Chapter Text
Bucky knows a thing or two about the abuse of power and what can happen to a man weak of mind and strong of body. He thinks about that sometimes when the nights are long, when Steve is more gone than he is during the day. He thinks about Bob.
He thinks about all that might, all that pain, and what people could do to him if they got their claws around his throat. The abuse he might suffer on top of the abuse he has already suffered.
Bucky doesn't want any of his team to face that fate. None of them are going to suffer in that way anymore. Yelena will never be under the thumb of some power-hungry man, Ava will be free to exist and choose, and Walker will no longer be let down by the system that made him.
Bob will never become Bucky.
The very idea of it makes his skin crawl. If he closes his eyes, he can picture it -- Bob in that chair, teeth guard in his mouth, eyes haunted, screaming. Bucky flinches away from the delusion, glancing to the side toward the clock. It's barely three in the morning.
It's sweltering in here, the moon too bright. Bucky knows when sleep is a lost cause. He sighs, rubbing a hand down his face, and pushes himself up into a sitting position. A few minutes later he's showered, wearing a pair of lounge pants, and padding silent as a ghoul down the hall towards the kitchen.
Most of the team are near silent, and the others sound like bulls in a china shop. He can always hear Alexei coming. Walker could be quiet if he wanted to be, but he doesn't. Yelena tries to sneak up on him and sometimes succeeds; Ava cheats with the whole walking through walls thing. Scares the shit out of him when she starts taking shortcuts.
She and John got into an argument the other day because she keeps stepping through his room to get to the kitchen faster. John's response has been a series of booby traps that don't really work, but it's amusing to play observer to. God help any mice that make their way into his room.
Bob sneaks up on Bucky the most, which really shouldn't make any sense, but he never seems to know when he's coming, unless it's one of those days when he's singing or muttering to himself.
Bucky turns the corner, determined to make himself some coffee and maybe try and find something useful to do, when he pauses. Bob is standing there, hand halfway to one of the open cabinets. He looks over at Bucky when he comes into view, both of them startled.
Bucky should have put on a shirt. Bob is wearing a baggy t-shirt with the Waffle House logo and plaid sweats. His hair is all mussed, eyes sleepy. Once he registers who it is, Bob goes back to pulling the mug from the cabinet and a moment later reaches back in for another.
"Coffee?" He whispers.
Bucky nods, walking fully into the room, leaning against the counter. "Want me to make it?" He asks, because most days he's the one that does it. Bucky is almost always the first one awake, or at least the first one in the kitchen. It's become a bit of a habit.
Bob nods, shuffling out of the way, hands pushing deep in his sweatpants pockets. "I don't know how to do that uh thing you do at the end."
Bucky's lip tips up, just barely, mostly hidden in the low glow of the kitchen. None of the lights are on; the whole thing is lit by the moon and what few buildings are tall enough to cast into the windows at this height. "I blend it." He explains, "With this thing." He pulls open a door and presents the immersion blender to Bob.
He hands it over as he heads to the luxury coffee machine; in truth, this thing is ten times more complicated than it needs to be. He's happy with toss water in, filter, coffee, but instead there are like thirty-five settings, and some guesswork is needed to use it.
Luckily, Bucky has long figured it out, too ingrained in the habit he's built of having coffee every morning even though it does nothing for him. Bob and John are the same way, a sense of self more involved in the choice than need. It's all in his head, but then most things are, so it's not like that's changed anything.
He gets the coffee started, keeping Bob in the corner of his eye. He presses the button to start the immersion blender, and it buzzes to life. Bob jerks in surprise, pulling his finger away, before he tentatively presses it again, more prepared this time.
"Tiny blender." He mumbles.
"You know what one of my favorite inventions is?" Bucky starts; they're still whispering. They don't need to, the kitchen is far enough from the bedrooms that they wouldn't be bothering anyone, but they whisper anyways.
It's nice to have Bob here, given the reason he couldn't sleep was because he was worried about him. If he's right in front of him, that means he's safe; he's level. It's late, but he seems in a decent mood. It helps. It shouldn't help, but it helps.
"What?" Bob is still wielding the blender; Bucky should show him how to use it when the coffee is done; with how fascinated he seems already, he'll get a kick out of it.
"The lava lamp." He replies, eyes sparking as he looks over at him. It's a silly thing, but that's a bit of the point, and it's not a lie; he thinks they're incredibly relaxing to look at even if he doesn't own one. "You ever seen one of those things?"
Bob grins, shifting his weight, looking down at the floor, "You fuckin' with me?"
Bucky pulls the sugar container from its shelf, everything always kept in the same place. "Nah." He shakes his head, droplets of water falling at the motion onto his bare shoulders. He didn't dry it enough, but it's starting to get long again, and for once he doesn't mind it. "Did you know they come in pretty much every color?"
Bob huffs out a laugh, the most genuine kind he has. This quiet, authentic thing that shakes his shoulders and makes him cover his mouth with his hands. "I spent most of my life high, Bucky."
His brow furrows. "What does that have to do with lava lamps?"
To his surprise and growing fascination, Bob laughs again, "You're really not messing with me?"
Bucky isn't an expert when it comes to lava lamps, and he doesn't really know how they work; it didn't seem all that important. Is there something in them that can be used as a drug? The coffee maker beeps, and he moves to pour the coffee.
"Can you get high off something in a lava lamp?" He asks, making sure not to sound judgmental, only curious. He'll be the last Thunderbolt to ever judge anyone on their team for anything they've ever done. They're a bookshelf of red ledgers. Bob was an addict; he's incapable of being one anymore. It's a non-issue.
Bob makes this sound somewhere between a snort and a cough, and when Bucky looks over in surprise, he has both hands over his face as he laughs. Bucky can make out the way he's turning pink with each half-concealed giggle.
He pauses, the coffee pot held in his metal hand, watching him. He can't pull his eyes away, not with the way Bob is laughing into his fingers, trying to muffle the sound, all scrunched up. Bucky finds an uncertain smile coming on against his will. "What? That wasn't my thing back in the day. Granted, most of us were on LSD by medic orders. Things were a little different, I'll have you know, and lava lamps didn't exist!"
"Sorry, sorry." Bob mumbles into his hands, wiping his face. "I just—heh—I'm sorry. That was funny."
Uncertain of where he went wrong or right, given he did laugh, he pours the coffee, returns the pot, and adds a dash of milk to his and then automatically goes through making Bob's the way he's seen him or Yelena make it. When Yelena makes it, she always adds a little extra sugar, but Bob uses less, so he goes with the lesser amount.
"You'll have to correct this old man." Bucky says dryly, walking to set the mugs on the counter next to Bob. "You want to blend them, or you want me to do it?"
Bob turns so they're facing the mugs together, holding onto the immersion blender with the eagerness of a small child handed a bat and a ball. "I'll try."
"You're gonna want to push it all the way in before you press the button, or you'll make a mess." Bucky explains, miming the action.
"Kinky." Yelena says from behind them. Snuck up on him again; she's getting better at it. "Careful, Bob, do not make a mess all over Bucky." She smiles victoriously at her joke and goes for her own mug, leaving both men standing there in suspended silence.
It's a Pandora's box. Bucky can almost see the metaphorical lid opening in his head. His concern for Bob shifting abruptly to something far different than a friend looking after a friend.
He puts image to the thought she poses, Bob on his back, clothing on the floor. Bucky above him, a mess across his chest, whimpering with wide, apologetic eyes, 'I didn't mean to.'
Bucky can hear the suddenly metallic whir as his hand tightens into a fist—too much pressure. He lunges for that internal lid, trying desperately to slam it closed before those thoughts can take root. Don't think of Bob that way. Don't think of him that way.
And yet, he can picture the flush of his face, the way his eyes shimmer between blue and gold, sweat on his neck. 'More. More. I can take it.'
Something wet splatters his chest, and he blinks down at the hot coffee dripping down his stomach. Bob holds the blender up in horror, one hand raised in surrender. "Sorry!"
Yelena, apparently utterly unbothered with what she has done, sets her cup down beside theirs. "He needs you to push it deeper. I told you not to make a mess."
Bucky could toss this mug at her; for a woman who doesn't even like the idea of sex, she sure does make jokes that make him want to launch himself off the landing strip. The coffee is hot on his stomach, and it is not helping anything. It is not helping at all.
Bob has gone pink, still trying to recover from splashing Bucky with what to anyone else would be scalding coffee. It would have hurt if pain weren't so easily compartmentalized. "I'm really sorry, Bucky."
The way he says his name rocks through him, this high pitch along the end, drawing up the ee sound into something that makes him want to touch. Yelena only smiles, pleased with herself.
He wants to snap at her. Wants to throw a closed fist. Look what you've done to me, his eyes scream as he glares. Look what you did.
He swallows hard and knows that there's no going back from this. It exists now; it exists in him. She put words to something inside him he wasn't ready to address yet, because if he thinks of Bob that way, that means he's not thinking of Steve.
And if he's not thinking of Steve, not filling those nights with shame-filled masturbation to a man that's gone, then that really means he's gone.
Her mirth drips away, like the coffee on his stomach that's begun to catch in his waistband, once she takes in his expression. The growing abject panic of his own realization. "Bucky, hey, it's okay. I'm just playing. It is joke."
He looks down, blinking hard, trying to clear it, shove it away. Put it in the right box, hammer the lid closed, go back to the oblivion that wouldn't let him come to this realization.
Steve. Steve. Steve would be so ... does it matter what Steve would be?
"I need to clean up." He mumbles, fleeing the kitchen, darting back into the safety of his room. The fact that he has a room he feels safe in, that he knows is his and will be respected, is still new. Ava teases Walker, but she doesn't come in Bucky's room; she knows better. If anyone understands needing a haven, it is Ava.
Bucky walks back into his bathroom, shucking his clothes to step into the walk-in shower. All fancy white tiles, before he blasts the cold water, standing in it until he starts to shake. He lets the freezing rivulets pepper his face as he tilts into it.
For a second he can't breathe, his lips won't open. He won't breathe in the water; he won't go unconscious. Then he remembers he's in the shower; there's no towel over his face. This is not torture; it's a bathroom, and he's running from his own desires.
His own desires. Fuck. Bucky reaches out to press his hands to the tile, letting the water roll down his back. His desires for Bob.
Bucky hasn't thought about sex with anyone outside of Steve since he was sixteen years old. Once it was Steve, it was always Steve. A constant, endless, aching want that he never acted on, never spoke about. Never said. Not once. Not ever.
Steve knew. Of course, Steve knew. He let it exist, unaddressed between them like a cancer.
Until the end of the line. Steve's line. Not Bucky's.
The thought rises a panic in him, if he thinks like this, that means things are changing, and he knows they're changing, but this is proof of the damage. This is proof that he has changed, and though he knows it is for the better, that he has friends, a greater purpose, a place to call home, it is still change.
"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes, you are no longer the Winter Soldier. You are a Thunderbolt. You are Bucky. You're Bucky Barnes, of the West Chesapeake Valley Thunderbolts. Sponsorship unknown. You're James Buchanan Barnes. You're Bucky. You're Bucky." His voice is shaking, this fear expanding in his chest.
Things are going to change. They've already changed.
He still doesn't know what lava lamps have to do with drugs.
"Longing, rusted, furnace, daybreak, seventeen, benign, nine, homecoming, one, freight car." The Russian sounds foreign and familiar as he speaks it. His eyes burn, snot filling his nose. He spits down onto the tiles, not blood. He thought it would be blood. "Longing, rusted, furnace, daybreak, seventeen, benign, nine, homecoming, one, freight car."
Bucky waits, focusing on his body, on his mind. There is no pull, no recognition other than the biting dread of remembrance. There had been a time when he couldn't get past the third word.
The panic doesn't go away. The words don't make him feel any more in control. He spirals.
"My name is James Buchanan Barnes, I am no longer the Winter Soldier. I am a Thunderbolt. I am Bucky. I am Bucky Barnes..."
✦ 🄽🄾🅃🄷🄸🄽🄶 🄶🄾🅁🅈 🄼🄴🄰🄽🅂 🄽🄾 🄶🄻🄾🅁🅈 ✦
Bob wipes the counter down with a paper towel, quiet, contemplative. Yelena mixes the coffee with the fancy blender. He doesn't want to try using it again. It'll just get everywhere.
"Why did you say that?" He asks quietly. Bob isn't angry with her; he's fairly certain he doesn't know how to be, but he doesn't know what good that did. He's certain it didn't do any good at all.
It had been going so well, he'd made Bucky smile. It was peaceful. And then she'd spoken, and Bucky had disappeared behind that cold, hard mask that Bob knows must belong to the Winter Soldier. That one little line had shattered the peace like a needle through skin.
Yelena sighs next to him and takes a sip from her mug, both of them keenly aware of the one that now sits without its owner, losing heat. Should he put it in the microwave? Bucky always drinks his coffee in the morning, every day like clockwork.
"Sometimes people need pushes." She says quietly, eyes caught out the window toward the city beyond.
Bob does the same, mirroring her pose. The kitchen seems too quiet now, too dark. "I don't think he needed a push." He disagrees, pulling the mug a little closer so he can smell it with each inhale. When Bucky makes it, it always smells a certain way, and over time Bob has begun to associate it with him. A good smell. One of the therapy techniques Ava taught him, finding the five senses, grounding himself.
The scent of coffee, his bare feet on the cool tile, the way the moon reflects off the counter, Yelena's slow breathing, the sugar on his tongue. Here. Him. Bob.
He's never afraid to tell Yelena anything, she listens, she understands, she helps. But he regrets it just a little bit that he told her about Bucky and the way he sticks in Bob's head like a song on constant repeat.
It had taken time to understand Bucky beyond their first initial interactions. Bob had been intimidated at first, figured that Bucky didn't really like anyone. It started with watching him whenever he could to make sure he didn't piss him off, and things changed from there.
He came to understand that Bucky likes all of them and has no idea how to show it. That he's in a lot of pain. The kind of pain that sits in the head and eats and eats until your brain is all desiccated. The more Bob watches, the more he is certain that Bucky is in a place he doesn't know how to crawl out of, just like him.
He's starting to see himself in Bucky's shadow, and he wants to make him laugh. He's started focusing on doing what he can to make things a little easier. He can't always do the dishes; sometimes it doesn't feel possible, but he always washes one mug so Bucky has it for his morning coffee.
He makes sure that he doesn't ask stupid questions or play music out loud on the days Bucky looks stretched thin. Bob isn't sure if it helps, but he tries. And maybe along the way of doing all that, all those little things got caught up into a bigger thing.
And maybe he has feelings for the Winter Soldier, and maybe that's the stupidest thing he's ever done. Everyone in the tower knows that Bucky doesn't do relationships. From what he could piece together, maybe Captain America and he used to be together, but not anymore.
He got left behind. There isn't a fact he's learned so far about who Bucky is that doesn't make Bob want to step a little closer, learn a little more. It's silly, it's reckless, and it's completely foolish to ever assume for a second that he could compare to Steve fucking Rogers, the sentinel of justice.
Bob Reynolds is a meth addict from Florida. Steve Rogers was born a hero.
Yelena drinks her coffee next to him, unbothered by his contemplative silence. "I think he needed a push. We will see."
He chews on that, trying to see it from her angle, but he's having a hard time standing in anyone else's shoes. All he can keep thinking about is the way Bucky had gone from half a smile to dead eyes in a matter of a second.
Bob finishes the coffee, setting the cup in the sink. He should rinse it. He doesn't. Instead he gathers Bucky's mug up and leaves Yelena in the kitchen, making the slow journey to Bucky's door.
He knocks, barely audible, but he knows Bucky will be able to hear it. Bob waits, shifting from foot to foot, bare feet sticking to the tiles as he begins to anxiously sweat. It takes a bit of courage to knock again a hair louder.
No one comes to the door.
Bob sets the mug down to the side, near the doorjamb, and hopes that he still drinks it.