fossilised | For Steve

"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."

"I don't speak Russian," Steve said softly, though he could almost tell by the tone Bucky used that he was asking for help. There was no need to ask. Steve was trying to give it anyway.

A new wave of nausea was hitting him hard and fast as he swallowed down the bile trying to rise up in his throat. He pressed his lips together and then pressed his face against Bucky's chest and shoulder. They could practice not moving together if the other man was afraid to so much as flinch, though Steve's body wasn't really taking the pain it was in too well.

"Wherever you think you are, you aren't. You're safe. You're always safe with me."

Steve's words drummed into his head like the regular rattle of machine gun fire, each iteration of safe making him unwind bit by bit. Even if he couldn't bring himself to switch to English yet, that didn't mean he didn't understand the language as it was being spoken to him.

He wanted so much to raise his arms and wind them around Steve, but he couldn't do it, was kept in place as easily by his programming as if someone had drilled steel rods into his spine and bolted him to the floor.

"Заказы. Мне нужно... заказы. Я не могу без них."

It was getting harder and harder to stay standing and Steve was pretty sure that he was going to vomit any moment now. He swayed against Bucky, gripping his hand more tightly. "Told you. No idea what you're saying but.. I need help, Buck. I don't think my legs are going to be listening to me much longer.."

He knees failed and he gasped as he tried to hold himself up.

"You need to-- I need help. Please. My arm. Something is really wrong with it. And I'm going to get sick--". Steve let go of Bucky's band to grip the shirt he had insisted that the man wear to bed the night before. "Get me to the bathroom..."

It wasn't meant to be an order but Bucky could take it like that.

It wouldn't matter though. Steve was going to get sick before they hit the toilet.

Get him to the bathroom was finally a direct order, and Bucky began to move immediately as though those words had been a key to unlock the cuffs keeping him in place. He scooped up Steve by the waist and had got him nearly to the bathroom before vomit pooled all over the floor and his feet.

He didn't stop moving, only ceasing when they were in the bathroom and he could put Steve back down on the cold linoleum floor by the toilet. His brow was furrowed in confusion, concern leaking into the cold hard stolidity of his eyes.

"You're hurt."

Finally, English. He couldn't help the slight twitch of relief that went through him when his words came out in the language he wanted.

"How?"

He had said his arm, right? Bucky moved to try and touch, to see, careful but altogether too rough for someone already fragile with a broken bone.

"Aah-- Buck, please," Steve moaned again, his tshirt ruined and breath smelling of vomit. His forehead was against the cool toilet seat as Bucky manipulated his arm. "The elbow-- you have to be gentle. You have to careful, I think it popped out." Was that even possible? It wasn't like they taught anatomy in school. He knew the basics but not really how joints worked. All he knew was that his bone was sticking out at the wrong angle and so his arm was hanging oddly.

His whole body was stiff and he whimpered with his eyes closed as Bucky touched him again.

"Do you know how to fix it?" Or did they have to go to the hospital? He couldn't afford that. It was why he rarely went. And why his mother died at home in her bed.

Bucky might have money but they needed to be careful.

"Mmm... Bucky you're back right....?" The pain was making his head foggy.

Back? No. No, not really. He felt very fuzzy, very strange, like he was two people inhabiting one body and the dichotomy between what each one wanted made every movement hard to decide upon. He was still in the grip of his programming and the dream, and yet Steve-- God, Steve needed his help. He was sweating and pale, he looked like he was in so much pain.

"Broken."

He can't fix a broken arm, he didn't know that much field medicine. His training had only been sufficient to keep himself alive in an absolute emergency and make it back to one of the HYDRA bases so the qualified personnel could take over from there.

"Need a hospital. Steve, what happened?"

How did Steve break his arm? He moved, still stiff and like it was difficult to do so, to grab Steve's jacket and toss it over his shoulders.

"Come on."

"We don't have... Buck, there isn't the money. Can you push it back in? I'm fine," came a bunch of rather put together and intelligible words, despite the slurring. He groaned as he was jostled, but kept to his feet despite the stink that covered him. He actually wrinkled his nose to it, hardly fighting when Bucky got him outside and physically lifted him into the truck.

It had been a long time since he'd been to a hospital and though they didn't have to do much waiting, there was a lot of buzz from cute nurses who kept hovering around Bucky trying to get an idea of what was going on. And flirt, of course, because handsome men didn't always come waltzing through the door half dressed and being kind enough to help out someone less fortunate.

The Doctor that came to see them was old and white haired and Bucky was told to wait outside, since he wasn't blood related. Steve spun some tale about being drunk and falling, which seemed about right since everyone was celebrating and no further questions were asked. He was dosed up on painkillers and had his lower arm set within the hour before Bucky was allowed to come in and see him.

Steve's smile was high and wide, rising above a hospital gown as his cast was hardening. "You'll sign it, right?" he asked Bucky, head tilting back to the pillow. "First and only."

Bucky had at least made sure that the long sleeved shirt he had pulled on covered his metal arm and the worst of his scars, though some of the spiderweb of scars from his shoulder could be seen peeking out of the open shirt. He hadn't bothered to fasten it, which was why all the nurses were taking a rather keen interest. He must have a gal, though, they whispered to one another. Just look at him.

He did not take well to being asked to wait outside, only going because otherwise they wouldn't treat Steve and he needed it. But he spent the whole time pacing like a tiger and making all the nurses swoon more over his sensitive side where he clearly cared for his weakling friend? Brother? Cousin? It was so sweet!

Eventually he made it back in and glared down at the cast, before his expression softened slightly.

"Steve," he said, ignoring the smiled question. "How. Did. Your. Arm. Break?"

He wasn't going to ask again.

Technically, Bucky hadn't really asked in so many words. He'd wondered it, half out loud, but Steve hadn't been paying too much attention at that point. Now, he was more or less blissed out of his mind, the doctors of this day and age not really thinking about addiction and pain management the same way they did when Bucky last had lived. Telling his friend now wasn't that important to him. Steve was sure that Bucky was going to be upset no matter what so he might as well just gloss over it all.

"Hey Buck," Steve said instead, thinking himself oh so very clever, honestly, for taking the conversation in a new direction, "Buck, I have a secret." His smile was sweet, faded at the edges, but still present and aware. "You know all of my secrets, even this one, but I'm telling you anyway because it's important."

He patted the bed beside him and kept on patting it until Bucky sat down. Steve's hand rested on the knee that now occupied the spot on the mattress he had been previously indicating.

"I love you. More than anyone else. More than anyone ever. Okay? You understand me, right?"

He hated that Steve didn't answer him again. It must be bad, and he wasn't an idiot, he had been the only other person in the room. But he didn't remember hurting Steve, he wouldn't-- and surely Steve wouldn't be smiling at him if Bucky had been the one to break his arm? He would be afraid, or at least angry. Yet he couldn't shake the uncomfortable feeling that he had been the cause.

The bed sank quite significantly under Bucky's weight, he had a lot of muscle mass now, and the serum combined with his prosthetic had only increased that. In comparison to Steve, he must weigh at least two if not three times as much.

"No," he said, his brow furrowed in confusion. Steve had not mentioned love before, only the temptation of lust. Was this friend and familial love, a blur with the other Bucky now dead? "I think you need to sleep."

"No, I need you to understand me," Steve said as he gripped the muscle in Bucky's thigh, just above his knee, as if it was in any way possible to keep Bucky sitting there if he wanted to get up. "So try. Try real hard okay?" Steve attempted to scooted up, but his arm and the way the pillows already propped him up stopped him from getting anywhere.

Bucky spent his whole life, before he went to war, watching Steve struggle to achieve whatever he could, however he could. That he was still fighting even now had to mean something or maybe not another memory or two loose. Steve wasn't a forgetable sort. Obviously. Look at what had happened when the Soldier and Captain met? Years upon years of brainwashing had been untangled in an instant. Bucky had questioned what he had never questioned before.

Despite the drugs, Steve's eyes were bright and focused solely on his friend. "So you have to... You gotta believe me. Just do. I love you. And I don't want what happened to make you question anything. It was an accident. You were asleep. You wouldn't do anything until I had you take me to the bathroom. I think you got stuck in who you aren't any more. I don't think you knew who I was. You can't blame yourself because I don't blame you."

There were bits and pieces, more fragments and emotions than real memories, that Steve kept pulling loose. Like the feeling of exasperated pride, a weird combination, that came from seeing someone push themselves too hard for a good cause. Protectiveness, affection, even a love of his own.

"I don't ever want to hurt you," he murmured and moved his gloved metal hand to rest atop Steve's head amongst messy hair. "You're the only thing in the world that I care about, and you make me feel human."

Steve had no idea how much of a leap forwards that was, how much of a big deal. He needed Steve to understand just how much he meant in return, but he wasn't as good at expressing these things any more.

"I don't want waitresses that smile at me, I just want you."

That hand on his head was more soothing than it ought to be. Steve let his eyes close as he nuzzled into it the way he used to do when he was really little and sick and his mom laid in bed with him to help him keep a steady breathing going by copying her. He didn't generally take too well to being touched like this, but usually only because it made him feel lesser. He'd had a girl try it once and he'd almost fallen out of his seat, and told Bucky later that she made him feel a little bit like a pet dog.

And maybe that had been her goal, but wow, he'd missed out. This felt really nice.

His eyes stayed closed and his breathing evened, hand slipping up Bucky's leg as far as it could go until switching directions to move up his chest. "You don't have to have any waitresses," Steve teased, not exactly letting himself read into those words because it was fundamentally wrong, even on drugs. "I promise. And you-- All right, so... It wasn't you. You didn't hurt me. It was an accident. We.. I just need to be safer, okay? Figure it out, together. Me and you. So don't worry about the waitresses," he murmured. "You have me. Always."

"Go to sleep, Steve."

Bucky would have this talk with him when he woke up, but he sure as hell needed to find a way to make sure that he never bore the brunt of Bucky's issues again. He needed to find them a place, an apartment with two bedrooms, that would at least put a buffer between them for when Bucky was at his most vulnerable to losing himself. Or cuffs. Maybe he could get cuffs to restrain himself each night.

"You'll be safe here, I'll go and sort some stuff out and be back."

He kept his hand in Steve's hair until his friend had fallen asleep and then slipped away. But it wouldn't be Bucky there when Steve woke up next. It would be a familiar face, his own face, but atop that muscled body he had seen in the pictures on the leaflet that Bucky had shown him.

Steve looked down at himself, his past self, with a slightly wistful and sad expression, just waiting for him to wake up. He wore black pants and a white tee, though he also carried a shield made out in red, white, and blue on his back.

Steve had the most pleasant dream. He was at the beach with Bucky, both of them just laying on their backs in the sand. He could hear the waves and smell the salt water. They weren’t talking and his eyes were closed, but he still knew Bucky was there. He could smell that awful cologne he’d taken to wearing the summer Steve turned seventeen. The girls seemed to love it but it triggered Steve’s asthma sometimes. He never had the heard to tell Bucky that, he’d just been happy whenever he spent time with him so…

Slowly, pain seeped through his dream. His arm hurt terribly and he shifted his head around. That was pounding too, now that the medication had worn off. When he opened his eyes, it took a moment for him to figure out where he was, and then it took another moment for him not to panic at the weight on the mattress.

“Hey Buck, I had a dream about—“ Steve said groggily until he found himself looking up into a funhouse mirror. “O-Oh.” He put on an uncomfortable smile. “Hi, Steve. I uh… Gosh, I really hope that people don't think I'm just laying here talking to myself,” he offered, before his eyes fluttered shut. “Even if that’s…exactly what I’m doing. Oh boy.”

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