Chapter Text
He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus
But he talks like a gentleman
Like you imagined when you were young
— “When You Were Young,” The Killers
-- -- --
He woke panicking, chest heaving, listening to the echo of his shout fade along with the nightmare it had accompanied. He was on his feet before he fully realized what he was doing, mind blurred with sleep, staring at the ragged remains of his shirt where he’d torn it apart in his sleep. He dropped it on the floor and stood beside it, staring at his hands, his shaking hands, confused, chilled from the sweat beginning to dry on his skin. He was still standing there perhaps twenty seconds later when his door opened. Bucky heard his name die in Steve’s mouth. He heard the ragged inhale that meant Steve had seen. He made an aborted movement to turn, to cover himself, but of course it was too late. Steve was staring at him with his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth slightly open and fuck, fuck, this was bad.
“Steve — ”
“Buck, what — ” Steve stepped forward, one hand outstretched towards Bucky’s shoulders. He flicked on the overhead light despite Bucky already had on the (much dimmer, more nighttime-appropriate) floor lamp beside his bed. In the sheer sudden glare which followed there was no mistaking the raw ugly nakedness of the moment: Bucky, bare-chested in front of Steve for the first time since 1945, his arm whirring quietly at his side, his shredded tee on the floor — and the scars lancing his back.
It had been four days since Rumlow whipped him. Just four days. Bucky had thought there wouldn’t be an issue with hiding it from Steve, because Steve never saw him naked. The scars were mostly healed, anyway; just thin whitish lines remained striped across his shoulders and spine and ribs. The skin around them was pinkish and shiny and in another two days or so it would fade into something kind of resembling a sunburn, and from there into nothing. If Bucky could’ve just held off the nightmare for at least a week —
— but he’d screamed. Like a stupid, weak idiot with no control over himself, his brain, his mouth… He couldn’t even remember what he’d dreamed anymore. Probably the same standard nightmare he’d had weekly since leaving Hydra. Nothing new, nothing out of the ordinary. So why couldn’t he handle it?
“ — find whoever the fuck did this and — ” That was Steve. Steve was talking in his righteous controlled fury voice, the one that brooked no arguments, the one that meant someone, somewhere, was about to get their ass handed to them. Bucky really didn’t know how to deal with it when he was like this: half-awake still, feeling the threads of panic slowly receding as his confused brain tried to catch itself up to where he was now in the overbright room with Steve and the door wide open and Steve yelling, kind of, and his shirt was off and he was scarred and it could’ve stayed a secret, why hadn’t he locked his fucking door, why had he ripped the shirt up in his sleep, why —
“Bucky,” Steve said. It occurred to Bucky he’d been saying his name for some time. His face was doing a lot of things, sad and scared and concerned and furious all at once. Bucky couldn’t look. He wanted to fold his arms across his chest, but he thought that might make things worse, because folded arms could be seen as aggressive or defensive and the last thing Bucky needed Steve to think right now — on top of everything else — was that he was getting defensive. So he focused on his arms swinging at his sides, the weight of his hands by his hips. He held Steve’s gaze.
“Who did this?” Steve asked, gesturing.
Bucky bit his lip. The only one he thought had a real chance of permanently scarring was the searing welt Rumlow had broken open three times. It was deeper than the others and had taken the longest to heal. Even now it was still a little bruised and reddish looking, standing out starkly from the other pale thin lines. The tip of it was just reachable if Bucky twisted his arm a little awkwardly, and he’d caught himself touching it in the shower, metal thumb lingering over the ridged heated skin longer than it needed to, or looking at it after in the mirror once the steam had cleared. It ran from his right shoulder to just below the left side of his ribs. If Rumlow had cut another line across it he would have made an X.
“Buck, I’m not mad at you,” Steve said quietly. “I just — what the hell’s going on here?”
“They’re old, Steve,” Bucky mumbled to his feet. “Dunno who — ”
“Bullshit,” Steve snapped, and Bucky jerked his eyes back up. “We don’t scar unless it’s gone bone deep — ”
“So maybe all of them went bone fucking deep — ”
“Then why does only one look fresh, Buck? How come all the others are fading except that one that’s just bright fucking red?”
“Fuck’s sake, I don’t know,” Bucky said. His heart was starting to lurch behind his ribs. He wished Steve would just leave him alone. They never shared a room and part of it was because Bucky disliked sleeping in the same room as anyone else but most of it was for this shit. These whip scars weren’t the first or only mark Rumlow had ever left on him that stayed for more than a few hours. And of course Steve had always respected Bucky’s privacy because he was just Like That, and of course Bucky knew how Steve must really feel about it — how could he not, the way Steve looked at him sometimes — and of course Bucky couldn’t tell Steve to fuck off because he couldn’t say no and he couldn’t lie like this, he was a fucking terrible liar —
“Did someone hurt you recently?” Steve asked. He’d said he wasn’t angry at Bucky but his voice was starting to hit a different pitch from earlier. “Fine, if the fresh one’s the only recent one. Fine. But it still means someone fucking took a strap to you, or, or — ” He took another step, moving smoothly around Bucky before he could stop him. He started to reach out; stopped. Quietly, like he was trying to salvage some lost moment, he asked,
“Can I touch it?”
Bucky shrugged. “Sure,” he said, because what the hell else was he going to say. He wasn’t even sure why Steve had bothered asking.
He felt Steve’s fingers move over the edges of the gash momentarily. Then Steve was back in front of him, and there was something else in his face now, something Bucky couldn’t read. It thrilled up from the base of his spine, bad metallic taste in his mouth.
When he was still working with the Soviets they’d wanted him to be part of the Chernobyl reactor explosion. They’d run experiments in isolated labs to see if the serum would allow him to take radiation. The rule had been if he tasted metal for more than two minutes he had to ring a bell that would let them know, and they’d get him out. He’d ended up in America shortly before the actual event because Hydra had decided — for once — that they couldn’t risk his safety. When Pierce found out he’d had the cryochamber refitted with lead and kept the asset stowed away for a while because he was scared there might be residual effects. There weren’t, but sometimes when Bucky got really stressed, or upset, or angry, he still tasted metal, even now, over thirty years later.
Steve said, “It looks like a whip mark, Buck,” and he said, “What the hell’s been going on?”
“Nothing,” Bucky said. He was starting to shake; he folded his arms. “I told you I don’t know where they’re from.” It was so hard to lie. It was so much easier when Steve just didn’t ask questions and Bucky was able to keep his mouth shut and not say anything at all.
Steve drew in a breath and let it out like he was counting down in his head. He reached out again, and it was too much. The metallic taste hadn’t gone away, and Bucky was afraid he’d be sick. He stepped back, and a flash of hurt crossed Steve’s face. The worst part of it was Bucky didn’t think Steve was even aware he’d let it show. Steve tried just as hard as Bucky to lie, to keep his real feelings buried. The difference was Steve was doing it to protect Bucky, even though Bucky could see right through him most of the time.
Bucky just lied because it was easier than trying to let the two halves of his life come together. Or rather, it was because it was easier than choosing between the two halves of his life. There was no way he would be able to have both if Steve ever found out what was going on.
He wasn’t being good. He was a terrible, horrible person. He was hurting Steve and it was hard enough to think of that when he wasn’t in the asset’s mindset, or when he wasn’t standing here in his bedroom, the searing overhead lights confusing his still half-awake brain, feeling dizzy and caught off guard, out of control with his mouth moving long before his mind could catch up and hear what he’d said.
He wasn’t supposed to ever hurt his handlers. He wasn’t supposed to think of Steve as a handler, but Steve was something like a handler. He gave (terrible) orders which weren’t really orders, and he was in charge even if he said the Avengers didn’t function like that with a single person in charge. Steve was the closest thing Bucky had to a handler here and Bucky was upsetting him and he was being so, so bad, and Steve had seen the markings and Steve had asked to touch Bucky already and Bucky had allowed it, and then he hadn’t. He wasn’t supposed to do that; it was inconsistent. He wasn’t supposed to give his permission for anything. If Steve wanted to touch him he should be allowed to and Bucky was bad, Steve should punish him but he’d told Bucky years ago he would never, ever punish him, even if Bucky begged, even if he fucked up, even if he upset Steve, even —
“Buck,” Steve was saying, in his most quiet, calming voice, the one that made Bucky’s skin crawl, which then meant further revulsion at himself, because he wasn’t supposed to feel disgust over something Steve was doing to or for him. “I can’t help you if — ”
“I don’t want your help,” Bucky snapped. His shoulders were so tense. He was going to fly apart if he relaxed any of his muscles, even for a second. “I don’t want — fuck, Steve, can’t you just leave it alone?”
“Of course I fucking can’t leave it alone, Bucky,” Steve snapped back. The expression on his face was caught somewhere between exasperation and fear, and it sliced further into Bucky’s heart. He was being bad. Every second he spent standing here was just driving the nail further and further into his skin. He’d upset Steve, and he’d let Steve see something that wasn’t Steve’s business, something that belonged to Rumlow, and he was going to be in so much trouble, he —
“ — walking around with scars on your back,” Steve was saying, his voice getting louder in the bright bright small hot room, “when you’re not even supposed to scar, when you haven’t let me touch you in years, and you’re lying to me about where you got them and you expect me to just — ”
“Get out,” Bucky said. He hadn’t meant to say it, but once it was out it was out. It hung in the air between them like a gunshot, ugly, flayed open. Steve’s mouth shut all at once, and he blinked.
“I’m not gonna — ”
“I said get out, Steve,” Bucky said again, and now it was him who was getting louder. He so rarely raised his voice that it sounded shattered in the stillness, broken apart. “Get out of my room right now.”
Steve was looking at Bucky like he’d never seen him before. “Bucky, whatever the hell you’re — ”
“Get the fuck out of here!” Bucky screamed, and he grabbed Steve’s shoulder and shoved him across the threshold. Steve lunged at the door and Bucky slammed it in his face. The sound of the wood smacking together rang in the silence.
Bucky twisted the lock on the doorknob and ran to grab his pants. He fished his phone out of the pocket — hands shaking — and tried to call up his contacts. But the phone wouldn’t let him. He was jabbing at the list frantically with his thumb and it just kept showing him a static gray screen. After five seconds Jarvis’ voice came calmly through the speakers in the walls:
“I am sorry, Sergeant Barnes. I have been instructed by Captain Rogers to disable your phone until further notice.”
Bucky’s stomach dropped, deep swooping panic. His eyes darted wildly around the room. He thought he was crying, but he couldn’t be sure; his face was numb. “Undo,” he said, shouted; his voice was still overloud, he couldn’t seem to turn it off. “Undo, Jarvis, please, please I need the Co- I need my phone please — ”
“I have been ordered to initiate the protocols which prevent your regression and return to Hydra,” Jarvis said. “These protocols can be initiated by any of Mr. Stark’s houseguests, excluding yourself — ”
“I want to override it please — ”
“The full use of your phone will be returned to you when Captain Rogers says it is allowed.”
Jarvis wasn’t physical. Tony had always been clear on that point back when he was explaining him to Bucky the first time. But Bucky punched the wall anyway. “Give it back!” he screamed. Tantrum, bad, bad, acting out bad wrong sick restrain him volatile unstable —
Somewhere deep in his head Alexander Pierce was saying, You really must settle down and get control of yourself, and then it was Jarvis’ voice, and it was Jarvis saying it, saying,
“Sergeant Barnes — ”
Soldier —
“ — if you continue to damage the property — ”
— if you cause physical damage to Hydra property —
“ — I will be forced to subdue you,”
but he was too far gone to care, system overload, malfunctioning. He dropped his phone on the ground and aimed another punch at the wall, metal hand this time. He thought if he just hit it hard enough he’d bust through and then he could scale the wall, he was good at that, he could get out of here get out go go go —
He was tensing his arm up for a third hit when the air vents in his room closed and something hissed out through the ceiling. Bucky went completely still, stunned; he tried to shout Steve’s name, overwhelmed, betrayed, but his lungs seized, and he fell unconscious to the floor.
--
He woke face-planted in a disgusting sticky puddle of his own drool. At some juncture Steve must have gotten Jarvis to unlock the door so he could come back inside, because there was a pillow under Bucky’s head and a blanket draped over his back. Bucky could feel the cool heavy weight of the fabric against his scars as he stretched and shifted.
— his scars —
He sat bolt upright; chest suddenly heaving. The residual panic from the night previous soaked into his brain. The sky was burning blue outside; it was the middle of the day. Instinctively Bucky reached for his phone before he remembered, but he couldn’t help picking it up again anyway. Just to hold onto it.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant Barnes,” Jarvis said. He sounded just as calm as he had last night when he’d fucking knocked Bucky out. “Shall I inform Captain Rogers you’re awake?”
Bucky drew in breath to say no, but it caught in his throat. In the pause Jarvis added, “Captain Rogers is already on this floor, and has no plans to leave it until he sees you are stable.”
Of fucking course he doesn’t, Bucky thought. He started to curl his hand into a fist before he remembered that was what had gotten him in trouble last night. Instead he flexed it against the floor, listening to the quiet sound of recalibration. Maybe if he let Steve see him now he could get this over with faster, or something. To that effect: “Sure, Jarvis,” he said, and Jarvis said his usual very good, sir, and then it was quiet.
Bucky pushed himself off the floor. He discovered he was still clutching his phone, but what difference did it make? If Steve was smart enough to have disabled it there was no point in trying to hide that he wanted it on his person. He set it down long enough to pull on a t-shirt, then sat on the edge of his bed, tucking his right foot under his left knee, as the door opened.
Steve looked like he hadn’t slept much or maybe at all. Bucky watched Steve watching him from the doorway; momentarily Steve walked all the way into the room, coming to a stop just before the bed.
“Can I sit?” he asked.
No, Bucky thought.
“Yeah,” Bucky said, and Steve lowered himself onto the mattress. He was looking at Bucky’s left shoulder, for some reason. His mouth was set in a tight determined line that echoed back through the decades. Bucky had seen variations of that look ever since 1924, when some third grade asshole had tried taking Steve’s crayons — they were in first grade at the time — and Steve (who must have weighed all of about thirty pounds) said furiously, No, they’re mine. Bucky had been the kid the teacher had asked to take Steve to the nurse after the inevitable scuffle. Bucky had told Steve he should’ve just let the other kid have his crayons to make it easier. The resultant glower he’d received had stayed burned into his seven-year-old brain for some days. He’d been surprised the following afternoon when Steve offered him one of his cookies during snack time.
“So,” Steve said, after a painful silence. “Last night was — ”
“I’m still not gonna tell you anything,” Bucky blurted. His metal hand was clenched around his knee. Last night’s panic was tightening coils in his chest and throat. Don’t interrupt your handlers, ever, for any reason. It was one of the hardest habits to shake as Bucky Barnes, especially around the Avengers, who were generally talking over and around each other pretty much constantly. Bucky had been a quiet person even before Hydra. Now if there was a conversation going between him and more than one person he tended not to talk at all. When he did interrupt it was rare, and it made his stomach clench unpleasantly. Like now.
Steve raised his eyebrows. “I wasn’t going to ask,” he said.
Bucky scoffed.
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry I upset you,” Steve said.
Bucky blinked at him.
“And I’m sorry for what Jarvis did,” Steve said. “That, that protocol Tony instated when you moved in… he just wanted to be thorough. Jarvis was just — ”
— he paused, wincing a little, and Bucky could tell he wasn’t supposed to have noticed —
“ — just following orders,” he finished after a moment, and Bucky nodded, slowly.
“All I want is for you to be comfortable,” Steve said. “I know it’s not always easy — but you know I’m here, right? You know you can talk to me about anything — whatever you want.”
In 2015, just shy of a year after Bucky had left Hydra, and somewhere around eight months since he’d come to live at the tower with Steve and Steve’s friends, he’d tried asking Steve for what he needed. He’d been having a lot of trouble making decisions — things he still struggled with sometimes now, though he’d learned to hide it better — and he’d asked Steve to tell him what to do. Sure, Buck, Steve had said, though he’d sounded confused about it. Sure, I can tell you what to do. When, uh — when would you want it?
For everything, Bucky said. What to eat. What to wear. I can’t — Steve, it’s too hard to think about those things.
He’d seen Steve’s face shutter off even before he said, You told me your therapists want you working on that stuff yourself.
Yeah, but they don’t have to know everything, right? Bucky tried to smile around the widening chasm in his stomach. You c- you can — if I do something wrong, you can even, uh. You could punish me.
Steve looked like he was trying really, really hard not to make a certain expression. You want me to, to punish you?
Yeah, if — if you told me to use a fork, and I used a spoon instead… It was hard for Bucky to say it because it was a fucking terrible example, but he was trying to keep it as tame as possible for Steve’s sake, rather than saying what he’d really wanted (at the time) which was for him to go fuck around with someone else in the tower and for Steve to “catch” him at it. Still, the fork/spoon thing could’ve worked — and then you could, um, spank me —
— he wanted to ask Steve to take his belt to him, or some other form of a strap, like their parents might have when they were kids, but Steve’s face, Bucky couldn’t —
— or if you wanted you could just, you could take me in your room and, and force me —
Buck, no, Steve had said, and there was no hiding that expression anymore: he was horrified. Sick. Bucky was sick and broken and Steve hadn’t realized the extent of it until then. I’m not going to use sex as punishment — I’m never going to punish you, period! That was when he’d told him the terrible thing. Even if Bucky fucked up bad, he wouldn’t be punished. Even if Bucky hurt Steve, or one of Steve’s friends. It had settled down in his throat and he’d started crying, unable to stop himself, weak, stupid, sick —
Steve had thought — because of course he had — that Bucky was crying because he was overwhelmed by Steve’s kindness. He’d asked Bucky if he could hug him and Bucky had nodded yes because if Steve was holding onto him Bucky couldn’t punch his stupid perfect mouth like he wanted to. He’d spent some months after that conversation feeling increasingly like he was falling into himself, like the floor was opening up under him and there was no guarantee the next time he put his foot down there would be solid ground to meet it. He tried to think of Steve’s refusal to punish him or make his choices as a type of punishment in and of itself, but it wasn’t the same. He was still having panic attacks over whether to wear red or blue when Rumlow came back unexpectedly into his life.
Now, sitting on his bed with Steve in the early afternoon, Bucky thought what a pretty sentiment it was for Steve to say he could talk to him about anything. It certainly wasn’t true, and it hadn’t been even prior to the war. Steve liked to see what he wanted, and to ignore whatever he hadn’t already sanctioned in his head as fact. And he liked to have discussions where the main point was something he (Steve) already agreed with.
He didn’t want the Bucky he was talking to right now. He wanted the Bucky from the forties, the Bucky who had died in the fall from the train. He might have shoved that Bucky around a little if he’d asked; it wouldn’t have meant the same thing, and Steve wouldn’t have had this weird moral dilemma about it. But that Bucky hadn’t wanted it, not like this, not this intensely. Not for these reasons.
If he was a better person he supposed he would feel guilty about all of it: the lying, the underhandedness, the need, the ache that never went away unless he was with Rumlow. He would try harder to be who Steve wanted and he would give into this intervention Steve was staging now. He would dredge up a smile. He would let Steve touch him, fuck him.
— hell, if Steve wasn’t a better person he would’ve already fucked him years ago. If nothing else he could’ve done it last night, just grabbed Bucky around the waist and thrown him to the floor, railed into him, scraped his nails over the whip scars, claiming his territory, a carnal fuck-you to whoever had marked Bucky up like that. Bucky wouldn’t have said no, because he never said no, and then maybe Steve would’ve walked away feeling more in control and less like Bucky was disobeying him, and Bucky would’ve been (somewhat) sufficiently punished, and they wouldn’t be sitting here right now not-talking; Bucky would still have access to his fucking phone —
“Buck?” Steve said, and Bucky realized he’d been sitting there staring at the wall. He shifted a little, his arm whirring softly. He forced himself to look at Steve.
“Yeah?”
Steve swallowed. “I — you know I’m not doing this to be cruel, right?”
Bucky shook his head a little. “Doing what?”
Steve gestured around the room. “The, setting up the protocols,” he said. “Taking your phone — ”
Bucky’s hand clenched reflexively —
“ — keeping you on lockdown — ”
Bucky’s face must have done something he didn’t intend, because Steve added hastily:
“Just until I know that nothing’s going on with you. Just until I’m sure you’re safe — ”
“I am safe — ”
“Yes, but.”
“But what, Steve? You don’t trust me that I know when I’m safe?”
Steve sighed. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Buck, don’t… don’t do this, please.” He lifted one hand off the mattress. It hovered off Bucky’s shoulder for a second, then fell.
“I was really scared last night,” he whispered, after a moment. “Fuck, I just — you have to know I’d do anything for you. Anything in the world.”
Bucky sighed too. “I know,” he lied.
“I’m sorry to keep you here like this,” Steve said. “But it’s just temporary. It’s just until — if you want to tell me what happened — or if you remember what happened — ” he added, because Bucky drew in a breath — “but either way… it’s for you. For your safety. So I know nothing’s gonna happen to you.” He reached up again, fingers drifting hesitantly towards Bucky’s face. When Bucky didn’t flinch back or do anything else to reject him Steve tucked his hair behind his ear. His hand lingered against the round edge of Bucky’s skull there. “So I know you’re not — you’re not gonna get hurt like this. However it happened.
“But I’m not gonna push you to talk until you’re ready,” he finished, letting his fingers slide down Bucky’s throat, over the metal shoulder. “And I’m sorry I yelled at you last night.”
And therein lay the whole problem. Bucky pulled up a smile from somewhere deep and mostly hidden. He reached out and squeezed Steve’s hand, then leaned in to kiss his cheek. Steve smelled like some kind of aftershave Bucky remembered from the forties. Bucky knew he spent a lot of time scouring Amazon for it.
“I know, Stevie,” Bucky said. “I’m sorry, too.”
Some lies, as it turned out, were easier to tell than others.