Bucky had more or less come to terms with the fact that he was kind of fucked up.
He’d been assured by a lot of people- some professionals, some friends- that given all he’d been through, what he’d suffered, it was completely normal that he’d have some lingering issues.
He knew he was at risk for flashbacks, and was getting better at avoiding triggers. The problem was, he was working through 70 years of hell, and while some of it had been understandably traumatizing, there were still some triggers that were just completely unpredictable. They knew to keep him away from war films, from anything involving electrocution, loud noises or sudden movement. But his mind was a minefield, and he never knew what small, mundane thing might set him off. The big triggers were relatively easy to prepare for; the smaller ones, not so much.
During his recovery, he’d learned to be wary of pistachio ice cream, the smoke from certain cigarette brands (but not others), blue umbrellas, and granola with raisins (without was fine). He didn’t always have context for why something was a trigger, just that the flashback would hit him like a truck, rushed images flying past his mind’s eye, snatches of sound, and he’d come back to the present shaking, sweating, unsure briefly of where he was, or in the worst cases, who he was.
This time, it was the lingering smell of black licorice. The smell overwhelmed him, cresting over him like a wave and pulling him under. Flashes of dark, poured-cement walls, leaking cold rivulets of water down the sides. Rough cement underneath him, no clothing between him and the floor. Yelling, words in Russian, though he wasn’t coherent enough to grab them and figure out what they were saying. The words slid by him, just out of reach, and he let them go; he probably didn’t want to know what they’d been yelling, anyway. Eventually it faded, the world coming back in blinks. He opened his eyes, he was in the cement room. Blink, and he was somewhere else, somewhere warmer, softer. No cold cement here, no one yelling in Russian. After another minute, he realized there was a voice nearby, speaking in a quiet, soothing tone, in English.
“-and ya know, I can never turn down my nana’s bread pudding, so I went on ahead and had some, even though I was ready to burst already. You’d think somebody would’ve told her that a man can only eat so much, but she was having none of that- oh, hey. You back with me?”
Bucky blinked a few times, clearing his eyes enough to see the shape of Sam, sitting on the floor across the kitchen, his back leaned up against a cabinet door. Bucky’s awareness of his body started to filter back in- he was hunched over on his knees, arms up, protecting his head. His knees ached, and he wondered how long he’d been out this time. He hummed, acknowledgement that he’d heard Sam.
“That’s great, buddy. You know where you are?”
“Tower kitchen. On the floor.”
Sam snorted in amusement. “Yeah, that’s close enough. Any idea what set you off?”
Bucky had to take a few deep breaths to be able to get the words out. Even saying them made him queasy, though he didn’t know why. “Smell. Black licorice.”
Sam hmmed, nodding. “Yeah, that one’s on Clint. He raided the snack cabinet earlier before heading to watch a movie. Want me to check the cabinet for you?”
Bucky let his eyes slide shut and nodded, curling down to let his forehead rest on the cool tile of the floor. He could hear Sam get up and move to the cabinet that routinely got stocked with a wide array of snacks- cookies, candies, crackers. There was a rustling of packages, then the cabinet closing again, and the soft thud of Sam sitting down again, though closer to Bucky this time.
“All gone, Buckster. JARVIS?”
“Yes, Sam?”
“Can we please make a note in the grocery order to exclude any black licorice from future orders for the main kitchen?”
“Of course. I’ll make the note for the next order.”
“Thanks, J.”
“You are quite welcome, Sam.”
“How-” Bucky coughed, his throat dry. He cleared his throat and tried again. “How’d you get him to call you by your first name?”
Bucky could hear the smile in Sam’s voice when he answered. “He likes me best, that’s why.”
Bucky huffed, not quite a laugh, and pushed himself up and over so he was sitting on his ass, back up against the center island of the kitchen. He gently thunked his head back against the island, cracking his eyes open. “That sucked.”
“Yeah it did.” Sam rolled a bottle of water across the floor so that it came to rest against Bucky’s thigh. He picked it up and opened it, taking a sip. The cool water was soothing on his throat, and after a few more sips, he could feel his mind starting to clear.
“You wanna talk about it?”
Bucky shrugged, looking down at his hands and rolling the water bottle back and forth, listening to the label crinkle. “I mean, it wasn’t anything too terrible. I think it was in Russia, probably one of the outposts. The whole ‘deep, damp, dark hole’ type place. Lotsa yelling.” Sam nodded at him to go on. “Didn’t remember anything really awful, though. Don’t know why I got a whole flashback out of it.”
Sam was quiet a moment before he spoke; Bucky appreciated that Sam gave consideration to what he was going to say before he said it. The thoughtfulness was nice.
“You know, just because you don’t remember something bad happening, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Your body still remembers, and even if it’s buried a little, on some level your mind still remembers, too. And don’t pull any of that ‘it wasn’t super bad so why am I reacting to it’ nonsense with me, I know you know better. Everyone’s scale for ‘that bad’ is different, and yours is scaled up higher than most people’s. Even then, it’s not a competition, even, and especially, against yourself, about whether something was bad enough to react to. You’re allowed to react to anything and everything they did to you. You’re allowed to feel how you gotta feel about what happened. That’s part of the healing process. Sure, there are some ways to cope that are healthier than others, but I don’t wanna hear you saying that something wasn’t bad enough to warrant a reaction. Cause we both know that’s straight up bullshit.”
Bucky nodded, a small smile pulling up at the corner of his mouth. “When did you get so smart, Wilson?”
“It’s part of the whole Falcon Deluxe package, my man. Good looks, great brain, and more flying skill than you can shake a stick at.”
Bucky snorted. “Yeah, yeah.”
Sam pushed himself up off the floor and stretched with a groan, his back popping as he twisted. “I should not sit on the floor for that long, though, damn.”
Bucky rolled gracefully up to his feet, smiling at Sam’s playful scowl. “It’s ‘cause you’re old.”
“Old my ass, you ungrateful geezer. You wanna go hit things til you feel better?”
“Yeah, that...that sounds good.”
Bucky was still kind of fucked up, and likely would be for the foreseeable future, but the warm feeling in his chest as Sam heckled him from the sidelines of the training ring helped get rid of the last of the remembered chill, and he thought he might end up okay anyway.