Chapter 3
Steve wakes up to the comforting feeling of something heavy on his chest. When he finally mustered up the courage to open his eyes, he sees Bucky’s head resting there. He blinks slowly, wondering if he’s still asleep and this is just a dream. But he’s never had control of his dreams and not even his fever-induced ones had been this good. He feels Bucky stir and pretends to be asleep. He feels Bucky get up off his chest and groan suggesting his stretching his arms. He keeps his eyes closed as he hears Bucky quietly get up and walk away.
When he hears Steve reenter the room he pretends to have just woken up, yawning.
“Sorry, did I wake you?” Bucky asks, his blue eyes were wide with concern.
“No, just my body's natural alarm clock.” Steve lies, waving Bucky off.
Alpine wakes as well, stretching her frame out and immediately padding over to Bucky and curling around his legs. Bucky sighs and goes to get some breakfast for the dog and Steve has no clue why the domestic sight makes him want to swoon as the sound of the kibble hitting the bowl makes a resounding clang.
It’s pouring outside, the faint cascade of rain against the old building echoing softly on the roof and lashing the windows.
“You want coffee?” Bucky asks, his head tilted slightly, snapping Steve out of his thoughts.
“Sure,” Steve agrees with a nod, not about to refuse anything from Bucky.
Bucky gives a sloppy salute and dips into the kitchen and Steve finds himself pouting at the fact he can’t see him. He steps back out a few moments later, peering his head around the wall.
“How do you take it?” Bucky asks and Steve hasn’t felt so special in a long time.
“Splash of milk and two sugar,” Steve replies automatically because there isn’t an artist in the world who doesn’t thrive on coffee and spite, watching as Bucky disappears once more.
It takes less than ten minutes for Bucky to return and this time he has two cups of coffee with him. He hands Steve his which is pale with the use of milk while Bucky’s is black. The taller man throws himself back onto the couch with a huff.
“Raining hard.” Steve muses, a poor attempt at small talk though Bucky doesn’t seem to notice and that’s when Steve realized it was because he was zoning out, his gaze fixed on a spot on the wall. “Buck?’
Bucky snaps to it when Steve says his name and rubs the back of his neck. “What?” He mutters. “Sorry, zoned out.”
“No worries man,” The blonde says, waving it off. It’s not his place to meddle, but Steve really didn’t like that misty, far-away look in his eyes. “I just said it was raining hard.”
“Yeah,” Bucky agreed with a hum. “Never appreciated rain more until I was in the desert. Seventy to eighty degrees out durin’ the day but got real cold at night.”
–
Bucky doesn’t tell Steve where he was when he zoned out, not worth it. He can feel it lingering in the corners of his mind though. He can just faintly see the dusty mud bricks of low-to-the-ground houses, women walking around a marketplace in their burkas, men bartering over food, scanning every perch for a spotter, praying that the sounds outside your camp are just animals and not some jihad-joe.
“I’d imagine that sucked.” Steve agrees, seemingly just letting Bucky talk and he appreciates it. “At least you had your squad with you.”
“Better to suffer together than alone,” Bucky said with a nod. “Someone told me the military is just bonding over shared trauma.”
Steve chuckles softly and then slams his hand over his mouth like he immediately regrets it.
“It’s alright,” Bucky tries to assure him but even to him it feels hollow. “My boys are part of the only reason I made it through that shit hole.”
Bucky practically sees the lump in Steve’s throat as he tries to come up with words.
“Is that what happened with the…” Steve trails off and gestures to the metal limb vaguely and stiffens when Bucky lets out a sharp laugh.
“Stevie,” He begins with a smirk. “If ‘ya wanted to know about arm you can just ask. It’s a dumb story anyway.”
Steve is silent but looks at him with curious eyes and Bucky takes that as his signal to keep going.
“Me and the guys I told you about were in a Hummer, just tryin’ to do our usual patrol route. We were somewhere in Kamdesh, going to talk to the locals about the weapons cache we found nearby. Well, clearly someone figured out our route. I was driving and took one hand off the wheel to grab a cigarette from my pocket, stressed and all. The second I took my hand off the damn wheel, boom.” Bucky imitates an explosion with his hands. “The thing flips onto its side, and the whole front end of the Hummer is fried, my passenger and I took the brunt of it. Anyway I crawl out of the thing finally, and I don’t even realize it, but my arm is hangin’ on by a thread. Before I can think about it, we’re gettin’ shot at. My doc, Morita, tackles me down behind the flipped Hummer and before I can think about it, cuts the remaining little bit of flesh off with his boot knife, bandages it up, and stabs some morphine into me. One of my other boys hands me my gun and we fight like all hell.”
Steve looked at Bucky like he wanted to throw up, and Bucky couldn’t blame him in the slightest.
“The rest of it is,” Bucky paused, feeling unsure of what to say to explain three months in an Afghani POW camp. “Difficult.”
–
Steve has never felt like more of an asshole for making Bucky think about such a traumatic time. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” He reminded him because Bucky seemed like the type of person to keep that stuff bottled up anyway.
Bucky just nodded.
Steve gave him a small smile in response. “You know, after my mom died I felt like a part of me was missing.” He said, hoping to God that it was the right thing. “It’s not the same as losing a limb, but that feeling of a hole where something is supposed to be, and the pain when you remember it’s not there, it can’t be far off.”
This earned a reluctant smile from the brunette man. “I don’t think that’s far off at all. Sounds about right actually. My mom died when I was young too.”
Steve was shocked, in all the time he’d known him, Bucky hadn’t said a word about his own family.
“She got diagnosed with cancer, died when we were little, me and my sister I mean.”
“That must have been horrible,” Steve murmured, knowing how hollow everything felt when such an important figure in a kid's life was gone.
“It was, still is sometimes.” Bucky mused. “My dad died a few years later.”
Steve felt his heart sink into his stomach. This guy had lost everything. His mom, his dad, his arm, and for a moment Steve thinks, probably a bit of himself too.
“He was in the army, some accident happened and he got hurt,” He explained and Steve couldn’t do much other than let him speak. “My sister got sent off to an all-girls school and a close army friend of my dad took me in.”
“Is that when you decided to enlist?” Steve asks.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Bucky confirms with a nod of his head.
“I’m sorry Buck, that sounds real rough.” He said honestly.
“It’s alright, in the past now.”
Steve nodded, and they both continued to sip their coffee and listen to the rain in silence. Alpine had finished her food and wandered back over, placing her head on Bucky’s knee. Maybe it was just Steve, but he swore he could see an expression of concern on the pure white canine's face.
They stayed like that until their coffee was done and Steve retreated back to his apartment, remembering a commission he needed to finish by the end of the day.
–
Bucky hadn’t moved from his spot on the couch even after Steve left, his whole body feeling like a block of ice now. He didn’t know what to do. Alpine kept trying to get his attention but even that didn’t pull him from his own head. He felt stuffy. Like someone had shoved a wad of cotton in his skull. Finally, he stood.
“Alright Alpine, let’s go. A little rain never hurt anyone, right?” He said to the dog who looked back at him with intelligent blue eyes, knowing the two of them needed the walk.
He made his way over to the door to grab Alpine’s things off of the hooks, but just as he went to remove the leash, a rolling boom of thunder sounded, followed by a crack of lighting across the sky illuminating the shadows of the house, and everything went dark.
Bucky dove for the floor, curling himself under the space between the coffee table and the floor with his back drawn up tense and his arms over his head. Spot flash and wait for boom. Alpine was somewhere nearby, nudging at his hands with her cold nose but Bucky didn’t even think he’d notice it if not for the sake of the temperature difference. His head felt like it was swimming.
“Come on man, I’m telling you. Johnny Cash is great.” Jones is saying as he and Monty fight over the radio in the vehicle.
“Have you heard Iron Maiden man, come on.” He huffs and both he and Dum Dum break out into some horrible rendition of “The Trooper”.
Bucky narrows his eyes and tries to focus on driving. “What kinda music do you like Sarge?” Morita asks and Dernier peers over the seat as if he too is interested.
He has to pause a moment to think. What does he like? “Frank Sinatra.” He decides because it’s true. He was always listening to it with his mom when they’d clean the house on the weekends. He can hear the words in his head now, loud and clear as the day that he first heard it.
“I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet.
A pawn, and a king.
I’ve been up and down and over and out,
And I know one thing.
Each time I find myself flat on my face,
I pick myself up and get,
back in the race.”
Boom.
Boom.
–
Steve is in the middle of the last details of a painting when the power goes out and he groans. It’s too dark out for him to have the proper light to keep working, so he starts to rummage around his apartment for candles, dismayed as he realizes he has none. He decides to ask Bucky. It’s a low chance, but it’s better to ask he assumes. Bucky would be upset if Steve told him he didn’t finish the painting because he couldn’t see and his neighbor would’ve been able to help.
So, after wiping his hands on his jeans because they are already covered in paint anyways, he begins to ascend the creaking steps of the stairwell to the other apartment. He gets to the door when he finds that it's open a crack. Did Bucky leave and forget to close it? He leans to the side to glance out a small window in the stairwell only to see the tail end of Bucky’s truck there, meaning unless he went out with someone else, he was there. However, something tells him he wouldn’t be doing that. He knocks gently.
“Buck? It’s Steve.” He calls out to the darkness. “Was wondering if I could borrow some candles, or an LED light maybe.”
There was no response.
“Bucky?” He called again, a pit of fear pooling in his gut that he tried to ignore. Maybe he was sleeping? But he didn’t think that was likely, a war veteran sleeping at three in the afternoon through a rain storm strong enough to cut the power seemed to not be Bucky’s style.
After a few hesitant moments, he gently opened the door. The room was dark, and Steve narrowed his eyes as he tried to see what was going on. It was then that he was promptly tackled by a large white dog. Alpine. The dog was barking furiously, ears pinned back and if Steve didn’t know better, he’d think that she was about to bite him. The dog then grabbed Steve’s pant leg and practically dragged him into the room. Steve took that as his sign to follow.
Alpine guided him into the living room where Bucky was curled in a fetal position with a pistol tucked close to his chest, the knuckles of his flesh hand white with the effort. Steve swallows thickly and does everything he can to focus on helping Bucky.
“Buck, you with me? I need you to put down the gun.” Steve tries, wincing at the fear in his voice.
Bucky’s head snaps up but he isn’t looking at Steve, rather looking through him.
“Пожалуйста, пожалуйста, не делай мне больно. Оставлять. Я убью тебя.” Steve doesn’t recognize the words but he knows the language is Russian. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan back in 1979, so a lot of the local militias spoke Russian. It’s not a surprise Bucky knows it.
“Buck, it’s me, Steve Rogers. You're in your apartment in New York, it’s storming and the power went out.”
Bucky still looks through him. Steve gets an idea and hates himself for it, but it’s the only thing he can think of to keep both of them safe right now.
“Sergeant Barnes!”
–
Bucky snaps back to his senses, eyes darting around frantically when they lock on a concerned blond boy.
“Steve?” He mutters, rubbing the back of his head. “What happened?”
“I don’t know, the power went out so I came up here to ask for some candles or something and Alpine led me to you having a panic attack on the floor.”
Bucky didn’t say anything for a moment, his brain trying to catch up. He remembered now, getting ready to take Alpine on a walk, thunder, lightning, and then blacking out.
“Shit Steve, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay Bucky, I’m just glad you're safe.”
Steve lays a hand over his metal one and Bucky can’t help but flinch, immediately grimacing at the wounded look on Steve’s face.
“You should come to my apartment with me, change of scenery.” Steve offers. “Might make you feel a little better. I don’t think you should be alone right now.”
The blond visibly shrinks back at what Bucky comes to realize is a withering glare.
“Steve, I think you should leave.” He grumbles.
“What?” Steve seems bewildered. “Buck you clearly need–”
“Steve, go.”
“But–”
“I said leave, now.”
“Okay, Buck.”
A door closes.