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Bucky was permanently starved for touch. Even on the days when having anyone within two feet of him was unbearable he was desperate for it. He wasn’t having one of those days, (thank God), but he also hadn’t been able to sleep for more than fifteen minutes without jerking awake for three goddamn days and he was exhausted and his head ached.
He would also never, no matter what he did, deserve Steve who, no matter what he said to the contrary certainly had better things to do, but was stretched out next to him keeping him company anyway.
“Easy there,” Steve murmured, when he started upright. Again. “Easy now Bucky.”
Bucky moaned, partly out of frustration, but mostly just out of tiredness and let himself slump sideways against Steve’s chest. The new position actually helped a little. He could remember curling up around Steve and tucking him against his chest a long time ago, but not why or when. It felt like a good memory though. Steve was too big for that now, but Bucky could still press himself against Steve’s side and listen to his heartbeat and his steady breathing. That had changed too and he knew it but didn’t know why. The memory wouldn’t shake loose.
Suddenly he was tense from the effort from trying to remember and Steve shifted around to make sad, concerned faces at him. “Easy,” he said again, “you’re alright. Everything’s alright. You just need some sleep Buck.”
Bucky just nodded silently into Steve’s chest, because he really did and it was hard to think straight.
“You sure you don’t want me to go get Dr. Banner?” Steve asked him, “see if he can give you something to put you out for a few hours?”
“No,” Bucky said, as clearly as he could with his face still pressed against Steve’s chest. “No.” Because as much as he wanted to be able to go to sleep, he wanted to not be drugged more.
And Steve, even though it would save him a lot of time if he stopped mollycoddling him and stuck a needle in his arm just said, “Alright,” and reached over to comb his free hand through Bucky’s hair.
Within the limits of his currently hazy, uncooperative memory, Steve holding onto him and running his fingers through his hair was the best, safest thing he had ever felt and Bucky wanted him to keep doing it, possibly forever, even though he didn’t deserve it. But he was far too tired to articulate any of that so he just leant up and kissed Steve on the mouth because he wanted that too, and it seemed like he should until he very abruptly realized that for some currently forgotten reason that that was something he absolutely should not have done and froze. But then Steve kissed him back. And didn’t let go of him or even stop stroking his hair and Bucky was so relieved that he finally fell asleep.
Steve wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, let alone what he should do about it. Bucky had kissed him. Which was of course, ridiculous. Bucky kissing him was the sort of thing he had made himself stop day-dreaming about because Bucky kissed pretty dames in dance-halls, and definitely not Steve Rogers. Except that Bucky had kissed him and then more or less passed out on his shoulder like sleeping beauty in reverse. Which left Steve hot and flustered and entirely unsure of what he was supposed to do or how to disentangle himself without waking Bucky up again.
Which just made it even worse. Steve was supposed to be looking after Bucky, not taking advantage of him while he was half asleep.
By the time Steve got around to moving, Bucky was sleeping deeply enough that he didn’t so much as stir when Steve got up, rearranged the blankets so he wouldn’t get tangled in them and smoothed his hair out of his face.
Then Steve went and sunk into a couch two floors down and stayed that way until Natasha came and stood over him with her hands on her hips like she knew what he’d done. It wasn’t until she asked “You alright?” that he simultaneously realized that Natasha didn’t know about the bad thing he’d done and that he didn’t have the guts to tell her. “Just, uh, bad day.” He mumbled, waving a hand in a vague upstairs-ward direction and talking to Natasha’s shoes. “He’s out now though.”
Natasha let out a very performative sigh. “Two months ago,” she said, “Bucky having a bad day involved him neither moving nor speaking. Four months before that he would have been actively trying to kill you. Control your expectations Rogers, this isn’t a fairytale. And anyway, I didn’t ask about Bucky, I asked if you were alright.”
“I’m okay I guess.” Said Steve.
Natasha crossed her arms and shifted her weight onto one leg as she looked down at him. “Are you saying that so I’ll ask or so that I won’t?” Natasha said, “I’d stick around to guess, but I’m supposed to be meeting Pepper.”
“No, I mean, won’t,” Steve stammered as he got up and left before Natasha could.
When Bucky woke up his memory had gone back to as close to normal as it got (which wasn’t so bad these days), so he got about half-way out of bed before he remembered what he’d done and curled back up. How could he have done something so utterly fuck-wittedly stupid .
“Oh no,” he gasped, half involuntarily “oh, no, no. That was so stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”
Then Steve walked in and it wasn’t until he sat down next to the bed and started up a steady litany of “your name is James Buchanan Barnes. People call you Bucky. Its 2014. We’re in New York.” That Bucky realised that Steve thought he was having a flashback or an anxiety attack instead of just realizing that he had probably ruined everything and burst into unexpected teary laughter.
“Bucky?” Steve asked. His brows were drawn together and his eyes were wide and wet the way they got whenever Bucky did something especially worrisome. Which just made Bucky laugh even more, because he had kissed Steve like a raving lunatic idiot and Steve was sitting there peering concernedly up at him, apparently completely willing to let it go, along with everything else he’d done over the past half-year. And as much as this particular fuck-up wasn’t Hydra-related Bucky thought that maybe he’d be willing to accept the excuse.
“Bucky?” Steve asked again. Probably because Bucky was staring at him and giggling and crying (when had he started crying?). Steve picked himself up and took a step back “It’s okay Buck,” he said, “I’m not – I’m not gonna do anything you don’t want me to do okay.”
Bucky didn’t answer because he didn’t actually understand why Steve was saying that. He’d been the one kissing Steve like a crazy fucking idiot.
Steve gaped heartbrokenly at him and whispered “Its okay, I’ll just – just leave you alone.” And turned to leave.
"No,” said Bucky, because if Steve left then he really had ruined everything, but his useless, useless brain had jammed up and that was all he could get out. He grimaced and bit his lip and tried again with only slightly more success. “No, don’t. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Steve came back and sat down on the floor by the bed again.
“I’m sorry,” Bucky said, “I won’t do it again. Don’t leave.”
Steve gaped up at him. “What are you sorry for? You don’t have to be sorry. I’m so sorry Buck.”
They sat there for a minute, in mutual, open-mouthed, non-comprehension before Steve said, “I thought I frightened you.”
“No. I thought you were mad,” said Bucky, and it all came out on the first try.
“No,” Steve gasped, “no, not ever. Um, I – actually I liked it.” He peered up at Bucky through his eyelashes.
“Me too,” said Bucky, and shoved himself onto the floor so he was sitting next to Steve. “For a while.”
“Yeah, a long while,” said Steve and slid down sideways very slowly until his head was resting on Bucky’s shoulder.
Bucky didn’t have a whole lot of specific memories, as it were, about what things had been like back in the past, but he didn’t need anyone to remind him that this was a familiar, comfortable way to sit. He propped his head against Steve’s and spent a few minutes just enjoying the contact.
Eventually Steve tilted his head around and asked “do you wanna?” and smiled up at him.
Kissing Steve felt good enough that Bucky could pretend for a while that that had sorted it out and everything was going to be fine.
Steve kissed surprisingly hard. Bucky was draped across Steve’s lap, leaning into him with one arm looped around his neck. Steve was warm and solid underneath him and kissing like he was trying to get something to stick. Bucky tilted Steve’s jaw for a better angle, and tried to draw each kiss out as long as humanly possible.
Steve slid his hand into the waistband of Bucky’s trousers and Bucky felt his mouth twist, which meant that Steve did too, and pulled away before he could finish processing why he was suddenly scrambling to sit at the other edge of the bed with his knees drawn up to his chest.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, before he managed to place the sensation of overwhelming disinterest that pulled at the edges of his mouth like vinegar.
“Its alright,” said Steve. He stretched out and then stayed still. That was something they’d worked out an accommodation (Sam’s word) to work around his lingering bouts of touch shyness.
This time Bucky managed to come and lie down next to Steve without any invisible electric fences coming up. Steve lent over and pressed another kiss onto Bucky’s forehead.
“Don’t worry about it,” he whispered into Bucky’s hair, “we’ll go as slow as you need.”
Bucky’s mouth twisted again, Steve was still nuzzling his hair and if he saw he didn’t react, but Bucky had to get back up and go and curl up in his own room. He didn’t want to admit to the familiarity of that reflexive, vinegary, distaste or the memories it has evoked of a back alley and the back-stage of a Brooklyn dance hall. But the guilty admission of permanence was jammed in the back of his throat like nausea and he was afraid he might say something before he could stop himself. He didn’t want to go slowly, he wanted to stop in place. He had ignored the distaste before, he could remember it, but now he couldn’t even bear the thought. Not even for Steve.
Steve (as always) was as good as his word about taking things slowly and kept his hands exactly where Bucky wanted them. It helped a bit, but every time Steve touched him the feeling of having secrets sitting in the back of his throat came back and he felt like he might gag or tell Steve everything without meaning to.
After about the fourth abortive kissing session, which ended with Bucky in self-imposed exile on the floor by the side of the couch Steve stopped silently letting him leave and instead slid over the arm of the couch to sit next to him.
Bucky emphatically did not like the way Steve looked when he left. The guilty grimace as he tried to hide the way the corners of his lips turned down when Bucky pulled away. The way his eyes widened he ducked his head into a silent sorry, as if he was somehow responsible for the state of Bucky’s brain. It wasn’t nice when he was fleeing the room and it was worse with Steve sitting right next to him so he got the full force of it.
“Hey Buck,” Steve whispered. He slid his hand under Bucky’s so that Bucky’s good hand was resting on Steve’s open palm. “Do you think you could maybe, tell me what you want to do?”
Bucky just glowered at Steve and the stupidity of his stupid question. Because he couldn’t reliably say what he wanted for breakfast without freezing up so how was he supposed to explain that what they were doing was good and he “wanted to do it without people expecting him to do anything else because he just didn’t and he couldn’t tell Steve that because he’d have to explain that he was just screwy that way and Steve wasn’t going to be able to fix this and he couldn’t do that because Steve had put up with enough already.” Then he realized he’d said that out loud and fled before he had to see Steve’s disappointed face again.
Steve let Bucky dart out of the room rather than grab him and let himself flop back against the arm of the couch with a sigh as the tension went out of his shoulders. He had more or less resigned himself to another round of holding Bucky’s metaphorical hand while he pieced himself together again the first time Bucky had panicked. But it was okay. He was fine. Steve wasn’t entirely sure how to go about explaining that to Bucky, but he’d been trying to figure out how to ask Bucky if he hadn’t wanted to have sex because of something someone had done to him, instead of overall reticence and this was a thousand times easier than that.
Bucky avoided him studiously for a week. That made things more difficult.
Bucky was in the gym when Steve finally managed to corner him, methodically kicking and slashing his way through a set of virtual targets Jarvis had summoned over the obstacle course that ran around the edges of the room. His muscle memory belonged to the Winter Soldier now, and whatever noises Steve kept making to the contrary Bucky increasingly felt that it was probably going to be a permanent arrangement. It didn’t bother him, particularly. It made it easier to keep up with a team full of super-humans, and what the Winter Soldier knew how to do wasn’t different from what Sergeant Barnes had known how to do, it was just much, much more. But he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he was somehow standing back and deploying himself, so he was here, trying to figure out how his body moved and which motor programs he’d lost, which he’d gained, and how they started and stopped, how to stay inside himself while he did it all.
“Hey Bucky,” Steve called, “You got a minute.”
Bucky sat down on the top of a pillar and looked down at Steve through his hair.
Steve lent against the wall. “So how’s it coming?”
Bucky looked down at Steve, smiling up at him and tried to figure out what he’d wanted. He’d been trying to avoid Steve for a week and up until that moment, he’d been doing a good job. Looking at Steve hurt. He missed him horribly and he felt miserably guilty about it and he was desperate for any kind of contact after spending so much of his time by himself. He hopped off the pillar and sat down on the ground.
“How’s it coming?” Steve repeated.
Bucky hesitated. “Its okay. It - I can do it. Don’t remember learning any of it. Probably don’t want to anyhow.”
“That’s good,” said Steve, “that’s good.”
“Something’s got to work I guess.” Bucky muttered.
“Oh Bucky,” Steve gasped, like Bucky had hit him with the statement, instead of saying it, “you work fine.”
Bucky stood up abruptly. “I don’t.” He snapped. “I don’t. Why won’t you just admit it.”
“Is this about the other day?” Steve asked.
Bucky didn’t answer. He wasn’t entirely sure he could answer. Also it was a stupid question.
Steve walked over and sat on a box a foot and a half away from where Bucky was standing. “You’re not broken. You’re fine.”
Bucky shook his head. “I’m not,” he mumbled. “I told you I’m not.”
Steve walked over and scooped Bucky into a hug. Bucky bit back a sigh at the contact, and settled into the hug in spite of himself.
“You are fine. You are,” said Steve.
Bucky didn’t have much capacity for argument, and he’d just exhausted most of it, so he just looked up and Steve and shook his head.
“You are fine.” Steve repeated, “I promise. You don’t have to want to have sex. Everything’s fine.”
Bucky stared at him.
“Really,” said Steve, “there’s a name for it – which I – have forgotten, but I’m sure Jarvis can find it for you if you ask.”
“But what about you?” Bucky asked, because fine could go hang, but he needed Steve.
Steve tilted Bucky’s jaw up with one hand and kissed him, nipping Bucky’s lower lip when he had to pull away to breathe. “We’ll make it work,” he whispered.