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There are so many things. There is -
- cold. Running water, the wrong kind of running water, how a door closes (too heavy), the smell of . . . something (oily-thick-sour-salt-water) -
A tone of voice. An image, a picture; the wrong thought.
So many fucking things. Everything, every other thing, new things old things, something safe today's a mine tomorrow waiting to be stepped on and that isn't, isn't actually true. Been true, but just - days. The last days, the last few days, a week. They happen. It happens it gets bad it gets worse it passes. Has passed, each time. So far.
Fuck. Hard to think. Well, no - easy to think, if he just gives up, if he just lets himself think there and then and that. If he stops trying not to smell petrichor and ozone, blood and evergreens and spring rot, cordite and snow, only one door, one way out, behind him and restraints mean he can't turn -
No. Not there. Not then. Not that.
But it makes it hard to think. But this, here, now smells of rain and car-exhaust, dish-soap and cold oats, oil soap for the hardwood from yesterday, surface cleaner. Coffee. Leather upholstery behind his back, laundry soap from his shirt and sweat from his own skin, the last turning . . . wrong. He should probably do something about that.
He hates everything about this week. Maybe. Or maybe just himself and the inside of his head and the part that says there's only killing and testing and cold, and if reality doesn't match up reality's the lie.
Years and years and decades, to grind the collar in, to put the cage inside his head and rip everything else out. Distant fragments of sense say he shouldn't be surprised it takes time to get rid of it but he's not in the fucking mood for platitudes.
Steve's hand on his shoulder makes him flinch, but he catches Steve's wrist before Steve can pull away. "Fuck," he says, "sorry - don't." Lets go and rubs at his eyes with fingertip and thumb, realizes it's been a while since he actually saw the room and the light's brighter, closer to noon.
It's hard to think.
He doesn't have anything worth saying, doesn't want to hear the question, so as Steve sits down on the floor beside him he says, "You know, you should really just fucking shoot me and put us both out of my misery," because it's a way of answering the question how are you? (the one hiding in you okay?) with fucking awful, thanks that . . . isn't.
No question, no answer, just - that. Twisted up like it's funny. Which it kind of is.
"Yeah, that's not happening," Steve says as he settles himself, matter-of-fact and unaffected and like these haven't been four (maybe five?) days of only occasionally relenting shit. He catches Bucky's left arm, pulls him over and after a few seconds resistance Bucky lets him, because he doesn't have enough to fight Steve and his own head, and he can afford to let one win more than he can afford to let the other.
Steve arranges them both so that Bucky's sitting in front of him, back against his chest; he's human and warm and worried, again, and Bucky hates that. Wishes he could fucking reward patience with sanity, with recovery, but he can't, so it's just . . . this.
And even fucking furious with himself and his head, all the shit he's tied to and still can't shake off, he can't help relaxing, a little, and knows it'd be fucking stupid to try. Because in spite of all fucking evidence to the contrary, he's not a complete fucking idiot.
Steve's arms cross each other across Bucky's chest, and Steve just barely digs his fingertips in to the front of Bucky's shoulders, testing; Bucky suppresses a wince and says, "Yeah, that's fucked up again too."
Steve rests his forehead against the back of Bucky's neck and says, after a bit, "You need a bath."
"No," Bucky says, and it's maybe bitter, "I need a bullet to the head or a slit throat, but since you get sad calf eyes when I say that, I could probably have a bath."
"Six of one . . ." Steve says, blandly. The breath that makes the words is warm; it's easier to think, maybe, it's just most of the thoughts now are sour-twisted-sick, so Bucky's not sure about the exchange.
"Fuck," he says, "fine. In a minute."
It's actually about forty, but fuck it.
Bucky gets as far as running a shallow bath before his ability to think just sort of . . . stops, leaving him sitting on the edge of the tub staring stupidly at the now-still water for a minute, forgetting what comes next or, when he remembers, how to make himself do it.
He startles - again - when Steve comes to stand beside him, hand brushing the top of his head. "Fuck," he repeats himself, "sorry. Tired."
"Yeah," Steve says, "I know. Unless you want to try for washing you and your clothes at the same time," he adds, with a little bit of humour, "the next step is getting rid of them."
Should be a retort about laundry or some other shit there, but Bucky can't find it, can't find anything past the blank emptiness of his head right now and stops trying. He sighs, and pulls his shirt off over his head, kicks jeans and underwear off without bothering to stand up.
Washing shouldn't take as much fucking energy as it does. Bucky's vaguely aware that Steve hasn't left, kind of doesn't care and thinks maybe he should worry about that but can't find the energy. He stalls with shampoo in his hand, arms resting on bent knees, until Steve taking the bottle from him brings him back and he realizes he was on the edge of losing time again.
God fucking damn it.
Before he can summon up the energy to argue, which is about all he can summon up the energy for, Steve says, "Will you just . . . not?" The bottle snaps as he closes it again. "Pretend you've got the flu or something if it helps. Call it fair play."
Mostly Steve wins because his fingers on Bucky's scalp are distracting enough that Bucky almost forgets why he'd've been arguing. And maybe he's too tired to argue anyway, or maybe he's just tired enough that common fucking sense manages to get a leg up on . . . whatever else, and common sense says turning down something that feels as good as Steve's hands on his head and neck is fucking stupid.
Maybe he'll go with that one.
Bucky's vaguely aware of Steve pulling the plug after Bucky's hair's rinsed clean, but only really tunes back in when the water's running again, to blink and stare at it as the tub fills back up with considerably warmer water until Steve says, "Move over," and steps into the water behind him.
At that, Bucky fights to surface out of the apathy, bring the world back into some kind of focus, and manages to say, "This water's too hot for you," except he can't tell if he's objecting, accusing or amused, because he knows what Steve's doing.
He's not sure why that matters.
"I'll live," Steve says, settling and then drawing Bucky back to lean against him, the same way they'd been in the living-room.
Bucky lets the water run until it's resting somewhere around three inches from the top of the tub and then sits forward to turn it off before letting Steve pull him back. Without the water everything's weirdly quiet, the noises from the street coming in from the open windows in the other rooms coming from another world.
The water is hot, but it's something - not something to focus on, something he doesn't have to, something that shouts itself at him, something simple and immediate. Between it and the quiet and Steve's arm resting across his chest, for a few minutes at least Bucky can approximate thinking. Actually thinking.
He sighs. "I'm sorry," he says, quietly, because he probably won't be able to later, the words will twist into something that might as well be real and sharp and might as well cut him up trying to come out of his throat. Words, most things get caught between different parts of his fucking mind, all screaming different things so that instead of now, when he can't think for the emptiness, he can't think for the noise.
Steve doesn't say anything at first and then, like he's picked carefully, he says, "I know you are. But you don't need to be."
And Jesus, Bucky could argue and probably should, but right now he doesn't want that fight, when he could just stop bothering to talk and close his eyes and not think for a while either.
At least until the water gets cold.