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Reality doesn't slip so much, anymore. He doesn't end up finding that edge as much, where the now and the past and any shit he's made up while he wasn't looking collide and cut him adrift. It's easier to believe that "now" is real instead of hallucination made out of wishes, and that makes it easier to know flashbacks for what they are, even if memory's bad enough to make his skin scream it at him.
Not as much doesn't mean never.
When he's awake, Bucky can make himself stop, make himself be still and wait until the distortions let go and something tells him what's more real than anything else, what's actually there - noise, sound, movement, touch, something and even if he can't stop hearing, can't stop feeling the other times and places he knows that's what they are: other times, gone; he doesn't need to do anything about them and not only that he fucking can't. That's when he's awake.
Waking up into it . . . mostly doesn't work that way. Waking up into it means he doesn't get to make himself do anything. Means that snarling panic takes whatever's worst as the truth and that, that is why as far as he's concerned at least half the fucking time he should still be trying to sleep alone.
It has gone wrong before, he has hurt Steve before - not badly but he doesn't care - but this time all Bucky wants is to get away, get away, make it stop, and it's himself he ends up shoving off the bed, the real world putting in a winning bid in how hard he hits the floor, cracks his right wrist on the leg of the bedside table.
Doesn't help that much. The world splits in two, then and now and both wrong. Doesn't help much but helps a little, enough that he can stop Steve from touching him - not this time - and then figure out that the echo, the skin-echo is the neck of his shirt, the neckline and his wrists and get it off, away, get it away.
Away so there's no echo of collar-cuffs-closed-locked - no, it's bad enough, bad enough on its own, it doesn't fucking need help. Cold here cold then damn it -
Overhead light makes him blink, stabs his eyes. Steve's standing by the light-switch and there aren't shadows anymore, yellow-white light and the bedroom instead - here, now.
Then gives up a bit, pulls back a bit, leaves filth behind it. Bucky digs the heel of his hand into his forehead and tries to control his breathing. With limited success.
Steve comes and sits down beside him, leaning up against the side of the bed; when Bucky looks, Steve hands him a mug - microwaved, Bucky doesn't think it's been long enough since he told Steve no go away for anything fresh. Steve has one of his own. It works, helps - smell, heat, taste, all of them sharp and none of them with any echo or at least any echo he doesn't want.
He shifts the mug to his right hand and holds it against his forehead, lets the just-short-of-burning heat drag him back into his skin a little. He can make his breathing slow down but his heart's still trying to choke him. For a long time neither of them says anything, until Bucky sighs and says, "Fuck," and then lets the coffee burn a path down his throat instead, drinking too much at once just for that before he puts the mug down.
This time Bucky doesn't stop Steve when Steve puts an arm around his shoulders, shifts closer so Bucky can lean on him; it's fine, it's good and Steve's warm and he's freezing. Doesn't want his shirt back, or a blanket on the back of his neck. Not yet.
"I woke you before I woke up," Bucky says, after a minute, running what he's got of the last little while through his mind, noticing this time it doesn't look like he managed to hit Steve before he knocked himself out of it. He feels Steve's nod and suppresses a sigh. "I was talking," he says.
"Yeah," Steve admits. Bucky digs a thumb into the bridge of his own nose.
"What'd I say?" he asks, keeping his voice neutral. Not that he actually wants to know, but he needs to - needs to know how much he has to explain and how much he can just leave. There's shit he still doesn't want in Steve's head if he can avoid it, along with stuff he just doesn't want to think through again deep enough to tell.
He can feel Steve's discomfort and unhappiness, isn't surprised when Steve starts with a try for, "I don't thi - "
"Steve," Bucky says, flat, and the rest of the breath that would've gone to words goes to a sigh; Steve puts off answering for a second or two by taking a drink of coffee, and Bucky waits.
"You were asking someone to stop . . .something," Steve says - the most circumspect way, Bucky thinks, to say you were begging someone that Steve can think up. "Zola," Steve adds, reluctantly. "I think."
The echo-world offers up a voice Bucky doesn't want to hear saying, Better, yes, but still some work to do, and in the clinging smears of then things close around Bucky's neck, his wrists, his lower legs. To try and wipe them off he finishes his coffee and says, "No wonder you look so miserable."
"Bucky," Steve says, sounding unhappy but like he doesn't know how to go on.
"I'm joking," Bucky informs him, stealing his mug since he just seems like he's staring at it, not drinking it.
"No, you're not," Steve says, accurately and Bucky sits on the urge to curse him. He doesn't mean it anyway.
"I'm trying to," he says, letting it carry the admission and hoping it gets across some of the edge, too. The voice is fading, a bit; he rubs hard at his right wrist, trying to drive the feeling out, too. "Which is more than I can say for you."
Steve doesn't really answer, tightens the arm he's got around Bucky and shifts so he can lean one side of his forehead on Bucky's left shoulder. In spite of feeling like kicked shit, Bucky manages a flicker of amusement and says, "That's not gonna be comfortable very long, Steve."
"Good," Steve says. "Because you're freezing. Which means we should go back to bed."
"I dunno," Bucky says, leaning back, "it's already two AM, we might as well start the day." He feels Steve's breath snort against the skin beyond his left arm.
"Yeah," Steve replies, "or not. C'mon, Buck. You can rest if you can't sleep." He moves to disentangle his arm and stand up, hold out his hand instead.
"Fuck, I should never have given you those sleep pamphlets," Bucky says, using Steve's help to get up just far enough that he can let go and fall on the bed instead of beside it, kicking his feet under the comforter.
"And you did it on purpose and it was your own idea, even," Steve says, looking like he'd grin if he weren't tired, kneeling on the bed to pull the comforter over both of them as he lies down along Bucky's right side and half rolls over so he can wrap one arm around Bucky's chest.
"Clearly I was more brain-damaged than usual," Bucky retorts, dry. Steve digs his thumb into Bucky's ribs, just a little, but otherwise doesn't dignify that with a reply. Which is probably fair.