laugh , and you are a fractured machine & it comes out just as that : the ink too wet , your typeface distorted. push the cigarette between your lips like a fuck you , and you might mean it , too. “ yeah , yeah. didn’t see you offerin’ to help , though. ” watch him , from the corner of your eye , through your lashes , like a wink : you wouldn’t have taken his help. your lighter is a flat and shiny thing , barely dinged , & you’ve got the compulsion to carve it up , the way you used to do. lights like shit , too. you’re half sorry you even took it.
hold it in , because you like the burn of it , down your throat and in the desperate contractions of your lungs. exhale , in these cute little rings you learned when you were fifteen and offer it between the two of you like a spliff , loose in your fingers. brows arch , unvoiced question , but bucky’s hardly going to be offended if it’s turned down. twists his mouth to show teeth , and tips his head ‘til he’s looking skyward , at nothing much but a dark hull , “ i think you probably gave too much for those fuckin’ boots to be anything other than what you are. ” laughs , again , and this one’s softer , or at least it’s more put together , “ goddamn cowboy. ”
jesse breaks open on a laugh, the vaguely hysterical edges of too much energy and no place to put it, something restless and wild in him twisting around. like he wants a fight or a fuck and ain’t about to get either one. he shrugs and slouches down in his jump-seat, like he’s not ready to jitter right outta his skin. “whatcha about to learn from a lil’shit like me?” jesse asks, catching his eyes like a punchline. grinning at the almost twinkle like wink in them. it’s funny---how bucky outranks him but still acts like a solider, a universality to him that jesse would never have guessed at before he met him. never acts like he’s better than all of them, doesn’t seem to have the desire to command men underneath him. maybe he just likes being down in the action and the muck with the rest of ‘em, jesse’d like to know why but he doesn’t know him well enough to ask.
jesse can feel himself grinning, dumbass expression as barnes blows these puffy little smoke rings into his face. like the kind of trick you learn from a father figure, one of those bad habits you pass down from one generation to another. he darts his eyes around, bottom lip’s smirk caught behind the point of a canine, looking to see if gabe is around and keeping an eye on him. “m’supposed to be quittin’.” he explains as he takes it from bucky, fingers brushing warm. damn him for an addict but he’s trying-- always wants what is probably bad for him. he breathes out like an aggression, like a ‘fuck you’ in return. he kicks his feet up, cross one long leg over another and rotates his foot at the ankle. actual cowboy boots that he didn’t dig out of a second hand thrift store--beaten halfway to hell before he’d gotten his hands on them. these ones black of course and only half broken in so far.
“don’t be jealous-- these boots are killer, i know.”