Chapter 4
Steve grins, holding up a bag.
“My man,” says Sam.
The two of them laugh about how they deserve a night in, and quickly turn on the TV. It’s lighthearted and fun and for a second Bucky thinks that this is how people should feel, comfortable and surrounded by friends and laughter.
“Pot?” asks Bucky, eyeing the green flower.
“You ever smoked before?” Sam asks. Bucky shakes his head.
“It’s alright, Buck, you don’t have to,” Steve assures, reminded of Bucky’s panic attack after their night of drinking.
“But you can,” Sam whistles, shooting him a grin.
—
Sam rolls a joint and they turn on the TV. The sun has just set, and the sky outside darkens quickly, but the lamps in the Airbnb are cozy and warm and Bucky gets a rare sense of safety.
The three of them banter through a few episodes of Jeopardy before Steve pulls out a lighter. Bucky wonders how many times he’s smoked before.
Sam takes a draw and then instinctively holds the joint out towards Bucky.
“You don’t have to,” Steve reminds him, and Bucky looks up.
“I know,” Bucky says, and takes the joint from Sam.
Steve nods, then their attention is shifted back to the television. He takes a pull, and his exhale is immediately followed by a cough; the smoke was rougher than he expected.
Sam chuckles and hands him a glass of water.
They puff and pass for a while, until the joint’s almost out, and Bucky starts to get this fuzzy, warm feeling. He sits back, wondering why he never tried this before.
“I feel like gonna sink into the couch,” he says, tilting his head back.
Steve sighs. “Me too.”
Bucky watches the episode of Jeopardy, and his brain is moving slower than he’s used to and suddenly, he’s very impressed by the contestants.
“How do they know so much?” He mumbles.
“Wish I knew,” says Sam.
“It’s a different kind of brain,” agrees Steve. “I’ve lived much longer than them and I only know a fraction of what they know.”
It’s true, Bucky thinks. The two of them have lived much longer than anybody else, but he realizes he actually knows so little of what the world has to offer. He’d be lying if he said that didn’t give him a weird feeling.
He knows he’s pretty high right now, and tries to direct his focus towards his friends chattering beside him or the TV in front of him, but his thoughts seem to scatter. He doesn’t really mind, and he’s actually feeling tired so he shuts his eyes.
For some reason, the drug makes his limbs feel heavier, and he leans into the feeling, and thinks that he finally understands what a body high is.
He becomes hyper aware of his hands and feet, the way they feel heavy and weighed down.
There’s an obvious weight difference between his left arm and right arm, and he turns them over. His left one suddenly feels so hollow, like it wasn’t even there at all, and when he looks down at the metal weapon shaped like a human arm, his stomach starts to sink.
He never really had ghost pains of his missing limb, when the truncated nerve endings get confused and sent false information to the brain. At least, he doesn’t remember having ghost pains, but to be fair, his memories of the years right after his fall from the train are blurry at best.
From what he can remember, when the Russians put a metal arm on him, it didn’t feel all that strange. He also didn’t have much time to dwell on it.
But here, as he sinks into the couch, he can’t focus on anything except the hollowness, like his arm isn’t really a part of him. This is not how his body is supposed to feel.
He moves his metal fingers.
They aren’t his. They never were.
“What the fuck,” he breathes, pulling his fingers in to form a fist. He compares it to his right hand, unable to shift his thoughts away from the blaring difference between the two.
His heart beats a little harder.
“You good?” Asks Sam, not moving his eyes from the screen.
“Uh,” Bucky breathes. “Don’t know.”
“Bucky? You okay?” Steve chimes in, from the other side of Sam, and Bucky swallows.
“This feels weird,” he says, words sticky in his mouth.
“Hm?”
“My— my arm. It doesn’t feel right.”
“Your arm?”
Bucky opens his metal palm at the same time as his normal one, and it sends a dull sweat up his spine.
His heart pounds harder. He takes a shaky breath and then pushes himself off the couch. He just needs to walk around, that’s all, he tells himself, but he can’t stop flexing his hands, feeding into the spiral.
“What’s wrong?” Steve’s voice echoes.
“It feels fucking different,“ he mutters. “I don’t know. It’s freaking me out.”
“What, the metal arm?” Asks Sam, looking at Bucky and then back at Steve.
“Yeah, the metal arm,” Bucky breathes.
“It’s okay,” Steve assures. “You’re fine, don’t worry.”
“I’m like, messed up in the head, or something,” Bucky mutters, pacing. “I don’t know why I feel like this.”
Steve and Sam exchange a nervous look.
“Don’t focus on it,” Steve suggests.
Bucky glances up at the TV, but that trickle of sweat up his spine is becoming relentless. His heart still pounds, and he thinks if he looks down he’ll see it shaking his t-shirt.
“Shit,” he curses, rubbing his right hand across his face, left metal arm resting stiffly by his side as he tries not to move it. If he doesn’t move it, at almost feels normal. He turns, looking around for something to pull him away from this.
“Come watch,” Steve repeats. He’s high, but not high enough to ignore the way that Bucky paces nervously across the room. “Don’t think about it, you’ll feel better.”
“Can’t,” Bucky chokes, and Steve looks up to find him facing away from them, leaning against the kitchen counter.
“A walk could help,” Sam whispers to Steve.
Fresh air would be good.
Steve gets up, making his way towards Bucky, whose frame is now hunched over the counter, left arm limp by his side as his face presses into the crook of his right arm. His back rises and falls quickly.
“Hey,” Steve murmurs. “You need to— you need to clear your head.”
Bucky doesn’t move or say anything for a minute. Jeopardy plays in the background.
“I think I’m— it’s another anxiety attack,” he says, voice low and shaky.
“I know. Look, nothing’s wrong,” Steve promises. “I know of a good distraction.”
“What?”
“Let’s go for a walk,” he suggests. “Just around the neighborhood. It’s still warm out. It’ll be nice.”
Bucky can’t look up, not wanting to move in case the nauseating static comes back. So he stays there, head down, wind whistling in and out of his lungs as Steve stands behind him.
“Come on, Bucky,” Steve murmurs. “It’s going to be fine.”
“I don’t know why this is happening,” Bucky chokes. “But it— it doesn’t— it feels off.”
Steve watches the spiral unfold. He doesn’t personally understand this kind of pain, of crushing anxiety and numb limbs, but as he watches Bucky struggle for air he gets a wave of empathy. For a second, he can feel the pain and panic that Bucky does.
“Shit,” Steve mutters, hand pressed to his heart. Anxiety is white-hot and all-consuming, and in that moment Steve feels for Bucky and the trauma he’s had to endure.
“Hey, Buck,” he says, stepping closer. He puts a hand on his back, leaning forward until he rests an elbow on the counter next to Bucky.
He rubs his thumb in a small circle into his back, and Bucky seems to relax at the repetitive movement. He doesn’t lift his head up, though.
“This isn’t fair, what you have to go through.” Steve swallows. “But it’s okay.”
Bucky’s less frantic now, but the anxiety still buzzes like bees in his stomach. Finally, he lifts his head. His eyes are red-rimmed and tired, but when he turns to Steve he feels the buzzing recede, if only a little bit.
“I’ll take you up on that walk.”
—
Sometimes, when he smokes, Steve can zoom out. They walk the dimly-lit residential street in Cape Cod, South Africa and Steve’s suddenly in awe of how big this world is, and little of it people really get to understand. Everybody is always wrapped up in their own corner of this planet, but when he’s zoomed out like this he can see that none of those small details that he worries about are as important as they seem.
Speaking of worries.
“How are you doing?” He asks Bucky, who’s a step ahead of him.
“Okay,” Bucky answers.
Steve hates being so helpless. He wants to be able to take control, but he doesn’t know the answers to Bucky’s problems. He starts to think that maybe he’d travel the world— the galaxy— if it meant that he could find the cure to Bucky’s disease.
Because that’s what this is, right? A disease?
It’s a sickness in the head, the way he’s like a prisoner to the anxiety and everything else that haunts him. But they both know that this sickness doesn’t have a cure-all.
They find a bench that faces a patch of forest. Through the trees, they can see the glittering lights of the city of Cape Town as it sparkles along the coastline. The air is warm, as it’s summer in the Southern hemisphere, and the breeze is light. It’s a beautiful night.
For a while, Bucky sits there with his head in his hands, forcing his chest to rise and fall slowly. He counts his breaths in time, carefully and methodically, until his head eventually clears of the clouds and static.
Steve looks to his right.
He watches as Bucky bends each finger, synchronized perfectly on both hands, and Steve’s suddenly convinced that this Wakandan metal is made of magic.
“You know, I still don’t know how this works,” Bucky murmurs. Steve is glad to hear his voice steady. “I— I never really had the time to think much into it. And then I just got used to it.”
Steve stays quiet.
Bucky sighs, looking up through the trees. “But I know it’ll never feel the same. Usually it’s fine, but for some reason today it just messed with my head. Sorry.”
“I mean, I get it,” Steve responds. “I don’t blame you.”
“Yeah.”
They sit there in quiet for a bit.
“I think we should go to a trivia night,” says Steve finally.
“Why?” asks Bucky, quiet but amused. “So we can get better at jeopardy?”
“Yeah.”
“Make up for all the lost years of information?”
“Something like that,” Steve answers, grinning down.
Bucky bites his cheek, watching the lights blur together through his marijuana haze, and he realizes he actually feels kind of hopeful. Sure, his arm doesn’t quite feel right, but now it doesn’t bother him.
“Sorry,” he says to Steve. “I’m sorry about that. I’m okay.”
Steve doesn’t say anything for a minute. “What you have to deal with, it’s— it’s a lot,” he says finally. “It’s a lot, and Sam and I get it, okay?”
Bucky swallows.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is… you don’t have to apologize. Not to me, not for any of this.” Steve looks down at his shoes, and the lump in Bucky’s throat swells.
This time, it’s not from the darkness on the inside, but from the glimpse of light on the outside.
—
“That happens a lot?” Sam asks, after Bucky goes to bed.
“What?” Steve says, distracted, looking at his phone.
“Bucky having those— those anxiety things?”
“Oh. Yeah. He’s having a hard time.”
Sam chews on his cheek.
“It’s going to catch up to him,” he warns, giving Steve a look. “You know that, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Anxiety and depression, they go hand in hand.”
Steve takes another look down at his phone before turning it off and putting it by his side. He sighs.
“I’m really trying to help,” he says.
“I’m sure you are, but this can get bigger than you.” Sam gives Steve a look. “I worked at the VA. I’ve seen so many cases, and Bucky’s makes me nervous.”
“Okay.”
“Living with that much fear, it does something to people. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Okay,” Steve mutters, frustration growing. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“I’m not trying to blame you, I’m just worried. He seems so low, that’s all.”
“You think I can’t see that?” Steve sighs, exasperated.
“I don’t mean you’re doing anything wrong.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t have to be defensive.”
“This isn’t helping anybody, Sam,” Steve mutters. He picks up his phone.
“Steve, this is serious. You have to watch out for him.”
Nerves and frustration tangle in Steve’s stomach. “Why was this a good idea? Bringing this up?”
“What, depression?”
Steve nods, glaring at his phone, refusing to look up.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve been living with him for months, and I don’t know if I’ve seen him not depressed, okay? And— and you, saying that it could get worse, it really fucking stresses me out. Because I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Sam stares for a second, shocked by the outburst but more shocked by the fear that drips from Steve’s words.
“Look, I’m not trying to scare you, I’m just telling you what I’ve seen—“
“Sam,” Steve warns.
“When soldiers have PTSD like this, when it’s this severe, it takes a toll.”
After a while of silence, Sam gets up from the couch, taking a look at his watch.
He leaves Steve alone in the living room, weed wearing off as his fears pile miles high above his head.