Week 5 - A story set in London

[dira]

Perhaps with a little more obvious relevance to our favorite characters, this week's challenge:

A story set in London

You have a week for this prompt, so get a move on!

Comments

[starmaki]

And...yep, a bit late. Darn it. I thought I lost the whole thing I typed...dumb technology. So recopied it and...anyhow here it is. Will post this later on AO3 but wanted to do it here first. :)

(With a few minor editing changes, now added link to AO3
'A Chilling Frost' by themirrordarkly )

Just an idea that came to me. It is part in Brooklyn, part in London. POV Steve. No warnings really except angst. And this being Steve pining over Bucky and not realizing it.


"A Chilling Frost"

A chilling frost hit just before Christmas. On another December day, Steve Rogers was camped out at the noisy radiator seeking out the warmth, buried in a thick, lumpy wool sweater his Ma knitted for him. The cold etched in his frail bones, skin blushed not with heat but cold. Not bone white with frostbite, but he imagined what the numbness would feel like. Better than the burning ache of the chill that was for sure.

His Ma was heating up some chicken soup that Bucky brought over. Bucky had stayed, flopped on the faded sofa, thumbing through a glossy magazine he spent too much for. Just to read about the lives of rich people going to concerts in London's Royal Albert Hall or ritzy parties with rose colored champagne and hors d'oeuvre of salty fish eggs.

Bucky's casual sprawl, loose limbed, was graceful not gangly with youth. The shadow of youth merging into a man while Steve stayed small and thin. And yet, he wasn't jealous in the true sense, more like he wanted to capture the changes in his friend. Cold fingers itched to sketch out the lines that blurred between boy and man. The artist in him called and it wasn't anything more or so he kept reminding himself. But his hands still were cramping from the lack of heat so he dug and twisted his fingers into his sweater's warmth as he watched Bucky mouth words silently as he read.


Steve slurped down the soup in careful gulps. He didn't want to over do it just getting over his cold. He observed Bucky, not with the same consideration, slurp with gusto the delicious soup.

"Ma, sure makes the best dumplings," Bucky said, between mouthfuls.

Steve just nodded as he ate. He had to agree, but he'd never let his own mother know.


A chilling frost hit just before Christmas. On this December day he found Bucky sitting alone on a low wall over looking Hyde Park. A trail of smoke floating up from his cigarette as he peered up in the dusky, grey sky. Searching, searching for what? Steve wasn't sure. He could be looking for a lone German plane that somehow gotten through the city's defenses. Or something more divine and less tangible.

Again that old ache shot through him. It wasn't from cold this time; his body lost the capacity to feel it as deep. It was the desire to capture this moment in time and freeze it in ink and paper. Steve thought he'd lost him last month. The capture of the 107th was more than a shock; it was a lose of youth, the etch of war becoming all too real.

Bucky's careful appearance he prided himself in was not to be found. Instead his rumbled uniform and mussed hair spoke more than the schooled neutral expression he wore on his face. A steady hand brought his cigarette to his lips, a deep drag, and a long exhale of air as if all his inner demons could be expelled in the sighing smoke.

Steve wished with all his heart he could have gotten to Bucky sooner. Before Zola took him away. Before... Something changed, but Bucky being Bucky waved it off with a smile and a wink, however Steve knew when Bucky was hiding something. Just like when he broke Mr. Gains' window with a baseball. He just knew.

Bucky swung his gaze toward Steve and stilled as if caught in a private moment, then smiled wide.

"Come on over, Stevie." Bucky waved him over with his hand holding the cigarette, patting the wall with his other.

Steve obliged, sitting on Bucky's left.

"Pretty, ain't it." Bucky pointed to the trees. "Like someone knew Christmas was comin'." He said, nodding.

Steve glanced around and was struck with the surrounding beauty. He didn't even notice so entranced by Bucky earlier. And that was something he couldn't find an explanation for or didn't want to understand the why.

All around him was a winter wonderland. The trees glazed in sparkling ice, cold and beautiful. The sleet from earlier must have froze, decorating all the trees in glittering frost and dripping icicles.

"The trees...the branches will break from all that weight." Was what Steve said, but what he felt instead was the raw, natural beauty of Mother Nature.

Bucky elbowed him in his chest, shaking his head. And for the first time since he rescued him, Bucky started to laugh. An eye crinkling, head thrown back laugh. And it warmed Steve better than any sweater, soup or radiator ever could.

"Oh Steve, you're such a Scrooge!"

And Steve had to chuckle too; it was infectious.

"Stevie, what do you want for Christmas?" Bucky wheezed out between bouts of laughter.

"The end to this war." Is what Steve said, but what he wanted to say was--you. I want you.

"Me too, pal. Me too." Bucky's laughter quieting, but his eyes still full of life and humor. He slung his left arm across Steve's shoulders as he did in Brooklyn so long ago. To the future, Bucky had said then. To the future.