Chapter Text
Steve walks through the doors of The Pierrepont Hotel resigned to put his career in the hands of some swim instructor. It’s not like his new doctor gave him much of a choice.
His appointment with Dr. Ransor had seemed standard enough at the start. The young doctor had him undress to silently observe his gait and his scoliosis. Had him bend forward and back, walk on his heels and then his toes. He measured Steve’s pain by palpating his spine, then watching him raise one leg and the other. And Steve felt the way he felt in every doctor’s office before this one. Not like himself, a person, but as the sum of his parts: a crooked spine and a rheumatic heart, swollen joints and asthmatic lungs.
Until, that is, the doctor asked him, “Do you put too much pressure on yourself, Mr. Rogers?”
“Sir?”
“I’m asking about your emotional state.”
“I don’t understand."
“Our emotions, our stress, and anger—especially anger—can significantly affect our pain.”
“Are you suggesting this is all in my head?”
“Not necessarily. Only that our minds and bodies are connected in ways we are only beginning to understand.”
His childhood physician had scowled in distaste when he’d heard who Steve was planning to visit for a second opinion. But then, Charles from figure drawing class couldn't hold a pencil when the pain in his hands got as bad as it did, until he started seeing Dr. Ransor. Charles has a steady gig drawing health and safety posters for the WPA now.
“I think you would benefit from Hydrotherapy,” the doctor said, bushy brows drawn as he jotted down quick notes on his clipboard. He still didn’t look at Steve. “Swimming has many therapeutic effects and water can be good for both pain and stress management.”
“I’m not stressed.”
“You know, the smallest child and the weakest woman can enjoy swimming as equally as the strongest man.” He looked down at Steve’s medical history again. “It’s especially good for nervous people.”
Steve smiled and nodded because he had a lot of practice sitting in doctor’s offices like this one.
“Do you swim, Mr. Rogers?”
“I, uh. No.” He’d been to the floating baths on the East River a handful of times as a kid, whenever a heatwave baked the streets and sidewalks. But Gaffney and Des were usually waiting to hold his head underwater until Mary Margaret told their mothers or hawked a big enough wad of spit in Gaffney’s eye to make him stop. “I never really had a chance to learn.”
Ransor pursed his lips before rifling through some papers at his desk. He handed Steve a weeks old section of the Brooklyn Eagle, then tapped an advertisement next to a page of apartment listings.
“I’ve sent several of my patients to this program.”
Steve looked at the price for an individual swimming course on Pierrepont Street. It was more than his rent.
“Sir, I can’t afford that.”
“It’s half price for my patients. Certainly cheaper than the surgery.” The doctor pursed his lips again. “And it has a better chance of working.”
“You’re saying I can keep painting?” Steve asked, desperately hopeful. His own doctor had cautioned against long hours on his feet until after the procedure, and the months of recovery that would follow. But Steve didn’t have that long. Not if wanted a chance at his first real commission.
“Certainly,” Ransor said. “So long as you heed my advice and come see me again in two months.”
Steve thought his advice, Hydrotherapy, sounded nuts. But he had to try.
The Pierrepont is nothing like Steve’s visits to the baths. He steps through the decorated marble of the main hall, wanders past the four-wall handball courts and the gymnasium until he finds the pool. That too is cased in marble instead of metal scaffolding, with a blue and green domed ceiling overhead instead of the blistering summer sun that littered freckles on Steve’s shoulders.
There are only three people in the pool at this hour, just after dawn. At one end, an older man swims slow and steady laps. At the other, a boy floats on his back while his swim instructor counts the seconds in a low voice, hands cradled carefully between the boy’s neck and shoulders.
Steve squints from the marble deck. Their features bleed together with his nearsightedness. The boy is six or seven, he guesses, and not very interested in listening. He spits water, he kicks wildly. He starts to sink in a fit of giggles the next time the instructor's hands cup his neck. The instructor doesn’t seem too bothered and he doesn’t raise his voice. All he does is whisper something quickly in the little boy’s ear. Whatever he says turns the distractible child into a model pupil. For the next five minutes he focuses completely on the mundanity of the repetitive movements, right up until the lesson is over.
“Steve! Hey, sorry to keep you waiting,” the instructor calls out from the pool ladder.
Steve looks over his shoulder, in case there is another Steve behind him more deserving of the huge, magnanimous smile and familiar tone.
“I’m just early. Are you James?”
The first thing Steve notices is that he’s big; tall and broad-shouldered enough to make his own heart kick up uselessly—threat. He angles his posture to hide the curve in his spine.
“Bucky,” he says, hand outstretched as he gets close enough to come into focus. “Bucky Barnes.”
Steve’s eyes snap up. Bucky’s features have sharpened like a matinee idol’s since the last time they met. Steve looks about the same, minus the furious nosebleed and the scraped knees.
“Bucky,” Steve repeats, feeling just as ungainly as he did at 11 years old, when Bucky had a reputation as a star student and perpetual first pick for stickball. “Hi.”
“Got a cousin named James, but he was born three days earlier. So he got to keep the name.”
Bucky’s still smiling at him. He’s tall and broad-shouldered and he smiles like he’s trying not to, like the both of them are in on a secret. It’s hard to imagine anything he couldn’t have if he wanted it.
It’s even harder to imagine Bucky remembering him. Why would he? They only crossed paths once, a hundred years ago, and Bucky is…well. Look at him. Steve isn’t exactly memorable by comparison.
“I don’t got any cousins. So just ‘Steve’ is fine with me.”
Bucky laughs like Steve startled it out of him.
“That’s real good, Steve,” he says, even though it really isn’t, and claps Steve too hard on the shoulder. Not on purpose, probably. People like that always take their strength for granted. “You ready to get started? You got your suit on, I see, thanks for that.”
Steve looks down at himself. Where Bucky’s fashionable navy stripes skim his torso, Steve’s black one-piece gapes over his narrow chest. “You’re welcome?”
Bucky laughs again, possibly because he spends too much time underwater.
“C’mon,” he says, only he redirects Steve away from the pool with another stinging squeeze of his shoulder. He gestures at the marble floor. “Lay back here for me, will ya?”
“Why?”
“It’s part of the lesson.”
“I manage on dry land just fine already.”
“I do this with all my beginners.” His smile changes, shrinks down to a teasing quirk in one corner of his mouth. He crouches down. “You ain’t special, Steve.”
Steve follows him there a little too quickly, ignoring the protesting twinge from his back when he sits down on the unforgiving marble.
Bucky asks, “Somethin’ wrong?”
“When I answered the ad, I did imagine there’d be more, you know. Swimming.”
“Relax wise guy, we’re gettin’ there. First, we gotta get through the basics. You’d never sit down on piano for the first time and start playing Stravinski. Gotta learn scales first, even if it’s really goddamn boring.”
Steve’s eyes widen at the easy way Bucky curses, at odds with the sparkle and class of the hotel.
“Sorry,” Bucky says, biting his lips together. They’re deeply red when he stops. “Did I offend you?”
“No,” Steve says sharply. He picks at a scab on his shin. “I’d never play piano, anyway. I’m awful at it.”
Bucky heaves a tired sigh that isn’t all that convincing with the way his mouth keeps twitching.
“Okay, Steve, what is it that you like to do, then?”
“I’m an artist. A painter.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes,” he admits quietly. It’s so new he’s afraid to say it aloud. “I just won a grant.”
Bucky’s face cracks open, eyes wide and sincere. “Oh hey, that’s incredible!” He snaps his fingers. “You must’ve been born a great painter then?”
Steve plays along. “No. I had to start with the fundamentals first. Like brushwork.”
“Brushwork, hey, now we’re gettin’ somewhere. You ready to get to it then, or what, kid?”
Steve bristles, neck hot. Bucky isn’t that much older than him, even if he’s grown in ways Steve hasn’t. What’s worse, though, is that the actual kid Bucky’d been teaching first is still sitting by the pool and watching them, his mother just having arrived with a towel.
“Hey,” Steve asks, “how’d you get him to listen to you anyway?”
Bucky follows Steve’s eyeline. “Who, Frankie? I bribed him.”
“No, really.”
“Really. I owe him a Coke next week.” He crosses his arms over his chest. Steve doesn’t roll his eyes at the irritating bulge of muscle there, but it’s a close call. His wide shoulders are still dotted with water droplets. “Do I gotta cut the same deal with you?”
Steve does roll his eyes then, but he lies back on the marble, too. The neutral position eases the pain in his spine.
He announces, “Here I am.”
“At long last.” Bucky positions himself at the back of Steve’s head. Close enough to Steve’s ear that he can feel the warm gust of breath, Bucky whispers, “I still woulda bought you a Coke if you held out a little longer.”
Steve’s stomach feels funny, like it’s gone all carbonated anyway. “I’m listening. Free of charge an’ everything.”
Even upside down, Bucky’s smile looks genuine. “Before we get in the water, I start my beginners off with the backstroke. I’m gonna show you how that goes here, till you get accustomed to things. Arms first, then legs, then the both of them together. Few times through, even if it’s really goddamn boring.”
Bucky’s touch is light when he closes his fingers around Steve’s wrists. His palms are cool and damp from the pool, if rougher than Steve would've guessed. “Like this,” he murmurs, his voice as gentle as the way he guides Steve’s hands up his body until they touch his own shoulders. “Alright?”
“Alright.” Steve agrees, even if it’s about as mortifying as his last visit with Dr. Ransor and he’s nearly every bit as exposed. He tries not to think of the way the doctor had turned him this way and that, frowning and tutting and making little notes about each deficiency he found.
Steve wonders what his sprawled, skinny body must look like to someone like Bucky. But Bucky doesn’t seem concerned by the twist of his bony limbs. If anything, he looks pleased with Steve’s form as he straightens his arms into a T. He brings them down sharply to the side of Steve’s body.
“There,” Bucky says with a satisfied nod. “That’s how it’s done. See?”
“Sure. Just like learning scales.”
Bucky’s mouth twitches. “Which you hated.”
“Sister Katherine said I lacked patience and discipline.”
“Huh. You don’t say.”
“She said I couldn’t be taught.”
Bucky scoffs. The next time he guides Steve’s arms through the movement, it’s fluid.
“So it’s not too late to back out now,” Steve offers. It’s only halfway a joke.
“Never.” Bucky grins. His teeth are very white. “I’m too good ‘a teacher.” He lets go of Steve’s wrists and sits back on his heels. “Okay, show me.”
Steve didn’t really care what Sister Katherine thought of his piano playing, which made his wrists and fingers sore. But Bucky’s kind expression is nothing like her dour, disappointed glares. It’d be cruel, really, to let him down.
“How’s this?” he offers, repeating the motion.
“That’s good, Steve.”
Steve can’t see his face from this angle, but he can feel the weight of Bucky watching him. Even without a clipboard, Steve’s reminded that this is just as much of an examination.
“Do you play piano?” Steve asks, a strategic deflection.
“How’d you guess?”
Steve shrugs, which makes Bucky correct his form.
“My ma taught me. She’s got the gift you know? A real ear for that kind of thing, just picks it up. My sister, she’s that way too—”
“You got a sister?”
“Nope,” Bucky’s heavy brows go up, “I got three sisters. An’ Ella, she’s the youngest, she’s got the gift too. But not me. Me? I gotta practice, and practice, and practice, and the girls still make me feel like a putz. Hey, Steve, that’s aces. Legs are up next.”
He bounces up easily from his crouch and positions himself by Steve’s feet. He takes Steve’s ankles in the same light grip and, with Steve’s knees turned out, draws his heels up toward his body as far as they’ll go.
“Um,” Steve says.
Bucky doesn’t seem to notice that Steve’s gone red from the tips of his ears to the top of his chest. He looks like a frog pinned to a metal tray, ready for dissection.
“My ma is self-taught too,” Bucky says. “Took it up while my da was in France and I was only just born so she could give lessons to those deep-pocketed kids in Park Slope, you know the type.”
“Uh-huh.” Steve’s not sure what he’s agreeing with, exactly. His heart pounds with jittery discomfort from having anyone this close in his space, let alone someone he hardly knows.
Bucky has Steve kick his legs around a few more times before standing up, putting his hands on his trim hips and saying, “Let’s put it all together.”
Steve copies the movements as best he can, but without Bucky manipulating his limbs, he feels awfully uncoordinated. And stupid. Which makes sense, given the fact that he’s flopping around on the marble deck of a fancy hotel, pretending to swim out of water.
Bucky says. “How’s that feeling, Steve?”
“It feels pretty stupid, Bucky.”
“Well, you don’t look stupid.”
Steve gestures with a raised eyebrow at the obvious, his ever-uncooperative body.
Bucky crouches down, his voice dropping just as low.
“Steve.” A water droplet slides down his temple and lands on Steve’s shoulder. “You really don’t.”
Bucky says he’s a good teacher—Steve is paying half his rent to learn from him. So really, he has no choice but to believe him.
Steve swallows, then takes his first easy breath all morning. “You’re dripping all over me.”
Bucky rises to standing, broad and bright and taking up Steve’s field of vision. “Guess we might as well get in the pool then.”
Steve enters gingerly from the stairs; Bucky sits down on the edge with his feet dangling in the water and drops in all at once.
It’s mild and soothing in the pool. Even more so because it’s easy to hide in, to duck down in the shallow end with only his head above water. But that relief is short-lived.
“Ready to give it a try?” Bucky asks.
“Huh?”
“Your backstroke, you ready to try it in the water?”
“If you think I am.”
“Well, yeah, cus I’m gonna help you. Here,” Bucky swims up next to him, “just relax.”
Help means Bucky’s hand on Steve’s low back, the other under his chin, a shivery hot-cold contrast as Bucky guides him onto his back.
“This is the part where you relax,” Bucky reminds him.
“I’m trying,” Steve grits out, but the rest of him doesn’t get the message. His arms and legs pump instinctively against the threat of drowning.
“I know this feels a little…”
“Uncomfortable?”
“New. But I’ve got you. See?”
Steve does. Bucky’s touch is barely there, but it’s enough to keep him above the surface.
“Promise I won’t let you go under.”
Steve muddles his way through the supported backstroke, but he remembers very little about his uncoordinated movements. Mostly, all he notices is the immediate relief. Not only from his own self-consciousness, but from the strain on his body. The soreness along his spine subsides in fractions. He’s almost annoyed that the young doctor was right. Almost.
All the while, Bucky makes minor corrections and tells him he’s doing a swell job. He doesn’t have any reason to lie. So Steve decides to believe that, too. Almost.
*
When he recounts the lesson to Mary Margaret, the distance from his vulnerability makes it easier to laugh about.
“You know the worst part? It worked. See?” Steve demonstrates his backstroke from the common room rug of the women’s boarding house. He isn’t allowed upstairs.
“I’m not sure what I’m looking at,” she mutters. What she’s actually looking at is her latest project scattered across the floor. Steve thinks she does her best work in a studio, connecting to her subjects. But for now, she’s a photography assistant, so that’s not usually up to her. What the alphabet of government agencies want today looks more like this: realistic documentation of the city around them. Unglamorous, unsentimental.
“It’s a backstroke,” Steve explains. “Well, it was in the pool anyway. Or, it will be. Eventually. With a little help.”
“I think you should quit and get your money back while you still can,” she says.
“Jeez, Emmy,” he complains. It’s a childhood nickname. At two-years old, Mary Margaret had turned to mush in his mouth. “I’m not that bad.”
“Hydrotherapy,” she mutters to herself. “Sounds like you’re being taken for a ride.”
“You think I oughta get the surgery instead?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Spend months on bed rest for a fraction of a chance that’d even work? Miss my shot at the reading room mural at Brooklyn College?”
Emmy sighs. “Obviously, I don’t want that.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I know you, Steve. And I know you’ll do anything when you want something bad enough.” Her eyes are as dark and vengeful now as they had been as a child, standing down bullies at the public pool. “I can’t stand the thought of anyone taking advantage.”
Steve’s about to parrot all of Bucky’s confident praise before he thinks the better of it. Emmy already thinks he’s too naive.
“The instructor seems like a nice enough guy. He treats me the same as anybody else who wants to learn how to swim.”
“So you’re misleading him about why you’re there?”
“That’s none of his business. Besides, I’m not misleading anybody. I do want to learn how to swim.” Steve thinks of floating—of almost floating, supported only by Bucky’s fingertips low on his back. He tries to summon the momentary calm that flooded his brain. “Maybe I wanna see what all the fuss is about.”
It’s there and gone again, but Steve doesn’t miss Emmy’s flinch. She’s a strong swimmer because her papa taught her in the shallows of Rockaway beach. That was two years, maybe, after he made it home from the Western Front when Joseph Rogers didn’t. Because their mothers were dear friends during The Great War, they’d shared the worry for their husbands the same way they’d shared dinners, remedies, and childcare. Emmy inherited that guilt, too. She’d never say so, but Steve knows it’s worse than ever since she moved out of her parents’ apartment. They still live a few blocks away on Montague Street. She could see them whenever she’d like and chooses not to.
Steve rolls to one side and says, “That one.” In the photograph, a young woman braces both hands on a countertop behind a handpainted window sign, Schneider’s Deli. She has tight, short curls. Her mouth is pressed and her eyes are hard. The poor customer she’s staring down is out of focus.
Emmy scoffs and slides it off to one side. “These,” three men working on a subway excavation, the seaport beneath a cloud of fog, “are better.”
Steve shrugs.
“What?”
People stop to look at Emmy when she walks by. It’s the striking intensity of her too-blue eyes, Brighter still when she cropped her black-brown hair.
Emmy is used to getting what she wants. But it’s not like that with Steve.
“They’re good. They are.” He taps the photo of the deli girl again. “But this is the one.”
Emmy arranges and rearranges her submissions while Steve twists onto his back again. He spreads his arms and legs, snaps them back into a straight line. If he practices and practices, if he works at it every day after his shift at Rosen’s Grocery, he’s sure he can be good enough. He just has to work harder at things if he wants to be good enough.
Quit, Emmy said! He nearly bursts out laughing. It’s like she doesn’t know him at all.
