fossilised | It's AU time

The Bucky of old probably would have put on a horror or action moving, maybe even deliberately stripped his shirt off to display a body that he knew was well toned and attractive. But this Bucky just flicked through the channels until he found some old re-runs of Friends, something mindless and light hearted, and he sure as hell wasn't going to be stripping anything off.

"You need me to be sitting a certain way? I've never had anyone draw me before."

He was kind of self conscious about it, it seemed weirdly intimate for someone to study him quite so much and in such detail, then to put it all down on paper. And he had seen how amazing Steve's pieces of art were, he kind of felt unworthy to become one. The comic character didn't count, that was just based roughly on him.

"Is this where I lie down and say 'draw me like one of your French girls'?"

A comic character didn’t quite have his face. No one could hold up a comic beside him and say it was definitely him. But a portrait? Every little expression needed to be captured. Maybe that was why Steve didn’t want to do something full on. It wasn’t that he wasn’t sure he could capture the expression of someone’s eyes properly, it was just that Bucky had so much emotion that Steve was almost afraid to tackle that.

Why had he asked to draw him? He could have taken a photograph of his mother and drawn her. Or copied an image from a magazine. Working with an actual model was…surreal. It was strange in class and even stranger having someone pose for him and just for him.

“Yanno, if I had a dollar for every time I heard that line-- I’d have a whole dollar.” Okay, so that didn’t really come up in life, but still. “And what would Miss Universe say to that anyway? I don’t have any jewels to drape you in either so we’ll just have to work with what we’ve got.”

Steve brought one of his larger pads over with some pencils first. He’d fill in with charcoals later. Right now he just wanted to capture essense and shape…which was why he settled on the back of the couch, looking down on Bucky over his shoulder to get a slice of his face while he was watching a sitcom. His hair was a little…wrong though. Steve cleared his throat.

“Hey, as much as I like the man bun-- Can I change it?”

Bucky hadn't been expecting Steve to perch up behind him on the back of the couch and Steve might be able to tell from the tension in his shoulders that he really didn't like the position. People behind him set off his survival instincts like nothing else now, it was just a really vulnerable position to be in and he didn't like it. Not even with Steve, who seemed to be mostly harmless.

"Huh?"

His voice was a bit rougher, a bit lower, but he was determined not to make a big deal out of this. He knew that Steve was only drawing him, so he could get over it.

"Oh-- yeah, do what you want with it. I just tied it up to keep it out of my way while I was cooking."

He had got pretty good at the one handed hair tie trick. He really should get it cut. He had always had short hair as a kid, and then he had been stuck with regulation army length. It had just grown out in captivity and then in hospital, and he kept it that way because it felt like giving the middle finger to the idiot past him who had thought signing up was a good plan.

"Okay, cool." Steve had never had hair any longer than it was right now. Sometimes it got too shaggy and he had to do the trimming himself, and sometimes he went to the barber for an actual shape up, but the slight dip to his ears or cheekbones was as long as he could stand to let it go. He was always clean cut. He parted his hair on the side when he combed it. Steve was just that sort of man.

He leaned forward, putting his pencil between his lips, and pulled the elastic out of Bucky's hair. It was softer than he'd thought it would be. Guy hair was usually rough with product made to make it look perfectly messy. There was no texture here. Bucky's hair was fine and glossy and he almost let it slip through his fingers before he decided that would be too much.

He gathered dark strands in his hands and raked his fingers across his scalp over the crown of his head and beneath the ponytail to smooth it out before wrapping the band around it. The high pony was dishelved and imperfect. He liked that. Baby hairs drifted down the nape of his strong neck. And he liked that too.

Steve shifted his position after that to the arm of the sofa. It was a waning profile that way and he could still see the skin beneath the crew neck shirt and the shape of the ear-- he could see the chisel of a jaw--

He had liked the other angle better but this way Bucky might be less tense since he could see Steve out of the corner of his eye now.

Bucky stayed extremely still while Steve worked on his hair, almost as if he had almost forgotten how to breathe. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was weird and he wasn't sure if he liked it, a bizarre mix of his internal paranoia and the pleasure from fingernails across his scalp. Still, he managed it, and he relaxed a bit when Steve moved position to the opposite arm.

Once studied in detail, Steve would probably notice the way that Bucky's skin was peppered by the collar of his shirt in slightly whitened lines, like a spiderweb of scars that obviously stretched a long way below the surface. His muscles were well defined, his adam's apple prominent but not overly so, and his eyes a very deep blue.

He tried to focus on the episode of Friends, but really most of his attention was taken up by the soft scritching sound of pencil across paper. He kept silent, though, waiting... he didn't want to interrupt before Steve was done.

What Steve noticed the most was the way that Bucky's has kept moving, or how he swallowed. "You can talk to me," Steve said kindly, his eyes focused on the shape of Bucky's throat where the stubble was just about visible. He'd add that detail in later, probably after he got himself uncomfortably close to his subject.

Fuzzy socked feet stretched forward before Steve leaned back to grab a stick of charcoal. It would be a softer sound on the paper now. And he may or may not end up sticking his tongue out as he blended and shaded.

"How much of yesterday do you remember? You decided that you wanted to get to know me but I have a feeling that most of what we talked about was taken out with the recycling. So maybe we should play twenty questions again?" He still knew almost nothing about Bucky but he had a feeling that Bucky wanted to keep it that way. "Do you remember me talking about my parents?"

Steve was such a good guy. Bucky kept thinking it, because it kept being hammered in repeatedly, and every time was like an extra reminder that there were still nice people in the world. He picked up the remote and turned down the episode, though he didn't turn it off because it was good to have something to look at, but twenty questions sounded better.

Parents. Shit.

He tried to wrack his brains for what had been told to him, he didn't want to put his foot in it if Steve had confessed to him that he had been from an abusive home or some shit like that. Finally a fuzzy memory surfaced, something about his Ma having died not that long ago and his Dad-- oh shit. The military. Now he remembered that conversation, which meant Steve definitely knew he was at least a little fucked.

"Yeah. Sorry again. And about the shit I spouted last night, it's kind of coming back in pieces. But-- sure, twenty questions. I ask one, you ask one?"

It was an olive branch way of offering at least some more information about himself, he figured Steve had earned it for being so good about everything he'd learned so far.

"Okay, uh-- how old were you when you had your first kiss and who was it with? Tell me about it."

Downplaying what Bucky said, because he would not be bringing up the suicide threat he'd heard, or any of the torture that had been eluded to, Steve made some sort of noncommittal noise to the apology and just kept working. He didn't touch Bucky's eyes yet. The outline was there but the image would be special and meaningful and he needed desperately to ignore that for now. Especially since Bucky dove right on in with probably the most embarrassing thing he could ask.

"I uh... Okay, but keep your judgements to a monimum?" Thet pretty much gave free reign over his little story. He was sure of it. "So I was seventeen--". Yeah. Late bloomer. "I really liked this girl in my math class. Her name was Peggy. But she wasn't interested in me at all. I thought that maybe if I could seem a little more mature and grown up, she'd notice, you know?"

It wasn't like he was growing hair on his chin any time soon, after all!

So I got a leather jacket and I started to wear my dad's dog tags around. I was trying to be tough you know, but I really looked more like those guys from Grease. Which got me beaten up pretty badly. Anyway, I was off under the bleachers licking my wounds and this blond girl a year younger than me came back to smoke and she said I looked so pathetic that she just had to kiss me. She tasted like cigarettes and I had an asthma attack after she stuck her tongue in my mouth."

Ugh.

"Go ahead and tell me about yours. I bet it was when you were thirteen or something playing spin the bottle like normal people."

Not gay, then.

That was a shame, but maybe it was a relief, it meant that the flirting could continue and just be teasing between friends, and Bucky wouldn't have to worry about wanting to ask him out because it just wouldn't be on the cards even if he hadn't been fucked in the head. The story, though, that made him laugh even if he tried to choke it down for the sake of Steve's pride.

"Wow, pal, that was real smooth," he snorted, laughing at him but not in a cruel way. Not because Steve was a late bloomer or had an asthma attack, but just because the story itself was pretty funny.

"Alright, I'll tell you, but none of this copying my questions bullshit next time. That's just lazy. I was fourteen, actually, and he was this guy from my boxing club. We'd had this really intense round and he broke my nose, he was helping me set it and we got a little too close and-- not the most romantic kiss. It hurt like hell with a broken nose and kinda tasted like blood and sweat, but it wasn't too bad. We dated a while, maybe a month, before we broke it off."

No. Steve wasn't gay. But he wasn't straight either. He wasn't really in the middle, he didn't have a preference, but he wasn't a borderline asexual-- Steve didn't do labels. That was a bullying ploy and he hated bullies with all of his heart and his soul. But that said, he wasn't entirely capable of sustaining relationships either. He didn't have many friends. He had only one good friend and she was all wrapped up in the firefighter and her job with the ballet.

"I'm not copying you. I'm giving you the chance to brag," Steve said without looking up. "How do you even-- how do you date at fourteen? Do you ask your mom to give you a ride...? Or hey, where were you even born and raised? You sound Brooklyn." Sort of. The accent wasn't that thick. Steve didn't have much of an accent either though and he was born here and raised here after his dad died and they moved off of military housing.

He had a lot of other questions too. Like what was it like to have a broken nose? And how did he know that guy was into him, because he would have been afraid to say anything when he was fourteen to anyone about finding boys attractive. Everyone growing up thought he was gay already but that's what made it worse.

"What do you mean, how do you date at fourteen? Loads of people date at fourteen, Steve, geez. You just hang out after class, or sit together at lunch and mack in the hallway. That sort of thing."

He had been lucky. There was a world of difference between being skinny, nerdy, and gay; and being athletic, charming, handsome, and gay. Bucky had been enough of those things that the people who wanted to give him a hard time about it had been the outliers, and most everyone else still wanted to be his friend. It helped that he was a school champion boxer and in really good shape even as a kid, knowing he wanted to go into the army, so any bullies knew they'd have a real fight on their hands.

"I am. Was. I was born here in Brooklyn, but my family moved out to Boston just before I graduated high school."

He wasn't sure if that's why he had come back here, somewhere familiar and comforting, but far away from his family so that they'd never find him.

"My Ma still lives there, I think, and my sister will be in college by now. Last I heard, she was trying to get into Harvard to do chemistry, she's a smart kid." He cleared his throat. "Okay, so-- you ever had any pets?" Wow, what a lame question.

Shading Bucky's hair was taking time. Steve wasn't sure if their teacher was expecting so much detail but Steve couldn't help himself. He wasn't to represent every strand so he could look on it later and claim which ones he had touched. And that was a weird thought and a weirder desire and so he decided that he was going to completely pretend that he hadn't just thought that. Wow. Smooth, Steve

He kicked out a fuzzy foot at Bucky for being a jerk -- evidently Steve was sheltered enough even in school that he hadn't noticed people were dating by just hanging out. Thst seemed like what friends did. But what did he know really? He'd been too busy with school and with his art to pick his head up most of the time.

"Wow, Boston? That's just a few hours north. I've always wanted to go and draw the dinosaur bones in the museum and shut up, Buck, before you make a comment about that. I don't want to hear it. Don't make me kick you again."

Yes. Blue fuzzy feet of doom, ladies and gentlemen. How terrible!

"But no. No pets. I get sick a lot so even if I got like a lizard or something that wouldn't upset my allergies, I might end up starving it to death accidentally. I'd really love to get a puppy. Maybe one day. Bishons are supposed to be hypoallergenic."

"Did you only box or did you play other sports? You don't look like the football kind of guy, but I can see you running track."

Bucky was just going to gloss over the Boston remark, as if he ever intended to set foot in that place again and see his family. They were better off without him, better off never seeing what he'd done to himself. Because that was the root of it, he really believed all of this was his own fault. They had both told him not to sign up, his sister had practically begged him and his Ma had tried to reason with him, but he had gone and done it anyway.

Now look at him. Down an arm, scarred to hell and back, with a brain so scrambled that it could be served on toast as an egg and nobody would be able to tell the difference. What a fucking idiot. He had dreamed of being a hero as a kid, but he turned out just a failure.

"Sick, how? You got some kind of immune problems, or you just pick up colds and stuff easy? Like-- am I supposed to be taking a first aid course to be living above you?"

He was teasing, but there was a note of serious concern in there too. What if Steve was pretty seriously ill? He wasn't sure why that would bother him so much when they didn't know each other that well, but it would.

"And you should absolutely get a dog, the only thing you need to complete your image is this cute little Bichon curled at your feet. Uh-- and I did run track, played baseball, mostly boxed. I was a tristate school champion."

"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.

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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