The White Wolf's New Life

The White Wolf vs. War Machine

Bucky had a considerable relationship with just about everyone in the Avengers. Very few people he had a love-hate relationship with. The only people that Steve could think that Bucky had aggression towards was Maria and Fury. And possibly Sharon but he wasn't sure about that yet.

Steve worked hard over the past few days to try to work on his social skills. So far he's gotten Bucky to ask politely for him to come with him somewhere and ask nicely to open things. While it was more of mind your manners thing, it needed to be taught because Bucky liked to pull on people and not everyone could stand up to his strength, especially little kids.

But so far, he was getting the concept.

Today was intentionally supposed to be a learning day but Bruce had asked that Steve bring Bucky in for a check up. Nothing major, just to see if everything was doing what it was supposed to do. And to hopefully make sure his medicine didn't need another adjustment.

"Bucky, are you ready to go?" Steve asked. Bucky was more interested in his buttons and fidget pad than anything else today. He was definitely in a sensory seeking mood. "Bucky, eyes on me." Steve said. Bucky looked at him. "Can you go get your shoes so we can go?" Bucky put his buttons on the couch then went to put on his shoes. Steve picked up his buttons, fidget pad and tablet. Bucky put on his shoes then they went in the truck and left.

Once they arrived to the facility, Steve wasn't expecting Thor, Loki, Scott and Peter to be here. Bucky could play with them later. Bruce brought them down to his lab.

Bucky hated the ear thing and the weird cold thing that went on his chest, no one ever wanted to warm that thing up. Bruce got him on a scale then frowned. "He's lost weight."

"Has he?"

"I think he was around 200 a few months ago, now he's at 185. I know you guys work out but I'm just concerned if he's working out more than his calorie intake."

"He eats more than me and we do about the same thing working out. Could it be his metabolism burning through muscle?"

"Or it's burning what little fat reserves he has."

"So he should eat more?"

"No, I think if he stays within the 180-200 range, he'll be okay. I just got concerned that he has suddenly dropped almost twenty pounds. Most people would be happy about that."

"Yeah, I've seen that."

"And he's not having any trouble with his medications? Such as waking up after taking it?"

"Now that you've mentioned it, he did wake up in the middle of the night once for a few minutes. It wasn't from a nightmare, he just suddenly woke up."

"Would you rather he sleep through the night?"

"Yeah, but I want him to work on trying to get himself back to sleep if he does just suddenly wake up."

"Well, if it gets to the point where he can't go back to sleep, there is always melatonin unless you think he needs something stronger. But other than that he looks perfectly healthy. Any concerns?"

"Yeah. He's been doing a weird humming and grunting noise sometimes, I don't know what it is." As if on cue, Bucky began humming. It wasn't like humming to a song, it was a deep hum then turned into a curious hum. "I don't know how long he's been doing that."

"It sounds like a stim. A vocal stim. I actually took it upon myself to do research on stimming when we were figuring out his hand flapping. So the hand flapping is a visual stim and the humming is a verbal and/or an auditory stim."

"I knew about the hand flapping but not the humming. Why is he developing new stims?"

"That much I don't know. He could have simply hummed to himself one day and found that it was giving him some sort sensory input. You know some children have loud stims like yelling or clapping. So I say he has some of the milder stims."