Journal

Steve keeps his arm around Orpheus until they're well into the apartment. "Keep me company in the kitchen?" he says, sliding his fingers just above the waistband of Orpheus's jeans.


[ooc: Adult shenanigans within.]

The room is comfortable and pretty, shades of red and cream and brown, with a coffee pot and a TV. It's perfectly adequate.

Steve misses his room anyway.

But if Orpheus isn't comfortable there, he's not going to insist.


Of course, all of his clothes are in the other room, which he remembers after he's pulled off his sweaty T-shirt.

Seems like it's going to be one of those nights--the kind of night when Steve can't get Orpheus alone with him fast enough, can't kiss him passionately enough, can't get his hands on enough of Orpheus's skin.

"I know exactly how I want you tonight," Steve says as he pushes Orpheus through the doorway.

The Bar, for reasons best known to herself, has given Steve a room that could be a renovated warehouse loft in New York. There's exposed brick and lots of bookcases--which Steve has begun to fill--and a shelf for his record player and vinyl albums. The tall arched windows open to a view that could be Manhattan at nighttime, if you didn't know you were at the end of the universe. The bedding and upholstery are faded, Cape Cod-type shades of cream and red and blue, as if someone left them out in the sun during a long, lazy summer.

Steve gets another key from the bar and stands in front of the door for a few moments, breathing deeply, before he lets himself in.


[ooc: Adult content warning.]

Steve has been planning this trip for a long time. With the help of JARVIS and everyone else who'd contribute, he had found funky motels and roadside attractions, as grand as Graceland and as silly as the world's biggest thermometer.

Now, he throws all those maps away.

JARVIS is able to find the information he needs in a matter of hours. All it takes, then, is to pack a bag, say goodbye to his friends, and get on his motorcycle.

And then, he heads west.

***

Someday he'll go to Europe and visit Falsworth and Dernier. For this trip, there are only four stops.



Four places to pay his respects.

Jones.

Morita.

Dugan.




Bucky.

***

They were both New Yorkers, born and bred, but Steve at least got to see most of the country--its train stations and theaters, anyway. There's a lot he didn't see, has only heard about, and he would talk to Bucky about those places sometimes. He wanted to see those places. He wanted Bucky to see them, too.

(He wanted to see them with Orpheus. But he's trying to let that dream go.)

He'd seen the Grand Canyon in a newsreel, the sheer size of it barely translated by the film and cheerful narrator, and he'd tried to describe it to Bucky. He had always been good at painting a picture with words, but even he couldn't describe the grandeur, the awe it had filled him with, to know that a place existed that was so ancient and so beautiful.

"We'll see it," he promised Bucky. "When we come home, after the war."

But Bucky had never come home.



Really, neither had Steve.

***

There's a fee to camp in the canyon itself, and the park ranger looks skeptical at Steve's minimal provisions. But he has the proper permit and the recommended amount of water (and then some), and so they give him a map and he rides his motorcycle into the canyon as far as he can go.

He finds his assigned campground without trouble, and sets up his bedroll and a fire before sundown. He spends what little light there is finishing the drawing of Bucky he'd begun in the bar after he got Lt. Gaeta's letter.

The sun goes down.



The moon rises.

And Steve holds up the drawing in the light of the moon and stars and says, "There it is, Buck. I promised you'd see it.

"I had to keep this promise."

"I have been reading a lot lately," Steve remarks when he unlocks the door to let them in. "So much literature to catch up on."



[ooc: Preemptive adult content warning.]

Steve manages to get up the stairs without stumbling too much, and to their door without falling over his own feet.

The drinks he takes from the bottle don't help.

When they get to their door, he leans on the wall to stay upright while Orpheus gets his key.

"Used ta be a lightweight," he tells the wallpaper.