{ 8. Team-Player }

"The more I see,

The less I know,

The more I'd like to let it go"

-Snow, Red Hot Chili Peppers

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"Looks like Barnes' signal made its way to Texas. Yee-haw…" reported Tony. He was hunched over his laptop on the couch while Steve heated a can of soup on the stove. This hotel offered suites with a kitchenette and two separate bedrooms, along with a tiny shred of normalcy. It almost didn't feel like they were on the run. Almost.

It was the off-season and the place obviously wasn't doing well. It was understaffed, in disrepair. Tony noticed the security guard's post was dusty and unmanned, and assumed it would stay that way until summer or until this place went under. Whichever came first.

This hotel was still leagues above the dumps they'd stayed at so far. Sam took a long, honest-to-God shower without worrying about the water going cold after ten minutes. They could prepare their own food. They were way up on the third floor with a great view of any potential threats.

Steve prayed that nosy agents wouldn't show up and ruin this. He hoped they could stay a while because Bucky desperately needed rest and they were all so sick of the road and the fear, the uncertainty. No word yet from Pepper or Natasha, and they didn't have much time. Steve pulled the pot off the stove and divided the soup into four bowls.

It was worth a try. Not like Bucky had anything to lose at this point as he stood on Death's doorstep. He was lying on the couch beside Tony, legs hooked over the armrest, wearing sweats and the "I want superpowers!" shirt that Steve hated so much. Steve helped Bucky to sit up and saw the wobble in his movement, the glazed-over look in his eyes. His arm was trembling, so Steve held the bowl to his lips for him.

Bucky compliantly drank the broth down. Steve went through the trouble of straining out any solid pieces and knew broth alone wouldn't sustain him, but it was better than nothing and he usually kept it down. Might buy them some time while Natasha made her decision—and she better make it fucking quick, said Steve's bitter thoughts.

Sam picked up a kid's magazine at their last fuel stop. It was full of crosswords, riddles, mazes, and plenty of other things to distract them from the horror of being hunted, plus the activities were closer to Bucky's level as his brain patched itself back together.

He was still lying there in a daze when Sam approached him a couple hours later with the magazine and some pencils. Sam felt he had to keep him engaged or Bucky's misery would consume him—and then Sam's boredom would consume him. Bucky really didn't have the energy mentally or physically, but he complied because he promised Sam he would be a team-player from now on and he liked Sam the most, just after Steve.

Bucky decided he liked Tony the least. The guy smelled like alcohol, drove like a maniac and talked too much, always talking and talking, and sometimes he said asshole things to Steve and Bucky sure didn't appreciate that shit, but they were his handlers and he was in no place to tell them what to do. They told him what to do because he was a tool, their weapon, their asset.

That's how it worked. That's how it had always worked for as long as he could remember.

So Bucky was a team-player. His skull felt like a cinderblock on his neck, so he leaned his head on Sam's shoulder as they made their way through a candy-maze. It was kind of like secretly navigating through a dark ventilation system. Bucky didn't know where that thought came from.

After they survived the maze, Sam turned the page and found something tucked in the book's spine. It was a thin, vertical sheet of little graphics: hearts, dinosaurs, stars, skulls and bones…

"Ah, tattoos!" Sam grinned and plucked the strip out, turning it over in his hands. Each graphic was perforated so they could be torn out separately. He patted the strip against his arm and explained, "They go on your skin until you wash 'em off. Which one do you want?"

Bucky stared at the sheet with unusual intensity. Was this a test? Would he be graded depending on what he chose? What was the punishment if he chose incorrectly? Fuck. He didn't remember his training for this. The star was jumping out at his brain, so he pointed to it. It was gold with two eyes and a big smile.

Sam left for a moment. When he came back, he had a wet rag and he tore the star away from the rest of the sheet. He turned Bucky's hand so his palm faced upwards, pressed the graphic to the inside of his forearm, then held the rag over it. "We gotta wait a minute for it to stick," he said, so they waited.

Sitting at the table in the dining area, Steve watched them from the corner of his eye. There was a window beside him that looked out to the parking lot, which he'd been monitoring for the last couple hours. It was easy to keep track of the guests here. This place wasn't exactly bustling—the parking lot was like a graveyard.

A little over a minute passed and Sam carefully peeled the paper square away from Bucky's arm. The star graphic was left behind, stuck on like paint. "Heeey, that came out great!" Sam said and smiled at him. Bucky liked Sam's smiles, they were warm and genuine; unlike Steve's, which were always a little sad for some reason, and that made Bucky feel sad too.

The brunet felt his lips curl. He wasn't trying to do it, it just happened. He didn't remember his face doing this before. Sam patted his shoulder and then gave himself a tattoo as well. It was a four-legged green dinosaur and it was decorating his bicep. "Lookin' pretty badass over there, Guys," Tony said from the table. He sat across from Steve with his laptop, phone, and a few other gizmos Steve couldn't identify.

"You want one?" queried Sam. Tony shot him a sarcastic little smile.

"I'll pass."

"You want one, Steve?" Sam examined the sheet again. "We got hearts, Princess Ariel, Mickey Mouse, we got…Heh, we got some jolly rogers! Want a jolly roger, Rogers?" Bucky saw another sad smile cross Steve's face as he replied,

"I don't feel much like a Jolly Rogers right now..."

Bucky furrowed his brow. Stupid Steve. Why was he such a bad handler? He didn't know what was good for Bucky or even himself. Bucky wished he was an asshole too so he could hate him and his feelings wouldn't be so confusing. But even though Steve was a terrible handler, he wasn't cruel or malicious. Incompetent, but a damn good guy.

It was arrogant for an inhuman tool like Bucky to assume he knew better than his handlers. Those thoughts weren't even allowed, but he found himself breaking the rules anyway and approaching Steve with the rag and the sheet of tattoos. If this made Bucky smile, maybe it would make Steve smile too and then he'd stop looking so fucking sad all the time.

Steve silently watched as Bucky kneeled beside him, trapping the sheet under his toe as he tore out a jolly roger graphic. Steve's arm was resting on the table, so he placed the graphic on top of his forearm and held the rag over it for exactly sixty seconds. The blond man waited, didn't resist, didn't even yell at Bucky or strike him for being such an arrogant, disobedient asset.

Setting the rag aside, Bucky slowly, gingerly peeled the paper back. The ink caught the hair on Steve's arm and came out cracked and imperfect. Bucky's stomach dropped in horror. That's why Sam had put his on the other side of his arm, the side with no hair. He watched Sam do it and he still fucked up. He failed and he was being arrogant and he was going to be—

"Looks good! I like it. Thanks, Buck," said Steve, and Bucky looked up to see a big flash of white teeth. Steve turned his arm around, examining the tattoo from different angles. "These things have come a long way, huh? Way better than the ones we had when we were kids."

Sam's eyebrows jumped. "They had those back then?"

Steve nodded. "Yeah, you'd get them with bubblegum sometimes. I remember," he chuckled a little and shook his head, "Bucky and I, we had a bunch of them and we stuck 'em all over ourselves after school. My mom was ticked, she said I looked like a delinquent and made me wash them off. I think Bucky even got whooped for it, I'm not sure. Mrs. Barnes blamed me, said I was a bad influence."

He paused, gaze falling. Sadness crept back into his smile. "Man, that was so long ago…"

God damn it! Bucky wanted to slap him with the metal arm he didn't have. Slap those storm clouds off his face, grab him by the shoulders and shake that sad fool until he was happy like he deserved to be. He didn't know what else to do, didn't know how to make him smile like Sam smiled.

Bucky was dumb. That's why he was a weapon and not a handler.

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The hunger pain didn't really feel like pain anymore. It just…Was. It was one with Bucky, consumed his whole being until he was no longer Bucky. He was Hunger. But it didn't feel like hunger anymore either, it just felt like dying. Bucky was dying. That's how he felt as he lay in the bathtub. The water was getting cold.

A yellow rubber duck floated by his knee. Bucky watched it through one eye because he couldn't muster the energy to open both. The duck made a high-pitched squeak when it was squeezed. Steve left it there and told him to squeeze it if he needed help, then he left Bucky alone in the bathroom and Bucky wished he hadn't. It was very lonely in here with the tiles that echoed every sound, with no windows to the outside.

Bucky was sufficiently decontaminated and he should have reported to his sleeping quarters some time ago. He knew that, but he was struggling to make his body move. He fell asleep—or passed out, he wasn't sure—in the tub for a while and now he had no idea how long he'd been in here.

Someone tapped on the door, then a voice called, "Barnes? You wanna wrap it up in there? Some of us have functioning digestive systems, you know…"

It was Tony. Bucky groaned a little and forced himself to sit up. He felt like sand bags were hanging off his body and the room was spinning so he shut his eyes, shaking his head to shake the dizziness out.

He planted one foot down and hoisted himself up. His body wobbled, then he grunted as his knee hit the floor of the tub, he collapsed to the side and water sloshed out onto the tile. Bucky lay there panting, sore and out of breath from doing a whole lot of nothing. The rubber duck floated by and he grabbed it, squeezing it repeatedly.

The door opened nearly an instant later and there was Steve, looking concerned as he observed Bucky's awkward position and all the water on the floor. "I got ya," he said, and he grabbed Bucky under the armpits and pulled him to his feet. Bucky fell against him as he staggered out of the tub. He was soaking Steve's nice blue shirt with the buttons but his own legs refused to support him. They were not being team-players.

Bucky sat on the edge of the tub as Steve dried him and helped him into his pajamas. Steve was always doing stuff for him because his previous handlers decided he only needed one arm. Bucky thought that was stupid, but he was just a weapon so what did he know anyway?

Bucky missed it, that metal arm. He was more capable and independent when it was part of him. Now Steve had to do all this extra maintenance on him that he should have been doing himself instead of wasting his handler's time. Steve didn't seem angry though, just a little sad like always as he hooked Bucky's arm around his shoulder and half-carried him to bed.

Sam returned from the Laundromat earlier, and now all the clothes that Bucky soiled with dirt and vomit and sweat were clean again. He had new shirts too which Steve bought for him. These shirts were plain and some had buttons, but none of them had pictures or words.

Tony and Sam's bed was in the other bedroom. This room had a dresser, a closet, and a chair in the corner. It almost looked like a real apartment. Still a nicer place than Steve and Bucky's old flop, Steve thought as he dragged the chair over to the window. It was dark, but the parking lot had lights here and there so he could still see most of it.

Steve sat there for hours, resting his arm on the windowsill with his phone in the other hand. Tony installed some game on it with colored jewels that he was getting a little addicted to, but he still threw a vigilant glance toward the window every couple minutes. Once in a while he looked at Bucky too, lost in a deep sleep on the bed. He always slept on top of the blankets, just wouldn't tolerate being under them no matter how cold it was.

The hours passed until 2:30AM was staring Steve in the face, according to the clock on the side table. As much as he wanted to stand guard all night, Steve knew he'd be no use to anyone tomorrow if he didn't sleep. He placed the phone on the side table and slipped into bed, under the covers because it was the middle of November and he wasn't a freak like Bucky.

He rolled over to face his friend, staring into his back, his mop of long hair, the back of his bare feet curled up near his thighs. Bucky didn't snore anymore, Steve realized. He remembered chucking a pillow at him in the middle of the night when they lived together because he'd wake Steve constantly, but now he didn't make a sound.

An assassin had to achieve perfect silence, Steve supposed, and he shuddered to think how Hydra managed to beat that lesson that into him. Poor Bucky. Poor fucking Bucky. Steve sighed deeply into his pillow, throwing an arm over his head. His eyes were stinging and his chest felt heavy.

He wouldn't care if Bucky snored. He could snore like a chainsaw all night, every night, and he'd never chuck a pillow at him again as long as it meant he was alive. Steve didn't know how much longer they had before his friend's body consumed itself. Neither of them had a normal metabolism. A week? A day? An hour from now?

I'm dying!

Steve couldn't bear to open his eyes as he did it, but he reached forward and his hand found Bucky's cold metal shoulder, then it slid down and he wrapped his arm around his middle. He kicked off the blankets and inched closer, pressing his body against the brunet's back and burying his face in all that damn hair.

"You're not allowed to leave me again," Steve mumbled against his head. "Don't do it. Don't you dare." Bucky lie still and silent, eyes scanning the darkness ahead. He didn't like this—Steve was way too sad. He was at Maximum Sadness. Bucky knew because he heard the quiver in his voice, the way he sniffled, knew he was trying very hard not to cry.

And here was Bucky, a dumb weapon that was only capable of hurting, maiming, killing. That's why Steve was crying, because he hurt him somehow. He wasn't supposed to hurt his own handler. That was the worst crime ever, and Steve wasn't even going to punish him because Steve was the worst handler ever.

Bucky sucked in a deep, shuddering breath and hesitated. Then he spoke.

"No," he said. "No. Nonono." He shook his head to emphasize, trying to get the point across to Steve that he was trying his hardest to stay alive and if he died, well, it wasn't from a lack of effort, so please don't punish his corpse.

He wanted to say more—so much more—but his brain and his mouth were not being team-players. They were being assholes. He felt like there might have been a time when they weren't assholes and turning his thoughts to words wasn't so difficult, but he wasn't sure. He wasn't sure of anything anymore.

And now Steve was fucking losing it, letting out a big ragged sob against Bucky's neck as he pulled him tighter. His whole body quaked with grief. Bucky was so lost. This was so alien and terrible. He felt his own hand reach up and hold on to Steve's around his middle. He felt Steve squeeze his hand and he squeezed back.

Bucky thought of a forest in Germany, all white with snow. Soldiers around a fire that couldn't burn hot enough. Two of the soldiers together in a tent that wasn't big enough, shivering under a blanket that wasn't warm enough. They held eachother just like this. They kept eachother warm in the bitter cold and they survived to feel the sun on their faces the next day.

Bucky didn't know where that thought came from.

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