrunched his own eyebrows into a scowl until she rolled her eyes and stepped lightly away like a bored cat looking for a more interesting toy. When Bucky looked away from his doorway, he noticed that Steve was staring at him.

"My sister..." Bucky explained, feeling his cheeks heat up just a little, "She was making faces at me from the door."

Steve smirked a little, tapping the eraser end of his pencil against the table, "Your sister's so weird."