Chapter 23: Muscle Memory

He woke with a tightness in his chest and tears on his cheeks, the remnants of the dream fading fast. Bucky again, turning to ash, and even the ash dissolving to dust, until there was nothing left. A sound brought him further out of the dream—a low, shuddering groan of something wounded.

He opened his eyes, lurching into a sit, blinking against the darkness. A hint of light made the place a cave of shadows and dark shapes—street lights from outside, spilling through the tiny window high above, he realized.

The sound was coming from Bucky. Steve blinked at the obscure ball of a figure and, as his eyes adjusted further, he made out enough detail to see that Bucky was on his knees, curled so far forward that his head was on the floor. He held his hands to his head, making a low mewling sound.

Steve eased forward carefully, half-crouching, half crawling toward his friend "Bucky." He spoke low, softly, mindful of the last reaction he received when he touched Bucky. "You're safe. Do you know who I am?"

Steve's mind flashed back to the grisly photos. Was he re-living one of those horrors? Or another one that was never memorialized with the flash of a bulb?

"It's a dream. Wake up," Steve prodded. He wasn't actually sure whether Bucky was awake or asleep, but he was determined to get him out of whatever hell he was experiencing. "It's okay. I'm your friend. You're James Buchanan Barnes, and I'm–"

Bucky exploded forward, body-slamming Steve and sending a fist into his wounded side with enough force that, for a couple of seconds, Steve couldn't breathe and bright spots danced in the darkness.

He caught a reflection off the metal arm, raised above his head, from the dim light spilling in through the window and instinctively brought his arms up. "Bucky, stop! It's me, Steve!"

Bucky's wild blue eyes caught the faint glow from the streetlight. That was the only glimpse Steve got before Bucky bolted away and flung himself into a pitch-black corner of the room on the other side of the metal cabinet.

Steve's side was on fire. He groaned and rolled to his side, bending his knees and pressing a hand to the bandage. It was wet.

Damn.

At least he'd had the foresight to pack the first aid kit.

Bucky emerged from his dark refuge. Steve tensed, rolling to his knees so he was in a better position to defend himself, but when Bucky went to the duffel bag and pulled out the first aid kit, he relaxed and breathed a relieved sigh.

Bucky knelt next to him, hands shaking, eyes wide as he studied Steve in the dim lighting. He reached up, and Steve went still as Bucky's trembling thumb touched his wet cheek. The dream. He'd forgotten about it.

"It's not because you hit me," Steve explained, clearing the tightness from his throat. "I had a bad dream. I guess we both did."

Bucky's hand slid away, and he opened the kit. His chest rose and fell with quick, shallow breaths. Whatever nightmare or flashback he'd had still lingered. Steve shifted onto his butt and peeled off the soiled bandage. In the dim lighting, it took his eyes a few seconds to make out the details of the wound. A section near the bottom of the wound was bleeding. Nothing bad, but the punch had made the entire line of healing tissue hot and angry.

"It's not bad," Steve said, hoping he sounded sufficiently reassuring.

Bucky avoided his gaze, focused on the first aid kit and finding the appropriately-sized bandage. Finally, he selected one, then opened an alcohol wipe.

"That's not really nec—" goddamnit!

Steve gritted his teeth as the alcohol touched the open part of the wound. He wasn't worried about infection. It'd require a particularly overachieving bacteria to make it past his enhanced immune system. He wondered if it was the same for Bucky. So far, they both seemed to have similar effects from the serum in terms of speed, agility, and healing.

Even the bandage was likely superfluous, but given their less-than-hygienic conditions, he figured it couldn't hurt to cover the wound. If there were overachieving bacteria, this would be the place to find them.

Bucky slapped on a fresh bandage, closed the kit, and returned it to the duffel bag.

Steve slid until his back was against the wall to relieve the strain on his wound. "Are you okay, Buck?"

Bucky ignored the question as he pulled off the sweatpants. Steve wasn't even sure he processed the question, but when Bucky grabbed his tactical pants from the chair, Steve's gut twisted. "What are you doing, Bucky?"

Still no answer, but Bucky continued to dress, moving next to his boots.

"Are you leaving?" Steve risked a hand on his friend's arm.

Bucky froze, head lowered and face turned away.

"This wasn't anything. Just a nightmare. If you leave, I'm coming with you." Steve released his grip. "Please don't go. Not now. At first light, we'll go for supplies, figure out our next move."

Bucky slipped into his shirt.

Steve didn't know how to get through to Bucky, and the silent treatment made things more difficult. He could only guess at what Bucky was thinking. Guilt over hitting Steve? Embarrassment over his reaction? Or had the dream spooked him? There had to be a way he could make Bucky listen.

"Do you remember when those guys were beating me up, and they stole my jacket? You fought them off. I had a concussion, and I took a swing at you."

Bucky went still, fingers on his vest.

"You got me home, set me on the couch, got me warm, and watched over me," Steve continued. "You were always there for me, when I was sick, when I was being an asshole, even when I took a swing at you. When my mother was dying, we fought. I said some…things. I tried everything I could to push you away, but you wouldn't go." He took a deep breath, remembering that painful day when he and Bucky argued, then Bucky dragged him behind the sanatorium and boosted him up so he could say goodbye to his mother through the window. "Please, Bucky, don't go now."

Bucky's shoulders curved forward and he turned his head just enough to throw a dewey, sideways glance at Steve. Bucky was in that gaze, and for a moment, it felt like home. Steve was sure it wasn't wishful thinking.

"Let's try for a couple more hours of sleep before the sun comes up," Steve offered, hoping to continue the momentum since Bucky appeared to be listening.

He had no idea what time it was since he didn't have his watch or a phone, but he had a fairly well-developed internal sense of time. He'd guess sunrise was still at least three hours away.

"I…" Bucky's voice was so low, Steve had to strain to hear him, "...don't want to hurt you."

"You won't. You didn't," Steve said. "You still hit like your little sister." It was a gamble bringing up Bucky's family, but he was listening to his gut, hoping the gentle ribbing and old line would strike a familiar chord.

Bucky took a breath, blinking several times, the shadows making his expression difficult to read. "I have a sister?"

"You had three." He thought it best not to mention that two of them were dead. He'd looked up Becca, and she was still alive, but that was a complicated situation best avoided for now.

When Bucky took off his boots, Steve let the air out of his lungs.

Steve returned to the makeshift bed on the floor, pulling the blanket up to his chest and laying on his back as he stared up at Bucky. "When we were kids, we were always sleeping over in each other's rooms. Do you remember any of that?"

"Sometimes, images," Bucky said.

Then he did something that had Steve's heart in his throat. He took off his shirt and laid down on his back next to Steve, on top of the blanket.

"I remember a woman with blue eyes wearing a yellow dress with white flowers," Bucky said. "Who was she?"

Steve closed his eyes. The question was a simple one, but something sharp twisted in his gut. To forget your own mother….

Hydra had to go down. Every single last one of them.

He took a breath to push back the rage, not wanting it to contaminate his words. "She was your mother. Her name was Winifred Barnes."

"You knew my sisters?"

Steve sighed, happy that Bucky was finally talking more, but hating that all he could do was tell Bucky about family members who had died a long time ago. "Yeah."

"What were they like?"

"The oldest was Ruth. Maggie was the middle girl. Becca was the youngest. You and Maggie fought the most. Becca worshiped you." He smiled as he thought of the three girls that Bucky endlessly complained about and rarely admitted how much he adored. "You griped about having to share one bathroom with four females. Becca used to follow us around a lot. We tried to ditch her, but she was tenacious."

Silence lingered long and heavy in the darkness as Steve pondered what else to tell Bucky about his family, but Bucky broke the silence.

"I don't remember them."

"It's okay. You're getting some of your memories back. You might remember them eventually. If not, I do. I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

"My father?"

"Do you remember him at all?"

Bucky hesitated, then whispered, "I'm not sure."

"His name was George. He had a good sense of humor, always joking."

"Was I close with my folks?"

My folks… Steve smiled because that was how Bucky had referred to his parents. It was another clue that at least some part of his friend survived Hydra. "Yeah, you were."

"Did I have anyone else?"

"Just me." It felt intimitate between them, laying side-by-side, shrouded by the night and talking about a past they shared but only Steve remembered. "You never married, if that's what you're asking. Neither one of us did before…." He stumbled over the words describing what happened to both of them.

"We died?"

"Yeah, sort of."

"You were frozen?" Bucky asked.

"Yes. I crashed a plane that would've wiped out the eastern seaboard of the United States into ice. I woke up seventy years later. How do you know that?"

"I remember a newspaper. The people who kept me showed it to me. I don't remember much else, just feeling sad. I learned more when I interrogated the Hydra member and accessed his computer."

There was a lot to unpack in those words. Is that how Bucky learned about Project Insight? It was the first time he could recall Bucky mentioning anything about his captivity. And the computer he referenced could provide a lot of useful information.

"What computer?"

"I left it. They can track it."

"What Hydra agent?"

"A man named Jasper Sitwell."

"What?" Steve clenched his fists and resisted the urge to sit up. Bucky was talking, and he didn't want that to change. He calmed himself. "He's with SHIELD. A double agent?"

"Hydra is SHIELD."

"It can't be all of it. Peggy Carter and Howard Stark founded SHIELD. They weren't Hydra."

"Howard Stark?" There was a low, gravelly quality to Bucky's voice suddenly.

Steve mentally kicked himself for bringing up Howard. He wasn't sure how much Bucky remembered of Howard or the assassination.

That was the end of their conversation. Bucky went silent, and Steve listened to his friend's choppy breathing. He wanted to reach out and comfort Bucky, but he kept still and quiet, not wanting to risk another reaction. It was agony listening to Bucky's inward struggle. How well did Bucky remember Howard? Did he know they were friends?

Bucky would've given his life for Howard, Peggy, or the Howlies. He had given his life for Steve. If Bucky really was in there, then he was in agony remembering the things he'd done.

Steve tried to imagine what he'd feel if their situations were reversed, and he didn't think there'd be anything anyone could ever say or do to make the knowledge that he'd killed good people he cared about less devastating.

Twenty minute passed before Bucky's breathing settled. Ten more minutes went by before Steve found himself drifting toward sleep. His side ached from the hard floor, and he bent his knees, not wanting to move too much and risk disturbing Bucky if he were asleep. Still, he couldn't help the tiny groan that escaped.

Bucky's right arm flopped across Steve's chest. Steve's eyes stung with the threat of tears, and he closed them, soaking in the familiarity of the gesture and feeling like a kid again. Then he grinned, so wide his cheeks almost hurt.

I'm okay, Buck.

-0- -0- -0-

The pain in his left shoulder woke him. It was always there, but worse in the mornings or after a grueling mission. There was a warm mass and breathing on his right and a brief burst of alarm that faded with the memory from last night.

His human arm was draped across Steve Rogers' chest, which rose and fell with a deep, steady rhythm. He drifted in the sensation of the warm smooth flesh beneath his arm. This was physical contact of a nature different from what he was accustomed to. It was not clinical, punitive, or restraining. It was intimate but not in a way that made the mutilated thing scream.

The mutilated thing was….His breath froze in his lungs when he realized the mutilated thing felt different. It was touching parts of him he didn't know existed, like a glacier below the surface of the water, melting and becoming one with the ocean. He began to wonder which of them was which.

Opening his eyes, the first thing he saw was the subtle glow through the window high in the wall over his head. The sun was rising, the morning barely started. He needed to move soon, before his left shoulder locked up and became a liability.

He sat up, lifting his arm away from Rogers' sleeping form, surprised by the feeling left in the wake of the loss of contact. He couldn't identify it, but it felt like a cold tightness in his chest. Or perhaps that was a product of his angry shoulder.

"Hey," Steve shifted, muttered, his eyelids fluttering open. Blue eyes met his, and then Steve smiled. "Good morning, Buck."

"We'd better get moving."

Steve's smile faded. "Okay, but it's still early." He sat up and glanced at the window, "and the city's just waking up. We don't need to rush."

Bucky leaned forward and raised his left arm to grab the shirt from the chair, but the pain stopped him, pushing a grunt from his throat.

Steve shifted closer to him. "What's wrong? The arm?"

He nodded. "It'll pass."

"I don't want to pry, and you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," Steve began, taking a deep breath, "but I saw some of the scans Bruce took, how they attached that arm. It must hurt a lot. Bruce said it probably would."

"It hurts, but I'm used to it." No one had ever seemed to care whether the arm hurt, so long as it was functional.

"Do you remember that you were a boxer?"

"No." Had he always been a fighter?

"Well, I used to help you out after fights, when you were stiff, hurting. Will you let me try now? I'll do my best not to hurt you, and if you tell me to stop, I will."

He hesitated, not sure what the man was proposing. "I don't want an injection."

"I don't have anything like that, and that's not what I mean. Massage, Bucky. Just my hands. I can try to loosen things up a bit, if you'll let me."

He held his breath, considering. Hands on him. He found the earlier contact almost…enjoyable, but this was different. Steve was behind him. Touching him from behind. He felt his chest growing tight, the hair on the back of his neck standing straight, and a twisting in his gut.

But something else inside him trusted the man behind him, and his curiosity overrode his anxiety. He nodded.

"Okay, I'll do my best, gentle at first. Let me know if it's too much, or you want me to use more pressure."

Warm hands pressed against the back of his left shoulder, close to the line of flesh and metal. A palm, flat and gentle, pressed smoothly from the base of the shoulder upward. Then fingers probed the creases between the muscles.

He closed his eyes and released the air in his lungs. Steve's hands worked the muscles carefully, finding the tight spots and working the tension away. Soon, Bucky's head began to droop of its own accord, bringing his hair forward, and Steve's hands moved to the upper shoulder, then the neck, pressing, pushing, gliding, then working down again, toward the shoulder, along the scar tissue. They moved toward the center of the back, down the spine. The palm pressed inward, gliding a path along a ridge of tendon and muscle.

His throat vibrated with a soft, contented sound, and his anxiety melted. This felt familiar, but different. A memory sprang forward of a smaller Steve, all gangly limbs with no strength behind them, using sharp elbows and fists to work away lesser substantial aches and pains.

"Is this okay?" Steve asked.

"Firmer."

"You got it."

The pressure increased, deeper, more confident, bringing twinges of pain that quickly faded to relief. He lost himself in the sensations. Touch that healed, brought comfort.

Then something shifted inside him, like a crack in glass, and he trembled with the suddenness of the new feeling.

"Bucky?" Steve's hands fell away. "I'm sorry. Was that too much?"

He shook his head. He didn't know what this feeling was—like a nexus where pleasure met pain, the answer to a longing he had forgotten existed. His eyes leaked, and he wiped quickly at his cheeks.

"No," he forced out, more a croak than a word. "It felt good." He sucked in a quick breath, then straightened. "Thank you."

Thank you.

The word felt strange springing off his tongue.

"You're welcome," Steve said softly, a note of caution in his voice. "We should get something to eat, but before we do, I want to ask you something."

Bucky straightened and turned to him. "Ask."

"You seem to only want to eat soft foods. Is that because it's what they fed you….the last seventy years?"

He nodded. "That's sufficient."

Steve looked suddenly unwell, his face mouth pressed into a hard line and his breathing quickened. "Okay, well, maybe, but don't you remember food? Your mother used to bake a lot…cookies, banana walnut bread, casseroles. We used to eat hot dogs, and Paddleworth's Hoagies. Do you remember any of that?"

He probed at the edge of his memories. Hot dogs were familiar, long yellow-white buns wrapped around brown cylinders that smelled like….

Like…

His brow furrowed. "Maybe. I think so. Hot dogs, at least. They smelled good."

"Will your stomach be able to handle real food if we start off slow?" Steve asked. "Maybe oatmeal and toast? We passed a diner on our way here."

He was hungry, and optimal function required adequate fuel. "I'll try. Let's pack up and head out."