Cwtsh: A hug or a cuddle. A safe place; the space or the cupboard under the stairs.
Steve finds him in the closet under the stairs, the one that nobody really uses except to deposit old ties that don't quite shine anymore and boxes of cogs and electrical gadgets that Tony always swears he'll get around to but never does.
"Hey, Buck, what are you doing in here?"
Bucky isn't small - in fact, Steve thinks privately that Bucky is built like a horse, wide in the shoulders and chest, broad, strong, long-limbed and graceful all at once - and it is an incredibly tight squeeze trying to fit the both of them in there. Steve ends up with his shoulder digging into a cardboard box of VCR tapes, some black film spilling out and snagging itself along the places where they touched.
Bucky peeks out at him from where his head is pillowed on his knees, hugged tight to his chest.
"I was just thinking," he says after a moment. "I was trying to remember."
"Remember? Remember what?" Steve asks, a little bit hurt. "I can help you remember."
Bucky shakes his head vehemently. "You can't. You weren't there."
And this is when Steve realises that Bucky is trying to remember where he goes when it goes white, where he goes when he isn't with Steve, where he goes where it hurts, to a place that Steve cannot follow.
Bucky shifts his gaze to a haphazard pile of what looks like Tinker Toys. "This place reminds me of there, kind of. Tight. Suffocating. Dark."
The slight quaver in his voice tells Steve that Bucky is scared, though he doesn't admit it. He sighs and wraps an arm around Bucky, tugging him closer and breathing in the smell of his shampoo.
"If I remember, maybe you can find out what's wrong with me," Bucky whispers into Steve's shoulder, and Steve wraps his arms tightly around Bucky and runs a hand through long, inky hair, and tells Bucky over and over in hushed whispers that he is perfect, absolutely perfect as he is.