AN: At least one person has expressed disappointment over the use of the "f-bomb." It's not a word I would normally use, but no matter how I tried, nothing else seemed to express Tony's frustration he can't drop being a self-absorbed, defensive jerk long enough to call Bucky by the name he's worked so hard to earn, instead of by some pop culture reference. Tony's had to get massively drunk to even talk to Bucky person-to-person, especially after Bucky's cryo flashback in the lab. If enough people are upset over it, I wouldn't mind changing it, but I think it will lose some of the impact that I wanted. Rest assured, it wasn't a flippant or random word choice.

The bricks were worn and crumbling in spots, but that made climbing super easy. Bucky eased himself over the top edge of the apartment building and gripped the stonework as he explored with the toe of his shoe. When he found a niche, he moved his hands to the next solid-seeming place, and tested it with his weight before he extended his other leg. Bit by bit, he worked his way from the roof down the exterior wall, until he reached the curtained window. He planted both feet on the open sill and swung into the tiny room beyond.

Bucky saw right away that Steve had gotten worse. His fever was obviously higher, and his cheeks and neck were mottled with dry patches of dark red. The skinny punk really needed to be asleep but he was fighting it tooth and nail, as usual. "Hey, Bucky," Steve said weakly. "Mom's going to be sore if she finds you in here."

"When has that ever stopped me, huh? How are you doing?"

Steve gave him a ghost of a smile. "Not too good."

Bucky forced himself to look cheerful, even though it was troubling to hear Steve admit that he wasn't feeling well. "You gotta quit hanging around here, that's for sure. Stuff is getting out of hand. Let me tell ya, that rotten Peter Lansson kid? He's been telling everybody that he's going to thump Donald Harvey."

"He'll kill Donald." Steve's eyes flared with indignation, even though he didn't have enough strength to lift himself off of the pillow. "I should go bust him right now."

"You should," said Bucky, holding back tears, wondering if Steve would make it until tomorrow, much less long enough to serve justice to Peter Lansson.

Bucky didn't understand why the sight of Tony slouched over a table in his laboratory would elicit a memory of Steve battling illness in a Brooklyn bedroom. Tony didn't look sick, though he looked like he hadn't shaved or combed his hair in a few days. He was just sitting there with his jaw propped on his hand, staring listlessly into a glass of amber liquid. A nearly empty bottle of the same substance stood beside his hand. He wondered if it was a real memory, and thought he would try to ask Steve about it later.

He was glad and greatly relieved that Steve was there. Once Steve had accepted that Bucky really did want to find out what was on Tony's mind, he had offered to stay nearby, out of earshot, but within calling distance. "Not going to hurt Tony," Bucky had promised.

"I'm not worried about you hurting Tony," Steve had said. "If you need me, just yell, or let JARVIS yell for you."

Bucky moved closer to the entryway and stood where Tony would be able to see him. Then he knocked on the acrylic room divider. Tony startled with a snort. When he saw who it was, he waved as acknowledgement. Sound was muffled through the divider, but he heard Tony say, "Let him in, JARVIS."

The work area was still chilly, but Bucky had borrowed one of Steve's sweatshirts and wore it over a long-sleeved T-shirt. The lighting had been reduced by about half. The place smelled of machine oil and dust and increasingly of alcohol the closer he moved to Tony. He also noticed the lingering scent of citrus and mint that JARVIS offered after he'd been sick, because it had also seemed to help Tony. Small tools and an articulated machine segment lay across the table. Tony had split his denim jeans from ankle to knee, and a maze of wires ran from each separate piece of the machine to contact points along his left leg. "Well, if it isn't Jason…fuck. Sorry. Bucky. Check this out." Tony flexed his calf, and the machine twisted and flopped. "I call it "The Really Deranged Caterpillar." Don't know what I'm going to use it for yet. Maybe nothing."

Bucky shrugged, not really seeing the point in something that had been made for no practical purpose. Then he remembered the green and red painting that he kept upstairs, next to his cherished book of space photographs. Art didn't seem to have a purpose, but he liked his painting anyway. Was Tony making his own kind of art?

Tony took a long drink from his glass, and motioned with his head that Bucky should sit down. Then Tony appraised him coolly for a moment and settled his eyes on the shiny surface of Bucky's left hand. "So. Does that thing hurt? I saw a lot of scarring before, right around the shoulder."

"Sometimes," Bucky admitted. He didn't have clear memories of when or how it had bothered him, but it had itched or burned when there hadn't been adequate time for maintenance.

"I want to apologize for what happened a couple of days ago," Tony mumbled. "I shouldn't have laid you out on the table and played engineer on your arm. I'm an asshole."

"Negative. You are a jackass."

Tony's eyebrows crept nearly into his hairline, and he laughed. "Guilty as charged." He took another drink. "Can I ask you something? Something serious, jackass to jackass? I know you can't always answer…crap. Sorry. I keep walking right into that stuff, don't I?"

"Is okay," Bucky said softly, raising his eyes. Tony looked pinched and gaunt. "Ask."

Tony sighed and ran his finger along the rim of his glass. The Really Deranged Caterpillar twitched. "All right, I think I'm finally drunk enough to just come right out with it." He leaned forward, his eyes black and intense. "You were tortured and frozen and had your brains burned out for seventy years. If anyone is entitled to flashbacks and shit, it's you. But you're dealing, you know? You've gone from a complete basket case to most of a decent human being." He sat back again, but his expression had lost none of its haunted intensity. "So, what I want to know is…how?"

He wanted to tell Tony that he didn't know how. He had only recently realized that he was a human being, much less a decent one. Going from needing someone to give him an order to eat to taking fifteen minutes to make up his mind about whether or not he wanted mustard on his cereal wasn't that big of a step.

Decent human beings didn't need to make sure friends were out of harm's way before they could sleep, when they slept at all. Decent human beings didn't deserve to be hurt when they made stupid mistakes, like reaching for reflections in viewing panels or for making their friends cry. Decent human beings didn't worry every second about punishment descending for a wrong look, a wrong word, or even while sitting still and doing nothing. How could he possibly explain that to Tony?

He pushed himself out of the chair, lowered himself onto the floor and sat cross-legged under the table. Then he reached for Tony's hand and tugged until Tony disconnected the leads from his leg and had also moved to sit on the floor. Then Bucky said, "Am scared, Tony. Scared always." He waved his hands around to indicate the space under the table. "Want…this, all the time."

"You feel like hiding under a table all the time?"

"Affirmative." Bucky rapidly pattered an open hand against his chest to simulate a racing heartbeat. "This, always."

"Panic attacks?"

Bucky nodded. "All the time. Bad dreams, Tony. All the time."

"I have nightmares too." Tony looked at the floor. "Especially after New York. And after Afghanistan. They…um…yeah."

He'd read about the Invasion of New York. He knew that Tony had carried a nuclear missile into the wormhole, and had plummeted to Earth like a lifeless rock from space. Bucky also knew that the Ten Rings organization had kidnapped him and held him for months in Afghanistan, but he'd not known that they'd tortured Tony until now. "Hurt you?"

"Yeah."

Anger...no Bruce had called it "outrage"...boiled up inside him, surprising him deeply. It felt like what he thought of as anger when he saw it on the faces of other people, but without a specific target. "Understood."

Tony rubbed at his eyes. "Yeah, I guess if anyone here would understand, it would be you. So there's no magic bullet, huh?"

Bucky didn't understand what a magic bullet was, but he guessed it meant that there was no easy way to become a decent human being. "You are not an asshole, Tony."

The billionaire playboy industrialist laughed uproariously. Then Tony's shoulders began to shake and tears began to flow.

His first thought was to pull Tony into his arms, as Steve did to comfort him when he woke screaming at night, but he didn't know whether Tony would find that acceptable. But he decided that he'd rather accept the risk that Tony might drive a drill bit through his hand or put pliers to his fingers than do nothing. So Bucky took Tony's hand in his metal left one, thinking that a man who made machine art might like the prosthetic hand better than his real one, and sat quietly until Tony had cried himself out.