Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s quiet.

Bucky likes to wake up early in the morning during that time it’s so grey that you can’t tell if it’s overcast or predawn. He likes the washed out aesthetic because he feels like it matches his mood. Solemn. Grey.

Depressed.

He wakes up before the sun, as he does every day, and hops from barefoot to barefoot on the painfully cold kitchen tile while waiting for his tea water to boil. The chill aches up through his ankles and into his shins. He wishes he had slippers. Slippers would be nice. Big and fluffy warm ones. But really, he’d settle for thick winter socks. His hair is thick and heavy around his face and ears and he breathes open mouthed behind it, little wafts warming up his face and nose. They did a hack job of trimming it in the hospital before he came back stateside, and he hasn’t gotten it cut since.

Bucky before he was deployed had short charming hair. Bucky while he was deployed had military regulation hair. Post-deployment Bucky deserves to have long layabout hair.

So it’s grown out to the point that it sweeps over his nose whenever he turns his head but isn’t long enough to tuck behind his ears yet. It could stand to be longer. Bucky thinks he might enjoy it if his hair was long enough to coax into a ponytail at the base of his neck. He might even enjoy a higher ponytail--although he draws the line at a man bun.

He keeps loose leaf tea in mismatched mason jars he bought at Salvation Army, a higgledy piggledy row standing like a row of sentinels on the back of his stove. He made the mistake of not labeling the first two jars he filled, but continues to not do so for the pleasure of it. He likes to unscrew the jars and smell each one, their diverse and mixed scents tickling his sinuses awake in his chilly grey-scale apartment as his aching feet stick to the cold floor. His therapist tells him that he’s very much a kinetic and tactile learner and likes to suggest different things for him to do to stave off the depression. So far his favorite is using scents to dislodge memories.

Today he chooses the jar that smells like spices he once found in an Afghani market. It smells like cinnamon and paprika. When he closes his eyes he can smell the rest of the marketplace and hear the shouts of the vendors ringing in his ears, the slap of hot dusty air on his face. When he opens his eyes, all he can see is the thin stream of steam from his dented kettle, the chipped coffee mug next to the crusty burner.

He scents the smoke from said encrusted burner seconds before his temperamental smoke detector goes off. The sound of it is startling, enough that he reels backwards, his real arm swinging defensively in front of him.The outside of his hand and his pinky glance off the hot tea kettle, knocking it off the burner and to the floor. He’s barking a rough curse out and stumbling backwards in pain when it hits the tiles and splatters his bare feet and legs with scalding water. In his haste he throws himself as far back as he can and lands roughly on the wood floor of the living area of his apartment. The fall rattles through his bones but he can’t hear anything over the ringing in his ears and the pained huff of air through his nose. He lies on the floor, winded for a moment, before he realizes that his ears aren’t ringing at all. Instead, there’s the host taste of blood in his mouth where he’s bit his tongue and a high pitched whine locked behind his teeth.

Shortly after this realization, a downstairs neighbor begins banging on the ceiling and yelling at him to shut up. It takes Bucky several minutes to lever himself off the floor, wounded hand tucked firmly to his side. He shoves his red speckled feet into his unlaced boots to tramp across the host water in the kitchen and turns off the stove. He has to get the folded step stool out from between the stove and the refrigerator and kicks at it until it unfolds. It screeches as he drags it across the floor to the tune of the wailing smoke detector and the shouting neighbor but Bucky doesn’t fucking care. He just climbs the ladder and smashes at the smoke detector with his prosthesis until it shuts up, the force of it aching through his shoulder and making him grit his teeth even harder. He’s still whining, huffing sharply through the pain.

He leaves the kettle and water on the floor, steaming gently in a pool beneath the abandoned step stool and crushed smoke detector. He treads wetly across his living, ditching his boots near the futon, then makes a beeline for the closet in his bedroom. He drops to his knees and pushes the squealing folding door to the side just enough that he can wiggle in. He shuts it behind him and curls up on the rug he left in the closet for just such an occasion.

He’s not going out today and no one can fucking make him.

Chapter Text

Bucky spends the entire day in the closet, cradling his burnt hand to his chest and relishing the sting of his splattered feet against the rug. The day is a complete write off, so he eventually lets himself nod off and doesn’t wake up until nearly one in the morning. He drags himself out of the closet long enough to toss a towel or two at the puddle in the kitchen and take a piss in the bathroom before he goes to bed.

He rips the perfectly made bed apart, yanking the sheet and blankets from their military corners until he has a pile of blankets he can proper wrap himself up in. He’s got one knee on the bed to climb in before he realizes he’s missing something. Bucky goes back out to the futon and picks up the fuzzy pale yellow blanket his therapist Dr. Simmons had given him.

“You need some friendly textures in your life,” she had told him.

He had looked it up later and found that he recommend fuzzy blankets for both anxiety and concussions. Either way, he’s sure the blanket is a sign he’s fucked in the head. But he can’t bring himself to care when he’s got it wrapped around his shoulders and tickling at his chin. He’ll never admit it to Dr. Simmons, but it’s the best thing she’s suggested so far. It’s warm and cuddly and he’ll go to his grave before he tells anyone that he frequently spends all day wrapped in the stupid thing, pretending it’s a hug just for him.

He and the fuzzy yellow blanket burrow into his nest of blankets and pretty soon he goes back to sleep. He doesn’t wake up until 11 am. He’s groggy but there’s an angry banging on his front door, so he struggles out of his sweaty twist of blankets, noticing the time on his digital clock by the bed. It’s a little blurry from gunk in his eyes, but it definitely says he’s slept about ten hours after spending the whole of yesterday in his closet.

The floor is icy cold, which probably means he forgot to turn on his heat, or maybe it’s gone out. He shivers and pulls the fuzzy yellow blanket out with him, wrapping it around his shoulders and tugging a bit up into a rough hood to cover his probably horrific mess of bed head. He stumbles over his shoes, then goes to his door and clumsily disables all of his locks. He leave the chain up to yank the stiff door open and peer around the edge. There’s no one there.

But at an enraged spit of Chinese, he looks down at the building manager, all of four foot ten, who is shaking a positively giant stack of mail at him in both of her tiny hands He stares at her bemusedly for a moment as she rants, then slams the door. He can hear her still hissing like a kettle in a dialect he’s not quite sure he’s heard before--Cantonese maybe? But he’s getting the general idea he’s being yelled at about his mailbox. He fiddles with his chain to get his door open, but it won’t come loose. It rattles and slides and rattles and slides and she yells but he can’t get it unhooked so he just uses his prosthetic and...there. It’s open. He yanks the door back open and she gains another decibel in volume, which is now causing his other neighbors to take notice too.

He can hear the rattle of more security chains down the hall, which means he’s now going to have witness to a tiny old lady lecturing his six foot ass self in a fuzzy blanket the color of a fucking rubber ducky. What even.

“Mrs. Hua,” he tries interjecting. She responds by shaking the stack of mail so viciously in his face that he flinches back to save his nose. “Truly I’m sorry, Mrs. Hua, but you’re going too fast for me to..Okay I’m not sure my mother earned that remark. Wow, do the rest of the tenants know...do you kiss your husband with that dirty mouth? Oh come on--”

Her yelling reaches a fever pitch so he is briefly cut off by the increasing ringing in his ears and the feeling of vertigo. It feels and sounds a lot like when mortar comes crashing through the air and lands within 20 feet of you. His chest hurts. He wants to breathe through it, but he can feel himself start to make tiny little injured inhales through the pain, like there’s something sitting on his chest. His eyes are going out of focus like he’s been staring at a still object for too long, so he shakes his head and tries to focus on his landlady.

“I’m sorry,” he fumbles out in Mandarin, hoping to get the idea across. “I’m sorry.”

With an aggressive cessation of words, she drops the entire log of mail at his feet with a hearty smack. Bucky watches the various envelopes and magazines slickly slide across his doormat and widen like a colorful paper oil puddle.

“Just check mail. Once in blue moon!” She shakes her finger at him in emphasis and he stares at it bemusedly, huffing through the weight in his chest.

“I understand,” he says in Mandarin again.

She nods, satisfied, and then totters away.

He can hear more than one door being slammed shut down the hall as she passes. He wonders how many people saw him in a yellow fuzzy blanket being shouted down by an old Chinese woman half his size. His eyes water and his chest is tight. He can hear her mutter a particularly colorful epithet and calls out, “Pretty sure that’s not anatomically possible, Mrs. Hua!” She spits something incomprehensible in reply, so he shuts the door to grab his broom from the bathroom and then reopens his door and starts to sweep his mail inside. He can still hear her in the stairwell.

She’s ninety percent of the reason he got this apartment, to be honest. His veteran liaison thinks she’s crazy intimidating. He can’t really disagree. Bucky once saw her beating a mugger off a tourist in China Town. He’s pretty sure that guy will never look at a purse the same way ever again. Personally, he finds it reassuring that she camps in her office downstairs by the building entrance and yells at anyone who comes inside.

After sweeping the mail in, Bucky props the broom by the door and locks up. He ignores the crushed chain--he’ll fix that later.

He ends up spending a solid hour on the futon rocking and rubbing his cheek on his fuzzy blanket as he stares blankly out his window. His cheeks are wet, but Dr. Simmons tells him that in times of great anxiety, his eyes can leak without permission and not to worry about it. Thinking about anxiety makes his breath shorten and his chest hurt, so he finds it easy to just choose to ignore it. He’s pretty good at ignoring things. Bucky’s an ignoring champion.

His stomach rumbles. He ignores that too. There are entire countries starving, he tells himself.

Suck it up, Barnes.

Chapter Text

Every Monday and Thursday, Bucky leaves his neighborhood and ventures to his therapist’s office. This Thursday, it feels like a physical wrench to step over his piles of mail and exit his apartment. There’s a hollow pit in his stomach as he shakily locks up his door. He’s not sure if it’s nerves or hunger. It’s probably both. His socks are grimy in his shoes as he treads down the hallway to the stairs. He should do laundry. That’s a valid excuse to stay in. All his clothing is dirty and he can’t go out. Maybe he can just destroy all his clothes in the laundry and never leave his apartment again. He can use that video program other soldiers did to call home to their family. Sky something.

He’s damned certain Dr. Simmons would kill him, though.

Mrs. Hua starts yelling as soon as Bucky passes the mailboxes and tries to leave. He can hear her slamming things in her office as she curses at him, so he backtracks to the mailboxes installed on the outer wall of the office. There’s a note taped to his mail slot with an obscene amount of packing tape, words in angry sharpy calligraphy.

“I can’t read this, Mrs. Hua!”

He’s pretty sure she insults his downstairs brain in reply. Creative lady.

He jams his mail key in the hole and jiggles it until the door comes loose. He has to fix the fittings almost every times he opens it; The locking mechanism is constantly falling apart on him. He thinks there’s a missing washer in there causing the bolt to fall off. He should replace that. Sure enough, once he gets the door open, a couple metal pieces fall off and tinkle across the floor.

“I not pay for that,” his landlady shouts.

“You got it, Mrs. Hua,” he calls back, a little distracted by the sheer amount of mail jammed into the slot.

He tries to pull it out with his real hand, but it’s jammed in so tight that he doesn’t have the hand strength to pull any of it out. He tries to yank on some ads from the center of the morass, but he ends up ripping it instead. His prosthetic can’t get a grip on any of it, thanks to the glove he’s wearing. He tries to use its strength in order to overpower the slickness of the glove against the glossy envelopes, but it’s a no go. With a growl he gets the fingertips of his glove between his teeth and pulls it off.

His hand isn’t so great with the fine details, but it has a lot of oomf behind it, so he clamps his hand around as much of the mail as he can and rips it out of his mailbox. It takes effort, but the whole lot finally drags out of the tiny box and spills out of his hand onto the floor. The outer ads spill around the the pile in shredded accordions.

“Mail no,” Bucky complains irritably.

The building door bangs open and the fall wind whips through the lobby, shoving over the pile of mail and scattering the shreds of ads around his feet. He looks up, glove hanging dimly from his teeth and his prosthetic hand bare for the world to see and is uncomfortably aware of the child who comes skipping in the now wide open door. She turns towards his dumb ass just standing there like a freaking mannequin and it’s like everything slows down into the same stuttery slow motion you get in any explosion scene in an action movie. Her eyes spread open wide and her mouth opens in a gasp and she’s saying something, he knows she’s saying something but he just can’t hear it so backpedals into the mail slots with a bang, dropping his lonely winter glove into the pile of mail at his feet.

Bucky doesn’t know what she’s saying, what her parents might be saying, and he doesn’t care--he doesn’t. This is his not caring face and his not caring thoughts and fuck it just fuck everything. He needs to get out of here.

So he scrambles for the stairwell and somehow makes it up three flights to the floor just below his apartment where he knows there’s a supply closet that’s never locked. And sure enough, the door handle opens readily under his real hand and he tumbles inside. It should probably concern him how much time he spends in closets. Like, seriously, this is becoming a problem, but he’s a little too busy hyperventilating to care, to be honest. So instead, he focuses on pushing around boxes and stacking them up into a wall between him and the door, freeing up a tiny space between them and the back corner of the closet under a low hanging shelf. He shoves himself down there as far back into the darkness that he can and is thankful for the low red glow of the emergency light, the only illumination that the small space has.

Luckily he’s only wearing a hoody and sweatpants, so it’s easy for him to wiggle his hand into his pocket and get out his cell phone, his breathing uneven and still coming too quickly for his liking. He can see little spots in his vision, and he’s pretty sure they’re not from dust in the closet. He clumsily holds his phone in his metal hand while poking at it with his right. It takes him some time because his real hand is shaking and his vision is going in and out and he’s kind of actually concerned about the wheeze of his breath and also he keeps trying to hit the screen with his prosthesis and of course that doesn’t fucking work.

But eventually he coaxes the thing to start ringing and just gets it up to his ear when he hears, “Bucky, it’s Jemma.”

“Dr. Simmons,” he says. Or at least he’s pretty sure that’s what he says through the rough gasps of air escaping through his gritted teeth.

“I’ve told you time and again it’s Jemma, Bucky. Am I to assume by the sound of things that you’re on your way? Do you need me to talk you through making it the remainder of your trip? How far have you made it?”

“The floor below my apartment. Storage closet.”

“Okaaaay,” she says slowly. “I’m going to take it that something happened on your way out that caused you to retreat, rather than assuming that going down one flight caused you to freak out.”

Bucky’s grinding his teeth through the hyperventilation, now. “I’m not that pathetic,” he grits out. “I can make it more than one floor.”

“Hmmm,” she hums thoughtfully. “How far did you make it? For curiosity’s sake.”

“Lobby.”

Her voice probably shouldn’t be that reassuring, since she’s not doing or saying anything in particular. But he’s breathing in and out a little more evenly now that he has her on the phone.

“Is it too soon to ask what caused you to stop there? If it is, we can talk about something else. You know what, let’s talk about something else. Have you been using any of the coping methods I talked you about? Have you found any favorites?”

“I don’t like the feather,” Bucky says.

That’s a bit of an understatement. When Dr. Simmons found out how tactile he was, how much he liked to touch and be touched by things, she brought him a box of things to take home and basically….fidget with. He gets the general idea that some of them are things for kids, but what works works. He won’t begrudge that. What didn’t work, however, was that stupid feather. She told him that he might find it soothing to rub the feather under his chin, or on the sensitive underside of his arm. And like, he was skeptical and all that. But he promised Sam at the VA that he’d give therapy a real shot so he sat like a schmuck on his futon in the living room and tried each and every thing in the box the way his therapist told him to try them. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to try them all at once. But fuck if he cares.

“It’s very soft, didn’t you like it on your skin? I have a lot of clients that actually really enjoy it.”

“I don’t like the feather,” Bucky repeats, his breathing evening out a little bit. “I set it on fire.”

There’s a long moment of silence, then Dr. Simmons says, “Ok. You didn’t like the feather. Good to know. Are you feeling any better?”

For a given amount of better, Bucky supposes. He’s still sitting in a janitor’s closet on the third floor of his apartment building with a dim red glow illuminating the small dark space. He’s jammed so close to the wall that his shoulders are actually aching a bit, but he likes how enclosed it feels. “I guess,” he admits.

“All right,” she says. “Do you think you’re going to make it to therapy today? You still have time to get going.”

“Can we, I dunno. Talk about that mindfulness thing instead? I don’t think I’m moving yet.”

“Okay, Bucky,” she agrees. “We can talk about mindfulness over the phone. Is there anything about the concept that confuses you? Have you been trying it out on your phone?”

“I just guess I don’t get the point of like, deliberately thinking about what’s going on. I know I’m freaking out. You know I’m freaking out. Everyone can tell I’m freaking out. Why do I have to sit down and tell myself, hey, you’re freaking out. Like. I get it okay. I’m freaking out.”

“That’s...certainly a way of putting it. Let’s talk about that.”

So Bucky has an impromptu therapy session in a storage closet. That’s his life now.

Eventually he let Doctor Simmons talk him through getting his mail from the lobby. Except when he gets there his mail slot is still wide open and the mail is no longer on the floor. Neither are the pieces from the mail slot’s locking mechanism.

“You sound unconcerned your mail is missing, Bucky.”

“Well, there’s a note,” he tells her.

“Where?”

“In my mail slot.”

“What’s it say?”

“Well, it’s in Chinese and English, but I’m pretty sure it says something about my landlady making her grandkids take my mail to my door, and killing me if I ever ditch it again.”

“....is that normal?”

“It’s how I know she loves me,” Bucky replies.

Chapter Text

Bucky spends the rest of his not particularly good Thursday doing inside-the-apartment things. He’s determined that if he can’t get himself out into the out-of-doors, he’s going to be a productive adult and do things like clean. Or feed himself. Things that most adults don’t struggle with, he assumes. He thinks that’s stupid. It’s not like the army prepared him for things like, how not to set off the smoke detector. Instead it just gave him triggers so that when he does set off the smoke detector, he tries to kill everything in his apartment in retaliation.

He’s pretty sure he’s going to need to replace said smoke detector, actually.

His mail was on his doorstep when Dr. Simmons finally coaxed him up the stairs, and he kicked it inside ahead of him before locking the door up tight. His first order of business in adulting is to scoop all the mail already on his floor into the box with the rest. It looks like it’s mostly junk mail, but that doesn’t stop the sour rise of anxiety in his throat when he looks down at the box at his feet and thinks about sorting the lot of it.

“I’m nervous I’m going to find things in there I don’t want to open,” Bucky tells himself, out loud, experimentally. “Because I’m nervous about unwanted mail, I don’t want to sort the mail. And that’s ok. Ok, no, that’s not ok this is fucking bullshit.” He runs his real hand through his greasy hair and kicks the box with his shitkickers. He leave a dent and a black mark on the side. He doesn’t feel better. “I’ll get back to you,” he tells the box.

Next are the towels on the floor of his kitchen. His stomach aches a little. He thinks he might be hungry, but isn’t really sure. He’ll think on it. The towels are still kind of damp. It’s gross. And they smell like mildew. He gives them up as a lost cause and tosses both of them in the trash. While he’s at it, he pull the bag out of the bin and ties it up. When it splits and causes a cascade of trash onto his still mildly damp floor, he shoves the whole mess into a second bag and then dumps it by the front door. So now his floor is damp, mildewy, and there’s little flecks of stale cereal stuck to it.

Great.

It takes him twenty minutes to clean the floor and now his stomach is properly cramping on him, so he rescues the kettle from the floor, refills it, and puts it on the back burner. Then he takes it off the back burner, scrapes some detritus out from under the rings, and replaces it. He flicks the soot and crumbs into the trash bin before he realizes he didn’t put a new liner in.

“Trash, no,” he complains.

He puts in a new liner.

Ten minutes later he’s got a cup of ramen and tea that smells like the cookies his gramma made every Christmas on his coffee table. Fiefer Nuts. Feffer Nuts. Something like that. Bucky looks it up on his phone, cursing every time he tries to tap the screen with his metal hand. Pfeffernusse. Right. The spicy things. Anyways, the tea is good.

So he enjoys both hot beverages while huddled under his fuzzy yellow blanket on the futon next to his living room window and feels a lot like the dreary grey sky outside. “I feel you,” he tells the skyline. It’s so grey and monotone that he can barely see the cityline through the haze. It’s kind of hypnotizing. So he sips the soup and gulps the tea and doesn’t burn his tongue at all (ok maybe a little) while staring at the view. Maybe he can be productive today. Maybe if Bucky is productive today, it’ll slide into tomorrow. And if he’s productive tomorrow maybe it’ll become a pattern?

“Fuck that,” he tells himself.

Yeah, that doesn’t seem likely.

So he takes it a step at a time and goes for the busted smoke detector next. It’s a total loss, not counting the base it’s screwed into. So he takes down the smashed bits and eyeballs the base, wondering if he has a screw-driver in the apartment. He doesn’t, but his bowie knife works just as well. He’s working on like, screw number one million, turning the knife with his real hand and bracing the plastic base with his metal one (cuz face it that knife is gonna slip and it’s not gonna cut his prosthetic) when he hears his phone buzz several times in a row from the coffee table. The bowie knife skids off the screw and slices right through the plastic base, sending a chunk of it clattering to the floor. He stares at the small piece of it still screwed to the ceiling and rolls his eyes.

“What the fuck even,” he says to it.

When he checks his phone, he’s got far too many text messages from an unknown number.

He never texts anyone.

Dr. Simmons always calls. So does Sam down at the VA. And like, the crazy guy who works on his arm sends guys in suits to his front door to chauffeur him to appointments without notice. It drives Mrs. Hua crazy. Bucky’s pretty sure she threatened the last one with a kitchen knife. The poor guy looked like he was going to wet himself.

Curious, he opens the text conversation, planning on telling them that they’ve got the wrong number.

He waits a few minutes, staring at his phone a little blankly. Then saves the number and types a few replies.

Bucky shakes his head. He didn’t know that Clint’s assignment was up. He got the general idea that Clint was in it for life, to be honest. Career military or something. But maybe he’s assigned stateside. And in New York? What are the chances. But if he was in New York, he might have gone to the VA and met Sam. Clint is good at meeting people, Bucky knows. And charming them. He could have gotten his number without any problems.

So Bucky locks his phone and goes back to cleaning. He’s got the remnants of the smoke detector to finish fucking with.

After he’s done with that, he tosses the screws in an empty drawer in the kitchen. “I dub thee the junk drawer,” he advises it. Then he drops to his ass on the floor by the box of mail and tips it upside down. All of the ads go sliding everywhere and he hears the tinkle of metal bouncing on the wooden floor as well. He sighs. So that’s where the locking mechanism from his mail slot went. He gets back up and gets the trash can, then sits back down and systematically throws away every ad, coupon, and flyer he can find. Then he throws away all of the magazines that don’t look interesting. Only two make the cut. Looks like his neighbor’s subscription to Popular Science went to Bucky instead--it’s got the crazy guy who make his arm on there. Tommy or something. Bucky can never pay attention when he talks, he sounds like a squirrel on speed. The only other magazine that made is is one that’s got a picture of the paralympics on it. Bucky thinks maybe he can get behind that. Or at least pretend to. He’s got layers, or whatever.

He gets the box down to two magazines, a few bank statements, hospital bills, and a couple flyers from the VA. His trash can is now full again. He pushes it over to the door and the other bag with his foot. Maybe he can like, fit some of the bathroom trash in there or something. There’s no way he filled the entire bag with mail. And also he needs to double-bag it. These bags are shitty.

Bucky’s basically at his limits though, so he drops the few pieces of mail he saved on the coffee table and throws himself lengthwise onto the futon. It’s kind of short for him, so he shoves his toes under the armrest at the end and wriggles until he’s propped on the lumpy pillow at the other end. He’s earned a nap.

Clint texts him again that evening. It wakes him up from his nap on the couch. This time he only sends one message--it’s nothing but exclamation marks. Bucky closes the conversation without replying. Clint’s a good guy, but he can be a bit much for Bucky sometimes. He kind of crashed into his life and then crashed back out of it--and then didn’t have the decency not to continue the pattern. He isn’t positive, but he thinks that there were actually a few ops Bucky was on that he was working against Clint. Not that the fucker would ever admit it. Whenever someone asked him which of the alphabet soups he worked for, or why his uniforms always changed, he’d just wink and then ask if they wanted some of his napalm steak.

Like, Bucky likes a good steak, but he’d rather not have one with a side of hallucinations.

Even though it’s after dark, Bucky does some more chores, throwing in some exercises for his arm while he’s at it. His physical therapist would cry if they knew how little work he was putting into the stupid thing. But like, it’s a completely automated metal arm. It’s freaky how well the thing works. Bucky doesn’t like to look at it. As cool as fully articulated fingers are, he can’t help but look at it most days and think--but it’s not mine . And his shoulder always hurts, like all the fucking time, and he knows that the exercises are supposed to help with that. But sometimes he just, lying there, and his hand will start to ache so he’ll flex it to make it go away and realize that there’s nothing there to ache. It’s gone. It’s all fucking gone and it’s never fucking coming back and a stupid freaking cool metal arm isn’t going to make up for it and--huh.

Well Bucky didn’t much like that mug anyways.