Chapter Text
Steve rolled over in bed, and reached out for Bucky, and Bucky wasn’t there.
It was early, even for them. The time on his phone said 3:18.
Steve lifted his head off the pillow to see if he could hear his husband somewhere in the house. If Bucky was being stealthy, even Steve’s ears wouldn’t detect him. But it sounded like he was in the kitchen. The super soldier metabolism did sometimes demand a feeding in the middle of the night.
Steve rolled out of bed, pulled on some soft pants, and went to find out what Bucky was making.
Nothing, it turned out. Bucky was on his hands and knees, scrubbing at the kitchen floor by hand with a soapy cloth.
"Hey, Bucky,” Steve said.
“Hey, Stevie,” Bucky returned.
“Did you spill something?” Steve asked.
“No,” Bucky said, working on the tiles intently.
The gleaming tile floor was clean as a dinner plate. Steve had bought the the townhouse where they had lived back in the 30s, and he’d had the living quarters fully modernized and restored to historical perfection. Steve, raised by a nurse, had been well-trained to keep things spic and span at all times, so their floor never really had a chance to get dirty. Bucky, the eldest of a pack of four wild Barneses, had grown up in a state of controlled chaos kept barely in check by a strong-willed mother, so he could be sloppy, but he also knew that Steve liked things to be neat and clean, so he gave it some effort.
Still, it was odd behavior for Bucky. Scrubbing the floor in the middle of the night wasn’t something either one of them would normally get out of bed to go and do.
“You sure you want to be out here scrubbing in the middle of the night?” Steve asked.
“Mmm,” Bucky said. It was the noise he made when he was conflicted, a noise Steve was coming to recognize.
Just because Bucky’s trigger words had been deactivated didn’t mean he was all better and back to the old Bucky. Steve and Bucky were both in therapy, trying to learn how to cope with everything that had happened to them. Steve knew that Bucky had been terribly abused, and Steve’s outpouring of love and devotion couldn’t make that trauma magically go away. Plus, Steve knew that Bucky suffered under a terrible weight of guilt and sorrow for the awful crimes HYDRA had used him to commit. Those things added up, and it meant that Bucky would never regain the innocence of the guy Steve had fallen for when he they were kids.
It meant that sometimes Steve would find Bucky on his hands and knees in the darkest hours of the night, scrubbing and scrubbing at an already pristine floor.
Steve wasn’t all that sleepy — neither he nor Bucky really needed much sleep — but their therapists had pointed out how important it was to try and keep to a regular sleep schedule. Even super soldier brains needed time to dream and rejuvenate. And Bucky and Steve in particular needed time to cuddle and rest, skin to skin. They slept naked, pressed close and twined around each other, and sleeping like that was one of the things about this new life that Steve cherished most.
Steve was pretty sure that Bucky out here pointlessly scrubbing didn’t do much to improve anyone’s quality of life.
“I feel,” Steve said, slowly and clearly. It was a thing the therapists made them practice.
Bucky cocked an ear to show that he was trying to listen.
“I will feel more heard if you put down that rag and look at me,” Steve said.
Bucky’s wiping hand slowed, and stopped, but didn’t quite let go of the rag. Slowly, Bucky lifted his eyes from the floor.
“I feel, that the middle of the night is for sleeping,” Steve said. “I feel, like I want my husband in my arms, more than I want such a well-scoured floor.”
“Mmm,” Bucky said, his eyes dropping back down.
“What do you feel right now, Buck?” Steve prompted. He was tired of looming over Bucky, and he sat down on the floor in a spot that was dry.
“I feel terrible,” Bucky whispered. “Every time I close my eyes. It’s awful. I can’t stand it. All I can see is the blood.”
“I’m so sorry, Buck,” Steve said. “I wish I could make it all go away. Can I help? Can I hug you, maybe?”
Bucky’s eyes squinched tight and he shuddered, then with effort he looked up at Steve. “There’s only one thing that’s ever made it go away,” Bucky said.
“What?” Steve said, with a little smile.
“The chair,” Bucky said. Before Steve could recover from the shocking words, Bucky's body was wracked by a terrible shudder, almost a convulsion, as he slammed his forehead to the floor, arching his back in a horrible subservient position.
“Please,” Bucky begged. His mouth was tightly closed, his teeth gritted together, but Steve could hear the word trying to force itself out through Bucky’s desperate control. “Please,” he whined, like a wounded animal.
“Bucky, sh, it’s okay,” Steve blathered, afraid to touch. All the words the therapists had told him to say flew out the window.
“Steve,” Bucky sobbed, “make it stop. Please, make it stop!”
“How?” Steve said, hands hovering over Bucky.
“I don’t know,” Bucky moaned. “Just, please, I can’t stand it.”
“Can I touch you?” Steve asked.
“Yes,” Bucky cried.
In a flash, Steve gathered him up and pulled his anguished husband into his arms, rocking him back and forth, crying as Bucky whimpered. Every muscle of Bucky’s huge body was tight as a bowstring, straining against the horrors flooding through his mind.
“Sh,” Steve said. “I’m here, I’m here. You’re not alone. I love you, God, I love you so much, Buck. I’m so sorry,” he babbled, tears streaming down his face.
“Tighter,” Bucky said. “Don’t let go, please don’t let go.”
Steve held Bucky as tight as he could.
“Get, get on top of me,” Bucky panted.
Steve stretched Bucky out on the floor and lay down on top of him. They were so close to the same size now. Bucky was broader in the shoulder, and thicker all over, while Steve was just an inch taller. It was so strange to Steve, even now, that he was bigger than Bucky, who’d always loomed large in Steve’s mind’s eye, perfect, heroic, unassailable.
“Tighter,” Bucky begged.
Steve wound his limbs as tight around Bucky as he could, but Bucky couldn’t stop thrashing. Steve wracked his brain for some way to calm Bucky down. Whisky did nothing for them, and it had been a while since Thor’s gift of Asgardian mead, though carefully rationed, had at last run out. None of the drugs the therapists had suggested had had any effect on Bucky’s enhanced physiology.
At last Steve thought of something.
“Hydrotherapy,” he gasped, struggling to hold Bucky down as tight as he could.
“huh?” Bucky said.
“My ma told me about it, the year she worked at the asylum. Wrap you up like a mummy, pour cold water all over you. Supposed to calm you down.”
Bucky let out a horrible groan at the suggestion. His back arched, fighting Steve as though rebelling against the idea. “That… sounds…. Bad,” he ground out.
“But, it might help?” Steve said. “I mean, we could try it? I’d wouldn’t leave, Bucky, I’d be right there, I promise.”
“No,” Bucky said, groaning more. His limbs were really starting to thrash. Steve had never seen him get this bad.
The vibranium fist slammed down and a floor tile shattered, sending up a spray of shards that drove like needles into their left sides.
“Bucky, I know this is hard, but you’ve got to quit it,” Steve said.
“No!” Bucky said. His eyes were wide now, terrified as he struggled to breathe against his growing panic.
“Bucky!” Steve shouted.
“Nooo!” Bucky screamed, and with a huge effort, he threw Steve off.
In a flash, Bucky was on his feet, his deadly ingrained skillset taking over his reactions.
In a heartbeat, Steve was fighting for his life.
“Bucky, I’m gonna have to take you down,” Steve warned.
Bucky swung his metal fist, and it flew wild. The new arm was a lot lighter than the old one had been, and Bucky hadn’t been much interested in training to get used to the difference.
Steve caught the arm, spun, and forced it behind Bucky’s back. The Wakandans had built the new arm to be compatible with the old should joint, which was deeply rooted into Bucky’s chest and back. The shoulder wouldn’t give, and Bucky couldn’t break the hold. Steve grappled until he got his other arm around Bucky’s neck, and for the second time since their initial reunion, choked him out.
Steve felt the iron tension in Bucky’s body finally give way as he lost consciousness. He only had seconds.
He sprinted with Bucky in his arms to the bathroom and lay him gently in the tub, then ran and grabbed the heavy wool blankets from the linen closet. Quick as he could, he picked Bucky up and wrapped him as tight as he could in the blankets.
“Whuh — no!” Bucky moaned, starting to regain consciousness.
Steve knew Bucky could tear through the blankets, thick as they were in so many layers, so he kept his arms tight around Bucky as he finished wrapping the blankets into place.
Bucky tried to arch his body, but Steve was prepared, with his legs and arms locked into place, and chin tucked down and away from Bucky’s deadly head butts.
Steve managed to turned on the shower to cold, and he held Bucky in place as the cold water rained down to soak into the blankets. It wasn’t that cold. It wasn’t full of ice. It wasn’t the cold of arctic salt water. It wasn’t the cold of the cryo tank. It was just cold enough, maybe, maybe, to slow Bucky down, to give him a chance to calm his fevered brain.
“Argh!” Bucky screamed.
Steve held on.
Bucky fought, but he couldn’t break free. The cold ran down into the blankets and Steve just held on, held on. He lost track of time, holding Bucky fast in his arms, like a young lover who refused to let his beloved be taken.
As last Steve realized that Bucky had stilled.
He pressed his cheek softly against Bucky’s, carefully in case it was a ruse. Bucky’s cheek was cold and wet.
“I gotcha,” he said.
“Steve,” Bucky breathed. “Cold.”
“I know,” Steve said, his voice breaking. “Let’s just stay here a while.”
“Didn’t want you … to see me… like this,” Bucky whispered.
“In sickness, and in health, for richer, for poorer, as long as we both shall live,” Steve swore.
“Til death ... do… us part,” Bucky breathed.
“Nah,” Steve said, voice breaking. “Death can’t keep us down.”
“You could do … this all day,” Bucky said, voice slow and slurred, but sounding a little calmer.
“You bet I could,” Steve said.
“Cold,” Bucky said. “Stevie. Don’t let go.”
“I won’t let go,” Steve swore. His throat ached from crying. “I’ll never let go.”
“Stevie,” Bucky sighed, and the cold took him down when nothing else could.
Steve didn’t let go, and they made it through till dawn.