Chapter Text
Not every bad day has a reason, or at least a reason Steve can see or Bucky can tell him. The more dramatic ones, the more abrupt ones do, or at least have so far. Not always a reasonable reason, or one Bucky's happy with accepting as a cause for the sudden total collapse of his ability to cope with the world, but an identifiable one. Afterwards you can pretty much see how it wrenched his head around to where it can't avoid falling apart, or at least Steve can by now. Something Bucky saw, something he read, something he smelled, something he heard - but something.
But sometimes it's just . . . nothing. Just a downward slide, mind pulling itself apart no matter what Bucky does. And, Steve thinks, it probably doesn't help much how little Bucky can do about it, or the fact that he ends up humiliated by the fall.
(And Steve restrains himself from saying, you have every reason for falling, Jesus, anyone would fall because Bucky knows, and right now it doesn't help. In the moment it doesn't help. Between times, maybe, maybe they can talk about it, maybe that wears down the awful for the next time. But not in the moment; not when he's hitting the ground. In the moment all that's there is the shame of hitting the ground, and Steve remembers how that feels and how someone trying to excuse your stumble makes it worse, like nobody could expect better from you anyway.)
Steve's private theory is, it's mostly about being tired. About cognitive load and working memory and how much shit Bucky has to wade through every day. And that it's about not being able to tell what all that shit is at any given moment, about how neither of them can tell what's wearing Bucky out or how fast, because there's so many possibilities and they're always changing, but that there comes a point where there's just nothing left and reality's too much, too loud, too full of things that need to be understood or ignored or avoided and the crash is just Bucky's brain trying to deal with it the only way it really knows how.
Which is checking out. Some kind of dissociation. Too many things, the grinder jams, the machine shuts down, except the machine is his mind and the only way it can shut down is by checking out.
And Bucky hates it. Maybe not more than he hates a lot of other things - but not less either.
On that kind of bad day - like this one - Steve can watch him lose moments here and there over and over again, little hiccups spread through the hours.
It's different than just zoning out the way anyone would, and Steve can see that even from the outside. Sometimes the artist in Steve actually twitches with the desire to find a way to quantify that difference, pin it down, figure out what changes about the muscles in his body, face, around his eyes, what's telling that story. It's there, Steve knows it is: every expression is a story of the muscles and skin that makes it up, and if you look hard enough you can find that story and take it apart, understand it.
But for this, finding it would mean letting his mind drift into a kind of detachment that he won't turn on Bucky. At all. The kind that sees model instead of person, pose instead of body-language, line and shadow instead of expression. Steve's not going to do that. Not now, maybe not ever. It's not worth Bucky catching him at it, not worth the risk that it'll hit something wrong, not even worth the way it changes how Steve thinks about him. It means his best friend is one of the least frequent subjects of Steve's sketches, but that's fine. Bucky doesn't need to be drawn. Doesn't need to be pinned to a page, flattened into a sketch. The opposite, even. Steve has lived in a world where Bucky was only pictures, photos, and he'll pass.
And Steve could draw Bucky with his eyes closed, anyway.
But that means he doesn't really know how to pin down what it is that's so different between ordinary middle distance woolgathering (even exhausted, brain-dead middle distance woolgathering) and the times Steve knows Bucky's world is teetering on the edge of the unreal, or at least the edge of where he can't tell what's real and what isn't, which amounts to the same thing. That teetering used to mean a lot of broken stuff; doesn't so much anymore. Sometimes, yeah, but not anywhere near as often.
Steve's said to Sam more than once that he wishes he knew if that's a good sign or a warning; if it's because control is easier in and of itself, or because Bucky's more conscious of stuff as Steve's, and leans on control harder, spends more to keep hold of it. If Steve should be pleased or worried.
(There's stuff where Steve knows that the reason, the mechanism at work boils down to "because of me". Food, still, for one, but it's not just that. And not because-of-him, where it's about who he is and the way people do things for one another, but where it's more about what he is, the space he can't help filling, and everything Natasha warned him about. So far it's either stuff that Steve can keep safe or it's stuff where if anything it's pretty obvious Bucky's leaning on that because the alternative is . . .bad, but it's still a dangerous thing and not one Steve wants to mess up.)
(So he worries about that, still. Maybe always.)
Either way, these days if reality slips, it tends to come with an intense, wary and disoriented, fear-tinged care, and today Steve watches Bucky slip into it and then drag himself out, angrier at himself each time, until around one in the afternoon. Which is when Steve looks up from the anatomy worksheets he'd grabbed off a teaching site, because there's a small meowing cat bumping her head into his leg. And he realizes he hasn't seen Bucky for almost twenty minutes, and gets up from the dining-room table to look for him.
Abrikoska only tries to get herself crushed underfoot once, complaining again and darting across the living-room towards the back of the condo.
Steve finds Bucky standing in the hallway, across from the space of wall that separates the door to their bedroom and his old room. His gaze is pointed at the floor a few feet away, but that's not where he's really looking and wherever he's staring through the floor to, Steve doesn't think it's good. The ghost of an expression on his face is confused, maybe, concerned, but it's shaded over with distress and Steve knows that part's just going to get worse.
Bucky's subconscious has a lot of good reasons believe pretty unshakeably that if he's confused, if the world doesn't make sense and there isn't a clear, overriding purpose, he's going to suffer for it.
"Bucky," he says, quietly, to get his attention and then, "no, don't," when Bucky focuses on him and Steve can see the moment he tries to dig into God only knows how many, what kind of fragmented messed up thoughts and drag them together, enough to fake . . . something.
"Don't," Steve repeats, stepping closer now that Bucky knows it's him, and where they are, at least a little. He touches Bucky's nearer arm, right arm, the one that'll feel it. "Don't," Steve tells him, "you don't have to. It's fine."
Bucky shakes his head, half-disagreeing and half like he's just trying to clear it, looking down and then closing his eyes, frown cutting lines on his forehead. "No," he says, "I just - "
"Bucky," Steve interrupts him, carefully. Bucky's arms are folded tight against him; Steve rests his hands just light at Bucky's upper arms and says, "It's fine. Promise." And he hesitates, because it's the kind of thing that can be go sideways as easily as help, but in the end asks anyway, "What do you need?" fully aware of where it might go, risking it anyway.
At worst, it'll get Bucky angry at him and sitting on it, or giving up and joking-that-isn't-joking about euthanasia. Steve can handle that.
But he just gets Bucky lifting his left hand to dig at his left temple with one bent knuckle, and then Bucky saying, "I don't even fucking know," and in spite of that Steve decides it's better than it could be, because the answer's Bucky's, his own, cadence and language, irritation and cursing and nasty sharp-edged laughter that isn't, really. There are times when the difference between Russian and English isn't important, even times when the former's a good sign; but moments like these, it's too easy for what comes out of Bucky's mouth to be someone else's words, someone else's thoughts grafted on and hammered in and so how he says things matters.
Then Bucky echoes himself. Says, "Don't even fucking know," and the distance creeps back fast, so he's already staring through one of Steve's arms into whatever's eating at him right now.
"Okay," Steve says. Weighs a couple things and then says, "Come on. Come lie down."
Bucky doesn't argue, which is kind of telling all by itself: it's the middle of the day and Steve saying that should get Bucky griping or even snarling about not being a fucking kid who needs a nap even if he cooperates. Silence means something. But Steve catches the disgust in his totally inward-focused gaze, while Bucky lets Steve lead him over to the bed with one hand just barely on his arm, when Steve gets him to lie down.
He half curls on his right side; Steve decides it's a good sign that he works his feet under the blanket at the foot of the bed automatically, without hesitation or even really giving any sign of noticing. Means comfort still matters somewhere, somehow, and that's better than it could be. When Bucky stops caring enough about the cold to do anything about it, that's a bad sign (worse, when he starts inflicting it on himself like some kind of punishment), so caring enough to keep his feet warm is a good one.
Sometimes Steve feels like his life is made up of those kinds of thoughts.
Steve lies down beside Bucky, facing him, close enough that it's easy to rest his top arm over Bucky's hip, work his ankle over one of Bucky's. "Relax," he says, brushes Bucky's hair back from his face. "It's fine, I promise. You're home. The bed's real, I'm real, the dumb cat, whenever she gets done running around fussing and comes to settle, she's real. There's nothing you need to do, nothing waiting. It's okay."
He thinks Bucky wants to answer, probably to say something ironic at best, who knew what at worst, but the answer gets lost somewhere in the distance, in the dissociation; after a second Bucky reaches out to touch Steve's shoulder with his right hand, like he's testing to see if Steve's really there; Steve catches his hand.
"Right here," he says, low, working his fingers between Bucky's and resting their hands on the coverlet. "Right here."
Bucky shakes his head a little. He closes his eyes, but mostly like he's trying to block out one too many things to keep track of, like vision is just one step beyond him. And he stays like that for a while.
Steve watches him breathe, watches for the times his breath stutters or pauses. He watches the flicker of different expressions, most of them tiny and fleeting, the movement of Bucky's eyes under his eyelids. It's not very long before Abrikoska jumps up on the bed to try to curl up by the front of her human's hip, expresses her disapproval of the way Steve picks her up and moves her out from between him and Bucky, and then settles by Bucky's head, grooming herself a few times and then taking a stab at grooming Bucky's hair.
It gets stuck on her tongue and it's longer than she can extend her silly little neck, so she gives up on that pretty quick. Steve pets her silly little head, and she squeezes her eyes shut at him, and otherwise he watches Bucky and waits.
It's funny, Steve's said to Sam before, you know, it's not dealing with stuff that's wrong or goes wrong that drives me nuts? It's all the time he spends insisting nothing's wrong when it is, or he thinks it shouldn't be, and dealing with him when he's twisted himself up so bad he can't help being a jerk. And then gets mad at himself, for being a jerk.
Yeah, I get that, Sam'd replied, and then given Steve a sly look. Figure that counts as karma?
Steve'd elbowed him (carefully) and rested his forehead on the railing of the little bridge in the park they were in. No, he'd replied, but with wry acknowledgement, because I'm not a Buddhist.
Yeah, okay, Sam'd said, his voice communicating the eye-roll Steve couldn't see with his head down, so what'd a Catholic call it?
Steve'd stood up, grimacing but with at least a little bit of good humour, because it wasn't like Sam didn't have a point. God making a point? he'd said, after considering a minute or two. And being kind of a smart-ass while he's at it? That part, he'd added, might just be Irish-Catholic, though.
Sam'd laughed at him, which he completely deserved. The point is, though, this isn't the stuff that's frustrating, exhausting, worrying, even sometimes fucking scary. It's the other stuff. Or what this stuff turns into, when the other stuff twists it up.
Not that the way Bucky tries to insist he's better than he is, or rips at himself for not being, or any of that - well, not that that's not part of everything broken, too. Steve knows it. Personally, even. It's just that's the hard part, the times he has to hold onto his patience and not just shake Bucky and snap will you just fucking stop it and let me help? or worse, all the things that work just damn great in TV dramas and the heads of people who've never known this, and are like throwing acid in the air and hoping it doesn't hit anything important in real life.
For starters, it might just fucking work, after a fashion. Might work for every single possible wrong reason, a lot of which make him sick to his stomach to think about.
After a little while the kitten decides she doesn't like being up by their heads and goes to settle herself behind Bucky's knees instead. And after a little while longer Bucky's eyes blink open, although he doesn't look at Steve's face.
"Sorry," he says, and his voice isn't distant or strange. Just drained and laced with disgust, all of it aimed squarely at himself. He pulls his hand back; he brushes it over his face, like he's shaking the quiet moments off, but Steve thinks it's got more to do with him thinking he doesn't deserve the comfort.
And it is weird, still, for Steve to think of himself that way, just plain, without qualifier. Still strange and sometimes frankly uncomfortable to think of himself - himself, Steve, not Captain America or anything else, which is more a role, a duty he tries to live up to - as that important. As meaning that much, to anyone. It feels like rank arrogance, pure conceit, and old habits and ways of thinking want to squirm away from it, still. Or at least say that if it's true it shouldn't be and he should make sure not to get above himself with thinking it . . .
. . .and then those old habits and ways of thinking run flat into Natasha's warning, and the fact that over and over, he's been shown she's right. And he can hate it and think it's wrong as much as he wants - and he does, and God does he wish for the day it's not true anymore - but he can't ignore it and he can't downplay it. Has to own it, and use it on purpose, because he can't help using it at all. And Steve being here, being close, touching him, those are all things Bucky finds comforting and more than half the time doesn't think he deserves, and Steve knows it.
Steve shifts to lean his head on his hand. Says, "You know you don't have anything to be sorry for." Like he usually does - that, or some other something like it, one of the ways he's found to shape the thought after he discarded it's okay as not helpful anymore. He's got a few, by now.
Bucky exhales, short and abrupt. He turns his head and his shoulders so he can look up at the ceiling instead of at Steve, folding his arms across himself.
"No," he says, evenly. "You know that."
It's the first time he's actually argued with that, instead of saying nothing or leaving denial to a single sound, a gesture. Which means he's actually thinking about it, at least. That the denial isn't so soaked in, so bone-deep that he doesn't even really hear what Steve's saying.
(Steve says it anyway, because as much as the thought bothers him at least the wary messed up core that rules stuff like Bucky's startle reflex and how much adrenaline gets dumped in his system hears I'm not mad or nothing bad's going to happen and that's really God-damned important - but it's not the same as actually hearing what Steve says.)
"Yeah, I do," Steve replies, mildly. And then adds, "And since I'm the one you're saying it to, I think that matters."
Because what the Hell, he figures. He'll see where logic gets them. And for the moment, it gets him a pained single-breath noise and Bucky rolling the rest of the way onto his back, right finger and thumb dragging over his eyelids and then pinching the bridge of his nose, under a knotted tight-jawed frown.
And silence.
After a beat, Steve asks, "What exactly do you think you need to apologize for, Bucky?" And he's pretty sure he knows the answer, because he used to be the one apologizing or caught in the resentful tension of not apologizing, caught up in the endless drive of sorry.
Sorry for being weak. Sorry for needing things. Sorry for needing you, for needing help, for being something you have to carry, millstone around your neck, sorry for being useless. That gnawing acid feeling of sorry for all those things, and not understanding, or maybe not being willing to understand that that's not how it works.
He's pretty sure it's worse, now, on the inside of Bucky's skull. Because use was all he had, for much too long, and now at least as far as he can understand it, he's not useful. And knowing that makes Steve sick and they've had arguments like this before, or at least close to it, overlapping with it, and they probably will again, and Steve doesn't think there's ever going to be one that makes the magic difference - but maybe if he says the smaller right things enough, they'll wear their way in, bit by bit, the way wind and water wear down mountains.
God willing.
"Real question," he adds aloud; Bucky gives him a long look before he's looking at the ceiling again while Steve just waits. There's guardedness to the look, a lot of it, but that's not the part that Steve has a problem with.
Because there's shame, too. Which is just -
Steve has a really damned hard time with that. With the shame, when it shows. It's the thing the impatient part of him wants to shout down, dig out, somehow fight until it falls down and gives up and goes away because it's wrong and because it's worse than wrong it's damn well obscene. Steve wants to get it out, to tear it out and burn it, and God does Steve wish it worked like that. And it doesn't. At all. And in point of fact, with Bucky at least, it'd probably make everything worse: humiliation, shame, they're as pernicious as cancer and Steve has absolutely no doubt that Bucky could end up ashamed of being ashamed, and more ashamed of letting Steve see, and eventually drown in that endless God-damned cycle.
If he isn't already. And, Steve thinks a little viciously, he probably is already.
So Steve shuts up, and waits, and carefully knocks the inside of his own head into line, as much as he can.
Bucky doesn't answer for a bit. Not until (Steve figures) he thinks he's probably got enough control over his voice so that he can manage the bitter-edged wry tone he uses to say, "Don't think I don't know you were doing something else before you came looking for me."
And Steve is actually genuinely impressed at how that statement could be about right now, could mean what Steve'd been doing before he got up to find Bucky in the hall - or it could mean at all, ever. Hell, if Bucky wanted to really stretch it, that sentence could apply to Austria and Steve forces himself to think about the sleight of verbal hand for a second to ignore the impulse do to exactly what he shouldn't, starting with shouting, for the love of Christ -
"Yeah," he says instead, "and I can go back and do it later. Bucky," he pushes, when Bucky exhales sharply again, "I was labelling muscle groups. It can wait."
Bucky's jaw goes tight, and for a second it looks like he's fighting with himself, before he says, "And we know why you're doing that," and then stops and looks away, like he's forcing his own mouth closed. Like he's making himself not say anything else, maybe didn't want to say what he already did.
The kitten gives a small meep of protest as Bucky shifts, bumping her with one leg, and resettles herself down on the blanket with her chin on his ankle. Steve thinks, distractedly, sorry, fuzzy, I don't think your human's going to get less agitated any time soon. And out loud he says as evenly as he damn well can, "Yeah, we do. There a problem?"
Before Bucky came home, Steve'd never realized how many ways there are to laugh that have more to do with pain or anger or grief than with anything good; he thinks he's maybe heard at least most of them by now, and still this is a new one Bucky pulls out next, all edged with a kind of shattered-glass helplessness that hits a note of warning in Steve's head. The kind where there's not that much difference between laughing and crying, except that one of those, Bucky can't do anymore so he just ends up fighting to breathe around needles stabbing in his lungs.
"Jesus, Steve," Bucky says, the same note in his voice, covering his eyes with his hand again. "Yes, there's a problem, of course there's a fucking problem."
"Why's that?" Steve asks, still pretty carefully mild. Bucky shakes his head a little, looks at Steve and away, like somehow Steve's hard to look at, too bright or painful. Or something.
The words, "Fuck, do you really want to - " come out of Bucky's mouth, and then stop short, choked off like Bucky didn't mean to let them escape but couldn't pull them back fast enough, hard enough. And Steve pretends they didn't, while Bucky stares at the ceiling and gets a kind of rigid control over his breathing back, blinking more often than he should have to.
And Steve knows by this point he looks worried and can't help it, because he is, a little. Wonders if irony's twisted all over this, and if this's been eating at Bucky lately and that's why he's worn out now, today, enough to lose his grip on the world a little. It wouldn't surprise Steve, honestly.
He's not going to point it out if he can help it.
"Me consuming your whole damn life," Bucky says eventually, each word like something heavy hitting the floor, "is a God-damn problem."
"You aren't," Steve says, and it's fast and reflexive and true, so that when Bucky breathes Jesus fuck and looks all the way away from him to the door, Steve tries to go on, "that's not what - "
"Yes it fucking is," Bucky says, and at the same time he's raising his voice his arms tighten around himself, and he can't keep looking at the door, ends up looking up again with his eyes flicking to Steve without him turning his head. "It is," he says, with the same control as before, "exactly what I'm doing. I dominate it, I consume it, I completely fucking take it over. And don't - "
He has to stop. He has to swallow, before he can make himself go on. And Steve's chest hurts and he sits on the urge to reach out yet. Because yes, he could probably talk this down and soothe it out, but if it's twisting Bucky up enough that he can actually say it, here and like this, then Steve's not going to.
"Do not," Bucky says, quieter, "try and make like this is the same as - "
And maybe he's not going to try to talk this down, but Steve's also not going to let that stand, leave that - Christ, that he can't leave, leaving it would be a total fucking lie and he says, "Yes it is," and then, "Bucky - yes it is," letting his own voice rise a little, until Bucky's actually looking at him and he can say, "No, you give me one reason this is so fucking different, one reason, that doesn't boil down to you needing something from me instead of the other way around. One."
Bucky's face is half crumpled up, expression twisted; he meets Steve's eyes for a second before he's looking down again, because he can't. Because they both know he can't and that doesn't, isn't actually making it any better. Not in his head. And Steve tries to think over what Bucky actually said, picking at words, shape of thoughts -
Gets stuck on dominate and consume. Turns them over and looks at them, because they're not . . . right, somehow, doesn't feel like they fit. That it's not . . . how Bucky would talk about that. That the shape of the idea is wrong.
"Bucky," Steve says, quieter, "what exactly is it you think you're doing to me?"
"Jesus, Steve, I don't think - " and Bucky cuts himself short there again. Some other time that'd be the setup for a joke, but not now; Steve lets it rest until Bucky takes a deep breath, arms still wrapped around himself, still looking away. He says, each word coming out like it's almost forced, "I take up your time, fucking monopolize it, I eat up your days and I wreck your nights and I fucking burn through your energy and effort and your fucking patience - "
And no, Steve thinks and holds the thought at arms' length to get angry about later, God-damn-it later Rogers - no. Those don't fit, aren't actually Bucky's. Not those words, the shape of those thoughts. Those are not his, so Steve's going to cut that right here with, "And you give me you."
Bucky stops.
Steve would say he freezes except it feels wrong, like in freezing there's a potential movement just waiting to finish, and this isn't that - it's just absolute stillness, for just a heartbeat or two. Like maybe somehow Bucky even stopped his own heartbeat. He sure as Hell stops breathing.
Then he swallows and Steve watches Bucky's left hand go to his right wrist, with the kind of spare, rapid movement that means it's happening on automatic, not because he means it. Carefully, Steve reaches over with one hand to stop it. Guide it down to rest on Bucky's stomach instead, Steve's hand resting on top.
"You give me you being here," Steve says, making every word clear, "and being you. You give me you."
Bucky's left hand curls up, tightens under Steve's, and then flattens slowly like Bucky's fighting to make it. He shakes his head, minutely.
"That's shit payment," Bucky says.
And that word stings, maybe even burns, and Steve's answering before he can actually think much, words coming before control like a fucking bad idea.
"Okay, first off," he says, shifting so he's sitting up more, "there is nothing you have to fucking pay, second, no it fucking isn't and third," and now his mind catches up a little, enough to offer him a way to maybe get out of this okay, turn it around so it's not just the harsh edge of being angry, and not a mistake, "I don't think you actually want to get into who owes who what here if you're actually trying to convince me you're the parasite."
"That's not - " Bucky starts, but he stops himself. Pulls his left hand out from under Steve's and digs his thumb into his collarbone for a second, drags it across. Carefully as before, Steve catches it, pulls Bucky's hand away from where he might use it to damage himself.
"Yes, it fucking well is," Steve tells him. He gets a hold of his voice, lowers it and adds, "Bucky," and waits till Bucky looks at him, "you want to go there I owe you fifteen years and my life at least four times and yeah I'm already accounting for Austria and I'm pretty God-damn sure I could come up with more if I actually paid attention, and then we can talk. So I don't think you want to go there. And I don't want to go there because it doesn't fucking matter - Bucky," he says, trying to find a way to say things, "I had a life without you, I had two years of a life without you and Jesus Christ, trust me, I don't want it back."
The lines on Bucky's face smooth while he's talking, but Steve thinks it's more like a kind of active pain ebbing than anything else. Like when you stop trying to use a broken leg and just let it lie there for a while, and even that much feels like relief. He doesn't think Bucky actually believes any of what Steve just said, not really. Just that he's hit the point where he's going to give up arguing, for now.
Steve can still hear echoes of Pierce, maybe, when Bucky finally looks at him and asks, "And if I'm a waste of your fucking time, Steve?" in a voice that's mostly like someone who's just dragged themselves onto a boat after almost drowning. Maybe still hear those echoes. But not as much.
"It's my fucking time," he replies, and when Bucky looks down again and lets out this breath slowly Steve leans over to kiss his forehead, lets his hand rest on the front of Bucky's shoulder. "I swear to God, Buck, I want you here. I want you with me. The only regret I have is when I can't do anything. And it doesn't have to make sense to you," he adds, "because you're not the one doing it. I am. Okay?"
Bucky's eyes close for a second, and he says, quietly, "Yeah. Okay."
Steve watches his face, hesitates, and then asks, "Do you actually believe me, or are you just saying okay to get me to shut up?" letting it come out with a crooked smile in it. And Bucky lets out breath in a short huff, and pulls his legs back to bend his knees, getting a mrrort! from the blanket, where the kitten apparently decides to give up on restless humans and just stay still and sleep.
When Bucky looks at him Steve finds himself wondering what he sees - not for the first time, and probably not the last. And in some ways he probably doesn't want to know, because he's not an idiot (okay, no a total idiot) and he mostly thinks if Tony's endless mock-irritable complaints were right and Steve could read his best friend's mind, he'd mostly be sadder and angrier and feel more helpless than he already does so much of the time. And that wouldn't help anyone.
"I believe you believe it," Bucky says, looking more tired than disgusted for the first time in a while now. "That's probably as good as you're going to get."
Steve can feel his own frown, can feel the words he can't quite keep himself from saying, even though maybe he should. "I'm not trying to get anything out of you, Bucky," he says. "That's not what this, that's not what anything's about. And you're not consuming me or stealing from me or anything - God, I wake up happy you're here, and I know what it's like not to, and there is . . . " he has to stop and look down for a second before he can say, "there is nothing that not being there again isn't worth, and that was a horrible sentence," he adds, "I know it was, but - "
When he looks up he stops, because Bucky puts the fingers of his right hand on Steve's mouth to make him stop. "That," he says, and his voice isn't even anymore, "is some of the stupidest shit you've ever said."
And Steve thinks Jesus, Buck, what have you been thinking but he shakes his head, pulling Bucky's hand gently away from his mouth and says, "No, not even close. Trust me, I said a lot of really stupid stuff when you weren't here."
Bucky looks away from him first, but Steve has to look away from what he can still read on Bucky's face, even so; he turns his head and kisses Bucky's palm, the side of his hand. Bucky's fingers curl around his. "You don't owe me anything," Steve says, quiet, and serious. "You will never owe me anything, Buck. That's not how it works. That's not how we work."
He looks back to Bucky's face and Bucky's watching him, like he's not sure what Steve is or what he's going to do. And Steve adds, "And you know that," and he looks at their hands again. "You know you do. I know you do. Somewhere under everything else that's screaming you know that's not what we are. And - " and he has to stop and clear his throat, blink quickly a few times before he goes on, "and I know that might not help a lot, right now, because the screaming's loud, but the screaming is fucking wrong."
Bucky traces the line of Steve's wrist with the index finger of his left hand, watches the movement like it's the most important thing in the world. Steve says, "The other part's right. And I will keep backing it up, until the screaming shuts up. I don't care how long it takes."
Bucky doesn't say anything; just looks at him for maybe forever, before his eyes close and his jaw tightens. Releases.
He breathes, "Christ, Steve."
Steve doesn't have an answer to that, maybe; he kisses Bucky's forehead again because he doesn't, hopes it isn't the wrong thing.
Bucky reaches his left hand up; he cradles the back of Steve's head, pulls Steve's mouth to his instead. Kisses Steve like he's still drowning and this is air, while Steve slides his hand down from Bucky's shoulder across his chest and his stomach, to his waist and up under his shirt, under him and up the side of his back. It's not really an invitation, a demand, any kind of request, it's just -
It's just that Steve can see in his head, can imagine other hands, other places and other times. Ones that belonged to people who had no God-damned right to touch Bucky, ever, and it makes something stupid and simple and loud inside his head and maybe his in soul wants to unmake that. Wipe it out, black it out. Cover up the memory. Something. Write it all over with things like home and us, with his hands on Bucky's skin, where Bucky wants them. And it's and kind of childish, but -
He shifts his weight over to lie back down on the bed, on his side; pulls Bucky with him without stopping the kiss, still stroking fingers and palm down Bucky's back, down his spine. And when Bucky breaks the kiss it's to rest his head against Steve's shoulder, right arm wrapped around so his hand's against Steve's other, pulling himself as close to Steve as he can. He's twisted up like a fucking spring, so much that the tension shudders itself out in bursts interspersed with stillness that Steve can feel. And they don't tell you what to do with this, how to do any of this, and Steve wishes again and again he could be sure he's doing the best he can. That there isn't something else he should do, some different way to handle it.
"It's okay," he says, rubbing slow circles over Bucky's back, because there isn't anyone to tell him, so he can only make guesses, and the best ones he can. "I'm not going anywhere."
Bucky relaxes over scattered minutes - one here, and then ten between, and another two there - until by maybe four in the afternoon or a bit later, the shuddering's gone and his breathing's slowed. And he looks completely exhausted and paler than Steve likes.
Steve slides fingers over Bucky's hair and neck, and his hand down over his shoulder and arm, back and hip and ribs, lying close enough to feel body-heat and just waiting. Until Bucky looks at him and looks a bit more like himself and says, "Masochist."
"Not really," Steve replies. He rests his forehead against Bucky's and says, "Actually I was thinking we're really fucking lucky you did decide to mark up my neck at Breitenau. Or I don't know what the Hell I'd be doing."
Bucky shakes his head a little. "I don't have an answer for that right now, Steve," he says. "Actually I don't have an answer for fucking anything."
"I know," Steve says. "It's okay."