fossilised | It's AU time

"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.

Was there any other way to take that? Thst was flirting, right? But why? Steve took a screen shot and sent it to Natalia before he slunk around in the back room with his phone in his pocket. He checked ink levels and he testing the ph balance of the cleaning solution for the tools before he felt the buzz that was her response.

[From: Natabatadingdong <3]
[To: Steve]
Go for it!!!!11 Right now!!!!!

She was a terrible influence and Steve groaned before he went back to the bathroom. This would take a little more wordsmithing than he usually bothered with and he kept glancing at the time at the top of the screen and groaning before he made Bucky a contact, putting a little gun emoji next to his name.

[From: Steve]
[To: Bucky -->]
Will that offer be available in an hour?
@ work right now
2nd offer not the 1st
Underwear is clean, promise

He’d be missing his evening pottery class but… Well, it was pottery. No one liked pottery.

Steve was so adorable that he didn't even mind being shot down in the flirting, it hadn't been intended to be serious anyway. He had no idea if Steve even swung that way and, if he did, Bucky sure wasn't in any kind of position to be asking anyone out. But an hour seemed a hell of a long time away, a lot could happen in an hour. He could be fucking dead in an hour.

FROM: Bucky
TO: Steve

k. mihgt be dead bt then.

Wait. Shit. He hadn't meant to text and send that. He had a frozen moment before he sent another few texts in rapid succession.

FROM: Bucky
TO: Steve

of boredom
nothin else was joking
haha
see you in an hour
door si open

Since there was literally no other customers that afternoon for him and the last thirty minutes of his shift couldn’t complete a custom drawing even with a walk in, Steve asked Mickey to let him go early. He stopped by the coffee shop he liked on the way back to his apartment to say hello to Loren (who barely looked up from whatever book he was reading to fill his order) and picked up two of his usuals and two orange raspberry scones. Once again he paused between flights of stairs, but he still managed to make it to Bucky’s apartment before the hour was up and knocked on the door as best he could.

Natalia had texted him twice more along the way but he didn’t acknowledge her and she eventually had to stop for practice.

“Buck? It’s Steve. Answer the door even if you’re dead. I got something to sop up whatever you’ve been drinking!” A scone was not going to make up for the mess he made but maybe it was a step in the right direction?

Bucky had not sobered up even a little bit by the time Steve got there, he had in fact drunk the rest of that bottle and started on another. He just about made it to his feet to come to the door and open it up, looking bleary eyed and attractively rumpled. His left sleeve this time was pinned up at the elbow, though it was obvious he had literally nothing below the shoulder.

"Steve? Fuck, this s'a... surprise. You should've told me you were coming."

He smiled a little lop sided and stepped back to let Steve inside, his judgement impaired enough that he didn't even consider how that might be a bad idea considering the state of his apartment. The boxes still weren't unpacked, the bed still wasn't built, there was just a sheet on the mattress and a grubby pillow. One of the mirrors in the bathroom had been shattered and the glass just left all over the floor.

"Sit-- sit down, make yourself at home." He snorted, like that was a joke, and plopped himself back down on the floor. "You want a beer?"

With the small size of the place, Steve got an eyeful the moment he had entered the room. First of Bucky, because there was no denying that he made everything look good, but then the state of the apartment was obvious. With a studio, he could see everything. Including the glass glittering on the floor through the bathroom door to his left. Mrs. Johnson was not going to be happy.

"A surprise huh? Well I just had my eagle friends fly me over. How about we have some coffee?" Steve set the bag on the counter with the scones in it and pulled out the large cup from the holder he was carrying to offer it to Bucky. There was mirth in his face as he tilted his head to watch how Bucky drank it. It was blank, but he had creamers and sugar with him. His own coffee was light and sweet.

Hopefully he wouldn't burn his tongue.

"I should have asked them to stay. You might need help getting around on those sea legs of yours." He was quick to put down his carrier so he could steady poor Bucky, swaying on his feet. "Been busy, huh?" It was only when he turned to get the scones did he spy the card on the fridge with the delivery menus. That was--

Nice. Really nice.

Bucky had genuinely forgotten everything about the text conversation, and his face when Steve mentioned the eagles was a picture. He looked shocked and slightly like a conspiracy had just been confirmed to him, and then amused as all hell. He was still chuckling when he took the coffee and downed a sip without noticing the heat in his mouth at all.

"I fucking knew it."

He knew it

"I knew you were too goddamn wholesome to be real. Like-- Captain America, you read that one? Carried around by a pack of bald eagles. They called a pack? Flock? I don't know... this s'good coffee."

He took another swig and watched Steve move about his apartment. All his private things were still in boxes, it didn't matter what he saw. Except the prosthetic, which was laid out on the kitchen counter as if it had been tossed there, smooth plastic with sturdy velcro straps to bind it to him.

"Captain America isn't carried around by Eagles," Steve said, chuckling under his breath as he pulled up some of the boxes marked BOOKS and sat on them at what was probably a small table under a pile of of more boxes. "My super powers are a lot better than his anyway. How lame is shield throwing?" Steve said nothing about the prosthetic, as curious as he was about it, and offered Bucky the first pick at the bag. "So how much were you drinking before I arrived?"

And why? He didn't want to blame himself, since the world didn't revolve around him, but he had a bad feeling that his brush with impropriety might have made Bucky spiral. He was very sensitive about his arm. He didn't seem to be holding down a job, and he didn't like to be out in public.

Which sort of spoke to Bucky being s get but Steve didn't see anything overly military laying out and about.

"You can count on me, Buck. I won't judge. Even if I'm wholesome. Or whatever you called me." He just wanted to make sure that Bucky didn't drink anymore. He needed someone to watch out for him. Especially if he was day drinking. "I mean, I might not even be real, right? So there's no harm in pointing the culprit out?"

"I like that you're wholesome, s'like-- you're a nice guy. I like you. I might've been your friend once, but m'nobody's friend now."

He really shouldn't talk to anyone when he was this drunk, because he had literally no filter on what was appropriate to say and what should stay inside his head. But at least he was probably drunk enough that he likely wouldn't remember anything that happened today when he woke up tomorrow morning. Or later that night, considering how early it still was.

"And I like Captain America. He's a good guy, really good guy. You seen those new movies? Wish I looked like Chris Evans, he's-- he's fucking hot."

Bucky frowned around at him and tried to count the cans and bottles scattered by his feet, but he was a little too inebriated for that. Steve might notice that it was twelve beers and a whole bottle and a half of whiskey. He'd be lucky if he didn't give himself liver poisoning this way.

"Who?" Uh huh. Okay, so this was what he was dealing with. "Yanno, doesn't even matter. Do me a favor and take a big bite of that. It's. Uh. It's magical friend bread. It means we're friends if you eat it." Thst was the worst lie he'd ever told anyone but he doubted Bucky was going to remember it anyway so what was the harm? He only made a move to get up when Bucky fulfilled the friendship bestowing bite and started to collect the bottles.

Should he be asked, Steve was prepared to claim that he was just seeing what was left so he could make sure they saved some money on beer. In all honesty, though, he was cleaning up, putting the bottles in an overturned bin so he could recycle them a little later. He set the bin in the hallway and then asked to use the bathroom as an excuse to clean up the glass too.

It didn't take long and he put the bag out in the hall too.

"So hey, Bucky? How about I order in? I mean I'm here now and no amount of friendship scones are going to make for a good dinner. You a pizza or a Chinese guy?"

Steve really was a good guy.

Some part of Bucky noticed that Steve was clearing up and making his apartment less of a shithole, but he was too drunk to stop him or to get up to help. Instead, he just lounged back against his box of books and kept eating the scone that had been given to him.

"Pizza, how's that even a question? Can we-- can we eat it down in your apartment? S'nicer there, your art is beautiful."

Apparently he had believed the friendship bread story, if he felt comfortable enough to invite himself down to Steve's place. And comfortable enough to make admissions that he really should keep to himself.

"We won't be friends for long," Bucky confided in a faux whisper, way too loud to actually be classed as a whisper. "I think I'll get evicted. I spent... spent all my rent money on alcohol today. That was stupid, wasn't it? Felt like-- like it didn't matter, though, because I wouldn't need an apartment. Just... just-- uh, just needed to drink to get the courage up to kill myself."

Though Steve had readily agreed to Bucky coming down to his place for dinner and was sctuslly in the tiny kitchen nook looking at the menus, as soon as Bucky started that last run on thought, Steve felt his heart literally break. He ended up dropping the menu and had turned with wide eyes towards the other man, laying there as if this was an alley and not his apartment.

"Why would you want to kill yourself?" Steve asked, though it wasn't his business and he had no right to do it. He should pick up the phone and call 911. He should tell someone-- But instead, he decided to fix the world himself. He decided that he was going to make sure that this Bucky in front of him was going to get through this. "You're going to deprive the whole world of your acting ability. Thst really seems wrong to me."

Steve slipped the menu under his arm and grabbed Bucky's keys from the ring by the door before he offered him a hand up.

"On your feet. No more talking about dying young, okay? And don't worry. I know your landlord. I'll get her to give you an extension. Come on. Up we go." Work with him, Buck. He's not strong here.

The arm could stay on the counter for now. Steve saw passed the fact that it wasn't even there when he had Bucky lean on him. If they didn't both do a header down the stairs, it would be a miracle.

All of this seemed really surreal, and Steve's reaction to his confession only made it seem more so. The weird off-colour joke about his acting and the genuine kindness only endeared him to this strange skinny artist even more, and he contentedly let Steve help him up and then leaned on him all the way down to his apartment.

God only knows how they managed to get there without falling, but someone must be smiling on them to make it so.

"You know... your eyes are really blue."

It was a mumble as Steve got his own door unlocked, obeying the order to not talk about dying young any more, which meant no explanation about why was going to be forthcoming. If this was a dream, a nice evening with a friend, he was going to enjoy it to the full before reality crashed in.

"If-- f'I wasn't so-- fucked, I'd've asked you out already. Fucking sexy."

"My eyes are really blue and that's all the criteria you have for asking someone out?" Steve asked because drunk brain was not a brain to be trusted. Steve found all sorts of things amazing or attractive when he was drinking even if his sober brain would but the kibosh on it immediately. He didn't blame Bucky. Bucky smelled like a distillery. And while thst was so much better than smelling like body odor, it was only just.

Steve got Bucky on his couch before he locked up and called in for pizza. It was cheaper to go and pick it up but he wasn't leaving some guy in his apartment.

"You don't even know my last name. And I don't know yours. I don't know anything about you, Bucky. Other then you have good taste in scotch and terrible taste in beer." He slipped his phone into his pocket and joined the other man on the sofa. The blue of the walls just made the blue of his eyes that much more pronounced. "So how about we start with that? James Buchanen... What?"

Truthfully, Bucky didn't need a whole lot more than a nice set of eyes to ask someone out. Or he hadn't done back in the old days, something would catch his eye, girl or guy, and he'd ask them out to get to know them better. Maybe Steve wouldn't have been his ideal, he probably never would have noticed the eyes past the skinny body, but he sure noticed them now.

"Barnes."

The gentle warmth of Steve's voice made this less like an interrogation, which was good, because he only had one pre-programmed response to that sort of questioning. Name, rank, and regiment unit.

"James Barnes, s'pretty boring. There's not much to tell you 'bout me, tell me about you instead? Steve. Steve Grant. Steve the artist. Comic books. Wanna know more."

James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky. Not Jimmy. He liked that. It was strange enough that it really fit this guy. Right down to his core. Steve kicked off his shoes and pulled up his knees. He stretched his arm along the back of the couch, bending it at the elbow so that he could rest his ear against his palm. He wasn't sure what to make of Bucky. He'd figured some stuff out kn his own but they were all just guesses at this point he didn't have anyone to really fill him in and he wasnt going to ask. This man's privacy was obviously one of the only things he had left right now.

"Rogers. Steven Grant Rogers. I'm twenty-two." Of course he was. He had innocence and sweetness pretty much just leaking from his pores. "I've lived in this apartment since I was five. I go to the Brooklyn Institute of Fine Arts and I work for a tattoo parlor part time. Just drawing. But you knew that."

Bucky had way more information about him than the other way around.

"Dad died during the Gulf War. Mom died almost four years ago. So it's just been me since then. No siblings of grandparents or anything..."

So he was a prime murder target. Steve needed to be more selective about his information.

Poor bastard. To have lost both his parents by the time he was eighteen really sucked, he had done well for himself to stay in school and support that, rather than having to drop out and work full time just to be able to survive. It was sort of amazing he was as nice as he was with that much pain in his past.

It made Bucky feel kind of guilty, like an asshole, when he remembered that he had family who were still waiting on word from him. His Dad had died when he was little too, though of illness rather than war, and his mother had always been protective. She had been dead against him going into the military, so had his sister Rebecca, but he had done it anyway. He didn't want to go back to them like this, the Bucky they knew had died in Afghanistan and it was kinder not to let them see him this way.

"Sorry, man, s'rough."

He reached out to clap a clumsy hand on his shoulder.

"You mus'-- must really resent the military, huh?"

He found that a lot of people who had lost a parent to war were pretty anti-military, anti-war, having felt that loss so keenly themselves. Some of them even went so far as to blame the soldiers and call them selfish for leaving loved ones to do something so dangerous. Rebecca had said that to him before he went, she had been a sophomore in high school then, spirited and angry that her big brother was leaving. She'd be in college now, if she'd chosen to go.

The hand on his shoulder was a little bit heavy, but Steve managed not to since so that was a plus. Losing his mom was still hard on him sometimes. She'd worked so hard to make sure he had money, scrimped and saved to let him stay in his rent controlled apartment and made him promise not to give up on school when she got sick. But yeah. It was still rough. So he smiled at Bucky and shrugged.

"I don't resent the military at all," Steve said, not just because he was sure that Bucky was in the armed forces, but because it was true. "I mean, okay, maybe a little. I tried to sign up for the Marines right after mom passed, but they laughed at me. Army too. And okay, laughed isn't the right word but my asthma-- They told me that I'd never cut it."

He'd not been strongly pro or anti war. He still wasn't. But he did love his country. He loved it very much.

"What branch were you in?" That was a good segway right?

Bucky's gaze sharpened just a bit on Steve when he asked that question so innocently, but damned if he wasn't so drunk that he couldn't remember if he'd actually told him or not. So Steve's deductions got the benefit of the doubt rather than an irritated snap about what made him think that Bucky had ever been in the army.

"Army. 107th."

He scrubbed a hand over his face as if talking about it pissed him off, which is sort of did.

"You should resent the military, I fucking do. I did-- I did everything, I never broke, and what did I get? A medal and a discharge, fucking thanks for everything but you're too broken for us now."

He hated them for that. The six months he had been a POW had been the worst of his life, but he had done everything that his training had told him to do, he hadn't broken under torture. And then when they got him back, they gave him a medal as if that made up for any of it, and discharged him. Like he just wasn't worth bothering over any more. What the hell good was a medal to him?

I never broke.

The arm wasn't an IED then. It wasn't combat loss. It wasn't friendly fire. It was either the product of or the prelude to torture. Steve's eyes softened and though Bucky hadn't quite taken his hand back, he reached for him and lightly set his fingers against his knuckles. "Thank you for your service," he said with a soft reverence and then changed the subject. This man was a PTSD sufferer. That made so much sense. Everything did. So it was the least that Steve could do to keep him from falling into that hole again. "So hey, how about you ask me questions. Ask me anything. We need to figure out what will be the ultimate turn off so you don't have to look at my eyes and fall madly in love with me when the beer wears off."

Steve took his hand back and let his eyes roam over Bucky's oh so handsome face.

The guy was going to kill himself.

And he called Steve over instead. That made Steve responsible for his life and the blond, luckily, was more than up for that task. Bucky, he could tell, was a really great guy under the damage.

A lot of people had thanked him for his service. All the doctors and nurses at the military hospital where he recuperated, his commanding officer when he came to give him the discharge papers, the woman from the VA when she came to offer him counselling, the man from the military pension office when he signed on to get his cheques... but all of it felt like rote, something they said almost every day because it was their job. The way Steve said it, it loosened a little knot in his chest and made him smile.

And then snort with laughter when those words sunk in. Hard to believe he had been ready to kill himself earlier in the evening, but sometimes it only took a little bit of light to chase the darkness away for a while.

"Jesus, I'm pretty sure I'm already sunk. Nice guy, likes comics, good sense of humour, gorgeous eyes-- ain't any turn offs there." So maybe he was a little more flirty when drunk too. "Okay, uh-- why comics? What was your first comic? Where's-- where's all your other friends? What's the worst tattoo you ever did? Where's the pizza?"

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