fossilised | It's AU time

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.

Loren preferred to stay in his little comfort zone of the book shop, which only sold coffee because it didn't pay enough to stay open otherwise. He liked Steve, as much as he liked any of his patrons, because the man was polite and never forced conversation when it wasn't wanted. It's why he had agreed to come here today and do this errand.

Stepping inside, though, that wasn't what he wanted to do.

Still, he did it, settling himself on the edge of the couch to look up at Steve, intensely green eyes bright in the evening light. He held up both the package and the thermos, which had a post-it note stuck to it with a really bad cartoon of a monkey wrapped in a blanket on it.

"I have better things to do with my time than fly such a distance just for a weekend of tedious conversation and personal questions."

He wasn't very sociable.

"I am certain that Thor will be sure to regale me of the trip when he returns, I shall not miss out."

The package and the note made him smile, after taking it carefully to avoid touching Loren. He'd always just assumed that Loren was a barista, not the owner of his favorite little shop, but that was again due to the lack of conversation they tended to have. Steve was a friendly sort but he was never pushy with it. Loren just seemed like that cool guy thst sad so untouchable he had an ice wall around him.

And now he was on his sofa. With a thermos.

Steve felt badly not offering him a drink but he also didn't want to inject the flu into him so instead he mentioned bottled water should Loren like some, and carefully unwrapped the monkey paper.

Yes. He was going to keep it. He'd spread it out in his sketch book and glue it into place.

It would look really out of place in his sketch book next to all the amazing pieces of art, considering how badly it was drawn. But inside the thermos would be chicken noodle soup, and inside the package would be a large fleecy sweater with a knitted picture of a bald eagle on the front in red, white, and blue. One of the most hideous sweaters ever.

Loren wrinkled his nose at the sight of it, who would ever think that was a good present?

"Well, I have discharged my duties in informing you of Natalia's absence, and delivering packages left carelessly on your doorstep. I assume I shall see you in the shop before too long."

He stood up once more, socialising just wasn't his strong suit, though he didn't quite intend to be rude.

Wasn't this from Nat? The eagle sweater seemed to show otherwise and Steve almost didn't say anything further to this man. He was quick to stand up with him, the box falling to the floor as Steve held the sweater close, and sniffled along the way to see him out.

"I owe you," he said, just before a coughing fit started that left Steve groaning as if his entire life had just ended. Everything hurt and he had no intention of burdening Loren with that as he clung to the doorknob and willed his chest to work long enough for him to say his goodbyes.

He'd grown very pale in the meantime, the splotches faded away into the white skin, his dark circles making him look like a recovering heroin user.

"Can you see yourself out...?" he finally wheezed, weak and wobbling. He needed to crawl back into bed.

With the sweater.

Loren thought it was from Nat, because that's who had given it to him to hand over, but it wasn't. She had just been the person who had gone out to do the buying in the store, Bucky not quite up to making it out of the apartment. The two of them had met three days previously and bonded almost immediately over their shared need to see a sightline to the door.

Bucky didn't trust her like he did Steve, but he liked her enough to have asked her to do that for him, and she liked him enough in return to do it. Not that Loren knew or cared about any of this, just nodding awkwardly before he showed himself out.

It would be another few hours before a text came through from Bucky.

FROM: Bucky
TO: Steve

Haven't heard any coughing for a while, pal. Checking you haven't up and died on me.

Steve had been half dozing and delirious when he got the text and for a little while, he just stared at it as if it wasn’t real. He was completely medicated on the vast array of over the counter cold and flu remedies he bought each time anything went on sale and was pretty dead to the world when he punched in a few letters to text Bucky back that didn’t make a lick of sense.

He sighed, frozen and sweating, and pushed the phone under the pillow to get to later.

It was true though. He hadn’t coughed in awhile, not because he was feeling better so much as it had settled like lead in his lungs and wasn;t the sort of thing that coughing was going to bring up. He was suddenly very sorry that Natalia had gone on vacation. He didn’t begrudge her the fun, but he was pretty sure that he was moving from flu to pneumonia and he wasn’t doing well enoughto put himself into the back of a cab to get to the doctor.

Two hours later, no further word from Steve in cryptic phrases or otherwise and the telltale lights of an ambulance painted Bucky’s apartment in red and blue. Steve hadn’t been sure what to do and called 911. He couldn’t bother Bucky with this, after all. He knew he was afraid to leave the building.

Bucky had made his mind up that if Steve hadn't got back to him within the next three hours, he'd head down there and make sure the other man was okay. He'd only known him a few short weeks and already he was stupidly attached, a friend where he had no others, and he remembered Steve saying how often he got sick. Maybe the dumb sweater had offended him rather than made him smile, or the chicken noodle soup had been disgusting?

But then the bright flare of ambulance lights flickered in his apartment and he felt a sinking in his gut.

For once not even thinking about his own fear, he launched himself down the stairs and into Steve's apartment to see the younger man being loaded onto a gurney with an oxygen mask over his mouth and EMTs saying kind things to him.

"Jesus... Steve, are you okay? No, dumb question, don't try to talk. Hey, uh-- I'm his neighbour, he doesn't have any family. I'll grab some of his stuff, can I come in the ambulance? Is he-- he's going to be okay, right?"

“Two minutes,” one of the EMTs told Bucky and the other assured him that Steve was going to be all right, but he needed fluids and IV medication. If Steve even noticed Bucky through those long blinks, it was hard to tell, but at least Bucky would get a chance to see his gift had been well taken, considering it was in the bed that Steve had been lifted from.

The ride through crowded New York Streets to the closeby hospital took a very long time. The EMT in the back of the wagon kept trying to get Steve to focus on him and smiled the whole while, the ambulance shaking him back and forth. He moved like a pro around the crowded space, explaining the things he was doing as he went.

Inside the hospital, they were walked through the ER where children laid their heads on their mothers’ laps for ear infections, people sneezed, and one guy sat with a towel wrapped around his head and his hand. That looked messy. They set Steve up in a room and dimmed the lights after a curly haired doctor with glasses and a quick, efficient way about him gave the expected diagnosis. Pre-stage pneumonia and told Bucky that he’d been all right by morning.

All of that was fine until Steve finally started to do better, the sludge in his lungs coming back up again with some coughing as the congestion broke apart. He gasped a little after he was finished spitting out the mucus and blinked at a set of eyes he hadn’t expected to be beside him. “Um… Hi…?”

Bucky had raced around the apartment as the EMTs talked to him, grabbing Steve's dumb fuzzy sweater, some sneakers, a coat, and a pair of loose pants because he figured the poor guy wouldn't want to come back from the hospital wearing nothing but his sleep stuff in bare feet. He hadn't had chance to freak out as he rode in the ambulance, too focused on Steve, though the strain of it had begun to sink in by the time they got to the hospital.

He fucking hated hospitals.

The smell, the sounds, the way the doctors all talked in that slightly patronising way that was meant to be kind. But he kept himself in the present by focusing on Steve almost obsessively, so he was right there to help support him in a seated position until he could spit the mucus out.

"Hey."

Smooth.

"You're in hospital."

With trembling hand, Steve pressed his fingertips against his eyes and then looked back up at Bucky. His eyes were always so vibrant, more now than usual given his surroundings and the dark circles still around them. It brought the blue out more than it ought to have done. A kindness filled them and below that, a gentleness to the smile. “I figured that out,” he said with a chuckle, that turned onto a cough. “You didn’t need to come in person to apologize for the sweater,” he had to tease.

He didn’t mention the drawing. He loved that drawing. It was amazing. Deputy Monkey in a blanket? If he ever made it big, he was going to use that for his logo. Or paste it inside every back cover. Maybe he was going a little overboard with that, but he couldn’t help but feel incredibly lucky to have a friend like Bucky.

Steve eased himself back and pulled up the thin blanket. “Tell me that I get to go home? I hate being here,” he echoed Bucky’s thoughts. The drip bag with the glucose solution was only halfway gone, though. There was no way he’d be discharged before tomorrow.

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

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