the tables have turned | steve/bucky

chapter ten

Bucky's Story.

 

Locked in a coma, I could hear people talking all around me.

Frustrating was a word that couldn't even begin to describe the feeling of so desperately wanting to join their conversations, or do anything for that matter. When I tried to move, nothing happened. When I tried to scream, nothing came out. It was awful.

On the other hand, my conscious was fully operational. But after a while, I realized that that was even worse. I was trapped in my mind with my own worst enemy: my memories...

As the third dreadful day of my paralysis slugged by, I began to mentally deteriorate. My mind couldn't cope with all the thinking—it started to confuse itself. I couldn't tell fact from fiction. Was that a memory or was that a dream? I couldn't differentiate the two. It was a dire situation.

By the sixth day of being trapped in my mind, vivid scenes began to play in my head—scenes I couldn't shut off. I couldn't look away from them, I couldn't mute them. I just had to sit there and silently endure them. But one scene in particular played in my head over and over again like a movie on the silver screen...

It was the summer of 1941, the summer before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Steve and I spent a night out on the town, recklessly drinking with a group of boys from the block. As the sun broke out over the horizon signaling that the morning had arrived, our group slowly split off. By the time the blinding sun rose over the skyscrapers, only Steve and I were left. We aimlessly stumbled through the streets of Brooklyn, laughing at the top of our lungs and falling over here and there on the way home.

I blacked out three or four times before we miraculously made it to Steve's lonely apartment. As tiny Steve pushed open the front door, I collapsed behind him. I was wrecked.

Somehow, some way, Steve dragged me into his bedroom, where he threw me on to his bed. After that, he went into the kitchen and retrieved a cold glass of water and some aspirin for me. I drowned the water and pills quickly. While Steve pulled off my shoes, a smile eased its way across my lips.

"Hey, Steve?" I drowsily asked. With a concluding sigh, he plopped down next to my knees, tossing my shoes across the room.

"Yeah, Buck?" he started to take off his jacket.

I twiddled my thumbs for a brief moment, carefully choosing my words.

"I... uh... err..." I paused, and then  reconsidered. "Can I please have another glass of water?"

Steve threw me a petite grin. "Of course." He left the room. When he returned, I met him at the door, drunkenly peeling off my shirt.  

"Oh!" Steve almost dropped the glass of water on the floor. His face went red as a cherry. "B-Bucky... what are you doing?"

"Something I should've done a long time ago," I responded, stepping toward him.

"What are you—"

My lips crashed onto Steve's before he finished his sentence. His minuscule hands grappled my belt, drawing me closer to him as he returned the gesture. With one hand hooked around his waist, I pulled Steve up into the air.

I carried him over to the bed where I dropped his small frame on the sheets. An adorable laugh escaped his from mouth as a dragged my lips down his neck, searching for his sweet spot.

My hands soon ventured down to his pants. As I fumbled with his belt, Steve stopped me.

"Bucky—" he started to sit up. "I don't think I can do this..."

I sat back, perplexed. "What?"

Steve sighed. "Bucky... I—"

I grabbed his neck, hard. Steve let out a squeal as my fingers tightened around his throat. I had him pinned underneath me on the bed. My body weight held him down. Steve's shaking hands gripped my forearms, trying to push me off of him. But he was weak; I barely even had to put up a fight. When Steve started to kick his legs I pressed down on his throat even harder. His face started to turn blue. He stopped fighting once his face went purple.

"I love you, Steve," I whispered,  squeezing even tighter. "I love you to death."

I snapped his neck.

As I released my grip, Steve's head fell back onto the bed softly. His eyes lifelessly stared up at the ceiling. After a long moment, I looked at my hands—the hands of a murderer. One of them was metal.

Outside of my mind, I desperately tried to move or scream in my hospital bed.

Only a single tear managed to cascade down my cheek.