Work Text:
Steve was supposed to meet him at the automat on Willoughby at two.
Yet here Bucky was, leaning on a light pole outside the automat, listening to the two fifteen train clatter past over his head with no sign of Steve.
With a sigh, he straightened and set off walking in the direction he knew Steve would have come from, stopping to peer down alleys as he went. It wasn’t that Steve made a habit of turning up in alleys; it was that he made a habit of not being late. If he was, it meant he’d run into something important enough to override that habit, and with Steve, that meant there was a half decent chance Bucky would find him somewhere he probably shouldn’t be.
Down an alley, behind a bar, under a dock with the tide creeping in.
Could be a fight, could be a litter of abandoned kittens, could be carrying an old lady’s groceries or an asthma attack he didn’t want anyone to see, but it’d be something.
He heard a rustle and a commotion and saw a guy duck down a side street. Instincts honed by his years with Steve made him follow, down the side street until he rounded a corner into a dead end alley that held Steve and a guy wearing an unpleasant combo of angry and smug.
The guy Bucky had followed stopped. “Come on, Walter. We’re gonna be late. You have to do this on the way to my sister’s party?”
Bucky assumed the smug, angry guy was Walter, since he replied, “Yeah, I gotta do this. This Mick thought he could mouth off to me like he had the right. I don’t stand for that.”
Steve’s, “By mouthing off he means asking him to maybe watch where he’s going so he didn’t knock over a lady carrying a baby,” was wry and directed past Walter to Bucky.
Walter and the guy Bucky had followed weren’t smart enough to have noticed Bucky’s arrival, but Steve talking to him clued them in. They both turned.
“Who’s this guy?” Walter said.
The other guy, Bucky was just gonna call him Not-Walter, squinted and took a step back, looking Bucky up and down. “Hey, I know you. You box at Goldie’s, right?”
Bucky’s smile was as cool as his nod and Walter suddenly looked interested.
Not-Walter frowned then snapped his fingers. “Barnes! That’s it, I saw you fight that Italian a couple of weeks ago.”
The interest on Walter’s face slid into a sneer. “Oh. He’s the Kike.”
The spike of anger drove Bucky up on his toes, lifted his fists, opened his mouth—
Steve was faster. Steve was always faster when it was someone else getting hurt. “Shut the hell up.”
Walter turned back to Steve. “Don’t snap your cap, little man. It ain’t nothing but the truth.” He glanced between them and laughed.“The Mick and the Kike. Trust the rats to nest together.”
Bucky gathered himself like he’d heard the boxing bell, but Steve shook his head. “I got this,” he said, and Bucky believed him.
Walter laughed again, heavy with contempt. “You don’t got squat. Your kind, you’re nothing but rats. Cowardly rats leaving your sinking ships of a second-rate country and thinking you can drag us down to your level. Taking good jobs away from real Americans, real Americans, the ones who made this country, who made it what it was before you turned up! We used to be the land of the free and home of the brave and now what are we?” He spat a great wad of phlegm that hit the ground inches from Steve’s shoes. “Land of the dirty, filthy rat.”
There was a light in Steve’s eyes, a righteous burning fire Bucky had learned to watch out for, because one way or another it was going get free. There was a beat of silence. Two. Then Steve smiled. “If my choices are be like you or be like a rat? I’ll take the rat.”
It drove some people crazy, that light, that smile, and no surprise Walter was one of them. With an unintelligible grunt he threw himself at Steve fists first. He was bigger than Steve, not that it meant much when most everyone was, but judging by the way he was huffing and lurching, he didn’t know how to fight.
Had maybe never been in a fight at all.
He was a lumbering ox to Steve’s slippery eel, Steve who’d been in too many brawls for Bucky to count, never starting but always finishing, fighting right ‘til the end, and Steve ducked a blow and gave one back. Dodged to turn a clumsy punch into a glancing fist to the face and knocked Walter away to stumble into the wall.
Not-Walter twitched forward.
“Unless you want to go a few rounds right here, no ring, no rules,” Bucky said under his breath, “you stay right where you are.”
Not-Walter had seen him fight. He stayed where he was.
Steve was breathing harsh, a little wheeze Bucky knew like his own heartbeat, blood trickling from his nose, but his voice was strong as a mountain. “You’re right about one thing, this is the land of the free, or it’s supposed to be. But it’s freedom for everyone, wherever they come from, whoever they are. And maybe that means people like you think you’re free to say shit like that to people like us.” He slid a knife blade glance to Bucky, then grinned, teeth bared and bristling. “But you better get used to people like us knocking you on your ass.”
Walter lunged but Steve stood firm and moved like Bucky had taught him, coiled, controlled, every ounce of power in that too skinny body and that too huge soul crumpling Walter around his fist to send him wheezing to the ground.
“All of us together, we’re the republic. We’re the country. Get used to it.” A drop of blood dripped off Steve’s chin, gleaming red as it splashed in the dirt. “Cause we’re not going anywhere. We’re never gonna stop standing up.” He took a step forward. “And you’re never gonna stop hitting the ground.”
In the silence that followed, Bucky suddenly understood the battle charge, the war cry, the devotion that drove men to follow into war and into hell, because he’d follow Steve anywhere.
Into war and into hell.
The desperate look of confusion Walter sent his way, his way, like Bucky could explain how this had happened was almost funny. There was no power on earth that could make a man like Walter understand a man like Steve, so Bucky gave him the only thing he could.
He gave him a warning. “He’s not gonna back down.”
Steve wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, grinned again with bloody teeth, and Walter scrambled back, let Not-Walter pull him to his feet and they hoofed it out of the alley without looking back.
Steve watched them go and Bucky watched Steve, the only sound the distant noise of the street until Steve met Bucky’s eyes and Bucky said, “You’re late.”
“Lady with a baby, Buck. He almost knocked her into the road.”
“Figured it’d be something like that. At least it wasn’t kittens this time.”
“Hey, kittens are cute.”
“Not when they pee in your pocket they aren’t.” Bucky pulled out his handkerchief and moved to stand in front of Steve. “Head back.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Uh huh,” he said, tilting Steve’s head back and swiping blood off his face.
“That better be clean.”
“Nah, I had a good blow before I found you.” Steve glared at him and Bucky just laughed and gently prodded his nose. “Not broken.”
“Told you.”
Bucky dabbed up a few more spots of blood then folded up the handkerchief and tucked it in his pocket. “Come on. I’ll buy you a sandwich.”
“Your Ma’s gonna be mad about all that blood.”
“Steve.” Bucky slung an arm over his shoulder and nudged him into a walk. “Ma was mad when I brought home a bloody hanky the week I met you. Now she just sighs and tells me to bleach ‘em myself.”
“I always knew I liked your Ma.”
Bucky snorted, tugging Steve closer, then let go as they reached the main street. They paused, Bucky checking in both directions in case Walter had found his courage or more friends, but there was no sign of him.
As they turned down the street towards the automat, Steve said, “You remember a few weeks ago when everyone at Goldie’s was talkin’ about tattoos?”
“I remember you telling me they were stupid.”
Steve shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m thinking maybe they’re not so stupid.”
Bucky turned to stare at him.
“I’m thinking I might get one.”
He cast a sideways look at Bucky, part challenge, part question, and Bucky knew sometime soon he’d be following Steve right into a tattoo parlour to watch. “Yeah? What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking,” Steve said, the grin from the alley flashing wide and bright, “I might get a rat.”