Work Text:
In the two years that Steve spent searching for Bucky, he saw him everywhere, while simultaneously finding him nowhere.
He saw him in the curl of cigarette smoke from a stranger’s hand in the street, the tang of nicotine reminding him of days spent drawing on their crappy, banged-up couch - knees drawn to his chin, pencil in hand, and Bucky squished up next to him, desperate to see what was on Steve’s paper, by hooking his chin over his bony shoulder, his cigarette waving perilously close to Steve’s sketchpad. He remembered trying to bat him away, “Quit it, Buck, you’re gettin’ ash all over my sketchbook, d'ya know how much it cost?”
He heard him in the jaunty tune of a piano being played as he passed a packed jazz-style bar on one of his late-night insomnia-filled walks around the city, raucous laughter and people filling a dancefloor Bucky would 100% have been on himself if this were 1938 and people were drinking and dancing to forget the looming spectre of war coming ever closer.
He smelled him in the scent of chocolate and coffee coming from a bakery, Steve remembering how Bucky had become increasingly grumpier as sweet things like sugar and candies were rationed more and more strictly during the war. The first time they got chocolate in their MREs while fighting with the Howling Commandos, he’d practically cried, and devoured both his own and Steve’s with a feverish kind of excitement more akin to a child than a haunted, hardened soldier.
He saw him in the window of a store selling designer men’s clothing, knowing the Bucky he once knew would have coveted the silk ties and sharp-pressed suits on display. He was always a bit of a peacock, whereas Steve never particularly cared how he looked, because it wasn’t like anyone was going to pay any attention to him anyway.
Ironic, he’d thought, because everyone is always looking at me now.
The rich, deep warmth of whiskey he couldn’t drink anymore reminded him of nights in illegal bars where men danced with men and women danced with women and he watched Bucky with seething jealousy, the eyes of every person in the room on him, sweat-slick and dishevelled and so damn carefree it made Steve want to both kiss him and throttle him in equal measure.
A stranger’s cologne. A stack of paperback fantasy novels, $5 for the whole lot, at a thrift store. A Louis Armstrong record Steve didn’t have in his collection yet. A poster for violin lessons written in a hand that looked eerily like Bucky’s. A stray cat with the same blue-grey eyes as his old friend casually licking its paw near a dumpster.
(He’d gone and fetched a tin of salmon for the cat and brought it back, after that, watched as it hungrily devoured the can and let Steve rub behind its ears for several minutes.)
(Bucky had always loved cats.)
He was everywhere and nowhere. For a guy who had died in 1945, he’d never been more alive - and that half pain, half hope, is what kept Steve going through long nights and dead ends and a silent prayer for please, Bucky, please send me something, anything, to tell me you’re okay. Please. Let me help you. I can help you. Just come home.
I want you to come home.