[Bucky Barnes; R] Puddle Of Grace: Chapter 7 Character/Series: Bucky Barnes; Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: R Notes: Bucky has developed an obsession with those cookies. Title: Puddle Of Grace- Chapter 7: Today I Found My Face Author:yuuo Word Count: 6171 Summary:Bucky hadn't even argued when he was told he didn't get to sit in the pilot or copilot's seats.
today i found my face floating in a puddle of grace a porcelain doll with cracks to mend oh, mama, i found a friend -Amy Jo Johnson
Bucky hadn't even argued when he was told he didn't get to sit in the pilot or copilot's seats. He was banished to the back before he could even pretend to give a protest. He didn't mind. It put Tony's back to him, and Steve would have to get out of his seat just to see him.
It wasn't a warm corner, and not terribly dark, but it was darker than the seats up front were. Close enough for now.
He barely registered Steve and Tony talking up front, though he caught enough to know that they were talking about him. The stop in Sweden was mentioned as something that might be a difficulty for Bucky. They weren't wrong, but he'd survive. He'd survived worse than having to pretend he was okay around strangers. If it came to it, he'd stop being Bucky again.
Not that hiding behind the Winter Soldier- Hydra's or otherwise -had really helped him in that base, but unless there was a god and he hated Bucky with a passion, there wouldn't be anything particularly menacing to Bucky's state of mind in Sweden.
"I didn't see anything either," Steve said. "I was focused on Bucky."
Bucky lifted his head, finally tuning into the conversation.
"So was I. Think he'll talk to you?"
Steve made a frustrated noise. "Not likely. He never talks to me. Not really." He sounded somewhere between hurt and angry.
Bucky shrank back into his corner more. He had explained that. How was he supposed to translate the fear and pain into words that made any sense at all? That tone was unnecessary and fuck you, Rogers.
"Let me give it a try."
Oh great. Fuck you too, Stark.
Bucky wanted to be left alone, but obviously, his friends had other plans for him. Despite his best efforts to put up a mental barrier between him and them, there was Tony, hopping out of his seat and then crouching down in front of him, completely uninvited and not caring about it. "You look cold."
Bucky gave him a blank stare, trying to process what he said, how it was relevant, and how did he know?
At Bucky's silence, Tony pointed at his flesh arm. "You're shivering." He stood up before Bucky could finish realizing that Tony was right, he was still trembling. Tony started searching the various hiding places the jet had for storing equipment. "There has to be an emergency kit somewhere. Something with blankets and little stuffed bears for kids you liberate from trafficking or something, right?"
"We've never had to rescue kids," Steve said in response. "But there are emergency packs in the front bins on the side behind me."
Tony began pulling out an emergency kit. "You know, with your jobs, you might consider having to plan to transport children or otherwise young and scared humans. Get more than- ah, a blanket."
Bucky wished they'd both shut up and leave him alone, but he knew that was about as likely as pigs sprouting wings and flying. So he sat there, shaking, waiting for Tony to fuss at him in a Tony sort of way.
Tony's way of fussing was to drop the rolled up blanket on his ankles. "I figure you're a big boy, and probably too prideful for being tucked in, so there you go."
Bucky silently thanked him, glad that Tony decided not to unroll that blanket for him, and simultaneously shameless enough right that moment to grab the blanket, unroll it, and pull it up over his shoulders. It took him a moment to remember his manners and thanked Tony.
"You're welcome," Tony said, not sounding quite like his usual irritating self about it. He sat down across from Bucky, crossing his legs under him like he was getting ready for another long lecture like he'd given in his work room. "So this is the point where I try to play therapist, or at least decent friend with a listening ear which is sometimes better than a regular therapist."
Bucky closed his eyes, really wishing Tony would go away.
"You're not getting out of it."
"Trapping me in a corner is a bad way to approach an assassin whose head isn't stable," Bucky said, voice much quieter and with less warning behind it than he wanted.
Tony tilted his head, considering that, then scooted over to sit next to Bucky instead. "There, you can get up and walk away, any time. Better?"
Bucky shrugged one shoulder. Marginally, but he still wasn't comfortable. But he could tell Tony was at least trying, and he appreciated that, although he'd appreciate it more if Tony would go back up front and everyone leave him alone until he was ready to come out of the corner on his own. Or until they got to Sweden. Whichever happened first.
"So you were pretty spooked down there." Master of the obvious. "Mind if I ask what set it off? Cap and I didn't see anything but you."
Bucky pulled the blanket tighter over his shoulders. "I really don't wanna talk about it."
"You have to eventually," Tony said. "Otherwise whatever it was is going to haunt you the rest of your life. The dead weren't the only ghosts down there, were they?"
Bucky had trouble trying to translate his brain again, not sure if he even wanted to. Finally, he shook his head. Tony was right. It'd take being dead for someone to be a ghost. That lab was where James Barnes from Brooklyn had been killed, and the Winter Soldier born. They both haunted that place, a grave where a weapon was made. Bucky may have physically gotten out, but the Winter Soldier had gone with him. And he couldn't see any escape from him.
It seemed they were stuck together.
But he couldn't get his brain to come up with words to describe that. He just saw the cryo chamber and every single thing in that room and how it made everything in his brain scream in panic; he had to try to get away before he could be pulled back under the ice.
Just like in the lab only a day or so ago- how had more time not passed? -Tony continued to just keep talking, as if hoping that if he threw enough darts, one would hit a bullseye.
"So tell me, which one of you was it down there?"
There was an almost bullseye. He slowly looked over at Tony, wondering how Tony could possibly know the disassociation defense mechanism that sometimes protected his fragile mental health.
"I talk to Bruce a lot," Tony said. "I don't think it's too different. He spends all his time trying to keep the other guy from having any say in what he does, you get familiar with the split personality thing."
Bucky shook his head. "It's not the same. Bruce and the Hulk aren't the same person."
"But you and the Winter Soldier are." Another near bullseye. Or close enough to win that fifty points.
Bucky went back to silence.
"You can't shut everyone out forever," Tony warned though his tone was gentle like someone approaching a wounded animal that might bolt with the wrong word or move. "Something's going to give, just like down there, and you might not have Steve there to catch you."
Bucky started trying to disappear under his blanket, pulling it up over his chin. The idea that Steve wouldn't be there when he needed him was a terrifying one. It'd been bad enough when Steve worked at the VA, he couldn't handle going back to that loneliness.
"I'm hitting too close to home, aren't I?" Tony asked. "Think I can get you to talk?"
Bucky shook his head. "You're not my partner."
That finally shut Tony up for a moment, nodding his head very slightly as those words shot down his arguments. "All right, completely fair. Want me to take over flying so he can come back here for awhile?"
"No. Later."
"When you're alone."
Bucky didn't answer beyond a faint noise.
Tony patted his arm and stood up. "I'll go back to playing copilot then. We'll see how you feel when we hit Sweden, if you want to take over for me and let me rest a bit. I'm not quite as superhuman as you guys are, and I didn't pack enough Red Bulls for this long of a trip."
"I'll be fine."
"We'll see."
Tony got up, without talking, grace be, and took his seat in the copilot's seat again.
Bucky closed his eyes again, turning on the mental radio, looping songs in his head in an attempt to drown out the voices of Hydra and the fear of that room, and decades of torture. It wasn't working well, the music mashing up with the feelings and images and colors that scrambled around his brain like someone had injected something into him that turned his mind into mush.
He immediately stopped the music and just hoped for the best.
Sweden wasn't quite as hard as he thought, but it was far from fun. Everything inside still was shaky and he started to worry just how long that anxiety would linger. It'd been hours and he still felt like he wanted to hide in a corner and cry for awhile. So he- with a lot of reluctance -pulled the Soldier around his shoulders like a blanket, enough to keep him steady but not enough to disappear completely.
He said nothing except to respond to questions directed at him- "Do you want food while we're here?" "Negative." "Anything to drink?" "Negative." He could tell he was frustrating Steve, but Steve would just have to wait until they were back home before he could start the interrogation. If he knew how much effort it was taking to hide without completely losing sight of who his friends even were, he'd be giving him a damn medal of honor.
"So we have a decision to make here," Tony told them while they waited for the jet to be refueled.
Steve looked up from the french fry he seemed to be debating about putting in his mouth. Bucky wondered why a military compound in Sweden had American food to offer them while they waited, but he let that slide.
"We have two options," Tony said. He held up one finger. "One, you can drop me off in DC to catch a ride of my own back to California and you two will be home."
That sounded preferable.
"Or?" Steve raised an eyebrow.
"Or we can go back to my place, give you two a chance to recharge where you know you won't have to go back out until you're ready."
"We can relax at our own place just fine," Steve said, setting the fry back down.
"I figured," Tony said. "But you told me that you go through your entire kitchen's contents when you get home from a mission. This means you'll have to turn around and go right back into public the next day. And you've been gone awhile, all your fresh food has probably joined the choir eternal."
All of that hard won silence in Bucky's head started beating against the inside of his skull again. He wanted to go home. But Tony was right, they'd have to go out almost right away just for food, and Bucky really wanted to have a few days to just hide and be left relatively alone.
Steve looked at him; he was leaving the decision in Bucky's hands. Bastard.
The best decision he was going to give them was a shrug. "I'm just a sergeant."
There Steve, it's all yours.
For some reason, Steve didn't like that hot potato getting thrown back at him, if the frown he shot Bucky was any indication. "I guess we'll go back to Cali with you. I hope you call ahead to Pepper so she knows how much food to get before we get there."
"I would never dream of failing to warn my lady of something important," Tony said. "Our door's open, gentlemen, so unless you want to brood over how rotted that celery in your crisper's going to be, you'll have a chance to relax for awhile."
Bucky knew damn good and well that the entire invitation and its purpose was for his sake, and part of him wanted to strangle them both for the offer and acceptance. The other part of him was saying he didn't care, he just wanted a damn corner to hide in. Steve wouldn't let him stay there either way, but at least he wouldn't have to immediately go out into public to grocery shop before he was suitably recovered.
Why was this taking so long? What was wrong with his head? This should've passed by now.
Maybe he just needed sleep. It was just an adrenaline hangover, that was all. Just needed some sleep.
Sleep wasn't anything he was getting just yet, but his mind could run longer than Tony's, and the desire to get to a rest point was enough that he could focus on flying. So they turned back to their routine they'd had on the way to Kiev once they were off the ground, rotating shifts. They gave Tony shorter shifts up front- physically, he was older than them, and it turned out that he actually didn't have enough Red Bulls. They were gone by his first rotation. So Steve and Bucky took over and let Tony rest.
Flying away from the place where the Winter Soldier had been created was actually easier than flying towards it had been, and time seemed to fly right along with them. The more distance, the more he reminded himself that the place was blown to hell, the better he felt. His mind was still trying to dredge up the memory of that room, and his right hand would begin to shake slightly when it did, but a deep breath and staring at the control panels in front of him regrounded him. If nothing else, he had to tell himself that he had a mission. That mission was to get home, or at least to California.
Even the Soldier was able to quiet the sick feeling in his gut. There was something to do, something that was taking him away from that place.
One of these days, he'd figure out how to destroy Hydra's Soldier and just leave Bucky, but it probably wasn't going to be any day soon.
Upon reaching California, Tony showed just how tired he was by handing the keys to his car to Steve. "Put a scratch on her and ... and... I'll hurt you somehow. It will be gruesome and painful. Do yourself a favor and drive like a little old lady."
Steve took the keys. "Relax, I know how to drive. It's Bucky that mangles steering wheels."
Tony turned his tired look on Bucky. "You are never allowed to drive any of my cars."
"Steve exaggerates."
"Don't care. Get in the back."
Fine. Put the dangerous assassin with head problems behind you. Talk about trust.
Pepper held the door open once they got home without asking questions, allowing them to enter with the now-empty cooler and the case with the suit. "Leave them for now," she said, closing the door behind them. Both cooler and case were set down with no small amount of gratitude. By then, they were all exhausted on every level. "I see you found trouble," she said. "More than usual? You two are bloody."
Steve looked at himself, and mostly over his shoulder at the bit of the shield he could see, which still carried blood from the horrific damage it could do to soft and fleshy human bits when thrown hard enough. "I was expecting this. It happens."
Bucky refused to look at her at that point, lowering his head to stare down at his weapon hand. The glove had dried stiff from a faint spattering of blood from his knife fight with a patrol's worth of armed men. He was sure there was blood from that elsewhere.
"Don't worry, none of it's ours," Steve was saying as Bucky's attention returned to the others. "We'll clean up before we go messing up your furniture."
"My furniture isn't a concern. Your safety is. You're certain none of that's yours?"
"I'm sure, Pepper."
Bucky glanced up without lifting his head as Pepper turned her attention to Tony. "I'm assuming the suit's dirty."
"Not with blood," Tony said. "It's just a bit dusty. I'll hose her off after I plant myself in the bath for awhile. Thaw out a bit. It was cold over there."
A bath. Water too cold to not be painful. A hose to advance defrosting in vital areas. Cold turning to a burn. After the ice came the slow ascent up and of course there was always one more thing to go through before the next step in the cycle, after the freeze.
Bucky quickly backed out of the conversation and turned for the guest room without so much as a word.
"Bucky?"
Bucky ignored Steve, just barely keeping his pace steady and not breaking into a run.
He thought he'd been alright, finally out of that place, but Tony's words had sent him quickly removing himself from the conversation. He thought he'd left that cryo chamber and its horrors behind. He should've. That was the whole point. But parts were still there. He was still cold. He didn't want to walk backwards, to let those words sink in. So running away seemed the most polite thing to do.
It wasn't Tony's fault. He didn't know. None of them did. That one was all on Bucky.
But that chamber was fresh in his mind, and along with it, the shock of his heart starting again, the way his skin burned from the ice. The cold made him shiver hard enough to drop to the ground after closing the bedroom door, leaning against it and trying to take deep breaths. In and out.
Don't take me back there. Please.
"Shut up, James," he snapped at himself in a whisper. "It's just a goddamn shower. We have blood on us, we need to clean up."
Great. Now not only was he talking to himself, he was answering himself, too.
Without a clue as to whether he was Bucky or the Soldier or whoever else might've moved into his head, he made himself get up. Strip. Carefully fold dirty uniform on the floor of the closet to be cleaned later. Go into the bathroom. Close the door.
The tub was against the far wall, a shower head on a hose, something that would be normally inviting because long hair could get so greasy and showers meant his scalp got a good scrubbing. Now, he could only stare at the whole set up, unwilling and unable to do anything with either the shower or the tub.
Oh for fuck's sake. He was standing completely naked in a bathroom, shaking and terrified of stepping into a tub to take a shower. He'd never had a problem with a shower before, usually nowhere near conscious to be aware of the spray of those hoses to be affected by it since then. But there was the tub, making the whole thing into an echo of ugly memories; he hadn't had to face that particular demon yet. Not like this.
"Come on," he told himself. "If we don't shower, Steve might actually come in here and dump us headfirst into the tub."
That was a dreadful thought, and thank you, self, for coming up with it.
He turned on the tap to a temperature almost dangerously high, higher than the slow and careful defrosting he got coming out of cryo; any water that may gather around his feet and ankles would be too warm to trigger the memories and cause him to have a nervous breakdown in the shower of all places.
On the other hand, at least it'd be in the bathroom.
Get in. Get in, for the love of god.
Oh Jesus. Okay, maybe that water was a tiny bit too hot. It didn't take him long to clean up, but his skin was bright red when he turned off the water and got out. The lobster look wasn't that good on him, he decided once he was looking in the mirror to make sure he got all the blood off. Lobster skin was a small price to pay though, for not having to get back in and all but grab a pumice stone and take off skin.
He knew Steve well enough to not be surprised by his presence in the bedroom when Bucky emerged from the bathroom. "Water hot enough?" Steve asked in a dry tone, raising his eyebrows at him.
"A bit," Bucky said, trying to ignore the statement or the fact that his insides still felt like a slushie with some weird blue flavoring that never tasted like anything except horrible.
Steve graced him by not saying anything else, simply taking his turn at the shower while Bucky dressed. He wasn't going to sit in the bedroom and wait for him, Steve could find his own way around the place by now. Remembering to close the bedroom door behind him, he went to the living room.
Where nobody was.
He checked the kitchen.
Nope.
The basement?
Hm. No.
A complete search of the house, or at least the parts he was familiar with, proved that either Pepper and Tony had left them, or perhaps had both laid down for sleep. It was late, Tony was tired, and Pepper had probably gotten very little sleep while they were out.
Hell. He wasn't sure he wanted sleep, not with the nightmares still so close to the surface, but his options at this point was to sit down at the TV and hope that Steve wouldn't try to start a conversation outside the privacy of the guest room, or go back to the bedroom and hope that Steve would leave him alone.
Which he wouldn't.
Damnit, Steve.
Maybe he'd get lucky and Steve would be tired, too. While sleeping meant nightmares, it also meant a bit of distance from the room that caused those nightmares. As long as Steve was there.
Fuck his brain, it had him turned around about two hundred and seventeen degrees. He was going to lay down, even if he didn't sleep. He needed rest, everyone else seemed to be resting, it made no sense to wander the house, so back to the guest room.
Steve was still in the shower when Bucky entered. It qualified as a sound of not being alone, but Bucky still changed his mind and decided against crawling under the blankets, choosing to sit cross-legged on the bed. He grabbed his tablet, and with reluctance, grabbed the base layout again and started filling out the second basement.
He hoped that showing Steve what was there that had panicked him would be easier than trying to tell him. Trying to describe the terror of being trapped in that little unit, the few seconds before ice took over and left him floating somewhere between being dead and alive, felt impossible. Even just thinking that much on it put a heavy lump in his stomach, and he was very glad that the group had apparently decided to eat another time.
Actually, that reminded him. "Did I miss anything when I left to take my shower?" he asked as soon as Steve walked out of the bathroom.
"Yeah, a little," Steve said, grabbing his night wear from their bag. Once he'd finished dressing, he walked over and sat down on the bed next to Bucky. "Sleep for everyone. It's late enough, we might as well go to bed." He looked over Bucky's shoulder at the map. "Why are you looking at this?"
"Second basement's filled in." Bucky handed over the tablet.
Steve took the tablet, looking more at Bucky than the image. He looked like he wanted to say something about it, but Bucky kept a flat look on his face, hoping that Steve would catch that he wasn't going to explain and Steve could figure it out himself. Steve picked up on the hint and looked at the map. "This is the room at the end of the halls?" he asked, pointing to the far end of the map.
"Yeah."
Come on, Steve, you're a smart boy, don't fail now.
Steve went back to studying it, manipulating the image to zoom in on the lowest level, looking at the row of labs that Bucky had gone down, the halls he hadn't gone down still blank. He turned the image to study that far room. "They had a chair." Steve looked at him. "Was that it?"
"No."
Steve's eyebrows raised, but he went back to the image. "What's with the pipes?" He paused, then looked over at Bucky, the lightbulb over his head, though he didn't seem to like the realization. "The cryo chamber."
"Judecca." It was the best word his brain could latch onto, the first one to come close to describing what it was like, the cold, the silence.
"Dante's Inferno," Steve said. "I didn't think you knew that book."
"I went to college, Steve. It's classic literature. I read more than chemistry text books there."
Steve ignored the attempt at flippancy. "That's what scared you. More than the chair." He was making a statement, but it was asking for confirmation.
Speak, Bucky. Make like a good dog and fucking speak. You said you'd try. His finger tapped on his knee in agitation, trying to find words that made sense. "Do you remember being under the ice? Up north?"
Steve shook his head. "No, not really. I hit my head in the crash. I managed to get out of the pilot's seat, grab my shield, but that was it. I passed out. Next thing I knew, I was listening to a broadcast of a baseball game that'd already happened with a fake SSR agent showing up to try to bullshit me."
"That was it?"
"It wasn't that simple for you, was it?"
Observant. Of course, now that left Bucky having to come up with a response. He was the one that took the conversation that way, his brain sure as hell better think of something good.
"Never was." Say more. Say something. Anything. Don't you dare get sick. You can use words. "I don't want to go back there. Don't make me go back." Okay, not the right words, but they were words. Give yourself a cookie later.
Still fully committed to making those cookies.
The bed shifted as Steve moved, set aside the tablet, and pulled Bucky into a hug, as if trying to make a human wall between Bucky and Hydra. "Nobody's going to put you back in that thing. Not without getting past me."
Human contact. Basic human contact that he'd been deprived of for decades. Nice panacea, he'd discovered, and right then, he was going to be selfish and take it and not let go. For at least a few minutes, Steve was going to have to find a crowbar to pry him off. "Not how I meant it."
"I know. I wasn't just talking about threats from others, either. The more you let it hide behind you, the longer they're going to be in your head. I know it's not easy to talk, but you're going to have to sometime. You're never going to get them out if you don't."
Bucky knew that, had been reminded of it enough the last few days, but every time he tried to drag up what was bothering him and put it into words, he just relived it and it- more than he'd care for -just threw him back into an episode, which made him useless. How was he supposed to talk when trying to put him right back there?
Try. Just once. Steve will forgive him if he can't do it, as long as he tries.
Before his brain could begin to think of anything to say, relevant or otherwise, Steve pulled back, keeping his hands on Bucky's shoulders. Bucky wanted to protest the lack of more comforting hug, but Steve was maintaining such intense eye contact that Bucky was forced to look away. "Talk to me. The cryo unit's still got you spooked. What'd they do when they brought you out that wasn't simple?"
Oh good, a prompt. That time as a peer specialist at the VA had taught Steve a useful skill or two. "Sensory shock." There, a clinical term. It was probably reported in that file, Bucky had refused to look too closely at it, but he was sure it was mentioned there. "Thrown in a tub, hosed down with cool water until body temperature had stabilized."
More clinical, sorta. He could still feel Steve's attention completely on him and it made him fidgety. His jaw clenched in rebellion to his brain's orders to elaborate.
Steve's hands left his shoulders to grab his hands that he hadn't realized had started to shake. "It's okay, Bucky. You're not back there. Tell me? Don't let them hold this over you. Keep talking."
Bucky stared down at their hands, making his brain spit out whatever words he could to explain. "Waking up hurt. Too loud. Too bright. Smelled too sterile. Pain responses from everything, even my left arm. Breathing hurt. They never cared how much it hurt, as long as the process was complete and I could respond to orders. A weapon's only useful when it can work."
"Did they ever treat you like a person?"
Bucky wasn't even sure how to answer at first. Hydra had given him some level of conflicting treatment. He frowned, pulling words from the feelings that had been left behind by the controlled interactions. "Only enough to keep me pulling the trigger for them." He closed his eyes, taking an unsteady breath. "Please don't make me do this anymore." He wasn't sure he could make it through more without curling up on his side and trying not to sob for awhile.
Steve's grip on Bucky's hands tightened as they started shaking too hard for a light touch. "All right, Bucky. That's enough."
Bucky pulled his hands away and looked at Steve, feeling betrayed now that he felt the effects of what Steve had pushed and pushed and pushed him to do. "Why do you want me to do this? It fucking hurts." Surely Steve wouldn't make him keep doing this.
"I know," Steve said. "So does cleaning out an infected wound. The wound may scar, but it won't kill you from that infection spreading. This is the same thing."
Simple enough reasoning. Completely logical and also terrible for being so logical, because it meant that Steve was right and trying to talk about this shit was ultimately going to help.
That was such a fun thing to look forward to. Adding another dozen cookies to make to kill the extra stress.
"Are you going to be okay to go to bed, or do you wanna sit up awhile?" Steve asked, his tone saying Talk Time was ending. Thank god. Bucky might've had a stroke if he had to keep going.
"No," Bucky said, despite that not being a yes/no question. "It's too loud."
Steve held up a finger. "Just a second, got the cure for that." He scooted off the bed and walked to the door. "Wait here."
What the hell?
Okay, time to decide what kind and how many cookies he'd be making if he managed to survive long enough to get home. That made more sense than Steve declaring that the cure for Bucky's brain noise lay somewhere outside the guest room of someone else's house.
He'd actually started browsing the internet for recipes for cookies he'd never made before when a stack of couch cushions on legs walked into the room. The cushions dropped to the floor, revealing Steve, who looked proud of himself for figuring out a problem, only to frown and point at the tablet in Bucky's hands. "You'd better not be back at that base, Bucky. You're done for the night."
Thanks for declaring that. "I'm not, I'm looking at recipe sites." He eyed the cushions while Steve shut the door. "You know, Pepper and Tony probably think we're weird enough without stealing their couch cushions." Ah, normalcy. How you were missed. It wasn't perfect, his insides still felt tipsy-turvy, but proper conversation was coming back.
"A little more won't hurt." Steve smiled, motioning Bucky over. "Come on, come pick out your cushions. Pick well, you're sleeping on them tonight."
Bucky shut down the tablet and set it on the nightstand. "Steve, we're pushing the century mark, aren't we too old for this?"
"We weren't when Mom died, we're not now." At Bucky's continued hesitancy, Steve gave him a look that was almost pleading. "Come on, you're either making me into a bad boyfriend, or a bad little brother here. You need something to help you sleep. I brought in something. Don't tell me it's not good enough."
"No, it's not that," Bucky said, getting up and walking around the foot of the bed. He stared down at the haphazard pile of cushions. There were happy memories associated to that image, nights spent sleeping on the floor, with only cushions under them. It put them closer to each other than the couches did, letting them whisper and laugh long past parental-declared bedtime.
Wait.
Bucky looked up at Steve. "Steve, we were already sharing the bed, why do we need to be closer?" Not that the idea didn't sound marvelous to his affection-starved brain, but he wasn't going to say that.
"Because you're cold," Steve said. "We'll pull the comforter over us, trap body heat closer together." He smiled. "Might even keep away nightmares."
If Bucky had any inclination that direction, he could've kissed Steve for thinking of that. As it was, he pressed his forehead against Steve's shoulder, closing his eyes, as a sense of relief crashed down over him and made him feel slightly off-balance. "Thank you."
Steve patted his back. "You'd do the same for me. That's what partners do. Now I mean it, pick your cushions before I leave you with the second rate ones."
Bucky took a step back to look at the cushions. "They're all the same. You really think Pepper and Tony would have second rate anythings?"
"Not the point. Shut up and pick your cushions. I'll grab the comforter."
Bucky obliged him without further retort, arranging all six cushions into two rough beds side by side. There was no way that their feet wouldn't be hanging off the bottom of the cushions. It was questionable if they'd fit on them all; despite how big the cushions were, he and Steve weren't exactly kids anymore.
Steve draped the comforter over the makeshift beds. "See? Just like when we were kids." He paused. "Okay, with better cushions and blankets."
"We've moved up in the world," Bucky said, crawling under the blanket to lay down on his bed that oh yes, was a bit too small to be comfortable. But a bit of physical discomfort was a worthy sacrifice for his mental well-being.
Steve settled in on his cushions, also too big for those to be comfortable. "Only quality incomplete pieces of furniture for us," Steve agreed. "Think you can sleep?"
Bucky considered a moment. The whole 'trapping body heat' thing hadn't quite kicked in yet, but they'd just laid down. That'd take a few minutes. But the proximity of the one person he trusted to help pull him out of a nightmare made Bucky relax a bit. Steve's presence, the closeness, meant that Steve could wake him from a nightmare without even having to stretch his arm. Maybe even close enough that he wouldn't have nightmares to being with.
Yeah, that'd work.
"Yeah."
"Good. Good night, Bucky."
"Good night, Steve."
He closed his eyes, letting the seconds tick by in his head as he warmed up, his insides thawing as the anxiety finally started to soothe away.
That did not change the fact that he was still going to bake those damn cookies when he got home.