laugh , and you are a fractured machine & it comes out just as that : the ink too wet , your typeface distorted. push the cigarette between your lips like a fuck you , and you might mean it , too.   â yeah , yeah. didnât see you offerinâ to help , though. â  watch him , from the corner of your eye , through your lashes , like a wink : you wouldnât have taken his help. your lighter is a flat and shiny thing , barely dinged , & youâve got the compulsion to carve it up , the way you used to do. lights like shit , too. youâre half sorry you even took it.
                          hold it in , because you like the burn of it , down your throat and in the desperate contractions of your lungs. exhale , in these cute little rings you learned when you were fifteen and offer it between the two of you like a spliff , loose in your fingers. brows arch , unvoiced question , but buckyâs hardly going to be offended if itâs turned down. twists his mouth to show teeth , and tips his head âtil heâs looking skyward , at nothing much but a dark hull ,   â i think you probably gave too much for those fuckinâ boots to be anything other than what you are. â  laughs , again , and this oneâs softer , or at least itâs more put together ,   â goddamn cowboy. â
        jesse breaks open on a laugh, the vaguely hysterical edges of too much energy and no place to put it, something restless and wild in him twisting around. like he wants a fight or a fuck and ainât about to get either one. he shrugs and slouches down in his jump-seat, like heâs not ready to jitter right outta his skin. âwhatcha about to learn from a lilâshit like me?â jesse asks, catching his eyes like a punchline. grinning at the almost twinkle like wink in them. itâs funny---how bucky outranks him but still acts like a solider, a universality to him that jesse would never have guessed at before he met him. never acts like heâs better than all of them, doesnât seem to have the desire to command men underneath him. maybe he just likes being down in the action and the muck with the rest of âem, jesseâd like to know why but he doesnât know him well enough to ask.
jesse can feel himself grinning, dumbass expression as barnes blows these puffy little smoke rings into his face. like the kind of trick you learn from a father figure, one of those bad habits you pass down from one generation to another. he darts his eyes around, bottom lipâs smirk caught behind the point of a canine, looking to see if gabe is around and keeping an eye on him. âmâsupposed to be quittinâ.â he explains as he takes it from bucky, fingers brushing warm. damn him for an addict but heâs trying-- always wants what is probably bad for him. he breathes out like an aggression, like a âfuck youâ in return. he kicks his feet up, cross one long leg over another and rotates his foot at the ankle. actual cowboy boots that he didnât dig out of a second hand thrift store--beaten halfway to hell before heâd gotten his hands on them. these ones black of course and only half broken in so far.Â
               âdonât be jealous-- these boots are killer, i know.âÂ