IT’S AFTER MIDNIGHT when sawyer creeps up the staircase to ‘ his ’ apartment, after stopping to buy himself a sandwich and proceeding to miss his train. it’s not a good day —— just like many others, but today has been that little bit worse. okay, a lot worse. he enters the empty apartment quietly, mindful of the risk of the landlord being around the building ( unlikely, but it’s better to be safe ) and closes the door, barricading it with a chair. he’d managed to pick the lock, which means he’s forced to leave it unlocked whenever he leaves ;; but it doesn’t matter. there’s nothing worth stealing in here. he switches on the light and contemplates devouring his well-earned food… but puts it aside on the counter instead. he has no appetite ;; hasn’t ever since he’d turned up at the film studio. even less so after he’d left.
there isn’t much for a young boy with no family and no high school education in terms of career path —— especially a homeless one with unease around people and a tendency to DRINK to numb everything. he had to take whatever he could get to survive, so when the opportunity came up, he’d gone for it… albeit highly reluctantly. he knew what would be asked of him, but still hadn’t been prepared when the time came. he’s still sore and in shock, and the shower he’d taken after had done nothing to make him feel cleaner. sex used to be a comfort to him, a way of blocking out the world for a short time and getting lost in something good… but today, with the cameras pointed at him, he’d just wished for it to be over. he’d gotten $100 for his ‘ performance ’ and feels as though he has crossed the line and ultimately sold his body.
how did i become this person? mom and dad would be ashamed. i’m ashamed. sawyer switches off the light —— plunging the apartment into darkness save for moonlight streaming through the lounge window —— kicks off his sneakers and drops onto the thin mattress padded with extra blankets, lying on his side and pulling a pillow up to his chest. he wants more than this. he wants to be more. and more than anything, he wants to go home. a home that no longer exists. blues close in an attempt to fall asleep ( tomorrow is another day and there’s always hope, isn’t there? ) but it’s not long until tears stream, the brunet crying as quietly as he can manage ;; though occasional louder sobs uncontrollably escape him.
*:･ﾟ* STARTER CALL. / @METALPLATED.
SOMETIMES IT PAYS TO BE PARANOID. he has to know the ins and outs of the building he’s taking refuge in for his own personal safety -- studies them to be sure none of them are HYDRA, none of them have cottoned on to who he is, who he was, who he’s trying to run away from. most of them are just normal people with a budget as tight as bucky’s who are doing their best to go about their lives. some are on his watchlist: a bookie, a couple two floors up that get into some concerning fights, a businessman that seems out of place in this neighborhood, and the man who lives just next door.
his apartment is at the end of the hall, but he spends enough time looking out his peephole when he hears footsteps that he’s seen the man come and go more than a few times, and always alone. he seems... sad, to bucky’s estimation. but this is a place where don’t ask questions is a way of life, and bucky’s got more than enough on his plate without worrying about his neighbor. he’s busy weathering panic attacks, using stolen wifi to research the locations of scattered HYDRA operatives ( namely, the ones that did all of this to him ), and writing furiously in his battered spiral notebook to try and make sense of all the tiny fragments of memory filtering in through the haze of his broken programming.
and he doesn’t ask questions, until one night as he’s lying wide awake on his mattress, re-memorizing the spiderweb cracks in the lounge ceiling by the dim light of the moon, that he hears something. it’s a low, jagged, wounded sound, coming from the apartment next door. he tries to parse it out, already rising to his feet, pulling on a faded secondhand sweatshirt to cover the arm, and tucking one of the knives he keeps on hand into his waistband. it’s -- crying. the kind of deep, gut-wrenching crying that he sometimes hears drifting down from two floors up when he sits out on the fire escape. the kind of crying that manages to twist something inside of bucky, amidst all the sharp shards that already exist to pain him.
he peers through the peephole first, for a good few minutes to make sure there’s no movement in the hallway. only then does he unbolt the door and take the few steps over to the man’s front door. he knocks, metal knuckles making a firm and distinct sound. the hair on the back of his neck is prickling the longer he stands unprotected in the hallway, and he decides to give it thirty seconds before he returns to the cover of his apartment and his cache of weapons.
