Chapter 28: Pain Can Do That

Bucky was still hurting, and he was still trying to hide it. Steve didn't know what to do besides whatever Bucky asked him to. He didn't ask for much, and when he did he asked as if he wasn't sure his request was even worthy of fulfillment. Clearly, he wasn't used to being the one under the weather and still hadn't gotten it through his head that Steve would do anything and everything humanly possible to help him through this. Steve repeatedly assured him that he didn't need to hesitate before asking for help or comfort. By Friday afternoon, Bucky appeared to have got the message, but he was still overly grateful anytime Steve helped him out. It was like he'd forgotten all the things he'd done for Steve over the years, things that imposed far more hardship on him than anything he'd asked Steve to do in the past few days.

After their walk, they ate breakfast and took their respective cocktails of meds. Bucky managed to eat more in one sitting than he had all week, much to Steve's relief. Between the stronger pain meds and the reawakened cancer trauma, he'd been eating only about a fourth to a third what he usually did. Hopefully, some proper nutrition would help him feel better.

Steve had some work he could do virtually, so he planted himself in the living room with his laptop. He offered the TV remote to Bucky, but he shook his head and sank down to the sofa. Now that he wasn't distracted by walking and talking, it was clear just how bothered he was by the pain. "Can I get you anything?" Steve offered. Bucky only shook his head, jaw clenched. Steve hated to see him so debilitated, but he knew better than to impose help when none had been requested.

By now, no traces of anesthesia drowsiness remained in Bucky, so he didn't doze off. He just sat with his head tilted back, breathing deliberately. The itch to fix it danced across every inch of Steve's skin, but he couldn't bear this suffering in Bucky's stead, no matter how desperately he wanted to.

Bucky's mom called to check in a bit later. When he heard his phone ring, Bucky looked to Steve, silently begging him to answer it instead. Bucky had only talked to his mom once since the surgery, and that was after Steve literally begged him to call her so she'd stop bothering him with inquiries about Bucky. Still, Bucky made no move to answer his phone, even though it was within easy reach. His reluctance to speak to her was ridiculous, so Steve answered the phone and told Winnie, "Bucky's right here," and held out the phone for him to take, effectively trapping him. Bucky stuck his tongue out, but reluctantly accepted the call.

"Hey Mom," he greeted. Steve expected him to take it into another room for some privacy, but obviously he didn't care if Steve overheard. Even hearing only Bucky's half of the conversation, Steve could discern most of what Winnie was asking.

"Yeah, sorry. Been napping a lot. I'm doing okay," he said through half-clenched teeth. Steve shook his head and audibly tutted. Of course Bucky wouldn't tell his mother the truth. Bucky heard him and shot him a glare Steve knew meant he would have been flipped off if Bucky's hand wasn't occupied with holding the phone to his ear.

"Did he now? I can assure you, Steve is prone to overselling things."

He threw his head back and sighed in frustration. "Fine. It fucking hurts. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

A long pause, suggesting Winnifred lectured him.

"Me too," he croaked.

"Yeah, Steve's been an angel."

Bucky snickered. "We both know he's exactly like his mom when it comes to that sort of thing."

"I won't, Mom. I even asked him to wash my hair. We're way past reluctance."

"Love you, Mom."

"Bye."

He hung up and tossed the phone onto the couch cushion beside him. "So apparently my mom texts you when she can't get an honest answer out of me."

"Yeah," Steve replied. He'd fielded all sorts of inquiries about Bucky from Winnifred when she couldn't get him to open up about more sensitive topics. "If you would just be frank with her, she wouldn't need to."

"What good does it do if she knows about this? It'll just make her worry."

"She's more worried when she knows you're hiding something. And she can always tell."

"Yeah, she can. It sucks."

"She knows you."

"Yeah." He trailed off and gazed out the window. Then, he asked, somewhat stiltedly, "Is Gabe still coming tomorrow?"

"That's the plan," Steve said. "Unless you don't want him to?"

"No, it's fine," he said—way too quickly.

"Bucky…" He'd just finished a conversation about honesty with Winnifred, yet here they were. Even if he didn't know Bucky as well as he did, Steve could've seen that he was lying through his clenched teeth.

"Okay," he relented. "It's just…I still feel like crap." He swallowed so forcefully that Steve could practically hear it from halfway across the room. A single tear ran down his cheek. "And I don't want him to see it."

"That's okay," Steve assured. "No one's going to make you have company if you're not up for it."

Bucky held his fist to his mouth and clamped his eyes shut as the tears continued to fall. Steve closed his laptop, set it aside, and made his way over to sit on Bucky's good side. "Hey, it's okay," he said calmingly. He moved to wrap his arm around Bucky the way he had so many times before, but stopped before he could make contact with the bandaged stump. That would've only made it worse. Steve settled for placing a hand on the back of Bucky's neck. "It's okay," he repeated.

"I thought the surgery would be the hardest part," Bucky said. "I wanted it to be over so badly, and it is, but now I know that was actually the easy part. I can't go back to full activity for twelve weeks, and how many of them are going to suck as hard as this one?"

"None of them," Steve said immediately. "The first week is always the worst. Every one from here on out will be better."

"How do you know?"

"I've done this sort of thing before."

"Yeah, you're right. I don't know why I feel so trapped."

"Pain can do that to a person. If it's this bad, do you want me to call the doctor and see if they can get you something stronger for a bit longer?"

"No, I can handle it."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

"Okay." Steve chose to let it slide, though given what he'd seen Bucky would probably be approved and would benefit from an additional course of opioids.

"Can you stay here, though?" he asked hesitantly. "Helps distract me."

"Absolutely." Steve kept his hand where it was at the base of Bucky's neck and gently massaged some of the tension he could feel there. Bucky started drooping until his head rested on Steve's shoulder. He didn't fall asleep, but Steve could feel him relax as some of the pain bled away.

~0~

Bucky was miserable. No position was comfortable. There were only those that made his phantom arm hurt, those that made it hurt more, and those that made it hurt a lot more. Jim and Timmy were kind enough to drive over an hour to drop off dinner at their house, but Bucky hid away in the bedroom until they were gone. If he looked anything like he felt, it was not a sight he wanted to present to anybody he didn't have to.

He didn't feel up to eating, but Steve forced him to finish off a medium-sized portion. It made him feel less exhausted and weak, but did nothing to ease the pain. Steve turned on the news after he finished cleaning up the kitchen, but Bucky only caught every fifth word or so. Darkhölme had warned him this would hurt, but Bucky never thought that this degree of anguish was even possible, much less that it would ever descend upon him. It made him wonder if it was even real, or if his brain was blowing the signals from his nerves out of proportion. If it was all in his head, he should be able to tamp it down, right?

Steve had texted Gabe earlier to cancel tomorrow's visit, but Bucky felt obligated to talk to him himself. Before crawling into the bed for the night, he texted Gabe, "I'm sorry to make you change your plans. I just don't really feel up to company at the moment."

"It's okay," Gabe replied a mere two minutes later. "I just hope you feel better." He followed it up with another text containing three of the prosthetic arm muscle flex emojis. Bucky laughed at that and showed Steve.

"But you don't use one," he pointed out.

"Yeah, but it's the spirit of the thing."

"Okay."

"Although I can't imagine what flexing my phantom arm would do to me right now."

"Don't. You're not supposed to move it."

"I know. Steve, believe me I have no intention of disobeying that order. It hurts enough as it is."

"Just checking." He paused. "Out of curiosity…what position is it in?"

"What kind of a question is that?" Bucky asked with a huff.

Steve shrugged. "I dunno. I was just wondering, like…where are you holding your phantom arm?"

"It's just hanging by my side." The sensation was difficult to describe, especially to a non-amputee, but that was the gist of it. "There is no phantom sling or anything."

"That's fascinating."

"Shut up."

"Okay. Good night." Steve turned out the light and was asleep within minutes. Bucky envied his ability to go down at the drop of a hat. He used to be able to fall asleep like that. Not tonight. The pain kept him up. All. Night. Long.

Sometime around two, Bucky gave up on lying in bed and moved to the sofa. Maybe an hour and a half after that he moved back, careful not to wake Steve. It was easily as bad as some of his worst sleepless nights during cancer treatment, possibly worse. At least when he was up all night throwing up, he was doing something other than just hurting.

When Steve woke up, he asked how Bucky slept. For the briefest of instances, he considered lying, but decided against it. "Not great," he admitted. It wasn't as descriptive as he could've been, but it was more or less the truth. They normally spent Saturday mornings in the basement lifting together. Bucky watched Steve get dressed and ready, knowing he wouldn't be able to join. That just added another layer of misery.

"Do you want to come with me?" Steve asked genuinely.

Bucky figured watching Steve would at least be better than staring at a wall, so he nodded. He didn't bother to change out of his pajamas, though. It was strange to be in their weight room in anything but workout gear, but then again, nothing about his current circumstances was normal.

Despite the pain, the urge to get working overcame him when he stumbled into the basement. If that was the case, he must've done a good job building solid habits. He needed to keep his strength up for soccer, and doing it with Steve by his side made it all the more enjoyable. Saturday mornings were his favorites; he'd always found lifting more fun than running, especially since it offered more different ways for him and Steve to challenge each other. Bucky's only challenge on this day was not to let the pain overwhelm him.

He watched Steve warm up and go through his usual reps, longing for last week when he was right up there next to him. If he was feeling more like himself, he probably would have shouted encouragement—scratch that, he would've shouted sarcastic insults and probably the occasional lewd remark—but as it stood, he just sat in silent observation. Steve attempted to wrap him up in a sweaty hug when he finished, and Bucky at least had the strength and coherence to fend him off. He was still stuck in a showerless hellhole for the next week, and he did not want his bandages infused with the scent of sweat.

Steve took a quick shower and then made breakfast. Bucky forced himself to eat his entire serving, though his brain had no room to perceive hunger when it was under constant assault from his angry nerves. He did feel less completely flattened now that he had a decent meal in him. Steve asked if he wanted to play Scrabble. Bucky knew his thoughts were too scrambled to play his best, but it sounded like an activity that wouldn't aggravate his arm further, so he agreed.

They were pretty evenly matched when it came to Scrabble. Steve was better with strategic use of the bonus spots on the board, but Bucky was better at finding words within his seven letters. This time, however, it was no contest. Steve crushed him. Bucky was too worn to be pressed about losing so badly, but he made Steve do all the clean-up.

"Every week will be easier than the last," he reminded himself over and over again. Bucky couldn't wait for this week to be over so he could get to an easier one. By lunchtime he was exhausted to the point of feeling hollow inside, but the pain would not allow him to sleep. Steve tried to help him drift off, but none of his tricks worked. Bucky tried to be honest about his pain and exhaustion levels without making him feel too guilty over not being able to help. But Steve being Steve, none of Bucky's efforts could save him completely from guilt. When they went to bed that night and his eyes remained stubbornly open, Bucky wondered how many consecutive hours of awake he could take before his body literally shut down. At this point, he almost wished that would happen.

~0~

Steve woke up in the middle of the night, and he wasn't sure why. Now that his anti-rejection med schedule didn't require him to take a dose at midnight, he usually slept straight through without issue. Not wanting to wake Bucky, he sat up slowly and rubbed the lingering sleep from his eyes. A quick glance at the clock on the bedside table told him it was just after three in the morning.

Maybe he just had to go to the bathroom, and that was what woke him up. Without turning on any lights, he tiptoed into the en suite. He did manage to go, but it definitely wasn't urgent enough that it would've woken him up. Something didn't sit right. As he turned off the water after washing his hands, he realized just how dead silent the house sounded. He should've been able to hear Bucky breathing. With a sick churning in his gut, he stepped back into the bedroom and listened out. The sound was there, but far too faint and far too infrequent. Steve ran to the light switch and slapped it on.

Bucky wasn't even sleeping. His eyes were open and glazed over, his jaw clenched so tightly that Steve felt his own teeth twinge in sympathy. Shallow breaths sawed in and out, but his chest barely expanded with each one. In a panic, Steve did the first thing he could think of to force him to take a deep breath—he located one of his legs under the tangle of sheets and smacked him. It worked; Bucky gasped and his chest fully expanded, but the inhale morphed into a strangled sob and he didn't take another breath until fifteen seconds later.

"What's wrong?" Steve asked. He almost slapped him again, but it was clear this pathological respiratory pattern was Bucky's conscious choice and not a side effect of something else.

"Hurts," he choked out.

"It hurts to breathe?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Why the fuck didn't you wake me up?" Steve grabbed Bucky's hand—it was cold—and immediately wrapped his wrist to take his pulse—it was fast.

Bucky only closed his eyes and whimpered. "Nerves…on fire." The slight, desperate breaths continued, each one preceded by an impossible tightening of Bucky's jaw, as if he was psyching himself up for each one.

"I know it hurts, but you can't keep breathing like this."

"No." Bucky flinched like he expected Steve to hit him again. At this rate, he might have to. Steve grabbed his pulse ox from his collection of monitoring equipment and snapped it on Bucky's finger. From the coldness of his hands, Steve expected the reading to be low, but his heart leapt into his throat when it read a dismal eighty-seven percent.

"You dizzy?" he asked.

"Dunno."

"Your oxygen saturation is low," Steve informed him, trying to keep his voice level. He remembered times his own sats had dipped that low, the panicky sensation of not getting enough air that had overtaken him. "I think we need to go to the hospital."

"No," he protested weakly. "Can't…move."

"You're gonna have to." Steve grasped him by the forearm and as gently as possible pulled him to sitting. Silent tears dripped down Bucky's face with each movement, but he managed to swing his own legs over the side of the bed and lurch to standing. Steve half carried him to the car and buckled his seatbelt for him.

"How long was it hurting this bad?" Steve asked urgently.

"I fell asleep for a few minutes, then it woke me up," he explained. "Breathin' just…made it worse."

"And you didn't think to tell me."

"Thought it would get better."

"For four hours?"

"Uh-huh." He swallowed thickly and held his breath for so long that Steve reached out and smacked him again. "Stop holding your breath," he said sternly. "Buck, you've gotta breathe."

"It hurts."

"I know, but breathing is important. I'm kind of an expert on this." The attempt at humor fell hopelessly flat on its face. He was too worried to sound jovial. Since Bucky could barely speak without crying out in pain, Steve took to explaining the situation to the staff at their local hospital while Bucky nodded agonizingly along. Before attempting to address the pain, they took one look at his sats and put him on oxygen. Steve decidedly did not like seeing such familiar equipment on his husband's face instead of his own. Bucky didn't much like it either, but he was too anguished to fidget with it.

They took off his shirt and unwrapped his chest to check the healing wound for signs of infection or damage. Steve saw for the first time the nearly ten-inch curving incision that snaked from the base of his neck to the middle of his left pec, dotted with half-dissolved stitches. It was almost as long as the scar from his initial amputation. Fortunately, it was completely clean and healing beautifully. Unfortunately, that meant they still didn't know what was causing the pain to be so intense. Bucky collapsed exhaustedly against the raised bed after they finished rewrapping his chest. Steve's sole comfort was watching his oxygen sats climb back up.

The team here contacted Gravesen, and within half an hour they concluded it was caused by nothing more than the relocated nerves continuing to cause phantom pain as they began to heal into the muscle. It was an ugly but not completely unexpected side effect of this type of procedure. Bucky was barely coherent enough to listen, but Steve nodded along as they explained that there was nothing they could do besides upping his nerve pain meds and potentially adding a second course of opioids.

Steve expected to have to fight them on that. Doctors were always reluctant to prescribe stronger pain meds, understandably so, but fortunately they understood that in this case the greater risk lay in Bucky not being able to breathe through the pain than in addiction or dealing drugs. To knock out the worst of the pain as soon as possible, they took him back and performed the same nerve block procedure they'd done to initially diagnose the neuroma. The level of relief was immediately noticeable in Bucky's face and jaw, though Steve knew it would only last a few hours at most. Steve stayed by his side, gently running his fingers up and down the inside of his forearm and giving his hand a gentle squeeze when his breathing fell back into not-quite-deep-enough. They weaned him off the oxygen, and a few hours later he was discharged.

On the way to the pharmacy to pick up Bucky's meds, Steve worked up the nerve to once again ask why he'd suffered in silence when Steve had literally been mere inches away. Bucky pinched the bridge of his nose and let out the most defeated sigh Steve had ever heard. "Didn't wanna sound whiny."

"Whiny? Jesus, Buck, there's nothing whiny about asking for help when you can't breathe."

"You never did."

"What?"

"You never asked for my help…with that sort of thing. Told me to go and live my life while you suffered alone."

Now it was Steve's turn to sigh defeatedly. Bucky felt like he needed to shoulder his own burden to repay Steve for so many years of shouldering his, but it didn't work like that. Steve told him as much. "I was a kid, and I had other people to help me. Our relationship is different now than it was way back then, in case you haven't noticed." He knocked his ring finger against the steering wheel a few times to accentuate his point. "I know I can always turn to you when I need help with anything, and I need you to know that you can do the same with me."

"I know," Bucky admitted. "Thanks."

"You're welcome. And thank you for being honest with me."

"Can I ask you something?" he asked hesitantly.

"Anything."

"How did you wear that stupid cannula all day long? It's so annoying."

Steve laughed. Bucky joined a moment later, and if it hurt him to do so, Steve couldn't tell from the grin on his face. Luckily, they made it home just in time for his anti-rejection meds. If they'd stayed at the hospital any longer, in all the chaos, Steve might have forgotten, and then they would've had another potential catastrophe on their hands.

Sorry to make the angst even worse, but I know y'all love it. You wouldn't be reading this if you weren't prepared for angst. I promise it gets better after this chapter.