Bucky looked back at her, too-distant still, but starting to come back down, breathing turning into something almost normal instead of a struggle he had to remember and work at and resent the effort of.
Where he was came back to him, with the tone of her voice. Bucky could process what she was saying, understand it, but it was all on a delayed feed, a second too late to really be acceptable for someone to catch up and catch on and follow. He swallowed at the tone of her face, the steady gaze, and then Steve's voice warm and familiar.
"I'm sorry," Bucky said again, that same reflexive response, but now he was starting to know the reasons. Steve's nose had been bleeding, and Natasha had to lie for them at a party that had been for Clint's worse day. And they were talking Bucky down because Bucky couldn't hold it together. Nothing had happened to him. Just words.
Why couldn't he just fucking hold anything together?
"I don't know why I ..." why he broke in different pieces. They were all the same brand of ruined and broken. But Bucky was the one who did this, when he didn't want to. He hated it. He hated a lot of things.
And fuck, like Steve didn't already think enough. Natasha had seen before. He didn't always remember, but there'd been too many parties and events in common, too many crossed paths in the Capitol that she hadn't known how he could get. But Bucky had been entertaining some delusion Steve might not, never quite believing it, but trying to. "Not like me," he said, too late to be a recognizable response. She'd hurt people, but she hadn't lost her mind when she did it. And people didn't look at her now and she didn't keep losing it just because someone said something that fucked her up.
And she didn't fall apart like him, which made everything different, even if Bucky didn't know how to work that into the conversation, or explain. They were all wreckage after the Arena. But he must have had something chipped to start with that things couldn't glue back together enough to make him hold it together when he needed to.
He just wanted to be good enough to fucking help until it was too late to try, and look how far that got him. Ruin of a person falling apart in a car with two people who had worse lives and worse nights trying to fix him.
He jerked back out of the circle of self loathing as her request caught up to him, breath stopping again. "I-" Bucky stopped, eyes dropping to her unbruised neck. The metal hand curled into a fist at his side. "Why?" Why did she even want to help him? "I ... you don't owe me. Remember? No strings." Bucky swallowed, because he didn't want to. He didn't know what he wanted, but it wasn't to be that near to somewhere vulnerable that he shouldn't be allowed to.
He looked from Natasha to Steve, shivering a little as Steve's fingers petted up his back, rubbed at his neck. He hadn't registered the question to answer before Steve's fingers were there, but it didn't hurt. It helped. It was just undeserved.
Bucky took a deep breath, shaky right hand reaching, metal firmly pushed under his own thigh, settling a touch light and barely there against Natasha's collarbone. After a second his fingers moved closer to her throat, touching very carefully where the bruising had been heaviest. Before he dropped his hand away, Bucky lifted it, tucking a stray strand of hair back behind her ear without thinking of why.
His head dropped back into Steve's hand on his neck, drawing in a deep breath that didn't catch, this time. "I'm all right," Bucky said. He didn't sound all right, but the trembling had eased and he looked less like someone falling apart. He didn't look at Steve though, dropped his eyes from Natasha's. "Sorry," he said. Again. He forced a quick, thin smile. "Pretty sure with this arrangement, it's gonna be Natasha they figure for in the middle. I could move," he tried to joke. He knew it'd fall flat before he said it, he just said it anyway.