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It is light outside. This means it is morning. Every day: a morning. You are getting used to it.
Steve says, "Can I?" Always asking your opinion. As though one of these days, a day with a morning, you'll say: "No. You don't have the strength."
He shows you the watch, how it fastens on you. He fastens the little clasp at your wrist.
It is cold and has weight. It is made of silver. You bring your hand up close to your face. You are getting used to it. You can hear the heartbeat inside the watch. A shiver of time. A shiver. A flinch.
"It's not a computer," Steve says. "You have to wind it up, like in the old days. Tony thought that would be— Tony made it. It can't be reprogrammed."
"Reprogrammed," you echo.
"Yeah. I don't, you know, with these things. I guess with electric stuff, someone else can change the time. But this way, everything that makes it work is inside it."
"The movement," you say. A driftwood piece of knowledge, washed clean out of its diagram.
He blinks. "What?"
"A movement is what makes a clock work. Mainspring. Balance wheel. Escapement." You think of a clock but you picture a rifle: disassembled, then each piece locking into place. Click. Clock. You press a fist against your temple. You want to physically move the memories. Your skull is a cell where you keep yourself captive, and someone has thrown away the key. There are days when you think of sliding a knife in. A lock-pick.
Steve says, "Bucky."
You flinch. "I."
"Do you like it? You don't have to keep it."
You jerk your hand down. You look at the watch. You can see, on the display, that little black leg flinching forwards and forwards. Time is shivering on. You are still in motion. You are part of the movement.
"I like it," you say. Testing out the idea.
You are getting used to it.
You take off your shoes.
You take off your socks.
You take off your jacket.
You take off your jeans.
You put your shoes by the bed.
You put your socks in the laundry.
You hang up your jacket.
You fold your jeans.
You sit on your bed.
You take off your watch.
You wind your watch.
It is 11 PM.
You are in Manhattan.
Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.
You are a human being.
You hear your heartbeat.
Tick, tock.
You are a human. You are.
Being.
"Steve."
"Huh?"
"Steve."
"Yeah, Buck, what?"
Breakfast. Coffee. Milk. Toast.
Steve spreads your toast with butter. You can't use a knife, is the thing. Can't. You can't make your fingers close around it. You had thought: hardware malfunction. But all the hardware is working: organic, inorganic. So why can't you— "Let's not worry about it right now," Steve had said. But you feel it inside you: a shadow in your body, cut-wire-smelling and dark as ink. It freezes your hands and strangles your voice. It rises up and sends you scuttling into corners. It has its own motions, and you do not understand them. It has its own demands.
You say, "Tony gave me this watch."
"Yeah." Steve is distracted.
You say, "I don't know Tony." It is almost a question. You let your voice rise. Do I? Do I know Tony?
Steve looks up. "No. Oh! No, you don't; he owns the building; he's kind of, I guess he's our landlord?"
"I haven't met him."
Steve uses his fork to chase a stray crust of bacon. "You met him when we first moved in here."
"I don't remember."
"Yeah, you were still pretty—"
"I know what I was," you say curtly.
You see the surprise on his face. You don't know if he is surprised because you are acting like you or not acting like you. You have no basis on which to evaluate. You don't know how to revise yourself. But: you don't want Steve's face to move like it's moving. His eyebrows dip. His mouth flattens. You wish you could reach out and move it back into position. Press your thumbs against his cheekbones. Make him not make the shadows on his forehead. It doesn't work like that. You know this.
You tear your toast into smaller pieces. "I know what I was," you say again. "So why would Tony give me stuff."
"People give each other things," Steve says, as though this should be obvious.
You stare at him intensely. He ignores your gaze.
In your experience, people give you nothing. You have never given anyone anything. You construct, in your head, the necessary sort of argument:
People give each other things.
People give you nothing.
You give people nothing.
Therefore: you are not a person.
But now this gift, upending the order.
People give each other things.
People give you things.
You give people nothing.
Therefore: are you a person?
"Hey," Steve says. "Don't over-think it. It's just a watch." He looks at you, all gentleness. You think of sunlight. You think of cresting the Williamsburg Bridge, bicycle wheels flying, sea birds circling, bright water beneath you with ship-trails in it, and a burst of light as you sped towards Brooklyn. The Savings Bank with its white brick, as huge and as ancient as anything Roman. Laughter behind you, Steve's laughter: a light and warm and steady thread that runs all through you, that you string yourself onto.
Bead by bead. Bit by bit.
By Columbus Circle, where the carriage horses sometimes stop, there is a bench from which you watch the crowds. You are not alone, never alone, not allowed to be alone, but you don't mind it; you have been alone so much in your lifetime. You don't like to be alone. You have a habit of slipping your hand into Steve's coat pocket. Just so that he doesn't wander off. So you won't turn and see him gone again.
(In the silences between years, dreams sometimes came. You don't know how to tell Steve about this. To ask: did you also... was it... for you? There's a space where the two of you don't dare to go. But you dreamed; you did; and you didn't remember your dreams, or there was no narrative to them, but only the faint sense that you'd been chasing somebody. A ghost of a ghost that seemed only to live in that labyrinth of dark spaces. Were you hunting it, or were you hiding it deeper? At the last, it slipped its knife between your ribs, and you woke shaking, gasping, choked with loss, and you said— you said— Put me back in—)
Steve sits and sketches. You pull your baseball cap lower. You are learning to be in the crowd. To not be afraid of it. You watch the tourists buying t-shirts; the women in heels; an accordion player and a girl with a violin, playing songs that sound like Russia; a group of red-haired Hasidim. Little birds hop along the cracked pave-stones. Curious and nosy. Their nervous wings twitch.
And the horses, large and heavy-footed. They are nervous too, but they calm down some when you let them nose at the palm of your hand. Your other hand would make them more nervous, you think; and it should, it should, so you keep it hidden. Then you can run your fingers through their manes, along the warm arch of their necks, feel the strange and wonderful living muscles.
Each harness is a leather strap.
The horses don't mind it; of course they don't. They don't know how to breathe without its command. Their lives are not bad; they have men who care for them. They are not happy, but they are not sad. They have no capacity for these emotions. Do they care if you show them kindness? Maybe. Maybe they care. They care like animals, not like people care.
But you think sometimes of cutting them loose. Cutting them loose, in the middle of the night, and leading them out— a long string of horses— past Maspeth, Jamaica, past Babylon, till you find a place they can play in the surf. And watching the sun rise on the warm sand banks, as content as any animal creature, as content as you have ever been.
You don't realize that you're holding onto Steve until he says softly, "Buck, you're hurting my hand."
You take off your shoes.
You take off your socks.
You take off your jacket.
You take off your jeans.
You put your shoes by the bed.
You put your socks in the laundry.
You hang up your jacket.
You fold your jeans.
You sit on your bed.
You take off your watch.
You wind your watch.
It is 11:02 PM.
You are in Manhattan.
Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.
You are a human being.
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock.
"Hey," Steve says. "Tony and I thought you might try this." He leans over the back of the couch. There is something in his hand.
The TV is on. You watch a lot of TV. You process information very fast. You are learning a language, new and peculiar. The way that people talk, how they look at each other. How they touch with no intent: a hand on a shoulder, arm around waist, a head pressed against the curve of a neck. They move as though they don't know their vulnerable places, which bones could easily crack, which parts are severable. They close their eyes. They sleep curled against one another. They tangle their hands up. They turn their backs.
"Tony," you say.
Steve rounds the couch to sit beside you. "He makes things, mechanical things. Let me see your hand? Or tell me if you don't—"
You don't offer your hand, but you don't move away. You let him lift the strange weight of your passive metal fingers. You can feel his touch: not the same as with flesh, a different and a colder and calm sensation. Flesh confuses. Metal does not.
What Steve has is a glove. It fits you perfectly. It has no fingertips.
"What," you say.
But Steve says, "No, wait a minute." He presses his thumb against the center of your palm. You jerk back for a moment— he didn't warn you— you don't know what this means, his touch against your hand—
And then you look down and see that your hand is not there. Or. The hand that is there is not your hand. You turn it over in silence, looking at it. There is flesh that is not flesh, where the alloy should be. There's a life line, a heart line, things you don't have. Fingerprints. A ghost map. You push up the sleeve of your oversized sweater. See the little blue veins showing under skin.
"It's, Tony calls it a virtual net," Steve says. "It's like a picture that you can move with you."
"Why?" you ask.
"For going outside. To stop people staring so much. I thought—"
You hadn't thought he noticed that. You move through the world like a kind of magnet. Warping everything towards or against you. Distorting the space through which you pass. You don't know what it is to be a neutral body. You knew once. You have forgotten.
"You don't like people looking," you say, watching Steve's face for his reaction.
"No! It's not— I want you to feel comfortable." He stops. He is visibly repressing words. He takes a breath. "Nobody has a right to look at you like, like you're—"
You look at him curiously. "Why not?" you say.
He presses his lips together.
You say, "To look at me like I am?"
"You know what; forget it. It was just an idea." He touches you again— that same insistent pressure— and you see the skin flicker, melt off your hand. He starts to take the glove off, and you react without thinking. You push him away. Your hand makes a fist.
"No," you say. "Don't."
He stares at you in surprise. "I thought you didn't—"
"It's mine," you say. "He made it for me. You can't have it back."
"You don't have to use it."
"Maybe I will," you say, "and maybe I won't."
You turn back to the television.
Steve stays very still. He watches you without speaking. Sometimes he'll sit for hours and watch you like that. Like you watch the TV, like he is learning some new language, or maybe only beginning to grasp that something is moving there on the screen. That there is sound and light in patterns, and not just stray haphazard gasps. He shifts, draws one leg up and leans against the cushions. You reach out without looking and let your hand clasp the bare slope of his ankle. His skin is warm and soft. You can feel the way the ends of his bones connect. You can feel the blood moving in his body. And you hold on. You hold on for a little while. As long as you can stand.
There are times when Steve goes out. He says, "To fight bad guys." But he says it with a kind of laugh, so that you don't know if he means it or not. He fights something. He comes back with bruises, with scars that quickly seal over. (His body erases itself. Like yours does. Erases itself as best as it is able.)
Sam watches TV with you when Steve is gone. He calls himself your babysitter.
You say, "I don't need a fucking babysitter."
He laughs. "I'm joking, man. I know you don't. If anything, you're my babysitter. I'm counting on you to save my ass if some space alien sonofabitch shows up from another dimension. Cause if that happens, I'm gonna be behind that sofa. That's what I got you super soldiers for."
Everything Sam says is half a joke. You don't understand, yet, the mechanics of a joke. Steve has tried explaining it. You know that Sam says things that are not true, but that at the same time he means them. You can't picture him hiding behind a sofa. There is nothing timid or fragile in him. Yet you remember, also, a thin wing snapping, frailer than tissue and bone in your hand.
You say, unsure, "So we have a... deal?"
Surprise prints Sam's face, just for a moment. "Yeah," he says. He's not laughing. "I watch your back, you watch my back. We have a deal. Shake on it?"
You touch your fingertips against his palm. You don't want to shake. You don't want to grip. But Sam just nods, as though this is normal. Sam acts, always, like what's normal is whatever you confront him with.
"Right," he says. "Now: sit. I got the third season of Dog Cops from Barton."
Steve doesn't like watching Dog Cops so much. He says it's too experimental for him. But sometimes— sometimes— it's a relief to watch something that doesn't have any people in it. No faces moving like flickers on water. No half-tones in voices: questions, sadness. You understand the animal world. You know just what it wants from you. You understand.
So you and Sam watch Dog Cops. After a while, Sam gestures towards your wrist. "Nice watch," he says. "Steve give that to you?"
"Tony."
"Tony gave you that?"
You shrug minutely. You touch the watchband. You say, "Yeah. I guess."
"It looks good."
His attention wanders. Yours doesn't. You keep thinking about it. But it's the kind of thinking you do with your nerves, a restless unsettledness under your skin. When this happens, you're supposed to breathe in and out, wait until you find the words. Not push your fist through a wall or a window. Not dig your nails in your skin till it hurts.
"I," you say, tentatively.
Sam just waits, waits you out, like someone who is not at all concerned.
"People give each other things," you say at last.
"Yeah, sometimes. Generally."
"I don't..." You try to gesture to yourself, to the total poverty of what it is you have: this body, this self.
Sam studies you. He says eventually, "You know they're not looking for, like, a return on their investment. You know that, right?"
You don't know. You shake your head. You don't know what he means by this.
He sighs. "It's kind of like, if those space aliens show up, I'm counting on you. So until then, you and me, we got to take care of each other. And if no aliens show up, which I'm kind of hoping for, to be honest, then I still get to wake up every day thinking, No worries about space aliens, cause Barnes— he's got my back."
You frown. You tuck your knees up on the couch. Confusion makes you defensive. "I have Steve's back," you say.
(The kick of a rifle at your shoulder; a bullet blooming from the back of a head. Steve sleeping beside you, your hand softly weighting the rise and fall and rise of his ribs. Reaching and reaching for him through the water, into that black labyrinth.)
"I know," Sam says gently. "And he's got yours."
"But other people. I don't have a deal with them."
Sam says, "Sometimes you gotta wait to find out what the deal is. You don't always make it all at once. It's like everything else, one step at a time."
"Like dancing," you say, and you don't know why.
"Like dancing. You dance, Barnes?"
(A 45 spinning under a needle. A needle slipping into your wrist. Your fingers slipping into Steve's fingers. Turning. The breath of the song before it began. Steve's breath, smelling warmly of bourbon. Steve was smaller then. Your breath grew smaller; you tried, you tried to cling to that thread. A hiccuping laugh. Steve clung to your shirtsleeves. You turned. He stepped on the toes of your shoes. "Careful," you said. You tried to be so careful. His skinny shoulders under your fingertips. The cold comes in through the cracks in winter. The cold is always getting in. The rattle of trains by the window. The lights, the distant stars of Manhattan: cold pinpricks. Somewhere there is a warmer world. You flatten your palm against Steve's spine. You wait for the 45 to skip. Steve's heart jumping under your fingers. Your heart jumping under your ribs. The prick of the needle. A faraway star. Make a wish. A wish. The train whistle dying out in the dark. Your thumb at the pulse-point of Steve's thin wrist. "I wish," you said. You were still dancing.)
You close your eyes.
You say, "I did."
You take off your shoes.
You take off your socks.
You take off your sweater.
You take off your jeans.
You put your shoes by the bed.
You put your socks in the laundry.
You fold your sweater.
You put your jeans in the laundry.
You sit on your bed.
You take off your watch.
You wind your watch.
It is 10:59 PM.
You are in Manhattan.
Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.
You are a human being.
You are waiting.
Waiting.
In the silences between years, dreams sometimes came.
So dreams are not a promise.
You dream and you wake up. Your eyelids are dark. You don't want to open them. When you close your eyes, time bends around you. Distorting: the space through which you pass. Time is a world that you never quite enter. Time is a stranger whose gaze you attract. Just for a moment: a lingering flicker. Then: back to sleep, the underworld, the river you cross. No turning back.
What if you slept for a thousand years? You think about it. The streets of Manhattan, all fallen to ruins. (A building in Poznań. A shell-pocked wall. You picked a flake of plaster from it. Something stirred: in the air, in your bloodstream. A knot you could not seem to untangle. You touched a bullet hole. The forest here, this far from town, was a toll-keeper who had come to collect. Birds nested in the broken-glass windows. Their nests were wild and ragged with twigs. "I was here," you said out loud. "I was here before." Your boots printed the floorboards: x x x x x. The birds cocked their heads: indifferent animals. Years were nothing at all to them.)
You imagine waking into that world, into the quiet of it. A world where you would not need a name, where you would not need a language. You lie in your bed and wait for noise to reach you. To tell you where you are, and when. Some days it takes a very long time. Like light from a star moving into the blackness.
Steve takes you to the Metropolitan Museum. You don't like it. Most of the art is too complex. You're confused by the shapes, the flatness of faces, the empty tombs, the armor sets. Voices collect in the high stone ceilings: a docent's lecture, an Arabic question, an art student's whisper, a child's laugh. They become ghosts, separated from their bodies. You hunch in your jacket. You tug on your cap.
There are rooms, whole rooms from distant houses. A window. Fake sunlight. A neatly made bed. Cards on the table, like someone's just left them, like out of sight there is some inhabitant who will come back, come back any minute. He'll close the window, curl up in the bed. But all of the small doors lead to nowhere, and those who once held the keys are dead, and all that remains are these painted rooms. No one will ever enter them.
Later the red leaves fall around you. "It's autumn," you say. (Testing it out.)
"Yup," Steve says. "Sure is."
The park is full of movement and noise. You are wearing the glove, the net on your arm. No one can see what you are. What it is. You can walk among them, secret, unseen. Steve hasn't commented on it.
"Before that it was summer," you say.
Steve nods.
"And before— before that—"
You are reaching. You reach out for Steve's hand. He lets you take it. The two of you fit just right together, like the halves of a jewelry clasp.
"It was winter," you say. "You were peeling an orange. Your hands smelled just like it. For a long time. I gave you a book, a book with pictures. You gave me a whole bar of chocolate. You were sad. I couldn't make you not-sad. It felt like being hungry. Or. Like I was gonna be sick."
(You puked your guts up. In the snow. After the car accident. The radio was still playing music. That woe is me, poor child, for thee. You felt hot under your skin. Your throat burned. You were crying, sobbing. You didn't know why. There was something in your chest that wanted to get out. A noise. A word. A name. A string. Tangling and knotting around your breastbone. Bye, bye, lully, lullay. A voice said Christ. Get it out of here. You said Put me back please please put me back in.)
You look at Steve. Steve is crying. You put your hand against his face. It is warm and wet. "Stop," you say. "Stop. I don't like it."
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He takes a deep breath. "It's okay. I'm not sad."
"Then why?"
"It's just a thing people do. Sometimes we cry, and we don't have a reason."
"Oh."
You shove your hands in your pockets. You look away. A kite moves, out over the Sheep Meadow. It rises slowly up from the earth. You watch it: its wings painted like a hawk. It lifts till you can't see the string underneath it. Till it might as well be a bird.
Steve says, "You gave me a comic book." His voice is still thick and very shaky. "I kept it till— I bet some museum still has it."
"Is that good?"
"I guess I don't know. I get stuff back from them sometimes, but it always feels like something's missing. Like they made a copy, but it didn't quite... work. Like the real one is still out there. The one I remember. My pencils, my pictures, my records, my clothes... Nothing ever really seems to fit."
"Yeah," you say. "I know what you mean."
You don't understand why Steve moves his face in a way that you can't interpret. You think for a minute he's crying, still, but it isn't that. He touches your face. The line of your chin. Tucks your hair behind your ear. You think that you'll flinch. But you don't. His hands are very warm. They don't hurt where they touch you. You let yourself lean in, just a little, till your head rests against the slope of his chest. You hear his heartbeat, liquid, strange. The same heart is still there, beating in him. A noise from the past that you listen to now. A perishable constant.
He wraps his arms around your shoulders, careful not to make you feel pinned; for a second, he presses his lips to your forehead. "I'm so glad you're here," he says. "Some days I wake up and I still don't believe it, I think it was all just a dream I had, and I'll get up and remember you're gone—"
You think about it. "Me too," you say.
Steve's crying again.
You take off your shoes.
You take off your socks.
You take off your coat.
You take off your jeans.
You put your shoes by the bed.
You put your socks in the laundry.
You hang up your coat.
You fold your jeans.
You sit on your bed.
You take off your watch.
You wind your watch.
It is 11:07 PM.
You are in Manhattan.
Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.
You are a human being.
You can't help it.
Steve is gone. Steve is gone. Steve. Steve. Steve. You can't find him.
It has been twenty-seven hours since he left. You know. You know. You wound your watch. You were careful. You didn't forget.
He told you. What? What did Steve tell you?
You can't remember. You can't remember.
(Breathe, Steve said. Breathe, okay, Buck? Breathing helps you remember. What the fuck do you know about it. I don't. I'm sorry. Can you keep breathing for me?)
It's hard to remember when you're upset. Or. It's too easy to remember. (Shivering, wet, rain dripping through the waxy leaves. A smell of earth, of green wood burning. Steve said I'll see you on the other side, all right? All right, Buck? He slung his shield back over his shoulder. His big hand reached out to clasp your shoulder. You leaned against a tree trunk. You were smoking a cigarette. Steve was saying London for two days, we got 'em on the run. Steve was saying Next round's on me, but I promised Peggy— and you drank your last inch of boot-colored beer, rinsing the rim of your glass with its suds— and Steve said Night, Buck, I'll see you in the morning, and Steve threaded his fingers all through your fingers, and Steve said Hang on and Steve said Grab my hand and Steve smiled Night, Buck, I'll see you in the morning and you cupped your cigarette in your hand and you set the glass down and you let Steve drop and you were drenched from the river, shivering, wet, and your boots left prints as you walked away: x x x x x x x)
You circle the floor. You touch each door, each window. You touch your watch. Twenty-eight hours. You didn't forget.
You turn the TV on. But it's just noise. You can't make any sense of it. People talking at pitches you don't understand. People with faces that move too fast. You turn the TV off. You circle the floor. You touch each door, each window. You touch your watch.
A knock at the door. "Steve?" you say.
Not Steve, when you answer it. Someone you don't know. You back up. You feel threatened. That's what Steve says this feeling is. The way the servos click and whir, convulsive, in your arm. The way your fingers knot themselves up in a fist. You're supposed to breathe in and out. You're supposed to say, I feel threatened. Instead you say, "Get the fuck out."
Someone You Don't Know says, "Whoa there, Cyber Shredder. You want to take it down a notch? This is my house. I'm just checking in."
"Where's Steve." You put the wall against your back.
"He's stuck in DC, so I told him I'd swing by. Make sure you weren't building gulags, herding reindeer, you know. Executing dissidents. Not that Stark Tower has dissidents, by the way. I'm a benevolent dictator. Well. Benevolent-ish. Don't tell Steve I said I was a dictator, by the way, he takes that shit seriously. You're looking confused. You with me, microchip?"
"No," you say. "Talk slower."
"Yeah, sure, no problem." But he doesn't. He stops talking altogether. He stands there staring at you. You don't like it.
"When will Steve be back?" you demand.
"Uh, tomorrow? I'm not his secretary."
"No. What time. What time will he be back."
"Seriously, I have no idea. Could you cool it with the predator act? I feel like I'm being stalked by the world's sulkiest panther."
"Why should I believe you?" you say fiercely.
"Because I'm rich and devastatingly good-looking? Oh, hey, you're wearing my watch. That's good, right, that's got to count for something."
You look down at your wrist. "Tony," you say.
"That's what they call me. It still working? Kind of an old-school job, not really my style; never been much for the whole steampunk thing—" He's stepping closer, his hands held at chest-height.
"Stay there," you tell him. "Don't come closer."
He stays. "Got it. Not gonna move an inch till you tell me it's okay. We'll just hang out like this. Cautious Iron Man, Sulky Panther."
"I don't understand what you're talking about," you say. Then: "You made the... for my hand." You gesture. Click. Click. Whir.
"The net," Tony says. He nods. "Piece of cake. Not a great idea, in my opinion, but you try telling Rogers that when he's stuck on something."
"I," you say. (Steve in an alley. The palms of his hands two long red scrapes. Blood in the notch of his upper lip. You pulled his body against your body. I'm okay. I'm okay. His little heartbeat hammering fast. Like it wanted out, like it wanted to escape. You held him for just a little longer. Please don't do this, Stevie. I know. I know. I'm sorry.) You shut your eyes. "You keep giving me things."
"I'm just the giving type. Everyone says so."
"But I don't give you anything."
He stands there for a while in total silence. You don't mind. For you, silence is easy. Finally he says, "You knew my dad. You know that, right?"
"No."
"Howard Stark. He was—"
"The man with the airplane." You don't like thinking about this. You don't like thinking about this. You frown and turn away. You press your head against the wall. The corner of your mouth is trembling a little. You press your hand against it reflexively. You taste a taste that you try not to remember. You don't like this. You don't like this. You breathe in and out. Your heart stutters. Your heart is a gun shell. A spent casing.
"There's a lot of things," Tony says, "that we're never going to get back. Things that got taken away. From you and me both."
(A comic book in a glass museum box. The breath before the 45 begins to play. A red flower pinned to a man's pocket. The sun through the slats of the bridge as you cycled. A life line. A heart line. Fingers tangled. Snow blowing in from upstate. Steve's sleeping breath. Your head on his chest. His heart beats and beats. So frail in its cage. Make a wish. A wish. Somewhere there is a warmer world. Bye, bye, lully, lullay.)
"I guess," Tony says, "we can't unwind the clock. At least, I haven't figured out a machine for that yet. So we're never going to get that stuff back. Never. Nothing we can do about it." He clears his throat. "So, why not. I guess. Was my thinking."
He stands there. You stand there. Uncomfortable beings.
"Anyway," he says. "This has all been ultra-disastrous and adrenaline-producing, but I gotta go now. I'll, uh, I'll talk to Steve. He'll be in touch. I'll have his people call your people."
"Tony," you say.
He's halfway out the door. "Seriously, I gotta go, emotional vulnerability is not my best look. I need to bang some walls with a hammer, maybe punch a bag."
The words are like birds, trapped in your throat. You can't spit them out. You are crying. Crying. You didn't think you could.
"Thank you," you say.
You sleep on the couch, under a blanket. Steve comes home at 2:45 AM. He sits beside you. He knows you're awake. You never could hide much from him.
"Hey, Buck," he says. "You doing okay?"
Outside the windows, the city makes light. Makes its own stars from pinpricks. You study Steve's face: his slack fair hair, the curve of his jawline, his ghostly skin. You have known him in so many bodies. The little boy cycling over the Williamsburg Bridge. Skinny shoulders. The smell of orange peel. His body carrying your body. Your wrist breaking under the torque of his wrist. All these shifts. These transformations.
"Can you," you say. You draw back the blanket. Making room for him.
He settles very carefully beside you. Close, but not too close. He asks, "Like this?"
You lace your arm under his arm. You lace your fingers in his fingers. You can feel his heart beating under his ribs. For a long time you lie there. It doesn't hurt. "I used to dream about you," you say at last. "I didn't know it was you. Just. Something. Someone. A step ahead. I thought if I could just— get there. It wouldn't be. What it was. But that wasn't— that wasn't it. You were always— you pulled me. Forwards and forwards. There was just. Some place I was going, then."
Steve is very quiet. He squeezes your hand. "What about now?" he asks.
"I'm still. Going. The two of us. Moving. I thought it would stop, but it doesn't stop."
"What?"
"The place. We were always going. The two of us. Always."
"—Oh. The future. The future," Steve says.
You take off your shoes.
You take off your socks.
You take off your coat.
You take off your jeans.
You put your shoes by the bed.
You put your socks in the laundry.
You hang up your coat.
You fold your jeans.
You sit on your bed.
You take off your watch.
You wind your watch.
It is 11:04 PM.
You are in Manhattan.
Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.
You are a human being.
You are getting used to it.