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“I don’t like that.”
The words tumble out of your mouth before you can stop them, and you flinch at the immediate thought-memory of a weapon’s opinion doesn’t matter a weapon doesn’t have an opinion as phantom pain blooms in your cheek.
“Don’t like what?” Captain America- Steve asks while he faces the wall, tilting his head this way and that at a shelving unit hanging twelve degrees off-center.
You look down, letting your hair fall into your face as silence encompasses you both. A beat passes, and Steve is suddenly facing you instead of the wall.
“What don’t you like?” Steve hurries to say, tone a rushed concern. He steps closer, expression horribly raw with hope. “It’s okay. What don’t you like, Buck?”
Buck. You know to respond to it, even if it isn’t you, and you bite down on your tongue hard enough to draw blood, and hopes you aren’t shaking. You shake a lot; when Steve asks you too many questions, when loud noises occur too close to your back, in the dark when the dream-memories play and the shadows reach out to reclaim you. “Weapons don’t have opinions, weapons don’t-”
“Hey, hey,” Steve moves close, catching each of your hands with his own. He squeezes lightly in what you assume he thinks is reassurance. “I asked you. There’s no wrong answer, Buck.”
You don’t believe him, but you answer because Steve will make The Face (the unhappy one that haunts you day and night, when Steve thinks he’s not being watched) if you pull away now.
“Curtains,” you manage to spit out.
Steve glances over at the light-weight curtains that are pulled away from the window. They’re thin and blue. “What don’t you like about them?”
“Useless,” you snap. “Anyone can see in, line up a shot-”
“Calm down,” Steve squeezes your hands again. “Take a breath, okay?”
You struggle to obey, inhaling sharply.
“Do you want to get new curtains?”
You nod, shoulders tense. Weapons don’t ask for comforts. Weapons don’t want for things.
“Then we’ll get you new curtains. How do you want them?”
Steve is asking all the hard questions today.
Your room is your fortress. It needs to be impenetrable. “Heavy. Dark.”
As you suspected, there is a wrong answer. Steve’s eyes lose a little of their brightness, and his expression falls. Even so, there is no pain (of the physical variety), and he nods before he drops your hands.
You decide to keep any other opinions you have to yourself. You aren’t meant to have them after all.
-
Except, you can’t stop having them, and it’s hard to keep them all in. Steve prepares food wrong, and he uses too much hot water when he showers before you, and his soap smells strange, and his nostalgia is palpable. His record player is used almost every night when he makes dinner, and none of his albums post-date the turn of the century.
You don’t want to voice these things to Steve, so you act on them instead (a voice in the back of your head praises you; sometimes better to ask for forgiveness than permission, it grins mischievously).
You use Steve’s computer to order a new album and a set of cookbooks. When the books come, you leave them on Steve’s bedside drawer; when the album comes, you put it in and let it play, sitting in the armchair next to the record player to stop any possible attempts on Steve’s part to take it out (Steve doesn’t attempt).
I feel it in my bones, I feel it in my bones drifts through the apartment as Steve stands by the stove, scratching the skin above his left eyebrow as he reads from one of the cookbooks you used his money to buy.
“No mushrooms,” you add, speaking just loud enough for Steve to hear you across the way.
Steve shoots you a sheepish grin, turning back to the book. He handles criticism well. He hasn’t hit you. You know that's a thought Steve will make The Face at if he knows you are thinking it, but it's as much of a reflex as breathing. You don't expect Steve to hit you, though. You wonder if that will make him feel better to know. I can’t do it alone, I can’t do it alone…