Re: Log: Bucky B/Steve R
[Steve isn't tired. He doesn't need much sleep, an hour or two a week. Before the Marauder attack, he'd hardly been closing his eyes, but post—with his body on the mend, he'd taken three or four hours here and there, and felt better because of it. It wasn't easy and the sleep wasn't peaceful, but he isn't tired. No. In fact, most of what Steve felt (and feels) is anger. He's irritated, feeling unmoored and disconnected from everyone. He knows he shouldn't, and some of that anger is aimed at himself. Everyone's here and what excuse does he have to feel lonely? Yet, for all his gratefulness for his friends or whatever they were called these days, he is lonely, and he's sad, and he's angry, and he wishes there weren't so many people looking at him all the time. War always brings things back hard and it's never easy to accept that the people you knew and loved died in apparent vain, because there's still no peace. They stood up for a cause they believed in and no one can take that away from them, but certainly, the world should have learned from it, right?
But, wishes don't do much and he knows that. Steve has the responsibilities he has and he'll shoulder them without complaint. Steve isn't Tony. He didn't bleed on other people. Maybe it was an era thing, a generational thing. He mourned for Howard, for his own Bucky, for the future he could have had in his own time with Peggy, but he did it alone.
The invitation to Bucky for drinks—it isn't mature, maybe. It's not like he can drown his sorrows. But Steve doesn't care. He wants to pretend things are normal for just a few minutes.
When his friend's voice jars him from his reverie, the smile on Steve's lips is automatic. He looks up from the journal in his lap from where he is on the sofa. Low, spectral notes of a long-dead song float out from the open door of his bedroom.] No use wasting it.