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Tompkins had never forgiven Bucky for making fun of his “itty bitty shoulder wound, fuck, if you don’t stop squealing I’ll dropkick you out the cargo hatch.” At any rate, when they dragged Bucky onto the cargo plane with a broken leg, the look on Tompkin’s face was part fear, part sympathy, and a tiny part satisfaction that now Bucky was the one bleeding on the floor of the plane.
Steve suspected that satisfaction was the reason that Bucky, who was not usually shy about demanding painkillers, set his mouth and didn’t say anything. “Tompkins,” said Steve. “Why don’t you go co-pilot?”
Tompkins glanced longingly at the cockpit, but he shook his head. “You’ll need my help field-dressing the leg,” he said.
“Oh. Yes,” Steve said.
Tompkins stood rooted for a moment. Then, reluctantly, he moved closer to Bucky – he hated being close to Bucky – and crouched down next to his leg, cutting off the bloody fabric with a pair of scissors and inspecting the break. Steve didn’t understand quite what he was doing, but Tompkins calmed down as he worked. He still wasn’t much of a field agent, but then he was never supposed to be: he trained as a medic, back when SHIELD had enough personnel that they didn’t need all hands in the field.
He put his hands on Bucky’s leg. Steve didn’t see quite what happened next. One minute, Tompkins was looking at Bucky’s leg. The next, the light reflected off Bucky’s metal arm in a bright flash, and Tompkins was up and flying across the cabin. He hit the opposite wall, and by the time Steve had turned around he had slid crumpled to the floor.
“Tompkins!” Steve yelled. He crossed the cabin in three strides, dropped to a crouch next to Tompkins and trying to look as small and non-threatening as possible. He didn’t usually miss being five foot four in his stocking feet, but it would have been useful just then. Tompkins’ eyes were big and glassy and he was having trouble getting his breath. “Are you all right?” Steve asked.
But Tompkins seemed to find Steve reassuring, because he sucked in a deep breath, and then another. The shaking lessened. SHIELD training kicking in. He pushed himself to sit, and winced as he put pressure on his left wrist. “I will be, sir,” he said.
“You’re not crying,” Bucky called from across the plane, and he sounded – proud, like he had trained a particularly stupid dog to play dead. “That’s good!”
“Bucky,” Steve called back. He didn’t even bother looking at Bucky; he wasn’t sure he could restrain himself from throwing something at him if he got Bucky in his sights. “Shut up.”
Tompkins’ eyes flickered over Steve’s shoulder, watching Bucky like he might watch a prowling tiger. “He has a broken leg,” Steve reminded him. “He can’t get at us here.” Thank God they’d taken Bucky’s weapons away. Aside from that fucking metal arm. But that wasn’t a range weapon. “Your wrist?” he urged Tompkins.
Tompkins held it up and flexed it. His mouth flattened out. But he didn’t start sweating and his breathing didn’t hitch, or exhibit any of the other tells Steve had learned to look for in macho SHIELD agents (Rumlow) who didn’t want to admit they were in pain. “Sprained.”
“Okay,” said Steve. He took Tompkins’ other hand and helped him to his feet. “Go to the cockpit. Drink some water, admire the sunset.” Tompkins’ huge terrified eyes flickered back to Bucky, and Steve put a hand on his shoulder and gently pushed him toward the cockpit. “I’ll take care of him. You go sit down. Have a candy bar.”
Steve waited until Tompkins had closed the cockpit door. Then he crossed the plane to Bucky again, his feet clanging on the grille floor as he walked. He stood over Bucky for a moment, glaring down, and Bucky glared right back up at him, his face smeared with kohl and sweat and other people’s blood, not quite dry yet. His crossed arms rose and fell with his quick breathing.
Steve dropped down to a crouch beside him. “Bucky,” he said, and he was surprised at the clear calmness of his voice. The Hydra files had mentioned Bucky’s penchant for attacking medical personnel. “You can’t do things like that to people.”
Bucky shrugged. “I want painkillers.”
In that moment, Steve could have grabbed Bucky by the hair and slammed his head against the cabin floor. “You can’t hurt people just because you want to,” Steve said, and his voice trembled with the effort of not shouting.
“I want painkillers,” Bucky said again, louder.
Steve nearly said no. But he couldn’t make basic physical comfort dependent on good behavior, and anyway, Bucky might be more reasonable if he wasn’t in agony. “Fine,” Steve snapped.
He smacked the pill into Bucky’s palm. Bucky blinked at the force of it, but didn’t protest; he dry-swallowed the pill and then leaned back against the bulkhead of the plane, pulling the blankets around him and scowling at Steve. “What are you so pissed about?” he asked. “He’s just deadwood anyway. Completely useless in the field.”
Steve nearly slammed his fists against the floor, but the vibration would hurt Bucky’s leg, and he could hardly show Bucky that hurting people was wrong by hurting him. “Bucky, you can’t hurt people just because you feel like it,” Steve said. “It doesn’t matter how useless you think they are.” Tompkins wasn’t useless, just trained as a medic rather than a field agent, but Steve wasn’t going to complicate things by pointing that out to Bucky. Even if Tompkins were as much use as a rotten pumpkin it wouldn’t give Bucky the right to toss him around.
“I don’t hurt people just because I feel like it. He was going for my leg,” said Bucky.
“He’s a medic, Bucky! That’s what he does! He was going to set your leg so it would heal properly!” Steve yelled. He took a deep breath. Suddenly he felt exhausted. “Aw, fuck, Bucky. And you promised me you wouldn’t hurt anybody.”
“Did not!” Bucky flared. “I promised I wouldn’t hurt civvies. And he’s not a civvy, even if he’s as useless as one.”
“I guess it never occurred to me to make you promise not to hurt SHIELD agents,” Steve said. “Bucky, they’re on our side.”
“So?” said Bucky.
Steve wanted to throttle him. “So hurting them is bad,” Steve said. He was flipping through pages and pages of Hydra files in his mind, reading comment after laconic comment: Asset attacked technician. Asset choked technician. Asset broke technician’s clavicle. Asset punched metal arm through technician’s kidney –
“Promise me,” Steve pleaded. His head was beginning to pound behind the eyes. “Promise me you’re not going to hurt the doctors who are going to set your leg.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Not fair!” Steve yelled. “What do you even – ” He took a deep breath. “All right. Fine. Don’t promise. Take off your left arm.”
Finally, finally that knocked the truculent scowl off Bucky’s face. His face twisted up in fury. His right hand rose toward his shoulder, then clenched into a fist, and he brought it down hard on the thigh of his unbroken leg. “It’s my arm,” he said.
“I know you can take it off,” Steve replied. “And I can’t risk you hurting anyone with it. So take it off.”
Bucky stared at Steve. Usually he could stare Steve down easily, but this time Steve met him glare for glare. The plane engines thrummed. The sweat trickling down Steve’s back felt like ice in the cold cabin.
Finally, finally Bucky half-unzipped his sweatshirt and stuck his right hand in at the neck to manipulate something in the shoulder. “They’re just technicians,” Bucky said. His voice trembled with suppressed fury. “They’re replaceable.”
“They’re people!” Steve shouted. “Jesus Christ, Bucky. They’re not replaceable!”
“Don’t be stupid,” Bucky snapped. He was nearly crying with rage. His hand slipped on his shoulder. “Don’t think – just because you can take away my arm, don’t think – that you can make me go quietly – ”
“If it’s the only way to keep you from killing your doctors, I’ll hold you down,” Steve snapped.
Steve couldn’t quite construct, afterward, just what happened next. He hadn’t thought Bucky was anywhere close to finishing with the arm, and yet suddenly Bucky was holding his own metal arm by its wrist, and swung it like a club so the shoulder slammed against the side of Steve’s head.
It knocked Steve flat. Next thing he knew he was sprawled on the grille floor of the plane, his ears ringing and a strange fuzzy halo effect around everything in his sight.
Bucky was staring down at him. It wasn’t his usual cool assessing look. His eyes were big and blinking, and his mouth hung open. He reached toward Steve, his metal arm drooping from his right hand, and when Steve flinched, Bucky looked down like he’d forgotten what he was holding.
Then, moving slowly, Bucky held out his metal arm. Steve stared at it, uncomprehending. Bucky shoved it forward a little more, like a kid trying to make a dog take a bone: take it.
Steve reached for it. His arm felt very far away from his head, and he had trouble judging the distance: somehow his hand didn’t quite touch the arm on his first try. He waved it around in the air a little till his fingers connected with the cold metal, and he took the arm away from Bucky.
The arm slipped in his hand and fell on the floor. He stared at the arm, and then at his hand, and saw that his hand was red with blood. His own blood. On Bucky’s arm. He gagged.
“Are you all right?” Bucky asked.
Bucky’s face swam in and out of focus. Steve closed his eyes. Suddenly he pictured Bucky telling this story to someone else, years from now – that moron thought he’d got me cornered, making me take off my arm, but I clubbed him upside the head with my own shoulder – and gagged again.
The gagging forced tears out of his eyes. Steve tried to dry them away, but it just smeared his blood on his face, and anyway, Bucky had already seen. “Go ahead,” said Steve, and his voice sounded strange and echoing in his ears. “I’m useless deadwood and you’ll dropkick me off the plane if I don’t man up, right?”
Bucky shook his head a little. A wisp of his hair stuck to the drying blood on his face. “Does it hurt?” Bucky asked.
“Yes it fucking hurts!” Steve yelled, and winced, because yelling hurt too.
Bucky didn’t say anything for a while after that. He leaned against the bulkhead, watching Steve, and Steve sat with his hands splayed on the floor to keep him upright, his head swimming. Time seemed to stretch, like taffy: he felt like he had been on this plane, listening to the roar of the engines, for months, for years even. Maybe he was still on the Valkyrie. Maybe he never left. The thought had all the force of a lucid nightmare: he knew it wasn’t true, but he couldn’t wake himself up.
“You could take a painkiller,” Bucky suggested.
Bucky’s voice brought him back to himself. Steve’s eyes were focusing a little better now, and he saw that Bucky was looking at him with a little frown. It wasn’t angry or derisive or any of the other things Steve was used to seeing in his face. He looked… Steve’s head hurt so much he couldn’t think of…
Puzzled. Bucky looked puzzled.
“It would help,” Bucky said, and Steve must have looked just as puzzled, because Bucky added, “The painkiller.”
“I don’t have any more on me.” There were probably some in the first aid kit, but that was across the plane. Oceans away.
“Oh.”
There was another little silence. Steve’s eyelids felt like they were lined with molasses, drifting closed and sticking shut. It was supposed to be bad, falling asleep while concussed, wasn’t it? Except maybe they didn’t believe that anymore in 2014. It was hard to keep up sometimes.
Something was tapping on his hand.
Steve pried his eyes open. His fingers laced through the grille floor, so tight that his knuckles had turned white, and Bucky was tapping his hand.
No. Patting his hand. At least, Bucky probably meant to be patting, but he was only using his fingertips. It felt weird. It distracted Steve from his head, though.
“You won’t really hold me down,” Bucky said. “You were just saying that. You won’t really.”
“If it’s the only way to keep you from hurting someone…”
“I didn’t hurt Tompkins,” Bucky argued. “You know he’d be a red splotch on the wall now if I really meant to hurt him, you know that. You don’t have to hold me down.”
“Bucky…” Steve felt very tired. “You did hurt Tompkins. I know you think it’s not bad enough to count, but it is. I think so, Tompkins thinks so, and SHIELD is going to think so too.”
Steve’s head throbbed quietly. Bucky was silent, and he wasn’t looking at Steve anymore, but staring down at the blanket in his lap and twisting it up in his hand. He looked lopsided without his metal arm. “I’ll hold still,” Bucky said. “I really will, I promise. I won’t hurt any of the techs. No matter what they do.”
Steve wished his head would stop hurting. It was hard to think around the pain. “They’re not going to hurt you, Buck,” he said.
“I know, stupid,” Bucky said scornfully. “It’s all to help me, even if it hurts, I know. To make me a better assassin. I’m not – of course I’m not complaining…” He grew agitated, flustered. “I just didn’t want you to hold me down. It was stupid. Of course you should hold me down if they tell you to. But if they don’t tell you to, you don’t need to, because I won’t fight, okay?”
“Bucky, I’m not going to hold you down while they – Jesus Christ,” Steve exploded. “Bucky, they’re not going to – to experiment on you, or whatever it is you’re expecting. And if they told me to – Bucky, I wouldn’t help them hurt you. We would leave SHIELD if – ”
But before Steve had even finished saying leave, Bucky roared, “Shut up! I hit you in the head, you don’t know what you’re saying. Shut up shut up shut up.”
Steve’s headache spiked from Bucky’s shouting. He lifted his hand to his head. His hair was tacky with drying blood. “SHIELD isn’t going to hurt you,” he repeated, because it seemed like the most important thing.
Bucky stared at him in silence for a moment. “I know,” Bucky said, low-voiced. He glanced away, and when he looked back at Steve his voice and face were scornful again. “I’m one of their best assets. Of course they’re not going to hurt me unless they really have to.” He shifted, trying to get more comfortable. “Or you either,” he added. “So don’t do anything stupid to set them off.”
***
Steve stood outside Bucky’s room, looking through the one-way mirror at Bucky lying in the hospital bed. Bucky’s legs were free, but his arm was attached to the bed frame with one of those magnetic handcuffs. He would hate that when he woke up.
Not that Steve blamed the doctors. Tompkins had trained with medical first, and the whole medical staff was damn pissed that Bucky had attacked one of their own.
The doctor said Steve could take Bucky home as soon as he woke up. She had even given Steve the key to the handcuffs. So at least Bucky wouldn’t have to deal with the cuffs for long.
“You look worse than Agent Tompkins,” said a calm voice, and Steve looked up to see Coulson standing beside him.
The nurse had washed the blood of his face, but Bucky’s arm had left a pretty spectacular bruise on Steve’s temple. Even super healing wasn’t instantaneous, and right now it had just sped up the healing process enough to make the bruise extra colorful.
Bucky stirred a little on the bed. Even unconscious, he looked angry.
“We’ve been discussing what disciplinary measures to take for his unprovoked attack on you and Agent Tompkins,” Coulson said, and paused.
“Of course,” Steve said, although he felt very tired. Of course some disciplinary measure had to be taken: he just couldn’t think of anything that would be likely to make an impression, not after everything Hydra had done to Bucky.
But Coulson must have been thinking along the same lines, because he said, “Unfortunately, we’ve reached an impasse. The only disciplinary measure that he seems likely to consider a punishment is being separated from you – ”
Steve felt like someone had knocked all the air out of his body. “No!”
“You don’t think he would consider that a punishment?” Coulson said, in his infuriatingly ever-calm voice.
Steve’s heart pounded so hard that it set his head throbbing again. But he forced himself to slow down, to take a deep breath before he spoke, because he had to convince Coulson that this was an awful idea or everything was over. “I know he would,” said Steve. “But it wouldn’t help SHIELD. It would just make him more volatile to take him away from his only…”
Stable emotional relationship, he was going to say (he’d picked up the term from Sam), but Coulson wasn’t going to buy stable. Not with that bruise on Steve’s face.
“I’m glad to hear we’re in agreement,” Coulson said.
“He’s been making progress,” Steve said. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, when he’s just done – this, but he’s had so many bad experiences with doctors, and…”
“I agree,” Coulson said, his voice so calm and unemphatic that Steve almost plunged on with more explanation. “He wouldn’t be a useful field agent if we separated you two. We were hoping you could suggest a different disciplinary measure.”
For one moment Steve was absolutely flummoxed, and then the answer came to him, like a ray of light from the sky. “Give him a six-month suspension.”
“You want to punish him by giving him a vacation?”
“He won’t see it that way,” Steve said. “His whole sense of self-worth is tied up in killing people. He’s not going to be happy to spend six months without a chance to remind us how valuable he is.”
“He is valuable,” Coulson said. “Too valuable to keep out of the field for six months. We need everyone we have to defeat Hydra, and that still may not be enough.”
“If he weren’t a super soldier, it would take his leg nearly that long to heal anyway,” Steve shot back. “You asked me how to discipline him. This is the way to do it. And if you don’t do something, he’s just going to keep looking at SHIELD agents as…” Steve’s mouth twisted on the memory of Bucky’s words. “Replaceable.”
Even in the coldest tactical sense, a sense that Bucky might understand, it wasn’t true. SHIELD’s numbers were so low that they could barely afford to lose anyone, and now that they were all but outlaws it was nearly impossible to recruit.
“Three months,” Coulson said. Steve lifted his head. “I can give him a three month suspension.” He frowned at Steve. “But that doesn’t apply to you. I want you back in the field as soon as the doctor says your head is better.”
“But – ”
“If you can’t find someone to look after Barnes while you’re gone, we can always put him in a SHIELD holding cell.”
“But – !”
Coulson’s expression didn’t soften. The new Coulson unnerved Steve sometimes. The differences weren’t as obvious as between 1943 Bucky and Bucky today, but still, the new Coulson seemed subtly colder than the old one. “He’ll have the parole of the building if he behaves. But we can’t leave him all alone in your apartment where it would be easy for Hydra to come for him.”
Steve bit his lip. This was absolutely true. But it was also absolutely true that Bucky would hate a holding cell, and it seemed unlikely that he would behave well enough to keep the parole of the building. He would probably snap under the stress of being surrounded by SHIELD at all times.
Maybe Steve could talk Natasha into baby-sitting. She and Bucky got along all right the one time they met, insofar as Bucky could be said to get along with anyone. Or Sam? Or maybe both of them together. He couldn’t ask either of them to deal with Bucky all alone. That was too much to ask of anyone.
A movement through the one-way mirror caught Steve’s attention. Bucky was stirring again. Steve watched, expecting him to drift back to sleep, but Bucky tried to turn over, jerked on his hand in the cuff, and woke up. Zero to scowling in point oh one milliseconds.
The doctors had washed Bucky’s face, and he looked pale and naked without the kohl. He lay very still, except for his eyes, which flickered around the room. “I should go in,” Steve said, but he didn’t move.
“He must be difficult to deal with,” Agent Coulson said.
Steve leaned his forehead gingerly against the cool glass. “Sometimes,” he said quietly, even though the truth was more like always and some days he woke up and just wanted to crawl under the covers and stay there so he wouldn’t have to deal with anything. Anything at all, but mostly Bucky.
Bucky tried to lift his hand again, but he froze when the handcuff stopped. His chest rose and fell rapidly with his breath. Steve took a deep breath to compose himself, and went into the hospital room. “Hey, Buck,” he said, and managed a smile as he bent to unlock the handcuffs. “You ready to go home?”
***
Bucky was silent while Steve pushed his wheelchair through the hospital. He reattached his metal arm in silence, too, and spent the ride back to the apartment staring silently out the window. It wasn’t his blank not-there look: he was aware that Steve was there, and trying to ignore it. “Bucky,” Steve said tentatively.
Steve could see Bucky’s face reflected in the dark car window. It contorted, then smoothed out again, so Bucky was staring into his own eyes in the glass, wide-eyed and pale.
Steve had always assumed that Bucky’s not-there periods just happened to him. But it looked almost like he was trying to cause one. Maybe he did know how to trigger them: maybe sometimes they descended on him and sometimes he made them happen on purpose, when he wanted to go away somewhere else.
Go away where?
To visit the orphanage, Steve thought. But probably it wasn’t as simple as that.
Steve helped Bucky onto the couch and put the wheelchair away, and fetched Bucky a glass of water.
Bucky ignored both Steve and the water. “Bucky,” said Steve, and reached for him.
“Don’t,” said Bucky, and Steve stopped his hand mid-gesture.
“Please, Bucky,” he said. “What can I do to help?”
Bucky didn’t look at him. “Go away,” he said. His voice was rough and hoarse.
“Bucky – ”
“That’s how you can help,” said Bucky. “Go away.”
Steve hesitated. “At least drink the water,” he said.
“I don’t want anything from you,” Bucky said sullenly. “Hopefully that will be less difficult.” He paused for just a second, almost panting for breath, and then he erupted. “You told them to take me out of the field! What the fucking hell were you thinking?”
Steve almost dropped the water glass. He set it down on the coffee table instead. “How did you – ?”
“You were shouting about it right outside my door!”
Steve wilted. In the Triskelion, an observation room like that would have been soundproofed, and he had just assumed…
“You should have just taken him up on his first offer,” Bucky said. His face was red, his fists clenched, and his suddenly quiet voice trembled slightly with the effort of controlling it. “It would be better. I wouldn’t have to deal with you trailing after me whining about how you don’t like the way I run missions. And instead you’ve set it up so I’ll just sit in a corner and rot and it will end up separating us anyway because they’re not going to let you waste your time looking after someone useless, and I am not difficult!” Bucky drew in his breath so sharply that he began to cough, and coughed until there were tears in his eyes.
“Bucky – ” Steve began.
“Shut up,” Bucky snapped. “Shut up shut up shut up. I hate you. You’ve always hated me, ever since I came back, and I hate you too. And you’ve set it up so you can just abandon me in a holding cell in SHIELD while you go on missions and hog all the fun – ”
“Bucky, I’m not going to stick you in a SHIELD holding cell unless there’s no other choice. If I can’t get out of a mission – ”
“You have to go if they send you on a mission! They’re not going to let you refuse!”
“ – then I’ll leave you with Natasha or Sam.” He hoped.
“You can’t leave me with Natasha and Sam! You’ve got to take them with you, they’re the only ones who look after you worth a damn!” Bucky roared. His face was scarlet; his tendons stood out in his neck. “And you have no sense of self-preservation, and you won’t have me to look after you, and you’re going to get yourself killed – ”
Bucky’s face twisted up. For a moment Steve thought Bucky was going to barf, and the awful noise he made didn’t help. But then he pressed his hand over his eyes, doubling over, and Steve realized that no. Bucky was crying.
Steve dropped to his knees by the couch, and Bucky wrapped his arm around Steve’s shoulders and buried his face in Steve’s hair. His harsh breathing sounded loud in Steve’s ear, and Bucky’s arm trembled. No. His whole body trembled, quivering like it had when he realized he was handcuffed to the bed.
Steve disentangled his arm from Bucky’s side and stroked Bucky’s hair. It didn’t seem to calm him down. If anything the trembling intensified. “Bucky – ” Steve said, but Bucky shoved Steve’s face harder into his shoulder, and Steve took the hint. Bucky didn’t want him talking. Probably he figured Steve would say something incriminating to the listening walls.
Bucky was nearly sobbing for breath now, shaking so hard that it seemed like he might break into pieces. Steve stopped stroking his hair and just held him, humming into his shoulder, meaningless soothing humming.
Bucky let out a harsh gasp, like someone had punched him in the stomach, and suddenly the repressed sobs turned into real sobs. His whole body jerked with the force of them, and he buried his face in Steve’s hair to try to muffle the sound. But the awful trembling, like a corked teapot ready to explode, had stopped, and although the sobs went on and on, they got quieter and the shakes got smaller rather than worse.
He calmed down finally, and lay still. Steve kept his head tucked against Bucky’s shoulder and began to stroke his hair again, and this time Bucky relaxed into it. He loosened his grip on Steve. Steve’s knees ached from kneeling, but he didn’t try to get up, just leaned against Bucky. Bucky rubbed his face in Steve’s hair. Steve almost melted, but a sudden spike of anxiety stiffened his back. It had been months since Bucky expected touching to lead to sex, but Steve couldn’t forget.
“You shouldn’t have freaked when he suggested separating us,” Bucky said. His lips brushed Steve’s ear as he whispered. Steve suppressed a shiver. “You shouldn’t let them know…”
“I think they already knew that I care about you,” Steve said. “It’s probably visible from space.” The closeness was too much: Steve hated himself for it, but he had to ease himself away.
But Steve had only pulled away a couple inches when Bucky shoved him to the floor. “You shouldn’t let them know,” Bucky said again. He still held Steve’s shirt tightly in his hand.
“Oh, Bucky,” Steve said helplessly. He wondered, suddenly, if Bucky’s outburst earlier had been a charade, or at least partly a charade: a performance for the walls that Bucky always believed were listening. We don’t really like each other. You can’t use it to hurt us.
Bucky must have hated the way Steve talked to him the first few weeks after he came in from the cold. Bucky could barely walk into a room without Steve nattering on about how much he liked Bucky, how much he had missed him, how happy he was that Bucky was back.
Bucky rubbed at his tear-streaked puffy face with the cuff of his sweatshirt. Steve found a tissue in his pocket and gave it to Bucky, and Bucky blew his nose. It sounded angry. “I’m thirsty,” Bucky said, and his voice was thick and hoarse.
Steve picked up the forgotten water glass. Bucky’s hand tightened convulsively on his shirt as Steve leaned over to the coffee table, like he expected Steve to get up and leave; but Steve just grabbed the glass and leaned against him again. “Here,” said Steve.
Bucky didn’t take the glass, and after a moment Steve saw the problem. Bucky didn’t want to let go of Steve, but he didn’t want to take the glass in his metal hand, either: the metal made awful sounds on glass.
And he wanted to be close to Steve more than he wanted water. God, Steve just wanted to hold him for the next week. “If you’ll let me…?” Steve asked, and brought the water glass to Bucky’s lips.
Bucky hesitated. Then he shifted, pulling himself to sit up straighter, and gave a little nod. Steve tilted the glass so Bucky could drink, but he felt suddenly nervous. What if Bucky choked on the water? Bucky might very well think it was intentional.
Bucky put his metal hand on Steve’s wrist, just the fingertips, and pushed very gently until Steve tilted the glass more. Bucky gulped most of the glass down greedily, then closed his mouth to swallow. Some water gushed down his chin before Steve righted the glass again, but Bucky didn’t seem to mind. Maybe it felt good on his hot face.
Bucky drained the rest of the glass and wiped his chin off with the sleeve covering his metal arm. The sight of his shining hand seemed to surprise him, and he hastily stuck it back into the pocket of his sweatshirt. So the neighbors won’t see, Steve thought. As soon as Bucky let him get up, Steve would find him a glove.
Bucky let go of Steve’s shirt, but he didn’t let Steve up. Instead he took Steve’s wrist between his fingertips, turning it to inspect the skin where his metal hand had touched. “I didn’t hurt you?” he asked. His voice sounded only a little less rusty.
“No,” said Steve. Then, feeling a little daring, he bent his head and kissed the back of Bucky’s hand. “I won’t let you hurt me.”
“Or anyone else,” Bucky said, with a half-scornful twist of his lip.
“Except for a mission,” Steve said. Bucky snorted. “You’ll be going on missions again in three months, Buck. The suspension isn’t going to last forever.” He turned his hand to clasp Bucky’s hand in his own.
He only meant it to be a comforting gesture, but Bucky tightened his grip: shaking on it.
Then he did push Steve away again, still gently, but he didn’t keep hold on him this time. Instead Bucky stuck his right hand in his hoodie pocket to join his left, and wriggled against the couch pillow to get more comfortable.
“You want more water?” Steve asked.
Bucky nodded. “And something – ” He paused to clear his throat. “Something to eat.”
Soup would be best. Steve poured a can into a bowl and heated it up in the microwave (he still wasn’t quite over the miracle of microwaves), poured a glass of water, and carried everything over to Bucky.
Bucky’s head drooped against the side of the couch, and he stared dully at the weave of the fabric – or rather in the direction of the fabric, because he didn’t look all there.
“Bucky,” Steve said, a little more sharply than he intended.
Bucky didn’t lift his head, but he spoke. “I’m sorry.” His voice was dull and hoarse.
Steve set down the bowl carefully and knelt by the couch again. “What for?” he asked, because there were a lot of things Bucky could be apologizing for, and he didn’t want to assure Bucky that it was okay till he knew Bucky wasn’t talking about Tompkins. Steve wasn’t the one Bucky needed to apologize to if he wanted to make that right.
But Bucky made a little gesture encompassing the couch. Steve almost sighed. Of course, out of everything he’d done, the one thing Bucky was sorry for was crying.
At least it was easy to reassure him. “That’s all right,” Steve said. He set the bowl of chicken soup in Bucky’s lap. Bucky frowned down at the steaming soup. “It really is okay,” Steve reassured him. “It’s been a hard day. Eat up.”