Disclaimer: Not my 'verse, sadly.

Author's Note: Sequel'y oneshot ficlet to "it's been a long, long time". Hurt/comfort, mild smut, violence, major psychological trauma, hints of period-typical homophobia, (Bucky) FEELS.

Bucky doesn't sleep well. And so neither does Steve.

just what you're worth

He wakes screaming, falling out of bed and landing scrambling on the floor. Wretched, animal sounds rip hoarse and frantic out of his throat, and his chest is heaving with his panicked breaths. His face is wet and he knows it must be someone else's blood. What else could it be? He doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't know where he is. When he is. Who he is. He remembers pain. Pain. The screams as he hurt them. All of them. His breath slows as he remembers, and it calms him; he is the Winter Soldier. He remembers eliminating his missions, every single one – he never fails. They are proud of him, his handlers, always satisfied when they use him. Yes. That is…right. That is good.

The Winter Soldier shifts up smoothly from his crouch and straightens, rolling his shoulders and flexing stiff muscles, stretching out the kinks. He wipes the wetness from his face, noting with curiosity that it is not blood, but a clear fluid. He touches his tongue to one fingertip, and tastes salt. His mind glances over the fact that he is crying, not recognizing it, and disregards the dampness that is now drying sticky on his cheeks, making the skin feel taut and strange. His mission is what is important, always.

His handlers must have woken him for a reason, but he can't remember it. He must be here for a reason. Surveillance. Assassination. Something. He tries to think. But his mind is blank. What is his mission? He frowns in the dark, unease creeping up his spine with clawed fingers that come to nestle sharp and hurting in the base of his skull. He doesn't have a mission. He has to have a mission. He has to have a mission. He has to have a mission. He has to have a mission. Hehastohaveamission.

There is nothing in his head, just the driving need to follow orders and there are no orders. He roars in fury and frustration, dragging his fingers at his hair, strands catching in the tiny metal plates on his left hand and tearing out in ragged ribbons. He can't feel it beyond the agony building in his skull. His face contorts as he clamps down on his rage, all seething with a mindless kind of anger and fear, because he's supposed to have a mission. And without one he is –

"Bucky?" A voice comes through the door to the room, and lights flicker on dimly, lighting everything in a faint orange glow. He tenses, turning to face the door of the strange, padded room – it seems like an odd kind of prison cell. Has he been captured? Compromised? Where is he? And who is Bucky? The voice speaks again, muffled by the heavy door in the way between them. "Bucky? It's Steve." He shifts on his feet, lowering his head and wishing he was clad in his familiar, comfortable body armour instead of the thin pants that are all he wears now.

The door clicks as it slowly opens, and the Winter Soldier moves fast at the sound - sliding up silent and slick against the wall by the door. A tall silhouette walks into the small room, and the Winter Soldier surges forward, arm slamming up and out, into the figure's throat. The man, Steve – who is Steve, and why is he calling the Soldier 'Bucky'? – staggers back with a choked gurgle, but slams the door toward closing again as he does, with one wild push. The Soldier snarls and flails past the man for the edge of the door, but it clicks shut, his fingertips falling short by less than an inch. Icy anger seizes him, crystallising in his mind.

"Jarvis..." the man who calls himself Steve gargles as he clutches at his throat, and then blocks one of the Soldier's blows. "Don't let him out! Alert...Stark..." The Soldier strikes at the man five times in quick succession, and the man blocks and dodges swiftly four times, but the fifth blow – a kick to the man's kneecap – hits hard, and the man sags and then pushes himself back, retreating. The Soldier huffs a growling breath. This is his mission, then, he decides. To neutralise this man and get out of this room, of this place, and to find his handler – it is the only course of action the Soldier can see before him. He is a weapon, and a weapon must always return to its master.

"Bucky!" the man cries frantically, holding out his hands to the Soldier as though he is surrendering, but the Soldier doubts he plans to, and really doesn't care. He swings his metal arm and flexes it, before bringing it to bear full power – he sends it slamming down toward the man, who is slow to react and lifts his arm to block. The Soldier can hear – feel – the faintest crack, but the man's arm doesn't shatter as it should. He frowns, and swings out another blow – this time the man grabs his wrist, and actually manages to stall the strike. He rips his arm away and punches again, only to be blocked. He curses in Russian and whirls and strikes, catching the man a glancing blow to the face this time, hard enough to fracture his cheekbone. And then he slams his fists into the man's stomach – one, two, three, and the man is only blocking and dodging, and the Soldier doesn't understand.

He frowns, puzzled, and pauses.

The man bends double, gasping, trying to speak. "Bucky – Bucky please I d-don't want…don't wa-ant to hurt you…" His blue eyes are desperate on Bucky. No. No. Nononono – the Soldier kicks out hard with one bare foot, and the man twists like a snake and catches the Soldier's foot between his legs somehow, and then lunges forward and seizes him in his arms. A bearhug – pinning the Soldier to the man, and he struggles but he's off balance – on one foot and momentum fucked, and they both fall.

The Soldier tries to wrench free of the fall and roll out at the last second, but the man holds to him with all his considerable strength, and they go down hard together. His breath leaves him with a grunt as the man who called himself Steve lands square on top of the Soldier. He slams his elbow at the man's face – blue eyes staring down at him desperate and sad – and the man is unable to dodge, tangled together as they are, and his nose breaks with a crunch, his blood spurting out onto Bucky's face. It gets in his mouth, sticky hot and tasting of copper, and he feels sick because – nononono – the man's eyes are round and horrified.

"Bucky," he says – begs – again, nasal, and blood is spattering on his lips and dripping onto the Soldier's cheek. "Bucky stop. Please. Don't do this. Please don't do this." The man's face is stark and raw with horror, and the Soldier snarls in response, struggling and thrashing beneath the man, trying to wrench his arm free.

"I don't know who Bucky is," the Soldier grates in Russian, and slams his head up – his forehead meets the bridge of the man's already-broken nose and he shove-kicks him away, flipping with a ragged kind of elegance to his feet. He steps lightly on his bare feet to the man and his metal hand closes around the man's throat, lifting him to his knees. In English, as he tightens his grip: "And I don't know you." The man wrenches at his hand as he tries for breath and fails, his eyes beginning to glaze ever so slightly, the small bones in his neck starting to compress in a manner that must be agonising, and will shortly kill him.

"B-Bucky…"

Bucky blinks, and his hand falters. "…Steve?"

"B-ucky…yes…'s me." Blue eyes filling with an agonising hope past the pain, and Steve's voice is a faint rasp, his eyes fluttering, rolling back in his head and Bucky is killing him, he's killing him what no stop stop stop he's killing Steve jesus christ he's killing him and Steve is just letting him do it fuck what no please god… And then the door slams open, ricocheting off the padded inside wall, and whatever it was that had been making it so hard to release his hand shatters, and Bucky drops Steve to the floor and spins and runs without a thought. But there is a man there in the corridor, in nothing but boxer shorts and with a pistol in hand, and Bucky skids to a halt. He swallows hard – throat clicking dryly and mouth tasting like the copper of Steve's blood – and looks back over his shoulder at Steve, who is stirring on the floor in a crumpled heap, gasping and choking. He nearly killed Steve. He stares down the silent man; Barton.

"Do it," he says. Begs. Because he nearly killed Steve, and if he had succeeded… "Please." The 'tuch' of a shot hisses through the air, and Bucky's eyes widen – not with fear, but because he hadn't dared to hope that Barton would do it, but he wants it. …Oh. The dart takes him in the shoulder, and is swiftly followed by two to the chest for good measure. They hurt like hell. Bucky has just enough time to feel cheated and furious that they are tranquilisers and not bullets, before he is dragged down into a suffocating morass of nightmarish memories and distorted snippets of reality.

"Bucky!" Steve's voice, ruined by the broken nose and packed with terror.

"He's just sleeping, Cap. Three tranqs is within safe parameters for an attack of the Winter Solider crazies, according to the doc who made these up. But Jesus fuck, lookit you. He catch the drop on you, or…?"

"I'm not fighting him. I'm not, Clint. He's my friend."

"The Winter Soldier isn't your fucking friend, Cap. Fuck, even Barnes knows that." Barton is wry and snarky in doling out the truth – he is always like that, Bucky knows, except when that dark-haired dame is around. Everything goes away for a while, leaving only memories, and then he is aware of hands on his face, grazing over numbed-feeling cheeks, and he struggles to speak and open his eyes, and mostly fails – seeing only a flutter of Steve's face before his vision greys out again. Everything sounds hollow and echoing, and he's dizzy and sick.

"Better get that nose looked at."

"It can wait. It's Bucky I'm worried about." Arms under him – he lolls like a rag doll, and his blurry sense of up and down rock and lurch, until he feels softness under him again.

"He'll be right as rain come morning," Barton says easily.

"No, he won't be," Steve says as he pulls something soft and heavy over Bucky's body, in a voice low enough that Barton wasn't meant to hear. And there is a sadness – and a fucking truth – in his tone and his words that makes Bucky want to cry. He wishes Barton had used a bullet.

The next morning when Bucky drags himself out of a tranquilised fog, Steve smiles at him from in front of the stove where he is frying eggs and bacon. The taller man waves a dishtowel in greeting, and says a cheerful good morning. Bucky says nothing, just stands there frozen on the spot. "Are you okay?" Steve asks Bucky, while his forearm is in a splint and his face is bruised and puffy, and his throat is staining purple in bruising from the strangulation Bucky had caused, and Bucky can only stare at him silently in horror, with a guilt so deep it settles into his marrow. Steve wants to know if Bucky is okay, and the world is all backwards and wrong and he just can't.

"No," he says very softly, and, "I'm sorry." And then he turns on his heel and hurries from the living area with a ducked head and stumbling steps, fleeing back to his room like a coward, because he cannot stand to look at what he did to Steve. He sits on the edge of his bed and rocks back and forth with fidgety little panicked movements, trying to breath through what his therapist would tell him was an anxiety attack, staring down at his clasped hands hanging between his knees, and loathing himself.

"It's okay, Bucky. It wasn't you," Steve tries to tell him patiently through the door – respecting Bucky's privacy, god, he would rather Steve burst in and laid him out, because that he would deserve at least, not this kindness that he chokes on like ashes. "It's all right, Buck. Honest. It wasn't you." But it's not all right, and it was him, because the Winter Soldier will always be a part of whoever the fuck he is now.

He doesn't sleep that night – he sits and stares at the wall listening to the music Jarvis pipes in for him, because even though a bad night has always been rare in the past, Bucky refuses to risk hurting Steve two nights in a row.

He wakes screaming, falling out of bed and landing scrambling on the floor. Wretched, animal sounds rip hoarse and frantic out of his throat, and his chest is heaving with his panicked breaths. His face is wet and he doesn't know why. He doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't know where he is. When he is. Who he is. He remembers pain. Pain. He screams. And screams. He scramble-shuffles across the floor on his hands and ass until he hits a wall, and presses against it like he can sink into it and disappear. Sobbing gasps keep hitching in and out, and his eyes are glazed – he stares at the opposite wall blankly, rocking back and forth, hands burying in his hair and fisting hard in the tangled strands. He doesn't care about the pain. He makes the smallest defensive ball he can. He knows nothing but to expect pain.

"Bucky!" A door bangs open and he flinches and yelps, stifling the sound and the rest of his screams, afraid of retribution, shuddering like a beaten dog. He whimpers and grovels in the corner, panicked and terrified and broken, cringing away from the hands that brush lightly over his shoulders. "Bucky please, it's me, Steve. You don't have to be afraid. I'm not going to hurt you. No one is going to hurt you." His lips tremble, his chin quivers, his eyes squeezed shut and hands tearing at his hair; it's a lie. It's a lie, a trick. Pain is all there ever is. Pain is everything, everywhere, and he bites his lips bloody and suffers in silence because his masters tell him to, and he wants so much to be good.

"No – no, no, no! Hey, hey calm down. Buck, please, you're going to hurt yourself," the man begs him, pulling at his hands, trapping them in large, warm ones, and with that self-soothing method lost to him he shakes like a leaf, and chews at his lip, and whimpers very quietly. He tastes blood, and the man acts horrified when he notices.

"Oh god, Buck, no. No, please don't," he pleads as if it makes him sick to see his dog behave as his training has made him; not the goal but a side-effect, yes. But he falters when the man says 'no', because he is supposed to do as he is told. And the man freezes for a second, and then gasps in a breath that sounds like he is crying, and says firm and despairing, "No. No. Stop it. Stop – stop hurting yourself. Just…be still."

So he stops because he was told to do so, he is very still because he was told to be, and he does what he is told. He is a good weapon, a good dog – he follows orders. He does as he is told, always. Always. The man sounds like he has been shot in the gut, but he tells him 'good', and praises him, but he waits for the pain to come anyway. Because there is always pain. But it doesn't. He waits and he waits, huddled in a ball, his hands cradled in the man's warm ones, remaining perfectly still even after the man tell him he can move if he wants to, because he has no wants but his master's wants.

He waits blank-eyed and staring, drinking when told and pissing when told, but vomiting up the food he is given despite his best efforts to please his master. He is sick with terror and the food just won't stay down. He waits through footsteps and voices, and people coming and going – the first man almost always there, growing ever more hollow-eyed and grey. He waits and waits, as hollow and empty as an automaton, until forty-six hours have passed by his internal body clock, and his eyelids feel as though they are weighted with lead, and his brain is sluggish and stupid. He doesn't fall asleep as much as sheer exhaustion makes him pass out, simply slumping bonelessly to the side on the couch where he obediently sits, small and fragile in his unconsciousness.

The pain never comes.

When he wakes later, blinking to consciousness with a blanket over him on the couch and no memory of the previous forty-six hours, and asks in a bewildered voice what the hell is going on, Steve shoves to his feet and excuses himself hurriedly, wiping at his eyes. Fear stabs into Bucky's chest, but when Natasha tells him gentle but factual what happened in the time Bucky can't recall, he is more embarrassed than afraid. It is humiliating in the worst way that Steve saw him like that. And he is guilty too, for being the cause of the shadows under Steve's red-rimmed eyes like bruises when he comes back into the room, and the rib-crushing hug that is overflowing with fear and desperate relief, and for the small, despairing confession in his ear that Bucky doesn't know how to answer – "I thought you weren't coming back."

He wakes screaming, falling out of bed and landing scrambling on the floor. Wretched, animal sounds rip hoarse and frantic out of his throat, and his chest is heaving with his panicked breaths. His face is wet and he doesn't know if it's tears or blood. But why would he be crying? He thinks it has to be blood, but he doesn't know if it's supposed to be his blood or someone else's. He doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't know where he is. When he is. Who he is. He remembers pain. Pain. On his knees on the floor, huddled and helpless. The pain shreds through his skull in echoes of memory, and he clutches his head and grits his teeth against the screams that keep rising up, the sound forced past his lips in muffled, sobbing moans.

He remembers taking the shock guard between his teeth, and the cold restraints they fastened around his arms to keep him still when he tried to thrash against the agony. He remembers doctors talking about him as if he wasn't a person. He remembers impersonal hands assessing his body, poking and prodding and examining while he sits obediently and lets them. He remembers the pain that came once he was strapped down and ready and the switch was flicked. He remembers as though he is living it again, and he shakes in shocky, helpless reaction, coming apart in the dark by the bed. Huddled there; teeth chattering, head ducked, panicked and unthinking, trapped in looping nightmares.

He remembers killing, and he wails at that, something in him that he doesn't recognise protesting hard, worse than the pain, even.

A light comes on, and he can tell despite his screwed-shut eyes – he can see the glow through his eyelids. Soft and warm and not too bright, but it terrifies him anyway. Blindly he seeks a corner for some sense of safety, and when he finds one he presses his back into it as if that can save him from the chair. From the restraints and the pain, and his own screaming drilling through his skull. The door opens with a click. He crouches in the corner sobbing hard with gasping terror and pain, arms wrapped tight around his drawn up knees and face buried in the space between his legs and his body.

He doesn't want to kill any more people.

"Please," he begs in Russian, knowing he will be taken to the chair and the pain will come and wipe him clean. There will be no fear left then. Just agony and death. He rocks on the spot, hair falling straggling over his face as he lifts it and squints into the light. The tall figure in the doorway; he begs him in the Russian that spills naturally from his tongue, as the tears course down his face and his breath shudders and jolts. "Please. Please don't. Please don't. Please."

The figure speaks, voice, soft and choked. "...Bucky? Bucky, it's all right. You're safe. It's me, Steve."

Bucky? Who is...?

Bucky blinks and his mind stutters and skips a moment, and then it is just his room in Stark Tower, and Steve standing in the doorway with his face written in horror and sorrow. Oh god. It was just a memory. It's not going to happen again. It's not. Bucky is so scared. "Steve?" he gets out, hoarse and wobbling, slumping boneless in the corner and going rag doll limp. His body is trembling all over, he realises as his head falls back against the wall, and he sucks in a huge, uneven breath. "Steve."

And then Steve is on his knees beside Bucky, and Bucky is gasping and clinging to him so hard that he will imprint his fingers on Steve in bruises. Steve shows no sign of discomfort. He never does, not even once the bruises flower dark on his skin, stabbing guilt into Bucky as he watches them fade over the course of the day. "It's all right, Buck. I'm here. I'm here." He holds Bucky's face in his hands, and his thumbs swipe away the tears leaking steady from Bucky's eyes, his lips press to Bucky's forehead. Bucky doesn't deserve Steve, doesn't deserve this. Doesn't deserve to be able to half crawl onto Steve's lap, bury his face into Steve's neck, and sob hot, harsh tears as though he is going to rattle apart.

Steve makes shushing sounds, and one arm wraps tight around Bucky's back, and the other cradles his head very gently, and it feels like coming home. He talks, too; a constant stream of reassurance in that familiar voice, and it helps. Bucky shudders out a sob, and sucks in a shallow breath, trying to be calm and get a handle on himself. He's acting like a dame in hysterics, and it's embarrassing as hell, but he can't help it.

"I'm sorry, Steve. I'm so damned sorry," he chokes into the warm, tear-damp skin of Steve's throat. His fingers clutch at Steve's tee-shirt, and sick guilt writhes hot in his chest. "I remembered – remembered more. I killed…I remember killing…so many people. So many." Bucky looks up, meeting Steve's eyes and forcing himself to hold them with an effort, because Steve is too kind and Bucky… "I don't deserve –"

"Don't," Steve says urgent and quick, shaking his head, his arm like a hot steel bar around Bucky's shoulders and back, his other hand pushing Bucky's hair off his face with a casual intimacy that could be platonic but isn't. Bucky revels in the feel of Steve's fingertips coasting over his cool skin, and dragging through his sleep mussed hair, tucking some of the dark, sweat-lank locks gently behind Bucky's ear. Steve's eyes are dark in the dim light, but so damn earnest.

Steve hasn't changed a bit, and Bucky doesn't even know who he is, not really. What's left beneath the rubble? He isn't the kid who went off to war with a grin on his lips and terror in his heart. Sometimes he thinks he isn't anything.

"It's not your fault, Buck. Not your fault at all. And – and those people are gone now, and we can't bring them back. They aren't important right now. What's important is you, Bucky. You." And then Steve's lips are pressing to Bucky's face, kissing his temples, his cheeks, the corners of his mouth, the tip of his nose, his chin, jaw…it is pure tactile bliss, and Bucky is exhausted to his bones, fragile and shocky still, the nightmare memories rearing up in gory flashes. So he shuts his eyes and relaxes into Steve's arms, both of them sprawled on the floor in the corner, Bucky half in Steve's lap, legs all entwined with each other, Bucky's hands shifting slow and cautious over Steve as if he is mapping him, as if he expects rejection.

It doesn't come.

He falls towards sleep like that, head cradled on Steve's chest and listening to his heart beat slow and steady, his metal arm slung around Steve's back – falling to lie limply on the floor as sleep rises up to claim him – his right hand sneaking to tuck beneath Steve's shirt, fingers splayed out against the other man's abdomen. Bucky is nearly perfectly contented in these sleep-drenched, half-dreaming moments – the only fly in the ointment that Steve still hasn't kissed him on the mouth again. Not properly. Not like Bucky used to kiss the girls he took out dancing, all hard and sweet, until their lipstick smeared and their mouths were ripe and quivering. Not like he and Steve had kissed nearly three weeks ago, that night that they had danced. Bucky's mouth slides up into a dreamy smile as he remembers.

"Kiss me," Bucky half-demands, sleep-blurred and smirking lopsided, tipping his head back to look at Steve and finding tired blue eyes fixed on him. He presses his lips together, suddenly nervous. "Please?"

"Bucky…" Steve hedges, but his tongue darts out unconsciously to wet his lips.

"Steve…" Bucky echoes smartly, really smirking now, although it is still clumsy with exhaustion and underlain with strain and horrors he isn't ever going to be without. "Kiss me."

"But –"

"I'm not going to damned well break if you kiss me, Steve." Bucky struggles to sit up, annoyance rising, and Steve pins him there against him. Bucky falls back against Steve – he's happy where he is anyway, really – and shoots him a curious look, raising an eyebrow, and Steve blushes.

"I'm…comfortable like this."

"Sure you are." Bucky grins a little. He has vague bits of memory suddenly dredged floating to the top that tell him Steve often used to grouse to Bucky about dossing down on the hard ground. "Look. We can finally…do things –" His mind races as he tries to think of the things that men can do together, and he has never done anything with another man, that would have been unthinkable, but that was then and this is now, and Steve was always different anyway. With Steve, Bucky can't stop thinking about it just lately. "– Do things without getting court-martialled or crucified or god knows what – and…and you go and say that we can't. Except you want to, just as much as me –" He cuts himself off, and stares at Steve, suddenly feeling threads of sharp fear again – and uncertainty, and insecurity, and it feels as though the ground is shifting to quicksand under his feet, he feels sick to his stomach with the fear of it.

"…Don't you?" Bucky's voice comes out small and quiet, and the weariness and awkwardness on Steve's face meltsaway, to be replaced by something Bucky can't put a name to but that makes his chest squeeze painfully tight. Fondness and love and want all tangled up together maybe, but whatever it is it makes Bucky's breath catch hard. "Don't you?" he asks again, nervy and shy, and just a little contradictorily pushy with it.

"Yeah, Buck. Yeah I do," Steve says, and then his mouth settles gentle on Bucky's, chaste but filled with intent. Like a promise. Bucky kisses him back, eager and hungry, needing more than just empty promises. Needing Steve. Just a little. Just a taste. When Steve draws away, Bucky nuzzles his lips against Steve's and lets a moan rise up, soft and muffled between them, and Steve's fingers tighten in his hair, his lips parting under Bucky's kiss. Bucky's pulse thunders in his ears, and from the way he's sprawled in Steve's lap he can feel Steve's dick digging hard against his thigh, and fuck that might be the hottest thing ever.

He leans up to Steve, hands scritching through Steve's hair and yanking him down closer, and Steve makes a husky little sound of approval and his tongue darts out, slicking over Bucky's. Oh. Oh hell. Bucky lets out an involuntary moan of shuddering pleasure that he didn't even know he could make - wobbly and rough and needy, and muffled by Steve's mouth - and his cheeks flush hot. His own dick is straining at his pants and he seizes Steve's full bottom lip between his two and nibbles on it, sucks teasing and rough, and Steve's stubble rasps against his as the angles shift and oh god it feels so good...

Warm and rough and damp, and oh god, oh shit, Bucky twists his fingers tighter in Steve's short hair and thinks deliriously that he might cum in his pants just from kissing Steve. And Bucky smiles into the kiss and thinks maybe moments like these make it all worthwhile, in a way. Or more bearable, at least.

He wakes screaming, and a man wraps his arms around him, pinning him to the mattress before he can fall out of the bed. Wretched, animal sounds rip hoarse and frantic out of his throat, and his chest is heaving with his panicked breaths. His face is wet with tears, and warm lips press to his cheekbone in an almost-kiss. "Bucky," the man murmurs in his ear as he struggles against him hard and violent, and the shock of hearing the name makes him freeze in the man's arms. "Bucky. Wake up. It's Steve. It's me. Wake up. Bucky."

He remembers pain. Pain. He remembers who he is – Bucky, he's Bucky Barnes. When he is. Where he is. He knows what's going on. He sucks in a shaking breath, and blinks up at the man above him; face sketched in worry and love, and Bucky will never, ever deserve him. "Steve." It is a statement, not a question, and a whisper on tear-damp lips. His metal hand lifts up, and his cool fingers trail along the curves and hollows of Steve's cheek with infinite care. "Steve. I dreamt..."

"I know, Buck. I know," Steve nods and makes some soft shushing sounds, and there's a pause – Bucky consciously trying to match his shaky breaths to Steve's steady ones to calm down. Their eyes lock together in the dim light, and Bucky finds himself staring at Steve like the sight of him is sanity and hell, maybe it is. Maybe he is, to Bucky. He's okay with that.

"I'm here." Steve rolls off Bucky, but splays his hand over Bucky's heart - naked skin on naked skin. Bucky smiles at the feel of it; so good. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. And you're safe."

Safe. It's a good word. Bucky shuts his eyes again and shifts in closer to Steve, their legs tangling together under the blankets, his metal hand clasping gentle but firm around the back of Steve's neck. His forehead bumps to nestle against Steve's chin, and his human hand wanders, dancing down over Steve's naked torso to rest on his hip. Steve tenses slightly as Bucky's fingers drift over his waistband, but relaxes again when Bucky doesn't try to delve beneath the pyjama pants he's wearing. They sleep sprawled together in Bucky's bed, but Steve has been insistent they remain...chaste.

Bucky is actually all right with that, for now. He thinks Steve is partly right; Bucky's not ready for much more than kissing yet - still too unstable, too prone to flashbacks, to slipping back into being the Winter Soldier. Who knows what sex could trigger in his screwed up head. But Steve's wrong on one thing - Bucky is perfectly capable of knowing what he wants. And he wants Steve. He sighes and nuzzles in even closer, contentment radiating through him in waves as Steve tugs Bucky snug in against him. "Do you want to talk about it, Buck?"

"Not right now."

"Then go back to sleep," Steve says, teasingly scolding, and Bucky jabs him reproachfully on the hip - prompting a muffled yip of surprise - before trying to do just that. His sleep is dreamless and deep.

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