the undefining of steve rogers (stucky)

six

bucky and him used to steal cheap alcohol from the liquor store five blocks to the left and one to the right. bucky would sweet talk the cashier while steve snuck bottles of whatever he could find into a canvas bag and then go out the back door.

during the hot months, they would drink their prizes on the fire escape. the metal was sharp against their bare legs, but there was a pleasant kind of buzz in steve's veins and so he didn't care. he ran his fingers across the red lattice, their shoulders touching. bucky was always sweating, and everything felt humid and sticky, but steve grasped at every chance to be near as possible to his friend no matter the conditions.

they passed the bottle back and forth, letting it burn their throats. their fingers would brush when steve took the bottle back, and steve lived for the tingle that shot up his spine.

he worshipped those moments on the fire escape, with the sun beating down on his thighs, just the two of them watching the sun set. bucky would sling an arm around steve's shoulder, and steve fucking melted into his side, waiting for bucky to kiss the top of his head.

it was nothing more than friends. nothing more than what they were. steve didn't care. he took everything he could, every desperate moment with a wet kind of longing. his mother raised him saying greed is a sin, but god, he was going to die young, and he wanted as much of bucky as bucky would give him before he went to hell.

steve wasn't going to die young anymore. he was going on 100 years. bucky wasn't ever going to age another day. bucky was gone and steve was still alive and that was wrong.

that feeling of transgression runs through steve's veins like the whiskey and rum. it sinks through his skin in the same way that bucky's used to.

the last time he had touched bucky he had - he had - he had -

the floor is crumbling. steve doesn't have words in his head or sounds on his lips. bucky is screaming, and it is bucky in every sense and form. steve can hear the sound on the playground, fighting off the bullies, he can hear it in wartime, charging towards men with guns who are no more brave than he is.

"how do you feel?" sam asked one day, settled in a chair at steve's dining table. steve didn't even bother to get up to let him in. he'd gotten into a habit of leaving the door unlocked, as if he was still waiting for someone to come home.

"full of infelicity," steve tells him. as in unhappiness. as in misfortune. as in misery. as in grief. natasha's dictionary had a lot to say about infelicity. it was archaic, the dictionary said. so was steve. it also meant inappropriate. was steve's grief inappropriate? did he even have a right to be sad? he had - he had killed bucky.

"i don't know what that means," sam said.

steve just shrugged. he closed his eyes. the world felt so meaningless from his curled up position on the couch. undefined. there weren't words for this. this wasn't supposed to happen. he tugged the sleeves of his shirt over his hands, trying to keep warm. the serum made his temperature run high, but he had never felt colder than in these last few days.

it was like he was back in the tenement with bucky, in the dead of winter, when all things warm seemed to lay scattered between bucky's lips, on his words, between his breaths. it was like he was drowning again, the water seeping through his skin and painting him the same color as the ice. it was like god was punishing him, and steve knew he deserved it.

"you have to get up eventually," sam said quietly. he tapped a fingernail against the wood. steve swallows, his eyes burning with pinpricks of tears.

"no i don't," steve said.