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“Hey, uh, Steve, can we talk?”
Something in Bucky’s eyes told him this wasn’t going to be fun.
Nonetheless, he half-forced a smile and said, “Sure, Buck, sit down,” gesturing to one of the comfortable modern sofas artfully arranged around the viewing deck of T’challa’s hideaway. Bucky instead crossed over to the window, leaning forward to grip the railing there, staring out across the impressive scenery. Steve looked at him for a moment, then silently crossed the room to stand next to him.
“What’s up?” He asked quietly, concerned. Bucky carried on staring forward.
“I want to go under again, Steve,” Bucky replied, just as subdued, but with an undercurrent of iron will. “I want them to ice me.”
Steve went very still. Bucky, unable to bear it, turned away from the endless sky outside to look at Steve’s face, searching for something, anything.
Steve took a long, measured breath in, and asked, as evenly as he could, “Why?”
“Until they find a way to get this stuff out of my head, I’m a liability. I’m not gonna sit around and let myself be used again.” Bucky’s eyes are hard, and Steve knows well that’s how he looks when he’s not going to budge. Still, he had to try.
“You’re safe here - only a handful of people even know about this place, let alone that we’re here.” Steve tries to sound reasonable, reassuring, and like he’s not about to throw up.
“You could’ve said that about where they had me locked up before, and look what happened there,” Bucky countered, mouth set in a hard line, words rehearsed. “I tried to crash a fucking helicopter into you, Steve. I doubt even you could’ve walked that off.” Steve winces slightly, wishes he could counter it, but he knows Bucky’s got a point.
“Fine, I’ll give you that one. But even if it does happen again - which it won’t - we can handle it. I’ve chased you down who knows how many times now, and I’ll do it again, as many times as necessary. I’m not letting you go.”
Steve reaches out and firmly grips Bucky’s shoulder, on the good side, partially to underline his words, and partially to reassure himself that Bucky’s here, he’s real, he’s solid, even if he wants to leave again so soon.
“Yeah, and whenever we fight, it’s always close,” Bucky argues back. He doesn’t shrug off Steve’s hand, but he’s tense. Steve reluctantly withdraws, fidgets a little, arms by his sides. Bucky presses harder, “Even if you can handle it, what about the researchers here, everyone else who’s not a goddamned superhero? Every time, people get hurt. I don’t want to be responsible for that.”
“It’s not your fault-” starts Steve, but Bucky shuts him down.
“I’m still the one doing it, and I’m still the one remembering it at the end of the day. Of course it’s my fucking fault.” He snarls, anger and self loathing boiling just below the surface, and it’s all Steve can do not to flinch. There’s years and years of torture and abuse there, things he can’t touch yet, so recently reunited as they are, but he’ll try. God, will he try.
“It’s not you. It’s whatever Hydra made you,” He ventures.
“Some fucking difference.” Bucky spits back, and Steve knows the anger’s not for him, but it smarts all the same. He wants nothing more than to pull Bucky close, try to make this all go away, but not now - this isn’t the time for that.
Steve looks away, huffs out a frustrated sigh. “Alright, well. What makes you think going under is going to be best for your recovery?”
Bucky stares at him. “I just said, I’m a danger-”
“No,” Steve interrupts, meeting his eyes again, “I’m asking what’s best for your recovery, not for your safety. Recovery’s a process that takes time and trial and error. You can’t get better while you’re asleep.”
“Sure, if anyone knew how to fix me - which they don’t!” Bucky gestures fiercely with his remaining arm, nearly smacking the railing. Steve’d laugh if there were anything funny about this. “It’d be better for everyone if I just went back to sleep while they figure this out.”
“There’s not gonna be some magic cure for this, Buck,” Steve replies, biting back a response to something else in Bucky’s statement, “They’re going to need to try a bunch of things, and they’re going to need you awake.”
“Have you asked them?”
There’s a pause, and Steve looks away. “...No.”
He hasn’t, because he was afraid they’d say that Bucky needed to be put under for his own good, just like Bucky himself is saying right now.
“Heh, well, I did. And…” Steve looks back at him, something like hope in his eyes, “...To be fair, they said either approach would work. But they agreed I’m a risk until this is sorted, and that they don’t know how yet. I could sit around and wait, awake, potentially able to flip at a few words’ notice, or I could go under until they have a plan, and then it’d take at least a solid ten minutes for me to wake up.”
“Or someone like Zemo could just shoot you where you lie,” Steve adds darkly. Bucky pales a little, but he doesn’t back down.
“You’d never let that happen.” Bucky sounds a little shaken, his argument weakened.
“Just like I’d never let someone get close enough to say those words again. And if you’re awake, you at least have a chance of fighting them off.” Steve’s frowning, concerned, but his face softens. “C’mon, Buck, we can do this. Let us help you. Stay with us.” (“Don’t run away again,” he adds in his head, silently.)
Bucky looks at the floor. He knows his position isn’t wrong, but he also knows Steve won’t give up on this. “You know, it gets harder every time,” he says, quietly. Steve makes a small noise of surprise, and Bucky continues.
“Coming back to myself after I’ve… Gone, that’s getting easier, sure, but… Living with myself, knowing what I’ve done, knowing how easy it would be for me to do it again, it’s unbearable. It was easier when I was that and not me all the time, and I didn’t know who I was fighting, and…” His voice breaks, and he hates himself for being so weak, and he chokes out, “God, Steve, what if I actually hurt you one of these days, what if I kill you, Steve-”
He’s cut off as Steve wraps him in a strong embrace, and Bucky clings to his back, trying so hard to keep it together, not to break down and sob into Steve’s chest, but he can’t hold back - it’s been so long, and it’s been so hard, and now they’re together, and Bucky knows the closer they get the easier it’d be to kill him, and, God, he can’t take that, he can’t. So he buries his head in his shirt while Steve holds him tight and makes comforting noises, saying calming nonsense.
Bucky thinks back to a hundred years ago when Steve’d come to him, torn up and crying because he was too weak, too sick, he couldn’t do anything, he couldn’t help, and Bucky would hold him while he shook and rub his back and say it was OK, it was alright, someday. The irony almost makes Bucky laugh, having Steve do this for him now. He waits until he can breathe again, takes a few seconds to make sure, and reluctantly pulls away. Steve looks at him, worry writ large all over his face.
“Thanks, Steve, I…” Bucky can’t really think of anything better to say. “Thank you.”
“Any time, Buck, any time,” Steve says softly, and Bucky knows he absolutely means it. Nonetheless, he can’t help but brace himself a little for whatever Steve says next (because Steve won’t let things lie any longer than needed.)
“I just wish we could help you more, and that you could stay with us,” and Steve sounds so sad and resigned that Bucky hates himself that little bit more, “But I can’t force you, and I won’t force you. It’s your choice.” For a brief second, Bucky hates that Steve’s letting him do this, letting him go, that it’s so easy, but he knows that this is Steve, and Steve is so good and so selfless that he’ll let Bucky do whatever he thinks is best. Bucky’s stubborn, so Bucky’ll sleep.
“But,” adds Steve, “I can’t agree that it’d be better for everyone.” He smiles a little wistfully, and Bucky knows exactly what he means - “It wouldn’t be better for me.”
Bucky fights off another rising urge to cry, knows he’s taking the easy way out, knows how much Steve has done for him only for him to turn around and say he wants to sleep it off. He knows, but the thought of hurting or, God forbid, killing Steve is more than enough. He couldn’t live with doing that. He can live with doing this. Besides…
“Hey, c’mon, you’ll have company,” Bucky shoots back, willing himself to sound lighthearted about it all. “Maybe you can go find - Sharon, was it? - and -”
He was about to make some smartass comment backed up with a mischievous smirk, but he’s stopped by Steve chuckling like something is incredibly funny.
“God, Bucky, whatever gave you that idea?” Steve’s grinning, a good deal of mischief in his own smile.
“I- But- You kissed her! I saw!” Bucky’s flustered, indignant. Steve’s laughing harder.
“Oh, Bucky, Bucky, Bucky…” He grins a little wider and puts an arm round Bucky’s shoulders, leaning round to look at Bucky’s face, “That was ‘thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry’. It was never going to happen, and we both knew it. Besides, we’re in hiding right now, and that’d be a very bad idea.”
“But… You kissed her!” Bucky repeats, throwing his arm up in disbelief. “Are you telling me you wouldn’t-?” He doesn’t finish the sentence, not really knowing how. Steve gets what he means, as always.
“In another time, sure, maybe, but this isn’t another time,” Steve responds. He pauses for a minute, then adds, thoughtfully, “Besides, in another time, there’d have been Peggy, and there’d have been you.”
It’s Bucky’s turn to go very still, Steve’s arm still round his shoulders, and it takes him a couple of seconds to remember how to breathe. There it was - the thing they very much didn’t talk about, and for good reason. Circumstances weren’t kind, and it was easier left alone.
He lets out a low sigh, and agrees, “...In another time.”
They stand there for a minute, as they were, the air thrumming with things unsaid.
Bucky’s the first to break the silence.
“Wake me up in a month.” Steve looks at him, questioning. “I’ll go under, the docs’ll have a think, and you’ll wake me up in a month and we’ll think again.”
“...You know you won’t exactly be conscious enough to mull it over while you’re under, right?” Steve says, a little confused by his reasoning, but happy enough to take it.
“Yeah, I know,” replies Bucky, “But you will. Besides - world’s turbulent. Who knows what might happen.”
Steve looks at him anew. “Yeah,” he says, “Who knows?”
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When Bucky goes under the next day, Steve watches the fog swirl around Bucky as he lies upright in the chamber, and he tries not to feel like he’s losing him all over again.
A month, they’d said. A month.