6640/=It's time for a big T Talk.

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=It's time for a big T Talk.
Date of Scene: 20 June 2021
Location: Bucky's Manhattan Hideaway.
Synopsis: Sam wins 1 out of 3 when Bucky finally falls asleep.
Cast of Characters: James Barnes, Sam Wilson




James Barnes has posed:
    Someone's in a mood. Bucky doesn't say a damned word when the boys leave the park. Hell, he barely even says goodbye to Steve when they part ways other than a nod offered along with a half salute that comes off a little asshole-ish for some reason.
    He's really honestly and truly hoping that Sam'll break off too and leave him to his own shit. By the time they reach the rundown building that's home to the little shithole apartment he keeps in Manhattan, conveniently not too far from Central Park, he's just about ready to explode. Seriously, if he was a bomb, the bomb squad would be diving for cover thinking there's no chance to diffuse him. Overall the walk takes about half an hour. Half an hour of stony silence Bucky. Half an hour of BuckyStare(tm) and even BuckyGlare(tm).
    He pauses in front of the building, one foot on the first of the crumbling steps leading to the door. "You're not going away are you?" he asks, tone somewhere between resigned and pissed the fuck off.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Sam's not very talkative himself, but it's probably hard to tell given how hard Bucky is messing with the grading curve. But he's not the kind of guy who can channel his issues into rudeness--that's spectacularly in Buck's wheelhouse, not his--and he wouldn't disrespect his mother's memory by ignoring his manners, either.

    So Steve gets an actual goodbye from at least one of them.

    And the next thirty minutes are hell for reasons that have basically nothing to do with Bucky giving him the silent treatment. Sam's got a lot to process, because this is the first real downtime he's had between getting jumped by HYDRA traitors in Puerta Vallarta and now that hasn't been spent straight fucking unconscious from exhaustion, so that shelf that he's been sticking shit onto lately?

    Yeah. Time to unload it.

    The walking helps, though. Flying would help more, but that's a bit too ostentatious for someone who is trying to avoid HYDRA finding out they didn't actually manage to off him in Mexico. So Sam will take what he can get.

    It's a productive half hour. Which is not to say that he has anything figured out at all, but there's now a distinction between the external chaos that is his life and the internal chaos that is his thoughts and emotions. Right now only one of those things is under his control, but at least he has that. Control.

    "Nope," he says, one step behind Bucky. "Look, first off, I don't have a problem having your back on this," and he leaves what 'this' nebulous, because: chaos he cannot control, "But I can't do it flying blind. We have to be on the same page here. And second, you're not okay." Sam holds up a hand. "Which is fine, because guess what: neither am I. There is nothing okay about this situation. And I can't in good conscience walk away knowing that without browbeating you into at least going through the motions. When was the last time you ate? Or slept?"

James Barnes has posed:
    When was the last time he slept? If he has to ask himself that question it's probably been too long. How long it takes him to answer that question alone means it's probably been too long. After a long enough time has passed on that, he figures answering isn't even relevant anymore. So, he just says, "I had a Twinkie..." When was that? Last night before bed or this morning? He'll go with the one that'll make Sam back off a little. "...this morning." So he ate today, maybe.
    All of this is handled in the time it take him to go through the front door of the building and up three flights of steps. The whole place reeks of cigarette smoke, pot smoke, cheap perfume, vomit and booze.
    Until they step into Bucky's own apartment. It doesn't smell so bad in there. He flips on the light switch. There goes a roach or seven. Other than a single kitchen chair and an old mattress on the floor, there's no furniture in the room that makes up the entirety of the apartment along with a tiny kitchenette and a bathroom with no door.
    He hasn't cleaned the blood off the mattress since that night he went to Wong's to get egg rolls.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    It's not that Sam is unflappable in the face of some pretty startlingly bad living conditions. Even growing up in Harlem, his parents made sure they lived somewhere safe and clean. It's just that, what, not even a day ago he was in the same room as a dead body with all the associated smells of days of decomposition and days prior to death trapped.

    Right now he's just a little desensitized. Eventually he'll bounce back, but Sam's human. He can't just shrug stuff off.

    "Uh-huh," is all Sam has to say about the answer Bucky gives him to one of his questions and the answer he *doesn't* give, which is of course answer enough on its own. Well, he'd say more, but he's waylaid by the state of Bucky's apartment. "Man, you live like this?"

    He pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers. There are limits to what he's capable of dealing with in this moment, though mostly due to the unfortunate circumstances surrounding them right now rather than his ability to care. He cares too much, it's practically a personality flaw. Still, he'd really like to shake Bucky and then haul him to the IKEA down in Brooklyn and yell at him about buying some fucking furniture, *fuck*.

    "Right. I'm ordering pizza. What do you want and so help me I will get nothing but ham and extra pineapple if you don't give me an actual answer."

James Barnes has posed:
    "I don't live here, I live in Delaware with the rest of'm. This place is just closer to the Sphere," Bucky replies before he strips off his gloves and his hoodie. He's wearing a t-shirt under the thing. It's no wonder he's always cranky, it's getting on to summer and he's always wearing LONG SLEEVES.
    He settles down on the mattress and pulls a book from beneath the case-less pillow.
    "Ham and extra pineapple." He's just being an asshole right? Surely he's not serious?
    He opens the book. It's... Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Does he really intend to hide behind the idea that he's reading to ... avoid Sam's Talk? Likey so.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    "Man, don't threaten me with a good time because I will absolutely eat half a Hawaiian with zero complaint and I will make sure you eat at least as much as I do if I have to shove it down your throat." Sam pauses. "Gently." Because aforementioned manners, raised right, etc etc.

    He digs out the burner phone from his back pocket, because like he'd assumed of the FBI agent they met earlier, he too keeps up a go-bag. Pretty necessary in this line of work, all told, and his first stop after Maine had been to get it.

    After a few seconds of staring down at it, trying to conjure the wherewithall to actually go through the motions of figuring out where to order a pizza from in a borough of NYC he's not really familiar with, he sits down on the apartment's sole chair. "Look," he says. "You want me gone, I get it. But we both know the only way I'm going to leave is if I know you've managed to go through the motions of being alive, which is: eat, shower, sleep. So, you want me out of your hair?"

    With a loose exhale of breath, he leans back in the chair and gestures with one hand. "Just play ball with me here. Then I'll be gone and you don't have to deal with me."

    A beat. "Okay?"

James Barnes has posed:
    Bucky puts the bookmark back in his book and closes it. He really is reading that serious, finally... how many years after it was published. "You want to take a shower here go for it. You'll come out dirtier than when you went in, promise."
    Just a beat, half of one really, "I thought you were ordering pizza." Maybe he really does like ham and pineapple? It takes a few more than just one beat before he gets to that last bit... sleep. He goes into that thousand yard stare, that look he gets when there's a memory there, or something buried is trying to come up or just when he's forcing himself to interact with someone in a way that's uncomfortable and painful. Sometimes that stare means 'bad things' are about to happen. This time it just means...
    "The past four times I've fallen asleep, I've dreamed about the night I was sent to kill Peggy," the conversation is uncomfortable and painful. It makes sense though, because all of his free time - when he's not killing HYDRA scum for release and sport - is spent in that damned sphere where Peggy's physical self is in that damned pod, unreachable to him. "... I wake up with feeling of my hand around her throat. The only way to make that stop happening is to not sleep until I'm too exhausted to dream when I do. I'm not there yet."

Sam Wilson has posed:
    It's been a long week, so Sam's just going to take Bucky at face value here and order them some god damned Hawaiian pizza. He takes a pause on the conversation, going so far as to hold up a hand in a 'wait' gesture as he hits dial on his phone screen and holds it to his ear.

    Everyone knows how this conversation goes. He lists off the address--of the bodega on the corner, rather than the building itself, which is maybe not any actual use in keeping them safe should HYDRA somehow... hack this pizza joint's phone system or whatever, but it gives Sam a little peace of mind-- and orders. Ham and extra pineapple. Yeah, he'll have cash, please call when you get here, etc etc.

    He hangs up. Pushes his fingertips against his eyelids until he sees starbursts. "Okay." Honestly that call was just as much a hail Mary for Sam to get his thoughts in order as it was to make sure Bucky's supersoldier body doesn't eat itself up or something.

    "That wasn't you. You know that, and I know you know that, because you know the Winter Soldier did those things, and you're not him." The bite of his snappy attitude--look, Bucky just brings it out in him--is gone.

    This is Sam-the-counselor's voice, and though he's made it very explicitly clear in the past that he is not a mental health crutch for his teammates or fellow agents, they are more than welcome to go get their own damn therapist, that doesn't mean he's just going to pretend he doesn't have that skillset or any of the tools that come along with it.

    "And I know this probably has a lot to do with HYDRA being the source of the current world-ending cannon we're looking down the barrel of right now," and Sam lets out a wheezy laugh at the absolute ridiculousness of how these sorts of things are a common enough occurrence that it's come down to this. It's dry and verging on pained, but Sam powers on through. "It's a shitty situation and there is absolutely no reason at all why you should be okay with this because it *sucks*, but that wasn't you, and nothing about the way you're treating yourself right now is going to help you get through this to the other side."

    Deep breath, Sam. He'd aimed for reassuring and it's only halfway through that he realizes he's trying to convince himself as much as he is Bucky, but he nods a little, mostly to himself, and gathers up his resolve. "Which you're gonna. We're going to see this through, kick HYDRA's ass and save the world. Because that's what we *do*."

James Barnes has posed:
    Bucky sets the book aside and pushes himself to his feet. "I'll go meet the pizza." It seems he thinks that Sam's just going to let him walk on out the door in the middle of this? What'er the odds he'd come back. ... probably about as good as the odds of flipping a coin and having both sides come up blank.
    ...but he stops partway to the door. That is to say about two feet from Sam. "There's no difference in my dreams. There's no line between where he starts and I stop. When I wake up, it's *my* hands I can still feel around her throat. The lines are blurred." Like they were in the beginning, before the progress he HAD made. "I can't find the edges anymore. So it's just damned well easier if I sleep when I'm so tired I don't dream or don't remember them if I do." Period. It's not a self harm thing, the not sleeping. It's a self preservation thing, from his line of thinking.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Sam doesn't even acknowledge that with a verbal response, he just sits back and crosses his arms over his chest, head tilted as he gives Bucky a thoroughly unimpressed Look.

    Sure, it's not the BuckyStare(tm) but he inherited his father's "I'm not upset, I'm just disappointed" gaze and it is a powerful thing, not to be wielded lightly. But Sam will absolutely put it to good use if necessary.

    "I get it," he says. "I really do. There was a time in my life after I got back from my second tour when I couldn't even close my eyes without seeing Riley getting hit on our last mission together. And I'm not going to sit here and tell you that there's some magic cure because I still have those nightmares all the damn time. Sometimes it's him, sometimes it's Steve or you or Rhodey or some civilian I saw in danger that week or--" One of his hand lifts to gesture loosely at nothing. "You get the idea. The way our minds torture us is complex as hell and not something you and I are going to solve talking to each other."

    He blows out a breath through his nose. "I'm gonna have to call my therapist after we get through this. And there are some methods of cognitive behavioral therapy that can help you take control of your nightmares, take the edge off. They work." All of this, and he realizes his chances of Bucky actually listening--or taking his advice, at least--aren't high. But Sam's going to try anyway, because he's stubborn, and he gives too much of a damn. "Speaking from experience there. Now sit the hell down and read your book, because that one's the best out of the whole series." This is not up for debate!

James Barnes has posed:
    He just stands there for a long few moments, weighing his options maybe? Bucky does go back to the mattress, but he doesn't pick up the book right away. "Look, I know losing Riley was hell. I know every soldier that's ever seen combat has been through hell." His voice lowers to barely a whisper. His feet are flat on the floor, ass on the mattress, knees bent and he rests his elbows on his knees. He's staring at the floor. It's easier to talk about if he's not looking at Sam. "But your hands didn't kill Riley..." There's more, something else that's eating at him, it's so painfully clear in his posture in the hesitant way he's speaking, halting and ... is that actual emotion in his voice?
    When he finally looks back up, those blue eyes are a little too bright. He *is* exhausted, that's probably the reason he loses control enough to let the tears well, but they don't fall. He blinks them back. But his voice is still laden with them when he speaks again. "They're fucking *everywhere* Sam, *everywhere*. I used to think I was relatively safe from... I mean I just got to the point where I felt like maybe... But now they're *everywhere* and... what they did to me is still in my *head*." The programming, the conditioning... it's still there and the keepers of the secret to controlling him are all around him.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    It's an instinct. Sam's human, and it's instinctual to try to justify his own pain and suffering when it's challenged. But that's not why he'd brought it up in the first place; Riley is not something Sam discusses lightly. This is not the Trauma Olympics. So Sam bites down on that urge.

    "I know it's not the same. I get it. That doesn't mean the things that worked for me won't work for *you*, though."

    And then, well. Sam called it, didn't he? How could it possibly not be incredibly triggering for Bucky to be on the run from the people who put him through hell for seventy years, especially when those same people are on the cusp of world domination? This is why he's stressing how much it's okay for Bucky to not be okay.

    He looks down at his hands, curled loosely into fists on his thighs. "Yeah. You're right, Buck, they are," he says. For a moment, Sam doesn't have a response. He's not in the thick of it in the same way Bucky is, but he's in it *enough* and it's a lot. "I'm sorry," he adds, soon after. "I'm not Steve, I don't have a rousing speech about the guiding light of freedom or our responsibilities in the face of injustice."

    The thing is, Sam's not talking shit about Steve, here. He has a massive amount of respect for Captain America, and he's been in the audience for a couple of those rousing speeches. He'd been in awe then. Still is, to some degree. He keeps showing up to work with the man day after day, doesn't he?

    Maybe it would be nice to have one of those speeches in his back pocket now, though.

    "The only thing I know is we gotta put HYDRA down, man. That's it. I look ahead and that's the only thing I see; it takes up my whole field of vision. It's that or nothing, because there's no room in HYDRA's America for my baby nephews and my sister or my brother, for me or you or any of the people we care about. I can't punch through solid concrete or call lightning down from the sky but I can sure as hell dig my feet in and fight back, so that's what I'm going to do. You with me on that?"

James Barnes has posed:
    "Of course I am," Bucky murmurs quietly but with at least a little conviction. Then, for the longest time, he's quiet and staring at the floor again. It's not an easy silence, it's a building up to something silence.
    He looks up finally. "I need you to promise me something. If they get me again and they turn me against you and Steve and Peggy and the people I love, I want you to *put me down*." He's obviously not talking about knocking him out, no, he's talking about putting a bullet in his brain kind of 'putting him down'. "I know Steve won't, couldn't, same with Peggy so I'm asking you, please." He can't be the reason they lose this fight and if HYDRA has their Winter Soldier back again, their boogeyman, their perfect killing machine? Well, he might just be the one little thing that tips the balance against his own friends.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    It's not an unexpected ask. Sam's pretty sure anyone would have seen it coming a mile away, and here it is.

    "I don't know if I can do that, Buck." Sam holds up a hand to stop the immediate rebuttal he expects to receive. "I don't know. If it comes to that? Yeah, I'd try. As much as it would tear me up, I'd try. But the thing is, for it to come to that, chances are I'm not still around to do anything about it."

    He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and holds Bucky's gaze for a moment. Not long, because eye contact is challenging and they're both probably running on fumes in terms of emotional capacity right now. Sam sure as hell is. It's important that Bucky sees, though, how serious Sam is right now in this moment.

    "One thing I can promise you, though? If HYDRA tries to pull you back down again they're gonna have to put me down first before they can, because there is nothing I won't do to keep that from happening. Okay? I won't give up on you."

    His phone goes off.

    It's on silent, but the buzzing is almost deafening in the quiet of the room, and Sam jumps, sits back startled. He's annoyed with it and with himself for reacting a second later--he's learned how to deal with sudden loud noises--and he looks away, expression tightening. It takes him a moment to get it out of his pocket, and then he answers.

    "Yeah--I'll be right there. Hold on." Sam's up and on his feet a second later, holding a hand out to Bucky. "I'll be right back. Stay put."

    At least this time around he doesn't expect Bucky to bolt, judging by the way he forgoes the look of disappointment to instead just slip out the door and head downstairs.

James Barnes has posed:
    ...and when Sam returns Bucky is gone...













    ... off into the land of Winkin', Blinkin' and Nod. He's sound asleep, on that disgusting dirty floor that really is more filthy than the mattress believe it or not. The 'bed' is left for Sam, an invitation to spend the night or maybe even a request?

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Sam's boots are heavy coming up the stairs. Emotional fatigue is as real and debilitating a thing as physical fatigue, and Sam doesn't have the necessary distance that he usually has as a counselor. He's not providing guidance, he's trying to help a friend not fall apart, and at the same time not doing a great job of keeping *himself* together in the process.

    But the relief he feels when he opens the door and finds Bucky asleep? That's bone-shakingly deep.

    He eats half the pizza stood in the tiny kitchenette and it's all mechanical, going through the motions to provide some energy for his body to continue functioning. Which is a damn shame, because it's a good pizza. Here's the thing, Sam actually really loves Hawaiian.

    There's no question about whether or not Sam is staying. It's not like a thin, dirty mattress is anything Sam's going to object to--he went to war in the Middle East, sometimes he didn't even get a bed, just slept on the dirt--but he's not quite to the point where he can just lay down and pass out, right then and there.

    It takes a bit. He cracks open Bucky's copy of Goblet of Fire and reads through the first couple of chapters, thinking less about the words on the page and more about the night he'd taken his sister and brother to the midnight release, scrapping enough money together from a few odd jobs around the neighborhood so that he could buy them each a copy.

    That's a good memory.

    He holds onto it as he falls asleep, the book ending up splayed out across his chest.