Ten Kinds of Grateful

"No, but seriously—wait. Hear me out," and Sam raised his hands and blocked Steve's way like Steve might suddenly make a run for it—shove past Sam and bolt down the old wooden staircase into the garage below where Bucky was working, and then out to the street.

Which was ridiculous. The thought had barely crossed his mind.

But Sam was staring him down with grim sincerity. "In a normal year, I wouldn't ask—you know I wouldn't. But this isn't a normal year, Steve. They didn't even have a parade last year, just that television spectacular, " and his disgusted expression no doubt mirrored Steve's own. "Lipsynching and pre-recorded segments. No crowds. The floats just drove round the block. No high school marching bands or baton twirlers, no little kids sitting on their dad's shoulders—nothing that makes the parade great. Hell, the Captain America balloon didn't even fly last year, did you know that?" and no, Steve hadn't known that. He hadn't had the heart to sit home watching some goddamn television spectacular: not when there were field hospitals set up inside Central Park and real work to be done. "But now things are nearly back to normal, really nearly there, and—Steve, you should be there with me. Both of you," and Sam tilted his head downward to indicate that he meant Bucky, too, which was honestly even nuttier.

Steve shook his head but Sam fixed him with a dark-eyed stare. "Look, people know what you guys did during the pandemic—" and Steve stopped him, had to stop him by waving his hand, because there was such a thing as heroism but that wasn’t heroism! It turned out that he and Bucky were immune to the fucking virus, and so of course it was their duty to help out where they could. The real heroes were the ordinary vulnerable Janes and Joes who had turned out day after day with their masks on to tend the sick or keep food supplies going. The real heroes were people like his mother, who'd turned up each day to take care of TB patients because somebody had to, because you couldn't leave suffering people alone.

Steve opened his mouth to say this but Sam seemed to read his mind: ”Yeah, I know, and they're planning a celebration of essential workers, too, but they aren't the globally recognized symbols of America, Steve. You are.”

“But that was the part of the job I hated!” Steve shot back. “The part I liked was the punching-fascists-in-the-face part. All I ever wanted was to go to Europe as an ordinary soldier, Sam. Stand shoulder to shoulder with all the brave people who were fighting,” and in fact he’d finally been able to do this during the pandemic. Super soldier strength had rarely been required. He and Bucky had just worn regular clothes and masks and turned up to do whatever needed doing: taking people to hospitals or distributing food to sick folks at home or, in those terrible early days in New York, moving and burying the dead. It had been like the war in many ways; it had, in fact, been its own kind of war. And then as now, he and Buck were only two people—but they'd worked with other people, regular people, to make sure the war got won.

Sam dropped back into a chair at their million dollar table. "Great," he said, crossing his leg and bracing his ankle on the opposite knee. "You can stand shoulder to shoulder with me and Barnes on a float heading fifty blocks downtown. We're brave," and before Steve could get a word in, he went on: "Look, I'm not asking you to give up your privacy. God knows you guys fought hard for it. But you can be masked—everyone'll be masked—so there'll never be a better time to make a public appearance. And it was thought that having all three Caps at once—"

Mrs. Goldstein had taught him about passive voice. It was thought, it was thought. “Who thought?" Steve demanded.

That seemed to throw Sam for a second. "Well...Natasha, actually," he said.

"Oh, well, tell the whole story," Steve muttered.

"Natasha thinks that having all of us there would send a message to New York and to the country. To the whole world, really. That we're strong. That we're going to be okay. New York especially needs to hear that right now—and from you and Barnes in particular, because you're like the living embodiment of New York's past, and you're still standing. You're survivors—and New York has survived alien attacks and terrorist attacks and god knows what else. And we'll survive this too, even though it hit us at our core —our strength in numbers and our diversity.The whole point of New York is that people come here from all over the world—

"—to live in tiny apartments for $4,000 a month?" Steve said, arching his eyebrows.

"I don't see you moving to Philly," Sam shot back. "Because you know there's no place like New York: people come here to make stuff together, to join a team —there's a reason that SHIELD's here and the U.N.'s here and the Avengers and the Yankees—"

"Now you're just screwing with me," Steve said, crossing his arms.

Sam grinned and said, "Maybe I am, maybe I am. It's just my way, I guess. But c'mon, Steve, you gonna do it or what? Let people cheer and say thank you—because they'll really be cheering for themselves, the people of New York. Me, I'll be there with bells on—because I will miss no opportunities to remind the world that Captain America is Black and Black people are the backbone of this country. And Barnes'll do it if you will."

Steve barked out a laugh. "Oh, you think so, do you?"

"Yeah, I do," Sam said. "He talks a good game, but he'll follow your lead. It's what he does."

"Not with this he won't," Steve said firmly. "They asked him once before to ride the float—and he didn't just say no, Sam, he said fuck no. In fact, he quit the whole Captain America thing cold turkey after that. And that was when he was trying to make nice to redeem his reputation."

"Sure, but that was years ago now," Sam pointed out. "Situations change, people change—"

"Bucky hates the performing monkey thing even more than I do," Steve insisted. "He's a private person, he won't want to be up there on some patriotic float while people wave flags and—"

"You don't think so?" Sam asked. "Because I know a lot of veterans, Steve, and even the grumpiest and most cynical of them—well, underneath, it still means something when you acknowledge their service," and that stopped Steve cold, because there was something true there. Bucky'd given everything in the service of his country and he wasn't exactly drowning in appreciation. Quite the opposite: it had taken years for him to get on top of his shame and his guilt. Sam said, nodding slowly, "Not all soldiers have had the chance to experience gratitude."

"Okay," Steve sighed finally. "Okay, okay. I'll do it and I'll ask Buck if he'll do it, okay?"

"Great," Sam said, slapping his denim-clad thighs with both hands. "You got any beer up here? Because I could really use a cold one."

They had a beer, and then after, he walked Sam downstairs through the garage to the door. It was loud down here: Bucky was using a table saw in the workroom, though he quickly switched it off when he glanced up and saw them. The high pitched whine faded to a dull hum.

"You heading out, Sam?" Bucky asked, hastily wiping his hands on his jeans before coming over and extending his hand; he was covered from head to toe in a layer of fine sawdust.

"Yeah, I gotta get moving," Sam said, shaking, "but I hope to see you guys on Thursday, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Bucky said, glancing at Steve before turning back to Sam. "Sure." Sam was still grinning as he went out the metal front door of the garage and got into his car. Steve sighed and locked the door behind him.

"Everything all right?" Bucky asked him when he returned.

"Yeah," Steve said. "Everything's great," and he reached out with his finger and drew a squiggle in the yellowish-brown dust clinging to Bucky's white t-shirt. Bucky grinned and shivered at the touch, and his body beneath the thin shirt was hard and warm with just a little bit of give. Steve impulsively hooked his fingers into Bucky's belt loops on each side and tugged until their hip bones knocked together and they were cock to cock. Bucky's mouth tasted of sawdust and cherry soda, and Steve strained helplessly forward to capture more of that sweetness, moaning as Bucky roughly cupped Steve's head and made the kiss even deeper and more urgent.

"All right," Bucky said, a little breathlessly when they broke apart. "Now you just tell me what's going on."

"Well," Steve began.

"No, but seriously—wait. Hear me out," Steve said.

They were told to arrive at the parade's staging area around six, which meant leaving Brooklyn well before five in the morning. Sam was there already, waiting for them, standing over a table piled high with bagels and breakfast sandwiches and donuts and carafes of coffee and hot chocolate. The highly organized chaos of parade prep went on for blocks. There were balloons all lined up in one direction, and floats set up in a row in the other, ready to alternate and interlace at the start point. There were people heading every which way and wearing all manner of riotous clothing, and if Steve had worried that he'd feel self conscious standing around in his old Captain America suit—well, he was wrong about that. Not only were there marching band uniforms and towering hats in every color of the rainbow, but there were grown people dressed as snowmen or mice or elves or frogs —and hey, were those guys dressed as Tweety Bird? In that company, his red, white, and blue outfit was practically understated: the epitome of good taste. Similarly Sam and Bucky, each wearing their own customized version of the suit, might as well have been wearing tuxedos. They were all in real danger of being upstaged by the Captain America balloon handlers in their bright star-spangled outfits. This made Steve grin behind his mask. It was just like old times: nobody'd ever looked at him during the Captain America USO show, not when the girls were out with their satin halter tops and their high-kicks.

Sam was on his third egg and bacon sandwich. "I'd chow down if I were you," he advised, and Steve figured he ought to listen, because Sam was the parade veteran. "Three hours up there passes faster than you'd think, but it's still a long time till lunch," and so Steve tugged his mask down—he'd shaved his beard when the pandemic started, to make mask-wearing easier, and grabbed a couple of sandwiches for himself. He turned to offer one to Bucky, but Bucky had wandered off. Steve looked around for him—God, there were literally thousands of people out here, shouting at each other and hauling ropes and blowing whistles: balloon handlers in windbreakers, workmen rushing to and fro with hammers, a woman in a red uniform hauling a tuba. He ate his sandwich in the cold morning air, taking everything in at once, trying to see it as a picture, like a Renoir or a Seurat, and so he didn't even see Bucky come back; Bucky just materialized beside him, eyes strikingly blue over his black mask.

"It's pretty amazing, what they're doing over there," Bucky told him. "Tell you the truth, I don't much care about riding a float, but I wouldn't mind building one. I mean, it's not like the fine detail work Jimmy used to do—you remember," and sure Steve remembered. Jimmy was Bucky's mother's favorite brother, the uncle he'd been named for—which was why he'd ended up a Bucky and not a Jimmy himself. Jimmy was in the carpenter's union, and each year he and a fleet of carpenters were hired to make the Christmas windows at Saks: elaborate and delicate animated scenes, all hand-carved and painted. A Winter Wonderland with skaters seeming to glide around a pond. The Shoemaker and the Elves, hammering nails into the bottoms of shoes, their arms rising and falling. Truly magical stuff. One year Jimmy'd brought Steve onto the job to do a bit of last-minute painting: ducks, and trolley cars for a street scene, and a dalmatian dog. The work had paid well, but it was obviously seasonal: with everyone laid off right before Christmas. He’d learned a lot from Bucky's Uncle Jim.

"It's still pretty great, though," Bucky was saying. "They're using a lot of high-tech materials, fiberglass and space-age textiles: more like engineering than building. You wanna look?" except they were suddenly out of time, there was a woman in a yellow windbreaker blowing a whistle and waving at them to board their float. Around them, suddenly, a marching band was assembling, tuning up and carrying trumpets and cymbals and saxophones. They were warming up, and even though the notes were coming a bit at random as they tried on phrases, Steve immediately knew the tune: it was the goddamned Star Spangled Man With A Plan.

Steve heard Bucky laughing, and tried to avoid his gaze—but no luck. Bucky grabbed him by the shoulders, amused eyes blazing. "Thank God for this mask, because I am not fit to be seen at the current moment," Bucky said. "Also, for the record: this is all your fault and I hate you."

"Duly noted," Steve said.

"All of it," Bucky said. "Everything since 1936 has been all your fault."

"Come on, come on; hurry." Sam was climbing the narrow metal stairs at the back of the float.

Bucky went next. "Hitler was not my fault," Steve told him.

"Hitler was before 1936," Bucky replied, stepping onto the platform. Steve came up next to him at the railing and—wow, okay. The view up from here was something: colorful chaos all around, stretching out to the parade route on Central Park West. He, Bucky, and Sam stood together on the high platform—like a tower, or a widow's walk—watching as their red, white, and blue-uniformed band got into formation and began to march. Half a block further on, Tony's dancers—-what Steve thought of as Tony's dancers: Rockettes in their red and gold miniskirts—were already high-stepping down the street. They would rendezvous with the Iron Man balloon at the park and, together, begin the long walk downtown.

There was a sudden jolt and their float began to move, following the marching band, who were now being cued by their drum major to begin playing the Star Spangled Man in earnest. Bucky groaned behind his mask, and Sam clapped a hand on each of their shoulders and said, “And here we go, boys. Normally I’d say our job was to smile and wave at everyone in the crowd and especially to the kiddies, but under the circumstances we can relax our facial muscles and just wave—“

“I’m sorry,” Bucky said, low and deadly, “but did you just explain to me how to be in a parade—“

“Yeah, but just put that on my tab, Buck, since everything’s my fault anyway,” Steve said, and then to Sam: “Look, he’s a bit nervous.”

“I am not,” Bucky said, and then he turned, neck craning, because there was the Captain America balloon, impossibly large as they neared it. It was going to bob above them as they turned onto the parade route and shadow them downtown. Steve stared up at it. This close, he couldn’t make sense of it. It dissolved, went abstract. Mostly it was blue—a huge field of blue; thighs, sides, helmet. A cloudless sky. Then a silver star and some red stripes seemed to float in midair. It seemed to him suddenly that, whatever this was, it had nothing to do with him at all.

Steve was brought back to himself by a roar, the sound of a wave crashing, the sound of a crowd. He turned back just as the float turned onto Central Park West, and holy shit: that was a lot of people. Both sides of the street were jammed with parade-goers as far as the eye could see. They were cheering, some waving flags or holding up pinwheels. The band was full tilt blaring the Star Spangled Man and from some loudspeaker somewhere, a tinny, echoing voice said: “Now entering the parade route, the Captain America balloon is 73 feet long and requires nearly 49 handlers to fly. Below him, on the float, are the three men who have served in the role, New Yorkers all,” and Steve immediately raised his hand to wave, and was greeted with applause. He was having serious flashbacks to his days on the Victory circuit, when he’d waved out train windows at crowds in Sayre, in Fayetteville, in Dubuque before being sent on to the Foxhole circuit in Europe. Sam was waving both hands enthusiastically, sometimes stopping to point at particular people or give them a thumbs-up, eliciting shrieks or whistles. He was having a great time. Bucky—

Bucky was still and silent, taking it all in with that way that he had of seeing everything at once, mapping it out like a soldier. He seemed all right at a glance, but you couldn’t love somebody this long without developing a kind of telepathy, and Steve could almost hear Bucky thinking, I don’t belong here. Which was bullshit, because Bucky was a soldier and a POW and had served longer than any of them, longer than anybody—and Steve impulsively slung his arm around Bucky’s shoulders and shook him, and Bucky jerked in surprise even as a cheer exploded out of the crowd, rising and rising and building and building until even Sam turned to look, until even Bucky understood that this was for him. Bucky half raised his arm in acknowledgement, and the cheer, which had been diminishing, immediately swelled up again. Bucky’s eyes suddenly seemed glassy, but maybe that was only the light.

Bucky slid away from him, moving past Sam to the other side of the float, where the east side of Central Park West now went out of their minds screaming and applauding. Steve, watching him, felt ten kinds of grateful that Sam had talked them into doing this. He could almost feel Bucky relaxing, his chin and chest lifting—and now Buck was waving back at the masked crowd with happy enthusiasm. Steve was also grateful for his mask at this moment. Natasha had always chided him for wearing his emotions on his face, and right now his feelings were overwhelming him. He was beyond giving thanks: this was more than he'd thought to want, the best gift he could ever have gotten.

Steve's vision blurred as he looked over at the remnants of the fall leaves, the twisted brown branches of the park—

The park. The—

Steve blinked away tears and focused his attention past the crowd lining the street, over the low stone wall and into the park. He peered through the trees at the winding paths, the ground cover of grass and leaves broken by rocks, searching out their rock. Had they passed it? No. That was—Steve thought that was it, there, but he wasn't sure until one of the two dark figures sitting on it stood up. A slip of a girl with bright red hair, and she was lifting—what, a glass? No. A thermos, probably, he thought, smiling. Filled with hot chocolate and schnapps, or coffee spiked with something nice, and Steve took a page from Sam's book and first waved, then pointed at her and—Clint, probably, had to be—while thinking of course, of course; yes, of course.