Sam called the next day and Steve picked up on the first ring.

"Hey, how's it going?" Sam said. He sounded like he was in a car. Steve rubbed his eyes, stretching and reaching with his free hand to pull open the window curtains and DC's bright morning horizon blinded him for a few seconds.

"Good, good," Steve said, shading his eyes and turning around.

"How's Bucky doing?" Sam asked.

"Oh, great," Steve said. "A lot better. I think we can both sleep a little easier at least, with Hydra gone."

"Can't we all," Sam replied and Steve smiled a little because it was true. "I was wondering if all of you had any plans for Thanksgiving."

"I don't know," Steve said. "I hadn't realized it was so close."

"It's on Thursday," Sam said. "I wanted to invite you and Bucky and Natasha to my place. My whole family's coming over, it's going to be a big thing." Steve let out a breath and couldn't stop himself from smiling.

"Wow, Sam, gee," he said. "Thanks. We'd love to."

"Great!" Sam said. "Bring sometime to eat, but not stuffing because that's my specialty."

"Okay," Steve said with a laugh and then, because the conversation sounded like it was closing but he didn't want Sam to go, he began to ask him about the VA. "How are things going down there?" He said.

"Decent," Sam said. "Lot of people starting to open up again."

"That's good," Steve said.

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "I mean, that's the first step, man. You just gotta get 'em talking."

"Course," Steve replied, simply for something to say, and suddenly, he didn't quite like where the conversation was going. Lucky for him, however, he had somewhere to be, and he was able to say goodbye to Sam and he'd call back later, yeah, of course, happy holidays to you, too. Bye, Sam.

The place Steve had to be just happened to be Natasha and Bucky's apartment, because Steve had bought his new paints for Bucky's shoulder and had promised Bucky that his red Soviet star would be gone before the end of the day. So Steve covered the bruises around his neck and walked over, his new tubes of paint and brushes in a canvas bag slung over his shoulder, and he ran across the street from his building to the other in order to avoid the frigid cold in between.

Bucky was waiting for him at the door and let Steve in eagerly and there was some sort of relief in Bucky's face that Steve noticed, a sort of letting go when he saw him and Bucky sat them both down at the counter across from each other and rolled up his sleeve immediately.

"You still want that same design?" Steve asked.

"Yeah," Bucky said and looked over at his arm, reaching up with his right to move his hand up and down his shoulder, frowning at the star. "Yeah, that same one."

"Kay, then move your hand and hold still," Steve replied and Bucky let his hand drop and looked down at his lap now, waiting.

"Hi Steve," Natasha said, wandering into the kitchen with them, wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt and looking like she just woke up. Steve began to pull his paints out and set them on the table, putting the first few colors on a palette and choosing his brush carefully.

"Morning, Natasha," Steve said. It was blue first, bright, strong, American blue, to go in a circle around the red star first because Steve was thinking it out and he wanted to do this right for Bucky.

"James has been looking forward to this with some fervor," Natasha added as she began to rustle through her kitchen for breakfast. "Either of you boys want anything to eat?"

"No thanks," Bucky said.

"I'll have his meal," Steve replied and laughed a little, which in turn made Bucky grin and Steve was going to say something further, a joke, make him laugh, but he was leaning into Bucky's shoulder now and he noticed scratches up and down the paint job and stopped. He rubbed the scratching over with his thumb and frowned at Bucky. "I thought this paint here was brand new," he said. Bucky shrugged his other shoulder, still trying to hold still for Steve, and looked over at him.

"It was," he said.

"Then why does it already look like it's been through hell?" Steve asked and Bucky pressed his mouth together in that way he did when he didn't want to address something.

"Tried to scratch it off," Bucky finally admitted when the kitchen had gone silent and Steve stared at Bucky's face and back down at his arm with the long, thin lines through the red paint and swallowed. Behind them, Natasha set down the bowls she had been setting up and Steve heard her shuffle as she turned her back to them.

"What, with… Your nails?" He said and Bucky looked down at his right hand and then held it up to Steve.

"It's fine now," Bucky said. "I only tore a couple of them, but I'm fine now." Steve dropped his brush and grabbed at Bucky's hand, but Bucky pulled it back, frowning deeply now, and dropped his right hand down at his side. "You know it's perfectly okay now," he said slowly. Steve glared.

"Damn you, Bucky," he said angrily and pulled back a little from Bucky's face, leaning over the counter with one elbow and using his free hand to scrub his face. This wasn't okay. Bucky thought it was okay, he was so unsettlingly undisturbed by it. And it wasn't that he healed, Steve was incredibly glad he healed because if anything good was to come out of the way Steve let Bucky down, it was that now, Bucky couldn't hurt himself as easily, but then again, he still did. He still managed to find little ways to draw his own blood and it wasn't okay, even if he healed, it wasn't okay, and Steve didn't know what to say to Bucky to make him understand that he couldn't do things like this anymore.

"I stopped," Bucky added in the quiet.

"Why, because it was a bad thing to do or because it wasn't working?" Steve asked.

"Does it matter?" Bucky said and Steve ground his teeth and tried to fight the urge not to yell.

"Yes, it matters, Buck," Steve said.

"I don't see why it's such a big deal, there were no consequences at all," Bucky replied. "If I can do it, then why not do it?"

"Natasha," Steve said warily, turning to see Natasha standing in the kitchen behind him, one arm around her waist and one hand covering her mouth. "Help me out here." Natasha pulled her hand away from her mouth and looked down at the ground in silence. When she looked up, she was biting her bottom lip.

"I don't know what to say," she said. Bucky turned in his chair now and put both elbows up on the counter, his face angry.

"This is ridiculous," he said. "I'm just fine, it's like it never happened. I didn't even nick the metal. Why are you two making such a big deal out of this?" Steve grit his teeth together and looked away from Bucky's face and began to coat his brush in the blue paint he'd been mixing.

"Turn," he instructed sharply and Bucky let out an exasperated breath and turned back to the side, pulling his sleeve up higher and glaring forward. Steve leaned into Bucky's shoulder and began to paint carefully over the red and the metal plates and each and every long scrape. He worked for a long time in silence, letting the paint dry, having Bucky shift his arm every so often so he could cover every inside angle of every sliding plate and make the blue continuous and unbroken.

Natasha set a bowl of cereal down in front of Steve and then another down in front of Bucky, despite his protests, and took her own to the couch across the room and sat with her knees up, watching the two of them and letting her cereal get soggy.

"I just don't get it," Steve finally said quietly after a while, as he added a second, thin coat over the top plates. "We discussed this, you knew it was coming off soon anyway." Bucky was silent again for a while, until finally he spoke.

"I couldn't look at myself in the damn mirror," he admitted, venom in his voice. "I couldn't look at myself. I'm supposed to be able to do that now. And that-that-" Bucky stopped talking for a moment and screwed up his face. "It… That thing was stopping me from doing that." Steve frowned deeply and looked back down from Bucky's face.

"Well, it's gone now," he said. "Totally covered. You never have to see it again." Bucky looked over at his shoulder and rolled it, admiring the blue circle, and looked back down, letting out a breath.

"Thanks," he said quietly and Steve began to pour out white paint now, and picked out a different brush.

"Don't mention it," he replied and started in now on the new star, a bright, clean, white one overtop the blue.

And of course, like always, this wouldn't have happened to Bucky if not for Steve. He wouldn't be tearing out his own fingernails, in anguish over some marker on his arm if Steve had just caught him seventy years ago.

It was his fault. It was all his fault. He'd practically done it all to Bucky himself.

"So, Sam's invited us to Thanksgiving," Steve said now, loudly, because he couldn't stand to think to himself any longer. "He wants us to bring food."

"Oh, great!" Natasha said from across the room, sounding relieved. "I was worried about that because I don't think any of us can cook a turkey." Steve saw Bucky crack a smile out of the corner of his eye as he concentrated on the sharp angles in white.

"Well, I hope we can manage to bake a pie for him or something," Steve said.

"Who's invited?" Bucky asked, probably, Steve thought, because he wasn't so sure of his own place in a group, but Steve wasn't going to let him be alone because alone was horrible and Steve said, "You. You are. And me and Nat-"

"And Sharon?" Natasha asked, interrupting Steve and smiling her half-smile. Steve rolled his eyes at her.

"Sure," he said. "I'll ask Sam. Why not."

"Just why not?" Natasha exclaimed. "Wow Steve, you're such a romantic. I bet Sharon's smitten with your devotion." Steve would have laughed, except that he was thinking now about Peggy, and he shifted in his seat and almost smeared white paint all over Bucky's shoulder, but luckily, Bucky was watching his hand and pulled away just in time. Steve glanced up and met Bucky's eyes and Bucky didn't look mad like Steve had almost expected him to. He looked concerned, his eyebrows furrowing and his lips parting slowly, like he was trying to think of something to say, like wheels were turning in his head and he was putting something together.

"You're hilarious, Nat," Steve said. "Ha ha ha. Move back here, Buck, I can't reach you." Bucky looked away from his face now and leaned back down into him and Steve began to concentrate fully on each sharp white point, blocking out Bucky and Natasha's subsequent conversation about how fun a Thanksgiving could be with the Wilson family.

"Oh, look!" Natasha said after a while, when Bucky's new star was almost complete and Steve was just beginning to mix the red to circle the emblem in a thick line. Natasha set her empty bowl down and turned around on the couch and pointed out the window. "Snow!"

And sure enough, Steve could see a flurry of white outside and he looked away and back down to his paints, somewhat disgruntled, but Bucky was moving again and Steve grabbed him by the elbow and jerked him back.

"I'm almost done, you can look outside later," he said.

"It looks really good," Bucky commented and Steve smiled a little down at his paints, rolling his eyes because Bucky was obligated to say that.

"Glad you like it, cause you're stuck with it," he said. "No scratching this one off." Bucky continued to watch Steve add the finishing touches on the top coat until Steve finally called it done and began to put his paint away. "Stay still," he added. "Until it's dry. You'll smear it."

On the way home, Steve thought about Bucky and the disinterested way he hurt himself again and again, insisting it was okay, insisting it didn't matter and Steve sighed, his breath visible amongst the falling snowflakes and he hurried indoors. It did matter, it mattered so much, and Steve had hoped that this was a roadbump they had already gotten over, a trial they had already faced, but it looked like it was going to be more difficult than he previously assumed. He just hoped he could help Bucky before he seriously injured himself.