fossilised | werewolves

werewolves

Pumpkin Spice.

It hits the shelves the moment the temperature dips below eighty, before the summer officially ends and the leaves give hint at changing color. It's become an American way of life. Lattes might claim it to be proof of their success and staying power but it's expanded into hand soap and e-cigarettes now. You can't find anything, really, that hasn't been pumpkin spiced these days. Pumpkin pie is too humble to try and reclaim it anyway, and has quietly retreated to Thanksgiving where it waits to mark the end of the most beloved season in New York among straight white girls.

Steve Rogers, while neither straight nor a girl, has whole heartedly embraced the trend and the moment Starbucks announced that it had come back out for a Limited Time Only, Steve had rummaged in his sock drawer for a gift card he was sure had money left on it and stood in line with the masses to claim his holy grail.

It's a comfort. It's a promise that there's going to be something else to look forward to in the coming months when holidays rear their ugly and beautiful heads to remind you that your family is dead and most of the kids you lived with in foster care and group homes have disappeared out of your life. It makes Steve's day and he's already day dreaming about boots and puffy vests the moment he takes his first, iced sip. Steve isn't really a day dreamer, but his head can get stuck in the clouds on the best days and distraction comes easily in a city where you're never and always alone at the same time.

There's charcoal under his nails and a moment of joy in his heart from the iced latte he grasps so fiercely the day he sees Bucky across the street. He'd know him anywhere, even with that long fringe of hair he hasn't seen since before he went off to basic training. The light to cross the street between them is red but Steve ignores the risks. There are two lanes each direction, and all four are packed with yellow cabs and black Uber cars. No one can go fast enough to do him any damage.

The latte gets dropped along the way and Steve doesn't care. It's been over a year and a half since he's seen Bucky. It's been six months since he last heard anything from him actually. He hadn't even gotten a birthday card this year.

"Buck!" Steve is just a skinny guy, five foot four, maybe 100 pounds if he's got art supplies and an easel on him. He has fallen arches and a heart arrhythmia, but they aren't keeping him from shimmying between cars and nearly getting run over. He's out of breath when he makes it across the street and though he's lost his drink, he needs to bend over and cup his hands on his knees to steady himself anyway so it all works out. "Hey." It's smooth and followed by a smile. Something bright and cheery and all too Steve Rogers hopped up on artificial sugar and flavorings.

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“Hell yes I’m more excited to see her,” Steve barks, huffing slightly with the effort of their quick progress down the street. He had just gotten over a chest cold a few days ago and he’s still feeling it in his rib cage. It’s nothing like it had been for the past month and a half but it’s still uncomfortable and getting progressively more so as he forces himself to keep up with his own pace.

He’s never liked being weak. He doesn’t let it define him. If he can be stubborn about everything else, it’s all stemmed from his stubbornness to even be alive. It’s a small miracle that he made it to age ten, let alone nineteen.

He’ll need to remind Bucky that he owes him a present still, later, after they’ve both decided to come clean about understanding the situation the other is in. They’ve never really called each other out on it before and it’s not going to happen now, not when there’s more than just time separating them.

Steve shifts the bag he’s been given to his other hand to try and save the skin across his fingers from the heavy load. He watches Bucky set his own bag down to get his keys out and realization hits him smack in the face.

Bucky has never been a hands in pockets guy. And that hand, the one he’s kept on the far side of Steve, hasn’t moved. The blond narrows his green flecked blue eyes at his friend’s back, pressing his lips together. Bastard, hiding this from him! He wants to hit the guy so bad. He’ll do it too. He’ll lay his straight out for being a dick head and trying to hide from him for who knows how long.

He can feel the tears welling up again and this time he can’t stop them. He shifts the bag to his other hand again and tips forward until his forehead is against the back of Bucky’s shoulder.

“God, you’re such a god damned asshole,” he murmurs. His mother would hate the way he runs his mouth now. He likes to think she would understand though.

Bucky has always been a fairly well muscled guy, he worked out in high school and was on the boxing team. But time in the army has only honed that, and Steve will feel an added layer of tension beneath the muscle to make Bucky's back hard as steel. He almost turns and pushes Steve back when he feels the other guy's head hit him from behind without warning, instinct screaming at him that he's vulnerable to attack.

It's only because it's Steve, and because he feels the warm dampness of tears soaking through, that he manages to keep his head and do nothing. He's not sure what exactly of the many things he's trying to hide that Steve has figured out, but he feels his stomach sink. This is one of the reasons he didn't seek them out, he didn't want any of the people that he cared about to get hurt seeing what had happened to him.

More than that, he knows Steve. He knows that if Steve finds out everything, then the asshole will cope with it better than he does. He'll research every goddamn thing about amputations and PTSD, he'll go to rallies and fight for better treatment of vets injured in service, he'll force Bucky to go to his VA meetings and physiotherapy appointments. He'll be, in short, his annoyingly stubborn and perfect self.

"Don't..."

It's soft and hesitant, and he's not even sure what he's asking Steve not to do. Don't cry, don't ask, don't find out his secrets.

"...come on, I thought you wanted to meet the dog."

Don’t feel? That’s impossible for Steve. The guy over-feels, like he’s an empathic sponge. There’s no way in hell that he’s going to be able to shut any of this off in the next two minutes so Bucky is just going to have to wait for one god damned second as Steve pulls himself together again.

It won’t be without a question though. Bucky can’t get away Scott free this time.

“Of course I want to meet your dog but she’s not disappearing in ten seconds,” Steve grumbles, still face planted against too much muscle with too much heat under it. His voice softens, the question almost demanding itself to be whispered. “Did you decide not to see me because you were trying to spare yourself...? Or because you were trying to spare me?”

One is far worse than the other.

“If you were trying to spare me, I’m going to kick your ass so hard you’re going to taste my shoe.” Actually, Steve doesn’t even think his leg is long enough for that but the threat still stands. He can’t be overly emotional without throwing in some guy-language for Mister Tough Guy Brooklyn here. He’s got a reputation, and Steve intends to let Bucky hang onto that if he needs to. “I’ve been a few streets away all this time.”

At least the tears are turning to anger. Steve’s always been able to deal with that better.

“How many times have you been there for me? Come on, Buck. I’ve got a bad heart, but that doesn’t make me too weak to be there for you.”

Steve is still leaning against his back and, in a way, it makes it easier because he doesn't have to look into fierce blue eyes while he's being berated. It's not like anything Steve is saying is false, he knows with a certainty that he knows water is wet that Steve would be there for him. Becca would too, and she'd marshal the two younger ones as well so there was an army of idiots for him to lean on.

He doesn't say anything for a few long moments.

It's hard to find the words for any of this stuff a lot of the time, he struggles even with voicing it to himself. But he's never been able to lie to damn Steve Rogers, and he's not about to start now. Even if it's going to get him his ass kicked.

"Both. I didn't want you to see what happened, and-- I'm ashamed, I'm kind of a mess and it ain't pretty being around me a lot of the time."

He privately thinks that it would have been better for all involved if he'd been shipped home in a box draped with a flag. At least that would have been clean for all involved, not this drawn out process of crap that his life was now.

"I haven't been in the apartment long. Five weeks, maybe. Just-- come on, can we get off the stoop? I'll answer your damn questions inside and you can yell at me after."

Because God knows it's too late to save face now.

Steve agrees to the demands. They make sense to him anyway. He’s going to yell, Bucky has given him permission for it. They’re on the same page. That’s more valuable than anything else is right now. Steve also knows that there’s an ice breaker just inside the door. He can hear her snuffling at the space between it and the jamb. He can hear a heavy tail lightly whacking the edge of something hard too. It’s enough to make him stand back up on his own two feet and rub at his already red eyes. It doesn’t do anything but make them even more red.

Such is life.

Steve can’t hear the tumblers in the lock click, which only goes to show how loud Penny is about her desire to be reunited with Bucky. Steve’s almost completely deaf in his right ear, after all. None of that is important, however, because there’s a nose and a snout to contend with the moment that there’s a gap large enough for it to fit. Steve is instantly charmed.

“Peeeeeeenny,” he croons, just about able to see the dog around Bucky’s arm. “Hi sweetheart! Has mean old James been keeping you a secret from me for the last five weeks? Yes he has!”

Maybe it will sting less if Steve just baby talk berates Bucky through his murmurings to the dog?

Penny is a light grey husky dog with bright blue eyes and a tail wagging nineteen to the dozen. She's very well trained and she's a working dog first and foremost so, even though she really wants to greet this newcomer, she pushes against Bucky first to make sure he's okay and waits for his signal before she pushes against Steve and licks his hands enthusiastically.

Bucky's place hardly looks lived in. There's a kind of dusty couch that was here when he moved in, a harness on the side that says WORKING DOG: DO NOT DISTURB, a couple of library books, a huge pencil about four times the size of a real pencil, and a purple heart in a display case that's been shoved to one side.

Resigned to getting flayed, especially since Steve just called him James, he sits down on the edge of the couch and looks warily over.

"Okay-- so what do you want to know?"

He said he'd answer questions, and this is pretty much a one time deal because he really doesn't enjoy talking about this shit.

It hurts to get down on the floor and Steve knows he’ll pay for it later but there is a dog here and Penny is amazing and Steve knows already that he’s gotta do this with his arms around the service animal or he’s going to lose it again. It’s not that he’s angry at Bucky, he really isn’t. It makes a lot of sense why the guy wanted to be alone. Objective Steve can understand that, but Objective Steve isn’t having s really good track record staying in control here.

It’s why he presses his face against gray and white scruff and lets Penny half bowl him over in the playful way dogs do while cans rolls by the door from discarded grocery bags.

He does peek one blue eye over Penny’s shoulder at Bucky, though. He’s here. He’s got his attention on his friend and not the Purple Heart or the bum arm. “I want to know what you want for dinner,” Steve says, because Bucky’s got to know by now that he still respects his space. “I’m going to be putting a lot of chili powder and cracked red pepper flakes in yours though, if that helps you make up your mind.”

What Steve wants is for Bucky to love him. He wants his best friend and brother back. There might be a brooding, long haired hipster overlaying the suave, cool dude that used to be his best friend, but Steve has got a big heart. It might be damaged but that just makes it easier to mold around change.

“And then I want your phone number. And for you to promise me that you’re not gonna just stalk my neighborhood without me anymore.”

If Steve thinks that Bucky ever stopped loving him, then he's a goddamn idiot.

But this is one of the main reasons why he didn't call, didn't reach out. He doesn't want to disappoint Steve with the man he is now, knowing that he's struggling so hard to get back to being even half the man he was. He doesn't want to be second best, or see the pity in anyone's eyes as they remember how he used to be, or worst of all to become an obligation that they put up with for the sake of a memory.

He looks tired for a moment, and then a sudden snort of laughter escapes him, seemingly taking even him by surprise.

"Jerk."

Putting spice in his food, what are they, twelve? Penny seems to sense that Steve needs comfort and that's what she's trained for, so she sits next to him good as gold and licks his ear once in a while.

"I don't have a phone, so I can't give you my number. But I won't stalk about without you, I've gotta start making sure you're not breathing in mould."

If Steve isn't going to ask, Bucky isn't going to volunteer it. He's not quite that brave. Not yet.

"Besides, we can't have dinner, don't you gotta get to work?"

“Shiiiiit.” There goes Sarah with her scolding and the pepper canister popped open, shaking her head at him in his mind. Steve ignores her as he lays his cheek against Penny’s fur. “Second dinner. Tonight. I’m done at nine.” He never minds closing except when he actually has something he wants to do. The store is a few stops on the subway away from here and while he does have class in the morning, it’s not until ten. That gives them some time to catch up.

Steve sort of hopes it goes more smoothly than this time did because a lot of the shock should be over by then.

“I’ll bring something.” It’s going to be a sack of burgers and some lattes. He can’t balance a pizza and coffees or he’d go that route. Even so, it’s going to be pretty predictable.

He stretches his legs out to try and relieve a little bit of the stress on his lower back and lightly fondles one of Penny’s ears.

“How do you not have a phone, Buck? How am I going to call you incessantly when I think I see Robert Downey Jr walking around by the zoo?”

And here it goes.

Bucky knew that Steve would latch on tighter than a limpet and refuse to let go, and he's not so sure that's a good thing for either of them. Steve is going to want to fix him, he's never going to understand that Bucky's changed over there, and it's going to frustrate and upset him.

Bucky's going to want to be the person he was before, and seeing his failures reflected in Steve is going to make it all a hundred times worse. He knows he's going to feel like a piece of shit by the time this is done, because he can't give Steve that easy companionship he wants. Not yet. And it's not because he doesn't trust or love his best friend, it's just because he needs to relearn how.

He looks sad and tired, but he nods all the same. Steve is going to have to find out for himself that Bucky is different, and it's going to hurt them both.

"Phones can be bugged," he mutters, knowing full well the look he'll probably get for it. "Besides, you've never seen Robert Downey Jr. at the zoo, you saw that guy from the schwarma stand that copies his beard."

It’s a very good thing that Steve isn’t a mind reader or they’d be back to a violent end. He would never be disappointed in Bucky. There’s no one on this planet that could ever hope to be kind and compassionate more than Steve Rogers. Sure, he’s tenacious, and maybe he’ll drive Bucky up a wall, but at least Bucky will stay alive and remember to eat and learn how to smile again. All Steve wants is to make him happy. And then, given time, maybe they can plot world domination again. It doesn’t have to be today or tomorrow.

Steve’s fingers work down Penny’s coat and over her shoulders, hearing Bucky mention bugs in cell phones before dismissing it. The conversation doesn’t need to happen right now. He’s just collecting evidence here for later. He has a five hour shift to really contemplate everything he’s seeing.

Besides, he has a celebrity sighting to insist upon and in the grand scheme of things, that’s what is more important here.

His face scrunches up in annoyance. “Uh. No? You weren’t there. He was there with his wife and his baby. The shawarma guy doesn’t bring his family to the zoo to sell street meat. Penny believes me, dontcha girl?”

Penny gives two affirmative tail thumps on the floor, which seems to please Steve to no end.

“Sorry Buck. I know you usually get the girl but this time all signs point to Steve for the win.”

"Penny will agree with anyone who scratches her ears, and it was the schawarma guy. He just had the day off and took his family to the zoo, it wasn't Robert Downey Jr."

Bucky doesn't know what Steve makes of him and his apartment, and a small bit of him is scared that as soon as he leaves for work then Bucky's fear will overcome him and he'll bolt. It's happened before. This is the second apartment he's had, he fled the first one after an incident with the mailman. He's going to have to work hard to still be here when Steve comes back this evening.

"Just get out of here already, you don't want to give Thompson an excuse to fire your ass, do you? He's still the manager there, isn't he? And Steve... don't tell Becca. Not yet."

He knows that's a lot to ask. He might be Steve's best friend, but Becca is like a sister to Steve too. They've been close a long time, since Steve had pretty much been a part of the family growing up.

He’s spent half an hour with Bucky but he does have to get home to change. He’d only come out to get a latte (which is now some New York pigeon’s latte). He does need to get going, but he’s afraid that he’s hallucinated this entire thing. When he comes back tonight, there’s probably going to be a little old lady here, threatening him with her cane and a call to the police.

If Bucky isn’t here when he gets back, he’s not going to fare well. Not at first. But Steve is like a weed. Nothing ever gets him down for long.

It’s why Bucky needs to stop worrying about him. Steve will live through stubbornness alone.

Getting to his feet requires help from Penny, and she fills her role perfectly even for someone who isn’t Bucky, and the. Inserts herself between the two young men. She knows Steve might try to hug her human. That won’t bode well for anyone here. She doesn’t like strife. She doesn’t like it when Bucky is in danger. And while she knows Steve might mean well, she can’t have him touch Bucky.

Not yet.

Steve gets the picture. He isn’t going to push it.

“You’re asking me to risk everything for you,” he says seriously. “She’s not going to believe that I just ran into you and then she’s going to hunt me down and pull my underwear up around my ears. I might never recover, Buck. When you finally get around to talking to her, you leave my name out of it, okay?”

He lingers. He’s fretting. Eventually, though, claiming that he really had seen Robert Downey Jr, he lets Bucky kick him out and shut the door at his back.

It’s the longest wait in his life, the longest shift he’s ever had, but he hangs up his apron the moment he can and rushes out of the store to pick up some lattes and burgers. His lungs hate him for all of the rushing today but they’ll get over it. He had his inhaler now if they don’t.

He knows that he's asking a lot of Steve to not tell Becca where he is. She must be out of her mind with worry at not having heard from him in so long anyway, and she'd be trying to keep the two younger ones from worrying. He had no right to keep them in the dark, it was just that he wasn't ready yet to let them see all the changes and deal with all of this becoming reality.

It was stupid and childish, but a part of him really thought that as long as he could keep people from finding out, then it wouldn't be true. He could work on himself and then reappear a few months later all better and they'd never have to know.

Stupid. Beyond stupid.

But now that plan has crashed down around his ears because of tenacious little Steve Rogers, not that it ever would have really worked anyway. So he has a choice whether to run or whether to stay. If he runs then he has ways of going to ground so he won't be found, he'll be left alone to his solitude and fear. But if he stays then it means being willing to fight, being brave enough to face up to his shit.

He nearly leaves four times in the six hours Steve is gone, he even makes it past his front door with one attempt, but each time he goes back inside. He's still there when Steve reappears, wearing the same faded hoodie and jeans, though he's got bare feet now instead of his boots. He looks exhausted, but there's something easier about his eyes when he smiles softly at the entrance of his friend, a determination to see this through if he can.

Steve isn’t blind. His eyesight might not be great but he knows Bucky by thousands of little aspects and there’s no way even this somewhat altered soldier can hide completely from him anymore. He can tell in a glance that Bucky had been through some soul searching and had decided to stay with him. Steve almost marvels at that, at the soft touches around his eyes. It’s not the old Bucky in there. It’s one more tested and more mature. One who has seen things Steve can’t even guess at.

The guy has always been beautiful. There’s never been a girl alive that could turn down if he smiled at her and Steve’s pretty sure that some of the guys they hung out with sometimes might even have been infatuated with Bucky. Steve’s never pushed it with his friend. Losing him over something like a crush would have been too devastating a loss and so Steve shut that down right away before it could go crawling around his skull and slip into his dreams.

Bucky is beautiful now too, framed in sadness and determination. Steve wishes he had a feee hand to snap a picture with his phone. This look is worth remembering.

Penny trots over to press her nose to the bag and her snuffles show her approval before her tail even starts to wag. Steve doesn’t bother to wait for an invitation. He’s right back down on the floor, spreading out wrapped burgers in little six to a stack pyramids. “I don’t want you to get used to this, Buck. You’ve got to eat better than fast food.”

"We're not gonna eat even fast food if you put it on the floor like that."

Bucky gestures to where Penny has already sneakily taken one burger from a stack and is trying to pretend that there's no cheese sticking out of her mouth. She might be a well trained service dog, but she's still a dog and burgers where she could get them was too much of a temptation.

He slides off the couch and onto the floor to take one of the burgers himself, shoving almost half of it in his mouth in one big bite. He doesn't eat as often as he should these days, he forgets or he loses time and ends up missing meals, but when he does then he makes up for it by stuffing his face.

"--you've got questions. Don't bother denying it, you're a crap liar. I'm telling you now that you ask them tonight and then let it be, because I ain't good at this stuff. Call it a Limited Time Offer or something."

Forcing Bucky to talk is not at all what he wants to do but Bucky is right. Steve isn’t sure where to step. There could be proverbial land mines all over their conversations for the next few months and Steve needs to know where to step.

It’s best, then, to start from the beginning, after he’s rescued their dinner from the floor to the coffee table. There still within Penny’s reach, but at least she might be better behaved now that they’re slightly more guarded. Steve takes his time unwrapping a burger. He flattens out the paper and carefully uses his thumbs to split the sandwich into two pieces. He’s buying time. He knows that. It’s just awkward to ask.

“You told me they were sending you in assignment. That was more than six months ago. You said there might be black out conditions... but what happened? You were hurt.” He can see it. Bucky still isn’t using his other hand. Not even to help with the food.

Bucky is just glad that Steve isn't protesting like an idiot that he doesn't have any questions, because then he'd have to kick his ass. He made the decision not to run and still be here, which means he was also understanding that in staying he was accepting Steve back into his life and, by extension, Steve's help. That means he needs to get some stuff out of the way.

But when he says he'll answer questions, he doesn't mean in detail. He can't. He's able to talk about what happened but only by shutting down and replying as if it happened to someone else, facts only. His expression shutters a bit, going blank, and he turns his gaze down to his burger as if it holds the facts of life.

"It was a trap, the assignment. We got ambushed. Six of us, me included, two died during the fight. Rest of us were taken to an insurgent camp. Four months."

He hesitates a second, a shadow over his face. He doesn't expand beyond the time they spent in the camp, but he's sure Steve will fill in the blanks. Torture, questioning, deprivation.

"There was trouble one night and one of the guards left his knife behind. I cut my hand off at the wrist to get out of the shackle, found the keys, let out the other two still alive and we ran. It was septic when we got back to base, they had to take the rest to keep it from killing me."

He pulls his loose sleeve up, showing Steve that the prosthetic goes all the way up to his shoulder. It's not the whole story. He can't talk about the stuff that was done to them in the camp, stuff that killed one of the other survivors and left the remaining three with issues beyond PTSD. Memory issues, brain damage of various levels, Morita was blind in one eye now.

"I've been Stateside since it was safe to move me, about a month ago. Maybe six weeks."

Though Steve can’t listen with the same disconnect that Bucky can use when telling his watered down, bullet point story, probably one he’s delivered many times, at least in his own head, to make the telling easier, he can do his best to keep his emotions in check. What he wants to do is impossible. Hunting people down and killing them? It’s not his style and he has no means to do it even if it was.

His take away, therefore, has to be more subdued. Somehow, though, it’s also more profound. “You’re a hero.”

Bucky mutilated himself to save himself and other people..

“You’ve always been a hero... but...”. This is so much more than offering someone a leg up or hauling them over a wall to safety. Steve can feel his fingers curl up into his palms. He can feel mucus filling the upper parts of his nasal cavity. He ought to have been with Bucky the moment he got home. He ought to have been able to do more than Day dream about pumpkin spice lattes and about the date next summer that Bucky was supposed to get his walking papers, tour of duty complete.

Steve knows why Bucky enlisted. The guy has always been taking care of him as best as he could, a brother to go with all of his sisters. This just seems like too much. The sacrifice had been too high.

“You know I’m proud of you. And Becca and the girls are going to be too. Are you—. Does it... is there pain?”

Bucky hates that word: hero.

Nobody seems to get that there hadn't been any bravery involved, no clarity or goodness of character that made him self sacrificing. There had only been terror and exhaustion and an opportunity. He cut his hand off because even failing and bleeding out was preferable to another day of torture, it was dumb luck that he managed to get the others out as well, and fluke that they all somehow made it back to base.

He hated the word even more after the army were finally done with him. They threw that word around like it was their license to print dollars. They wanted to publicise his story; a young man making a sacrifice for his brothers in arms, it would sell, it would get the public sympathy behind the military and make them support where Uncle Sam said. The only reason it hadn't turned into a media circus was because they couldn't rely on Bucky to be a good little soldier and say what he was supposed to, he would have been just as likely to cuss out any reporters that got near him. So instead they gave him a purple heart, a worthless medal to gather dust, a thank you, and a pension. Goodbye and get out.

No, he wasn't a damn hero.

He scowled over at Steve, but getting into an argument over semantics wouldn't help anyone; especially because whenever he protested that title with anyone else, they thought he was being modest and it all got more irritating from there. So he'll just answer the actual question asked, skating over the rest of it.

"Sometimes. I have meds that I'm meant to take, and physio classes to go to, check ups, all that stuff."

Not that he does most of it.

"It's pretty much healed up now, it just looks ugly as hell when I don't have a shirt on. But I've got the prosthetic, so most people never notice."

Most people doesn’t pertain to one Steve Rogers because he had noticed in minutes, at least as far as knowing something was terribly wrong. He couldn’t have guessed the rest if he tried. Using the knuckles of his right hand, Steve presses against the underside of his nose, maybe a bit roughly, so that he can do something to make his face look less distraught. It does the trick and he shifts his weight on the hard floor.

He misses carpets. No one wants carpets anymore to warm a place up or make them soft to sit on. Everything in modern society is hard wood. Steve doesn’t care for it. It makes his tailbone hurt.

“So when’s the last time you’ve been to a class or taken your medication?” You can bullshit a bullshitter. Steve might look sweet and innocent, but he’s been known to decide against a doctor’s recommendations several times a day and he can spot someone doing the same thing when they’re sitting across from him. “Actually, don’t answer that. I’ll get mad and insist on going with you to your appointments.”

And he might still do that. Sorry, Buck.

Penny is right there between them again, sitting down to Bucky’s right so that he can touch her if he needs to. Her ears are perked up and her eyes are focused on Steve as if wary. He might have brought burgers but he could still topple her person over again.

Steve, however, has moved on from one for of mothering to basic boys’ ridicule. “You couldn’t be ugly if you tried. No one can get a girl to get out of her clothes faster than you. And now you probably get to collect on Cool Scar points too. Plus your hair? You’re always trying to one up me. Maybe I’ll grow my hair out too. Get a beard?”

Bucky knew that sometimes he would hate Steve in the coming days, he could see it as clearly as he knew Steve was uncomfortable on the floor. He was a tenacious little jerk and was bound to get way too involved for his own good. He'd be willing to bet everything that he owned that ten minutes after Steve goes home tonight, he'll be downloading every information docket he can find that might help him out with all of this and then return armed to the teeth with knowledge.

But right now he loved him for not pushing the point on medication or appointments. They'd have that fight eventually, he knew that, but he could appreciate that Steve would let him get his equilibrium back and not ruin things this soon. Even talking about it so briefly and dispassionately unnerves him and he lightly rests his hand on Penny's head as an anchoring point.

"You can't grow a beard, you just get weird puberty scuff. Like fluff."

It's easier to tease than to stay serious right now.

"You can grow your hair if you want, but you'll still be a dork. You can't teach cool, Steve, you're born with it or you're not. I'm cool, you're the idiot with a Hogwarts House scarf."

Mock anger colors Steve’s face. This joking is probably more healing for him than for Bucky right now but Steve understands that sometimes, in crisis, you have to put yourself first to help everyone else. If he cracks now, he can’t be the support that Bucky needs. Will need. Is going to continue to need for maybe the rest of his life.

Steve is up for that. But first he needs to shore himself for what is going to come. It’s not always going to be pretty. Chances are, most days for awhile won’t be pretty.

“First of all, you got me the scarf. You always made me read the books with you each time one came out and we went to the midnight showing of the first five movies because you didn’t have a girlfriend to supposedly drag you to them. You’re the Gryffindor. You just wanted to keep wearing the guyliner and the skater pants and pretend you weren’t totally into it.” Steve might look like the geeky nerd but he isn’t. That’s Bucky’s realm. Steve’s the mastermind behind their pranks. He’s the leader. But he also doesn’t look the part and so he’s absorbed whatever it is Bucky might otherwise be embarrassed about.

And he’s fine with that.

“The only reason I still wear that scarf is because it’s from you,” He harumphs, though that might be saying a little too much. They’re not like that. Steve isn’t about to add another issue onto their friendship now when it’s so strained anyway. Not even symbolically. “And the colors go with my complexion. Besides, I only have room for one scarf. That one is the warmest.”

That gets the first genuine laugh out of Bucky. It comes all of a sudden, creaky and hoarse, and his expression actually shifts to surprised as though he didn't expect that sound coming out of his mouth before he gives in to the laugh.

"Hey-- you said you weren't ever gonna tell anyone about my secret shame."

Because it was all true. Bucky had been the dork between them for years, he made them go to the Lord of the Rings films in costume, he made them stand in line at midnight for the Harry Potter books, he was the one that sobbed like a baby when Ned Stark was killed and once again Sean Bean was out of a show.

He misses being that guy. He tried to go to the movies when he got back, wanted to see the newest superhero flick, but he made it about four steps into the foyer of the movie theatre before he fled like the hounds of hell were after him.

"Besides, you were totally into it too. --Jesus, Steve, I really missed you."

So damn much.

“I’m sure Penny knows all about your secret shame at this point,” Steve mutters, play acting his anger. There’s no way in hell he can ever be mad at Bucky for more than half an hour tops, even if they’d often butted heads and called off their friendship during their childhood only to be seen reading comic books and playing video games before the hour was out. It’s just another testament to how close they are.

They clicked at six years old and it’s a bond that’s never managed to do anything but stronger from day one.

Steve moves, both to save his back and because he would really like to hug Bucky. No one is here to see but the dog and though Steve tries to man up as much as possible and not be that snot nosed little sick kid always hanging on the bigger boys in a ‘sensitive’ or ‘girly’ way. He doesn’t know why being emotional is girly or why being girly is bad, but he does know that he tries to fly under the radar when he can. And no. That’s not a short joke.

His bones creek as he gets up and Penny licks her chops and moved forward, towards him, both paws lightly padding the floor as if she’s making a low level warning. Steve smirks.

“Call off your backup, Barnes. I’m coming in.”

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