The Pen is Mightier! (penismightier) wrote in chaotic_library, @ 2015-01-14 19:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | bruce banner, bucky barnes, marvel, pg-13, short story, steve rogers, tony stark, yuuo, yuuo: marvel |
[Bucky Barnes, Bruce Banner; PG-13] That's What Makes Us Human
Character/Series: Bucky Barnes, Bruce Banner; Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Marvel science makes real science cry and they both make me cry.
Title: That's What Makes Us Human
Author: yuuo
Word Count: 10007
Summary: "Come on," Steve said. "You promised Bruce, and you've been putting it off for three weeks."
"Come on," Steve said. "You promised Bruce, and you've been putting it off for three weeks."
Bucky didn't move from his spot on the couch, hiding behind his tablet. "If you want a needle jammed in you so badly, you go all by yourself."
Steve stood over him, and Bucky had to hunch down in his seat and lift his tablet up to stop being able to see the stern look Steve was giving him. Steve reached out and yanked Bucky's tablet out of his hands, ignoring his protests. "Come on, you promised."
Bucky did his best to not look like a sulking teenager, but he had a feeling he didn't succeed. "I don't wanna."
Okay, that didn't help much.
Steve raised an eyebrow at him, "Bucky. You. Promised."
And Bucky didn't break promises. He held his scowl for a few more heartbeats, hoping it'd hide that he was actually afraid of keeping that promise, then let out a huff. "Fine." He got up. "You call him, I'll get my damn socks and boots, and we'll go get the integrity of our veins violated so a scientist can do sciencey things with our blood, because that has never led to anything bad."
Steve grabbed the back of his neck in a reassuring gesture. "Relax. This is Bruce. He's not going to do anything to hurt either of us. He's just making sure there aren't going to be any unwanted side effects of what was used on us. He needs a few blood samples for that. That's all." Then he gave Bucky a mock-stern look. "Besides, I don't want to hear this scientist nonsense from you, Mister Chemical Engineer."
"Engineer," Bucky said in a rather pathetic attempt at pushing aside the main subject. "I'm not a scientist."
"Remember the 'chemical' part," Steve said. "You're a scientist, deal with it. Now come on, you promised."
"So you keep saying," Bucky said, feeling defeated. "Let me go get my socks and boots on, then we can go. Might wanna let him know we're on our way."
Steve shooed him off, saying he'd contact Bruce, so without any stalling techniques, Bucky retreated to his room to pull on his socks. It wasn't that he didn't want to know what Bruce might find, didn't want to know there wouldn't be any adverse effects that hadn't shown up yet from the chemicals Hydra pumped him with.
It was the idea of a needle coming near him again. It was the idea that while Bruce would never experiment on him based on what he found, every scientist that came before him had. He liked Bruce, but that was putting a heavy load of trust on him that Bucky wasn't entirely sure he could hand over.
But, he'd promised, as Steve pointed out, and Bucky didn't like breaking promises. So on went his socks, and back out of his room and down the hall to the coat closet. He grabbed his boots and yanked them on. Steve was waiting patiently for him, made sure Bucky wasn't armed- what, did he think that Bucky would shoot Bruce or something?- and then headed out, Bucky in tow.
Bucky spent the entire trip in the elevator to the medlab trying to squash the butterflies tangling up in his stomach. It's Bruce, he kept reminding himself. Bruce isn't going to do anything to you, or with your blood. Settle down.
The receptionist in the front lobby of the med center told them to head on back to Bruce's private lab, he'd be with them shortly. Bruce must've been with a patient when Steve contacted him. Grateful for the fact that Steve could navigate his way through any place, Bucky let Steve lead them back through the secured doors that Tony had shown them through shortly before Christmas, and in further to the lab.
The lab wasn't empty when they got there; Tony was seated on Bruce's lab stool, rolling around the room like a small child. "Hey guys!" he said when they entered, zooming by the front door. He turned and pushed himself back the other way, passing by them again. "Finally came in for that blood sample?"
They both remained silent, watching Tony make another pass, before Bucky was able to answer with a "something like that" that was rather vague, his brain more focusing on the fact that Tony Stark, a forty-something year old man, was flying around a doctor's lab on a wheeled chair like he was eight.
Tony came to a stop by them, and motioned them in. "Come on. Bruce takes samples back here in the phlebotomy lab. We've got everything set up in there that he needs." He proceed to push himself backwards towards the lab.
Bucky followed him with Steve. "Aren't you a little old to be doing that?"
"Nope," Tony said, entirely too quickly. "You're never too old to have fun. You might relax a little if you tried it."
"I'll relax when the needles go away," Bucky said.
Tony slowed to a stop by a doorway that led into what looked like another large lab with a medical chair designed to make drawing blood from a patient easier that made Bucky's stomach do some unhappy flip-flops and resurrect those butterflies he'd managed to kill earlier. He declined to enter just yet.
"Can't say that I blame you for the fear, but you got nothing to worry about," Tony said. "It's a quick poke, take some blood, then done. I'll even have him give you a lollipop for behaving."
Bucky shot him a dirty look. "I'm not a kid anymore, Tony, I don't need candy as a reward for playing nice with the doctor." Then he lowered his gaze pointedly at the stool. "You, on the other hand, I would question."
"Told you, never too old to have fun," Tony said. "So what finally dragged you down?"
"Steve stole my tablet and reminded me that I promised," Bucky said, sulking in Steve's general direction.
Steve put a hand on his flesh shoulder. "He's been putting it off. Bad old memories."
"Not surprised, Bruce probably won't hold it against him. He came in as he promised, after all," Tony said. Then he studied Bucky. "Relax. Bruce is the best, he won't hurt you."
"I know that," Bucky snapped, then drew in a steadying breath, feeling guilty about being so defensive. "Sorry."
Tony held up his hands as if in surrender. "No hard feelings. Things just sink in better when you hear them multiple times. Helps when it's from different sources, too."
Bruce entered before Bucky could get a chance to answer. "Sorry I made you wait," he said. "There was an employee who came in with her sick child. She claims Urgent Care wouldn't take her insurance, and her doctor couldn't get her son in until next week." He shook his head. "I can't believe that insurance offered by this company doesn't cover Urgent Care."
Tony scowled. "Neither can I. I'll send a message along to the employee benefits department, have them look into that."
"Her name is in the records for the afternoon," Bruce said.
Tony spun on the chair once. "So our old guy friends are here to give blood, like the saints they are," he said, motioning to Steve and Bucky.
Bruce's lips twitched into a wry smile. "I couldn't tell." He eyed Bucky. "And one of them is nervous, I see."
Bucky startled a bit, looking around, then back at Bruce. "How you can tell? I was just standing here."
"You're jumpy, for one," Bruce said, then motioned to Bucky's left hand. "And you're doing the finger tapping thing."
Slowly, feeling like a caught child, he glanced down at his left hand, his index finger tapping against his thigh compulsively. He gave it a betrayed look, then crossed his arms to keep from doing it again. "Does everybody know about that?" he demanded, still defensive. Bruce being there meant that the needle was imminent.
Bruce smiled. "I don't know who else knows or why, but I've asked Steve for signs of stress in you. I'm your doctor, I need to know these things."
Suddenly the center of attention and not liking it, Bucky made a childish face. "I don't like needles, that's all. Name someone who does."
"I could," Bruce said, "but I suspect that's a different type of liking. You're right, few people enjoy needles for medical reasons." Then he looked at Tony. "You're first, then we'll let Steve and Bucky decide who goes next."
"Why is Tony having his blood drawn?" Steve asked, looking between Bruce and Tony.
Bruce gestured for them to follow him into the phlebotomy lab, where that awful chair was. "He's my control subject," he explained. "Despite his high intelligence, he's still just a normal human, with normal human DNA. If there's been any mutations in your respective genetic codes, I'll be able to compare them to his to try to isolate what changes are doing what."
Tony wheeled himself up to the door of the lab before getting up, pushing the stool slightly out of the way. He flopped into the chair. "Hit me, Doc."
Steve stepped in behind him, leaning back against the wall near Tony. Bucky elected to remain in the doorway, easy to get away if he had to. He knew he wasn't being fair to Bruce, and he was upset with himself for letting his nerves show in front of anyone but Steve, but there were just some things he hadn't had a chance to get over yet.
Bucky had to turn his head and not watch as Bruce drew some blood from Tony, and it felt like it took forever before Bruce spoke up, declaring Tony done. Bucky looked back in to see Bruce covering a cotton ball with a bandaid over Tony's new needle hole.
Bruce looked between Steve and Bucky. "I'm gentle, I promise. So who's next?"
Steve looked at Bucky, expecting an answer, and Bucky just shook his head. Steve took the hint, and stepped around Tony. "I am."
Bucky turned away again, stomping down on the desire to intervene, his anxiety over a scientist drawing blood mixing with his overprotective streak to create an ugly tight feeling in his chest and cause his right hand to ball into a fist and shake. His left hand stayed still by sheer force of will.
Tony's voice nearly made him jump, made his heart accelerate as he was pulled from his sorry attempts at keeping himself under control. "Easy," Tony said, voice low. "Bruce isn't going to do anything bad with that blood. Cap's safe."
Bucky drew in a deep breath, forced himself to hold it as he closed his eyes, then let it go, slowly. It didn't help much, but it took the edge off. "I know. It's just been a long time since I've had a good interaction with a medical scientist."
"You were willing to take that Methylphenidate-C Bruce made for you," Tony pointed out.
At first, Bucky didn't answer, brow furrowed as he tried to figure out the best explanation that made sense beyond his currently addled brain. "Pills don't have long-lasting effects, they weren't used much."
Tony nodded once in understanding. "But the long term stuff, that was all injected with needles?"
That time, Bucky didn't answer at all, glanced into the phlebotomy lab when Bruce declared Steve successfully poked and drained.
Bruce was holding a cotton ball over the injection site, then lifted it, studying where the needle had been. "Already not bleeding. Can't say I'm surprised, with your healing factor."
Steve rolled down his shirt sleeve. "Yeah, when the scientists with the SSR took a sample, they didn't even bother with the cotton ball."
Bruce tossed the cotton ball away and put the three small vials of Steve's blood into a small box of sorts that had three sections with small, round slots for the vials of blood. The far left and middle sections were filled now. That left the far right for Bucky's blood samples.
He balked, staring at the chair that Steve had just vacated. He heard 'your turn' from someone, saw Bruce motion to the chair, but his feet remained rooted to the spot, his legs refused to move. He felt his right hand begin to shake again.
"I got an idea," Bruce said. "Bucky? Bucky, can you hear me?"
"I hear you," he said, voice hollow, lips barely moving. But he managed to say it.
"Good. Come on, let's go out here. I have a nice stainless steel counter you can sit on. We won't use the chair."
Even with the lingering promise of a needle and a blood draw, he felt relief crash on his head at the prospect of not having to sit in a chair like that. His hand stilled, and he nodded, licking his lips and swallowing hard, trying to get rid of the dry feeling.
"Steve, why don't you take him over there, get him comfortable. I'll follow with the blood draw supplies," Bruce said. He was studying Bucky over his glasses.
If it wasn't for the fact that the attack that the whole mess was causing hadn't fully abated, Bucky might've been of sound mind enough to feel humiliated at the spectacle he was making of himself. But with the blood still needed drawn, that silent scream in his head was still there, and he had to be prodded by Steve over to the counter. He obeyed the command to hop up and sit on it, and waited, taking in several deep and unsteady breaths.
He heard rather than saw Bruce set down his supplies on the counter next to him, and he spared just enough of a glance to see the container with the blood vials, and five empty vials. The container held three each from Tony and Steve.
"Why five?" His voice sounded almost hysterical in his ears.
Bruce looked up at him, seeming to make a point of eye contact. "If I have more tests I need to run than what three would give me, I won't have to ask you to go through this again."
The eye contact was different from what the other scientists had done. They hadn't bothered doing anything to treat him as anything but an experiment, not a human with fears or even misgivings about what was being done to him. That helped. A tiny bit, but it helped.
Obediently, Bucky followed the instruction to roll up his sleeve, to hold his arm down straight. He closed his eyes as the rubber band was tied around his upper arm, just above the crook of his elbow. He gripped the edge of the counter as the doctor's gloved fingers tapped along his arm for a vein. From somewhere down the tunnel, he heard the screeching of metal bending.
There was talking, then the band was removed. "Bucky?" He couldn't respond, mouth too dry, chest too constricted, stomach too twisted into knots. His fists were clenching. A hand touched his left thigh and he jerked his arm out, smacking away whoever'd touched him. Damn the consequences.
Steve stumbled back a few steps, but didn't fall. "Bucky, it's okay. It's just me."
He stared at Steve, pulled just enough back into his own proper brain to realize that one- he'd just hit Steve, and two- both Bruce and Tony were watching him patiently, annoyingly so. Bruce was still holding the rubber band that he'd untied, his hands in a pair of blue sterile gloves.
Bucky hunched over, his hands tangling in his hair in frustration, trying to calm his breathing, pulling on every technique he knew as a sniper to bring his heart rate down to a sane level. "I'm fine," he said. "I'm fine."
His hands were shaking.
He felt Steve place a light hand on his thigh, and just barely saw his other hand move to rest on Bucky's metal shoulder. "It's okay," Steve said. "You're not back there."
"Steve, I think we might need medicine intervention with that severe of a panic attack," Bruce said.
"I'm fine, I'm-" Bucky took in a deep breath, dropping his hands into his lap. He glanced at Steve, and paused, hesitated, then looked down at the counter. The spot where he'd been gripping it with his left hand was warped and twisted from the force of his hold. The damage looked worse than it had out of the corner of his eye. He sat up a bit, tilting his head back to look at the ceiling and not at them. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay," Bruce said, pulling off his gloves. "Tony, get me a glass of water, please?" While Tony walked past them to the sink on the other side of the room, Bruce adjusted his glasses, holding eye contact with Bucky again. "I know my MD doesn't really cover psychiatry, but I'd have to be pretty blind to not see how much this is upsetting you. You can back out now, and we'll find another way to look for any potential damage by those chemicals, or I can give you a sedative."
Bucky swallowed against the dry mouth feeling again. "I thought normal medicines wouldn't work on me."
"Not for long term, certainly," Bruce said. "I can give you a milligram of Ativan. It's a fast-acting sedative, usually used to treat panic attacks and general anxiety disorders. It won't stay in your system long, but it'll last long enough for me to get the blood draw done. You can take a pill, we'll give it a minute to kick in, and you'll know when it does. When you get nice and relaxed, I'll do the draw, put the needle in the sharps container, you won't even know it was there."
Bucky's shoulders slumped, and he ran a hand through his hair, hand unsteady, before having to swallow one more time and then nodding. "All right. Yeah, we'll try that, I guess. Sorry, I-"
"It's okay," Bruce said. "You don't need to explain. We've all been there to one extent or another, we all have our triggers." Then he smiled. "You're reacting better than I do when I get that upset."
Tony rejoined them, holding the requested glass of water. "Your path of destruction generally includes more than a mangled lab counter, that's for sure."
Bruce didn't say anything to that, just took the glass and set it on the counter next to his phlebotomy supplies. He looked at Tony. "I hate to send you on an errand, but I'm going to write a prescription for that Ativan pill, I need you to go get it. I think it'd be best if I stay to monitor him, and Steve's going to be better at calming him down than you will."
"Understood," Tony said, glancing up at Bucky. "You gonna be okay if you lose sight of my charming self for a few minutes?"
"Oh for god's sake, I'm not a child," Bucky said, trying to sound far calmer than he actually was. All he sounded like was someone on the verge of tears. He felt like he was on the verge of tears, a mixture of anxiety and embarrassment making his eyes sting. He concentrated on breathing.
"We know, Buck," Steve said. "But you know it helps to be talked to. You've talked me through a couple episodes, too. That's all we're doing for you."
If it wasn't for the fact that he had finally seen Steve having an episode of his own, Bucky might've felt even worse about panicking in front of Bruce and Tony. He wasn't even fully comfortable with them happening in front of just Steve. He folded his arms across his stomach, trying to make it unclench while he waited for Tony to get back with that medicine.
"Bucky?" Once again, Bruce made sure to make and maintain eye contact once Bucky had turned his head to look at him. "Mind if I take your pulse? I'm not going to do anything else, I just want to establish where you're at before I give you that Ativan."
Bucky didn't vocalize an answer, but held out his wrist for Bruce. Bruce gently took his wrist, fingers over his pulse, eyes on his own watch. After about fifteen seconds, he nodded to himself and let go of Bucky's wrist. "Thank you."
"How bad?"
"Hm?" Bruce blinked a couple times at him, then smiled. "Almost ninety. Normal range for a normal adult, but with your cardiovascular condition, you should be closer to forty. So a little elevated. I imagine it was worse a minute ago."
Bucky made a noise of acknowledgement, returning his arm to its previous position of folded across his stomach. He was getting so sick of these episodes. They weren't as often as they had been, been getting fewer and farther between over the last two years, and he logically knew that he'd probably never fully get away from them, not with how much his head had been messed with. But they were tiring.
Tony returned carrying a small, almost opaque, orange bottle. "Here you are, Doc, one Ativan pill, one milligram."
Bruce took the bottle from him. "Thanks." He turned to Bucky. "I had Tony get that water for you to take this with."
Bucky looked down at the dixie cup on the counter beside him, studying it a moment before he got his arms to cooperate with him enough to grab it with one hand, and take the pill from Bruce once it was offered with his other.
He told the voice in his head scolding him for needing to be sedated at the doctor's for a simple blood draw to shut the fuck up and took the pill, emptying the tiny cup of water. He glanced around for a trash for the cup.
Tony took the cup from him. "I got this," he said, and walked over to the trash by the sink. He rejoined them, crossing his arms and looking at Bruce. "So how long does it take to kick in?"
Bruce glanced over at him. "Depends. I have a feeling a five minutes might be generous with him. It'll probably take effect faster than that."
"You sure it'll last long enough, if it goes that fast through his system?"
Bruce shook his head. "I'm not sure of anything when it comes to medicating these two. But it doesn't take more than two minutes to do a blood draw, assuming I find a working vein first shot, and it should last at least that long."
"I can hear you, you know," Bucky said, still feeling somewhat irritable, but he was slowly relaxing, tension draining out of him.
"We know," Bruce said. "We weren't trying to talk about you like you weren't." Bruce started asking him a series of questions, none of which made sense to him, but he answered them dutifully, until a few minutes had passed. Bruce went silent, studying him. At Bucky's 'what?', Bruce tilted his head. "You sound like you're feeling better."
Bucky took in a breath, then released it, feeling his brain settle down and start to unwind, a sort of mellow haze settling over his thoughts. "I think it's working."
"Can I take your pulse again?" Bruce asked. After Bucky had obliged him and fifteen seconds had passed while Bruce counted, he nodded once. "All right. You'll do better to not watch. I'm going to go ahead and take that blood now."
Steve spoke up when Bucky caught himself starting to watch Bruce pull on a new pair of gloves. "Hey, Bucky, over here." Once Bucky had turned his head to look at Steve, he noticed that Steve still had a hand on his metal arm. "Don't look, remember? Why don't you talk to me, huh? Or just listen. Just don't watch that, okay?"
"You don't need to talk," Bucky said. "I'm okay." He didn't say it, not with Tony and Bruce right there, but Steve had heard him say before that just focusing on Steve in general helped sometimes, because Steve was not back there, not part of Hydra, so if Steve was there in the present, then so was Bucky, and Hydra wasn't. It was odd logic, but it worked.
He felt the pinch of the needle and flinched slightly, but Steve tapping his finger on Bucky's leg kept him from turning his head to watch. Steve occasionally glanced over to see what Bruce was doing, but never let Bucky look away from him. "Looks like he's almost done," Steve said after what felt like it might've been awhile, but with how fast blood draws could actually go, it was probably only about thirty seconds.
"Not almost," Bruce said, and Bucky felt the strange sensation of the needle leaving his arm, and then the soft feeling of a cotton ball pressed against his skin. "Completely done."
By the time Bucky had turned his head to look at what Bruce was doing, the needle had already been deposited into a sharps container with a clatter, and Bruce was lifting the cotton ball and examining the skin. "No bleeding." He looked up at Bucky. "You did good. You can pull your sleeve back down."
Bucky gladly unrolled his sleeve, and looked at the damage he did to the counter. "Sorry about your counter."
"It's fine," Bruce said. "Better the counter than one of us." He paused. "Or a neighborhood in Manhattan."
"Or almost your girlfriend," Tony added. At the confused looks all three of the other men turned on him, he shrugged. "I was having a nightmare, accidentally called for the suit. It tried to attack Pepper because she was trying to wake me up and was perceived as a threat as a consequence. So relax, the counter's the least of our worries. You're not the only one who's been there, and you're not the only one who's had to have medicine because of it. Welcome to my prestigious club of Ativan takers."
"You still take it?" Bucky asked, wondering how long that Ativan would stick around in his system. He still felt a little weird.
Tony shrugged. "I still have my prescription. Don't use them that often anymore, but yeah, still keep 'em around. Pepper had to be on..." He trailed off, thinking. "Oh! Xanax. It's similar to what Bruce gave you, they're both benzodiazepines. She started on a pretty low dose, I don't think what she was on would even blip on your body's radar."
Bruce eyed Steve. "And if you think you need it, I can write a prescription for you, too."
Steve shook his head. "No, I think I'm fine. We're both usually pretty good at talking the other down. It's rare that we find such a strong trigger like this was." He eyed Bucky, like he was trying to decide if he should answer for Bucky or not.
"You don't need to look at me like that," Bucky said, still feeling rather vague. "How long does this stuff last?"
"About twelve to twenty-four hours in normal humans," Bruce said. "So about four hours at most for you. You might want to go ahead and just nap it off."
Bucky made a noise that was meant to be a 'meh' and ended up sounding more like a broken squeak toy. "Oh boy, a sleeping pill. How do people on this stuff handle this?"
"We sleep a lot," Tony said. "But no, really, this is why you don't usually start on a high dose. I was on half of what you took."
Bucky looked at him for a long five seconds. "Did it make you feel this vague, too?"
Tony grinned. "It certainly made it so my thoughts weren't racing around so much. Sleep it off, you'll feel better."
Steve looked past Bucky at Bruce. "How long before we get results?"
Bruce glanced at the blood samples. "It usually takes about five to seven days, but I can have it in about seventy-two hours, if you guys think it's important enough. But after putting it off for a few weeks, I think we can wait the five days. I do have other things I have to do around here, after all."
"That's fine," Steve said. "We're not in a particular hurry." He looked at Bucky. "We should get you home so you don't fall asleep sitting up there."
"Will not," Bucky protested, then shooed away Steve's hand when it was offered to help Bucky down. "Not a damsel in distress here, Steve." He slid off the counter more than hopped off it, and glanced at the damaged edge. "How can I help repair that?"
"Don't worry about it," Bruce said. "Just go home and rest. Doctor's orders."
Bucky gave him a half-hearted salute, waved to Tony, then headed out, quibbling at Steve about who got to be in front this time. Bucky still didn't like not being where he could see Steve to make sure he wasn't being left behind, and Steve reminded him that he was currently drugged and would probably do well with someone to make sure he made it home okay. Bucky swore at him, but gave in when Steve compromised that they walk together, instead of trying to lead each other like mother hens.
He slept through lunch.