Bucky saw the flinch, and he almost felt it. Like a hit, like a jab he'd been waiting for. In a way, it was welcome, the way the jab of the needle was welcome, sometimes, when he needed the numb to take him away.
He laughed, and it was choked, and ugly sounding, ending abrupt and short. Bucky shook his head, taking long enough to process through that he almost missed anything else Steve was saying, almost missed the reach of a touch. Bucky watched it happen like it was in slow motion, and somewhere in the back of his mind he measured whether or not he could stab through Steve's hand faster than Steve could touch him, and then recoiled from the thought.
Bucky jerked away from the touch. "I shoulda died," he said. "You would have died." It could have been an insult - Steve had been too small and too slow and he wouldn't have lived through. But Bucky didn't mean that. He meant Steve would have stayed Steve. He wouldn't have turned into whatever Bucky became to stay alive. Steve would have lost, like Bucky should have. But in the end, he'd been too much of a coward to die, and now he was too much of a chickenshit to want to be alive most of the time.
He shut his eyes again then opened them. Steve should be somewhere else. Somewhere safer - away from him, away from ... all this. Bucky couldn't talk to him and Bucky couldn't lean on him, and even if he could Steve wouldn't understand because Steve wasn't like him. They spoke different languages now. They weren't the same species. Steve was human. Bucky didn't know what the hell he was. "You should go," Bucky said. "I-" he didn't know how to explain, and there wasn't a way to end that sentence that would make Steve just go. "It's not the same." Steve was still there, he'd still be there. Bucky knew that. But Bucky couldn't let him and Bucky ... Bucky wasn't still here anymore.