It begins with a daring escape at secret paramilitary compound where Poe Dameron is rescued by FN-2187. Then life happens and they’re both forced to navigate living life as two human being inexorably tied together by trama.
They’re screaming, realizes FN-2187. They’re innocent and they’re screaming, realizes FN-2187 with no small amount of horror. Commander Phasma orders them to shoot and he can’t bring himself to, even as all his squadmates raise their guns and follow orders. He kneels down by a dying woman and she smears the front of his helmet with a bloody hand as she gasps for her last few units of air.
She looks familiar thinks FN-2187. When he was younger, he remembers a young girl, with large brown eyes and many, many braids that fell across her shoulders. Her eyes were kind and her voice soft. She was the one bit of kindness that the recruits were fortunate to experience before they were molded into the soldiers that they are now. This was her, he realizes, his gut churning. He goes through the mission pretending to go through the motions of killing indiscriminately, deciding instead to think.
I can’t.
It’s this thought that sticks with him as Phasma chews him out for not participating, as his fellow squadmates whisper viciously behind his back about how the great FN-2187 is losing it. As he gets reassigned to janitor duty in a remote location as punishment.
AU: In which Clarke and Bellamy start up a FWB relationship and Bellamy has fallen in love with her.
They’re not friends.
They’re not even friendly, spending most of their time arguing with each other before falling into bed together. Bellamy traces patterns on her naked back while she’s almost dead to the world, sleeping the sleep of a medical school student. The morning light is streaming through his blinds bathing half his room in golden light. Summer is fast approaching, something that Bellamy hasn’t looked forward to since he was in school. Crimes go up in the summer, and the life of a rookie detective gets harder. Clarke goes home for the summer.
Unwilling to muse further on the long days ahead he gets out of bed, stroking Clarke’s hair when she lets out a whine. For a moment, he considers staying. But this is a relationship of convenience; they don’t stay in bed all day and trade lazy kisses in the morning sunlight. He checks his email while the coffee is brewing, taking note of the work that has piled up in his absence. He’s on his second cup when Clarke comes stumbling in, wearing one of his work shirts. She fixes herself a cup of coffee using the mug that she’s used for the past year, a chipped white mug with blue stripes. She spends the next couple of minutes leaned against the kitchen counter, enjoying the first cup of coffee of the day. He has a picture of her like this on his phone, nestled between various crime scene photos and pictures of Octavia like a secret.
“Are you cooking breakfast?” asks Clarke, her voice raspy from sleep.
Clarke can’t cook. She tried to cook breakfast four months ago and destroyed one of his frying pans. Bellamy remembers how the eggs tasted, an amazing combination of charcoal and tasteless rubber.
Grumbling, he rummages around in his refrigerator, gathering enough ingredients for a couple of omelets. Twenty minutes later Clarke is on her third cup of coffee and Bellamy has both omelets ready.
“You’re the best,” exclaims Clarke after she takes the first bite. Bellamy ignores the way his chest aches, and focuses on sorting the mail that’s been piling on his coffee table for the past week. He pauses when he sees a card in a thick, off-white envelope. Though Octavia told him it was coming, he hadn’t expected to receive it so soon. Clarke looks at him curiously.
“Who’s getting married?”
“My sister.”
Clarke looks like she wants to pry, but stays silent out of courtesy. Bellamy is grateful for the silence, because he doesn’t know how to process the fact that his baby sister, who is only twenty-four years old Jesus Christ, is getting married in six weeks. Objectively he already knew it was coming, he had gotten fitted for his suit last week, but it was a different thing holding physical proof in his hands. O has been bugging him about bringing a plus one for weeks, despairing at his barren dating life.
Clarke must see the complicated expression on his face, and immediately becomes uncomfortable.
Bellamy has noticed that she doesn’t stick around for personal moments, feeling like they’re outside the bounds of the relationship that they have. Bellamy supposes that she does have a point, but it doesn’t fail to irritate him. He doesn’t know why, but he expects more out of her after a year of sleeping together. But then again, Bellamy has been quietly in love with Clarke for about six months. It’s become a bit of a problem.
Just because one finds one’s soulmate, doesn’t mean that they cannot pursue other people. Bellamy tries to shrug it off, saying that it must have been a mistake. He has a revolving bedroom door, and still feels empty inside. Clarke can’t figure out why Finn, who seems like he would be perfect, isn’t. She also can’t figure out why she finds herself so drawn to Bellamy Blake when he’s the biggest self-serving asshole she knows.
Octavia Blake had always been fascinated by the concept of soulmates. Two people who were perfect for each other in every way. It was a heady fantasy to a young girl who was constantly hiding from everyone that wasn’t family. As a result, Bellamy knew almost everything there was to know about a soulmate bond that the Ark library had to offer, from the scientific studies to the stories only found in Harlequin romances.
It was something that Bellamy learned about to keep his sister happy, to help her imagine a world outside their small quarters. And though Bellamy knew that it was technically possible, a soulmate bond wasn’t something that Bellamy ever thought he would have.
Until he smuggled onto the dropship and met Clarke Griffin for the first time.
The moment their eyes meet on the dropship, it felt like the world narrowed to a single point, where the only thing that Bellamy could see were the deep blue of her eyes.
When he felt his heart jump and his heart beat accelerate, he knew what it was.
“Bellamy.”
But all that was secondary to being able to hear his sister’s voice again. Being able to hold O, seeing that she was alive and well.
Seeing Wells stick by her after they come out of the dropship reminds Bellamy of who she is. Witnessing the way she talks to the group and expects them to follow only reinforces the thought that has taken root in his mind. It can’t work.
Bellamy Blake is sick of the new coroner sassing him.
Admittedly it really is Bellamy’s fault that he’d gotten off on the wrong foot with Dr. Clarke Griffin. When he had burst into the morgue and demanded that she hand over the toxicology results for John Doe #8 he wasn’t exactly polite or patient. He had his reasoning; the reasoning being that it was the third body to show up in the last 4 months in what Bellamy suspected was serial killer case that no one would believe was a serial killer case. But that behavior had put him in Dr. Griffin’s ill graces for what he was sure was eternity.
“Doctor Griffin, may I please have the report you wrote up on Mr. Walker?”
“Nice to see that you can request things like a civilized human being.”
Danny Williams is comfortable with his sexuality. But maybe he doesn’t exactly feel comfortable broadcasting his bisexuality to the world. And while 5-0 is great, Steve’s weird reactions when he finds out makes Danny think that he was in the right keeping it under wraps all these years.
Danny has always loved women, he loves their soft curves, the way they smell; Danny’s all about the ladies okay? But maybe he has an undisclosed love of dick or whatever.
I mean it’s 2016, he lives in the modern world where men can like men and women, but people are weird about his bisexuality. His mother, who knows about his preferences but has never quite understood them, had crowed when she found out about the divorce. “Maybe you can find a nice boy and settle down.”
Magnus looks at the menu hanging on the wall with no small measure of disappointment. It’s cheerfully advertising a mocha chai ice… coffee thing. Magnus wasn’t a coffee shop person. But midterms just wrapped up, and while it was a small measure of relief for his students, as a professor he had hundreds of exams to grade.
“How can I help you?” says the blonde at the counter, looking bored out of his mind.
“By serving me a generous glass of whiskey. But as I suspect that you only serve coffee here, so I will take the strongest coffee you have in the biggest cup you can find me.”
While the bored blond was completely unaffected by his frankly charming personality, the other barista at the counter giggles in appreciation while she begins pouring him his coffee. Nice to see he was still appreciated.
Dorian is unused to the easy way that people in the south express their affections for each other, instead being used to navigating the minefield that is dating as a gay man in Tevinter.
Dorian had always enjoyed the dangerous thrill of flirting with a man. In Tevinter, he always ran the risk of being bled dry by the magisters if he was caught openly soliciting the attentions of men. Which is why Dorian had waited so long before he attempted to flirt with the men of Skyhold. He knew he was in a precarious situation with the rest of the Inquisition, being a Tevinter mage that had been looked upon with no small amount of suspicion by the rest of the Inquisition. He didn’t need to lower anyone’s opinion of him by revealing that he preferred the attentions of men.
But a man has needs, and Dorian was as susceptible to the whims of his cock as any other man. He has a quick tumble in the hay with a shy stable boy with pretty blue eyes and a young supple body. He knows that he’s picked the wrong boy when the boy comes to him days later, clumsily presenting to him a hand carved charm. He berates himself for days afterward, for picking a naïve boy and nearly ruining the boy’s reputation. [blah blah Dorian was in a similar situation with the first man he slept with as a teenager, and lets the poor boy down with gentlest of words].
Steve Rogers is an unfulfilled ex trophy husband. James “Big Dick Buck” Barnes is a proud male entertainer looking for the right fit for his impressive package.
Bucky didn’t expect much out of this road trip. He expected one last final hurrah with the Howling Commandos at the convention in Myrtle Beach and then he’d be working at Tropicana mowing grass on Monday. It was nice to have Gabe along for the trip after he’s left to do his own thing three years ago though.
That was before they visited Charleston and he met what was quite possibly the most perfect specimen of man he’d ever laid eyes on.
“I’ve only ever had sex with one man,” confesses Steve flush with wine.
“Now that’s a damn shame,” says Bucky as he places his wine glass down and stalks towards Steve.
“God, look at you,” breathes Steve as Bucky pulls him up.
Bucky smirks as he notices Gabe duck into the kitchen. He looks at Steve with nothing but hunger in his gaze and is gratified to see Steve return his look with the same intense hunger.
Steve bites his lower lip, and Bucky follows the action raptly. Steve pulls away his face flushed. Bucky wants to take his wrist and grind into him, audience be damned. He’s used to putting on a show.
“It’s getting a bit hot in here. I’m going to head upstairs for a breath of fresh air.”
Bucky watches Steve go with no small amount of regret. Steve reaches the base of the staircase when he calls out, “Well Bucky, aren’t you going to join me?”
Bucky nearly runs out of the room. The sound of his asshole friends laughing at him follows him as he catches up to Steve.
“Hey,” says Bucky when he catches up to Steve.
“Hey yourself, Buck,” replies Steve, as he gives him an indulgent smile.
“Can I kiss you?” Bucky blurts out the question before he has a chance to really think. He flushes as his brain catches up to his mouth. Usually he’s a lot more smooth than this, but he can’t be held responsible for his lack of chill when confronted with Steve Rogers in a tight white t-shirt giving him fuck me eyes.
Sid thinks that his relationship with Geno is more than it actually is.
They had been doing this for a while, a little over six months. It had started as something convenient for the both of them. Sid liked the anonymous hookup in order to relieve stress, and Geno was feeling lonely after he broke things off for good with his long term girlfriend. So it didn’t mean anything.
But lately, it felt more like a relationship. They would watch movies and trade lazy kisses, they each kept a change of clothing at each other’s place. Sid had a box of the tea that Geno favored in his cupboards, and Geno stocked the brand of peanut butter that Sid was partial to. For Sid, it didn’t feel like it was just hooking up anymore.
They’re both lazy and sweaty in their afterglow, Geno tracing lazy shape onto Sid’s back while Sid struggles to stay awake.
“Hey we should get dinner next week, at that restaurant that Nealer was talking about,” mumbles Sid.
Geno stops tracing aimlessly.
“Where Lazy took his girlfriend?”
“Yeah, he said that the dessert was amazing. I looked it up too, and it has pretty good reviews.”
“Sid, that’s date restaurant. Not really place where friends go together.” Sid can hear the frown in Geno’s voice.
Poe is a prince of a small planet and his family has some expectations of him. Finn is not processing any of this well. (Finn/Poe)
Poe’s status as a runaway prince of a distant planet was something that people didn’t so much find surprising, but something that people had been telling each other all along as part of his origin story. Poe doesn’t find it quite embarrassing, per say, but he always gave it a nervous chuckle when people brought it up, finding a way to change the subject one way or another.
“Wait, you’re what?!” exclaims Finn, his mouth opening in comical surprise. Poe had always admired Finn’s burgeoning ability to freely express himself, slowly casting off the traces of the conditioning training that storm troopers went through. Finn is kind of amazing, muses Poe to himself. He didn’t think he’d be half as resilient as Finn if he’d lived the same life.
“Prince of a small planet in the outskirts of the Outer Rim. Tiny planet, really more of a forest.”
“An entire planet?!”
“There’s a lot of yelling going on here,” sighs Poe. He’d really been hoping that they’d have move past this point of the conversation at this point.
Jupiter Jones had no idea her father was a wizard, and that she was a witch.
Jupiter Jones has one picture of her father, a picture that her mother cannot bear to look at but it’s one that she’s held close and had whispered conversations with as a small child. It lives in her wallet, in an old hard plastic baseball card sleeve that she had stolen from Vladie some years ago.
She doesn’t know his first name, doesn’t know anything about him really. Her mother didn’t talk about it, her mouth settling into a hard line and a forbidding aura rising around her when Jupiter asked as a child. It didn’t take long for her to figure out that she would never get those answers.
At least, that’s what she believed.
There was a weird guy on the corner of building they were working in, dressed head to toe in red plaid; attracting strange looks from everyone that passed by him. When she was rushing across town to another job, she notices a young guy yelling into his cellphone, as if the other person on the line couldn’t hear him at all. All throughout the day, there’s a black crow following her; a black crow that stares at her with cool impassive eyes.
While studying time-travel Hermione Granger sends herself back in time. Now that she has the opportunity to fix everything, or at least make things easier for everyone, she’s not sure if she should. But things change whether she wants them to or not, and now she’s realizing that she never really knew everyone as well as she thought she did.
While I have the entire series planned out, I’ve not written any of it. The planning document is extensive.
Disregards Civil War and Age of Ultron. Bucky is found by Steve and Sam and in the process discovers that his personal journals, which have unknowingly made him an underground gay icon during his death have been unearthed. Bucky is coming to terms with being outed and living in a world where his homosexuality is celebrated, not condemned.
Sam and Steve had found Bucky weeks after tracking him, looking up at the globe in Flushing Meadow Park. He wasn’t trying to hide, having had his share of hiding after he had left Steve on the side of the bank. He remembered enough to know that Steve wasn’t always the broad shouldered, muscled man that he met on the rooftop of that apartment building. He was small and tiny, and got sick so often that Bucky knew some of the nurses in the hospital better than members of his own family. He remembered taking Steve’s temperature and worrying as he listened to Steve’s rattling cough in the dead of winter.
The memories were coming back in fits and spurts and not only of them time he spent in New York before the war. He was remembering missions, conditioning, months spent in the Red Room where he trained Tayla and four other girls her age. He felt like his mind was being split in two, like he was going crazy. Crazy like the scientist he killed in ’97 who had laughed and laughed as he bleed out slowly or that woman that lived above their first apartment in Brooklyn, who muttered to herself and swore up and down that the government was listening to her thoughts.
June 26, 1943
There’s some part of me that doesn’t want to go back, not that I love serving or the army in particular. It’s a duty, but not one I take pride in. But I’m getting on in age, and I’ll be expected to marry when I get back for good. Here it’s easy, it’s just two fellas helping each other relieve some tension. The other men avert their eyes, give you some privacy, be decent and pretend it never happened.
Back home, I’m sick. Disgusting, perverted.
Ladies, they’re fun. They’re fun to kiss, fun to grope, but I’ve never been able to fuck one, never been able to get hard for one. I’m real good with my hands and mouth, and those that pull at my belt and ask for more I tell them that I’m a good Christian boy who’s waiting until marriage.
June 30, 1943
Steve doesn’t know. God I hope he never finds out.
So I have a million drafts of everything in my fic folder with no motivation to finish any of them. I’ll be posting them here so people can tell me what to write.
(Bucky has always been gay, but so few people really knew it. Sometime in the 1970s, his journals become public. And while there is some talk about whether he should be completely erased from any Captain America exhibit, Peggy expressively forbids it, threatening to take away all of the stuff she has on loan to the Smithsonian. Instead he becomes a foot note, with the occasional picture and video. As the struggle continues and interest in the exhibit is renewed, his role becomes bigger.)
June 26, 1943
There’s some part of me that doesn’t want to go back, not that I love serving or the army in particular. It’s a duty, but not one I take pride in. But I’m getting on in age, and I’ll be expected to marry when I get back for good. Here it’s easy, it’s just two fellas helping each other relieve some tension. The other men avert their eyes, give you some privacy, be decent and pretend it never happened.
Back home, I’m sick. Disgusting, perverted.
Ladies, they’re fun. They’re fun to kiss, fun to grope, but I’ve never been able to fuck one, never been able to get hard for one. I’m real good with my hands and mouth, and those that pull at my belt and ask for more I tell them that I’m a good Christian boy who’s waiting until marriage.
June 30, 1943
Steve doesn’t know. God I hope he never finds out.
July, 14 1943
Is it possible for a man to fall in love with a man? Is that something that you can only find with a woman? I think what I have with Johnny is close, if it is.
Not that it matters, he’s engaged.
August 9, 1943
The thing is, I never asked to be in this war. Steve thinks I enlisted, almost everyone back home thinks I enlisted. It’s an easy lie to tell, it makes people proud of me. And the more I tell it, the less it feels like I’m being dragged to my death.
The Asset had no feelings. He was a tool used by HYDRA. A gun was pressed into his hand, he was told his mission, and he completed it.
Bucky Barnes was someone that the Asset had to learn to be again. He wasn’t quite there, but as the days went by he became less of one and more of the other, but since he’s neither of either he doesn’t know who he is.
Emotions are new.
Anger is easy, immediate. But so are the tears, which crop up at the most inconvenient times. He is lonely, which was a feeling that he didn’t often have, as either Bucky Barnes or the Winter Soldier.
It’s easy for Steve to find him. He was never needed for long term covert operations, and he is incapable of maintaining a cover for long on his own. He still walks like a threat, and people instinctively part and avoid him when he steps into a crowd. Three months after he fails to meet his objective, Steve finds him in a public library. Another man is there (baggy clothing, likely concealing a weapon), covertly clearing the building. It was unnecessary, but he finds himself annoyingly relieved for the privacy.
For all their attempts at stealth, he notices immediately, but chooses to continue reading. Steve has had his chance to kill him, and it’s unlikely that he would take his chance now. He is curious to what this man would want from him, curious if Captain America/the obstacle/Steve can help him make sense snatches of the memories he’s been receiving since he’s been on his own.
Steve sits across from him. Steve is gentle, as if the slightest movement will startle him and send him back into hiding. But he is done hiding, he thinks.
“Catching up?” Steve gestures to his book, A Brief History of the 20th Century.
“There is much I do not know,” he says in a carefully measured tone.
“I could help.” Steve looks at him with soulful eyes, and it stirs something within him. There is something familiar about Steve Rogers, warm and inviting. It stirs up longing inside of him, which isn’t a new emotion but one so familiar that it does nothing but annoy him at this point.
He wants to run, but tactically it would be unwise. He cannot continue his current state of living, not with what he knows of the world currently. He can barely blend, he has no steady source nutrition; and he is tired, tired, tired.
Sleeping is difficult too.
“I’m Sam by the way,” says the man clearing the perimeter. He looks at Sam blankly, and his silence makes Sam uncomfortable. “Just in case you were wondering who the handsome man you tried to kill was.”
“Sam.”
Sam deflates into the nearest chair. “Oh, we’re going to have our work cut out for us Rogers.”
“That’s okay, “ says Steve, relief pouring off him like miasma. “I’m willing to put in the work.”
Steve takes him to New York. He spends the next couple of months in Stark Tower, learning more about the 21st century and more about Bucky Barnes through Steve. He still doesn’t quite feel like Bucky, he doesn’t feel like the man who joked around with Steve in those old films at the museum. But at this point it’s a more comfortable name than the Asset.
As more time starts to pass without a mission, he starts remembering more about his past. He remembers Steve, which seems to please him. But what he remembers most vividly is his reconditioning. The memories are stark and disturbing and often keep him up at night. Tony and Sam seem to understand the most, and so does Steve but Bucky sees that it’s harder for him to come to terms with it.
Sleeping is still difficult, but avoiding sleep is easier in Stark Tower. He’s watching television when she creeps into the room.
He doesn’t think that Natalia Romanova will kill him. She’s had her chances, especially with the access that she’s afforded in the building.
“You don’t sleep very often,” she remarks from the shadows.
“I don’t need a lot of sleep.”
A beat passes between the two of them.
“We’ve met before,” he says. He remembers frustration, blood, and red hair. He remembers the dry desert air, the pervasive presence of sand.
She doesn’t tense, but causally moves her hands by her thighs, carefully picking at a loose thread. He knows better than to think the action is anything more than a calculated move. “You remember?”
“Some.”
The admission seems to put her at ease, and he can see her slowly come out of that exaggerated nervous posture. Her hands still remain by her side, hovering over a concealed weapon. “You’re a threat.”
“Yes.” There was no point in lying. He had been turned inside out and scrubbed clean for years. He was as far from stable as he ever was, and perhaps even more dangerous now.
She turns to leave him alone. He finds himself speaking, not knowing why. He has non-violent impulses now, and he finds them hard to suppress now that he doesn’t have to.
“I was a tool to them. I was wiped clean after every mission and then put on ice. There was no room for feelings.”
His words seem to echo in the empty room. She doesn’t turn around.
“I am aware of the process.”
From the information he has found on her, he imagines that she is.
“There was no room for feelings, but I hated them.”
“Good to know.”
She doesn’t give anything away as she leaves the room.
Three weeks later, Romanova drops a heavy book on his lap during another one of his late night television marathons. The title reads: Gay Icons of the 20th and 21st Centuries.
“Page 78 might be of some interest to you.”
He flips to the page mechanically. On some level he already knew, but he was forced to confront it when he sees a picture of himself half-dressed, his combat boots sloppily tied and the tank top he was wearing streaked with dirt. He’s smoking a cigarette and smirking broadly at the camera.
Johnny had taken this picture, he remembers with some astonishment.
“And where the hell are you pointing that thing?”
Johnny gives him a broad smile behind the camera. His black hair rustles in the wind. “Well I need a memento. Something to keep me company on those lonely nights when you’re out on patrol.”
“Johnny” he rasps out, his voice thick.
“The photo was taken by a Lieutenant John Baker. I take it you knew him.” She looks at him curiously, attempting to pick him apart with a single gaze.
“We-“ had a thing, he remembers. Johnny lived in Ohio, and had enlisted out of a sense of duty towards his country. He was kind, with gentle hands and a warm smile. Looking nothing like Steve, Johnny was well over six feet, with tanned skin and broad shoulders. Steve was still barely over five feet when Bucky had met Johnny, who was bright eyed and so willing to do good. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that Bucky had managed to fall so quickly in love with Johnny, but it had still hit him like a load of bricks when he figured it out.
“If anyone asks, I’m Italian on my mother’s side.”
“Got it.”
Johnny looked stupidly relieved, his face breaking out into a giant grin. “You’re a good man Barnes.”
“Want to make it up to me?” Bucky steps closer to Johnny, grabbing his collar so he’s at eye level. Johnny gives him a filthy smile that makes Bucky feel like he’s touching a live wire. He presses a kiss to Bucky’s neck, the scrape of stubble sending another thrill through Bucky’s body. It’s been too long since he’s had this with another man, almost a year.
“I’m sure I can find a way.”
“Barnes.”
“I was-“
“Remembering. The book has some excerpts of your journals that have been made public, I thought it might help. The journals in their entirety have been donated to the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco.”
“They were supposed to be private,” rasps Bucky as anger and embarrassment rush through him in equal force.
Natalia gives him a dead look. The next words hold no sympathy, which is something that Bucky has grown to appreciate from her.
“And you were supposed to be dead. Privacy doesn’t matter to corpses.”
Fair enough. Then dread snakes through him as he starts to absorb the impact of his journals being available for public consumption. Romanova is able to read him easily, and smirks. Bucky’s never liked a smug asshole, and Romonova’s smugness grates more than most. Bucky grinds his teeth and doesn’t say a word.
“I don’t think that Steve knows. Though they aren’t a secret, they’ve never been officially published. It’s not even mentioned in the Smithsonian exhibit, though there was some controversy about that.”
Bucky’s laugh is hollow.
“It’s not really something that befits a hero, so I’m not surprised.” It’s funny how this particular brand of self-loathing is so familiar, how it makes him feel more like Bucky Barnes than anything else he’s experienced in the last couple of months.
Romonova’s next words are almost kind, but hold no comfort.
“It was wrong of them to attempt to erase that part of you. We live in a different time Barnes. It’s time that you realized that.”
Bucky has been watching the news, he knows that times haven’t changed that much. “Not as much as you’d think.”
She says nothing as she walks away, something that Bucky has gotten used to.
He spends the next couple of days reading the book, stopping and starting a million times over. He finds himself grateful that Steve doesn’t know about this, even though he knows that Steve would have never judged him for it. But he’s not so sure that he’ll ever be ready for Steve to know, to find out about this dark part of his character.
After reading the book, he starts to feel more and more like Bucky Barnes and less like the Asset. The memories don’t come back all at once, but sometimes when he’s doing something, like shining his boots or shaving he gets assaulted with a memory from before. The flashbacks are anything but easy, especially when he starts getting bits and pieces from the time that he was under HYDRA’s thumb. But he’s getting better at dealing with things, even if everything isn’t easy.
Unsurprisingly, it was Sam that started to notice first. Years of working with soldiers to rehabilitate them made it easy for Sam to spot when he started feeling more like Bucky. Sam approaches him one late afternoon when he’s making use of the gym.
He doesn’t say anything, just turns on the treadmill to the left of him and begins to run. They run in silence for the next hour, Sam getting more tired the more he tries to keep up with him. Finally Sam turns off the machine and stands there, panting.
“Is there no one in this building that works out like a regular human being?”
He’s seen the way that Sam has tried to keep pace with some of the other members of the Avengers. Without meaning to, a laugh escapes him.
“You bastard, you’re not even winded.” It’s said in good humor, and he can see the way that Sam is barely concealing a smile. Bucky likes Sam’s version of non-intrusiveness, the way that he makes it seem like checking up on him was more than making sure that he doesn’t snap and start killing people.
“We should do this again- I’m sorry, I don’t know what to call you.”
He turns off the treadmill. “You can call me Bucky.”
“Nice to finally meet you Bucky, I’m Sam.” says Sam as he holds out his hand.
Bucky shakes his hand firmly, smiling when he sees Sam try to suppress a wince. “Nice to meet you Sam.”
There is no performance in Sam’s behavior towards Bucky. Sam knew exactly how dangerous Bucky could be, but he had no fear about being in his presence and was never wary about being around him. When asked about it, Sam shrugged and said “I strap mechanical wings on my back and fly without armor. Self-preservation was something I let go of a long time ago. Besides, you won’t hurt me.”
“I could,” says Bucky seriously.
“But you won’t. You want to be better, and I see you trying every day. You’re not going to throw it all away.”
Bucky paces the length of the kitchen, agitated. “You can’t know that; no one can. Everyone treats me like I’m going to, how do you know that they’re not right. I’ve been programmed and brainwashed by HYDRA for decades. How do you know that I won’t just up and join them?”
Fear, loathing and anxiety pour off him in waves and everything that has been bothering him since he started to become Bucky Barnes again rushes to the surface in a poisonous cloud.
“You think you’re the only soldier that’s had it screwed up? The only one who’s come back from capture and thinks that they pose a danger to the people around him? It happens, and granted, not as bad as you had it,” says Sam when he sees that Bucky is about to interrupt. “but it’s happened.”
“I won’t lie and say I’m not worried about the brainwashing. But that’s because you’re my friend, and I don’t want that to happen to you because how it’ll affect you. You need to let go of the fear that you’ll become the Winter Soldier again because all that fear is doing is fucking up your progress.”
“It might help,” Says Sam a couple of days later when Bucky is reheating some leftover Thai.
“What do you even do with a therapist?”
“You talk, man.”
“I’ve been talking to you.”
“Yeah but not about feelings and junk.”
The microwave beeps and Bucky reaches inside a drawer for a fork. He takes a bite of the food, chewing in contemplation. “So let me get this straight. You want me to talk to a complete stranger about my feelings. About my nightmare inducing past, about the brainwashing.”
Sam shrugs as he pulls open the refrigerator door. “Don’t see how it could hurt. You’ve made a lot of progress on your own, more than I thought you ever would alone. But sometimes you need a little bit of professional help to make sure that everything runs smoothly.” He roots around the fridge, looking for any appetizing leftovers before deciding to make himself a sandwich.
“I could just talk to you. Or Steve, I suppose.”
Sam levels a deadpan look his way, made all the more menacing by the way he clutched at the bottle of mayonnaise. “Don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled, thrilled, that you’re finally starting to act like a legitimate person. But you need someone who’s going to be able to be objective. Steve can’t do that. And I can’t do that, not if we’re going to be friends.”
“And it might put the others at ease as well,” says Sam as he turns his back on Bucky to focus on his sandwich.
Bucky had shown up for a group dinner yesterday. It was tense at first, but then Stark started poking at his mechanical arm and claiming that he could design better. When Bucky didn’t attempt to strangle him, everyone relaxed greatly. And while the dinner had eased some concerns about his presence in the tower, people still treated him like a ticking time bomb. Except perhaps Bruce and Sam, who tried the hardest to treat him like a normal person. It was why Bucky preferred to spend time with them, as they weren’t treating him like a glass ornament (Steve) or like a landmine waiting to go off (everyone else).
Bucky sighed. “Fine,” he grumbled around a mouthful of food.
“What’s fine?”
Steve walks into the room, with more purpose and confidence that Bucky is used to seeing. Sometimes he doesn’t even believe that this man is the tiny little boy he looked after.
“I figured now that Pinocchio is now a real boy, he might benefit from seeing a professional.”
Steve frowned. “A professional what?”
Sam sighed. “A professional therapist. He needs someone to talk to that can be objective. Someone who won’t look at him with giant puppy eyes.”
“To be fair,” mumbles Bucky, hiding a smile behind his container of takeout “he’s always looked like that around me.”
Steve colors. “Oh shut up, I do not.”
“It was far more effective when you were tiny, though. It was real easy to get a home-cooked meal when you batted those baby blues at Mrs. Gasparti. Or the nuns at school, Sister Mary had a real soft spot for you.”
“Oh like you didn’t do the same, I remember how you flirted with every old biddy in the building.”
Bucky shrugged. Flirting with those ladies was the easiest way to get some spare change when things were tough. He would do some chores for them; they would pay him more money when he did it without a shirt on. Mrs. White, an old widow living off her husband’s pension that lived on the floor below them, had even gotten him a job at the docks when the garage laid him off.
“I don’t think one is necessary, Buck has been doing really well with just us.”
Bucky mulled it over while Sam explained the benefits of therapy. He didn’t particularly want to talk to a stranger, it made him uncomfortable. But Bucky had been dealing with uncomfortable shit pretty much since he came to live in Stark Tower, so that wasn’t a reason not to do it. He could give it a shot, especially if the therapist wasn’t going to write him off as crazy when Bucky told his story.
“-and sometimes people need to talk to people that have no personal investment in their lives.”
“I don’t want Bucky talking to someone that might blab his secrets to anyone that’s willing to pay.”
Sam bristled, reminding Bucky of an angry cat. “Everything is confidential, a therapist is required to keep everything confidential. It’s a matter of professionalism, dude. Blabbing secrets is a sure fire way to lose your license and lose and fuck up your professional reputation for life.”
“Stop insulting Sam’s profession Steve,” says Bucky when he sees that Steve is about to stick his foot in his mouth again.
“You’re a-?” Steve looks about ten seconds away from an apology, but it looked like his stubbornness would be winning out.
Sam puffs up proudly. “Got my Masters in Social Work early last year. I was working at the VA as a therapist for about 8 months when we met last year.”
“We’d need to find someone who’s not going to sign me into a looney bin,” says Bucky as he picks at his food.
“Maria probably knows someone. I’ll give her a call.”
Bucky smirked and shared an amused glance with Steve. “Maria, huh?”
Sam sputtered, slowly reddening. “Shut up, the both of you. Let me go make that call.”
It takes a couple of weeks for Bucky’s first appointment. Especially once Steve made sure that the guy was vetted within an inch of his life and ran surveillance on the guy for two weeks so he could be sure that he wasn’t a HYRDA plant.
Bucky rolls his eyes and lets Steve get obsessive. He didn’t want to get into a fight with Steve about the whole thing, they’ve already had plenty. It’s not like he doesn’t understand, thinks Bucky as he waits in the waiting outside of the office. He would be doing the same if it were Steve
