Training lately seemed to take longer than normal, but without the back and forth verbally and physical sparring with Nat, the time crawled by. Sam was still healing from something he'd caught when captive on the island prison and wouldn't be around to spar with for another few days, according to the doctors.
Asking Bucky to join him seemed out of the question; he had been so withdrawn the last few weeks since waking up again. There was some sort of complication with the system (Steve suspected Tony) and they wanted to get him out of hibernation instead of risking harming him. Ever since, he'd spent hours at a time in one of the incubation-type rooms, a slender therapist holding the door open for him when he entered and left. Steve waited for him every day, so they could walk up to the mess hall together.
The newspaper was a few days behind, but T'Challa brought a copy from each day of the week when he stopped by on Sundays. Steve picked through the first copy, last Monday's, and started to read it front to back. Bucky sat at the other end of the couch, fiddling with one of the joints on his metal arm.
Normally, he could take the silence, but Steve was starting to get a headache from pinching his eyebrows together with concern. He sighed and put the paper down on the table nearby.
"You've been very quiet this week," Steve said. Bucky stopped fiddling with his arm and looked up, his long hair obscuring half of his face. Steve swallowed under the scrutiny of the eye visible to him. "I mean, quieter than normal, Buck. Are you…do you regret that we woke you up again?"
Bucky sat up so his hair moved back away from his face, and he turned to look and Steve for a few seconds, his expression unchanged, before standing up and walking away.
"Damn," Steve cursed, interpreting Bucky's actions as discomfort. He hated pushing him but he wanted to help him voice what he kept under lock and key.
Steve could hear him rustling around in his bedroom, and he let out a relieved breath that Bucky hadn't slammed the door behind him, completely shutting him out. Counting to three to compose himself, Steve stood up and turned to follow him, and apologize. Before he could even take another step, Bucky was right there waiting for him.
Or at least, he assumed it was Bucky. A pile of…yarn with Bucky's legs on the bottom. Some of the strands were stuck in the joints of the metal arm, other bits trailed behind him.
"Bucky, what-whoomph!"
Steve landed heavily back onto the couch, covered in a heavy cloud of multi-colored yarn that spilled out of his lap and onto the floor. As he looked at the pile, he started to make out the arm of a sweater, the roundness of a cap, and what could be a scarf or potentially a long sock. At first he was perplexed but realization dawned on him: Sam had mentioned they had…different forms of therapy here.
He started to chuckle for the first time in what felt like forever, and could barely hear Bucky through the massive collection of knitting when he said, "I've been busy."
for parseltonquinq on tumblr, who fueled this new headcanon of Bucky's alternative therapy methods and how he uses them to show Steve how much he loves him.