fossilised | It's AU time

Bucky spent a long time in the shower, just standing under the almost scorching water thinking. He had killed people, did it make a difference that they were people trying to do bad things? Did it make a difference that he hadn't been fully in control of his own mind at the time? Maybe. But that just made him think with a worm of guilt if he could have avoided this if he had just been less proud.

He wasn't an idiot, of course he knew that he had PTSD and a host of other traumas from what happened to him out there, but he had kept trying to deny it to himself because he didn't want to see himself as broken, let alone the world see him that way. If he hadn't been so determined to prove he was fine, when he blatantly wasn't, would he have already have had the help he needed to make sure that never happened in the first place?

There was no way to know, but he knew the only way that he could live with himself going forwards, if he didn't get punished, was to do this right.

By the time he came out of the shower, towel wrapped around his waist and very deliberately just that as if to display his scars and the stump of his arm, Natalia was wrapped around Thor so tightly that it was hard to see where one began and the other ended. Ignoring his natural urge to hide his deformities, he instead strode straight past them to look for Steve in the living room.

"I need help," he said, without preamble so that he didn't lose his nerve. "I have PTSD and other fucked up things in my head, and I need help for them because I never want to hurt you. You're the best goddamn thing in my life and I want to be worth having you, I want to make it up to the people I hurt the other night by making sure it never happens again."

There was nothing better than to hear Bucky finally acknowledge his problem. His physical disability was not much of one, it was not the problem, but the mental block he had was ruining every other aspect of his social life. Bucky wasn’t a case to be cured. He needed some help dealing with himself, his mental attitudes, and most of all, he needed help dealing with how to see the world now, what he could cut out and what he should focus on.

Only people that were in his shoes could help him. Steve had been a good start, but he wasn’t trained for any of this and he certainly could not relate. That was by far the most glaring difficulty that they had.

Steve stood and headed towards the other man before he wrapped his arms around his waist. His physical deformity, the scars and the missing arm, they weren’t a problem for Steve and had never been. He laid his cheek against the burn marks left over from the healing process on his chest and closed his eyes.

“We’ll call the VA tomorrow,” Steve said. It was their best resource. "And I'll be... I'll be there as much or as little as you want."

Of course he wanted Steve there every step of the way, but he didn't want to drag Steve down. He was a good guy, the last thing he needed was to get pulled into the mire of Bucky's head. But he did deserve to know why he was this messed up, and he was willing to share that much.

"...hey, Steve?"

He wound his arm around him tighter, thankful that his boyfriend had accepted the scarred parts of himself. It made it a lot easier to start trying to accept them himself.

"You, uh, you wanna make some tater tots and play twenty questions? I think I'm ready to answer some more serious ones, but only if I get to ask stuff in return again."

"Yeah I do. Go put some pants on and I'll... I'll scrap Nat and Thor off of each other and get the oven on."

Outside, the world wasn't the same as it had been when Steve and Bucky shared one another in bed. But they weren't the same either anymore and that was just something each would need to prepare themselves for.

After Steve's guests had gone and the door was locked, after the breaded, shredded potatoes were put in to cook and plated when they were finished around a ketchup right, after two full glasses of ice water were set up on the coffee table and a blanket stretched across the couch, their game started. It had been the same one Steve used to get to know Bucky when they had started to become more than acquaintances and he laid down the same ground rules.

"You don't have to answer anything you don't want to. But how about I start with an easy one...? How do you know Tim and why do you call him Dum-Dum?"

Steve was an amazing guy. He would never understand anyone who thought he wasn't strong just because he was small and skinny, he had never met anyone before who had the amount of courage and fortitude that Steve had. He didn't know if he'd be as strong if their positions were reversed and he was dealing with a new boyfriend who had this amount of issues.

But he didn't argue against it for once, he just accepted it and was grateful for it. He got dressed as requested, he helped set up the table with the tots and the drinks, and then he settled down beside Steve under the blanket.

"Uh-- we served together. He was in my unit, special ops type stuff." Bucky's words were still careful, like talking about any of this stuff was unnatural now, but he didn't back down. "Y'know I don't actually know why he's called Dum-Dum, it's a nickname from his childhood, I think. We all just called him that in the unit. He's a good guy, really good."

Okay, a question of his own, and he wanted to know more serious stuff about Steve too.

"Tell me about being a kid, sick a lot. Can't have been fun."

"Mom used to make a game of it sometimes," Steve said, cold hands and cold toes reaching out towards sources of heat. He was still processing follow up questions about Dum-Dum so he was being somewhat more open about how bad his childhood really had not been. "It was only the two of us for most of what I remember. Dad died when I was a toddler and mom worked really hard to give us all of this. The military helped of course. Especially with all of my medicines and my specialists. But there was one two month stretch in second grade where I couldn't get out of bed with pneumonia--"

He shrugged under the blankets as if to detract from how that sounded.

"Truthfully, Buck, I liked my childhood. I really did. Mom and I played games and I took up drawing to pass the time when she had her second job--"

What he wasn't saying was how lonely it was and that was because Steve always felt lonely, even with other people. He had friends and acquaintances, but it hadn't been until he met Natasha three years ago that he had anyone that could understand him. And she didn't really. They were friends because they had no one else but that made it special too.

Bucky was glad that Steve had managed to find some joy out of a shitty situation like being sick all the time. He would have liked to meet Steve's mother, she must have been some woman to have raised a kid as wonderful as Steve, and he really felt for the poor guy for how much he must miss her.

"Of course you liked it. No school a lot of the time, getting to sit around in bed, who wouldn't like that?"

It was a gentle tease, because of course he knew it must have sucked. Steve must have found it hard to make regular friends being so often out of the loop, no wonder his social circle was still so small. He was pretty damn privileged to be a part of it.

He kissed Steve on the head while he waited for the next question about him.

"I'm sorry you got sick so much-- and that you still do."

“I just hope it doesn’t scare you away. I’m a sack of worry.” That’s what one woman he had attempted to date about two years ago told him before she stopped texting him back. He doubted Bucky would be so easily scared off. He’d already been through a lot of what it was like to be with Steve from that first trip to the hospital.

Of course, it could weigh on a person over time. The constant illness, the constant coughing, the constant canceling of plans—

But they would come to that later.

Steve set his jaw after having more ketchup than potato, not chewing for a moment to savor the salty sweetness before he allowed his brain to formulate a question that might be a little more daring. “Special Ops huh? So…that’s what you were doing when you were captured?”

He would never be scared off wanting to date him, though he might buy him so many winter clothes that by the time he left the house he'd look like a giant puffy marshmallow in an attempt to keep him warm and healthy. He wouldn't care about plan cancelling, about any of that, as long as Steve was okay.

He hoped it would always be that way.

"...yeah." He shifted his hand as if to touch his dog tags, but of course he wasn't wearing them any more, so he just looked like an idiot touching fingertips to his chest. "I was specialised as a sniper, we were a special ops unit that went into high risk situations to try and diffuse them before they escalated. We were damn good at what we did. There was me, Dum-Dum, Morita, Gabe, Dernier, and Falsworth. Falsworth and Dernier were killed as we were captured, Gabe died in captivity, Morita got captured and discharged later, and Dum-Dum avoided capture and is still in service."

There was silence for a moment as he remembered good men lost, and good friends he'd likely never see again, before he tried to move on with another question for Steve.

"So, uh-- what're you scared of? Phobias, like-- you don't like spiders or thunderstorms. There's gotta be something, you can't be so brave all the time."

Edited 2017-04-14 12:20 (UTC)

Knowing now what Bucky was into, and at such a young age, and that he was a trained specialist sniper, certainly put so much into perspective. He listened and drank in what he was being told, though some of it left up to his imagination was not exactly ideal. He made sure to eat, though, and made sure that Bucky was eating too. Chewing could have a panacea effect, much like alcohol, since drinking right now for either of them was not a good idea.

Steve wanted to know what happened to the captured but discharged soldier, but he wouldn’t waste a question on that.

“I’m scared of a lot of things. I get worried that Nat will be hurt or you’ll be hurt—“ But that wasn’t what he had been asked. “I guess I don’t have a whole lot of phobias though,” he commented softly. “I grew up knowing I was probably not long for the world. And after mom died… Well, I believe in God. He has a plan for us if we live our lives well.”

A tiny smile touched his lips and left just as quickly.

“I’m not really afraid of anything…except maybe leaving people that I could still help. Don’t you dare start looking for eagles. That doesn’t make me a good person. I’m just a guy. Just like you. There’s nothing special about me.” He rubbed a finger against one eyelids and hurried on to his own question. “How long did they hold you for?”

Bucky's eyebrows shot up as he listened to Steve speak, lips twisted in what might accidentally look like scorn but was actually him just trying not to laugh until Steve had finished speaking. Even the heavy question asked to him in return couldn't quite stop the snigger from breaching out.

"That's such bullshit, Steve."

He grabbed a tot and pushed it in his mouth whole.

"I'm not trying to avoid the question, I'll get to it in a minute, but I have to sort this out first. You're not still here because you believe in some divine plan for your life, you're here because you're an idiot punk who doesn't know when to quit. You never backed down from a fight in your life, I bet, and if the doctors said you weren't long for this world then I'm willing to lay money that half the reason you're still alive now is because you're too damn stubborn to let them be proven right. Maybe you do believe in God, and I sure as hell believe you want to help people, but you're not alive because of 'living a good life' or whatever else, you're here because you're a scrappy bastard. And that's what makes you special."

So there.

Steve rolled his eyes. “I’m not saying that God has that sort of purpose for me,” he chided immediately. He didn’t think he was here for anything amazing or spectacular. He was just here. And God had a plan for all of them. It was all right if Bucky wasn’t as religious as he was. It wasn’t like Steve took himself to church or the time but that didn’t mean that he didn’t have beliefs. “I don’t believe that I’m defying the doctors or that I have to keep alive to see what my fate is. No. All I’m saying is that I’m alive. I want to help people. And I feel good about it. And I’m not afraid of spiders or clowns or the dark or thunderstorms or anything else you can harass me about.”

He made a show of crossing his arms over his chest, which was rather amusing considering that his arms were mostly inder the blankets right now! He hoped that his pout would make up for it.

“And now you have to answer the question. And I don’t mean a cop out answer either because you think my answer is a cop out.” And there was more of that pouting. Bucky, don’t make him pout so much!

He was having a pretty hard time holding onto it, laughter cracking at the corners of his eyes.

Steve was such an idiot and Bucky found that he loved him all the more for it. He had never really been a soppy romantic, so where this was all coming from he had no idea. But with Steve everything just felt right, like they could go through hell and back and as long as they were together then they could weather it. Such a stupid thing to think of someone that he had only just started dating.

"Six months, three weeks, and four days."

The answer wiped any residual smirk from his face, shutting down into something that seemed almost dead. He hadn't learned to talk or think about this without distancing himself from it yet, finding it easier to talk about it like it had happened to someone else.

"Gabe died after two months, his wounds from getting captured were too severe and he got an infection, never quite woke up properly. Morita and I were lucky when we made it out, we just-- ran as best we could, first vehicles we met just happened to be from our lot."

He shrugged, mouth a hard line.

"Steve, you ever been so sick you genuinely thought you might die? What did you-- what did you think about then? Did you try and bargain with God? Would you have given up something important to live?"

Maybe there was an edge of desperation under his question, maybe it wasn't wholly about finding things out about Steve right then.

The question had not been intentionally sobering but there was little left to be done about it. Bucky wanted this. It was his idea. As best as he could, poor Steve had been trying to ease them into the heart of the matter, but even this one little question (which did not pick at all at the true meat of it) had been enough to leave Bucky blank.

And he hated it.

That didn’t mean, however, that he was capable of or willing to shy away from it. He had a part to play in Bucky’s healing, even if that meant being the one to rebreak a bone that wasn’t healing right.

He knew, too, that Bucky wasn’t going to like his answer.

“The first time,” he said softly, not emphasizing that he’d nearly died many times because that wasn’t important, “that I can remember was when I was eight. Mom had just lost dad not too long ago and we’d moved in here. She needed to work two jobs to support us, so she tucked me into bed and went to work for a four hour shift at Dunkin Donuts. I woke up about an hour after she left and I couldn’t breathe. My inhaler was stuck and I thought I was going to suffocate. I begged God to let me live because my mom was a good person and she didn’t deserve to come home to find me curled up in the bathroom.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t promise to be a better person, or to give something up….but I do promise to keep helping people. And I don’t care if you don’t believe me, but I really feel like that works.”

Eight years old and he had already thought he was going to die, and he begged for life for such an unselfish reason. That was why Bucky was so sure that Steve was a better man than him and always had been. He had this streak of perfectly natural generosity running through him, without any cynicism or lies, and that made him wonderful. Bucky' expression softened just slightly and he bowed his head.

"I believe you."

How could he not? It was a story old and true, and it perfectly embodied who Steve was at the heart of him.

"Your Mom was so lucky to have a kid like you and I bet she'd be proud as hell of the man you are today. I hope you never lose that streak of wanting to help people, Steve, even if jerks like me tease you."

His eyes shifted down, shame and guilt on his face. "I didn't make those kind of promises to help people or think of my Ma, I was just scared. I was so scared and all I could think about was that I never got to ride the Cyclone at Coney Island, isn't that dumb?"

Since the threat of a potential tongue lashing about how God wasn’t a presiding factor in his life was bullshit had ended, Steve let his eyes soften. They were nearly out of tater tots and the ketchup was just a smear of red across a plastic plate with a little banana motif on it that Natalia had gotten him two birthdays ago.

All of those months and weeks being kept… Well, Steve didn’t know where he was being kept, but that was the question to ask next, perhaps… Steve just wasn’t sure how he could judge a man for his fear.

He’d lost the arm prior to capture. He knew that much. But the rest? Those were the everlasting touches of someone that needed to, and hopefully had already, paid for their crimes.

“You should be ashamed of yourself because that is a terrible rollercoaster. I don’t care what people say about how the bones are better in the wooden ones, but if you go on it, you’ll be asking to be let off. Seems like a waste.” He hoped that Bucky would take the tease as intended. “But hey. I’ve never been… I haven’t been in your situation, you know? I haven’t been held under duress for any length of time. Being nearly buried in the subway doesn’t count either in my book. But… What was it like? Where you were held?”

Steve would be wrong if he thought the arm had been lost pre capture, though it was a mistake that a lot of people made because they saw the scars and assumed it had come off in an IED blast that had led to his capture and he preferred to lie and pretend that was true. The actual way he lost his arm was far too fucked up to talk about. And now Steve was asking questions that touched too close to it, too hard to talk about properly.

He didn't even realise that he had tensed up completely with his remaining arm across his chest in a defensive posture. He regretted starting this now. But he needed to, he couldn't fall at the first hurdle when he had such good intentions of getting back on his feet the right way.

"It sucked," he said succinctly. "I don't know how to put it into words. What it's like to spend that long knowing you could be dead st any moment, bleeding and hurting, trying not to break. I know what it's like to have bones broken and fingernails pulled, I can tell you if a waterboarding scene in a movie is accurate, or how many volts of electricity it takes to cause burns. Morita and I learned how to be quiet real fast, we learned not to scream and how to cry without making a noise so they wouldn't know how bad it was. All I said for weeks was my name and rank. Shit, Steve, you don't want to know what it was like. Just... tell me some good stuff. What's your best memories?"

Perhaps it was best not to believe everything drunk Bucky had said then. Truthfully, Steve would never question it, though. He couldn’t go picking at the scars when he knew that they had replaced all of Bucky’s skin and were as deep as bone. He hadn’t wanted detail about the tortures, perse. He was asking about the environment. Was it hot? Were the nights cold? Was it dusty or sandy? Could he see the sky and If so, what was it like? What could he hear, what could he smell? What were the textures of the locks—

Steve was an artist. Artists needed that little bit of detail or their minds would supply it far too horribly. He was imagining bugs and sweat and rats and filth—

And maybe it was like that, maybe it was more vibrant or muted. He didn’t know. But he pretended that he did.

“My happiest moments-- Meeting Nat. Having a conversation with her that didn’t involve Google Translate. Or going to the zoo with my dad-- It’s my only real memory of him. I mean, I have other ones but maybe they’re too clouded by my mom telling me about them. I remember everything else in her voice except for the zoo-- I pressed my hands to the glass of the lion enclosure and the lion came right on up to me and licked the spots my hands were at. Dad made me promise not to tell mom or she’d worry, you know? I wasn’t even supposed to be at the zoo. My asthma, you know? But we had ice cream. And he shipped out two days later. And that was that. So maybe that’s sad. But for me-- It’s everything I’ve wanted to live up to being because my dad saw me as being unafraid of that lion. I was perfectly safe anyway, but that’s not the point. I want to be that man. And… You. Us. Christmas together. That’s…that’s on my top five list. Well. Top ten at least.”

It was probably sensible not to listen to or believe most of anything that Bucky said when drunk, it's why Steve had been smart as hell to wait until he was sober before believing that he loved him. He had once told a sheep that he loved it when he was drunk, and if that wasn't a perfect illustration of why he wasn't to be trusted with drink in him then nothing was. It was soothing listening to Steve speak and by the time he was done, Bucky had his arm around him tightly.

"That's my happiness too. You. I'm not lying when I say that you're the reason that I can see any good in this world. I love the hell out of you."

He pressed a kiss to Steve's forehead.

"You're amazing to stick with me through this shit, but I don't want you to feel trapped, okay? If it gets too much then get out, don't let me drag you down. Promise me that? If I'm gonna do this, then I need to know it won't fuck you up."

Steve didn’t exactly want to go on. Hadn’t this been enough for them? Bucky kept waivering between worlds and Steve was afraid that he really might just stay in his gloom if they kept pressing on. But wasn’t that the deal? Didn’t Bucky want this? To talk to someone? Steve knew he couldn’t just run. He couldn’t.

His heart might ache but anything worthwhile did hurt. And hurt badly.

He felt a lump form in his throat as he repeated his love, returned the kiss, and then took Bucky’s hand in his.

“Tell me about the day you escaped. The whole day. Every part.”

That earned Steve an almost frightened look before he firmed his jaw and nodded. He needed to do this if he ever expected to get over this, and how could he hope to talk to strangers and professional therapists if he couldn't even open up to someone that he loved and trusted? He had to do it in his stoic and neutral voice to get through it, and he had to keep looking at the empty plate of tots to stop himself freaking out, but he did speak.

"They had us manacled when they weren't questioning us, and they'd often leave things we needed just out of reach. Keys, food, even weapons. It was to make us feel helpless, break us. It was evening and my right arm was free because I'd just been given food. My left had got burned and broken in the capture and after, but it was still... it would have healed and I was still locked up there and at my ankles. There was some shouting from outside and the guard that brought out food ran out and I thought... this is it. If we don't get out now, we're dying in here. One arm free was the best either of us ever had and we both reached as hard as we could. There were the keys to the cuffs just left there, a knife too, but all I could reach was the knife. I couldn't cut the cuffs or jimmy the lock, and I was desperate so I... cut it off myself to give more stretching room."

He knew what true desperation was, and it felt like the pain of sawing off your own arm with a knife over a whole hour of effort.

"I got the keys and unlocked my ankles, unlocked Morita, and we ran like hell. The confusion of the in fighting covered us, and we met some of our trucks about ten miles out. We didn't fight, we didn't try and bring them down from the inside, we just ran. I don't remember being picked up, I was pretty out by then and Morita was half carrying me. And that's... that's it."

He exhaled heavily, shaking but oddly not feeling as terrified as he had when he started. The last day was the worst of all, and now the telling of it was done then it was like a weird relief knowing that Steve now knew the ugliest parts of him.

The act of saving someone else, to lay down on the wire for yourself and your fellows, that was the very definition of what being a person ought to be. Steve was in tears, moisture collecting like jewels at his lashes, running down his face when they became too saturated, and dripped from his chin to the blanket. His jaw quivered as he tried to keep himself from sobbing.

He'd been trying to pick a moment of triumph. Of Bucky facing freedom, but instead he'd picked his most heroic day... And the day he lost a good part of himself.

Bucky had played baseball in high school. His left arm had led each drive of the bat forward and was the last to drop the stick as he rushed towards first base. He'd cut off part of his history to save his future.

Steve wasn't sure how receptive Bucky would be, but he reached forward and wrapped his arms around Bucky's neck.

"I knew you were a good man. I've always known you were a good man," he wept, no longer able to hide it as he spoke. "I just didn't know that you were a great one."

He wasn't expecting that reaction and it completely floored him. He had only ever been able to look at what he did as an act of cowardice, just a man who was so unable to face fighting another day of questioning that he had mutilated himself and made himself useless to the army. His superiors had been so busy making sure that he hadn't actually broken under pressure that they had failed to really thank him beyond perfunctory words to go with the medals that felt like consolation prizes. That Steve thought he had done something great was so bizarre to him that he just stared, pulled out of his neutrality by confusion.

"You don't think what I did was stupid?" It was quiet and a little humbled as he wrapped his arm around Steve in return, careful of his sling and the poor injury underneath.

Jesus, how did he deserve someone like this who could turn his whole world over in a few words?

"I did it to myself, how can't you think that's stupid?"

Steve didn't feel his shoulder. The supply of pain killers he was on took care of that. And the cut on his head? It didn't matter. He always had cuts somewhere. His skin was so thin. He was a breakable sort of guy, even if he was strength embodied within Bucky's embrace.

"You saw your opportunity and you took it." The risk hadn't outweighed the reward. Bucky spent an hour cutting off his own arm at the point it had broken, or maybe just enough so that he could pull himself to the key, destroying it in the process.

He could have just saved himself, but bleeding out and delirious by then, or so Steve imagined anyone would be by that point, he'd saved his fellow soldier. They could have been caught at any time but he was tenacious. He pushed through.

And it all worked out for him.

Steve took awhile to calm down, eventually cocooned in blanket and Bucky. "You're not stupid. It makes me love you more. I love you Bucky. I love you."

Bucky couldn't help that he was crying too by the time Steve calmed down a bit, holding all the tighter to his amazing boyfriend. He had just never thought of it in those terms, as a sacrifice for the greater good rather than an act of cowardice from a weak man. It made a hell of a lot of difference. He wasn't suddenly cured of everything that ailed him, but it was a strong foundation to build up from.

"I love you too, even if you think the Cyclone is a bad rollercoaster. C'mon, Steve, it was my dying thought-- or I thought it was, that I didn't get to ride it. You don't get to crap all over someone's dying wish like that. You're supposed to tell me how awesome it is, and that one day you'll propose to me at the top of it or something schmaltzy like that."

He pressed a kiss to the crown of blond hair, careful to avoid the butterfly bandages that hid a new bald spot where the doctors had shaved around the area to glue his poor head back together.

"...you know I haven't spoken to Morita since that day? I heard he got discharged, but we were in different parts of the hospital and then... I just never looked him up. Dum-Dum is the first person I've seen from over there."

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