Journal

Sam got some intel about a possible safehouse-slash-weapons depo that might be of interest to Bucky, so he and Steve head out to upstate Pennsylvania to check it out.

Steve doesn't have much hope for finding Bucky there--they're always at least two steps behind him, it seems, cleaning up what he leaves behind-- but sometimes standing in rooms he knows where Bucky has been is all the comfort he can find. Sometimes he feels like painting "BUCKY COME HOME" on the walls, just to see what would happen.

But Bucky won't be back to places he's already destroyed. Steve knows that.


Anyway.



The warehouse is on the edge of a small rural town that the economic crisis has hit hard. Most of the store fronts are boarded up. Some of the fields are bare, some are overgrown, and some hold the machinery of fracking. The warehouse itself looks rusty and abandoned, and Steve would pass it by if there weren't the hope of some sort of clue.

(Or the chance to bash some heads.)

It takes only a tap from the shield to break the padlock on the small door to the side of the building. No reason to break into the main security doors and draw attention to themselves. Steve eases the door open and steps inside, and nods to Sam.

Steve's sleep is troubled tonight.

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.]

Once he's in their room, Steve decides to take a shower to calm himself down.

He feels the effects of Orpheus's music all the time, but usually it's the ripples of happiness or desire or affection that wash over him. He'd forgotten -- or put out of his mind -- the downside, the gloom, the loneliness, the despair.

And most of the time, he tries not think about Eurydice. Her story would have no meaning to him beyond what he feels about other tragedies in myths, except that Orpheus loved her and it shapes everything he does, even after all this time.

He knows he shouldn't be jealous of a dead woman, but he is.

He stays in the shower for a long, long time.