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Sometimes Steve dreamed about what his life would be like if he was born in some other time. Some time when there were no more wars to fight and people would be free to love whoever they wanted to. If there was a world like that somewhere.
He’d caught a glimpse of it, the one afternoon he and Tony had had together. Right before he’d stepped on the bus, the sun was starting to set. If you looked hard enough, stars were starting to appear, but Steve was looking too closely at Tony’s face. Those beautiful brown eyes shone with a new expression Steve hadn’t seen in them before. If he took out the sadness, he could almost see something else entirely, some sort of other life waiting for him, where he and Tony could lay on the grass until the sun fully set and the stars were the only things they could see hanging in the sky above them.
Of course, all it was in the end was a dream. Just a dream.
But...Steve looked down at Tony’s picture again. He’d folded Pepper back so that only Tony’s smiling face looked up at him. Looking into brown eyes, grayed in the photo but still so lively, it felt a bit closer than a dream.
The first time Steve saw him was Steve’s junior year. Tony was a sophomore, though Steve suspected he could be done and out of college if he’d really wanted to. Tony was...Tony was smart. He was quiet, but didn’t take any of the shit some of the idiots on the football team liked to dole out. Bruce Banner, Peter Parker...Steve wished he knew how to do more to stop the assholes that picked on anyone with an IQ above 15. Bucky was better at it than he was, but Bucky was graduating this year, and Steve could never quite capture the quiet elegance Bucky was able to disarm any bully with.
“You can’t run into a room shooting and not expect to get shot at right back,” Bucky used to tell him, flicking his temple in reprimand. At least Steve had gotten his growth spurt, or else Bucky’d still be dragging his scrawny ass away from fights twice his size, picking him up by his shirt collar while he’d spit dirt and blood at the ground and try to get one more bony elbow in for good measure.
But anyway...Yeah, Tony was smart. He was confident too, which was a dangerous combination. He had brown eyes that danced in the sunlight and a mischievous smile that always seemed to be saying, “Fuck with me, I dare you,” but in the most charming way possible.
He had biology with him fifth period, in the same lab group and everything. Steve was useless in that class, and so was Thor, and most of the time Sam too. But Tony didn’t seem to mind. He could probably do this backwards in his sleep, didn’t bother him that no one else seemed to know a lick of what the teacher was talking about.
“Biology isn’t my best subject,” Tony’d said on the first day, “but I’m still probably better at it than any of you, so don’t worry about it.”
“Works for me,” Sam shrugged.
Sam made the most effort to offer any sort of assistance, but Tony worked too quickly for any of them to catch on, and it didn’t look like he was going to slow down for anyone. Finals were fast approaching, and Steve had yet to find his tongue in that class. The most interaction he has is when Tony hands him the list of materials and Steve goes to the front of the room to collect them, but only so it looks like someone besides Tony is doing something.
There was only one time Tony must have gotten some part of an equation very, very wrong, and a green goop bubbled over the edge of the bowl onto the table, and the chairs, and the ground. It smelled awful, and the room had to be evacuated.
“Tony, I said to wait to finish the lab until tomorrow for a reason ,” the teacher gritted out through his teeth.
Tony had shrugged, all five feet six inches of him not even flinching under the teachers hostile glare. “Sometimes you’ve gotta run before you can walk, Dr. Richards.”
The morning before he shipped out, Steve didn’t wander into Tony’s cafe by accident. He’d never gone before, mostly because he could always see Tony’s brown curls through the window and never had the guts, but if he was about to be shipped off and see God knows what, he has to at least be brave enough to face the most beautiful boy he’d ever seen.
“Hi, my name is Tony, how may I help you today?”
Steve had been shaky and awkward and probably come off dumb as a pole (of course he can’t sit down with you dumbass, he has better things to do, he’s working ) , but Tony had kept smiling at him, and Steve never knew how could have ever looked away from that smile before. This wasn’t the Tony he’d seen in biology, arrogant and quick-witted; this Tony was gentler, kinder. He still held a certain confidence, but he spoke softer, like he was calming a startled deer. Any other time, any other person , Steve probably would’a mouthed off and gotten himself punched, but he couldn’t feel anything other than breathtaking relief at the other man’s perceptive kindness. Steve was wearing the uniform, so he probably knew. He probably guessed that was what had Steve’s nerves wired.
“Come on,” Tony had said, shedding his apron and tossing it back into the kitchen. His eyes had a fresh sparkle to them. “Let’s go to the pier.”
“What do you think the future’s gonna be like, Buck?” Steve murmured, still looking down at the picture.
“I don’t know, Punk,” Bucky responded gruffly. “This about your sweetheart again?”
“It was just a question,” Steve argued, but the smile growing on his face took any bite out of the words. “What makes you think it was about a person?”
“She’s got all that science and tech stuff, doesn’t she?”
Steve was silent for a moment.
“Kid? You still there?” Bucky prodded into the fading evening light.
“Still here,” Steve responded, fainter this time. “Yeah, science stuff. Could probably talk circles ‘round you’n me any day,”
“Sounds like a helluva gal,” Bucky replied neutrally, but he was pleased.
“S’eyes look gold in the sunlight,” Steve babbled almost incoherently.
“Okay, Shakespeare,” Bucky needled him fondly.
Bucky knew. Steve wasn’t sure how much he understood, but he knew. Steve could tell. At first he’d been ashamed, hidden himself, blustered that part of him away under an irrational need to be here, on the front lines in a war no one wants to be fought. But here, Steve thinks he lost the ability to feel shame. He’d learned to take his pleasures where he could get them, and if he wasn’t sure he’d be killed for it, he’d proudly parade around Tony’s picture, read off the letter that Tony sent saying he’d gotten into MIT like he’d wanted. Tony was going to change the world, and Steve wanted nothing more than to be beside him when he did it.
I never knew my dad, and Ma didn’t like talking about him much. No pictures even. I barely knew he existed before I was old enough to realize I had to have had a dad at some point, but even then, Ma didn’t say anything substantial. He was gone before I could walk.
I’m sorry your dad’s such an ass, though. You deserve so much more.
Ma always took care of me enough for two, anyway. I was pretty tiny as a kid, sick as a dog almost all the time. Wasn’t until high school that I actually started to fill out, but that was when Ma started getting sick. She stayed at home as much as she could, partly because she hated the hospital, but I think mostly because she didn’t want me in there. She was a nurse, so she knew about all the germs that floated around there, and didn’t want to risk me catching anything. That meant I wasn’t with her when she died, though. She’d told me she was coming home that day, so I should wait at the house. I still don’t know if it was a kinder lie. I want to say that I wanted more than anything to have spent every one of those last seconds with her but...I don’t know if I could have handled it. I hated seeing her so small. She was always so strong and vibrant, it was hard to recognize her then.
She would have liked you so much though. Knocked you over the head a couple of times for your language, but you two would have gotten on like a house on fire. I’ll have to tell you more about her sometime, I’m sure you’ll get a kick out of it.
Until then, I love you Tony.
“Do you know where you’re headed off to? Before, you know...” Tony asked quietly, eyes alternating between studying the ground shyly and scanning over Steve’s face.
Steve shrugged. “Before Vietnam? Camp somewhere.”
“Think it’ll be somewhere nearby?” Tony wondered, a hesitant hope in his voice.
“I’m not counting on it,” Steve frowned. “Why?”
“Just...wondering when I’ll get my first letter,” he replied, red filling his cheeks adorably.
Steve couldn’t help but smile a bit, and discreetly slipped two fingers into his pocket to brush against the paper sitting there with Tony’s address written on it, and his phone number, “Just in case,” Tony had said.
“As soon as I get some paper it’ll be sent,” Steve promised gently.
Tony looked up at him again, a shy half-smile gracing his face, crinkling the corners of his big brown eyes endearingly.
Why couldn’t I have had this years ago? Steve thought desperately, despairing at whatever higher power was dangling Tony in front of his face for this one afternoon before he’d be cruelly ripped from his grasp in just a couple short hours.
Tony sent a picture to him, just like Steve had asked. Well, not exactly like Steve had asked, he thought, frowning down at the picture.
Pepper and I took it at a fair a few months ago. Tony wrote in the letter that accompanied the photo. I don’t know if you remember her. She went to school with us, too. She’s always been like a sister to me. She’s probably going to take over the world someday, too, so just be prepared for that.
It’s hard to imagine you so far away. The stories people tell here...they’re horrific, Steve. Of course, a lot of them come from Justin Hammer, so who knows what kind of bullshit he’s sprouting. Thinks he’s some sort of bigshot because his dad made a shitty gun once upon a time.
I don’t know. I don’t want to waste your time writing about that, but I guess I just want you to know that I think about you. A lot. And I hope you think about me too, and, I don’t know, it makes you feel a little better.
I love you too, Steve. I think I have since I was 15, and you were the only one who laughed when I used silver nitrate instead of sodium chloride and ruined Dr. Richards’s shoes (probably wouldn’t have made that mistake, but I think you had just gotten a haircut the day before, okay, cut me some slack). There’s always been something that’s made me feel like...I’m okay, when I’m with you. It’s okay to be me. Even if that me is ruining some perfectly good Oxfords, or...or loving you. I don’t have to hide.
Steve clutched the letter as close as he dared to the low light in the tent. He couldn’t risk anyone catching sight of it over his shoulder. Everyone else was mostly asleep, and he knew he should be too, but he couldn’t stop rereading the letter.
I hope you think about me too, and, I don’t know, it makes you feel a little better.
Steve snorted softly. If only Tony knew the number of times he managed to derail Steve’s entire thought process. Every time he closed his damn eyes he saw Tony’s teasing grin, his deft fingers fiddling with a beaker in biology, the way his tongue darted out to catch a drip of ice cream before it fell to the pier below them. Sometimes it made him never want to open them again, and sometimes it was the only reason he pried his eyes open and walked into another day.
“I really love him,” Steve whispered to Bucky, unable to hold the words in anymore. They bubbled out of him in a violent splatter of red, red everywhere and it wouldn’t stop. “I love him .”
“I know, Kid,” Bucky replied, his voice strained. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” Steve counted, voice barely there. “Maybe that’s why I’m dead.”
“You are not ,” Bucky argued urgently. “You’re not . Listen to me, Stevie, come on.”
“I think he loved me, too,” Steve continued, the red still coming out ferociously, “He said so. He’s so smart. He couldn’t be wrong about that, could he? He loved me, and I...I said I’d...I’d be there…”
“You will be, Kid, come on, stay here,” Bucky interjected. “You’ll go home and be with him, and it’ll be okay because who the fuck cares. You just gotta stay awake until that happens, yeah? You stay awake, and then you’ll be able to go home and he’ll love you and you’ll love him and…” The words choked in Bucky’s throat, unable to come out anymore. And what? What happens then? “Steve? Stevie?” The sounds of screaming and gunshots and explosions became deafening in the absence of Steve’s reply.
“Stevie, come on, just a little while longer...Stevie, come on,” Bucky tried to reach out to him, knock against his shoulder so he could grumble and yell at him, like they had so many mornings before, but he couldn’t. His arm wouldn’t cooperate. He turned his head to look and found nothing. It was there before. What happened to it? “Steve? Stevie, have you seen my arm? It was...It was just here…” Bucky let out a sob, turning his head all the way to the left and seeing Steve, holding the picture. The one with Tony and Pepper. Smart. Steve did say he was smart.
Steve kept looking down at it, at him. The boy he fell in love with. The boy that fell in love with him. He stared and stared and never blinked.
Fuck. Bucky turned away, closing his eyes as violent sobs wracked against him, but still all he saw was red.
You know I always worry about you, I don’t know why you bother to tell me not to.
You’ll have to introduce me to Bucky sometime, I always wondered what was behind his perpetual guard-dog glare. I’m glad you have him, though. With you now, and just in life. I’m also glad you think I’m something worth fighting for. I wish there was something more I could do for you, or at least be there with you to keep you safe. I don’t think I’d be much of a soldier, I feel like we’d make a pretty good team.
I can only give you something to come home to, though. So stay safe, okay?
Until then, I love you, Steve.