fossilised | For Steve

He didn't really understand the question. Would the serum make Steve into a man who would torture him? Or would the serum make it so that Steve himself needed to be tortured and experimented on? His brows drew together as he shifted gears and increased their speed, almost as if he were subconsciously running from it all.

"They never experimented on you, not that I know of."

If he ever found out that they had he would slaughter every single one of them. But as far as he knew, Steve had just had the serum injected and then had been trained up as Captain America.

"And I won't let them test on me again. I'm not going to be that-- I don't want to be the Soldier again."

Steve didn't feel better. That was probably not possible anymore anyway. He wasn't sure how to approach this. He couldn't just reach over and take Bucky's hand or hug him. There was a disconnect happening at the moment, half because Steve was afraid of asking more questions and half because Bucky didn't remember everything. Not about his past at least.

"Did I do that to you?" It was the thing he wanted to know most and the thing he was the most afraid of, for understandable reasons.

He couldn't imagine being that muscled man in the photo any more than he could imagine purposefully hurting Bucky to prove a point they he had power and that Bucky was better off just listening to him. Steve found himself digging a heel of his palm into his eye socket.

He wasn't crying. He didn't deserve to when Bucky wasn't upset about it. He just couldn't stop imagining it.

If this was just one lesson-- Steve nearly vocalized his disgust and his pain for the man next to him, clamping his teeth together quickly to stop himself from being an embarrassment.

"No."

Bucky honestly looked surprised at the question, it just hadn't occurred to him. Why would Steve think that he had been the one to teach him these hard lessons? He thought through it for a few moments before it all clicked into place, voice softening slightly into a low hummed baritone.

"All my handlers looked like you. Even when I didn't remember you, I still reacted the best-- I was more obedient to men with blond hair and blue eyes. But none of them were you, you thought I was dead."

He swung the pick-up into one of the new burger joints at the side of the road and dug out a handful of change, they needed breakfast and he needed to break up this tension.

"It was never you."

All of them. How many men with blond hair and blue eyes 'trained' Bucky Barnes, who listened to them primarily because of their friendship. Steve could feel his heart clicking, like it was a motor that just wouldn't start. It was terrifying, what men would do to other men to get their way. It was worse still that this happened to Bucky.

Nodding to let the other man know that he had heard and understood him, Steve followed Bucky out of the truck across the driver's side because his right hand was stronger than his left on using the handrail to climb down the step to the parking lot surface.

He looked up at Bucky, shorn but still lengthened hair to his cheekbones cast in a halo from the sun. He was beautiful. The world did to break him. Bucky was still standing. He had survived.

"I'm sorry for blubbering, Buck," Steve said as he used his sleeve on his cheeks. "It's probably good to talk about the stuff you remember though. Sorry I'm--" He shook his head. He didn't have the right to make this about him so he looked at the roadside restaurant they had pulled up to. A little dinner of sorts. They dotted the roadways but this one was relatively empty. Inside, Steve could see a waitress in a peach dress pulling the top off of the pie dish and brightened. Just a little. "I think we should have pie for breakfast."

Bucky hadn't intended to make Steve cry. He had rarely cried himself since the early days, and it seemed so strange to him that anyone would shed tears over something less than human. It made him want to reach out and pull Steve into his arms, public place not an issue to him, but he didn't. His arm raised about two inches before he aborted the idea and gestured instead for Steve to go on ahead of him.

"You really think it's good for me to talk about what I remember?"

Now would be the ideal time for Steve to get this out of him. The longer he went, and the more he remembered, the more it would hurt and the less likely he would be to discuss any of it. For now, the pain was still mostly buried under the practised and well-learned mask of neutrality.

"You can ask me questions if you want. In the truck, after pie."

"Can I? I mean definitely in the truck," Steve said as he held the door for Bucky. The waitresses called out to tell them that they could sit anywhere and he picked a spot close to the door, letting Bucky keep his back to the empty diner so he could see whoever came in. "As soon as there's pie in front of me, I'm going to have better things to do than talk," he grinned, eyes still red but demeanor much better, and left the little menus in the holder with the paper napkins. The waitress was already approaching, skirt to her calf and hair pulled up in a curled, high ponytail that was so popular. She was a little younger than Steve but her eyes were on Bucky.

No change there at least.

"What can I get you boys?" she asked with lips as shiny as the vinyl they were seated on. "Coffees to start?"

Steve answered, eyes brighter now. "Absolutely coffees-- What's the pie today?"

"Why it's good old apple pie," she said. "Can I help you to a slice?"

"Both of us," Steve insisted. "But I think my friend is going to need a little more than pie to hold him over."

The waitress seemed to find that delightful as she leaned Bucky's way. "What else can I get you? We do some mean bacon and eggs platters here."

This was now the second time that a woman had smiled at him excessively and paid him closer attention than Steve, and he honestly had no idea why. Steve was by far the more social one at the moment, Bucky still hadn't cracked a smile in about seventy years, he wasn't about to ask any of them to a social.

"Bacon and eggs, sure."

He needed a lot of fuel, and the protein in that would do him good. He could shovel down a few platefuls, his metabolism would need it. He didn't even realise the way that the waitress tracked the curve of his impressive muscles beneath his shirt.

"You boys heading to Washington?"

Bucky's head snapped up as if wondering if he needed to kill her, how could she know that? But she continued blithely on as if she hadn't noticed the threat at all. "Those celebrations they're having for the end of the war sound swell, shame I can't get the time off to go myself. Still, it's not like I've got a fella coming back." She said that pointedly, and Bucky tilted his head in mild confusion. Why would he need to know that she was unattached?

"We are," Steve said, taking the heat from Bucky to answer. He still had his dog tags on and though he didn't fish them out from his shirt, the chain was visible around his neck and he cupped them lightly. "We were almost through basic training when we heard. Never got ourselves a chance to see war but we want to welcome back everyone that served."

The waitress, who had the unassuming name of Sally according to her name tag, looked from Steve back to Bucky as if he might add in something. Bucky didn't seem to be too social, though, so she pressed her hand to the table, turning slightly away from Steve, to try to catch Bucky's eye. "No shame in that. I'm sure you would have done real well if you'd gone. Maybe have tended it all yourself."

Behind her, Steve was still grinning. She was pouring on the charm hard. If this had been the Bucky he was used to, he and the waitress would be going for a little drive while Steve ate his pie. Bucky was a good guy. He didn't push too hard but Steve was sure he had kissed at least three dozen girls already. He never minded being left behind for awhile.

The girls were fleeting. Bucky always came back to him in the end.

"You know, I do have a break coming to me--" Steve's smile dropped just a little. He'd been feeling too much for Bucky for it to be true any more that he didn't care about Bucky's conquests.

So he cleared his throat. "Actually ma'am. We're in a bit of a hurry? So just a coulple of plates of eggs and bacon, some coffees and that pie?"

Bucky was so curious as to what was going on, because he had no frame of reference for it whatsoever. The men and women of HYDRA did not carry on romantic entanglements in their place of business, and his missions never really had anything to do with people who were flirting or in love. He had some vague memories of it from before, not for himself but seeing other people, and he knew from the news that the world accepted love in all forms now.

But directed at him?

His gaze flicked from her to Steve, that big grin that suddenly dropped away, and he tried to figure out why. Was Steve disappointed knowing that Bucky wouldn't do anything in her break and wanted to save them both the embarrassment? His eyes lifted back to her and, while he still didn't manage to smile, he managed to look less stoic.

"Thanks, doll."

Why doll? It had just slipped out, but it seemed to be the right thing to say because she flushed and grinned widely, shooting Steve a bit of an annoyed look, before she hurried off to get their order.

"Uh..." The words were right even if the tone was wrong. That was how Bucky spoke, and Steve watched him watch her leave, unsure if it was because he was just doing it unconsciously or if he liked her. Steve felt a little embarrassed and he plucked up the menu anyway just to have something to look at. "Hey pal, if you wanted to spend a little time with her, you can. I wasn't trying to... Step in or anything." He did feel bad for being a block. He'd never been a particularly good wing man because he was small and girls that Bucky set him up with still just wanted to be with Bucky anyway.

Sally hurried back with coffee and pie but didn't linger, the bell at the kitchen ringing for an order up at the counter.

Steve stirred in sugar and cream slowly into his coffee, glancing up at Bucky after. "She's pretty right?" This was the conversations they use to have in places like this. Bucky would tell him he'd never seen someone prettier, even if he had, and would remark and why she was so attractive. Her looks, sure, but also her voice. Or her eyes. Or the way she flipped her hair.

Bucky was thoughtful that way. Always a compliment.

"Why would I want to spend a little time with her?"

Bucky, at least, didn't ask that within her hearing, waiting until she had brought back the bacon and eggs for him before he spoke. He had at least some awareness of what was and wasn't appropriate to discuss in front of people.

"I don't want to spend time with anyone but you."

He had been fully prepared to be alone, perhaps for the rest of his life, after pulling the other Steve from the Potomac. He had never thought to trust anyone again, let alone find someone that he felt safe staying beside. He couldn't care less about this waitress, pretty or not, he just wanted Steve.

As good as that might make him feel, it wasn't right to keep everything from Bucky just so that he'd have an advantage. He didn't remember the way he used to be and as his protector, it was Steve's job to tell him everything.

"So.." He put down his fork and nodded at the waitress. "She's your type. I mean-- I don't know how to describe your type. Pretty. Petite. Long hair. You use to say that a girl couldn't dance right unless she had the hair for it." He made him smile into his coffee. "Any girl like that who showed you interest, you'd be trying to get her number and make a date with. She likes you. The way she keeps looking at you, her smile, that look in her eyes? She's flirting because she wants you to ask her out. Used to be you would is all. And if you want to again, that's fine with me, pal. I can just stay here awhile."

Steve didn't want to be crude about it. Taking a girl out wasn't what Bucky just did. There were more steps to that, steps Steve himself had never taken. He wasn't great with dances. And courtship was a dance like any other.

He cut into his pie with the side of his fork and chewed the piece thoughtfully., eyes downcast, just in case he happened to be looking at Bucky the same way that girl was.

"No, I don't want to."

It wasn't brusque or mean, just a simple statement of fact. He had no interest in that girl; if she had been his type once upon a time, she wasn't his type now. Maybe she would be in the future again, but that was far from here and he certainly wasn't going to go and ask for her number so that he could just lose it somewhere.

He paused halfway to pushing another forkful of eggs into his mouth and glanced sideways at Steve and the way he was watching the table as if it were the most interesting thing in the whole world.

"Is this about last night?"

Should he not be mentioning the incident of homosexual temptation where others could hear?

Steve was small and he probably didn't have quite as much blood as some people rushing through his veins but all of it instantly went to his face. He could feel the heat in his belly and across his cheeks and he wanted to just sink down against the back of the booth.

"Uh. No." He wanted to tell Bucky thst it had been an isolated incident, but he couldn't lie to him. He chose, instead, to say nothing at all even if the evidence was all over his face that Steve Rogers was having a massive crisis of faith and the natural order of things. He was cutting into the grain. He wondered if he shouldn't admit himself to a hospital willingly-- But Bucky needed him. He just had to ignore his urges. He had to be better than them. Didn't Jesus have a larger burden to bear?

Steve held his coffee a little too tightly and forced himself to meet Bucky's eye because he wasn't afraid. And he wasn't backing down. He could do this.

"This is seperate. It's who you are-- or used to be. And I promised to help you remember that, right? Last night-- that's one hundred percent on me. It's my problem and not yours." He didn't ask Bucky to drop it, however. Bucky needed to be free to ask and say anything he wanted or needed to.

He had already told Steve that it wasn't a problem. How the other man felt about him wasn't an issue, didn't make him wrong, and definitely didn't change anything between them. He hadn't yet managed to work out how he felt in return, though, probably because he didn't even really know who he was.

He grunted in acknowledgement, and then just went back to his eggs and bacon. Something here was snarled up in ways that he didn't understand yet, but he would unpick it eventually and figure out what to do. For now, though, it was better that they got back on the road and away from this waitress that had caused such a point of confusion.

"Come on, we've got a long way to go."

And they might have trouble finding someplace to stay when they got there, if the city was going to be full of people coming for end of war celebrations. For some reason he had never even considered that this might be a thing, but of course people would want to throw a party at the end of such a bloody war.

"Forget her, I'm not interested."

"I hear you," Steve said, trying to build his smile back up as he switched his plate out for Bucky's. The pie would fill him just fine by he took a piece of bacon anyway. "But you need to finish your breakfast before we go."

They left a five on the table for the meal and headed out, the waitress calling that they should stop back here on the way home. Steve waved not to be rude but climbed into the truck a little too quickly to facilitate their need to leave. The road was indeed long, and as they skirted Baltimore, the traffic jammed up the roads. It was already dark by that point and Steve was asleep against the door, cost thrown over him like a blanket. Motorists were turning off at motels and as they hit the edge of Washington, it became pretty clear that they would probably need to stay in the suburbs that evening.

A motel with a vacancy sign popped up after several had illuminated the NO section of their signage. It was a little fancier than the rest and offered breakfast at the attached diner in the morning. A Soldier's Special for anyone of the military persuasion or their families. Bucky would get the last room from a old man who could barely see from cataracts. It was no where near as nice as the hotel from Manhattan but it had views of the Capital all done up in lights from the window.

Bucky was almost prepared to just pull over and let Steve sleep where he was in the passenger chair of the truck, but they needed a proper bed. Not him, he could survive without, but Steve's health was fragile and Bucky had promised to take care of him. That's what this was.

At least there had been no questions, even though he had offered, once they got back into the truck.

He woke up Steve to get into the hotel room and then slipped into bed beside him again, same as before without hesitation. For once, he slept. He needed to every few nights and this was the safest he was going to get with Steve in his arms. He dreamed, though, his words coming out in whispered Russian straight into Steve's ear and his metal arm clamped down hard enough around him to bruise.

There had been no more questions because the ones in the diner had been awkward enough for Steve to mostly be silent. It wasn't Bucky's fault in the slightest, just something that Steve had to work around, and even as they had been stuck in traffic, the lack of escape worried him. He would try again sight the questioning in the morning, he'd decided, hardly aware of where they were and had snuggled into Bucky without question, fear or worry.

He should have known better. He should have been more prepared for nightmares of had a plan for escape when Bucky held him. But he didn't have one.

He was left to wake up in a start when the constricting began. He tried to tap Bucky out of it but the Russian just kept coming.

"Buck-- Pal, I can't breathe," he half moaned, still keeping as still as possible. Sudden movements could trigger Bucky and he wasn't sure if he'd survive being tossed across the room.

"Больно."

Bucky was lost inside his own head, and his arm simply grew tighter and tighter until a sharp crack echoed throughout the room where Bucky's strength simply broke Steve's arm where it was trapped between them. At least it hadn't been a rib or his back, but a broken arm was still no picnic.

Especially when he hadn't woken up or stopped, sweat streaming down his face.

"Мне очень жаль, что мне не удалось, пожалуйста, не делайте это со мной. Я клянусь, что я не подведу вас снова."

Steve couldn't speak Russian. He had no idea that Bucky was begging or promising to do better. He had no idea what he was dreaming about at all. Nor could he keep from screaming when his arm snapped. That was what he started to buck against the arms that held him, kicking at Bucky to at least attempt to stir him to wakefulness.

Steve couldn't survive this attack. He knew that it was no longer a matter of keeping Bucky from triggering so much as it was a fight for his own life. Bucky would never forgive himself as it was and if he were to wake with Steve dead in his arms, well he didn't want to think about whAt that might do to Bucky's fragile cling to reality.

"Let go! Bucky wake up and let go!" he yelled, frantic as pain shot across his arm.

The scream didn't wake him, he had heard far too many screams in his life for any to be jarring, it was the way that he felt real and solid limbs bucking against him as though he were the one on the attack.

His eyes snapped open and he rolled off the bed, completely abandoning Steve to his pain on the mattress, to stand in the centre of the floor. Rigid, at attention, his gaze fixed on Steve as though awaiting punishment.

He didn't know what he had done, but he knew his handler was upset with him. He knew he had been a disappointment.

"боль..." It came out in a whimper, barely aware he had spoken.

Swallowing the agony down, Steve kicked up the sheets as he pulled himself to the head of the bed, knees up and good arm holding the broken one against his side. "It's Steve," the blond said, blinking away tears. He'd cried enough that morning at Bucky's plight and he couldn't let that happen again. He just couldn't make a big deal about this, even after Bucky came to. He was going to have enough guilt already.

Steve felt down along his elbow joint and had a wave of nausea hit when he felt something that shouldn't be there, the bone popped out of place. a new, fresh radiation of agony swept up his arm and Steve let his head hit the headboard with a thud to distract himself from it.

"Hey, Buck, don't know what you're saying, but it's all right. Promise. You just have to wake up all the way for me. Can you do that?" He was sweating profusely now, his muscles trembling. He'd almost died a few times before, but that had been a different sort of thing. This was stranger and more disorienting. "You know me, right? Steve? Can you come back here? And speak English?"

The Soldier felt himself incapable of moving. He knew that he had disobeyed, something in the back of his mind stabbed through his consciousness like shards of glass. He would be punished severely, he would be wiped again, he would be-- His breathing had increased, but not much, he had learned early on how to hide the signs of panic.

His eyes, a deep blue, never left his handler's face. The words were strange, come to him, speak English, but he couldn't. Neither were phrased as an order, both were questions and he didn't know the right answers and so they paralysed him with a terror of making the wrong choice.

He just swallowed as if even moving that much were a Herculean effort, entire body rigid as he stared at the man he had just injured.

Don't move. The first lesson. Steve wasn't going to give in and try to be a handler in this. He wasn't about to step up to Bucky and force anything on him. Not even to try and save himself. "All right," he said, slowly getting out of bed. "If you won't come to me, I'll come to you."

He didn't limp, but his whole body had been exhausted from the fight and Steve slinked over to the taller man like a cat. With the arm not dangling uselessly at his side, Steve reached for the fleshed hand at Bucky's side and wrapped his fingers gently around it.

"I know you don't know what's going on right now. And that you don't know me right now. But that's all right. I know you. You're Bucky Barnes. You're a war hero. You're a good man. The best man I know. I trust you. You're going to protect me and I'm going to help you remember. Okay?"

Even though the hand that Steve touched was flesh, it was as hard and unyielding as its metal counterpart, utterly tense underneath Steve's touch. In any other situation it might even have seemed amusing, someone as big and strong as Bucky standing in sheer terrified tension at the thought of this weedy man hurting him.

His eyes were the only thing that moved, tracking Steve's every movement right up to his personal space. He had to clench his teeth shut to keep himself silent and stoic. Whatever the punishment, he'd take it, he'd-- Why was he saying that? Good man, Bucky Barnes, protection...

He blinked, a flutter of eyelashes that seemed to weigh a ton, before he shifted his hand just slightly under Steve's to curl around only one of his fingers.

"Помоги мне."

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