Insanity

Chapter 33

Song: Creep cover by Brian Justin Crum

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"I want to have control,
I want a perfect body,
I want a perfect soul."

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"Why don't you ask Mary? I bet she'd go with you," Bucky said, gently nudging Steve with his shoulder, seeing as his hands were occupied with both boys' school books.

Steve shook his head, quickening his pace to keep up with Bucky; upon noticing, Bucky slowed down. "Easy for you to say," Steve sighed, "it's not like you have a hard time finding a date to dances."

"Look, I already told Dot I'm not going unless you get a date too, so she's got a heads up," Bucky said.

Steve chuckled, though it wasn't necessarily a happy sound. "Yeah well, you might just wanna tell her homecoming's off, then," he scoffed. "I don't think girls are fond of the idea of losing their date in the crowd."

"Not with that attitude, they aren't," Bucky said, shaking his head. A pretty young girl smiled at him, batting her eyelashes. For Steve's sake, he ignored her. "So cheer up, if you don't even try then the answer is always gonna be no."

Steve rolled his eyes. "Fine, then who should I ask?" he asked.

"I already said Mary. She's kind of short anyway right?" Bucky teased gently, earning a weak laugh from Steve.

"Right, I'll ask her at lunch then."

When lunch rolled around, Bucky watched from a distance as Steve approached Mary Allen's table. Mary sat with a group of her friends, all giggling about something under their breaths, mouths full of the school's standard peanut butter and cottage cheese sandwiches. Sure, it sounded gross, but in the wake of the Great Depression, anything and everything was more than welcome.

Though he couldn't see Steve's face, Bucky watched Mary's eyes sparkle and a smile grow on her red lips as Steve talked; he took that to be a good sign. He took it to be an even better sign when Steve came traipsing back to their table, a little red in the face but still smiling huge and a bit of a skip in his step

Bucky patted him on the back lightly, afraid he might knock him over. "Hey pal, you did it," he said, taking a bite of his apple.

"Yeah, guess I did," Steve grinned. "Maybe one day I could even take your place and get all the beautiful dames to myself," he joked, peeling the top half of his sandwich off and sliding the cottage cheese onto his plate, leaving only the peanut butter on the sandwhich

Then, everything got all smoky, the images fading before his eyes.

Suddenly, Bucky was seventeen again, dressed to the nines for his highschool's homecoming dance. It took him a moment to realize where he was, who he was with. The song had ended, he'd just finished dancing and was walking back to the sidelines. Dot's arm was intertwined with his, her red hair pinned up in some sort of elaborate updo.

Steve stood beside him, nervously fiddling with the cuffs of his sleeves. "I'm sure she'll be here soon. You said you were meeting at six, right?" Bucky asked Steve.

Steve shrugged limply. "That's what she said." He coughed into his elbow, a wet, gurgling sound that would make anyone unaware of his constant state of being unwell back away.

Just as Bucky was beginning to worry Steve's date had abandoned him, in Mary Allen walked, though she was arm in arm with the known jock of the school, Robert. She gazed lovingly into his eyes, looking like she wouldn't even let go of him if she was pried off.