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Some days he was fine, he really was. He would walk around the tower, hang out at the range and spar with whoever was around.
He’d hit the showers feeling tired but accomplished, washing off the day’s grime and sweat with minimal effort.
After, there’d be food and friends in the communal areas, group dinners or movie nights or sometimes they’d go out and visit bars, pubs or even nightclubs, everyone trying to show him their favourite parts of the 21stcentury.
When they’d return from that he could go to his own rooms, drop his keys into the bowl next to the door, lounge on his own couch before sleeping in his own bed.
Sometimes there would be nightmares, but waking up in a space that was his and his alone, that no one was allowed to touch and barred anyone from entering when they didn’t have explicit permission to be there helped drag him back to reality.
On those days he’d be content.
On those days he wouldn’t mind being alive.
Today is not one of those days.
He’d woken up feeling like his skin was too tight, the air thick and closing in on him, the drag of fabric down his chest almost too much to handle.
Lying as still as possible he tries to assess himself, deciding whether he is physically capable of getting up and out of bed.
“Sergeant Barnes, apologies if I’m overstepping, but my sensors are indicating elevated levels of stress.” The disembodied voice of J.A.R.V.I.S. comes from somewhere along the ceiling. It had taken Bucky months and months to get used to the presence of the A.I., and only after being reassured by literally everyone in the tower that there weren’t any cameras in the private areas and that the public spaces were only monitored for the safety of the inhabitants, had the paranoia of being watched started to subside.
“Would you like me to start up one of the emergency protocols?”
He tries to reply, but when he opens his mouth no sound comes out. His chest still feels constricted, and where his voice should be is only gravel and the vague memory of screaming himself hoarse.
Frustrated, the fingers of his metal hand start tapping against the bedframe, the only movement his brain will allow him right now. There isn’t a conscious thought behind the action, so he’s surprised when the posh voice starts talking again.
“Do you have anyone in particular in mind, Sergeant Barnes? I’m afraid the request to send help is a little unspecific, and I do not wish to worsen the situation by waking up the wrong person.”
For a second Bucky thinks that Tony must have installed mindreading powers into the program that runs the tower, but then his brain catches up with the rest of his body and he realizes he’s been tapping out the same rhythm on the bedframe since J.A.R.V.I.S. had first started speaking.
He’d been asking for help in Morse code, and the A.I. must have caught on to the pattern.
Making a mental list of the people that are currently in residence at the tower he starts checking off almost everyone immediately.
Steve will only try to make him remember all the good times they’d had as kids, then get this sad puppy look when he will inevitably say he doesn’t remember those, or even worse, look at him with barely veiled horror as Bucky is forced to explain why girls with braids playing skip-rope or hopscotch make him screw his eyes shut and focus on his breathing (it’s because of Prague it’s because of Kiev because of Lima and Anantapur and Kathmandu oh god Kathmandu he’d done so much terrible shit he couldn’t breathe).
Steve is out of the question.
Natasha is on a mission, so he can’t ask her, and even if he could he isn’t sure he would because tonight’s nightmare had involved her and not in ways she would want to hear.
Sam is in DC, working at the VA. Tony and Pepper are at a fancy gala somewhere in Australia (don’t think about the kill order in Adelaide don’t think about the orphans you created do not think about the amount of blood that drains from the unmoving form of a 5 year old) and talking to a Stark in the mood he is in right now is only gonna make things worse.
Thor is off-world, Bruce is at a science convention having the time of his life getting his nerd on with people like doctor Cho and Stephen Strange, where they try to combine the medical and the mythical in a way that won’t destroy the entire solar system, and even though Wanda is one of the sweetest people he’s ever met, the fact that she can mess with his mind makes it hard for him to trust her when he feels this vulnerable.
That leaves him with Clint, and his brain tries to tell him no immediately, warns him away from that possibility, tells him he shouldn’t let someone so similar so close, but the lure of dog cops and bad puns is too strong.
Still, it takes him almost 5 minutes before he is able to find his way back out of his brain, his fingers the only part of him not lying there frozen in horror.
Thinking about the various places in the world where his friends are right now has triggered a bunch of bad memories, sucking him down a spiral of why did I do that why did I let them let me do that why didn’t I stop them what if I can still do that oh fuck what if I’m doing it right now and no one is stopping me what if they’re still in my head and they only let me believe I’m safe in the tower and in control of my own actions what if what if what if – and the only thing startling him out of the endless questioning of his own autonomy is the sudden pounding on his front door.
His eyes – which had been closed up until now – fly open at the unexpected sound. He’s up and out of bed in less than a second, crouching down next to the mattress, one arm up to shield his face and the other scrabbling for the knife in his nightstand.
The familiar weight of the dagger should be grounding, would normally ease his breathing and make him feel safe, but the hilt is getting slippery from the sweat on his flesh hand and it feels like the blood that dripped down his blade when he’d gutted that president who was making human trafficking a nightmare for HYDRA.
He stops seeing his bedroom door, staring into the unseeing eyes of the innocent woman instead. She’d been on her way home from a fundraiser where she had just successfully raised enough money to bring home a group of young Sudanese girls that had been stolen from their homes and shipped to some faraway country to be sold into illegal brothels. She’d been taking the fancy pins out of her hair, the gemstones matching the lovely champagne of her necklace. The colour of her lipstick was almost the same as the blood that stained the front of her dress after he left her.
He remembers every victim he has ever made.
He remembers the ones fighting back, the screams of pain echoing in his ears, their pleas for mercy etched into his brain. Some would be silently sobbing, others begging for someone, anyone, save them please help them they hadn’t done anything wrong please god don’t do this don’t do this!
His bedroom door slams open, causing him to violently flinch before throwing his knife at the vague human shape standing in the opening. His vision is blurring, and he knows his aim is off when he hears the low thud of metal hitting wood instead of the sickening squelch of ripping flesh.
The multicoloured blob moves closer, and Bucky tries to tell him to stay away, to leave him the fuck alone but he can’t hear anything over the screaming in his ears, a wave of wordless sound building and crashing until the roaring is disorienting him even more than his blurred vision already has.
He can feel his limbs locking down, the muscles freezing and refusing to comply when he asks, no, begs his arms to move, to protect him from the unseen and now unheard threat, swearing at his legs to run, to take him far away to a safe place even though he’s in the tower, in his bedroom and there shouldn’t be a safer place than this, no one should be able to get in, he specifically designed everything so that it was his command and his alone that could open doors how is there someone in his room –
A sudden flare in the otherwise dark blurriness causes his brain to pause, and that one tiny stutter in the endless spiral is enough for him to focus on the single bright spot in front him, but just barely.
The glow is yellowish and starts moving from the left to the right, creeping towards the corners of his eyes but never leaving his field of vision entirely. He pushes all conscious thought into following that spot, the tiny bundle of light the only thing keeping him from going into a full panic attack.
Bucky’s eyes are starting to water from staring so intently at the flame, but he doesn’t dare to blink, afraid that if he closes his eyes for even a second he will lose his mind entirely.
Slowly, slowly, his vision starts to focus, the blurriness giving way to sharp detail once again. The noise in his ears is starting to subside too, but now all he can hear is the too fast beating of his own heart and the way his breath sounds ragged and out of control.
There’s someone crouched in front of him, holding the lighter that brought him back from the brink of drowning in his thoughts.
“Hey buddy, you with me?” the person – man – in front of him asks softly. The voice is welcome and familiar, a soothing balm over his frayed nerves, but he can’t immediately place it.
He casts his eyes down, giving the man across from him the slowest and most obvious once-over ever. Flannel pajama pants with tiny arrows, no shirt, blond hair standing every which way in the worst bed head known to mankind, bright purple hearing aids.
Clint Barton is kneeling on his bedroom floor.
It hits him all at once, the remnants of the nightmare and the aftershocks of the panic combined with the surprise of finding the archer in front of him almost enough to make him physically keel over backwards.
He tries to inhale deeply, wanting to compose himself, but instead of a steadying breath he chokes out a sob and starts shaking violently. His legs, cramped up and painful, finally give out and he collapses into an ungraceful heap, clutching his arms close to his chest in an effort to lessen the unrelenting shivers.
“I’m gonna take the sheets off your bed and wrap them around you, is that okay?” Clint asks. He stands up smoothly when Bucky gives a vague approximation of a nod, his body still too much out of his control to do anything else.
There’s some shuffling, a muffled curse, and then the heaviness of his weighted blanket settling on his shoulders. He instantly drops his face into the folds and inhales deeply.
“I didn’t break into your room,” Clint says after a while, voice sounding strangely bashful. Bucky raises his head just enough to peak over the edge of the blanket, hoping the question that refuses to leave his lips shines from his eyes.
The blond is sitting cross-legged with his back to the bed, hands fiddling with the hem of his pants. He keeps his face down as he talks, refusing to look at Bucky.
“J. woke me up, said you weren’t doing well and needed help. I went down as fast as I could, but I think I made things worse by just crashing into your space unannounced.” His shoulders sag in defeat. “I was worried about you, but instead of acting like a grownup with a working brain I ran in without a plan and sent you into a full-blown panic attack.”
Clint runs a hand through his hair, making the bird’s nest impossibly worse, and finally raises his head to stare at Bucky, remorse clear in the bright blue of his eyes.
“I’m sorry for just barging into your bedroom, I know how protective you are of your space and even though J.A.R.V.I.S. let met in I shouldn’t have come here without getting your explicit permission.” He heaves a sigh and leans back against the bed, inadvertently moving closer to where Bucky is still slumped down.
Opening his mouth to reply he finds that even though he can now breathe without feeling like there’s an elephant sitting on his chest, his voice is still adamantly refusing to cooperate. His fingers are shaking too much for sign language, and he isn’t sure if Clint’s aids are strong enough to pick up on the soft Morse taps he’d used to talk to the A.I. earlier. He frowns, then does the only thing he can think of doing that might accurately convey his gratitude.
He lets himself fall forward until his forehead hits the archer, then Bucky turns his face to press his cheek against the bare skin of Clint’s shoulder.
The muscles there go tight for a fraction of a second, but just when Bucky decides he crossed a line and should just sit up and apologize strong arms move up and around him, maneuvering them so that Bucky is leaning against Clint’s chest, head tucked into the crease where neck meets shoulder, Clint pressing his chin into Bucky’s hair.
They don’t talk for a long time after that, content to just sit there touching, feeling, knowing neither of them is alone and that even without words, the other understands.
When the room slowly starts to brighten with the light of the early morning sun Bucky finds that he can speak again.
“Why the lighter?” he croaks out.
He can feel Clint’s chest rumble when he answers, feeling his voice as much as hearing it. It’s strangely comforting.
“When I get panic attacks I need outside input to drag me back to reality. Sight or touch works best for me, since my ears are 50 kinds of fucked up and not the most reliable source.”
Clint starts running his fingers over Bucky’s arm, a barely-there drag over the blanket still between them.
“I wasn’t about to touch you without permission,” he continues, “and you didn’t respond when I tried talking to you, so asking you to ground yourself by feeling your body didn’t seem like it would work either. So I went for the next best thing and lit a flame right in front of the face of the most notorious assassin known to history in the middle of losing his mind.” He lets out a derisive snort. “yet again, not one of my brightest plans. It worked though, eventually.”
Bucky considers this, mentally walking through all the mindfulness exercises his therapist makes him do, and finds that yes, sensory input is something he has used before. He had never tried it in this particular way though, but he might keep a lighter on him from now on just in case.
“Thank you,” he mumbles into Clint’s chest.
The arm around his shoulders tightens the tiniest amount, and Bucky lets himself melt into the embrace.
After another long period of silence, Clint speaks up again.
“I gotta ask though, why me?” sounding uncertain and vaguely scared of the answer he elaborates, “I mean J. said you asked for me. Like, you asked for me. Disaster human number one, trashfire supreme, resident fuck-up. Why did you do that?”
“You feel safe,” Bucky blurts out. He swears he can feel Clint stop breathing, can almost hear his heart skip a beat.
“Safe?” Clint repeats, hesitant.
“Yeah. Safe. Like home,” Bucky mumbles.
Clint lets out a breath that sounds a little like “oh” and a little like “whoa” and a lot like he doesn’t believe Bucky.
Clint turns his head to press his cheek against Bucky’s hair, and they sit like that until the sun has fully risen, Bucky curled up against Clint’s chest, legs tangled together, leaning against the bedframe.
“This feels like home,” Clint whispers at some point, more to himself than anything.
Bucky fully agrees.