fossilised | It's AU time

"So I'm friends with a guy who never would have given me the time of day in high school. Funny how the world works," Steve said before he reached out to tuck a bit of hair back into place behind Bucky's ear so it wouldn't distract him from the curve of that ear. He hadn't meant to just do that. He should have asked. But oh well. Done now.

And moving right along to his physical ailments? Steve didn't really want to get into his pill regimen. He didn't want to discuss the near deaths and the hospitalizations. He didn't like being so weak. He could have been a hero, a firefighter like Thor maybe or a doctor. He could have joined the Army like his dad. He could have been something. Really something.

Steve bit at his lower lip.

"It's nothing specific. Just-- a whole bunch of little things. I was born premature. Obviously. Look at me, right? No way I was a normal size when I was born. My lungs aren't exactly well formed. And yeah, colds knock me right out." He'd think that this was a curse later tonight when the sniffles started. "Me and pneumonia are Besties. Seriously. We exchange Christmas cards."

There was never a Christmas that he wasn't horribly sick.

"But don't worry. I'm not contagious. And I've got it all under control." He had to. He didn't have anyone else. "Which makes it my turn again. Are you a cake or a pie guy?"

His skin prickled where Steve touched him, and he had to force himself to stay still, though his lips curled up a bit at the edges into a smile despite himself. The idea of Steve being so sick all the time wasn't a good one, but at least it wasn't something that was going to kill him, it would just take him out of commission fairly often.

He turned his head to look at Steve properly, forgetting about the portrait for the moment, fixing him with intense and serious blue eyes.

"If you get sick, you can call me. I make a mean chicken noodle soup, and you've-- you've already helped me a lot, call it payback."

Well, that wasn't awkward, moving swiftly along.

"Definitely pie. Apple pie, what can I say, I'm a traditionalist? But when that crust is all golden brown and the apples are all soft, it's better than an orgasm. What's, uh-- what's your favourite food?"

"I just want you to know that your questions are terrible," Steve said, taking Bucky's chin to swing his face back around to where it belonged. That his chin had a thumb sized grove in it helped. That he could feel the stubble did not. He had this really terrible desire to run his neatly trimmed nails right scores the grain just to feel it prick up at the nail bed. Normal people didn't feel this way, he was sure of it. Maybe he should have let Nat set him up more often. He probably could have used a little bit of breaking in so he didn't feel like such s fool wanting something.

Twenty-three wasn't too old to be a virgin, probably. Shit. What if that made him more of a pariah? God if Bucky asked that... He was going to die. Or lie. Steve hated to lie but sometimes you just had to do it to keep people safe. And thst included his friendship with Bucky here.

"And I also want you to know that I make a mean apple pie," of course he did, "but I don't want you ruining your pants having something better than an orgasm so I'll make sure never to make it for you. Hold still."

Maybe he should have had Bucky look at him. Then again, his face was so hot right now he was very glad he hadn't.

"I think pizza is probably my favorite food of all time. You can eat pizza for every meal and never get tired of it. I can't at least. Okay, let's say money wasn't an issue, where would you go for vacation? Any place at all."

Steve's fingers against his stubble felt weirdly intimate and he was pretty glad that he wasn't a man who blushed often or easily. He didn't resist his head being turned, though he did shoot a mock scowl out of the corner of his eyes towards Steve when he maligned his question asking ability.

"What the hell is this? I didn't know my questions were being assessed. Just for that I'll think of a really embarrassing one next time. And for your information, vacation spots are hardly the height of interview technique." He snorted before turning his attention to the question he had been asked. He had no idea. He didn't want to travel any more and he sure as shit never wanted to go anywhere too hot or too cold, he had bad experience with both.

The silence was stretching too long and he didn't have an answer. God he was fucking pathetic. Just say something, anything.

"Somewhere with a pool, maybe one of those fancy spa resorts." The lie came out in a rush of sudden hoarseness, before he moved really quickly along. "Right. Embarrassing. You asked for it... you got any kinks other than an unhealthy love for tater tots? Secret BDSM lifestyle?"

"Spa resorts? Like the all inclusive ones in Cancun? Wow. That's very boring for a guy like you. So what you're saying is that when you vacation you just really want to vacation? Kick back and chill out?" That actually sounded nice. But Steve would probably get a sunburn or get water in his ears and get pneumonia... Maybe he would have a reaction to the chlorine, or something in the food would set him off... Maybe that didn't sound so nice after all.

He scratched the back of his neck timidly, ignoring the charcoal streak left there... And the slight one he had left on Bucky's chin. It blended in with the shadow so it didn't matter.

The return question left him by surprise and he actually started to laugh. "Me?" He didn't squeak it, that was a genuine question. "Probably not. I looked up all sorts of weird stuff online just because I was curious and this guy that Nat set me up with last year was really into furries... But I just don't think I want to chain anyone up and whip them."

It did not occur to him that he might be the one most people would assume would get chained up and whipped and not the other way around!

"And I don't want to wear a stuffed animal outfit and role play, either! So that didn't work out at all. Probably anything else our parents might have thought of as kinky are pretty normal now you know? Oh, I did see that fifty shades thing with Nat. It seemed ridiculous."

Wow, that just made him want to show Steve that everyone had a kinky side, they just had to find what he was into. God, he could just hear that voice moaning his name and-- no, bad thoughts, wrong thoughts, entirely inappropriate thoughts about his straight neighbour friend.

He laughed softly to himself, and shifted to settle a bit more comfortably on the sofa, wanting to look at Steve but knowing that he had to keep his head in profile for the picture.

"Okay, okay. So-- tell me a secret about yourself."

Hey, since Steve hadn't asked a question to Bucky on the end of that, he was going to be greedy and go for a second one without waiting for Steve's return question.

Hey now. Did straight boys get set up with guys who spent time being part of the furry community? Steve had not made a big deal about it and was taking a bit to mumbling as he worked. He shaped the jaw on the paper as if he was doing it with his fingers on skin. He'd never wanted to touch someone so badly-- Well that wasn't true. He'd wanted to touch Peggy pretty badly. And there was a guy in his class named Drake last semester that he had been certain he was going to lose his vkrginity to until it came out that he was just hanging around Steve to get to Nat. He was pretty sure Nat kicked his ass at the end of the semester, but they never spoke about it.

But those had all been long burns. Such deliciously long burns that he'd ached for so many months to have-- This was new and it was bright and it ached far worse.

But Bucky wasn't-- No. Bucky was fragile. Bucky needed a friend. And sure, he'd admitted he was gay, or at least gay leaning, and he flirted with him consistently, but some people were just flirts. And once he got over this bump of depression, he'd find someone better. Steve was content to be his friend. Or content to at least enjoy what he had.

Those eyes that Bucky was always going on about widened a little and then narrowed. "You're skipping turns now?" But he'd answer anyway. Because he could. Because he trusted this guy he barely knew. Because for some reason, some dark reason, Steve knew he could tell Bucky anything.

"I have these dreams sometimes. Dreams that I'm myself, but I look different. Like I'm bigger. And I can run really fast and jump off of roof tops. And I dream that I was in the Army like my dad. But not-- Like World War II. Or sometimes I dream that I'm brainwashed and an assassin. Or that I live on this other planet and I'm like a bodyguard for a princess. They're vivid and their strange but I lose all the faces in them when I wake up. All the faces except for one. He's older, like in his fifties. And he's sitting in this cabin on a cot looking at a hundred doors. There's a fire and w little girl stirring a lot a stew over it... I just see his face perfectly. He's got such weird facial hair. Real stylized. And brown eyes, like milk chocolate, but clearer.... I've drawn this guy over and over and-- I am honestly and truly crazy. I know. But you asked for a secret so now I want one from you."

Unfortunately, he had been so tickled with the idea of Steve thinking about chaining people up or whipping them, that he honestly hadn't even caught the fact that it had been a guy that he had been set up with. Otherwise he might have been considering doing something really dumb if he got some more drinks inside him. Which he would not be doing, because Jesus Christ that was a whole load of bad decisions.

"I don't think you're crazy, but those sound like some weird dreams. I'm no psychiatrist, so I have no idea what they mean, but isn't something about doors meant to be like-- symbolic of wanting a change in life? Or a new start, or some shit like that?"

He didn't know. He never dreamed abstract things any more, all of his dreams were things that he knew the meaning of explicitly. Bucky fell silent for a moment or two, teetering on divulging some dumb secret like he preferred the Star Wars prequels to the originals (he did), but Steve had been so open so... maybe he deserved that in return.

"A secret. Most of my secrets aren't good ones, Steve, you sure you want to go down that rabbit hole?"

He wasn't saying no, god help him, he sort of trusted this guy already. But this was a way for Steve to back out without Bucky judging him, to go back to casual flirting and no pressure friendship.

"I don't... Hey Buck, you don't have to tell me anything. If it will make you feel bad or make you think about something you don't want to think about, you're under no obligation here. My thing wasn't a really big thing anyway." Except that he had ten or eleven sketch books filled with drawings of that cabin or details of that man's face. He wanted to meet him. He felt drawn to him... Which was awkward. He felt like there was a connection there or like the man was what connected him to something other. Something so much more.

He didn't tell Bucky that. He'd said enough and he accepted what he said about it all being a metaphor for wanting something else out of life. And that was true. He really did want something more out of life. And maybe he'd get that with his art.

"I don't know-- I don't know anything about you," he continued. "No really. So anything you tell me will be a secret-- can you keep your eyes up?" He'd just started to work on them. He needed their position to be fixed. "But if you want to tell me anything... You got it. I'm not really one to judge. And I'll listen. I promise not to be Alice and fall into Wonderland and dear God can you just interrupt me before I say weird things?"

Steve was a sweetheart. That babbling actually reassured him, because he really did believe it. It wasn't the calm and measured words of the doctors trying to get him to open up, or the accusing way that he imagined his mother and sister would react in his head (not fair on them, they'd probably be just as understanding), and so it made him more likely to open up.

He lifted his eyes as requested and fixed them on the TV, though he didn't really watch what dumb antics were going on in Friends.

"I have a prosthetic arm," he said. It wasn't a secret, they both knew, but it was the first time he had admitted as much out loud and that made it a secret. "And I hate it. It hurts like hell to wear, but I don't like people to see me when I'm without it."

Steve had heard or read somewhere that prosthetics always hurt until there were callouses built up and even then they could hurt. People with prosthetic legs had to constantly get them refitted. It was a hard part of life. Steve could understand that. His fingers understood that too. They were already giving Bucky a sort of haunted glow to his eyes, deep and sad and struggling but clinging on somehow. He felt a knot form in his chest as he worked. Steve was empathetic. He felt as his subjects did. And it hit him so hard sometimes--

"You didn't have it on yesterday." Bucky probably realized that when he woke up here on this couch without it strapped on. "You don't know me. You don't have any reason to trust me or open up to me or-- But here, maybe, you can be okay without having to be in pain."

Steve stopped drawing. He wasn't finished but he wanted to really see Bucky for this, not take him in with his eyes and transfer thst image to his fingertips.

"Becsuse for me yesterday... Nothing changed about how I saw you, Buck. It was just you being charming and--". He didn't want to assume that was flirting. He didn't want to bring it up so he skipped over it. "And hungry and super drunk." The corners of his lips moved up. "You're still that devastatingly handsome actor destined to close down all of the shows in New York. I just want you to be comfortable here."

And who was Steve anyway? Just some kid from Broollyn living in this tiny two bedroom having dreams about being an artist. He was a nobody.

He had realised that he hadn't had it on the previous night, that might have been one of the reasons why he chose to make it his secret. It wasn't that much of a secret. Still, even if Steve had already known and had already seen him without it, it still felt like a big deal to admit it out loud.

Bucky snorted, though it sounded thick and he was pathetically close to tears. How was Steve such a good guy? When he said these things that sounded trite and condescending in doctor's voices, they sounded genuine and comforting. He could actually believe that Steve wouldn't see him differently.

"...I do trust you."

God only knew why.

"Just-- I'm not pretty under the shirt, and I'd have to take it off to get the arm off, maybe it's best if I don't."

Some things stayed in a person's mind and he didn't want Steve to change, he didn't want to be pitied or reviled because of the goddamn mess of his body.

There was a sort of amused tone to the edge of Steve's half laugh. "No offense but I seriously, seriously do not believe you," Steve said, setting the drawing aside. It still wasn't finished but he didn't need to look st Bucky to do thst. He had absolutely everything ready and waiting here, in his mind, to shape the rest of the piece. But Bucky would be able to at least get a good sense of where it was going, even if his eyes would probably naturally follow the movement of Steve standing up over him, right in the other side of the coffee table.

He gave Bucky a real thorough look over, from his shins and knees to his shoulders and face. He stood with his fuzzy socked feet apart and his arms over his narrow chest.

"You are probably the second best looking person I have ever seen in my whole life. Okay. Maybe third because Natalia's new boyfriend is good looking to the point of being ridiculous. But I can go in my room. You can do what you have to. And then come and get me?"

He'd just pick up his pad, charcoal all over his fingers, and finish up tucked away in his futon.

There was a part of Bucky that was incredibly self destructive now, the bit that hated himself for going to war and believed that everything that had happened to him was entirely his own fault. That bit almost wanted to make Steve hate him too, because it wasn't right that he was liked by this sweet guy who was saying kind things, and that was the bit that had him defiantly start pulling at the buttons of his shirt with Steve still in the room.

Second best guy, he'd see how long that was about to last.

It was awkward getting the shirt off one handed, but he was fairly practised, so it wasn't long before he pulled it over his shoulder and yanked it over the prosthetic to leave it on the ground. The velcro of the prosthetic straps following, letting the moulded plastic clatter to the floor.

He hadn't been lying when he said he was a mess. His entire left side was an angry criss cross of red scar tissue, burns and bad healing that had puckered the skin up to where his arm had been amputated right up at the shoulder. The rest of his torso had other scars. Wounds from blades, from whips, from blunt objects, electrical burns, even a couple of bullet wounds, a lot of evidence of genuine torture laid out on his skin.

"Yeah, I'm a real goddamn work of art, a fucking Picasso, maybe."

The blond wasn't shy about looking. He couldn't be when his face was so expressive and his eyes so bright thst they were impossible to miss, even in low light. He tilted his head to the left as he traced the lashes and the burns. This wasn't the stuff POWs suffered from. The insurgents didn't hurt people like this because they wanted information out of them and they wanted them for trade. So if Bucky was this damaged, it was because he had a lot of information that they wanted. And he had been stubborn in giving it up.

Of course, a lot of the scarring was likely from an IED or a bomb or whatever had caused him to be captured anyway. Could Bucky had been in some sort of Ops? Wrong place at the wrong time? Steve had questions and they were questions he knew he would never ask and therefore likely never have answered.

But that was okay.

The marks on Bucky's skin demanded to be drawn. They demanded to be seen and recognised and known. They wanted to be touched and he felt his palms sweat as he denied his fingers to move from under his arms.

Steve swallowed. He swallowed and he looked back up to meet Bucky's gaze. "So I was wrong," he said almost casually. "Im going to go back to my previous assessment that you're the second most good looking person I've ever seen. Thor is too beefy for me. I have some bad memories of beefy guys. Do you feel better now?"

Bucky was shaking from head to foot like a leaf, even though the apartment was anything but cold, already regretting his stupid fucking decision as Steve looked him up and down. He felt exposed and raw, way too vulnerable, but he forced himself to stand almost to attention and wait for the assessment. It would come, it wouldn't be pretty, and that would be fine.

"What?"

Naked shock spasmed across Bucky's face and he took a step towards Steve, expression unreadable as he looked into those piercing blue eyes. He was teetering between cussing him out again and telling him that he was a sick fuck for idiolising scars and amputees, and actually believing what he said.

"You're a fucking liar, Steve, look at me," he said, voice thick with self hatred. "I'm barely even human any more, let alone good looking, don't-- don't patronise me."

"Everyone lies, Buck. But I don't look at you the same way that you look at yourself. I don't have the memories of getting those scars, so I don't see the ugliness." Steve didn't have the hatred attached to the reminders of why Bucky had those marks. What he was was interestingness and not ugliness. He saw tenacity instead of tragedy. It was just the way it happened to be.

But he couldn't fully explain that to Bucky because he was too raw and bordering on getting angry with him again. And maybe Bucky had ever right to be angry. Steve had pushed. He tried to be sympathic but he'd made the suggestion in the first place. This pain in Bucky's eyes was his fault.

"But you're human. Not just barely. You're fully and completely human. And right now? I'm not lying to you. I'm just sorry you can't see it, but you are. I just want you to be comfortable around me, Buck. I'm not trying to push your buttons or upset you, man. I just think-- I just don't see anything I hadn't seen of your before," he said, the determination still on his face. "That first time I saw you, I thought you were just-- I thought you were just amazing. And this-- why does showing me this have to change the way I see you? You look at me, pal, and you tell me again that I'm lying to you."

Bucky stared at the floor for what felt like forever, too afraid to look up and see the lie in Steve's face because he didn't want it to be a lie, he wanted so much for it to be true. To have someone see him as still human even with all this; hell, even still attractive, it seemed fucking impossible. Surely Steve was just trying to be nice, just trying to mitigate the damage because he felt sorry for him.

But when he did lift his eyes...

There was nothing but honesty in those cornflour blues, and he felt something in his chest simultaneously shatter and loosen all at once. Tears ended up rolling down his cheeks, but utterly silently because crying so nobody could hear was ingrained very deeply in him now.

"Shit, Steve, you're-- you're never gonna be rid of me now. There's nobody else like you, is there? You're the real goddamn deal."

"I have no idea what that means," Steve confessed as he smiled up at Bucky. The scars truly intrigued him. That small bit of shoulder that was left saddened him, but not because he pitied Bucky so much as he felt terribly that he was in pain. "But I'm going to hug you."

That was fair warning.

Steve wondered if anyone else had hugged Bucky like this after his accident, arms carefully wrapped around his neck because he could and to prove that he wasn't afraid of the scars or the amputation. He was too short. Much too short. And on fuzzy toes, he was quickly off balance and left to lean against Bucky.

Which made him chuckle as he undulated backwards, perhaps too suggestively.

"It's not easy being short. But you'll get used to it since you're not getting rid of me either."

The only people that had touched Bucky since he had been recovered from that horrific place had been doctors. Gentle hands, but all business, careful to wash and dress his wounds. Careful to pay attention to the scars and not the man. Even his CO, when he was given a medal and discharged, hadn't shaken his hand, he'd just saluted to him and let him go.

Now here was Steve looking at him in all his horrendous glory, actually hugging him without flinching away. It took Bucky a moment or two of being frozen before all of a sudden he was clinging back, getting Steve's shoulder embarrassingly wet where he was bent over so that he could rest his face there.

"...thank you."

It was all he could manage, but it was full of over a year of pain and gratitude. Steve might have just saved his damn life with that gesture, and he'd earned himself a loyal friend forever whether he wanted it or not.

All of those tears called for some tater tots even if it wasn't Wednesday. Steve put them in the oven spread out on a cookie sheet and then plopped back down beside Bucky with one extended, the foot actually resting on Bucky's thigh as if they had known each other forever and touching wasn't taboo between American men, and the other curled up to give him a surface to work on.

He didn't need to look at Bucky anymore, he had the picture of him in his mind, but he did keep glancing up from time to time as they returned to their questioning game.

Shredded potato nuggets, deep fried with ketchup rounded out the evening and though Steve had not quite finished his work, he turned the tablet towards Bucky just as the other man was looking for wherever his arm had gotten to so he could return to his own apartment.

"I think you'll get me an A," Steve said, laying the prize on Bucky rather than his own skill. "Did I do you justice?"

Whatever Bucky's response, that portrait did get Steve an A and the teacher told him that it was obvious he'd found his muse. Either that or Steve was just s master, capable of shining light through the eyes of s bit of smudged charcoal on paper.

That picture was both beautiful and terrible to Bucky. It was so perfectly drawn, and it seemed to bring out a beauty in his face that he couldn't recognise himself. But it also reminded him of how far he had come from the man he used to be, his expression more muted, his eyes haunted, his hair long. At least it was only a neck up portrait. But he couldn't deny the skill, and he said as much in a reverent tone before he left.

The next three days passed with just text messaging and the occasional hi in the hallway, Steve busy with his projects and work, but it felt good. Companionable, the way they kept in touch. Buoyed by the success of making a friend, Bucky found the energy to unpack the rest of his boxes and actually make his apartment somewhat sorted out. And weirdly he got a call from Mrs. Johnson saying she forgot to tell him that there was a one month grace period on rent and so he didn't have to worry about paying this month - he had no idea that Steve had talked to her and explained he was a vet down on his luck.

Alas for Steve, though, all good things come to an end, and by day four he would be pretty damn sick. That cold that the delivery guy had seemed to hit like a truck, which meant he would surely be happy to have a knock at his door. He probably wouldn't be expecting it to be Loren, the quiet and enigmatically handsome young man from the bookshop cafe down the road.

Steve was covered in splotches, pale with rosy cheeks and dark circles under his eyes. He'd just come from the bathroom where he'd bundled up to sit on the toilet as the hot water ran. He sniffled as he pulled open the door, expecting Natalia of all people because she tended to have a sixth sense about when he was sick, but instead... Steve blinked up at a man he would never call friend but whom he was certainly friendly with.

"Loren?" What was he doing here? He had no idea that the man Nat was dating was Loren's brother and he had a perfectly reasonable excuse to be here. He felt too sick addled to really say anything other than the man's name since he was almost immediately overcome with a wheezing coughing fit.

It was not his most attractive moment, that was for sure. Wearing a towel around his shoulders, a baggy tshirt and boxers, hair all over the place, there was no mistaking his sickness.

He hid behind the door with a frown.

"Probably contagious."

Loren tended not to socialise with the people his brother socialised with, and they hardly looked at all alike, so Steve could be forgiven for not knowing that they were brothers. At least legally, if not by blood. Loren had been adopted by Thor's family when he was ten after being taken from a bad situation, it had left him with certain psychological issues, but he had bonded very well with Thor and Thor still doted over Loren when he was allowed to do so. Which wasn't that often.

All Loren wanted in life were his books, his intellectual pursuits, and not to have to socialise with the majority of people who were annoying as all hell. Still, every so often he ventured out, such as now, when he had a good reason to do so.

He held a small parcel in one hand and a thermos flask in the other.

"I have a strong immune system," he said in his slightly lilting Nordic accent, a match for Thor's. "I won't stay long. This thermos had been left on your doorstep, and I was asked to deliver this parcel by Natalia. She apologises for being unable to do it herself, but she will be out of town for two weeks visiting Norway with Thor."

Loren so very rarely spoke that Steve had no idea that his accent matched Thor's. Steve's eyes, red and puffy that they were, widened. How had he never known? Loren had been part of his almost daily routine for a year now! They'd barely exchanged words, he knew Steve's order and generally had it ready by the time he moved up in the line. Sometimes he gave him an extra pastry if he came by at the end of the day, but mostly he just read as he prepared coffee for people that knew very little about it.

"Sorry she roped you into cat-sitting," Steve said, throat on fire and gravelly. He opened the door, standing aside for a moment before he rushed to gather up the used tissue pile by the couch and wash his hands. "But Norway? That's exciting. You didn't want to go to visit your family with them?"

Steve knew a lot about Thor, mostly jovially and through shouted communication while building furniture for Bucky. His parents lived in Oslo with a summer house in Tromso. He had a brother who worked with books and lived in Queens like he did. Nat told him last week about the vacation-- he'd just completely forgotten.

Bucky had been taking up a lot of his time.

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fire alarm went off at work so you get a 'standing in the car park tag'

Whoop!!

Re: Whoop!!

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looks like we're heading back in so probs last tag for a while maybe

Have a lovely rest of your shift!

or not lmao god it's cold out here brrr

Oh no! Frozen tundra fossil.

But frozen tundra fossil who can tag you?

This is true. Am I a bad person who is happy about this?

nope

Re: nope

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