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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.”

Bucky has never wanted Steve to be anything other than what he was. If other people called him girly and assumed that was bad, they just either didn't know any kickass girls or didn't bother to look beneath Steve's unassuming outer shell to see the bravest guy in the world underneath.

Braver than Bucky, he always had been. Always would be.

Penny growls low in her throat as a secondary warning before Bucky lets her know it's okay through a hand gesture. She's good at her job, so she retreats to lie down a short distance away, though her ears stay pricked and she's ready for if this goes wrong. She knows her human doesn't take well to touching.

But this is Steve. It has to be okay. So he let's Steve enfold him in his arms and he tries not to stiffen up too much, even holds him back loosely with the one arm he has left to him now.

"I'm still gonna kick your ass after all of this. I remember getting a letter from Becca telling me you tried to join up yourself."

Steve fits pretty well against Bucky, legs under him on the sofa, knees up and his body pressed under Bucky’s arm. It’s not entirely comfortable facing the back of the couch without support but his arms are around Bucky’s neck and his friend has him. That’s good enough for now.

“Becca’s a liar,” Steve says, face against one strong shoulder. “I tried fourteen times before they told me that if I kept making up fake names and going to different recruitment centers, I’ll have to go to jail.”

Steve is pretty sure that he can handle jail. He’d get a lot of art and reading done. But it’s not exactly sexy so tell future boyfriends that he has a rap sheet for trying and failing to get into the army. That’s actually more embarrassing than anything, but he knows Bucky might get a kick out of it.

“Turns our that being able to hear and see and jog in place for longer than a minute are all very important parts of being in the Army.”

"Why were you even trying to enlist, Steve?"

It's a gentle question but it's tempered underneath with genuine anger. Everything he had ever done was to try and give his sisters and his best friend a better life, to keep Steve safe. It was harder than it should be given that his body tried to kill him every few months and he had a propensity for running face first into people's fists, but he tried.

So why the hell would he try and enlist? He had to know that he'd be refused, he's had health problems his whole damn life.

"I thought you really wanted to be an artist, what changed?"

He doesn’t want to answer. His breath curls from his lips and catches in the edge of the hoodie against Bucky’s neck. It seems so dumb now, admitting this. Bucky sounds angry, and that’s exactly what he doesn’t want. Not when this extended embrace is something he’s wanted for over a year. Or two years— When’s the last time he held Bucky like this? When was the last time this was all right? He shifts his face so his cheek is against the curve of his own upper arm, dreadfully thin, and does his best to man up.

“You were gone.” It’s not enough of an explanation and Steve tightens his grip, as if he’s afraid Bucky will dump him to the floor or lift him up physically and drop him outside. That’s a ridiculous thought. Steve might be small and compact but he’s not easy to toss around. Bucky would know that for a fact. “I didn’t know what to do with myself when you were gone. I know why you did it, I know it had been a guaranteed pay day and health care and you could get your sisters back and maybe this is selfish but I should have been allowed to go with you. Maybe I can’t shoot a gun right, but I could do something. Pilot a drone. Or... I don’t know.”

Steve feels useless.

“I wanted to help.”

There haven't been many times when Bucky has felt sorry for Steve. Even when he's been wheezing and in hospital with yet another bout of pneumonia, the fire inside him resists being pitied with such ferocity that Bucky rarely has. He never worried much when the doctors said he might die, because he knew better. Steve could keep himself functioning on sheer stubbornness alone.

But he feels for him now. He feels an aching pang deep in his chest that's a mingle of sympathy and affection. To know Steve was willing to risk jail to follow him made him cling a little tighter into that hug. He must have been so frustrated to get turned away time and time again. He'd never thought about how Steve must have felt being left behind, unable to help, and that feeling must be worse now that Bucky had come back in pieces as feared.

"You helped, Steve." It's low and soothing. Not an admission he could see himself making to just anyone, but he has a feeling Steve needs to hear it. "I used to imagine conversations with you at night when I was-- there. Knowing you were here, and you'd look out for the girls for me even if I didn't come back, it kept me going. But if you'd shown up, I'd have hit you so hard you'd have been shipped back home on medical immediately."

It’s probably stupid to feel comfortable enough to want to sleep right now, but Steve feels like he really could just drop off comfortably and drool on Bucky’s shoulder if the conversation hadn’t been so heavy. But it is heavy and Steve is feeling sick to his stomach despite the delicious smell of food from his half eaten burger calling him back for more.

“Why do you keep insisting you could win in a fight against me? Unless the army gave you a titanium skeleton and laser vision, there’s no way you’d be able to kick his ass.” And this is coming from the guy that used to sit on Bucky’s back as he did push ups for added resistance.

This whole thing is turning a little too much into a snuggle fest and so Steve extracts himself from under Bucky’s arm and turns so that his back is supported against the poorly padded arm of the couch. He stretches his legs across the cushions to press his socked feet against Bucky’s leg. Hopefully that’s not too much of an intrusion. He just needs to touch him, as right or wrong as that might be.

Bucky can tell him otherwise if it’s too much.

"It's just bravado, because I'm so scared of you."

He's not sure how Steve has managed to do it, but right here and now he feels more human than he has done in a long time. Not perfect, not by any means, but he can let Steve's feet rest against him and he can joke and it's okay... it's not the abysmal failure that he thought it might have been.

"But if you're not too busy lifting weights and showing off how tough you are tomorrow, maybe we could have lunch? I don't know what your class schedule is at the moment, but I have-- uh, I have to do something on campus, a kind of class, so I'll be round there."

He'll try, he really will. Even if the idea of the slog back to normality is enough to make his brain feel like it'll ooze out of his ears.

If Bucky is worried about an oozing brain then Steve will just pack his ears with cotton to keep that from happening. “Class at ten and free from one to three. I have pottery from three to four and then something at the book store.” He’s not willing to commit to the fact that he’s working two jobs and then going to school on top of it because there is still a fight lingering in the air and any spark might cause a reaction that neither are prepared for.

Steve reaches over for his burger and rests it on one knee, picking at the solidifying cheese that had melted onto the wrapper. It looks kind of gross but that just makes it taste better.

“So lunch will work. I can show you around life drawing. I’ve been working on this massive piece. I’ll bring the lunch.” He doesn’t want to share Bucky yet. He’ll have the eyes of everyone on him in the quad.

"Isn't life drawing painting nude people? Are you gonna show me some giant penis that you've been working on, because most people don't think that's appropriate for lunch conversation."

He has the tiny making of a smile at his lips, even knowing that he won't be in a good mood tomorrow after his stupid appointment. He hates the stuff he does as Cumberland House, the little unit that's attached to the university campus where they do some specialist classes for people with specific problems.

But then again, having lunch with just Steve in the art room sounds like a way better plan than outside with a bunch of other people, much more relaxing.

"My thing finishes at one thirty so I can be there by one forty-five, okay?"

“If it’s going to make you feel inadequate, I’ll only show you the little penises I’ve been working on,” Steve promises, a brightness to his voice. They can’t pretend everything is all right again but they can both feel good about what this might be.

With the tine set and the place decided on, Steve finishes his burger, takes another for the walk home, and leaves Bucky to his thoughts. It’s a long night for Steve. He can’t sleep, he’s too wound up and too grateful to have Bucky back, and after the nightmares come (mostly where he’s unable to catch Bucky from falling off of a cliff or a train or a building), sleep is out of the question.

He paints instead. He has a damaged canvas half his size set up in the living room behind the sofa and though he’d been doing a still life of Natasha’s ruined, marked up toe shoes she always leaves on the floor, he spreads gesso over the half finished work and sketches something else. It’s more abstract, a moonscape really, a splotch of dark colors and stark white that overlap his feelings.

He might be tired in the morning, but by the time one thirty rolls around, the classroom is empty and Steve has set up two placemats on the back table so that they can share cheese fries and a few slices of pizza among the penises and breasts.

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