All I Want Is Everything

Sweet Baby James

Please swallow your pride
If I have things you need to borrow
For no one can fill those of your needs
That you won't let show.

Bill Withers, Lean on Me

Bucky woke up with a sore neck from his head being tipped back and a dry mouth that indicated that he'd either been snoring or at least mouth-breathing, wondering why he was on the sectional sofa and why he didn't feel better. Ella was curled up tightly next to him, which was wrong. She never curled up. She slept on her stomach, almost always with an arm or leg over him. Then he remembered. The confrontation with Steve at the party, the sinkhole he'd stepped into inadvertently at dinner. He had a lot to do.

Priorities. He really needed to pee. It took precious time to evacuate the sofa without disturbing Ella, and he had to do the pee waddle to the bathroom. Once that problem had been addressed, he went up to the master bathroom to brush his teeth and make a phone call. Two, actually. He had to call a second number before he caught up with Sam at his sister's.

"What's up, man?" Sam asked, yawning. One thing you could definitely say was awesome about being a musician was the lack of regular office hours.

"I need help, Wilson," Bucky said tersely, taking the phone into the closet, poking the cord under the door, and closing it to keep the noise down.

"What's wrong?" Sam was alert now. "Did Ella kill Steve and you guys need help getting rid of the body? She looked like she wanted to, at the party."

"I'd prefer that, actually," Bucky said, rubbing his face. "At the party, he asked if I was sleeping with his sister, then said 'why' and laughed. I tried to make her feel better over dinner by saying that I didn't think he meant it the way it came out. It exposed a lot, Sam. I never thought—I mean, she's been going to analysis, she's almost always happy, she seems to deal with things and move on. I'm not asking you for a diagnosis or to turn me into a shrink for a day, but I don't know what to do. I'm at a complete loss and I need to get in the game and help her through this."

"Bec told me what he said," Sam said sharply. "What do you mean when you say that a lot was exposed, Buck?"

"She is fucking traumatized, Sammy. She felt belittled by the comment, then she was worried that he was going to somehow take away all her accomplishments again, everything she's managed to achieve. She's wary about trying to do 'the right thing' because she believes that she'll be taken advantage of. That Steve will manipulate me into hurting her. She's trying so hard to trust me but I think now that she's trying to enjoy what she has right now because she thinks I'll leave. She says she knows that I've changed, she's seen it, but what I've done in the past hurt her a lot more than I realized, and it's still there. It's fair that she's got trust issues with me because of what I did, and I own it. I just need to know how to support her while she gets through this stuff, and I'll abide by whatever she decides. It was devastating to see her like that." His voice trembled and he took a minute to get a grip. "And with Steve, I think the problem is a lot deeper than just what happened over the band. I think she's been repressing hurt since childhood. She always had his back, he usually didn't appreciate it, but she kept trying. He'd grumble about it growing up, but he got really cutting after he hit that growth spurt. She did back off at that point. But she heard that Chris was being bullied once in eighth grade, she went to the kid's sister who was a year behind us, told her to do something about her brother or she would, and the sister did. She felt bad about her brother. Chris was grateful and really sweet to her, so it wasn't her family, it was just Steve. I don't think she understood just what she was doing to herself, she seemed surprised that there was this crater there. She's been beating herself up. I had no idea that she'd been repressing so much."