fossilised | For Steve

The casual insult about Bucky's personality not being a great one to choose either made him laugh all of a sudden. It was a sound that came quietly, as if the man making it had almost forgotten how, but insistently. And it grew and grew until he was leaning on the work bench with a huge grin all over his face. This was what he had been missing with Steve and with Grant; when they saw his suffering, they both seemed to reduce him to nothing but a victim in their mind. This broken and shattered thing that had to be treated so carefully. Tony knew the worst of what had been done, just watched him break, and then casually insulted him.

"You're a goddamn punk, Stark."

But something in his chest eased as the laughter died away, maybe the decision to stay here wasn't such a bad one after all.

"We're not messing with the trigger words, but yeah-- exposure. To you. God help me."

"Uh, do you remember that you kind of made me your boss? So now you're talking back to me? It's a good idea. I'm a certified genius. I have the paper work," Tony complained, though was not a psychiatrist or a behavioralist and he had no idea what he was doing. Aversion therapy didn't usually work with innate behaviors. Now, you could argue that Bucky's were learned but it was hard to tell what was what any more inside that twisted head of his.

He set his little cube down and gave Bucky a hard look. First for the laughter and then for the weird enjoyment the other man seemed to have of his company. Tony didn't like it. He didn't choose Barnes. Rhodey, Banner, maybe Steve (but usually not)-- They got to be pleased to be around him. Barnes was supposed to be on his shit list right now. It just wasn't right.

"There are people that would love to be in your shoes right now. You don't have to bring God into anything. Damn it. Who did I piss off to deserve you?" He rolled his eyes and stepped around the vomit puddle on the floor. "Just for that, I'm going to finish up that cake. And since we're playing Handler here, you can just sit there and watch me do it."

There was a thin line between jokes and what crossed the boundaries into something harmful, and Tony would have to learn it really quickly, because the joking atmosphere dissipated almost at once. Not because Bucky gave a shit about the cake, but because he found himself moving already to go and take up a stance to watch.

"Quit it," he growled, at least already doing better at vocalisation than before. It was like his body and brain existed in separate planes for this. "Stop giving me orders, I can't-- I can't disobey them."

And that felt horrific, he didn't like to be so helpless to another person.

"Thing is, I really think you can." Tony was always cruel. He couldn't help it. It was in his nature to be, especially when he was right. "You just have to work with me here. You wanted exposure right? Well this is exposure. And look. You're already fighting it."

Not with his body but with his mind. When he was the Soldier, his mind was completely integrated into the persona. Obviously that wasn't happening here. Bucky wasn't just aware, he was able to express his displeasure at knowing what was happening to him.

"And I don't want you to like me anyway. You're ruining our working relationship every time you say that." Truthfully, Tony was a good guy. His dislike of Bucky had less to do with Bucky and more to do with his own hang ups and issues.

So upstairs Tony went. If Bucky followed him and watched him eat the cake that Grant had so lovingly made for him, so be it.

Of course he followed, and he watched as every piece of cake disappeared down Tony's throat. It brought up some bad memories, training exercises where he had been starved and forced to watch his handlers eat to check that he had self control, to check that even when his body screamed for something that he would ignore it on orders. He was sweating by the time the last mouthful disappeared, but he just glared at Tony.

"I do like you, you're a good man. You're not doing this because it hurts me, otherwise you'd be ordering me to do-- other things. You think it's gonna help, it's not, but you think it is."

He wasn't expecting Tony to like him, not now and not ever, he honestly didn't expect anyone to like him. He could handle Steve and Grant because they had nostalgia goggles on, but everyone else? He knew he wasn't much fun to be around.

"So if you're gonna work on my issues, maybe I'll work on yours. Why do you keep pushing them away when they care about you, and God knows you obviously want to be cared about?"

"Why are you so quick to dismiss this?" Tony said between bites. He was much too full of chocolate and he was pretty sure that he was suffering more than Bucky because of this. He kept expecting Barnes to grab at the cake or at him, but one little session of forcing the difference between wanting to do something and having to do it wasn't going to break the cycle.

He just hoped he could figure out something else to work on that wasn't cake next time. Maybe he could finally get all of those DVDs alphabetized with Barnes' help? He was about to say something about his he felt about that when Barnes opened his mouth and decided to fight fire with fire.

He couldn't blame him.

And just for that, he decided to be brutally honest too.

"It's better to push people away than have them leave," he said, lowering his fork to the plate. He set his chin on his palm and watched Bucky with calm, Amber eyes. "I'd rather have that control. And... Rogers bothers me. They both do. There's something about that that make my teeth hurt. They're not perfect. They're not all good and fluffy...but they are. And I hate it."

"You hate it because you don't think you deserve it," said Bucky, understanding implicit in his eyes even if his voice remained the same level monotone it usually did. "You keep showing Steve your worst sides, the most terrible things you've done, and all the reasons that you're a monster and he still sticks with you. You hate it because you can't drive him away, and that scares you because maybe you have to grow up and admit that not everyone leaves."

Some people did. A lot. Even without factors coming into play, human beings just naturally drifted apart very often, it wasn't anyone's fault. But you couldn't go through life pushing everyone away first, that was just dumb. Even Bucky knew that.

"I know what it's like to want to push them away, but at least I'm working towards being good enough to show them that their faith is worth it. What's your excuse? You're still a kid and you're not man enough to face up to yourself. Grow up and realise you don't have to wallow in your own self pity about whatever happened in the past, people are there for you. Steve is. The least you could goddamn do is be there back."

"I don't want to be!" Tony didn't like having his cards displayed. If he did it himself, fine. But this hit too close to home and he and Barnes were not close enough yet to show each other anything but their ugly sides. Tony was aware that his feeling were being manipulated too, he could feel it. That didn't stop him from making a scene though, even if Bucky was the only one there to see it.

He could easily do something awful right now. He could force Barnes to do something just to prove he could, but that wasn't who Tony was. He didn't lash out with strength. He might be a bully and an unreliable ally, but he was never going to hold what he had over Bucky's head.

Slamming his dishes in the sink, he returned to his lab. There had been no order for Barnes to follow him, but just in case he had JARVIS bar the way after him. He had little doubt the ex-assassin could force his way in, physically or through other means, but he wasn't making it easy for him.

Tony needed some time to stew. And he didn't need a guy he didn't care for pointing out all of his flaws.

He might not like it, but maybe he was smart enough to see that Bucky was telling the truth and even mature enough to face up to himself. Maybe not too, maybe he'd end up self destructing for no other reason than his own stupidity and stubbornness. Either way, Bucky wasn't about to follow him since he had no orders to do so.

He went to find a bathroom instead and took a long shower, heat up so high that it almost scalded him, and found fresh clothes. He took his time, he savoured a sandwich that JARVIS helped him find the ingredients for, and he just tried to find himself in the silence of solitude. He would make it back to Grant and Steve, that's why he fought, it's why he wasn't dead.

If Tony came out of his snit then he would find Bucky in the main lounge, pizza box open at his side, dressed in some loose sweats and a t-shirt, watching Return of the Jedi on the massive flat screen TV.

At least Tony did get out of his so-called snits pretty easily so that was lucky. He came up stairs somewhere in the middle of the movie, as if drawn by lightsaber battles and the smell of pizza. He helped himself to the latter and dropped onto the opposite end of the sofa, kicking off his sneakers to cross his legs at the ankles on the coffee table.

"Ugh, you went to Crespo's? Supreme has the best pizza. JARVIS, didn't you tell him Supreme was better?" Tony complained, and though JARVIS did give an explanation, Tony ignored it. He was quiet for the rest of the movie, minus a little cheer here and there because he was still a kid, and one point where he told JARVIS to pause the movie so he could make popcorn.

At least he put the giant bowl between them both, half as a barrier and half because Tony wanted to share with some guy living in his house who was not and could never be a friend.

It turned out that time rather than exposure would be the best bet for Bucky. Being around Tony really was exposure enough and he would find himself more and more able to ignore the occasional, accidental commands that the inventor gave. A few weeks passed and Tony got word that Grant had managed to get accepted into Brooklyn institute of art, mostly due to Tony fudging his transcripts, and he brought the news to Bucky with his hands in his pockets.

"We should send something. Like a gift basket of ramen noodles or some paints."

A few weeks, it turned out, was all that was needed to turn Bucky and Tony into friends. Not that either one of them acknowledged it as such, but they understood one another in surprising amounts of ways and got on most of the time. But the more time that passed, the more that Bucky felt somewhat more secure, and the more he missed Grant and Steve. He hadn't reached out to either, and both had been respectful of his wishes to be left alone.

Though the one time that Banner had come over, he had very gently told Bucky that the pair of them missed him a lot and only wanted him to be okay.

Brooklyn Institute of Art was a good school and he was proud, though he wondered if Grant knew that the syllabus promised a semester on 'art history of the wars' and included Steve Rogers' sketchbook in that. Probably, maybe not. He nodded at the suggestion and pushed himself off the couch.

"I think I'll take him something."

It was said so innocuously, as if he had been popping out every day when really this would be his first time out of the Tower. But surely Tony would understand, he didn't want a big deal making of it.

They were not friends. Tony would never admit to that. They were not friends at all, they just hung out most of the time and watched the same movies and laughed a lot when Bucky felt like laughing. And when he didn't, Tony laughed for him. They played Call of Duty together. And Portal 2. And Street Fighter. Sometimes Tony made DUM-E bring Bucky a blanket if he fell asleep on the couch. And maybe Bucky let him take a look at the masterpiece that was his arm so that Tony could get a little creepy about it and then vow to do better, or make a realistic covering for it. Even if Bucky didn't ask. Or didn't want it.

Telling Tony anything was nearly impossible.

He put his feet up as Bucky walked between the couch and the coffee table, once he had cleared the space. "What are you going to take him?" When Bucky didn't answer right away, Tony turned to drape an arm over the back of the couch and frown at Bucky. "No, seriously, what are you going to take him-- Not flowers, okay? Guys do not like flowers, I don't care how small and sensitive they--" He cut himself off and shrugged, turning before he could smile.

He couldn't help it. He was glad that Bucky was getting out for awhile. It made him pick up the phone and ask Banner over for the first time in weeks.

"I need your expertise. Car is already on the way," he said, not giving his friend any time to say anything at all.

In a neighboring borough, Grant was just getting done his first day at school. He'd collected syllabuses and some numbers too from classmates. They all looked about his age, though most were about five years younger, wore crazy clothes and had hair that was anything but naturally colored. He'd enrolled himself in two different art history classes, life drawing and a cartoonist class that focused on storyline and layout. And he had a digital design class that excited him to no end even if he had no idea how to use most of the programs. But that was what school was for, right? To teach him?

He left the school by himself, a silly, huge smile on his face when he saw who was waiting for him at the curb, leaning on a motorcycle. He hadn't seen Bucky in just under.a month and for a moment, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. Dressed in a white collar shirt, khakis and a sweater vest, he still looked like the boy Bucky had known all that time ago, despite the setting and the people streaming around him.

"Buck....?"

Bucky was gaining quite a bit of attention from the students milling around, because even jeans and a well-fitted leather jacket over a white t-shirt (all courtesy of Tony who had begun to complain that Bucky dressed like a hobo and then refilled his closets one night while he had been sleeping) couldn't completely hide how almost unnaturally muscled he was. Clean shaven, hair long but nearly trimmed, quite a few of the girls were watching him as he sat astride his motorcycle.

He still looked a little nervous around the edges, it was all in the way his eyes occasionally darted to the escape routes, or the way his fingers tightened on the handlebars when someone brushed too close, but he was so much better. He even smiled when Grant came into sight, lop-sided just as he always used to when he was being at his most charming or most smug.

"So-- I thought you might like dinner to celebrate your first day as a real art student?"

The words were deceptively casual, but Grant would know him well enough to see the lines of nervousness beneath about whether he would be accepted back into Grant's life quite so easily after being gone for so long.

There was absolutely no scenario where Steve would not be happy to see Bucky. That said, he did approach slowly as if he was afraid of spooking him, or afraid that he would appear farther away the closer he got like a mirage. "Oh yeah?" He glanced around for a sports car. Or Iron Man. Seeing neither. His eyes softened ever so slightly. Tony wasn't here. He felt bad from taking a reunion from Steve, but maybe Bucky saw him already. Or would see him after he got back from his trip to stop an some arms dealer or other. Grant never aid too much attention to where Steve was going because he was always going somewhere. He was just a lot better than Bucky at checking in. "Just... Us?"

It felt dreamlike. Twenty-six days had been s long time apart from Bucky. Especially without a moment of contact. No call. No letter. Grant had been keeping his distance, but he kept wishes Bucky would reach out. And now he worried that that wish would send Bucky right back into hiding.

Grant wasn't used to walking on eggshells. "Dinner sounds real good, but maybe not too late. I've got some homework." He was offering Bucky that out. And slso trying to be responsible. He was thankful that he didn't have to work tonight, that would have ruined everything.

"Then maybe I'll pick us something up on the way to your apartment instead of going out to dinner, we need to talk and if you have work to do then we need to do it first off."

Bucky had no real idea that his words would probably be taken the wrong way, that Grant (and Steve) lived in fear of him getting in contact only to tell them that he wouldn't be seeing them ever again. Perhaps it was a legitimate fear considering the bad decisions he made sometimes regarding... everything, but that wasn't the case this time.

"Can you hold onto my jacket if we ride there?"

He waited for Grant to get onto the back of his bike before he set off for Grant's apartment, stopping along the way to pick up some pizza from a random pizza shop.

Fear was one word for it. Fear was a better word than the one going through his mind right now. Every single fiber of Grant's being was focused on trying to figure out how to downplay what he knew was going to happen to him. He smiled and he tried to be so very agreeable at the moment, but agreeable was not how he felt. If he could escape without tearing up in front of Bucky, he would have managed a feat and a half.

But the simple truth was that Grant was already near to weeping as they pulled up to the building his old tenament apartment had been in. Now, there were a mere fraction of the families living there and his walk up apartment took up most of the floor. It was so large that he and Steve often joked about renting out rooms for income and it was a notion that Grant was considering.

College was extremely expensive and his job at the coffee shop barely paid his bills. Yes. He owned the apartment thanks to Tony giving him the keys and the deed but electricity and water and heat-- Grant was still suffering sticker shock.

He tried to cover up a sniffle as he climbed completely Without gracefully off the back of Bucky's motorcycle, pretty sure that there were finger prints in the leather from the way he had pressed them and his cheek to the fabric.

Grant hurried up the stairs to unlock the door and get a moment to properly wipe his face while Bucky fully parked and took the pizzas inside.

Ha dropped his bag by the couch and threw a cover over the easel he had been working on.

"I'll get the plates!"

Bucky noticed the sniffling, he was hyperaware to everything going on around him now that he was out of the Tower, and he assumed erroneously that Grant was becoming unwell. It wouldn't be unusual, with his chest and list of ailments, he got colds like other people got sandwiches, but that didn't mean they were nothing to worry about. Maybe he'd check in a bit more often now, make sure that Grant was taking care of himself.

He got himself sat down, choosing the chair that had the best tactical view of the room just on instinct, and opened up the boxes of pizza to dish out a few slices when Grant returned with the plates.

"Okay, so-- we need to talk."

He had prepared this beforehand, because he knew he wasn't very good at this sort of situation. Writing it all down on notecards and then memorising it like an actor with a speech.

"I want to apologise for shutting you out, but I didn't do it out of malice. I did it because I wanted to make sure I wouldn't hurt you, you and Steve. I know I'm not the man either of you wish I was, and I probably never will be, and I make bad decisions that hurt us all. I still have days where I'm fractured and wrong, but I still want to be part of your lives. Everything I've done, I've done to try and get back to you both. Please believe that. I love you."

Grant had been prepared for this, the pizza sitting in front of him as if made of plastic, the scent artificial and his stomach churning. He let Bucky get right out with it because they both needed that. Why drag out a visit when Bucky would be cutting him off like the dead weight he was? Grant listened without hearing it until the final three words caught the rest of him up in some sort of horrible backward loop. His breath caught in his throat and he set one hand to his chest, as if trying to keep the flutter of his heart firmly settled in behind his ribs.

It was not ideal. Not when he had just been told for the first time in his life outside of his mother that he was loved. He looked like he was about to pass out.

"You don't... You don't want to leave for good?" He felt like such an idiot, suddenly, hands trembling as he moved them to his lap. "You don't want want to leave for good," he repeated, no longer as a question but a statement to console himself.

He could not have helped the weeping now if he tried, as weak as he knew it made him seem.

"How many times do I need to tell you that I don't expect you to ever be the person you were when you went to war. I certainly will never be the man you left behind, trying so hard to follow you. It doesn't matter who were were to me. Just who you are now. I miss you so much."

Grant's tears sat like a cold and heavy weight in his stomach, making him wonder if he might be sick with the guilt. That's what he thought? That Bucky planned to skip out on them forever... He had never meant to give that impression, but how could he blame either of them for taking it that way?

"No, I don't want to leave for good."

Somehow he managed to keep his voice level and calm, it wouldn't do for them both to get upset.

"I know it probably didn't seem that way, but every decision I've made has been with the end goal of being safe to be with you. I came to ask if I could live here with you and Steve."

He was finally at a point where they could help him, and he had Tony for backup support if he needed it. He wanted to be able to protect Steve and Grant, make things easier, and watch with pride as they both excelled and made the world better in their own ways.

"Only took a month of Tony Stark to want to move out, huh?" Grant teased, using his napkin to dab at his eyes and to clear his tears away. He didn't want to make poor Bucky feel terribly, even if his tears were of relief and not pain. He stood up from his place at the table and came around toward his friend to wrap his arms around his neck and burrow his face against the side of his jaw and cheek.

"Shouldn't speak for Steve but I don't think he'd mind if you decided to stay with either of us." The other blond lived at the compound and Grant was doing just fine on his own here but he would never deny Bucky anything. Not when he had been willing to give him up if the other man wanted that.

It was as Steve had said to him in the hospital. He'd stand by Bucky, any Bucky, for forever. It didn't matter if he was comatose or brain dead or suffering from any disease or ailment. Bucky would always come first.

"Going this long without you was too much."

Bucky put down the piece of pizza that he had been cradling in his hand and stood up, slipped around the table, and wound his flesh arm around Grant from behind. He noogied him very gently, more just a ruffling of his hair with his knuckles, voice warm and soft and guilty as hell.

"I'm here now, you punk, so quit weeping over me."

He didn't let the contact last long, and Grant would be able to feel that he was still mostly tense beneath it, but it was a definite improvement and progress from what he had been capable of before. It was a slow and incremental progress, but he finally felt as though he actually was making progress.

"So-- tell me about school, huh? The first one of us to go to college, no less."

Grant was more animated than usual that evening, even from before Bucky chose to stay with Stark. He told him all about working at the coffee shop and book store, at how he mostly took orders and had a few regular customers that said he was the reason they kept coming back. He told Bucky about all of the reading he did in his free time and how nervous he was about the classes that were less about art and more about history. "Doing my best to catch up the last seventy years fast as I can," Grant said, still picking at pizza long grown room temperature. He had it ingrained in him to never waste food though so he would eat the whole slice eventually. "And the neatest thing is with the computer art programs. You can just tap an area and it will share automatically once you program it to recognize what you want. I don't know a thing about computers though so I'm doing my best to catch up with that too. Kids do it all the time right? I really like it, Buck. Just had no idea art supplies could be so expensive. Ten dollars for a pack of charcoals. Ten!"

But when a cup of coffee and a muffin at his shop was also ten dollars he supppossd that the price for the box of charcoals wasn't so bad after all. That didn't stop him from chattering in about it.

It was nearing nine when Grant started to yawn and he groaned, flying off of the sofa he and Bucky had moved to in order to fetch his backpack. "I can do my reading at work tomorrow when it's slow, but I'm supposed to do some life drawing-- mind if I draw a part of you? It's easier than drawing a part of myself."

Mirrors or truncated perspective always made self portraits difficult.

Bucky enjoyed listening to Grant talk. He didn't have the same manic energy that Tony had, always running as if the sound of silence was somehow oppressive to him, but he still made it easier for Bucky to be a part of the conversation. He was quiet, mostly just nodding and making an occasional murmur of acknowledgement, but that was how it was comfortable for him. He was so damn proud of Grant, pleased that he had managed to find a life for himself in this strange future.

"Me?"

It had been such a long time since Grant had used him as a reference for his drawings, though he remembered there were sketchbooks bound with twine and drawn in charcoal they had dug out of fireplaces full of his face, his hands, his smile. He shrugged after a moment.

"Okay, what part of me? Do I have to stand up?"

"I probably shouldn't do your face." And it was too much for a proper gentleman like Grant to suggest anything he might actually want to draw, so he settled on what his professor said they should probably not tackle given the difficulty and technicality of drawing it. He wasn't sure about showing off, but any other body part seemed too sensual. "Could I draw your hand?"

He'd never made a study of Bucky's hands before, which now felt like such a waste. He ought to have gotten them down when they were bloody and bruised from boxing. Or at rest when he slept, fingers slightly curled up. Or maybe holding the hand of some graceful dame as he whisked her around the floor.

A brightness came over Grant's eyes as he imagined that scene from what seemed like so long ago. They'd been happy then and while they'd never go back to the dance halls, he felt almost as happy and content now, here in the living room, which would have been part of their neighbor's kitchen back in the 30s and 40s.

"You can just stay as you are. We can keep talking. You should tell me about how living with Mr. Stark is. I bet it's equal parts fun and confusing."

Bucky held up both hands, one gleaming in the low light, and the other flesh and blood. Just an ordinary hand. He set both of them loosely on his lap so that Grant could choose whichever one he wanted to draw, though he privately didn't think the metal one should count as a 'life' drawing, when it was just lifeless metal.

"Loud."

He grinned, lopsided just as he always used to do before he suggested some point of mischief or other, or right before he sniped an apple pie from his Ma's windowsill to take round to Grant's house and share with him.

"He's a good guy, a little too interested in my arm, but good. He's helped. A lot. I think I might even call him a friend now."

Regardless of if Tony called him that back.

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