Archive of Our Own

Steve is very familiar with things that go bump in the night.

He's used to the irregular sounds that are only influenced into strange, bewitching noises that need investigating after the light leaves the space. He’s always awake when they happen, he always wakes up in the late afternoon if not evening. Being not just a night owl but something of a vampire. As in, he's not really a creature that happens to be up at night in order to survive or to find its elusive prey (read: the owl) but that he's a version of the ghosts and ghouls and child-terrorizing monsters that make young and old alike instinctively afraid of the dark because of what's in it (read: a vampire). Nevertheless, Steve will never admit out loud that he lives like a vampire, not to strangers or friends, because they'll just look at him (probably having to look down because, hello, he's literally five foot four) and laugh. He’ll instead say that he’s a night owl or that he works better late at night and lives alone so he does as he pleases when he pleases. Otherwise the person listening to him will just call him cute and barely rein themselves in from patting him on the head, chuckling to themselves because they have yet to see him throw a punch up close.

Steve shakes his head- usually the people who do that don’t know him anyway, have no knowledge of what he really is like, and so they shouldn’t be able to burrow under his pale skin so easily but… well, he always thinks about following through with that idea of punching so they see. Which means clearly he’s letting them bother him regardless.

Types of night dwellers and ignorant acquaintances aside: Steve is used to hearing things when he's up at odd hours. Being carried through the hours meant for sleeping via coffee gone cold in a forgotten mug - one that is easily confused with paint water unfortunately - and the ever relentless marionette strings of inspiration that often have him in a cloudy haze of imagination that Peggy tells him is so obvious that he might as well leave a trail of sparkles behind him. And that when he’s like that he’s got his head in figurative sparkly clouds that block everything else out. Her meant to be pretty words of discription always makes him think of the stupid relation of sparkles to pop culture's most popular vampire. Well, Twilight is at least certainly the correct way to describe the usual environment that contains his existence.Afternoon slash evening, then twilight, and after a while, morning.

Up until two weeks ago Steve’s twilight hours were only interrupted with the confusingly timed chirps of birds that have taken the saying 'the early bird gets the worm' too far and the occasional rustle of cars with other city white noise, like drunken idiots stumbling through the alley next to the building.

Two weeks ago Steve received the information that he has a new neighbor above his apartment. The news came through a heart stopping crash rather than a new person showing up at his door with a smile and some baked goods the way you see in movies.

The noise had come just after four in the morning. Loud and jarring and realistically probably not as eardrum shattering as it had felt considering that had there been regular daytime noises going on at the same time it wouldn’t have seemed out of place, hell, he might not have even heard the sound then. However, with the darkness cocooning his apartment to nothing but a sparkling, inspiring, precisely lit studio like a blanket over a bird's cage making the animal hush it had made his ears ring. Encircling his head with rings like a planet, the noise falling into his gravitational pull and staying put, echoing over and over for a moment stretched into many. His hands had twitched and opened, his right dropping his paintbrush to the worn wooden floor like he set his hand on a stove without the knowledge of the item being on. Thankfully the only casualties had been his socks and the floor, the latter of which was much easier to fix. His left hand had been reaching out for his palette, abandoning the journey in favor of just dropping dead in the empty air; thank god, he’s not sure what he might’ve broken out of frustration had he dropped that. The fucking thing was slathered in paint all the way across it, hell, he couldn’t pick it up without getting his hand coated in paint.

The jarring crash had sounded like a fucking peice of furniture tippingover- shoving him out of his cocoon and into the world.

A world that was completely silent. People wrapped up in literal blankets that weren't made of a lack of light but rather materials like cotton and polyester and… other things. Whatever blankets are made of.

Later when he told Peggy and Sam of the sound over an early breakfast (his dinner because he was going to go home and sleep the day away after) Peggy had asked him with that beautiful, focused, and fiercely concerned expression of hers if he had gone up to ensure that the new tenant had been okay. Sam paused long enough to let her concern buzz in the air around them. Then once it had encircled their little semicircle for long enough he just busted out with, "you sure it was furniture and not just a person falling over in the dark- y'know, like a regular sized person, waking up from their regular sleep schedule?" Grinning at him suavely and threatening with that mischievous look to take him by the shoulders and shake him up a bit - to pull him into his side roughly - as if to prove his point in reminding Steve of how tiny he is.

And to be fair, his size is the only reason he can get away with staying up all night, walking around his apartment when his downstairs neighbors are sleeping. He's too light to make the floorboards creak or shift in a way that can be heard from more than literal millimeters away. You would have to put your ear to the floor to hear him move about; he's only one hundred and two pounds and it means he's underweight by nearly ten pounds according to his doctor. Yet he can't change it no matter how much horrible junk food he consumes (or, really, how much of it his friends give him or push across a table) so he's got to live with the reminders of "getting healthy" and the stares of everyone he'd love to take out passing over him as if he's a ghost. He certainly could pass for one. Or a vampire. He’s pale enough with sharp enough cheeks to be a vampire.

Although Sam's teasing doesn't bother him because he knows it's one thousand percent a joke, he's thinking about it now. Steve had slept through the day after their quick get together and has woken to a pleasantly humid, warm evening, and he’s thinking about it, about Sam. Not because he’s dwelling on the emotional hurt of it but because he is speaking to his landlord. And she has just explained the following:

“Oh hon," she, Shelia is her name, always calls him that. Steve isn't sure if the nickname is just something she uses all the time with everyone to indulge the stereotype of a sweet old woman just because she can or if it's because he's so short and thin and she can’t help but use it with him. Steve doesn't ask, he never plans to, he just lets her tell him more, "he - the tenant above you - he’s lived in that apartment for a couple of years." He feels his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. It would certainly explain the lack of new faces (and yeah, it's not like he would see said new face because of his sleep schedule but that's beyond this point) and the lack of spotted movers. Still… how has he never seen this ghost of a tenant? Is he not a vampire like Steve but a ghost? How's he never heard this guy walking around? Or apparently either tipping over his furniture or falling like a deadweight to the ground. What’s he been doing for all the years he’s lived here? Is Sheila just telling him a ghost story because she can?

She continues, easily speaking like she's been waiting for someone to ask her about this guy, "I’d have to dig out his papers to tell you the exact date but I know it was around the same time as when you moved in, dear. I wouldn’t swear to it but I believe he’s also around your age,” which, yeah, makes sense as to why he didn’t notice this guy at all then. With the stress of moving and all that stressful jazz. “He just wasn’t home that often, really at all, because of his work.”

“Work? What changed then?” What he really wants to ask is what fucking nightmare of a job keeps you away from sleeping at your own place- but he's not going to. Sheila has certainly been around long enough to have heard swearing in her day but that doesn't mean she needs to hear it from him.

Her voice takes on a sadness that makes Steve feel like if he repeated her words he would also compulsively have his insides painted blue with empathy for this ghost, “He was a soldier honey… he was discharged and,” she sighs out of everything but annoyance, “they - his former employers in the military, some men from the Pentagon - emailed me some basic information because you know how the economy is now. It’s… well. You didn’t ask to hear about inflation and an old ladies' memories on the way things used to work.” She pauses, likely to clear her head of what was bubbling to the front of her mind. “They kept him overseas for a long while, a few months I believe, and then they had him cooped up at the military hospital that’s attached to the campus of the VA downtown for a while- uhm, I couldn’t remember the name if I tried. I’m sorry.” She pats his shoulder, “bless him, he tried to pay his rent in full the whole time too,” she tuts somehow looking disappointed at the idea that this ghost was still trying to give her his rent money when he had been discharged from the military. She makes that level of responsibility sound like a bad thing, “shoulda’ seen all the medical bills he was being delivered…”

“I took care a’ them for him,” she adds eventually. Her eyes are trained on Steve physically but he can see that she’s not seeing him, her eyes are full of emeralds as they always have been - the alluring color gone milky with age - but today the green clovers of her eyes are wilted and sad. Like she’s forgotten to water the plants growing behind her pupils while simultaneously looking as if her eyes are coated in glass with how watery they are- preparing to shed tears for this phantom of a tenant.

“This ghost story of a guy got a name?” He finds himself piping up, making his tone clearly humorous so that she knows he’s interested and also not scared off. Because he’s not. It’ll take a lot more than an ex-soldier to scare him and she also has told his tale like she’s setting him up for a very, very interesting blind date. She looks like she could use someone to not be afraid to know this ghost.

“The ghost’s,” her lips pull tight- an attempt at a smile that becomes something genuine with a joyful twinkle returning to her forest eyes, “name is James. He was always adamant that I call him Bucky… you have to call him Bucky, hon,” A smile pulls at his lips too from her response as well as the amusement boiling in his stomach, a little witch’s cauldron of his own: the vampire and the ghost.

James- Bucky, rather. He files the information away, carefully thinking the ghost’s name over so he has a chance at remembering it on top of the chance of remembering it because of the strange nickname he apparently willingly goes by. Maybe it’s a military given nickname?

Bucky. The ghost of apartment eight-c. An ex-soldier that’s been injured somehow and has been quarantined to his place either by order or choice (well, if he’s been injured… maybe it’s not his ‘choice’ but, who knows mental health is vastly different for everyone).

Someone who goes bump in the night.

Steve thinks about the ghost living above him the entire way up to his apartment after the conversation revolving around him concludes, taking the stairs because contrary to most people he enjoys the milder humid climate that often covers Brooklyn during this time of the year. He’s always had poor circulation despite not having much real-estate for his blood to cycle through and the damp heat does wonders for making his blood fully reach his toes and fingertips. Plus with the moisture in the air he can actually breathe. His lungs enjoy the heat just as much as his blood, if not more, his asthma was about a million times worse when he was a child but it still haunts him often. Like now- as he lightly wheezes his way up the stairs. He loves the view from the seventh floor but the walk up to his place isn’t the best in the winter when the air is so dry he feels like the inside of his lungs are cracking apart and clogging up his throat. Serves him right for living in the oldest apartment building in Brooklyn - maybe even on the entire east coast - because it may look real pretty and inspire him to sketch more architecture but it doesn’t have an elevator.

Steve thinks about the ghost living above him while he paints that night, flicking his brush over this new canvas and dipping it in water and paint and wondering if he’s going to drop this brush on his feet too tonight. He’s barefoot this time and he’s doing a great job of reminding himself that he’s not wearing socks because it’s too hot out for them, not because he’s anticipating being forced to get paint all over his floor and feet via a mysterious noise that will bleed down from the eight-c into his seven-c apartment. He wonders as he works his way through the mixing of a few new colors what colors make up this guy. What color is his hair? What about his eyes? Does he follow the common trend of wearing all black or does he prefer shades of black and grey and white? Does he do neither of those and instead don dorky bright colored clothing? Steve can’t stop thinking about the ghost.

Steve thinks about the ghost living above him as he stops to get himself another cup of coffee, his third of the night, not really drinking it because it’s got caffeine but because he truly likes the taste of coffee. He always buys two kinds of coffee when he ventures out to the grocery store, caffeinated and decaffeinated, then he manually mixes them together because, well, to be honest he doesn’t know. He just likes the routine of it. Steve pours his coffee and pours over the idea of the ghost. Bucky. He ends up chuckling to himself while staring out into the black abyss beyond his window, interrupted by little circles of light here and there because the city never sleeps, not with both eyes closed; can vampires drink caffeinated coffee and feel the effects? Can ghosts drink coffee at all? Does the ghost living above him like coffee?

Steve thinks about the ghost living above him when the episode of the most recent show he’s started (and isn’t sure if he likes it yet) ends, getting up with a groan because of the twinge in his crooked back that’s only amplified by his “artist’s posture” as a PT once called it when he say how badly Steve slouches. He continues thinking of him while he readies himself for bed and the sun readies itself for shining through people’s curtains and be sworn at for doing so. Steve doesn’t mind. He sort of feels bad for the sun for a moment, he knows it doesn’t have feelings but- that doesn’t mean everyone who’s not a morning person should be allowed to be angry at it. He doesn’t get pissed at the sun for shining in his face when he’s trying to sleep and he’s always trying to sleep when it’s out and about. He thinks about the timing of the crash from the day (well, the night,) before and wonders if his upstairs neighbour gets angry at the sun or if he’s a morning person who instead gets mad at the sun for going away in the evenings. Maybe he doesn’t get mad at inanimate objects.

Steve thinks about the ghost living above him seemingly constantly until the next time a noise occurs, a noise that comes from above Steve’s head.

The next time it happens it’s not at night. It’s halfway through the day if Steve’s alarm clock is right and his reading of said clock is also right- just before noon. It’s also different because it’s not just one noise, no, it’s two clearly separate sounds. The first is easily identifiable once Steve gets beyond the scare of jolting awake and being convinced that the ceiling is coming down on top of him. Shakily attempting to get his arrhythmia and asthma under control takes a while and the second sound, the less identifiable one, happens. It’s louder and has him flinching like his brain has translated sound directly into physical sensation that’s hammering at his underweight sharpened ribs, pulsing over his heart and at his sides like he’s just been forced to run without warning and now his sides are aching with vengeance.

The first noise Steve knows, without any doubt, was a glass container (like a cup, bowl, or something along those lines) shattering along the floor. It’s an unmistakable sound- one that centers around one point at first but then spreads out like millions of spiders being found and scattering in all directions possible. It crawls up his curvy spine like spiders too, reaching his brain and making him shutter. He doesn’t mind blood. Not one bit, but, there’s something entirely unsettling about how easily glass slides through human skin and he hates to use the phrase but his brain is chanting it, ‘like a hot knife through butter’.

He has exactly one thousandth of a second to hope that the ghost- that Bucky is okay before another noise comes.

The second is reminiscent of the first ever noise he heard spill over the lip of the above apartment, like whatever it had been that made the sound was the exact same weight as what fell the other night except this time it had been caught before all of it could come crashing down.

Steve falls asleep with a pounding heart, picturing a war-hearted man just about his age falling to the floor after accidentally dropping his favored glass cup, not even thinking about it before landing on his knees and trying to collect the pieces back together. Wanting to rewind time so he can have it back. Maybe his mother gave him the glass. Maybe a girlfriend, yeah, surely a once upon a time soldier would’ve had some beautiful girl to call home to. To come home to. The very, very last thought that crosses Steve’s tired mind is, I hope he didn’t cut himself with it.

More noises flow into Steve’s living space over the next week, plenty of them being completely innocuous city noises but more than a few are centered from about Steve’s head. They don’t frighten him out of his very skin every time but they often come close. There’s a couple more glass or ceramic objects, some smaller sounds than others, that fall to his neighbours floor. Some more blunt objects also fall or bump into things and Steve has become accustomed to the sounds, letting them take up some of the air in his space because one, he doesn’t exactly have a choice, and two, he doesn’t mind. He thought he would after the first encountered noise from above but he’s learning that he doesn’t mind. He just begins thinking more and more about going up to speak to this guy to soothe his own imagination and to - perhaps a little selfishly - ensure that he’s okay. He assumes he is but he needs to know.

Steve just wants to be sure that this ghost isn’t covered head to toe in wounds in various stages of healing. He often muses about going up to say hello, introduce himself after their considerable delay of not knowing about each other and just maybe he’ll offer this guy his extra first-aid kit. Or a couple of bandaids at the very least. It’s entirely possible that Steve’s imagination is just going insane though, thinking about this guy so much without knowing what he looks like because he has to face it- he’s an incredibly visual person and every little bump had his brain reeling with what the situation must be. It’s also possible that he really just wants to know that this guy is okay and in one piece and maybe if he’d like to come back to his place because of the image that his imagination has sprouted but…

Steve doesn’t think about that option.

He just skirts around it and tiptoes to his door. Several times have Steve sliding out of his own apartment, each time with different colorful, hopefully effortless sounding line that will, god allowing, entrigue this guy into at least sort of explaining why he seemingly is both up all night and all day and continues to drop or run into things. Some of these times have him venturing all the way to the door that leads to the stairs at the end of the hall, intending to just pop into this guy's life and then pop out of it.

Everytime without fail though- he stops, something in his gut just tells him that he probably shouldn’t do it. He shouldn’t just show up at someone’s front door and expect to be provided with an explanation for how they act in their own home. Plus, it’s probably not the best for him to show up at some odd hour of the night even if it’s a normal time to him. So he doesn’t. He tells Peggy and Sam and some of the people he’s friends with at the galleries his pieces are hung in currently, asking about what he should do.

Tony- the owner of the most valuable chain of galleries in the states - had joked that he should make an art piece that represents all the time he’s been woken up and or startled when he was already awake and gift it to him. Subtlety has never, ever, ever been his strong suit. Steve will not be following his advice but the idea did have him thinking of all the possible outcomes if he did do that.

Sam had shrugged and told him that it was up to him because he already had that chat with their landlord and she clearly isn’t going to move him out or give him any kind of stern talking to because she likes this noisy neighbour too much. He had also taken Steve by the shoulders and said that as an EMT that’s worked both in DC and now in Brooklyn he’s seen more than enough vets have issues with spatial awareness and time and other things that would make sense for the behavior of the ghost and to maybe just put up with it for a while. To let him get better on his own.

Peggy had reflected his own wants in a much simpler way.

“Steve, dear, if it’s intruding on your life so much that you keep speaking to me about it you should just go and speak about it to him, not me, I can’t fix it. I’m not even certain he will be able to fix it so think of that while you do speak to him. Perhaps he’s just naturally clumsy. Or perhaps he has an injury that’s physically impeding him and he can’t stop himself from making those noises. Go and talk to him.”

Peggy’s pep talks are always, infuriatingly good.

So now that it’s been an entire two weeks of consistent yet random noises Steve can’t think of anything else any time there’s any kind of noise, it doesn’t even have to come from upstairs, it’s like magic. Boom, a sound happens and he’s thinking of Bucky. Of what he could be doing. Of how he might be hurt. Of what he looks like.

He thinks of all those things basically every second and he can’t take it.

His infatuation has gone too far. He knows. By god does he get that- he’s aware that this ghost shouldn’t have taken over his head, this ghost shouldn’t be haunting him the way it is.

So, when an eerily similar noise at an eerily similar time to the first ever noise happens Steve floats on his sparkly imagination all the way up to eight-c. Humming while he does it for some reason. Steve doesn’t hum. He doesn’t know what he’s doing either- hell, he didn’t even bring any offerings to hand over and leave if he wanted. No first aid kit or bandages or even one of his extra mugs (he’s certain Bucky has broken all of his own). His very noticeably empty hands shake; both with the unstable nerves of finally putting a face to the name(s) he has for this guy and nerves of pairing his looks to the part of his life story he’s been told about, he’s also shaking because he had to go out during the day (like afternoon but still) to re-up on some painting supplies because there aren’t any twenty four hour art stores unfortunately and that means he’s surviving on more half caffeinated coffee than usual.

At the least his shaking hands are able to knock at his neighbours door and it’s a little ironic he feels, to have to make more noise to investigate a noise because here he is, on the doorstep of this loud ghost he’s the one making the disturbance now. It’s strange. Eerie.

Steve moves his hand away from the door. Away from the temptation to knock once more because he can’t hear any footsteps coming towards him, he’s aware that this ghost has to be big or at least of average size because he always can hear him walking around. He places his hands into the pockets of his pants instead. Allowing them to freely tremble there, out of sight and out of mind, and so he doesn’t do something stupid with his shivering hands like offer them up to this stranger with his palms to the sky even though he’s well aware he doesn’t have anything in them. His hands burrow deeper.

“Hello?”

Steve jumps, knowing as he startles that there’s no way he’s going to be able to play that off as if it didn’t happen, shaking his head at himself mentally because he knew Bucky was coming to the door. He fucking knocked. He’s such an idio-

“ ‘Llo?” He speaks again, his voice makes shivers race over his skin like they’ve been caused by a cold wild. He doesn’t have the deepest voice and it’s not raspy, it’s just- there’s something about it. It’s sweet. That’s what it is, his voice is kind of shy and smooth, a touch of rasp sets it off though and it’s perfect.

“Hey-” Steve speaks and looks up. And up.

His throat constricts and he forgets all the swirling lines of conversation starters that he had brewed in his mind. Bucky is much taller than him, like pretty much everyone, but, the sheer difference in their heights has him basically tilting his head completely back so he can see his face. Exposing the entirety of his throat to this gorgeous ghost. Steve has become accustomed to guessing heights based on his own and if he’s five foot four then Bucky has to be at least six two or maybe even six three.

His face is shadowed by a short beard, just stubble that gives his jaw an even sharper edge and makes his angular cheekbones pop. Steve’s fingers itch to trace the lines of his face so he can forever recreate his handsome features on pages and pages of paper. His hair is long, falling in messy waves that come to a stop at just above his collar bones, Steve’s own head comes up to roughly the same height on him. His hair is a dark chocolate and he’s immediately thinking about how he might mix up such a color, thinking about how different the color would be in the sun. His fingers literally twitch with the urge to find the nearest drawing utensil. Pen, pencil, or hell, he’ll take some crayons if Bucky is offering.

“You need something, uhm,” Bucky pauses, tilting his head down searching him from head to toe like he’s trying to find a name tag on him somewhere.

“S-steve Rogers,” he stumbles out, locking his eyes onto the ones belonging to the ghost. They’re beautiful, a pretty pale grey-blue that shimmers even in the low light of the hallway- it’s a shame that he’s got such dark rings under them, he wants to see how they look against just the pure pale gold of his complexion. He watches them widen in surprise, giving him the opportunity to see the entire circle of color when the ex-soldier catches the baritone of his voice, something he’s been accustomed to since it dropped in high school- people being caught off guard by how not high pitched his voice is. His eyes are outlined with his full, dark lashes. Steve knows if Peggy had come with him to do this as she offered she would happily be commenting on how jealous she was of his eyes or how if she wasn’t only into women she’d be jumping right on flirting with him.

His mouth drops open a little, like he’s trying to find the words to respond to him and Steve would remind him that this is the part of the conversation where he tells him his name (even if he already knows it) but he can’t. Not when he’s faced with the perfect arch of his fallen open lips. They’re a pastel pink that Steve suspects would be deceivingly hard, entirely too stupidly difficult, to mix. And the way they’ve fallen open emphasizes the soft, pretty slope of his top lip along with the full pillow of his bottom. It looks like he’s been biting his bottom lip with the way it’s color is deeper and the little crack that somehow makes his mouth more perfect.

“Bucky, Bucky Barnes” the ghost finally chokes out, that shy, sweetness dipping into the air between them and stealing Steve’s breath with the tone of his voice and with the fact that when his mouth and jaw and tongue shapes his own name his cheeks get sucked in just enough to paint a line from the high points of his cheekbones to barely beyond the corners of his mouth, the attractive lines ending at his jaw, emphasizing his dimpled chin. He’s beyond handsome.

For once he finds himself being relieved that he’s such a not imposing person as he watches the tense set of Bucky’s shoulders drop into one that’s not relaxed per say- just not as tense. The look on his face is a mix of surprise and intrigue so he’s going to assume Bucky’s okay with, if not glad, for his small stature. So Steve extracts a hand from his pocket just the way he told himself he wouldn’t, offering it out to Bucky with a nod and smile that’s hopefully not too obviously stricken by his beauty. Bucky one thousand percent could get by on being a model. Hopefully his personal model but… that’s a question to ask someone later. When you haven’t just met.

Steve physically sticks his hand between their bodies but metaphorically he might as well have stuck it right in his own mouth because it’s right then and there that he notices that Bucky doesn’t have a left arm, that it ends just beyond his shoulder, and that his left happens to be the one he’s propositioned him with. Shit.

“Oh,” Bucky looks down at his hand and smiles before Steve can reel his arm back in, twisting his body just enough so his right can meet his left.

Steve must be having a caffeine induced hallucination because Bucky almost looks pleased with the opportunity to shake his hand. He lets it go, figuring his eyes have lingered long enough on his neighbours shoulder and that he now knows he’s missing an arm, he doesn’t need to know more. Not unless Bucky puts it back on the table after this. He nods to himself as they shake hands, filing away the fact that he’s missing a limb just the way he filed away the fact that the ghost has a regular name, James, but that he chooses to go by Bucky (which is much cuter and stranger).

“I heard you, uhh,” Steve realizes as his words spill out of him that he doesn’t have a clue about what Bucky was doing, he corrects himself. Trying not to dig his grave any deeper, “I heard you moving about, I, uhm, I live down in seven-c so, yeah. Would you maybe want to come down? I could stand to have some company and someone to help me finish off the pot of coffee I made earlier,” he wonders as he speaks if Bucky likes coffee. “Or tea, I have that too, it wouldn’t be a bother to get that going, I don’t judge, jus’ you’re already up and-”

“I like coffee,” Bucky blurts, his voice taking up the room between them and some of the room behind him, echoing faintly, he isn’t looking Steve in the eyes. Although he’s not sure he blames him, he does only come up to his collarbones (he’s also wearing shoes that add a few inches), the ex-soldier is looking just over his shoulder with a slight pink stain covering his cheeks. God, he’s pretty.

“Good, I’ve already had too much, you should drink the rest,” it’s all he can think to say and it’s kind of stupid and it really doesn’t make much sense but Steve isn’t sure if he cares or not. He just wants to hold onto this with his teeth and nails and every bit of strength he has in him because there is no way he’s not going to pour over this man even more now.

The offer for Bucky to drink the rest of his coffee, almost a full half of a pot left, is the only exchanged words from his door down to Steve’s.

Bucky had turned around wordlessly, leaving his door half open to tell Steve that he was still going to come and keep him company in his apartment one floor below but that he wasn’t going to allow a stranger into his apartment. Either physically or mentally. Steve nods at the door, thinking about how that’s probably for the best and immediately he feels stupid- he hopes Bucky didn’t see that from wherever he is inside his place. When he had returned to the door - widening it just enough so that he could slip through it and stand next to Steve - the taller man had gotten his keys and phone. Both items cradled in his only hand instead of shoved into one of the many, many pockets in his black pants (vaguely he wonders if they still qualify as combat pants if they don’t have the sewn on knee pads?). Steve takes it as a sign of trust; Bucky trusts him enough to not take his keys or phone and because of that he’s also trusting that Steve won’t harm him (or he just figures that he can’t which might be true, he’s very, very sturdy looking) seeing as there’s not much you can do with one hand that occupied by your belongings.

Still silent, Bucky had stalled a few seconds behind Steve as he had turned and begun walking back to the staircase. He had thought Bucky would go first because of his much longer legs (usually people forget that Steve can’t walk that fast on account of his anatomy or asthma). He also figured that he would’ve at least walked next to him and would try to say something but having him a good few paces behind him… it feels like having a bodyguard. In a surprisingly non-threatening way. He keeps that position all the way down the stairs, the flight of concrete steps sounding as if they’re carpeted despite the fact that Bucky had reappeared donning heavy, chunky looking boots that surely would be referred to as combat boots, the debate that Steve was having with his pants simply isn’t there with this item of clothing. It makes Steve shiver. Not out of fear of this ghost and what he’s done but just the sheer thought of having to do things that require him to be so quiet when he’s so physically intimidating. What orders did he have to carry out? Maybe he was a sniper? And a part of his mind still whispers in fear - an instinctual ‘if you wanted you could squish me like a bug you easily could’ taking over for a moment - maybe he’s been quarantined to his place because he’s not ready to be back around people after being victimized by a monster disguised as one?

He shoves the thought away as he holds the door open for Bucky, Bucky may be a stranger but he doesn’t have any “vibes” or whatever that suggests he’s a threat. He’s not a danger. He doesn’t exude anything that suggests he would’ve ever wanted to be a danger to anyone. Hell, the guy seems to be just a big teddy bear, and as he passes the door back he’s not thinking about the fact that he might not be able to catch the door as he bounces it off of his intact left hand and comes towards him. He’s just thinking about how Bucky would look holding a little teddy bear that’s made to look like him.

A guilty chord is struck in his chest, vibrating through his whole torso like the body of a guitar after it’s strings have been strummed.

When he turns around, hoping to a god he doesn’t believe in beyond dire situations that Bucky won’t be angry or hurt because of his thoughtlessness, what he gets is a secretly smiling teddy bear. He’s looking down, his hair obscuring his upturned, gorgeous mouth as he watches the door only just kiss his hip before he cocks it out and bounces the door away. Proving himself to be just as functional as Steve with his working two arms, a well of feelings burst in his chest. Bucky shouldn’t have to prove himself to him… but it makes him smile too, forgetting the harsh feelings from before because he can see the flecks of private pride meant just for his internal monologue painted publicly (well, just for Steve) over his handsome features.

Stormy-grey eyes look almost grateful as they peer down at him, no blush in sight (unfortunately) but he does look like he’s one well thought out slash well aimed comment from getting there. Steve doesn’t take the bait even though he’s hungry enough to see that pretty pink again his stomach just might start growling, his mouth might start watering. He just gives Bucky an even bigger grin of assurance and nods his head down the hall as if Bucky doesn’t know which apartment is his. It feels like the quiet is needed right now, like it’s meant to be blanketing them as they walk about an otherwise abandoned building in the middle of the night, well, the morning technically.

They walk towards the door, Bucky still keeping his distance behind him.

His footsteps make an even quieter sound than Steve’s own- it’s got his head reeling. Goddamn him, this handsome as hell, big ass teddy bear slash ghost that’s going to haunt his dreams and be carried around in his thoughts wherever he goes like a child carrying around a favorite plushie.

When they’re both safely inside of his apartment Steve needs desperately to rid his hands of their itch, so he finds himself going straight to his easel and locating the brush he had been using while submerging himself back into the world of whatever the hell he was doing when Bucky’s accidently noisy life broke through the barrier between their apartments. He can feel his mom rolling over in her grave at his rudeness. Leaving a guest unattended in a new space- how could he (technically he did already offer him some refreshments but that’s different)?

Steve fights off a playful scoff at the imaginary dialogue of Sarah Rogers; instead compromising by peeking up over his canvas, standing on his tiptoes to do so, and half paying attention to Bucky while he distractly tells him where the coffee is. Adding in the location of the bathroom and the open invitation (would it still be called that in this situation?) of being allowed to leave whenever but, that he works at night so he’s gonna get some work done and, oh, yeah, you’re totally allowed to sit wherever you want. Bucky stands where he’s set himself in the open entryway for countless moments, surveying the inside of Steve’s apartment with an intense air. He swears he only hears the brunette breath out when he’s done with his search. Those inspiring eyes flick over the rest of his apartment a second and third time as he breathes before he allows himself to unfreeze. Transitioning from a statue to moving sculpture, y’know, the ones that are hypnotizing to look at despite being just a bunch of shapes that move fluidly. Silent and hypnotizingly smoothly Bucky moves through his apartment.

He knows he should be paying more attention to the sort-of-stranger ambling about his apartment but he can’t. He’s got a commission piece in front of him that he actually likes and is excited about and now with Bucky here he’s got no wandering thoughts because he’s apparently the subject of ninety nine percent of them.

Quickly this becomes routine. So routine that nearly every other night Bucky comes down to his apartment with the only warning of something going bump in the night, well, he also knocks on Steve’s door but that doesn’t really count because most nights he’s already expecting him by that point so… yeah.

Pretty much every time it happens Steve finds himself talking to Bucky without hearing his voice, the other man just prefers to stay silent it seems. He’ll hum or nod or tap his fingers against the arm of his couch before he opens his mouth and uses actual words but Steve can always tell when he’s listening, it’s strange, even with his eyes closed and his head leaned back on Steve’s couch like he can’t hold his own head up on his own there’s an air about him. He can just know when he’s awake and listening versus when he’s not. Steve learns a couple things about Bucky this way, with these late night hang outs, but mostly he comes to understand that even with Bucky’s near constant silence he should feel like he’s talking to a wall but he doesn’t. Bucky’s too good of a listener for that to be true. So Steve lets him stay quiet (truthfully even if he wasn’t a good listener Steve wouldn’t force him to speak, he seems like he could use that compassion in the least).

When he does decide to speak he’s always soft spoken.

Only a hint of gravel gathers at the back of his throat and it’s almost always from him being tired too- and isn’t that a thought? He wonders how many other people have gotten to hear Bucky like that? How does he sound when he’s had enough rest and is happy? Is it entirely different? Will Steve ever get to hear him sound like that?

His tone of voice makes everything he says sound like it’s a precious secret given only to the most worthy of people or wary advice given to him by a fortune-teller who’s not quite comfortable with their gift yet. Even if he didn’t sound the way he does Steve would listen. It’s the least he can do- returning the favor.

This is what he learns from listening to Bucky over those weeks of hanging out when the sun has gone away:

He’s been diagnosed with PTSD, a mild to severe general dissociative disorder, and chronic insomnia (that comes with the “wonderful” side diagnosis of sleep terrors) along with a whole host of medical issues that have evolved in their own way. Also that he got back from an overseas deployment only four months ago and has only been out of the hospital for eight of those weeks- the last time he saw combat was when his arm got “torn up”. Steve has asked about his hair then because surely it didn’t grow that fast (Bucky had looked half relieved by the question and half like he wanted to burst out laughing at the dumbness of that question)? And it didn’t; on a technicality he had been allowed to have it this length because it fit with the woman’s regulations and he was friendly enough with his C.O. that he got to keep it. Steve tells him he likes it but he doesn’t miss the way Bucky grumbles under his breath at his compliment (Steve still hasn’t learned why). Bucky apologetically tells him after dropping one of Steve’s mugs to his floor that he occasionally will be tired enough (that’s the insomnia sneaking up on him) that he just forgets that his left arm isn’t there anymore and will go to put things in his other hand. He stares at the shattered ceramic on the floor as he tells Steve that and it sounds more like a confession than anything. So he takes a leap of faith, be obviously joking as he picks up the larger pieces from the floor, split coffee is nothing to cry over- pretending that it’s just a coincidence of words and not that he saw the way Bucky’s big, beautiful eyes were filling with tears behind his protective curtain of hair. Bucky had laughed, it was thin and short lived but Steve thinks about it a lot. He can’t and wouldn’t ever run away from the sound.

Bucky tells him that he was a sergeant in the military. He tells Steve while looking him in the eyes that he’s liked him since they met because he didn’t seem to care about the fact that he was missing an arm. Apparently everyone else had either tried way too hard to not notice his missing appendage (“oh, I didn’t even notice that it was gone,” type of shitty liars) or they tried way too hard to be accommodating (“do you need a han- oh! Oh, I’m SO sorry. I didn’t mean to…” and so on). He also learns that sometimes Bucky wakes up in the middle of the night as he’s falling out of bed or that when he journeys to the couch after waking up he doesn’t always turn on the lights and will let himself walk into things. He wonders if it’s true that he simply doesn’t have the patience to flip a lightswitch or if he’s doing it so he can feel alive. Steve hasn’t been there personally, he’s got too much chronic pain to want to induce more pain purposefully, but he’s had friends do that. He knows pain makes you feel alive.

And that’s how it goes for a while; Steve paints and talks occasionally between breaks for coffee or tea or something to eat and Bucky talks even more occasionally than Steve.

Nights are reserved mostly for his time with Bucky except when he texts him (they exchange numbers at some point, Steve doesn’t really remember when that happened) beforehand that he can’t stay up all night because he’s got to actually be awake for something happening during the day. Once or twice it’s so he can show up to evening gallery show openings or so he can meet with his personal manager (because god knows he doesn’t know how to sell his own work) but this time it was so he could hand deliver a piece to a client that’s very valuable. Steve doesn’t really know why but his manager insisted that he needed to walk to the piece over so they could literally take it out of his hands.

The piece was an oil painting recreation of the couples original wedding photos for their fortieth anniversary. It was sweet in theory but a complete bitch for him to work on, no matter how much extra he was getting paid to do it, because the canvas that the husband had wanted was taller than him (six feet tall and three feet wide).

He’s just happy to not have the looming clouds of anxiety floating above his head, acutely suffocating him, now that he’s dropped it off. His feet feel like they weigh less than air after dropping it off at their impressive victorian style mansion, without the worry of getting it ruined as he carried it through the streets of Brooklyn and into a taxi and up to their porch having disappeared and made it seem like he way float away with a mild breeze of air. He’s so light with the lack of weight and the abundance of sunny attitude that he nearly trips up the stairs, forcing him to notice the ball of dark fabrics trembling in the corner of the next landing up the staircase. Huh.

His first thought is of the kittens that his mother had once called him out into the back alley of the apartments he grew up in to see. Reminded of the way they had been silent under the black coat draped over the box they were stuck in but not meowing hadn’t meant they weren’t moving. He had tiptoed closer, using his ma as a bit of shield when the box had trembled and swayed, only bolting out from behind her legs to investigate when he heard a perfectly sweet little mewl. He loves animals but their apartment at the time wouldn’t allow them to own one, his ma and him had learned that day that he was allergic to cats too so it had been his first two heartbreaks.

Then his heart breaks another time because as he approaches the ball of a person - feeling like he’s that tiptoeing tiny child all over again - he hears a choked sob that must be the human equivalent of a helpless kitten’s mewl and then he’s being drawn over to the huddled person the same way he had then been fearlessly drawn toward the box of abandoned kittens. This time he doesn’t receive a runny nose and itchy eyes along with a scratch over the bridge of his nose.

This time he finds himself flat on his back.

Steve gasps, pain surging like waves through the back of his head and his jaw and for just a moment he thinks his nose has begun to run so suddenly without the presence of anything he’s allergic to that it’s dripped down to his lips. But his nose didn’t spontaneously decide to drip snot down his face. No. His nose is bleeding and the copper taste of it has fought it’s way between his lips.

“Bucky?” He nearly retches as he moves his jaw to speak, okay, so Bucky must’ve hit him in the face. His aching jaw and teeth along with the pulsing, hot drip of blood down from his nostrils to his lips tells him so. “Buck,” he tries to repeat the ghost's name, realizing with a tsunami of guilt that he was probably having some kind of flashback slash panic attack and he just scared the shit out of him.

He wiggles his fingers under Bucky’s sweaty palm, both of them pinned surprisingly effectively under his only hand, repeating his name again and getting the same locked on, cold, unrecognizing stare.

Steve takes in his surroundings, they’re between the fifth and sixth floors and it’s mid-afternoon, no one’s going to be coming home anytime soon, it’s way too early in the day. Bucky has him pinned. And even though he’s only got one arm and is self proclaimed as “less than mentally stable”, what he does have is ten inches and over one hundred pounds (much closer to hundred and fifty if he’s being honest) on him. He’s been punched much, much harder in his life, hell, he may have been hit in the face but he doesn’t feel like his nose is even fractured. But it doesn’t matter now how many hits he’s taken. How many times his nose has been broken or how many concussions he’s had. He needs to be smart with this.

Bucky isn’t responding to his nickname and Steve doesn’t even think he recognizes him- the brunette is looking straight through him and the concrete that he’s pinned to. He’s somewhere else entirely.

Steve tries his actual name, calling out to him and trying to not screw up his face at how strange the name “James” feels on his tongue instead of Bucky. He gets nothing but a blink and another furious breath from Bucky, he’s glad that the much bigger man only has one arm because it’s tripping him up and giving Steve time to think. He feels bad for thinking it but he’s also fairly sure Bucky might accidentally kill him if he had two arms because he’s pretty sure that look in his eyes is wild fear and no one is predictable when they’re scared.

He’s scared. Okay. Steve can work around fear.

Oh. Duh.

“Sergeant Barnes,” Steve barks out the title as loud and as demanding as he can, he knows that it’s basically just another name for his friend but he also knows that he must feel comfortable taking orders because he was in the military. He also knows from the way his shoulders always relax that being told direct orders always sets him more at ease than being allowed to do whatever he pleases.

It takes maybe half a second to hit Bucky.

Within milliseconds after the first gap of time that the words take to get through to Bucky he’s peeling himself away from Steve, throwing himself in the opposite direction like he’s burned himself, choked breaths hitching so harshly in his throat that Steve automatically swallows, as someone with asthma he can feel sympathy pain overtaking his esophagus. Bucky has his back literally against the wall, his hand scrubbing over his face and trembling visibly even with the distance yawning between them. His shoulders have curled so tightly inwards that he looks like a kid, scared to get in trouble all of the sudden when they’ve been found out. His eyes are squeezed so tightly that he feels himself wincing- that must hurt.

“Sergeant?” Steve tries, removing the volume from his voice but not the authoritative undercurrent, he feels the knowledge that his name still won’t get through to him wrap around his ribs like strings of twine. Wrapping him up in a cocoon that’s slowly tightening and forcing him to breathe shallowly with Bucky.

Bucky buries himself further into his own frame, an actual whimper coming from somewhere within him. Steve fights his own tears away along with the tremors making themselves at home in his chest- he can’t afford to let them spread and get into his voice right now.

Before he can prompt Bucky again he’s whimpering and speaking, his voice shattered like a handheld mirror that’s been dropped after the person holding it was spooked, “sorry, sir.”

His head is bowed and it follows the theme of the rest of his body, looking like it’s held so tightly with so much tension that it appears painful. Steve chews his lip, forgetting that there’s blood there and tasting it, recoiling with surprise and trying to think through it. Movies based on true military stories circle through his head like a depressing carousel, he also thinks about the stories Sam has told him with being an EMT and often interacting with vets because of that.

He barks out, “at ease, soldier”, the word coming much stronger than he feels, it’s the only phrase he can come up with. Blood flies off of the surface of his lips, landing in the canyon between them with a tiny splat that’s inaudible over the sounds of their breathing and Bucky’s half crying. Imagining the sound of it is soothing- the world is still turning as this happens, sounds are still being made, gravity is still acting upon them. Bucky slumps down, curling his arm over his shins and begins to freely cry. He looks like a marionette made of cloth that’s had its strings cut.

Steve isn’t sure if he’s helped or not. He scoots closer, wanting to help but not push.

Bucky doesn’t react even though he surely did hear him move with the way he tensed, he just breathes in deeper and appears to force himself to relax his muscles. He rests his eyes for a moment to check in with himself while Bucky gets used to the inch that’s been removed from in between them. The back of his head has already lessened it’s pounding and when he touches it to feel for bumps or blood there’s nothing but vaguely tender skin; he vows to tell that to Bucky when he’s more lucid, he wants him to know even when he was out of his own mind with fear he didn’t let his head hit the concrete hard enough to cause any damage at all. And the fact that his nose is bleeding is probably more of his body’s fault than Bucky’s- he’s got enough medical problems that Bucky knows about that he surely would believe him if he just said that he easily gets bloody noses in the heat or something (not that that’s one hundred percent of a lie, he’s been in enough fights to constitute as someone who gets frequent bloody noses).

He aches more for Bucky to know he’s done nothing wrong than he does from the partial attack caused by surprising the ex-soldier.

Steve isn’t sure just how much time passes between him being allowed to get up after being pinned and now, sitting directly in front of Bucky with barely an inch separating them, but he knows it’s a long period of time. He doesn’t mind. He wants Bucky to be okay, that’s all.

“Bucky?” He tries again, feeling his blood run cold through his veins as his lips form the word, his chest feels empty with uneasiness at the same time. Please respond. Please respond. Please. Recognize me. See that I’m here. Come back to me. Please respond. That’s your name. Your name, not a rank. Know your name. Know I’m here.

His mind’s impatient, terrified chanting almost drowns out Bucky, he doesn’t know if the bigger man makes a sound or not but he does know that he lifts his head. Slowly Steve lets his eyes drift up to see Bucky’s because the difference in their sizes is so massive that even when he’s scrunched up into a shaking ball of a person he’s still taller than Steve. All the air in his lungs rushes out in relief when he sees those eyes, they’re less wild with terror and he might even go as far as to say that he looks tame now. His lips are set in an unhappy line but his eyes are looking at him instead of past him.

The harsh noise of his breath leaving him must’ve startled Bucky a little but he continues to look him in the eyes so it can’t be that bad. The sudden rush of comfort from Bucky coming back to the present has Steve’s stupid thoughts falling out of his lips, “waddya doin’ Buck?”

Bucky opens his mouth.

He closes it. Opens it again and then shuts it. He presses his lips tightly together.

A hiccup makes its way out of his chest, his head jostles from side to side and his bottom lip begins to tremble uncontrollably. Steve feels like his heart is just as shattered as Bucky’s voice had been after Steve all but yelled orders at him to get him off of him without knowing what he should do. Steve shrugs back at him, both of his shoulders sliding up to his ears, not knowing what silent conversation they’re having but joining in anyway.

Steve starts to reach out before he thinks better of it, intending on unsticking the chunk of his hair that’s stuck on his mouth after being displaced by the shake of his head and tucking it safely behind his ear instead. Bucky hiccups again and a single tear beads up in his eye before trailing it’s way down his flushed cheek. He’s frozen in fear, he realizes.

“Hey,” he breathes out, leaving his hand in the air so Bucky isn’t spooked by the retraction of it. Bucky doesn’t move, he just stares at Steve. Eyes wide and round as dinner plates, well, not just your typical dinner plates, more like fine china. Special and pretty.

“You’re okay, I’m okay…” he loses his breath without meaning to, wheezing slightly to his own embarrassment, “we’re okay.” Bucky gives him the tiniest of nods, Steve isn’t even sure if he’s really seen what he thinks he did, his eyes flashing quick as lightning cuts through the night sky to look at his hand before they dart back to his face.

“I just was gonna get the hair out of your face,” he breathes in, the sound rattling in his chest, “is that okay?”

It takes the other man a while to answer but it doesn’t matter for even a moment after he has because Steve feels as if he’s won the trust of a wild animal, like he’s gotten a stray cat to lick his hands. Bucky doesn’t look away from his eyes, his own grey-blue ones bounce between his, not settling on one or the other but not looking anywhere else but there. But his right hand comes up to tap the back of his hand and his lips mouth the word “okay.”

Still Steve doesn’t want to endanger that trust so he doesn’t even inch his hand forward, he barely moves his hand forward by fractions of an inch every couple of seconds.

Eventually when his fingertips do brush the wayward strand of his hair he only just hides his gasp, drawing the clump away from his face and sliding it behind his ear. The motion takes such a short amount of time he doesn’t know what to do after he’s executed the action, he just flounders about, treading the water that’s around them helplessly.

“What do you need Bucky?”

His words hang in the air like spiderwebs, light and scarcely seen, just floating along with the wind without being attached to anything. Free and practically completely unnoticeable. Bucky doesn’t even open and close his mouth this time, he just stares at Steve, trust fully glazing his expression. He shrugs imperceptibly, unlocking their gazes for the first time in this bizarre exchange.

Oh, he knows that move. He’s tried that a number of times, “anything,” he tries. Not really even whispering at this point. Just letting the words slide out of him with more breath than syllables. His fingers find their way to the curve of his jaw, his palm resting on the lower part of his cheek. He taps his flushed, sweaty skin carefully, not really taking into account what his fingers are doing as they dance along his face. It’s not until he feels the muscles of his cheek pull taut that he realizes what he did.

Morse code. S.O.S.

Three short dots for an ‘s’ which are three quick little taps on his ghost’s skin, Three long dashes for an ‘o’ which are three taps that leave his fingertips touching his face for a long moment as opposed to the quick nature of his taps that represent the ‘s’.

“They still teach you morse code in the military?” He teases lightly, beginning to pull his hand away but being stopped by the panicked look that takes over Bucky. He puts his hand back where it was and slowly brings his other up to a mirrored position on the other side of his face. Bucky nods after a second, his face heating up even more under his palms. A brighter blush takes over the apples of his cheeks and stretches over the bridge of his nose.

“Anything,” Steve reminds him. His voice slipping back into the commanding tone that got through to him earlier without him knowing how he makes himself sound like that. Bucky nods, the motion soft enough that the only reason he’s aware of it is because of his hands and where they are.

Bucky swallows roughly, like his throat is made of sandpaper and his mouth is full of cotton that just won’t go down, “you’re real right?”

Steve feels like he’s trapped inside a plastic bag, rapidly running out of air as he chokes on a million thoughts rushing around the outside of the plastic barrier, like bees running into a window pane over and over again until they fall to the ground. Dead. He picks one at random, “yeah,” he finds some rare trace of saliva in the back of his mouth, “yeah, I’m real you big teddy bear. I’m right here.”

He doesn’t know what to do after the words leave his mouth. He’s not sure how Bucky will feel about being compared to a harmless and subsequently helpless stuffed bear often taken up by small children. Or how he should deal with an ex-soldier who’s his friend but also just basically admitted to having hallucinations.

Bucky choses for him, lowering his voice, “should we, uhm, should we leave the, the…” his eyes leave him entirely, shifting his eyes from one part of the staircase to the other like he’s a kid looking around around their room for shadowy monsters instead of a grown man that’s cornered in a public part of an apartment building during the day, untrusting of the place where he’s lived for years.

Steve catches on, his brain connecting his last stuttered statement to his question of if Steve had been real or not, “the staircase Buck,” he reminds him gently, “yeah, we’re in the staircase. Were you going up to your apartment or were you going out?”

There’s a quick peak of pink as Bucky licks his lips, biting down on his lip after, displacing the way the plush surface catches the light, “coming home from an appointment.”

“Seeing a shrink?”

“Wha- how? I, uhm-” Bucky looks at his, appearing less aloof than before. He looks healthy enough to be stable when standing, so Steve stands, hoping that his decisive action will be good for him - make him comfortable because he’s used to following someone - and hoping that he doesn’t need to be physically helped because if he falls Steve is never going to be able to hold him up.

He shoots for nonchalance, offering his hand out for him because it feels like he should, not because he thinks he has a chance at holding any of his weight, “that’s their job. They tear you open and then send you home to lick your wounds. Y’know hoping you learned whatever they wanted you to, the whole ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink’.”

Bucky hefts himself to his feet, sounding smaller than he really is, “oh.”

“Seven or eight?”

Steve watches Bucky’s lips begin to form that shape of a question as he gets to his feet, looking at Steve with his brows scrunched together. Then it hits him. He straightens up, clearing his throat and looking back down to the ground, uncomfortable with the question.

“Seven?” He offers, watching the weight melt off of his broad shoulders. Bucky nods quickly again, the movement so quick that had he blinked he would’ve missed it, “okay. We can do that.”

Bucky seems okay all the way from the stairwell to his apartment but when he sits down on Steve’s couch he can see the cracks in his surface. Stress lines have creeped around him, painting him into a tired, much older looking ghost. He looks like he’s not even moments away from falling asleep as he plops down, sitting in the same place he does during their nightly hangouts, rubbing his hand over his left side ribs. Steve just towers over him for once, his lips glued together despite the millions of questions pouring through his mind. He’s glad Bucky’s saved from the waterfall for now- he doesn’t want to be responsible for his drowning.

He watches the movement of his hand, rubbing up and down his side from just under his armpit to the waistband of his pants, Steve half wonders if he impulsively also struck Bucky, if his side aches. Or if-

“Oh,” the sound just comes out of him, tugged out of his throat without his own knowledge. His side doesn’t hurt. He’s trying to self soothe. If he had two arms Steve is more than one thousand percent sure he would be hugging himself. Bucky looks up at him, eyes widening out at whatever he spots in his expression, not even trying to talk. Just too lost in his own thoughts.

“Scoot,” Steve says, hoarse with his understanding.

Bucky obeys wordlessly, still looking at him and painted bright blue with his confusion, he goes from being centered on the couch to closer to the left side, curling into himself again. Steve sits himself down right where Bucky had been, vigilantly watching him for any signs of distress as he shifts and squirms right up his to side. Plastering their bodies together.

A gasp escapes Bucky and it makes Steve freeze, “okay?” He shifts, beginning to take his weight off of Bucky and preparing himself to remove his own presence permanently but being startled to a gasp of his own as Bucky maneuvers him with ease.

Steve finds himself straddling Bucky’s lap. Being squished into the hard, thick muscle packed on Bucky’s chest. Bucky’s shaking.

“Hey,” Steve finds himself speaking into the skin below his collarbone that swells out into the apex of his pec, “you don’t have to, uhh, do anything you’re not comfortable with… I just figured you would-” his trembling isn’t getting any better so he switches tactics. Ironically feeling like Bucky’s teddy bear with the difference in their bodies being emphasized like this. “My ma used to rub my back when I was upset and hug me when she was happy and- she was just real tactile and all that. Cuddly. I assumed that would help…” he continues quietly, “I’m sorry.”

Bucky squeezes his arm tighter around him, shaking his head vigorously, gasping out, “I just haven’t…” he sounds like he’s going to start crying again. Getting more choked up the longer he goes on, “please. I- you, ple-please stay.”

“I can stay.”

The dam breaks, tears flood down Bucky’s cheeks with a vengeance, as if they’re trying to drown him after he held them in for so long. And it’s not long before his tears have reached the sharp curve of his jaw, dripping down from there and landing on his shirt, barely missing Steve’s face. Some of his hair tickles his cheek, falling back out from behind his ears. Uncontainable. When the dam had broken he also started to really truly tremble, not the little shivers that occasionally were whispering through his muscles and surfacing on his skin before, no, this is different. It’s got his hand spasming over Steve’s back unpredictably. His shoulders also tense and relax without warning, jerking like they’re the tides being acted on the rogue moon of his tears. His chest rises and falls under Steve’s cheek like an angry ocean, rocking them both and trying to overturn their little liferaft.

Steve just stays where he’s been put, petting his hands down whatever area of Bucky he can reach- with the exception of his left shoulder and what’s left of his arm because he’s read into people who’ve experience limb amputation since meeting Bucky and he doesn’t know if he’d be comfortable with that. Plus he doesn’t know what damage has been done to his remaining body around that area, his nerves might be overactive and painful to even the lightest touch. It has him swallowing against a newly gaping chasm somewhere in his body. He doesn’t know nearly enough about Bucky and it’s all he can think about. He needs to learn more.

He should know how Bucky likes his coffee- they share it often enough! He should know if he has any family left and if he does, do they not want to see him this way - so deeply harmed by outside forces and unseen fates - or does he not let them in? Assuming they’ll act the way others have, figuring that he’s sparing them too much heartache. Steve wants to ask him every little question he can think of, even the stuff he normally could give a shit about like star signs, religious beliefs, and superstitions.

Instead he hums, keeping his arms wrapped around him. Swaying them just a touch when Bucky stops hyperventilating, the new pattern of breathing allows his body to relax, his chest has stopped knocking into Steve’s smaller body. Bucky seems to like the humming so he lets himself get louder until he can feel the fuzzy vibrations in his throat like choked down carbonation as it leaks it’s way down to his chest, he knows the feeling is bleeding into Bucky’s own chest. At some point while he hums to him one of Steve’s hands gets wrapped up in that beautiful hair of his, he muses about it having its own gravitational pull, scratching at the base of his skull and feeling the way his trembling turns back into occasional shivers. He feels like he’s untangling him string by string. His other hand explores his back, feeling the muscles there ripple like waves when Bucky decides to do the same thing to him, energy flowing back into his very capable frame.

They sit rubbing each other's backs for what seems like lifetimes.

The shivers that still occasionally wrack his body fade away so seamlessly over the period of time where they’re wrapped up in each other that Steve would be hard pressed to remember what they felt like when they were happening. Even with the bright terror of feeling sympathetic towards Bucky and feeling helpless to stop it he still wouldn’t be able to describe it in the exact way it was. He’s glad that the shiver’s grip has loosened regardless. His own breathing slowly returns to normal along with Bucky’s, both of their hammering hearts also coming to the end of their sprint.

By that point Bucky’s nothing but a pile of melted chocolate, laying lax against the back of the couch and fully accepting whatever affection Steve plans to lay on him even if those plans are to smother him.

Steve plans on taking that invitation seriously, he’s going to be dripping cuddle hormones out of his ears and nose by the end of this (and he really, really hopes it doesn’t end). The only thing that seems to be bothering the big brunette at that point is his hair; it’s been in his face the entire time because of the way his head has been bowed and even now that his tears have stopped completely there’s still wetness clinging to his cheeks and chin, some of his more unruly pieces of hair have gotten stuck those patches of salt water. Besides, whenever he tries to blow the pieces away from his face they just end up right back in place less than five minutes later. Watching his restless, infinite battle with his hair gives Steve an idea-

Steve squirms in Bucky's grip, repressing shudders as Bucky’s hand lands heavily on his hip (how the hell does it take up so much space?!), hushing him and telling him that he’s not going anywhere. Just presenting Bucky with one of the hair ties that Peggy always seems to leave laying around at his place- especially when she crashes at his after a night of drinks and dancing. The easily misplaced, “naughty” objects finally come in handy at this moment in time. He passes a telepathic apology to Peggy for always bitching at her for leaving them behind. He always piles them up on the coffee table for her to snatch back when she returns to his apartment so all he’s got to do is lean back and snag one. He doesn’t even have to leave Bucky’s lap. His hand, still cupped around his hip, seems happy about the not-having-to-leave-Bucky’s-lap as some of them drum a cheerful pattern on him.

Bucky nods once, lowering his voice to something of an inaudible rumble and burying his face in the middle of Steve’s chest while he leans back, “jus’ don’t leave.”

Steve nods back at him, getting himself back into the original position that they were in, smiling softly and running his fingers through his hair one last time before he sort of gets up. He doesn’t leave Bucky the way he said he wouldn’t, he plants his feet on either side of Bucky’s thighs to start. Whirling about and keeping contact while he gets himself so that his legs are sitting gingerly over his shoulders, closer to his neck then the edge of his shoulders to avoid the tender area of his amputated limb, his butt rests on the top of the back of the couch rather than on the bigger man’s lap, heels bumping and over his stomach so they’re still touching significantly as he gets to work.

Toying with the surprisingly thick, silky mass of hair at the crown of his head whilst he thinks.

All the different ways he knows to do hair fly through his mind but the only one he finds himself wanting to execute on Bucky is a french braid. The picture in his imagination of that on this gorgeous guy is calling to him like an irresistible siren. He’s never seen Bucky with his hair pulled away from his face and a braid that uses all of his available, thick, shiny hair would do that perfectly.

Steve finds himself justifying this strange bank of knowledge to Bucky as he untangles his hair with just his fingers. Combing through the length of it crudely, his fingers hopefully being gentler than the flimsy comb sitting lonely on his bathroom counter would me. Explaining in a low, still basically humming voice how before his ma died when he was in his last year of high school that sometimes (really most to all of the time) her hands would shake too much for her to do her own hair. But that she’d get Steve to do it because she still wanted to feel pretty, still wanted to look pretty. Cancer fucking sucks. And the treatment for it does too. She had been getting treatment for a while before but it was too late, all the chemo did to her was make her sicker. And make her hair fall out. Then grow back in at the perfect time for her to be able to enjoy it as she was physically, literally rotting away in front of his very eyes. Apparently the chemo had chewed through her nervous system and muscles and that had been what made her so weak and shaky.

Bucky leans back far enough that Steve can see the entirety of his handsome face, he looks more than just sincere as he tells Steve that he’s sorry and he doesn’t mind the words this time. He used to hate being told from people that they were sorry, what was a conditioned apology going to do for him?

Hearing it from Bucky makes him understand the way he was supposed to feel- not unreasonably angry but comforted. Having the notion that the other person is connecting with you on an entirely human level.

His face contorts into what’s probably a pretty piss-poor smile by the reflected emotions projected over Bucky’s tired face but he doesn’t have to explain himself. He just grabs another portion of his free hair and pulls it towards the section he’s already got, adding it in and weaving the section under another, going through with the movements without thinking but not robotically. He’s too present for it to be as bland of an action as the word ‘robotic’ or ‘mechanical’ would suggest, maybe more a practiced movement that’s done thoughtlessly but caring nevertheless. Not something that will get boring with repetition but something that you want to repeat again and again so you can hope to show the person you're doing it to that you care about them. Showing, not telling. Because as nice as words are, sometimes they aren’t enough.

Steve gets to the nape of his neck with the brain before Bucky talks again, when he does his voice is dreamy and slurred. He’s basically talking in his sleep as he tells Steve, his body lax and easy, “gonna have you do thisss, like, all th’ time. Can’t do anythin’ to get my hair out a’ the way anymore, not with jus’ one arm.”

“I’d be happy to, Buck.” Steve speaks without realizing what he’s saying. Feeling the bloom of warmth from his words and the realization of truth that has come after them- delayed by a few seconds like his brain was taking pity on him and forcing him to hear the happy, literal, purr that comes out of the brunette. Steve’s insides turn to warm goo. God. He’s just a big teddy bear for sure.