fossilised | For Steve

"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!"

This was not the first time that Grant had seen Bucky kill. His face had grown blank by the second hit and his lips pressed together as he bore witness. This could have turned out beautifully if Bucky had just offered him to the police, but he hadn't. He'd killed. It was on record. And even if there wasn't a tape of it, he was utterly smeared in blood now. The evidence was too high.

Grant's eyes moved towards the guns and then returned to the mess on the floor and lifted again to Bucky. The tears had come unexpectedly, but they were there. His own hands were covered in charcoal dust, streaks of gray resembling a black and white photo of what Bucky's hand would look like, color all drained out. He moved in a daze, slowly, standing between Bucky and the police. It would be called an obstruction of justice but Grant didn't usually fit any of the molds a person ought to. He had no desire to be anything other than the man that tried to protect another who had been so damaged that he could not protect himself....not even from his own desires to stop killing.

"Son, move aside!" One cop shouted.

Grant did not listen. "He's an abuse victim. You're going to punish an abuse victim!"

But Grant knew it was pointless. No one had the right to take the life of someone else unless they were being directly threatened. And Finney was not directly threatening Bucky. There was no case for this. And no cause. Bucky would lose. He would go to jail. HYDRA would get him. So he turned to the other even as he was being yelled at now to kneel himself.

"Go. Go!"

Bucky was still holding onto the corpse of Finney when he turned, radiating violence, though some part of him that was still himself forced him not to just attack. He wasn't an animal, he could control himself, he wasn't going to make this worse. And that's when he finally saw Grant, covered in charcoal dust and crying, and he finally let the corpse slide from his fingers back down to the floor below.

He didn't go.

He dropped to his knees and put bloodstained hands on his head, letting the police come forwards and cuff him, silent and obedient, even as they cuffed Grant too. One of them read them both their rights, Grant should just get a caution, he hadn't done anything too bad and this was his first official offence. But he would still be in the system.

They were put into separate police cars. The officer in Grant's car was professional but not unkind as he talked to him while they were driving.

"How old are you, son?" If he was a minor, they needed to get a parent or guardian involved. "You got somebody that you can call when we get to the station?"

"Twenty-three." He was an adult, even if he didn't look it. Grant sat straight and still with his head bowed, arms fitted nearly into the grooves in the seat back of the car meant for people who had been handcuffed. He'd never known about that small comfort until this moment, and he appreciated it. Sitting back on his arms in New York traffic would have become uncomfortable. "Twenty-four in a few days," he corrected, just in case he was in jail longer than that and they got bad at him for not giving his correct age.

He turned, leaning against the back groove with one shoulder, and watched the news media show up, talking to his classmates that had been all too eager to tell their sides of the story. One even had his own drawing and was touting it as their own in front of the camera.

All of it was just....ugly. The circus outside was ugly and it was unfair.

"I... Yes. Cal you call Mr. Tony Stark?"

The cop actually laughed. "You're not serious."

"No, I am," Grant murmured. "He's good friends with my cousin." And better friends with Bucky. Grant felt a calm settle over him, but it was actually just numbness.

Grant might notice that not all of his classmates were speaking against Bucky. Some were talking about how soft spoken and brace he had been, and how PTSD was a horrible thing, and how murdering Nazis shouldn't be a crime. They were literal Nazis! The one who spoke Russian swore blind that Finney had a weapon, and that it had been self defence. Some others were damning Bucky as a killer and claiming Finney had been the nicest professor on campus.

It turned out there would be no need to ring Tony at the station, there was already someone waiting. Sam Wilson gave Grant a tight sort of smile.

"Hey there, pint sized, not having a great day, huh? You're up for obstruction, but Tony already posted your bail so we're out of here. Come on, let's go get a coffee, you and I need to talk."

Grant didn't want to leave the station. He didn't want to be paraded through a crowd or captured on camera any more. He felt guilty for all of it. Guilty because of his own selfish desire for attending school. He could have just returned to the compound. No one would have ever found Bucky there. No protests. No chance spotting on the street, no murder of a man in his classroom.

His eyes were dry as he followed Sam, not exactly aloof but still sort of out of it. He was currently existing in his own head. He was currently trying to pick out points of weakness where everything good had gone sour and where he could have fixed it before it happened.

Sam led him out back, down the way they took criminals when transporting them to prison, and Grant was at least relieved that no lights or microphones were thrust in his face. He didn't care to speak right now. He didn't even really want to talk to Sam.

Starbucks. It smelled the same in every Starbucks in New York and thst was by design. It was busy and bustling and no one ever looked at anyone else. Not really. The best place to be annonymous in a city crawling with people was right here in the busiest place of all. The best place to be alone was I. A constantly shifting crowd.

No one recognized them. Grant waited for Sam upstsirs on the little balcony where there were still some seats in the back away from Windows where tourists sat to people watch and sip expensive water and milk beverages. He'd asked for... Actually, Grant didn't remember asking for anything. He didn't know if he could drink or eat anything right now.

Maybe Grant wasn't a veteran with PTSD, but he still had the blank look of someone in shock and pain, and Sam was well acquainted with that and how to deal with it. He brought two cups of strong coffee and some pastries to the table, and set them down between the two of them. Steve-- Grant, it was hard to remember sometimes, needed a bit of sugar to boost him through this.

"Tony is already building a solid defence for Bucky. We have CCTV file footage of that man, whatever his name was, involved in the Soldier's "care" about a year ago, and two staff members have verified that he cancelled his class and deliberately headed to your lecture hall once somebody told him who the guest model was. So we have an abuser intending to provoke the abused, that should give him some defence. He also didn't resist arrest so that's a point in his favour."

Sam was an easy blend of pragmatic and sympathetic, a skill well honed over his years at the VA.

"Tony sounded worried on the phone, pretty sure he's going to be raising hell to get Barnes free and Steve the same. You can't blame yourself for what happened, pint sized, you hear me? You doing okay?"

Grant didn't like the nickname but he didn't say a word about it. Not this time and not the last time. He used one of the napkins Sam brought up for his fingers, rubbing the material off of each digit that he could before he wrapped those fingers around the cardboard sleeve meant to prevent burns from the paper cup. The heat was intense. He appreciated that.

Lifting his eyelids, lashes exactly the same as Steve's, Grant found himself turning his gaze almost defiantly up towards Sam, though the other man was not the problem.

"I'm all right." He tried to make it seem like he could do this sort of thing all day, that he was uncrackable and resilient. Stronger, perhaps, than any man, serum or not, could ever be.

He felt like he needed this. It was a good wake up call, a decent shock to the system to remind him that he needed to man up here and take reaponsibility. He needed to understand that things couldn't be simple. Nine days of coming home every night to Steve and Bucky had been a bliss that unrealistically couldn't sustain itself without collapsing under its own weight.

"We need to focus on Bucky here, Sam. I'm glad there's going to be a defense though. It doesn't-- But it won't matter. The world is never going to see him as anything but an animal like this. We need to figure out how to help him. He needs... He really needs someone to talk to."

"You'd be surprised what the world can forgive, given enough incentive to see things in other ways."

Sam wasn't always necessarily talking about good things, but history was littered with the way that the public consciousness had been changed in order to reflect what those in charge wanted them to see. Maybe it would be harder, possibly impossible, but there was a chance. It was just unfortunate that even taking into account that none of this was his fault, it didn't change that Barnes was a very dangerous man.

A lot of people would pity a rabid dog that bit someone, but very few would argue against putting it down for its own safety and that of everyone around it. Sam was a little worried this would be the same thing.

"I ain't arguing with you, your man needs to talk, but I'm not so sure that's going to happen. He doesn't seem like the sort of man who's comfortable with opening up, and I don't think there's a therapist in the world qualified to deal with what he's been through."

He took a sip of his own coffee and leaned back in his chair.

"This was bound to happen sooner or later, it's probably better that it's sooner. And you're not alright, but that's okay too, nobody would be alright in your situation."

Sam was a good guy. There was a reason that Steve became such good friends with him, but Grant wasn't exactly in the proper frame of mind to sit here and be consoled. When he needed something off of his chest, he had Bucky. If he was real bad off, not even Bucky would get in to him. Grant dealt with his agony the way all men of his time did. Alone. That was what he needed more than anything else right now. But Sam was just trying to be kind.

So Grant tried to prove just how fine he was, taking one of the scones to pick out the overly sugared blueberries from the thick and super sweet dough. He ended up dunking little pieces in his coffee too, mostly letting the pastry disintegrate after the plastic lid had been placed side up. He watched the little brown droplets of moisture on the lid collect in the curved indents where the lip of the cup should go and finally sat back.

"Why did they tell you to take me away?" Tony. Steve. "I really should be there, Sam. Can you take me back?"

Sam would like to go back and find the idiots who dictated that all men back then be stoic about their pain, it was their fault that so many good men drove themselves into the ground with shell shock or other issues. Grant was obviously suffering, so was Steve, and both idiots were too goddamn stubborn to admit it.

He considered denying that he had been asked to get Grant out of the way, but he discounted it almost at once and shrugged.

"Tony asked me to keep you away, Bruce is on Steve duty, he wants you both away from the police station. Not sure why."

Maybe because Tony had more of a chance, impossible as it seemed, of getting Bucky free without resorting to shield throwing and emotional outbursts. Money and power could open a whole lot of doors.

"But I'll tell you what, why don't we ask JARVIS what's going on? Hey, J?"

"Yes, sir. Mr. Stark has already left the police station with Sergeant Barnes, a rather large bail has been posted and an agreement that Sergeant Barnes will not leave Stark Tower. Not entered into by Sergeant Barnes, who has not spoken since being arrested." House arrest. "However, Sergeant Barnes ran as soon as they were clear of the station and has not been sighted since."

Not that Grant could know it, or Steve could know it where he was being patiently but firmly kept talking in place by Bruce, but Bucky had run back to their apartment and was even now sat on Grant's bed like a lifeless puppet waiting for someone to come and animate him once more.

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Omg enough signal for a waiting room tag, a miracle!

Yay!

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