fossilised | It's AU time

Bucky... Bucky Balls. Oh my God. Bucky stared at Steve for a long moment as if he couldn't quite believe what he just heard, and then burst into genuine laughter. It was made all the funnier when Steve tried to backtrack in embarrassment, and he found that his stomach was hurting with how hard he was laughing. Bucky Balls. God. Nobody would ever buy anything sounding like that.

"No-- no way, you can't just change the subject after that."

He had to wheeze it out past laughter. But really, he didn't want to admit that he hadn't even started looking for a job because he had been too pathetic to even set foot outside his apartment for the last few weeks. It was just too ridiculous and too stupid to admit to anyone, not when he had come here with a determination to be normal again.

"We're going to talk about your terrible naming strategy. I mean, as a heartthrob actor, my balls are obviously coveted, but not as a food item."

"Hey now. Don't put yourself down that way! I'm sure your balls are just fine." Steve couldn't stop blushing. This was not even remotely the way he assumed that the evening would go. With the whiplash he had given himself from all of the assumptions he was under, Steve wanted to steer clear of all the innuendo and yet found himself crash right back into it.

Why? Who was this stupidly good looking guy (single arm aside) with the sassy personality? Why did Steve enjoy his company so much? He was a loner by nature. Aside from coffee with some friends at school and the occasional night out with his neighbor across the hall, Steve didn't go out of his way to make friends. So what was all of this with Bucky?

He put his chopsticks down and got up from the table, bringing his beer with him to the sofa. If Bucky wanted to keep talking about his balls or ramen noodles shapes like his balls, he could follow. He had wanted to get a look at what was on the easel right? Water color and graphite had taken over the canvas propped up there. It was the cityscape as viewed from Steve's window. It might not be the most exciting subject but the line work and the emotion in it was beautiful. The coloring made it look moody, and Steve only worked on it in the rain. But there was a spot at the bottom corner, a woman carrying a bright red umbrella, that pulled the work into singular focus.

It was a lonely piece without that tiny figure and though she was t the subject matter of the art, she drew in the eye.

Steve was hilarious. He seemed like such a clean cut guy, the sort that he might not even have been surprised to see in a shirt and tie knocking on doors asking if the people inside had found their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and the blush at his cheeks said that he probably didn't delve into innuendo that often. But that he was trying it, and sassing right back, that just made Bucky laugh all the harder.

"You know, people usually have to buy me at least three dinners before they get to discuss my balls in such detail."

He wasn't nearly as embarrassed. He had always been cocky when it came to flirting, and his time in the army had completely desensitised him to any filthy jokes or swearing, that was just the norm among the army guys and girls. Abandoning his last ramen ball, he chose to take his drink to the sofa instead, eyes suddenly catching on the painting.

"...wow," he said, laughter dying down almost at once. "You painted that? That's amazing."

"I just feel like if I'm going to be making ramen sculptures of your balls, we really need to have a good long talk about it," Steve persisted, even if he was dying inside. Where had this come from? He never made dirty jokes. Ever. But Bucky was laughing and when he laughed, the room just felt alive. It was like everything that he hadn't even realized was sketched in black and white was suddenly popping with color that he hadn't even noticed before.

Was that weird? It was probably weird. Nat would absolutely tell him to stop drinking the water from the cup he used to clean his brushes with if he told her.

Thankfully, the conversation had shifted and Steve got to shrug off his work. "That? Well thanks," he said politely. "Buildings aren't hard to paint. You just have to eye the perspective and fill in the lines at an angle. Anyone can do it."

Not everyone could pump such emotion into a painting with such a mundane perspective though. But Steve was modest.

Natalia would probably tell him that he had a crush and then get pretty excited about it. She seemed like an ice queen on the surface, and she certainly knew how to take care of herself, but once she let someone in then she really cared about them. And, unfortunately for Steve, that usually took the form of trying to hook him up with literally anyone she thought might be suitable. Guy or girl.

Bucky had already moved on from the innuendo, utterly captivated by the painting. It looked so-- real, and yet abstract too, more emotion than logic. It both saddened him and awed him. He hadn't expected this guy to be that good.

"You're kidding, right? I wouldn't be able to paint anything like this if I tried for the rest of my life, you've got a real gift. This is amazing, it's-- wow, seriously."

"Have you ever tried? It's all about technique and practice," Steve said, shifting to the edge of the couch so he could lean on his knees and watch Bucky. No one made such a big deal about his work. His teachers sometimes, sure, but not even Natalia did.

And speaking of, she needed to be discouraged from setting him up. When she found out he worked at at a tattoo parlor two years ago, she tried to set him up with a dishwasher at the club she worked at who was covered in tats and his idea of foreplay had been to throw Steve over his shoulder and literally toss him into bed.

It was the only time he had faked an asthma attack in his life, but he had no idea what else to do at the time! That guy had come on so strong that he hadn't left the apartment for a week! That was probably silly but wow, he'd never been so easily manhandled in his life.

After that, he tried his best to politely refuse any and all dates. Even when she ambushed him with blind double dates with her boyfriend.

"I prefer figures to landscapes but landscapes are important too. I would love to pen my own comic one day. You can't get away with plain backgrounds for panels anymore."

It was probably obvious from the toned muscles even through the shirt and flannel button up that Bucky was athletic and had always been that way, it wouldn't be hard to imagine him as a jock in high school. But if Steve had been nervous that he might get laughed at for having a dream as 'childish' as comics, he wouldn't have to be nervous for long, because Bucky beamed.

"That would be so cool. Do you know what sort of style you want to go into? Like... Marvel or DC superhero stuff? Dark Horse? Something more indie and stylised? Independents? You got a writer that you're working with for something original, write yourself? Or you hoping to just get placed through a big company?"

Whoops, that was too many questions.

Bucky realised it as soon as he turned around in his enthusiasm, but he really liked comics. The blend of art and writing was a way of telling stories like nothing else, and a lot of his boxes of books upstairs were graphic novels.

Wobbly eyes evidently were a thing, a real thing, because there was honestly no other way to describe the way that Steve looked right now. He was up in a flash to his studio -- where Bucky could follow if he wished and be amazed by the art on the walls and the art half finished spread out in parchment on the ground or propped up on canvas or stacked in sheets beside a light board on the tiny upright desk.

He wasn't interested in any of that, he just wanted to pull out his nice and neat labeled boxes of comics for Bucky to see. Some were filled along the edges with post its to mark pages.

"Spider-man is my favorite," he admitted. "And I've always wanted to create my own x-man character but to be honest, I think I'd like to make up my own world. Something Science Fiction or a steampunk Western and yeah. I know. I don't seem the type."

He motioned for Bucky to kneel beside him.

"But you don't seem the type to like comics either."

It was kind of sad how excited Steve seemed to be that someone supported his dream career path, what kind of jerks would put down something like that? He had always been a jock at school, but he had never been a bully, always the sort of kid to step in to stop a smaller kid getting beaten up.

"All of this is amazing, you're going to get a job with one of the big places no problem. I mean-- god, just look at this stuff, it's gorgeous."

He followed and knelt down, the action pushing his prosthetic hand out of his jeans pocket so that the arm hung loose and limp at his side. He didn't notice, he had no feeling there and so the way it hung wasn't something he paid attention to except to make sure before he went anywhere that the hand was secured.

"You should definitely go for it, steampunk Western sounds amazing. Jeez, I had no idea that I was moving in above a genius."

It took a moment or two after each sentence for Steve to remember that he wasn't being made fun of. Bucky was genuinely interested in the comics he'd had stashed everywhere, sure, but his eyes were over the acrylic paintings of the charcoal work and ink washes that adorned the walls. He felt shy about it, but still proud of himself. He'd come a long way from drawing comics about his daily life from the point of view of a monkey in an artist's apron.

"Can I show you some ideas?" Steve knew a lot of comic shop frequenters but they always were so opinionated or drew parallels between his ideas and issue such and such of this or that comic. Or offered ideas of their own to more closely align this character to that. Or thought that the boobs should be drawn bigger. That always annoyed him.

But Bucky seemed just down to earth enough not to be sexist about the size of the breasts of his female characters so...

He leaned over to drag out giant sketchbooks and laid them in a stack beside the boxes of published comics he owned. There were all sorts of things in there, sketches and landscapes and notes written in a small, neat lettering. There were even materials studies, like how leather or velvet would look draped in certain ways, and color swatches too.

"What did you want to be when you were a kid, Buck?" That seemed out of nowhere.

Bucky was absolutely entranced by the whole situation. Every drawing was wonderful in a different way and, even if he didn't have the art credentials to recognise good shading technique, the style and the emotion that went into each piece was easily identifiable. He was careful as he flicked through the sketchbooks, occasionally dealing out a piece of praise here and there.

Then the question came.

He had always wanted to be a soldier. He used to get really mad when the smaller kids got picked on in school and he tried to help them learn to fight, to box, to stand up for themselves. He wanted to be a soldier to do that on a larger scale. He wasn't some dumb idealistic kid; and, to be honest, he had never expected to see war. He hadn't expected to end up shipped out to Afghanistan, he hadn't expected two years of sand and blood, and then six months of-- No. He could almost see the edges of his vision starting to fray even touching on that time as a POW, and he forced it all back down.

Bucky pretended that he hadn't heard the question, it was easier.

"This one's the best," he said, pointing at a muscular but not overdone woman in steampunk western gear. "She looks like she'd be so interesting. Like... some kind of outlaw, or maybe the sheriff in a backwater town?"

They had been side by side. There was no way that Bucky hadn't heard the question but Steve wasn't too bummed about it. He leaned in to glance at the character and laughed. "That's based off of my friend, Nat. She said she wanted to be a police officer when she grew up. She's a dancer now. Uh. Not that sort of dancer. A ballerina. She actually just got accepted as a backup dancer or whatever you call it with the Met. But anyway, she's got this flaming red hair but she's so tiny. She said she wanted to be big and strong so... I drew her like that. I kind of picture her being this tough sort of negotiator, like she can crack the bad guys with a look."

Goodness knew she managed to talk Steve into just about anything and she'd only just learned English!

He flipped a few pages to a monkey holding what looked like a shield and a ray gun. "And this is me, as her sheriff's deputy. Not that I wanted to go into law enforcement or anything. I just wanted to be monkey in a zoo and play all day when I was little," he confessed.

Maybe that would get Bucky to open up?

"I should make a character based off of you. Maybe like.... A bounty hunter who specializes in disguises. Since you're such a big bad actor and all!"

Steve was almost ridiculously adorable, people like this didn't actually exist in real life. How could he have wanted to be a monkey just playing around in the zoo? That was too cute, it almost made Bucky want to reach over and ruffle his hair on instinct, but that would be really weird and so he held himself back.

"You serious?"

He lit up like the Fourth of July fireworks.

"Definitely! I'd love to be a badass bounty hunter, maybe I could have some kind of mask so nobody knows who I am, like the mysterious coolest guy around. I could have a six shooter, and maybe I don't talk. All silent assassin, you know?"

Okay, maybe he was going overboard, but who didn't want to be a bounty hunter in a cool Western comic?

"Or what if your arm was a rifle? Like you just lift it up and boom-boom! Right between the eyes, no more head! Which would make you a terrible bounty hunter because how could you prove that the alien scum you were bringing in to the sherriff was actually the guys on the poster? But deputy monkey would feel bad for you anyway and pay you in bananas."

He probably shouldn't have mentioned the arm, he thought suddenly as it lightly brushed against him, rigid and cold. It didn't bother him. He didn't make a big deal about it and instead reached down to grab one of the books and flip to a clean page.

Hopefully he could just sketch away his faux pas, outlining an individual in a big duster with a sort of medicine man gas mask on, tube connecting from the mouth to a tank on his back. He left one arm, the left, uncovered and the. Flipped another page to detail the palm with a barrel opening extending from it, metal fingers hooked outwards.

"You're too cool for a cowboy hat-- oh, this mask should be more like a metal bandana..."

The casual atmosphere disappeared in less than a heartbeat, as Bucky tensed up completely at Steve's side. He watched the figure being sketched in, the left arm clearly a cyborg prosthetic, and he couldn't help but feel sick. He had noticed and he hadn't said anything. Was that why he had tried to be so nice and invited him out for food? He felt sorry for the charity case with one arm?

"The fuck do you think you're doing?"

He didn't always have the best handle on his temper when things frightened him now, though he would never actually manhandle someone smaller than him. He just looked furious, and maybe a little scared underneath it.

"Why the hell would you do that? He's normal, a fucking bounty hunter, he's not-- he has two arms. Jesus Christ."

He knew. What if he knew how it happened? No. No, surely not. Most people tended to assume men his age, still in his early twenties, hadn't been to war. They always assumed an accident, car maybe. But he still didn't want to be pitied, didn't want to be seen as less.

Steve's eyes snapped up from the page and he found himself closing his hand more tightly over the pencil as if he might need it to defend himself. He'd gotten too friendly with a guy be literally knew nothing about. James. James, middle name Buchanen. He lived upstairs. And that was it. Steve had invited him in and now they were in the back bedroom with all of his stuff laying out and they were alone. Alone and no one knew he had a guest.

His breathing changed as he wet his lips.

"Most... There are always characters in steampunk that had reconstructed-- the Sheriff has bionic legs. The-- The deputy is a monkey," he tried to stress before he felt his face hear. "I'm sorry, Bucky. I just thought it would look cool if-- I'm real sorry:"

He snapped the book closed and then dropped his eyes, the lids periodically flicking upwards towards the edges of Bucky's knee or foot to make sure he knew which way he was moving.

He could almost smell the stink of fear, and it crashed over him like being doused in cold water. He had done this. He had made some poor artist look terrified because of his own hang ups about his damn arm and what had happened to it. But he was still too wrong footed to apologise, too on edge to do anything but stand up and back away a step.

"Is that why you invited me in? You have some sort of fetish for amputees?"

He needed to stop running his goddamn mouth, but it was like he had no way to stop himself.

"It's not cool, it doesn't look cool. Forget about it, just-- Jesus, I'm sorry, this was a mistake."

He was a fucking monster, he couldn't even talk to a genuinely nice guy without being a world class jerk. He turned to start stalking towards the door. Better to leave before he made everything worse, if that was even possible.

"Fetish-- hey! Hey, you don't get to be an asshole and just walk away," Steve said, stepping over his spread out art as he followed Bucky to the door. "I didn't even know about your arm until we were eating! And I don't care, why would anyone care? I'm not a bully, okay?" That was the most important thing that he needed to get out here. He needed Bucky to know that he wasn't that sort of guy. "If I offended you, then I'm sorry. But it's still cool, I don't care what you say, to have an arm gun. Ash from Evil Dead has a chainsaw for a hand and Barrett from FF7 has a gattling gun arm-- are you saying they're not cool?"

This was not the direction he wanted to go in for an argument here. It was bordering on the ultimate of ridiculousness.

"Because you are seriously wrong, Buck. They're awesome. And you're awesome too, even without a shotgun arm, because you're nice to me. And I don't know what your hang up is and again, I'm sorry if I hurt you, but I am not going to apologize for thinking my design is cool! That's your only mistake here!"

Yeah, so.... This was all insanity now.

Was he for real right now? Was he really trying to hinge his argument on fictional amputees having cool replacements, and therefore it was no problem at all that he just drew someone based on a real person with their real life disabilities just parodied over the page like that? It was such a dumb argument, so naive, that Bucky couldn't help but stop and turn to look at him incredulously.

"Your design is based on me," he finally managed to say, managing to keep his voice more level. "You don't know shit about what happened to my arm, I didn't even tell you that I had no arm, and you still thought it was cool to just lay it out on the page like it was nothing. That's fucked up."

It wasn't the idea of a gun arm that bothered him, it was the idea of a character based off him missing an arm at all. He hated his disability, he hated it so deeply that it was a part of him, and there's no way he wanted it broadcast out there for the world to see.

"Fine-- fine, I'm sorry for saying you had a fetish, but you're an insensitive asshole instead."

And that was what happened when you were a sheltered kid like Steve Rogers who went to school with other sheltered kids and worked in a tattoo parlor for sheltered kid patrons. He'd been red several times tonight but he had never been so red as he was now, the tips of his ears like beacons for airplanes. Just strap him onto a spire on top of a building.

What was worse was that he could actually feel his eyes brim from utter embarrassment before the scene before he blurred like watercolor on the canvas at the window. He hadn't meant anything by it, but he'd really been in the wrong here. Ignorance didn't cover that up.

His jaw worked for a moment as if he was trying to chew up the words and find a way to get them down his throat before he could say anything.

He hugged his sketchbook to his chest and tilted his chin down.

"I'm-- I really am sorry-- I didn't-- I don't have any excuses. That was horrible of me. That was really horrible."

"Yeah, it was."

Bucky's response was harsh and immediately, but that was mostly because he was in shock from the frank and honest apology. Okay, so maybe Steve really hadn't realised what an asshole move it was, maybe he was that sheltered. He certainly seemed like he was, if he had cited all those fictional characters as a reason that prosthetics could be cool.

"...it's fine." It wasn't fine, he could feel this whole evening gone wrong like an itch under his skin, but he wasn't so much of an asshole as to vindictively stay mad at someone who had genuinely been nice to him without reason before now. "Don't cry, it's fine. Just-- no gun arm for the bounty hunter, okay? Prosthetics aren't cool."

He sighed and scrubbed his hand over his face. "Look, I'm gonna go. I'm sorry I fucked this night up, I was having fun before."

"You didn't do anything. It was all me," Steve insisted, putting the sketch book down on the counter as he followed Bucky the rest of the way to the door. He didn't say anything about the crying remark. He hated that he was sensitive like thst sometimes but it served him right to be made fun of for it. He offered Bucky the last ramen ball in the container he'd brought him and regardless if he took it or not, he would shut the door after he left and do up the three redundant locks after.

There would be no actually sobbing, though he felt horribly about it for the next ten minutes until here was a knock at the door. Insistent.

A tired, annoyed looking woman was pressed close to the view port and Steve sighed before he let her in and offered her the take out container he had gotten for her before discussing his evening with the neighbor upstairs.

The one that Nat had seen leaving his apartment as she was coming home.

"He's so cute, Steven," she said, accent thick. "You make a dumb choice. Fix it."

Steve was up all night trying to figure out how to fix it and ended up sitting up drawing and inking the bounty hunter into an apology card for the rest of the night. He had a bionic face mask and two real hands with six shooters in each. Inside was an image of his monkey character tied up and hung from a tree.

"I don't deserve anything, but if I can ever make it up to you, text me," he wrote inside and left his number on the card before he slipped it under Bucky's door and finally went to bed.

Nat might be a force of nature all unto herself, but she really cared about Steve and wanted to see him happy. If there was a cute guy in the building that he might have a chance with, then she would do everything she could to set it up and make it happen. Unless that cute guy turned out to be a jerk and hurt her Steve, then he would get his ass handed to him by a petite ballerina with amazing core strength.

Bucky spent the rest of the night feeling like a jerk, and feeling self conscious as hell. He couldn't have broadcast 'I have issues about my missing arm' louder unless he'd actually got a loudspeaker and bellowed it from the roof of the apartment building. Idiot. Steve hadn't meant any real harm and he had just flipped out at him.

The piece of paper took him by surprise, but not as much as the drawings and the heartfelt words. Who the hell was this guy? He was so damn pure and all-American that he was pretty sure bald eagles probably came to tuck him up in bed every night. But he nevertheless pinned the drawing carefully to his fridge.

It still took him two days to actually text the number given to him, and only then because he was really fucking drunk on whiskey that he'd ordered from the internet.

FROM: Bucky
TO: Steve

ehy. youre a nice guy and im sorry that i was a jerk. do eagle s tuck oyu in at night??? i bet your underwear is a flag.

So. Bucky was done with him. He knew he had to have gotten the card already, but there was nothing at all from the man upstairs and Steve had to suck up his misdeed and just get on with it. He had tried to right his wrong but evidently it just wasn’t in the cards. He ended up donating his tips for the next few days to the homeless by way of fresh sandwiches. It wasn’t the same thing but at least he was giving back.

When his phone buzzed in his pocket, he didn’t answer it right away. He was listening to a client be wishy washy about the Pokemon tattoo she wanted to get and was trying to explain to her that the simpler, the better, when she wanted something small. The ink lines had to be less busy so that someone could tell it was a pokemon and not just a big black mole on her thigh. When she was happy with it and the tattoo artist took over to trace the design on her body for approval, Steve excused himself and went into the back room to check his messages.

He was surprised and a little confounded. He didn’t recognize the number, but he could at least puzzle out that it was from Bucky after another careful re-read. What was this about eagles and flag underwear?

[From: Steve] [To: Number Unknown]

I was the jerk :( I’m old enough to tuck myself in :/ & it doesnt matter whats under the jeans as long as theyre clean

Bucky had drunk another fifth of a bottle by the time that Steve answered him. He was feeling reckless that day, mostly with himself. That sort of self destructive anger that made him wonder if anyone would even miss him if he just up and killed himself. It would sure cost the state a hell of a lot less money. Jesus, he was pathetic.

The return text kind of made him smile in a slightly bitter way. He liked this guy, he was so-- wholesome without being saccharine with it, he was just a genuinely nice guy, and Bucky desperately craved that right now. He wanted human contact, he wanted proof that there were good things in the world as well as shitty things.

He needed to try and arrange a hangout without displaying how shocking his head was at the moment, maybe flirt back a bit?

FROM: Bucky
TO: Steve

ill check if theyre clean for you if you want? irght now? oyu should come up i have beer.

That was an okay message, right? Except for the fact that he was telling Steve that he was drinking before noon.

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