fossilised | For Steve

"We can't come, Grant has class in about an hour and he can't get there from your Tower too easily. If nobody is coming to arrest me, then we don't have a reason to hole up behind your defences."

No violence was something he could probably do, providing nobody set him off first, but no scowling was a difficult one. He smiled a lot more now, mostly around the Rogers two and Tony, but he still had a naturally intimidating expression when he was out and about in public.

"He's not going to be kissing babies, Tony, he hasn't done that since the forties."

He did, however, throw the phone at Steve's head so that he could catch it out of the air and put it to his ear.

"Tony, hey-- Thanks for getting your team on this, where are we at?"

"We're at your SO being a pain in my ass," Tony said, the sounds around him indicating that he had likely stood up. "Bucky mentioned you guys were going to send Grant to school, which is probably fine but I'd rather have one of my cars take and bring him back." Thst wouldn't be popular with Grant. He wanted to be normal. No special treatment. He didn't even let Bucky take him to school when he could take the subway just fine. "But let me guess? Famous Rogers stubbornness? Fine. Listen I'm coming over. I'm going to bring video equipment and set it up so you guys can keep in touch with my legal team. They think it's a good idea for everyone to come at this positively without giving information away. No talking to the public, got it? Right now we don't have any police force on the case. It's not even a case. But if the protests get too big, they're going to be out at the apartment. For the protestors. Tell Barnes that before he panics. I'll know if they get a warrant but it's not likely. Barnes isn't wanted in connection to anything. Fury isn't dead. You're not dead. He has something in Russia and something in Bulgaria that are within the statute of limitations but as long as no one is trying to extredite him, I think we're okay."

Grant took the coffee back from Bucky and shoved his sketchbook into his backpack. He wasn't bringing the portfolio case today. It would be too much in his hands. Just in case.

His hair wasn't combed but he'd get to that shortly. Of all of them, he was the only one acting somewhat normal.

"You have Sam coming?"

"He's on standby," Steve admitted.

"Bad idea. Sends the wrong impressions. Have him come down as a friend. I'll be there in an hour, Cap."

Maybe he was acting somewhat normal because he just didn't know what the media could accomplish these days. Back in the forties it had been much less of a powerhouse, far less credible than the police force or actual legal system. But these days social media, protests, and general public outrage could topple governments if they worked hard enough at it. If this took off over the social media sites, it could easily become ugly very quickly.

Steve sighed, but he could see the wisdom in Tony's words (for once) and he knew that Tony cared as much about keeping Bucky safe and free as the rest of them.

"Alright, I'll call Sam off of an official fly-by, get him to drop in later. I'll leave the door unlatched, just come on up."

Bucky came up behind Grant and slipped his arms around his waist, chin resting on his shoulder where he dwarfed the smaller and younger man. "Let me take you to school?" For his peace of mind. "On the bike, maybe it'll even help if I'm seen out in public doing a normal thing."

There was never a time when Bucky's arms around him did not make Grant feel better about himself. He closed his eyes and leaned back into the embrace while Steve dealt with Tony and then called Sam. This was about rallying together the wagons and not a out being defensive. And maybe Bucky had a point about waiting to take him but it scared Grant to put the man out there. He'd have to come home alone. He'd have to go through the crowd alone. What if someone said something horrible--?

He didn't know that Bucky had watched his own torture stoically beside Stsrk. He knew his boyfriend was strong but not how strong he could be. He twisted around to lay his head on Bucky's chest. "I can do this. I need you to be safe, Buck. Losing you would be the worst thing to ever happen to me."

Not that a lot of bad things had happened to him. He was poor and sick a lot but otherwise he didn't have a bad life at all.

"I won't tell you no but... I'm just afraid for us." If he couldn't admit that to Bucky, who could be tell? "A month was too long. If you're right-- what if they take you from me for years?"

"I won't let that happen."

Grant was an idiot if he thought that Bucky would ever let himself be caged again. He had seen what his life could be like as a person now, to go back to being trapped in a box and unable to control his own destiny would be the death of him. He bent further to press a kiss into Grant's hair.

"C'mon, I'm going to take you to school, you don't have to worry about me getting back okay. I can handle whatever a few protesters might say to me."

Truthfully, he might even agree with some of it. He still had a tendency to blame himself for what had happened, even if he knew logically that he had no choice in what he did.

"Got all your stuff?"

"Yeah... Just..." Grant moved back into Bucky's bedroom to give Steve a hug. Maybe it was an odd ritual since they were sort of the same person and definitely going steady with the same boyfriend, but both of the Rogers liked their hugs and it kept them connected to one another. "Make sure he comes back all right," he told Steve before the other blond wished him a good day and followed him back to the living room to give Bucky a kiss goodbye.

"See you in an hour? I'll have eggs waiting."

The door to the outside wasn't locked behind them, since Steve feared nothing and Tony was due soon, but Grant felt as if his escape had been completely cut off as the door shut at his back. Bucky was moving forward, towards the surging crowd, and Grant couldn't hear himself think over the shouting. People started to throw things passed their signs, all of which said horrible things like MURDER! and NOT IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD! and JUSTICE! Grant had to duck a glass bottle, wnd the sound of sirens made him cringe.

"Please, this is my home! You're trespassing! Just leave us alone," he called before he felt his backpack grabbed by one unruly twenty something with green frosted tips.

Although some of the braver protesters threw things at Bucky from behind the safety of their signs, none of them actually reached out to try and grab or push him. Even if he was the one they were here to protest about, he was huge and even in jeans and a hoodie he gave off a distinct impression of being able to destroy literally anyone there with minimum effort. He kept his expression blank as they shouted insults at him, but he couldn't stand by while Grant was grabbed.

"Let go."

He issued the order with a quiet firmness, but his voice still cut through the noise and everyone went silent, the tension creeping up. The girl who had grabbed Grant didn't let go, however, she just glared into his face and addressed him directly.

"What the hell do you think you're doing? You're helping protect someone who's murdered hundreds of people! He's a Nazi! You're disgusting!"

Bucky's fingers flexed but he didn't step in yet. "Last warning, let him go."

"He's not a Nazi!" Grant said. That word was the enemy. He'd grown hated them and everything they stood for. "He fell from a train, he was captured and tortured and forced to be a weapon. He escaped. How can you protest a POW? Are you people insane? This is completely unamerican!" Grant said pulling out of his backpack to turn and face her. "You have no idea what hardship is. You have no ide what living during wartime was like. You're selfish and you're uninformed and this man you're spouting hatred for? He's a good man. If any of you touch me again I will be pressing charges!"

He grabbed his backpack away from the stunned girl and marched his way down the stairs and towards the police car pulling up. "Officer, my name is Grant Rogers. We are being harassed. That woman up there laid hands on me and we have things being thrown at us."

No one got to be a bully. No one.

Bucky's expression didn't alter much, but Grant might be able to see the pride in his eyes as he followed the smaller man down the steps. This is why he had chosen to follow Steve, not Captain America, because he had always been a hero in his heart. Scrawny or muscled, Steve or Grant, they didn't make them like this any more. Or ever. He was lucky as hell to have them.

The police officers looked a bit nervous to be around Bucky now that he had been officially outed as a possibly dangerous super soldier, but to their credit they maintained professionalism.

"Alright, sir, we're here to make sure the protests don't get physical again. But I would advise you, for your own safety, to stay off the streets for a while."

Bucky put his hand on Grant's shoulder, voice soft. "Get on the bike, you're going to be late for class and they're not worth it."

"Thank you, officer," was the last thing that Grant said as the police climbed out of their cars to make a perimeter around the apartments. They were allowed lawfully on the sidewalk as that was public property but could not climb the stairs or throw anything. Two people would be arrested later for disorderly conduct but that would be well after Bucky dropped Grant off.

There were stares from people at the school as they pulled up and it occurred to Grant that by tomorrow, the fact that he was a student here would go as viral as where Bucky was being kept. It scared him, fully, to think that they had no recourse for this, that Bucky would feel guilty for it too, and so Grant made sure he smiled widely at his boyfriend as he climbed off of the bike.

"I'm going to be all right. Don't worry about me. I love you all right?"

"I love you too."

Bucky managed a small smile, though his expression was mostly thoughtful. He remained astride his motorbike after Grant had gone inside the building, staring at the walls of concrete and glass. He wasn't an idiot, far from it, and he knew that the best way to deal with being a media sensation wasn't to hide. It was to own it, to make it yours, and to control it.

He had to do something sympathetic, heroic, or just plain make people see him as a person. He had a sort of idea where to start, which is why he sent out a text to both Tony and Steve that just said: "Don't be mad, won't be there for a few hours. Am okay." And then he slipped into the college building.

Grant's class started late.

Most of the other students were talking about the Winter Soldier news, especially casting glances at Grant, isolating him from within a crowd. One or two approached to ask if he was really a descendant of the Steve Rogers, but everyone else kept their gossip over his head. When the professor did arrive, she looked flustered.

"Class, today we are having our "Life in War" session. Last year's class drew Colonel Kevin Sanders, a double amputee vet of Afghanistan. This year, you're going to be drawing--" She swallowed, nervous, but carried on bravely. "Sergeant James Barnes of the 107th."

One class. Not a whole media outlet, but one class was a start. If he could make these college kids look at him as a vet rather than as a killer, they'd tweet about it and make posts about it and the seed would be sown. It might also give Grant sympathetic company in his classmates.

Steve was used to ridicule. Class here had been amazing. The people that attended the Brooklyn Institute for Fine Arts were amazing and diverse. No one looked like anyone else. Fat, thin, gay or trans, pink hair, covered in tattoos, everyone was accepted and welcomed. It was why he had really, really loved it. So even though his current gathering of fifteen fellow classmates had ended up talking about him today instead of with him, Steve understood.

People were scared and gossiping and those that had braved their way over were smiled at sadly. "I do look like him, don't I? My mother always told me that," Grant had said before they were all shoed back to their seats.

If the whole class was surprised by their sudden guest, none looked so positively flabbergasted as poor Grant. Especially when the hulking form of his friend filled the doorway behind their teacher, pushing hair behind his ears. "Is it... Safe?" someone asked and Grant found himself climbing to his feet before the teacher spoke agsin and he was motioned to sit down.

"Sargeant Barnes deserves our respect as a veteran of our military. Please take your easels and prepare. You may select your mediums. I would prefer charcoals, graphite or pastels but there's temper paints and water colors available. Please no oils. We don't have time to allow the work to properly set. Sargeant? Are you... When you're comfortable, please take a seat in the center-- find a pose you don't mind holding for extended periods of time."

Bucky was handsome. His body was impeccable. And that arm? Well that arm was going to be making waves.

There were already photos being snapped as Grant took one of the nearby stations. Charcoals out, he wet his lips and watched Bucky undress.

The whole point of these sessions were for the students to see the veterans and their wounds in vivid detail, and know that war wasn't always far away on other shores to be heard about on the news. It also usually helped the veterans who came, they liked seeing themselves as art, it made the ugly more beautiful.

Bucky didn't really like being naked - not because he had any shame left in him at all, he didn't, but because it was a tactical disadvantage to escaping - but he didn't hesitate in pulling his clothes off. Muscle and scar tissue were revealed all at once in the body that HYDRA had given him. The arm glinted in the light and most of the class had gone into a hushed silence.

"Usually-- usually we encourage questions during the session about the tour of duty, but this time it might be--"

"No." Bucky interrupted her. "It's fine, they can ask me whatever they want. I don't have anything to hide." His eyes flicked up to Grant as he said that, as if in explanation of what he was trying to achieve here, battling it all head on and refusing to run.

There was no more liberal set of people in the world than the ones sitting in the life drawing class in Brooklyn. They were all young, Grant's age and under, with tattoos and piercings everywhere. None of them were too afraid to speak but it took one brave soul, the girl beside Grant, to speak up first. "How'd you lose your arm? I mean, you did lose it, right? It's not under the metal?"

More questions followed. All were superficial at first, requesting information about the train or if the arm hurt him. But not every student focused on the puckered skin at his shoulder. Some sketched his back and those students had the more difficult questions since they couldn't see Bucky's face.

"What do you remember?"

"I only read a little bit about the leaks last year from the government but is it true that you were brainwashed? Like an experiment?"

"What do you remember?"

"Is it hard to sleep?"

Grant, who had focused on the way Bucky held his head and the way his lips set and his gaze level, cleared his throat when there was finally silence. "What was it like when you remembered who you are?"

Getting any information out of Bucky was usually as hard as pulling teeth, he preferred to keep it all under wraps and pretend everything was okay until it really wasn't. He didn't talk about the things that had happened to him, not even to Steve and Grant, but he answered every question asked of him. Sometimes it was obvious that he had to force himself to, sometimes the answers were only a word or two, but he did answer them all.

Yes he was an experiment, yes it's hard to sleep, he remembers every victim and not a whole lot about his life before. Grant's question makes him raise his head, eyes dark and expression blank, but he answers all the same.

"It was horrible," he said, candid and honest. "The Soldier didn't feel, or want, or need because he wasn't, I wasn't, human. But then I was, and I had to feel all at once everything that I had done. Some of the memories are good, I can smell what my Ma's apple pie was like when it was ready baked, but most of it is the people I've killed and the blood on my hands. And what they did to me to make me do it. It was horrible, it's still horrible, but I wouldn't forget again for anything. 'Cos even if it hurts, I didn't just remember fear and pain, I also remembered love and laughter."

Bucky's answer made Grant smile. It was hard to hear this. He remembered Bucky tell him so much of it way back when he first came for him but these answers were raw and powerful and the art that came out of it, the emotion coupled with the visual, would be exquisite. A few of the students were battling tears, but most stayed away from the grit of the torture itself. The questions were respectful and not for shock value.

After an hour, the teacher called for a break and brought Bucky a black robe to cover up with. She offered him water and the students approached slowly to shake hands or to get photos or to ask Bucky to come over to see the start of their work. #IMWITHBUCKY was already trending on Twitter too.

"I just want you to know," the teacher said as she called everyone back to their stations, "that I think you're brave. And-- Thank you. For coming. This has been an amazing opportunity."

Bucky didn't feel brave, he felt like he was on the hair trigger of running away or punching someone in the face for asking the wrong question, but he brought a tight smile to his lips anyway and tugged the robe closer around himself. The students got a slightly more genuine smile and he shook hands with anyone who wanted to, even the one who cheekily asked to shake left handed to feel the metal hand.

It took him a while to make his way round to Grant, voice low and pitched just for his ears when he finally made it there to look at whatever he had started to draw.

"And Tony says I have no head for social tactics..."

Grant sat a little straighter and turned a bemused smile up and over his shoulder at Bucky. "He'll never believe you," he laughed, feeling a little embarrassed that Bucky was looking at one of his drawings. This one was pretty personal, this one was so much more indepth than the usual homework he had been doing since he started.

He didn't know what Bucky would say. He didn't know how Bucky would feel either, seeing himself so raw and powerful and emotionally charged as Grant had drawn him. Maybe he should have picked a different angle though, mostly because he had ignored a big section between navel and thigh. He was trying to keep his eyes away from that.

"You're... You're really amazing, Buck. Just want you to know that. And I want you to remember it too. Because everyone here thinks it too."

He should say something now about how grateful he was that he had people who thought he was amazing, and how they had helped him get this far to a point where he could stand in a room of strangers and answer questions about his life. But he didn't. He felt a flare of mischief in him that was so damn rare, it stole the breath from his lungs and brought a lop-sided grin to his face that was all Bucky Barnes from the old days.

"You kidding me, Rogers?"

His voice was still low, still just for Grant's ears, but it oozed with the Brooklyn charm that he used to have.

"You're my boyfriend and you haven't even drawn the good stuff?"

If Bucky wanted to get a rise out of Grant, he certainly did. They had a lot of eyes on them, mostly because the room was so thrilled to be able to experience this, and whatever eyes weren't on them were on their phones posting about their experience. Most, therefore, wouldn't really notice the way that Bucky pressed against their classmate. Or how red that classmate was getting.

"I happen to think what's in your thick skull is the best part," Grant murmured, clearing his throat twice. "Just because we're going steady doesn't mean we have to get inappropriate. One of us ought to be the gentleman. You've been around Mr. Stark too much lately," Grant complained and swallowed the thick lump in his throat. "I... I might be more interested in whatever best parts you're thinking of...when we have more privacy than right now."

Ah! What just came out of his mouth!?

"Gosh, Buck, go mingle! You're distracting!" he cried.

He wanted to bend and kiss Grant right then, he looked so adorable and flustered, and he was feeling pretty damn good about the way this whole plan was turning out. But he wasn't about to do that. He wasn't ashamed, but everything was difficult and complicated enough without dragging Grant into the public eye as the lover of the Winter Soldier, so he just grinned and moved off to mingle.

It wasn't long before the break was being called as over and Bucky was shucking the robe again to take up his same naked stance in the middle of the room. There was a small smile playing around his lips now, he could feel how the sentiment in the room had shifted in his favour, and maybe-- maybe he had made the right decision.

Everything changed in a heartbeat.

The lecture theatre door opened and one of the other professors came in, a small and slightly pudgy balding man in his fifties, he was well liked by the students with an affable nature and generally friendly disposition. But as soon as he walked in, Bucky began to radiate danger. His eyes focused in on the professor, a frozen heartbeat of murderous intent, before he moved. It was sudden, like the grace of a big cat pouncing on prey, and fast. He had crossed the lecture theatre and grabbed the professor by the throat in literal seconds, slamming him into the wall and holding him there.

Why did absolutely everything good that happened to him turn, by the end of the day, into hell? Grant blamed himself. He blamed himself as he jumped up and crossed the room, knocking over his paper and his easel in one swift motion. The page tore but it didn't matter. Everyone had their phones out again. Everyone was turning this empowering morning into doom, undoing their work in one swift motion.

"Buck, no!" It didn't matter if someone radiated badness or evil. It didn't matter if Bucky got a feeling. He could not strike first. There was no such thing as a preemptive move in civilian life!

Grant didn't care what people thought as he rushed to get between the two. He didn't care what photos were being tossed up and shared across the Internet. He didn't care that he was in them.

"God, Buck, please! No one here will hurt you!"

There was murmurings now about PTSD. And the police were being dialed.

At least Bucky had done enough before this moment to make the murmurings about PTSD rather than outright hostility or a belief that he was the enemy. Not that this would change anything if the recordings got out onto the internet, especially with the way the poor professor's eyes had widened and he was obviously so scared that his teeth were chattering.

"D-Don't hurt me, please--"

Bucky's eyes were completely and totally blank, as if he didn't even hear Grant talking to him, fixed wholly on the professor's face. His grip around the man's throat was punishing, but not enough to knock him out.

"Как вы думаете, я не узнаю тебя?"

"Please... please, you're mistaken, you can't recognise me, I'm nobody."

"Я помню тебя. Я знаю, что ты сделал."

"I didn't do anything! You're wrong, I'm just a Professor, just-- I just teach art, let me go, I'm begging you."

"Я собираюсь убить тебя сейчас."

The Professor's face went whey coloured, and he obviously believed that was about to happen, because he barked out words he wouldn't normally use in public. Image ruined. But he wasn't about to let himself die, he wasn't going to be a martyr to the cause, even if most would be.

"No, Soldat! Release and step back."

"He's HyDRA!"

Grant didn't speak much Russian. A few months without Bucky in various spats hadn't given him much more than sentence structure and some vocabulary. With Bucky living with him, Grant hadl less time for study than he had before. Who wanted to study when he had a beautiful man to spend time with? He was kicking himself for that now.

That did not mean that in New York's melting pot, someone in this class couldn't understand Russian. A boy with eyes bluer than the sky and blond hair dyed dark red tossed down the water color brush that he had been holding and moved the camera phone away from the scene towards his classmates. "Dude, Mr. Finney's HYDRA!"

Grant made sure to step back as his classmates actually came forward, some blocking the door and others rushing to meet security and the police to tell them what was happening. This was proof that HYDRA had not been completely rooted out. Like rats, they still filled New York.

Those who had stayed behind in the classroom might have wished that they had gone outside to meet the security and police with the others, because Bucky made good on his threat as soon as Finney had confirmed himself as HYDRA. There was nothing else in Bucky's head, no mercy, no hesitation, no recollection that anyone else was there, as he showed the class of art students just what the Soldier could do.

He slammed Finney's head into the wall, making a sharp crack and leaving a smear of blood behind. Then he did it again... and again... and again... Until his wrist and arm were coated in blood and brain matter, until the man who he had been holding resembled nothing human any longer, and still he kept going as if his brain hadn't registered that the man was dead. Over and over and over.

Police poured into the hall and levelled guns at Bucky, voices a sharp bark.

"Step back! Now! Hands on your head!"

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