fossilised | For Steve

For Steve

The war had been raging for a long time now, and James Buchanan Barnes had been drafted some months ago to ship out to Europe and fight with all the others in the trenches and on the front lines. Telegrams came back daily with the news of more brothers, sons, fathers, and husbands killed. More friends who will never return, and still there was no end in sight.

But then something even stranger began happening on both sides of the timeline.

All the newsreels were reporting strange anomalies centred in New York City and Washington D.C. that could only be explained by time itself unravelling in places. Buildings that changed to vast monoliths of glass and steel for a few minutes and then back again, a faded billboard for asthma cigarettes becoming a full colour motion picture of a man eating soup. Some people had even said they had met men and women claiming to be from the future, though this was all hushed up.

It only lasted a few days, and then it was sorted. Sealed, the government official offices said, just a trick by the Nazis to confuse us. Forget it and go about your day.

But there were pieces of the future lost in the past for good.

The Winter Soldier-- Bucky-- whoever he was now, confused fragmented memories all he had to go on, had been thrown through time unceremoniously into a street that looked altogether familiar and confusing. He hid from the authorities who were collecting all the anomalies with ease, even though his manner of dress was out of place now with jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. He didn't change it. He found his feet taking him somewhere only half remembered.

An apartment with a key hidden under an old brick. Why did he know it was there?

He didn't know. He just let himself in, quiet as a whisper, and made his way through to the bedroom where someone was asleep under the covers. Skinny, blond, somehow also familiar (the man on the bridge? The man in the Potomac? The man at the museum? No, that didn't make sense, that man had bulging muscles, but somehow he was sure they were the same). He didn't say anything, just stood there and watched impassively, waiting for the man to wake up.

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Bucky had no idea that Steve felt like that, and he would have panicked all the more if he did, because it just meant that he was losing his grip on both of the people that he needed to make himself whole. Steve was a goddamn idiot, he didn't see the hours that Grant was invisible because Bucky spent his entire time staring at the phone waiting for it to ring and let him know that Steve had survived another Avenger's mission, or the times that Bucky stalked him from the rooftops just to make certain that he was safe.

They both existed in his vision, it was just that sometimes one had to exist more than the other. He didn't have it in him to notice the way Steve's smile wasn't quite right, he was doing everything in his power to keep his mask in place.

"Quit worrying and go back to sleep yourself, I'm not even tired. I can sleep in the car tomorrow or the day after, and Steve can get himself down on that bed with you and sleep now so that I can keep an eye on both of you idiots."

It was more than just a feeling of inadequacy with Steve. He was seeing the cracks now, without even realizing what they were. He didn't know enough about Bucky's obsession with one or the other to know that this was normal and so he had inadvertently seen some of the weakness in the armor and the face beneath the mask.

"Can we both agree to sleep with him?" Steve asked, trying to judge Bucky's response. If he insisted, Steve would agree and climb into bed so he could intact sleep and then try to catch Bucky sleeping. He was pretty sure that Bucky wasn't resting properly at all. He never dozed in front of them. Never. And Steve never woke up with Bucky still asleep.

He was trying to figure out why, or maybe he was trying to find all the signs here as to what he was doing with two people that needed each other.

Grant smiled widely. "Been trying for months for this," he said, almost hopeful. "And the bed is plenty big!"

Bucky would stringently deny there were any cracks under the mask. He was managing so well to pretend to be the man they both wanted him to be, like everything he had been through for the past seventy years had left no real scars on him. It was almost funny, kind of sad, how they thought regaining good memories would somehow erase the bad ones. But that's the game Bucky was playing.

"Sure, sure, I'll come rest with you."

He agreed easily, smile at his lips, pulling the shroud of who he should be around himself more tightly as a protection.

"I'll just go get a shower first, I stink from the road. But you two go ahead and get some sleep, I'll be quiet when I slip in with you."

Bucky was only gone for five minutes with the water running when Steve felt Grant's head on his shoulder and, instinctively, he moved to wrap an arm around the still chilled man. "How do you think we should go about talking to him," Grant asked, which frankly confused Steve for a few long seconds. Had Grant figured it out? He'd been out cold when Steve did all of his thinking. How could he...?

It occurred to him a moment later that they might not be thinking about the same things. Or that Grant had been oblivious to Bucky's lack of sleep. He didn't play coy. "About--"

"He's pretending to be himself. He was almost catatonic the morning we left and all of a sudden, back in this reality, he's all charm and smiles? He called Natasha Dollface, Steve."

Steve was impressed and honestly put in his place by Grant's insight. He'd been so focused on the good because he'd wanted it so desperately that he forgot to look through it below the surface. "He's been playing us."

"For almost five days now. He doesn't think he can talk to us."

"No, he's afraid of disappointing us," Steve sighed. "We talk to him tonight."

If Bucky ever came back. He could be hiding in the shower. He had twenty minutes before Steve came in after him.

It was probably a good thing that Tony wasn't there to witness this conversation between the two Rogers men, not just because he would probably die of a happy heart attack to see the two blonds so inextricably twined together in the same bed, but because he would then be able to tell Bucky "I told you so" about his certainty that he could fool both of them into thinking he was a man that he wasn't.

Bucky, however, had no idea.

He took ten minutes in the shower to pull himself together and plaster over the cracks better. He would come back into the room on soft feet in case they were sleeping, and he hoped that they were, and cross to very carefully sit on the edge of the bed. He would lie down beside them and close his eyes, very carefully making his breathing slow and steady so they might think he was sleeping when he really wasn't.

He had no clue that he was about to be confronted.

Tony would have died on many occasions on this trip to see the pair tucked up together on occasion. They had really stopped thinking about each other as if they were the same person though, and while they did not have romantic feelings for the other, they were close. They were brothers, siblings that they had never had or thought that they wanted. They shared a best friend. They shared a man that they loved, but they themselves were not lovers. It was complicated but they had sorted it out. For the most part. Grant had had his jealous insecurities months before. Steve was going through it now. They might always be sometimes a little afraid that they weren't enough for their Bucky but that was just the nature of this particular game.

For now, however, both were focused less on each other and more on the brunet who thought he could slip into bed.

Grant turned and Steve unwound his arm from his little brother. He let Grant do the talking because Grant was better at it. His voice was calmer and he had seen the signs of this first.

"Buck. I think it's time-- We both think it's time for you to turn off the smiles when you don't feel like smiling. It's... They're no where near as nice as the real ones. I'd rather have one real one than a thousand fake ones."

Okay, so they were both awake, that was no problem. Bucky was pretty confident in his ability to feign sleep that they would surely just drop off soon and leave him be. Or not. Those words hit him harder than a bullet from a gun, and he felt his heart rate pick up tenfold, the start of panic growing like a weed in his chest.

He was so very careful not to show it though, only cracking one eye as if he were sleepy and smiling up at both of them in his absolute best lop-sided and lovable way. The same smile that Bucky always used to use when Steve was on the mend, or when he perfected a new dance step, or stupidly spent all their electricity money on buying some new art supplies.

"What're you talking about, idiot? Can't you see I'm trying to sleep here?" They could not know, they just could not. "Which I'm pretty sure is what you two are meant to be doing as well."

Steve sat up. It was dark here, the street was in the front of the building and they were tucked up in the back. The bathroom light had turned off but while all Grant could see was the glint of an eye and a smile when Bjcky's teeth flashed, Steve could see the whole picture. He saw the tightening of the jaw and the lines around d the eyes. Bucky was getting upset and still trying to keep his face on.

He lightly touched Grant's back to have him ease up a little. "We love you, Bucky. You. And this-- this isn't you." Maybe thst would straighten Bucky out. The man with the quick smile, easy on the eyes, and carefree despite his own lower middle class poverty, just so happened to not be the man that they were in love with. That man was gone. He'd died in a cold bunker alone, an experiment, raped and beaten and believing to the end that he was moments away from rescue, probably day dreaming between moments of agony about the dames he used to spin around dance hall floors.

That was Bucky, their best friend.

This was Bucky, their boyfriend.

"You're trying to spare us; right," Grant smiled, moving his hand up and over Bucky's chest. "It's noble of you but we don't want that. We just want you back."

"You'll never be our Bucky until you stop pretending to be and actually come to be," Steve said, eyes so kind, even the dark.

"Let us be your anchor," Grant insisted. "Let us hold you."

This was his whole damn world crumbling around his ears and he couldn't do a thing to stop it. He felt a sudden and irrational hatred for the two men that he was sharing a bed with, with their kind eyes and gentle words and fucking insipid compassion as if they weren't ruining everything.

"Shut up."

His voice was rougher this time, more of a bark, but he managed to cling onto the edges of his mask by the very tips of his fingernails. Couldn't they see that tearing this away would destroy him completely? Couldn't they see that he wanted this? He cleared his throat as he sat up, dislodging Grant's hand and getting just a bit of distance. He managed a weak sort of chuckle.

"Jeez, anyone would think that you guys didn't want me to be happy. I'm not allowed to smile and have a good time with the fellas I'm stepping out with now? We're safe, we're together, why shouldn't I be happy?"

Drop it. Drop it. Drop it. Drop it.

Spending time, even briefly, with Sam and with the literature that Steve actually left around the apartment for his own use about ways to deal with PTSD (including the knitting he had seen him do occasionally when he thought he was alone in his room), made Grant understand that he needed to break apart the bone that was healing incorrectly to set it again right. And this was going to hurt them all. Luckily, Steve was with him. Grant was not going to be capable of holding Bucky if it came to thst but his older brother certainly could.

And now that Steve could clearly see Bucky, he knew what he was dealing with. "You don't need to lie to us." Or himself. That's what hurt so badly about all of this. Healing Bucky meant that he needed to crumble. Before, he'd coldly told the tales of his torture. Now, he was trying to pretend it didn't happen. This was actually a good sign. It was progress even if it felt like a step back. It was real. There was emotion and hurt and anger behind the wall now. Bucky just had to accept it. Embrace it. And that would be the hardest part of all.

"You're not happy because you were abused. And you're afraid. And you're being a god damned martyr," Grant said as he sat up, parroting back Bucky's words. "Let us help you. These smiles are killing me. I don't want to act happy to help with your illusion."

"I told you to shut up!"

Bucky was out of the bed in a heartbeat, unable to just sit there any longer with the two men that he felt were pursuing him where he didn't want to be pursued. It was a weird echo of what had happened above the Potomac, of Steve constantly pushing and pushing that Bucky knew him, and the Soldier snapping back out of panic.

"What the hell is wrong with you? You're selfish jerks, the both of you. Did you ever think that maybe this is what I want? Maybe I want to be normal, maybe I want everything to go back to how it should be, why the fuck shouldn't I get that? Didn't I earn it? I think you both want me to be broken because it feeds into your guilt complex. You're just goddamn guilty that you let your Bucky die in Italy, and you can't forgive yourself for not knowing I survived the fall. Well, fuck you both. I am fine. Why can't you let me be fine?"

He was pacing the room like a tiger, all tense and hard lines, voice spiralling out of control. He hated them both so much, it was like a red mist, what right did they have to strip him of this? He couldn't even see that the anger was just a way to stop the choking panic from getting free.

For the first time, Steve saw Grant lose his resolve and shrink back. He murmured softly thst of course Bucky deserved everything he could ever want and more as payment for what had happened to him, only none of it came out in clear words. He put a hand on the younger man's shoulder and reached back to click on the soft yellow gold light. It filled the room softly, like sunshine. Steve had missed these bulbs, he'd missed how much warmer it felt when he was growing up. The twenty first century was all just harsh lights and whirring machines.

He took a deep breath. He'd been to enough meetings with Sam to understand what was happening right here and right now. He could almost read the ripples of panic about to burst out of Bucky's chest. It was sad. It was so, so sad. But this had to happen. This dam needed to break.

"You're not fine. This is not fine. And what you're saying to us now? We know you don't mean it. We know you love us. And I'm real sorry, pal. I'm real sorry. For everything. But I didn't know you were alive. I didn't know what was happening to you. I mourned your loss. And then you came back to me. And right now? Right now the only thing I want to do is not be your excuse."

He approached Bucky slowly. He anticipated being sung at or run from.

It was a good instinct, because as soon as Steve was in range, Bucky swung at him with every ounce of strength he had. He put behind it all his rage and bitterness, all his hurt and confusion, and all his terror that behind the fractured splinters of himself there weren't enough pieces to make a whole. He punched Steve so hard in the jaw with his metal hand that he almost expected him to go through the wall.

Didn't matter.

He pursued and grabbed him by the shirt to pin him up against any available surface and began just punching him over and over, face contorted and tears leaking down his face without him even knowing it.

"I told you to shut the hell up!"

He wanted to wound right now, he wanted to hurt them both. He wanted to make them see that this was preferable, that false smiles were better than no smiles, and that some pain just couldn't be endured. It made him freer with his tongue, but more to hurt than to admit his own hurts.

"What do you want me to say, Steve? Do you want to hear about Howard Stark and how he created my arm and the machine that wiped me? Do you want to hear about how I can't even remember my own sister's name or face, but I can remember the faces of every single handler I've ever had and how they've all looked like you? Do you want to hear about how much I want your touch, but every time you touch me my skin crawls because all I can feel are the people who pinned me down and fucked me until I bled even with the serum? Do you want to know that I've thrown up ninety percent of the food you give me, because I can't tolerate it. I've been on a liquid diet since 1958, and assets don't get human food. Do you want to hear about every time they tortured me, all of my victims, because I remember it all, but I don't know the steps to the Charleston or what my favourite food is. Is that what you want, Steve?!"

He kept punching the whole time he was yelling, voice raw and furious, uncaring how bloodied Steve's face or his own metal hand were getting.

"Tell me, Steve? Tell me! Is that what you want? Why can't you fucking let it go? Why can't you let me have this?"

Edited 2017-03-05 09:13 (UTC)

Steve didn't fight back. He blocked what he could but he didn't fight Bucky back. It was just like the helicarrier, and Steve took more blows than he should have simply because he refused to raise a fist to his friend. But Steve could withstand a lot, and that he was still standing when his arms were bruised from the punches and his stomach was bleeding internally and blood poured from his nose was a testament to more than the serum. It was strength of character and moral fitness that kept him from collapsing.

Grant struggled with the blankets and his own lungs, in tears as always from the words said that were meant to hurt them and he wrapped his arms around Bucky's waist as he'd done the afternoon they were brought to the future world.

"No! Stop! Buck stop and we'll talk! We don't need to-- Bucky stop!"

The words would be sticking with both men for much longer than the bruises did on Steve's face.

It was going to change them and do what Bucky had dreaded. But it was a step that they all needed first.

This isn't what he wanted.

He had wanted to go back and be who he used to be, to do it over again and get it right this time. He wanted to see Grant and Steve smile at him and know that he had put that smile there, and he wanted to smile right back. It wasn't fair that they were both doing this, it wasn't right. But he couldn't stop it now, not any more than he could have stopped an avalanche with his bare hands.

The combined look of Steve's bloodied face still looking at him with compassion, and the feel of Grant's arms around his waist, were the final blow needed to break through his walls and turn the cracks into fully fledged chasms. He let out a scream that sounded more animal than human, before he just fell to his knees. A sobbing, shaking, utterly broken man.

Break a bone healed bad to set it for the good, Steve repeated to himself in an agony rattled mind. Grant was already there to hold Bucky, even if the idea of holding him now that they knew every touch reminded him of being raped was a weapon. Steve watched it as he slid down the wall, coughing up blood. That arm had been unstoppable. His face bruised up and swelled until he could barely make out the scene ahead of him and then he crawled over to hold Bucky too.

He knew he'd be fine already. He wasn't dealing with the concussive force of water. His consciousness was intact. One of his ribs were broken on his left side but that would heal too.

He wasn't worried at all about himself.

But Buck.... He needed to be there to bookend him, to make him at least as all right as a man could get. He whispered an apology through lips that could barely move as Grant sobbed along with Bucky.

Steve didn't cry. He wanted to but he didn't feel as if he had that right.

It was like everything inside Bucky had finally flooded to the surface and refused to be pushed back down, bubbling over like an endless well of pain. He couldn't see it now, but it was for the best, like lancing poison from the wound so that it could bleed clear and then heal. Maybe in a way that left lasting scars, but also in a way that might not hurt every day like carrying it around this way did.

He cried for hours, though he lost all sense of time, and it was finally dawn when he quieted enough to pull back and away from the two men that were holding him. He didn't even know where he wanted to go, just that he needed to not be there on the floor any longer.

It was to the edge of the bed that he moved, slow and jerky, with his arms wrapped around his own waist as if to protect him.

"Why?"

It was a tired question for them both, no more hate or anger, just hurt confusion. Why couldn't they have let it go before it got to this?

Grant helped Steve to bed because he really couldn't get his feet under him. His older brother was so heavy that he thought he would collapse too, but of course he didn't. He found the strength to get Steve to bed and covered up and as comfortable as porrible before he sat on the bed next to Bucky. He knew Steve would be all right. He just had to let his healing factor kick in. He'd probably just have some bruising by that evening. Nothing more.

Grant tried to hold Bucky's hand as he spoke to him, slowly and with as much warmth as he could muster.

"If we let you carry on with that, or with your perpetual coldness, you'd snap. You need to get it all out. And you need to really try to believe us when we tell you that we want you. Not some shadow of the you that you think you need to be for our happiness." He was reluctantly to try and stroke Bucky's hair. Or lean against him.

He knew he needed to get over that revealation but right now, it was just so wrong and revolting to him that he might be thought of lthst way or trigger those memories-- he didn't allow himself to entertain thoughts that Bucky was only with them because he looked like his handlers all did.

And he had no idea how Steve was taking the news about his friend Howard. Steve was in and out of sleep, thankfully.

He had said he wasn't going to tell Steve about Howard because he didn't want to taint the memory of a friend long gone and he certainly didn't want to colour how Steve saw Tony. His friend was innocent, definitely not HYDRA, it would Steve suspect? Tony did take after a lot of his father's other bad qualities, after all. He hadn't wanted to hurt him either and yet there was blood all over the sheets and Steve was pretty much out cold.

The hesitancy of Grant's touch didn't go unnoticed, and it was both appreciated and reviled. It was so stupid; he couldn't even figure out his own damn mind on the subject. He wanted the touch like a plant in the desert needed rain, but it also repulsed and terrified him. They hadn't had the counselling in his day to know that was normal, that it was okay to be unsure or changeable.

Finally he nodded, fingers curling loosely around Grant's.

"Okay... okay, I don't think I can pretend any more anyway. I'm so... I'm so sorry."

"Tell you what," Grant said, looking up at Bucky with red rimmed eyes, though his breathing had greatly improved now that it was dusk again outside, another full day spent in this place. It had been lucky that Steve paid for several days upfront when Grant was feeling poorly. He had remembered how moving him when he was having an episode was a terrible idea and even after feeling better, he ought to stay in place. "Next time we pass a soda fountain, you get me the biggest chocolate malt you can get and I'll forgive you completely."

He brought Bucky's hand to his lips and kissed his knuckles. This was a good thing. Bucky was never going to outright believe him but it was the truth just the same.

"You have t been sleeping. And Steve needs the rest. I'll be right here, I promise, but do you think you could sleep a little?"

Grant was already processing what to do in the morning. Liquid diet-- that was psychological and not physical. He'd learned the difference when he was working with Bruce, about how the mind could have such strength against the body that the body played along with it. But if that was the case here, they would have to treat Bucky like a baby and introduce solid foods more slowly.

This all would give him something to do as Bucky rested and Steve healed.

The reason they had put him on a liquid diet to begin with had been physical rather than psychological. The had been the first time he had been thawed from cryostasis and he had nearly died. The food that had been in his stomach splintered into dangerous chunks of ice and ripped his internal organs to shreds. The liquid diet had kept that from happening again, though it had also allowed them even more psychological control over their asset.

Bucky didn't think he could sleep even though he was exhausted and drained. He was too afraid of the dreams that came with it and probably hurting them all over again if he woke in a panic. There was a balanced moment where he almost lied and nodded to alleviate Grant's concern, but in the end he shook his head, finally telling the truth.

"I can't. But I want a bath, I want to be on my own."

He pulled himself up and away after those quiet words and disappeared without another word into the bathroom. He was in there a long time and if Grant came to check on him then he'd see that, despite his words, Bucky had fallen fast asleep in the water with his head resting safely on the side.

Grant drained the water slowly, keeping the heat high in the room but making it safe for Bucky should he slip. He covered him with all of the towels they had and rolled a wash cloth so that it was by his head if he rolled it back to save him from the discomfort of the ceremony.

He cleaned up Steve after that. Slowly. Methodically. He tried not to wake him but of course Steve woke, if only to be lulled back to sleep.

The man that had always been the subject of care became the caregiver and it was good for him to do it for the men in this room even if everything was still so disastrously wrong.

They couldn't stay for long. They didn't have food with them and Grant couldn't drive. Not really. Natasha had shown him how to get around in a car on the compound but he had ditched the vehicle twice in the process.

That didn't stop him from sneaking the keys that evening and heading out into the wild to the general store he had seen a few miles back.

Parking had been miserable but he returned with his arms full just in time to drop everything on the sofa and, wheezing from the two flights of stairs, rush to answer the phone from the other dimension before it woke anyone.

Tony seemed annoyed.

"Uh. Barnes please?"

Grant had to laugh. "Are you always so entitled?"

"I think you know the answer is yes, get him. I need him."

If Bucky or Steve had known that Grant had taken the car out at night when he could barely drive, they both would have had a blue fit. But lucky for everyone's peace of mind both of them stayed fast asleep the entire time that he was gone, though it would hardly take a lot for Steve to notice the new supplies and then figure out where they had come from. Honestly, he was surprised that he slept at all even if his body needed to heal because he was just as horrified by all he had heard and guilty for all he hadn't seen or done as Grant felt.

It was the sound of the phone that woke him up, though he didn't quite get to it before Grant did. That is was Tony was pretty evident from the one sided conversation. He didn't blame Tony for what his father had done, more himself for not seeing through Howard, but he felt awkward. Did Tony know?

Surely not. Steve didn't want to be the one to tell him either, but he wasn't about to let Grant bear the brunt of dealing with Tony, so he gestured for the handset and tried not to sound like a man with a fat lip and a lot of facial bruising.

"He's asleep right now, Tony, can I help?"

"I can't believe I'm being Eiffle Towered by the Rogers boys. Wake him up." Tony was pacing and drunk, drunk enough that his pacing was more like stumbling but he was still articulate. His ability to function when his liver was having trouble was frighteningly commendable.

He'd put the tapes put two days before. As expected, his contracts dried up. Half of the country hated him and the other half were afraid of not hating him for fear of making themselves a target. A fifth of his work force quit in solidarity. Factories had closed down and he wasn't doing as well as projected with his ability to plug leaks.

HYDRA was paying him back in kind and everyone suspected everyone else. It was a mess. The one good thing, however, was that Barnes was playing downwind, and more like a battered wife, something to pity and then forget about, than big news.

"I just. Want to talk. To Barnes." He was caught up in so much. There were campaigns to have him arrested because everyone feared what he could do if he was HYDRA. And no one understood what he was going through the way Barnes could. "Run along and wake him up and give this phone to him."

Pepper was doing her best to help plug the leaks and minimise damage but it was hard when she couldn't prove that any money that Howard had made for the company hadn't been gained through his dealings with HYDRA. She and the team of lawyers had advised Tony to liquidate Stark industries and reestablish it as a new company in just Pepper's name with Tony just a very highly paid R&D technician. It might be the only way to salvage this.

Steve had no idea this was happening, all he heard was the slight slur to Tony's words that told him exactly why his idiot inventor friend was being so insistent.

"I told you, Tony, he's sleeping."

"It's okay," Bucky's voice was listless from the doorway, he had been woken by the sound of voices. He padded over without looking Steve in the eye and took the receiver. "I'm here, Tony."

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