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Steve is barely conscious, only opening his eyes to reach out for Bucky in the dark. Sleep is pulling him back under, making him melt into the mattress, when his hand hits cold sheets. Instinctively, he groans, moving his hand around to find the warmth he’s seeking. When he doesn’t find anything, he opens his eyes again. Squinting to see through the dark, he realizes the bed beside him is empty.
The lamp on his bedside table is too bright when he turns it on, blinding him for a moment before he can look around the room. Bucky isn’t there. Not in bed or on the chair in the corner, not standing in front of the window, not sitting on the floor. Nowhere he usually goes when he has a bad night. He likes to keep close to Steve even when he needs space to feel.
Tonight, he’s nowhere to be seen.
Steve makes his way out of bed, tugging on a pair of pajamas bottoms in his hurry to the door. His gut tells him to get to Bucky fast, it makes his heart race and his palms sweat. The hall is dark, and he stubs his toe on a bookshelf. Without flinching, he hopes on one foot while grasping his painful toe in his hand, cursing to himself as the pain blossoms. It always takes a couple seconds before the pain hits.
Then he sees Bucky and forgets all about his own pain. Bucky is curled up on a kitchen chair that he’s pulled out to sit in front of the window. They have a beautiful view of the city, littered in small lights like stars at night. Steve has sat there himself on countless nights trying to transfer the view onto paper, but never getting it quite right.
Walking into the living room, Steve feels like he’s sneaking up on a wounded animal. Steve doesn’t need Friday to tell him Bucky is in distress. The way he had his knees are pulled up to his chest, so tight it must be painful, and the trembling that seems to come from his bones, speaks volumes all on their own.
Bucky doesn’t react when Steve pulls out a kitchen chair and positions it beside Bucky. He moves slowly, unsure of what headspace Bucky is in, where he might be in his thoughts.
“Bucky?” Steve’s voice is reluctant, worried. Bucky doesn’t tear his eyes away from the lights. His eyes glisten with unshed tears, they tremble right on the edge, almost falling, but somehow being held back.
“Hey, are you okay?” Steve instinctively reaches out for Bucky’s shoulder when Bucky flinches away with a gasp. No touching, the message is loud and clear. Bucky’s chair almost tips over with the force of his movement, but Steve doesn’t dare reach out to him.
Slowly, Bucky returns to his position on the chair. He looks like he rests his chin on his knees, but he’s so tensed up his chin hovers just above his knees. There’s a painful twitch in Bucky’s neck that tells Steve he’s been sitting here for a while.
“I can see you’re hurting.” It slips out, meant as more of an observation than a statement. The hurt radiates off of Bucky in waves, threatening to pull Steve down with him. The only response he gets is another twitch in Bucky’s neck.
Steve wrecks his mind for something to say. A way to let Bucky know how much he cares.
“I remember the night before you left for the army. You were so scared, but you tried to hide it. Of course, I could tell, but you wouldn’t admit it.
“Instead, you sat me down and made me talk. Only when I told you how terrified I was of losing you did you break down. I held you, let you feel what you needed to feel. You stayed in my arms long after you fell asleep, and even though I was exhausted, I didn’t go to sleep ‘cause I didn’t know if I would see you again.
“That’s how much I care about you, Buck. Even on that night, when the darkest fears and thoughts came out of your mouth, I didn’t judge a word you said.” Steve hopes he said the right thing. He can never be sure how Bucky will interpret what he says. Especially when he feels depressed, he twists and turns Steve’s words to fit his own self-loathing.
The wheels are slowly turning in Bucky’s head. Steve can tell by the way he moves his eyes back and forth between two points in front of him. He always does that when he’s deep in thought.
“When-” Bucky’s voice is barely audible. “When can I give up?”
“Give up on what?” Steve knows what Bucky is saying, but he needs him to say the words.
“How much pain do I have to go through before giving up is okay?” Bucky speaks slowly, every word is heavy with emotion.
Steve feels like his chest is caving in. He knew Bucky was struggling, but not that it was this bad. “Is that what you want?”
The tears in Bucky’s eyes spill over. He shakes his head, but his body language is saying ‘yes’. Steve is no stranger to the temptation of nothing. At some point pain can get so bad that anything would be better that continuing to feel that way. But it passes, it always passes. Just like any other emotion, pain isn’t permanent.
“To me,” Steve pauses, collecting his thoughts. He needs to word this right. “You don’t seem at peace with that decision.”
Bucky huffs wetly but doesn’t make a move to wipe at his eyes or the snot running down his lip. It would be gross if this wasn’t Bucky, the person Steve cares for and loves most, the one he couldn’t live without.
“If you were, you wouldn’t be so upset, and hurt so bad. This pain you’re feeling, this is about how overwhelming it is that you have to fight and work for what you want, that you have to live through this pain to get somewhere it seems impossible to get.” He has no idea if what he’s saying is making a difference, or if it’s helping Bucky at all. But he tries, and all he can think to say is what he himself needed to hear, but he didn’t have anyone to tell him.
“Someone who’s at peace with giving up have decided that they don’t want that future anymore. They have nothing to stay for because they no longer hope for what they once wanted.
“You have hope, you want a future, or you wouldn’t be so worried about how to get there.” Steve hopes he’s right, or he’s just gone on a tangent that does the opposite of help Bucky.
“You don’t get it.” Bucky says with a sad chuckle. It sounds like Bucky is disappointed, like he expected Steve to not understand. It’s exactly what Steve wanted to avoid. He needs to come up with some way to explain what he means so Bucky will understand. No matter how broken Bucky feels, Steve still sees a spark of hope in him, and as long as there’s a spark, there’s going to be a flame.
“I’m not in your head.” Steve starts, making it clear that he tries with the limited explanations Bucky is giving him. “But I’ve met many people, and the only one’s I’m truly scared for are the once who find peace with the pain, the people who suddenly go from hopeless to joyful because they’ve decided, and they know their pain will end soon. Those are the people I’m worried about when my phone rings in the middle of the night.”
Bucky still hasn’t met Steve’s eye. He just looks out at the darkness, like he’s waiting for it to pull his soul out of his body, to drain all that’s good away from him. The darkness feels even darker now that Steve knows the contents of Bucky’s mind.
The fight going on inside is visible to Steve. The flicker of his eyes, and slight frown are small changes, but Steve notices. He notices when Bucky’s lip twitches as if he’s going to speak, but changes his mind, and he notices when Bucky’s shoulders sag just a little under the weight of his thoughts.
“It-” Bucky finally utters after a long silence. His voice cracks around the word, like what he’s about to say is too heavy for his vocal cords. “It hurts.”
Bucky’s head drops, finally tearing his eyes away from the view, followed by a sharp intake of breath. His shoulders start shaking, and Steve has to bite his lip to hold back his own tears. Bucky tilts in Steve’s direction and Steve takes it as an invitation to envelop him in his arms.
He holds Bucky tightly, rocking him back and forth as he chokes on shaky breaths that sound painful. By the way Bucky is clutching his chest, it probably does. Steve knows the feeling. Like his heart is swelling with pain, being pierced by broken ribs.
Emotional growing pains, Nat once said.
“I know you’ll be okay.” Steve says softly where he’s got his face pressed into Bucky’s hair. “You’ll be happy again, and your life will be beautiful.” It’s a promise, a guarantee that they will get there.
“How we get from here to there is something we have to figure out along the way. Just because we can’t imagine how it will happen doesn’t mean it won’t.” It’s pure instinct to say we rather than you. Bucky will never be alone; he will never have to go through anything without Steve’s support.
“You really think so?” In the way Bucky drags out his words, it’s clear he doesn’t believe Steve. That’s okay. Steve can have enough hope for the both of them.
“I know so.” He tries to put all his confidence into the words to show Bucky that there’s no doubt in his mind. “I know this is hard. This is so, so hard. No pain is so great that it can’t heal.”
Bucky sniffles loudly and makes a move to wipe his eyes. It’s clumsy with Steve’s arms around him, so he leans back, and Steve lets go of him.
“I’m like a balloon of pain, and everyone think they’re needles and they’re too scared to come too close to me because I might pop and smear my pain all over them and I don’t want to feel like this anymore.” It pours out of Bucky in one breath, more than he’s said all night.
Steve is taken aback by it. They’ve all been careful around Bucky, unsure of his triggers and in some cases maybe, scared of his reactions to certain things. But it was all with good intentions and rooted in love. “Is that really how you feel?”
“How am I supposed to feel better when everyone walks on eggshells around me?” There’s anger in his words. No matter their intention, if that’s how Bucky feels, that’s valid. Steve would’ve been angry too.
“I’m sorry, Bucky. We are all trying our best to help you.” He reaches out for Bucky, needing to comfort them both. Taking Bucky’s hands in his own, he squeezes in a hopefully comforting way to Bucky.
“It helps so much when no one touches me or sits next to me, no one asks how I’m doing or what I want. What have I got to fight for when no one fights for me? I’m just the scary Winter Soldier, and Bucky Barnes is gone.” Bucky’s vice cracks again, and in that moment, there’s nothing Steve wouldn’t do to help him. He would take Bucky’s pain in a heartbeat. It doesn’t matter that he would be in pain because Bucky would feel better.
“I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but if anyone actually believes that we are going to prove them wrong. You are proving them wrong, every day. Because you are Bucky, and no one can take that away from you.” The ‘not again’ goes unsaid. “I love you, so much, Bucky, and if we’ve been using the wrong tools to help you, we’ll have to change that.”
“I just want to be treated like everyone else, is that too much to ask?” Bucky looks so sad and worn down in that moment. He shouldn’t have to ask for this.
“No.” Steve sighs. “No, it’s not.” If Steve wasn’t so wrapped up in helping Bucky, he would be beating himself up at how he never stopped to ask Bucky what he needed. He took Bucky in the second he showed up on his doorstep, and he tried to fix. He’s a fixer, it’s what he does. That doesn’t mean he does the right things.
He should’ve stepped back and asked Bucky what he wanted, what he needed, how to help him. And only when Bucky asked him for help or was lost with no clue how to proceed could Steve interject with what he thought would help. He should never have takes Bucky’s freedom from him or made him feel less than human.
That’s the opposite of what he wanted.
Pushing down the thoughts, he tells himself there’s nothing he can do about the past now. He can only change and proceed differently from now on.
“Will you come back to bed now? So I can treat you like my boyfriend and show you how much I love and care about you.”
A small smile tugs at Bucky’s lips, and Steve realizes it’s been way too long since the last time he saw it. It’s the most beautiful thing that lights up Steve’s insides. The whole world is brighter when Bucky smiles.
They will find a way to bring that smile back.