commencement
He can’t— it isn’t quite that Bucky is incapable of being angry at Steve (he’s not, he’s been pissed at Steve before), but it’s more that he can never hang onto it. It slips through his fingers every time he tries to grasp it and make it stick, and he can’t even stay mad about that. It’s always been like this — he’ll grumble and rant, and yeah, Steve’s frustrating as hell sometimes, but Bucky can never remember a time where he was actually angry at Steve and stayed that way. So he’s either been — whatever this feeling is, too-big and too-light all at once — for his whole life (or, at least, as long as he’s known Steve) or he’s just incapable of getting angry, generally.
(It’s the first. He knows it’s the first, Bucky’s been fully angry before. Just not at Steve.)
But he thinks he’s kind of actually offended that Steve’s still acting like this is something that needs to be repaid. Maybe it’s come out wrong — Steve knows that Bucky never wants to be repaid (he has to know), so it doesn’t make sense that he’d ask that.
"You don’t have to, that’s the whole—”
He cuts himself off — maybe part of it is that Bucky is just perpetually unwilling to actually fight with Steve, and he can’t do much in the way of grudges either. So instead he just takes another breath, lets Steve stare at him. His parents won’t support this, probably — he knows his mother won’t, she’s already been a military wife and he knows she’s not going to accept being a military mother, too (his father’s a mystery, Bucky’s known the man his whole life and still doesn’t know what he thinks) — and he doesn’t want to do this to Becca. But— this is his life, and as long as he can force himself to remember that, he maybe has a shot at not going AWOL as soon as he gets overseas.
(He’d asked — and they didn’t lie to him. He can at least appreciate the honesty.)
Steve leaning against him again is actually — a surprise. Bucky figured there’d be more yelling, or he’d get knocked to the floor, or something. And at first, he thinks Steve’s still mad at him; this is him being a huge fucking jerk, it’s probably the cruelest thing he’s done (even if he doesn’t mean to be cruel). But some knot in the middle of his chest loosens a little, eventually. His smile’s not fake, this time, just lopsided and regretful and he squeezes Steve a little closer, pulling as much from this as he possibly can.
”Hey, I’m plannin’ on comin’ back to this place — not gonna take the sofa with me, am I?”
It’s the truth — he’s still planning on paying rent, he’ll just have more than minimum wage barista work to pay for it. He’d suggest that Steve could sublet, but— he doesn’t really trust other people around Steve. (It’s selfish, like he wants to keep Steve to himself, but Bucky’s never claimed to be a good person.)
”— If you don’t mind, ‘course.”
Steve is still upset, though now his ire isn’t directed at Bucky, if it ever really was, but at the fact that everything happening feels like it’s happening to him, without any of his input at all. (It’s out of his control, which is not a unique event in his life, but Steve has long been trying to be the master of his own destiny. It’s difficult, however, when his past and present are so inextricably linked to Bucky, to imagine that his future would be anything but. That, understandably, presents its own set of problems). Bucky has made this decision, and if Steve is honest he admires that about the man. His friend has always been embarrassingly easy to talk into things, good and bad ideas alike, but he is equally and oppositely impossible to talk out of them as well.
Anyway, this hurt is a familiar one, one Steve can manage without misplaced anger spilling out through all the cracks in his too-small body. He’s tired, and he doesn’t want to fight, not right now (not ever, with Bucky), so he closes his eyes when Bucky pulls him closer and tries not to wish it were for a different reason.
(He falls, of course, just like he always does with Bucky. But he keeps getting back up, because that’s what you do.)
“What if, when you’re gone, I do something dumb one day and toss all your stuff out the window and move to a different zip code. I might even move to Queens, and then you’ll never find me.”
The words roil in his stomach even as they’re still coming out. Steve doesn’t know why he’s even saying these things. They’re not meant mean-spiritedly (of course they aren’t, but his brain is kind of stuck on the ‘when you’re gone’ part, and Steve has literally no idea how to act in the face of that. Bucky has never been gone, before).
“And you’ll come back and ask the neighbors about me, and they’ll say, ‘oh, that nice boy, Steve, he packed up and left one day, must have taken his trouble-maker friend with him’.”
The thing is, Steve always thinks he knows best in the moment, but he’s not sure he can trust himself without Bucky around to at least attempt to rein in his less prudent ideas. It’s not forever, he tries to tell himself, but. What if, when you’re gone, you don’t come back?
“Not that I’d do that. But I wouldn’t let you take that sofa with you if you tried."
