Chapter Text
...the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David and Jonathan loved him as himself.
1 Samuel 18:1
...my Jonathan, thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of woman.
2 Samuel 1:26
He knows it’s ridiculous, and it’s not like he’s going to admit it to anyone, but what really outrages Bucky about Pearl Harbor is its inconvenience to him, personally. Sure, it’s probably shitty to attack a country without officially declaring war. But it’s not like it hasn’t been obvious which way the wind’s blowing, and Bucky can’t figure out why anyone would think the Japs would want to let people know before they bombed them. It seems kind of counter-productive. Also he can’t see how it would change much if they had announced it or blown a whistle first, or done whatever it is you do beforehand to get a war started, it’s not like the bombs were going to be more or less deadly either way. But most people have this whole thing about ‘playing fair’ that Bucky doesn’t really get. Probably it makes sense, it’s honorable, if you think the other guys are also going to do the right thing. But it’s war, right? The whole point is that you think they won’t.
If you’re going to think too hard about a fight, which he doesn’t actually recommend, but if you just can’t help yourself, Bucky thinks it makes a lot more sense to worry about whether you actually want to be having that particular fight in the first place instead of being fussy about how you’re going to fight it after you get started. That’s just a waste of time. He figures he can call it a win as long as he’s still standing by the end and anyone who has fucked with him is sincerely regretting it. He doesn’t really care how he gets to that point as long as he does.
The streets are cold and dark and the key sticks in the lock when he gets to the gym, so he has to stand around freezing while he blows on it till it warms up enough to turn. He is exactly on time to meet Steve, which is aggravating because Steve can get distracted within a single city block, let alone the twenty-minute trip from his place to Flatbush. He’ll stop to sketch something or start thinking too hard and miss the streetcar or, god forbid, get into it with some asshole. Usually Bucky plans better than this because he hates waiting for Steve anywhere.
So now that he’s miscalculated, of course Steve is running up on late. And knowing Steve, that probably means he’s found trouble somewhere along the way. Bucky starts to think seriously about going out to look for him, but it’s only been a few minutes so far and it’s four-thirty in in the morning. Who is even out on the street right now besides the milkman? Even Steve couldn’t get into a fight with the milkman. Probably. The other thing to consider is if he does go out to look for Steve and it turns out he’s just moving slow then Bucky will never hear the end of it.
***
When they heard about Pearl Harbor last Sunday, they were listening to the afternoon Dodgers game on the radio at Steve’s apartment like usual. (Well, Steve calls it an apartment. Bucky thinks it’s a badly ventilated flophouse shoebox and points this out whenever possible. After Steve’s mother died in ‘36, Bucky had tried to suggest that it would be fun for the two of them to move in together. Steve just shook his head, so Bucky had added that he was a man of twenty, and it was really way past time for him to get out of his folks’ place. If that was so, Steve had said flatly, why hadn’t he gone in with Frankie Sullivan when he’d been looking for a guy to split the rent last month? When Bucky politely asked what the hell Frankie Sullivan had to do with anything and why did Steve hate fun, Steve had just grimaced and said, “Not just fun, Buck, charity.” And that, as they said, was that. The most annoying part was that of course he spent more time at Steve’s place then he did at his own, so the fact that it had no amenities whatsoever actually bothered him way more than it did Steve, who really didn’t give a shit what kind of hole he lived in as long as he had his books and his art stuff.)
It had been kind of a boring game up until then, actually, the Bums were beating the Giants fourteen to nothing, and he’d had his feet up on the ratty-ass couch, was thinking about going out on the fire escape to have a cigarette, but kind of avoiding it because it was really cold outside. If it hadn’t been December, he might’ve risked Steve’s breathing and opened the window to smoke inside, but the place was already drafty as hell and he didn’t want Steve to catch pneumonia again. He was placing a private bet with himself over exactly how long Steve would last before telling him to get his shoes off the goddamn sofa when the news broke in to the game and the blazing look in Steve’s eyes told him that everything was about to change forever.
***
He can’t really remember anymore how exactly he met Steve. Probably he’d been around seven. There’s a kind of vague Before Steve period in his mind, but it’s blurry and besides that, he keeps putting Steve in his memories even when he definitely hadn’t been there. He does remember when he and Steve became best friends, though, instead of just friendly acquaintances. He’d probably turned eleven already, so Steve was still nine or ten. School was out and Bucky had been at a loose end when he’d seen Steve edging away from the usual afternoon stickball game like a man on a mission. Bucky had followed him, curious, and somehow they'd started talking and it didn’t seem to matter that they weren’t in the same grade or that Bucky was popular with everyone and Steve was popular with no one. They’d climbed down to the river eventually, out by the Manhattan Bridge, thrown a bunch of rocks, tried to catch a rat in the mudflats, looked out at the gray water and the gray Manhattan skyline that looked like the city’s bones were pressed out and flattened, faded yellow by the heat. Of course neither of them was supposed to go so far from home, but they’d gotten away with it, and that was the beginning of what Bucky would always think of as the best summer, the summer by which all other summers would pale in comparison.
Bucky dragged Steve along to play ball in vacant lots and in Prospect Park; when they could scrounge carfare, they visited Bucky’s numerous aunts and uncles and cousins on the lower East Side, in Hell’s Kitchen and in the Bronx, from where it was real easy to sneak off to swim in the Hudson; and one time, Steve’s mother accompanied them to the museum over on Eastern Parkway, where Bucky would never have thought of going in a million years, but also where he ended up staring at paintings for minutes at a time with his eyes blown wide open, feeling as if he were drowning in colors and lines. Some of the brushstrokes were savage and vicious, as if someone were attacking the painting; some were delicate with sharp angles and fine edges. But they were beautiful and somehow he was breathless and angry and exhilarated. He couldn’t explain how it made him feel, but he thought Steve understood.
They did stupid shit, too, which, well, Bucky had tried to act like he thought it was dumb kid stuff, but he probably enjoyed it even more than Steve, who just always did whatever he wanted without worrying about what other people thought about it. They used to pretend to be explorers or soldiers or spies or something out of whatever the new book or comic or radio play was. Bucky had brought up aliens one time and Steve explained that he liked it to be realistic, which Bucky thought was ridiculous—if you could imagine anything, what was the point of realistic—but went along with anyway, because it was fun. Especially after they started this long-running elaborate game where Steve was captured and it was Bucky’s job to make him talk.
Steve tried to be very conscientious about offering Bucky his turn to be the good guy, until eventually Bucky had to put a stop to it by telling him that he actually preferred it the way they had it. “I don’t know, it’s fun,” he tried to explain. “The bad guy is the one that does stuff, you know? The good guy just... responds.” Steve didn’t really get it, but he didn’t have to, so long as they were both having a good time. The other part, which Bucky wouldn’t have confessed, was that Steve really liked being the good guy, and Bucky’s actual favorite thing was watching Steve like stuff.
When they’d finally worked out the game to their satisfaction, there were rules. It had started out as this intense version of hide-and-seek where Steve would try to make it through a given territory without Bucky catching him. But Bucky was better at finding him then Steve was at getting away, so they added this other level to it, where Steve would draw some kind of map or code and hide it somewhere and Bucky would have to try and get the location out of him. It was actually kind of hilarious because it worked out the same way every time: Bucky would catch Steve very quickly and basically nothing he could do would make Steve give up the information. But it was great.
Sometimes Bucky used to try to really scare Steve. He wouldn’t have hurt him or anything, not really—although sometimes he wondered what it would be like if he did. But he did enjoy coming right up on the edge of it. It felt fantastic, like he could just reach out his hands and tear him apart if he wanted to, and Steve wouldn’t stop him, in fact the best part was knowing he could do anything he wanted to, anything at all, he could turn it around and make Steve laugh or he could try to make him cry or yell or just set his chin and refuse to give in. He was pretty sure Steve liked it, too, or they wouldn’t have kept doing it, and anyway he could have stopped Bucky anytime by giving up. Bucky figured it was like going to see a Lon Chaney picture; it was horrible and you were scared shitless while it was happening, but that was what made it fun. Also Steve really, really enjoyed winning, and he liked knowing that Bucky couldn’t make him do anything he didn’t want to do. Bucky didn’t know if he would have enjoyed switching parts, but that never happened so it didn’t matter and besides Steve would have been completely shit at it anyway, it would have been so boring. Steve was clever, really clever, but he wouldn’t have been any good at thinking up terrible things to do to people.
Steve was eleven and Bucky was twelve-going-on-thirteen the year Bucky got a sore throat, Steve caught his sore throat, which became rheumatic fever, and fear blew into Bucky’s life like a freight train and never quite left. Steve had just been starting to hit a growth spurt, but he’d never catch up to Bucky now. Steve’s mother who was incredibly undemonstrative, explained it all to him without any particular emotion: Steve’s heart had been affected so he would have to rest more and couldn’t be running all over the city with Bucky.
Bucky wasn’t stupid, he could add two and two and get four as well as most people. It didn’t take a genius to see—what with the asthma, the scarlet fever that had left him a little deaf in one ear and now this heart thing—that Steve might not make it all the way to high school, if he even got that far. He had to start thinking about the future. The problem with Steve was that he wasn’t practical. Bucky was practical; he could see he had two options. One, he could cut his losses and gently separate himself from Steve before anything too terrible happened. It wouldn’t be that hard. This was why he’d made Steve come hang out with his old crowd from time to time, and why he kept relations with them friendly even if Steve didn’t get along that well with them. He could ease back into the gang if he wanted to, without making it a big deal. Sure, he’d probably never be able to have a real conversation ever again, but it wasn’t like he’d die of loneliness or anything, it would be annoying but he could do it. Two, he could keep going the way he had been. In which case, either Steve would die young and then Bucky would have the entire rest of his life to do all the other stuff that people thought you should do, or he wouldn’t, and then Bucky could keep on having his best friend. It didn’t end up being a hard decision.
Of course, while he now had a lot invested in keeping Steve ticking along through the rest of school, it seemed like Steve didn’t care much about it at all, which drove him crazy. He also suddenly felt like he had to be very careful with Steve all the time, which was irritating, so basically he wandered around being pissed-off and terrified all the time and trying desperately to hide it. In hindsight, he realized it was possible that this had made him act like kind of a jerk. And he could see that to Steve it might have read as... smothering. Maybe. But he’d never told Bucky to take a hike, so it was probably okay.
It was a long time before he’d understood what was going on with Steve, who never referred to his own health if he could help it and was, as far as Bucky could tell, completely oblivious to the fact that he might not be able to physically handle all the stuff other guys could. At first Bucky had found it hard to believe that someone so smart could have so little sense, but eventually it'd become clear that Steve was perfectly realistic about what he could do, if you realized that he didn’t care at all about what kind of shape he was in when he was done. It actually made a weird Steve-type of sense, but that didn’t mean Bucky had to like it.
***
Bucky’s been standing still all this time in the dark like a complete idiot, so he shakes his head, takes a deep breath, and tries to get his thoughts in order. He turns on the lights, slings his jacket over the bench by the boxing ring along with his bag, takes off his tie, rolls up his shirtsleeves, shucks off his shoes and socks. He thinks about changing, but he’s not here for himself, so he decides not to bother. He probably won’t even work up a sweat today. Somehow he wants to start pacing, which is both ridiculous and kind of a foreign sensation; he’s usually real good at staying still when he wants to. But right now, he feels pulse-pounding frustration coiling tensely inside him like a spring. It wants to bounce him right off the balls of his feet. It would be great to lose some of this energy before Steve arrives. He looks at the speed bag, considering, but Steve could show up any minute and the last thing he needs is to get sidetracked from what he’s supposed to be doing here. He should really lower the bag for Steve anyway; it’s set up for a taller guy.
Boxing earns Bucky decent money and he’s good at it. Sometimes he likes it a lot. He started because Jimmy Barnes would have laid down on the ground and died if his son hadn’t put the gloves on, and by the time Bucky realized that he didn’t really care if his old man did die from the disappointment, it was already too late, he had the taste for it. He tells Steve he likes it because it’s the greatest sport in the world; he tells Steve that he’s gonna hit the big time and fight at the Garden or the Polo Grounds, get rich quick. He worries sometimes that he does it just because he likes hitting people. This one time his dad had caught him beating the crap out of Ratface Pacelli (his name was actually something like Donnie, but he never got anything besides Ratface) and didn’t bawl him out for fighting like he felt he had a right to expect. Instead he told Bucky—almost fondly—that all kids get into fights, but most guys are afraid to hurt the other fella, most guys are too chicken-shit to aim for the face, most guys don’t like to see all the blood. “Glad to see you’re not a sissy,” his dad said, “at least there’s that, thank Christ,” and Bucky had grinned shakily at him, trying not to cry, trying to hide how small and ashamed he felt knowing for sure that he was wrong inside, wanting so badly to be like the other guys his dad was talking about instead of like himself.
He thinks about where Steve’s head measures on his own chest and fixes the bag so it’ll be just about level with his face. Just as he’s doing that, Steve finally, finally shows up at the top of the stairs.
“Decided to put in an appearance after all, your majesty?” Bucky yells up at him.
Steve glares back. “I’m not that late,” he says, coming down the stairs. “Let’s get started.” He strips his coat off, puts his hands up, and squares off as if he’s ready to go a few rounds with Bucky right this second.
“Take it easy, pal,” Bucky says. “We’re not there yet. First thing, go change.”
“I didn’t bring—”
Bucky cuts him off by throwing a pair of Matty’s old athletic shorts—his little brother’s thinner than him—at Steve, who eyes them as if they’re a bomb that’s about to explode all over him. “Everything else off, Rogers. Including the shoes.” He tries not to laugh at Steve’s expression. “I mean, you can leave on your undershirt if you want.”
Steve disappears towards the changing room, but not before rolling his eyes at him, as if Bucky doesn’t know he’s shy stripping off, like probably anyone would be who didn’t parade around half-dressed for a living. When he comes out, he’s—of course—stripped to the waist because if there’s anything Steve Rogers can’t resist, it’s a dare. At least this makes it easy to see that the trunks aren’t too loose around Steve’s skinny hips, so it seems like he did okay when he took them in last night. They’ll get the job done.
“Aren’t you gonna get changed yourself, Buck?” Steve asks.
“Nah, we’re not even gonna get to sparring today. Today it’s Patsy’s jump rope and some exercises.”
“Bucky,” he says, exasperated. “I told you, I’m doing this for real. If you don’t want to help, that’s fine, but I can’t have you babying me like I’m some kind of infant.”
He sighs. “I get it, Steve. I know you want to fight. But see, this isn’t about boxing exactly. You already know how to throw a punch, buddy.” Steve doesn’t respond, so Bucky tries again. “Look, you asked for me to prep you for basic training with some boxing lessons and then gave me three weeks before you’re heading down to the induction center. Three goddamn weeks. We just gotta get you into the best shape of your life, we’re not trying to go ten rounds with Joe Louis here.”
Steve looks serious for a second and then grins at him. “You really making me use your baby sister’s jump rope?”
“Well, I’m not lending you mine, punk.” Steve falls all over himself laughing like the idea of Bucky skipping rope is the funniest thing ever. Bucky doesn’t care; he’s pretty sure Steve will be laughing out of the other side of his mouth when he has to try it. Come to think of it, Patsy could probably teach him a thing or two.
Unsurprisingly, it turns out that Steve has no sense of rhythm at all. Bucky shows him how to grip the rope between his fingers, how to hold it with his arms bent at the elbow instead of straight out. He demonstrates the motion for Steve and then stands back. Steve takes the rope back from him, holds it right, tries to get it going and hop at the same time, trips all over himself and then glares up at Bucky, daring him to say something.
Bucky just shakes his head and watches as Steve tries again. This time, he tries to slow it down, but of course you can’t really get yourself going if you don’t spin the rope fast enough. He manages to watch Steve tangle himself up four times before he takes the rope away and thinks for a minute—skipping rope makes you light on your feet; it keeps you going in a rhythm without getting tired; it makes your hands and feet work together; but really the point is to keep moving, moving, moving—“So,” he says, “since getting over the rope’s not really working—”
Steve gives him an apologetic grin. “Fine, fine,” he says. “Little girls all over Brooklyn got me beat.”
Bucky smiles back. “Only ‘cause you never let me teach you to dance.”
“Uh-huh,” Steve says. It’s an old argument.
“Because you’re a stubborn asshole.”
Steve raises his eyebrows at him, gives him a half smile and a one-shouldered shrug—yeah and what’re you gonna do about it—and Bucky just sighs because of course the answer is nothing.
“I’ll get the hang of it, Buck. Just need some more practice. I mean, if Patsy can do it—”
“Yeah, I’ll let you tell her that. Look, it’s just there to help you keep time, okay? I’ll show you.” Bucky loops the rope in one hand and starts spinning it by his side, counting one, two, three, four, every time the rope hits the ground. Then he jumps, again: one, two, three, four, showing Steve how he skips every time the rope smacks the floor. “The rope goes down, you go up, okay?”
He has to count for Steve right at first but he catches on pretty quick after that.
Steve manages to go for almost three-quarters of a minute at a time before he gets tired, which Bucky is pretty impressed by, considering. Then he has to show Steve how to wrap his hands before letting him near the bags. Steve’s hands and feet are unexpectedly large for his body, it’s like they belong to the man he was supposed to be before all his energy went into keeping his heart beating instead of growing.
Some people probably think Steve is the one who can’t get by without Bucky, when in fact it is and has always been the other way around. Bucky feels lonely all the time, even though he’s almost always in a crowd. He’s alone with his family, with the guys at the bar and at the gym, sometimes in the arms of a girl, sometimes even between her thighs. Not with Steve, though, never with Steve.
It’s not as if Bucky is known for underrating himself. He’s aware Steve prefers his company to most other people, would be sad if Bucky were gone. He might starve, maybe. He might get killed in some dumbass fight. But mentally, where it counts, he’d get along, he’d be okay. Bucky, on the other hand, would absolutely not be okay and he knows that, too.
It’s probably a little strange that Steve knows so little about boxing, apart from Bucky showing him a few crosses and hooks. Steve lets Bucky into almost every aspect of his life: they go to the movies together, to baseball games, to Coney Island, to the automat, to bars they shouldn’t waste money on; Steve makes him go to political protests and lectures (Steve is an ardent socialist; Bucky votes the straight Democratic ticket just like almost everyone else he knows). He picks Steve up from his sign-painting jobs all the time and he knows a hell of a lot more about art than most college students, which he tells himself isn’t too shabby for someone who only graduated high school.
He wonders from time to time if Steve notices how hard Bucky tries to keep him separate from his work and if he cares about being on the outside, not even looking in. It’s not that Bucky likes keeping things from Steve and it’s not like he’s ashamed of him either. He wishes things were different. It’s just that Steve is too good for all that bullshit: the managers peddling their tired old pipe dreams; the idiots who hang out at the gym, posturing as they envision that big break they imagine they’ve earned; the lookie loos who come out to drool over the fellas flexing their muscles; and last, but certainly not least, the assholes he fights with and therefore has to drink with, at least sometimes. Bucky spends a lot of time with people he can’t stand and he can’t really stand himself when he’s around them either. He doesn’t want Steve to see him like that.
***
Steve is 5’4” and a hundred pounds soaking wet on a good day. Steve’s mother died of tuberculosis. Steve has asthma and a shitty ticker. Bucky is 95% sure that there is no way that they’ll take him into the service. Not unless half the other men in America have been abducted by aliens. There’s this other niggling 5% of worry though that just won’t go away. Because Steve is a pretty convincing talker, unless he’s trying to have a conversation with a woman, and there won’t be any of those at the induction center. What if he can persuade them into giving him a shot?
After all, Bucky has found himself in all kinds of situations that he never would have, except that Steve has the ability to make insane plans sound not only plausible, but good, right, necessary, and above all, inevitable. It’s only afterwards, when Bucky is scraping Steve off of wherever they’ve ended up, that it sinks in, what a fucking terrible idea the whole thing was in the first place. That’s also usually when Bucky wants to go back in time and punch his past self in the face, because he never ever learns.
Like hell he’s going to let Steve go to war without him. But what if Steve ends up 4F as he most likely will? Bucky really doesn’t want to get shipped off to the Pacific alone by accident. The best way is to handle it, he’s decided, is to let Steve try to sign up first. If Steve makes it in, Bucky will just have to talk his way into the same assignment; it’s definitely possible, since everyone knows guys who enlist have a chance to pick where they go. If Steve doesn’t make it, well, Bucky guesses he’ll try to act disappointed, but probably not very hard.
At least he doesn’t need to consider his own draft card in the mix: Tommy Reilly is his manager and has fingers in all the local fights, and also the local draft board; in fact, Tommy Reilly is, well, connected, not to put too fine a point on it, and as long as Bucky fights the way he wants him to, maybe does a little work for him on the side, he’s pretty sure he won’t have to go any place he doesn’t want to go. So he’ll do that if he has to, no problem. Why not? It’s just more of the same.
He knows he should want to go to war, to fight. He hurts people for a living after all; why not do it for a good reason? His Aunt Syd and Uncle Norman look at him now, expectant, like, why doesn’t he just sign up? Hasn’t he heard the terrible stories about the rest of the family, still in Europe? He wouldn’t even go over there anymore except that Rebecca lives with Aunt Syd, always has, since right after she was born and their mother died like a one-two punch.
His mother was Jewish, so he knows he’s supposed to be, too, and it’s not like he wouldn’t mind giving the finger to his dad, who would definitely blow his top. But he just doesn’t feel much when he thinks about it. He can’t imagine how or why his parents ever got together, or more to the point, why she was dumb enough to marry him. Probably they’d had to get married, probably it was his own fault, James Buchanan Barnes showing up and causing trouble like usual (well, not like usual, exactly, he hopes he wouldn’t be that kind of shitheel, to get a girl in trouble like that with no eye to the future). Anyway, it’s all kind of funny, if you look at it right. Or maybe funny’s not the right word. But it sure seems like it should’ve been a great love story, the Jewish girl, the boy Black Irish, kind of like Romeo and Juliet. Except Jimmy Barnes couldn’t have cared all that much about her, since he married again not six months after she was cold in the ground, a regular old Christian this time, none of the complications. Bucky doesn’t mind that Matt and Patsy were born, but he doesn’t call their mother anything. It’s amazing how much you can get away with just pronouns.
The thing is, Bucky doesn’t want to be a soldier. He’s never been good at doing what he’s told. Besides, he loves Brooklyn. He loves the city, too, the lights, the noise, jazz up in Harlem, good restaurants when he can afford them. Who would he even be without going dancing, without girls to take out and show a good time to, without Steve? What if he were crippled for life? Dying might be better, if it were quick. But what if it wasn’t. Christ, he hates knowing he’s so gutless, but there’s no point in lying to himself: he’s fucking terrified.
“So,” Steve says when they’re sitting on the floor back against the wall and he’s caught his breath after going at the speed bag a little bit. “How’d you talk your way in here so early anyway?”
“Eh,” Bucky says, shrugging a little, “Goldie doesn’t care. He knows I clean up after myself. I like to get in early sometimes, without all the guys here.”
“You get up early in the morning on purpose? I’ll believe it when I see it.” Steve scoffs, elbowing him in the ribs.
Bucky really does only like seeing early mornings from the wrong side. But he’s never been so grateful for those few solitary hours in the gym. It means he can make Steve do all his calisthenics indoors, instead of being forced to watch him run around outside in zero degree weather or something. “You’re seeing it now, aren’t you?” he says, elbowing back.
“Yeah, and I think I also just saw a pig fly by over there.”
Bucky looks at Steve out of the corner of his eye, checking him over for pain or injury; he’s good at doing that without letting Steve notice. He sees drops of sweat glistening on the sharp edge of his collarbone and wants to reach out and grab him, just press his thumb into the hollow where the tendon and bone meet next to Steve’s throat, wants to put all his weight on him and keep him there, pinned. It’s when he realizes that his mouth’s gone dry and he’s started to lick his lips that he has to pull himself up with a jerk. This, this is not okay. Not when Steve’s sitting right next to him with his shirt off, with sweat dampening his legs, with his hipbones showing, with his slightly-too-long hair falling on his forehead, all tousled. Bucky wants to run his fingers through it, push it off his face.
He gets up as quickly as he can without making it look strange. “C’mon, champ, get your lazy ass up. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither are you.”
Bucky makes Steve stop at six-thirty when he’s had more than enough for a first time session; it would be nice if Steve wouldn’t argue with him about it, but it would also be nice if he woke up with one morning with a million dollars lying around and that's pretty much just as likely to happen. At least all the exercise means that Steve is pretty hungry, so bullying him into letting Bucky buy them a real breakfast at the automat isn’t as hard as it could’ve been. The gym’ll be open for business in a half hour and ordinarily Bucky might’ve stuck around to do a little work himself, but he’s got a fight tonight, so he needs to go home and sleep anyway. As they lock up, Bucky is already planning what he’ll say to convince Steve that he should get the twenty-five cent breakfast instead of the fifteen. Maybe they can compromise on the twenty; that comes with the ham and egg, and the cream of wheat, so it’s not a bad way for Steve to start the day.