fossilised | For Steve

"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.”

"Don't sweat it, nobody is going to disturb us for a few minutes."

Steve wore an identical uncomfortable smile, perhaps an indication that not a whole lot other than his physicality had changed with the serum. Oh, he was more confident now, more assured in himself, but that was the result of experience rather than anything that the serum had done to him.

"I know this is strange, believe me, it's just as strange from this direction too. I never thought I'd see myself this way again."

He held out a hand, left so that Steve could shake it with his good hand, and his smile became a bit easier. "I guess I should introduce myself, get off on the right food. Steve, hi, I'm also Steve. A different Steve, I guess. I'm here from the future, and man does that ever not get less weird to say."

Steve did shake that hand, trying to make his grip firm, though it was completely dwarfed in the larger hand holding his. He hadn't thought he'd feel so self conscious when he imagined being the large man opposite him. But this? This had him even more awkward than it should have been. Especially when Captain America seemed so disturbed to be faced with his past. Steve had been able to ignore the scrunity of others but himself? It was almost cruel.

Despite the pain, he did his best to sit up properly.

"I figured," Steve said, when the future was mentioned. "Have you... Uh. Done this before?" He didn't bother to ask why. He knew why. Steve had come back for Bucky. He knew himself too well to pretend otherwise. He just couldn't vocalize it yet.

There was no pity in those blue eyes, no judgement. He might not want to be that weak specimen any longer, but that didn't mean that he had forgotten what it was. He would never pity himself, he knew that he had been strong where it counted and that he had a good life despite his health.

"No, never. Well-- I guess maybe once, but in the other direction."

Going to sleep in 1944 and waking up seventy years later, give or take a couple of years, that had been one heck of a time travelling trick. But not exactly intended, nor had he been aware of it until it was too late.

"Bucky's here, isn't he?"

Steve only sort of knew that story. A plane went down and Captain America was frozen. He hadn't really asked for details. The thought of living in the future was equal parts terrifying and exciting, but it was neither here nor there. Steve had been hoping that this might just be accidental. Or a social call.

But no. As expected, Steve got right to the very heart of the matter. Bucky.

"Your Bucky is here," Steve stated, looking down at his hand clutched around the blanket. He needed to suck this up because it was the right thing to do. He'd be fine, here. Alone. He'd expected he would be for awhile anyway before this Bucky came into his life. There was a sinking feeling in his stomach but he worked through it. "I'm not sure where exactly but... He'll be back soon. Are you going to help him get home?"

"I don't know."

Steve looked very tired all of a sudden, the weight of his failures when it came to Bucky resting hard on his shoulders. He had the same look on his face that he always had, one this Steve might recognise well, that blend of love and concern.

"He ran from me a few months back, I've been searching for him everywhere. I never would have thought he had anything to do with the anomalies, but I saw his picture in a newspaper clipping about the war ending."

On the wrong date, no less.

"You and he were just coming out of the training camp with everyone else, so... tell me, why hasn't he run from you?"

Steve wasn't sure what to say. He knew the look on the larger man's face. He knew the turmoil. "I don't know. He broke into the apartment while I was asleep. He didn't really know me then. He doesn't remember most of how he had been, but he had these clippings... Of you, actually. He was trying to get me to be you, so that the world didn't get too screwed up. But it did anyway. That wasn't his fault. None of this has been his fault."

Maybe that sounded overprotective and a little insane since Bucky had put him in the hospital to begin with.

"He said you saved his life. I think he... Wanted a little time. To remember. That's all he's been trying to do." And now Bucky's Steve was here. So much less breakable. "He needs you. So I'm... I'm glad you found him. I don't suppose we ended up learning Russian...?"

It hurt deeply, like a wound being reopened, to know that Bucky had been trying to get back to him in whatever way he could. It hurt more because Bucky thought that he needed to remember, or needed to be something else, to be with Steve. Idiot. He could be with Steve even if he remembered nothing, even if he was a vegetable that could only eat through a straw and not even speak, and Steve would still care for him.

"No, 'fraid not."

Russian. He'll make an effort when he gets back, he needs to be able to speak the language if it was Bucky's main form of communication now.

"I need you to tell me everything, start to finish. I'm not trying to take Bucky from you, but-- I failed him, I can't do that again."

If anyone will understand, it's himself.

Yeah, Steve was trying to take Bucky from him. And he understood why. He was better equipped to handle him and to help him. He was better able to keep him from hurting other people. Steve couldn't come close to doing that. Bucky hurt those two fellows during training and he'd broken his arm... It wasn't Bucky's fault but Steve knew he couldn't handle it all. Not if there was someone that cared for Bucky just as much as he did.

There was no question about that. Steve knew it. They were the same person and had the same horrible love for their best friend.

So Strve told him everything he could. First about the hotel and the surprise attack when he accidentally woke Bucky up. He mentioned his nightmares and what happened at the barracks. He told his older self about the car trip and what had happened to break his arm. He didn't shy away from saying that Bucky had squeezed him too tightly, but he didn't mention his confession. He didn't mention how he felt. And he didn't tell Steve that the Bucky that belonged here now was dead and would be buried two days from now up in Brooklyn either.

It was sentiment. They needed to be practical here.

It wasn't about taking Bucky away, even if that's all Steve wanted to do, it was about what was best for Bucky. Somehow, for reasons that he didn't understand, his friend was finding it more soothing to be with him in the past. Is that because he hadn't made the mistakes yet? Because he saw Steve as a threat? As someone who might hurt him? Even just the idea of that made him want to be sick.

"Thank you," he said eventually, voice quiet. "For looking out for him. He's been through a lot, I don't know even a fraction of it, but-- the first time I saw him on that bridge, he asked me who the hell Bucky was. He didn't even know his own name."

It made him want to track down the people responsible and wipe them from the map.

He stood up. "I don't want to risk scaring him off, especially not when we don't have the resources to track him down here, so I want-- please would you talk to him? Maybe tell him that I'm here, and that I want to take him home."

Afraid to speak, Steve nodded at first. He knew that this was for Bucky's own good. He couldn't help him the way that this Steve could. But even thinking that left a sorrow building inside of him that threatened to burst. He needed Steve to leave first so he could have his cry and prepare to tell Bucky why he couldn't stay with him after all.

As far as Steves went, he'd be getting the better one. And it would be fine. He'd just sell the truck and get himself home on the train. His apartment was still there, nice and rent controlled. He'd go back to looking for a job at a school. Maybe he'd teach art? He had a good amount of things ahead of him.

Things that didn't have to include Captain America. Obviously he still existed in the future. So thst was fine. The future hadn't been changed too badly, right? No one was disappearing?

"You got it," he said finally, and the moment Steve shut the door, the tears came. He didn't sob. It was nothing so messy as that because he did understand. He knew exactly what was happening here and why and he embraced it fully for Bucky's benefit.

But he still felt the loss about to come. He was only human.

Steve felt bad in a way, he knew that he was taking a Bucky away from himself, but he thought that this Steve would still have the chance to find his own Bucky. Even if it was a long way into the future. Everything would work out, and this was his Bucky, his responsibility. So he didn't hesitate in striding away to go back to the little hotel room that he had rented himself with old dollars provided by Tony before he left.

It took another three hours for Bucky to reappear, time for Steve to get his crying done.

He slipped into the room on silent feet, blank faced as always, and sat down on the edge of the bed to check Steve over with intense eyes as if to make sure that he hadn't been harmed while he had been away.

The redness in his eyes had faded. Another dose of medication had been offered and accepted. Steve wanted to be able to think clearly and the fuzz of the pain killers was better than the fuzz of the pain. He did a lot of thinking too. He let it all go, gently in the darkness of the room, no real idea what the time was and certainly not caring. Time was fleeting and whatever he could spend with Bucky, he would do that, and then let him go.

Bucky’s approach had him smiling as the door opened, as those eyes came better into view. “Hey, pal. I’m fine. I’m really fine. The doctor said that I can go home in a few days too. It should heal cleanly. Oh, and I’ve got some news for you. Some really good news.”

He didn’t try to touch Bucky this time. His hand stayed on top of the blanket, even as he smiled. The sadness was there, persistently there, he couldn’t hide it and he couldn’t sugar coat it and he couldn’t do a damned thing but accept it and move on.

“Your Steve is here. The uh…me that I was supposed to be. I don’t know how exactly, but he’s here the same as you are. Plain as day. And really…really big. He could probably bench press me,” Steve joked, even if his heart wasn’t really into it. “He said you ran away from him the last time he saw you and he’s been looking for you since. Typical. It’s what I would have done.”

He looked fine, good. His colour was good, his pupils looked fine, and he obviously hadn't been out of bed. Bucky felt himself relax just slightly, he had been scared that he would come back to an empty bed and no Steve. Or that somehow he would have taken a turn for the worse while he had been gone and would be dead when he came back.

The relief lasted all of three seconds.

Just the mention of the other Steve, here in this time, had him on his feet again and ramrod straight as if he expected to be cornered any second. His eyes darted to the window, the door, tracking the escape routes in his head as rapidly as he could. How could this happen? How could he have been followed even here?

He backed up a step, swallowing hard.

"Where?" Terror, not delight, at the idea of a reunion. "Where is he?"

This was shocking to Steve, and the idiot actually attempted to get out of bed before the sling caught on the far railing and jerked his shoulder painfully. "Woah!" He had no idea what could have set Bucky off like this and it scared him. "He's not-- I thought you said he saved you? Why are you running from him? Buck--"

He had to get out of this bed. He had to get to Bucky's side before he panicked and hurt himself. Steve refused to listen to his own inner reason that it was best to just stay put. He planted bare feet on the cold floor and held onto the bed as he made his way to the few paces that Bucky had halted his forward progress at.

"I don't know where he is, pal. He wanted me to talk to you..." And he could see why now. It made him think again to those handlers. "Did he hurt you? Bucky be truthful with me. We can go right now."

He could feel himself trembling from head to toe and it made no sense. Why did he not want to see the older Steve, but he wanted so badly to remain with and protect the younger Steve? Was it because the Steve from his time had seen him at his worst? Had seen him as a weapon, and he was ashamed? Or was it that seeing him linked him back to the future, back to pain, back to where he was hunted?

He didn't know, all he knew was that he was terrified.

"No," he said, swallowing hard. "He never hurt me, he saved me, he's-- a hero. I can't see him, I have to get out of here, I have to go."

He pulled back again from where Steve was and his muscles tensed as if preparatory to actually running away. Not just from one Steve now, but from two.

"I thought we were sticking together," Steve blurted out with more emotion than he had planned for this whole conversation to encapsulate. He had already broken himself with the knowledge that doing the right thing meant missing out on something he wanted, and that he was giving Bucky the gift of freedom and himself the gift of his friend back.

But now he wasn't so sure. He wasn't so sure at all. The thought of actually losing Bucky was like being told that he was about to die. He didn't care if it was cliche or thst his older self had suffered watching Bucky fall. He didn't care at the semantics or at what was right--

No. That wasn't true. What was right was helping Bucky. And if helping Bucky meant keeping him? So be it.

"He said he can't track you. But... He can probably track me. This hospital put me on the map in a big way. He might try tracking down Erskine next. If we're going to run, and it's gotta be we, pal, we have to go now."

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