I'm Here | ✓

29 - Scars

I sat in front of the air conditioner, utterly confused. At least I think this is the air conditioner. I hope.

Steve's still steadily asleep in bed; he reached for my spot when I got out, but he didn't wake up. I tucked the blankets around him a little tighter and his breathing slowed again, so I retreated to the air conditioner.

"You better not," I threaten. Steve only grins deviously at me. It's sometime around 1 A.M. and about one thousand degrees in the house. Our air conditioning was broken again, but it would be awhile before we could afford to have anyone fix it. This wasn't the first time, so we knew the tricks, which included sleeping on the hardwood floor for a little bit of coolness at night.

My hair was plastered to my forehead with sweat and I had already taken all my clothes off, save for one pair of shorts. It barely helped, because I've been up all night. It's too hot to sleep, so Steve and I have been up talking. I gave him a water-soaked washcloth to drape over his forehead, but I can still tell he doesn't feel good. Regardless, he crawls a little closer to me, and I know what he plans to do. I scoot a little further from him, smiling and only half serious.

"Don't you do it, Steve, I swear to God - augh!" He flops on top of me, and instantly I'm way too hot. I scramble to shove him off, and we're both laughing. The washcloth slips off of him, and I slap him with it, careful not to hurt him. I pass off how red my face is getting on the heat, because I'm definitely not blushing, right?

I definitely was blushing.

I pull my hoodie off of my head, and after a moment, I yank off my shirt too. It's too hot in here for anything else, plus it's only Steve in here. He's seen this before. Well, maybe not this exactly -

"Bucky?" Steve mumbles. I turn around, and he's sitting halfway up in bed, rubbing his eyes. "Whashu doin'?"

"It got too hot, so I was trying to figure out how to fix the air conditioner." I tapped a button to show that I was trying to do something.

Steve got up and meandered over to me, leaning over my shoulder. "Uhh..." he pressed a few buttons, but nothing changed. "This is supposed to light up with the temperature, I think. But nothing's happening. I think it's broken."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Can we, I don't know, go down to the front desk or something?"

"It's, like, 2 A.M. They can't do anything about it."

"Oh."

"It's fine." Steve puts his hands on my shoulders and rubs them for a second. "Plus, I kinda like seeing you like this."

"Oh, shut up." I tease, a little embarrassed.

"No, really. If I wasn't so tired, I'd probably kiss the breath out of you. Unfortunately - " he yawned, proving his point, " - I am exhausted. I'm gonna grab a glass of water and head to bed. We'll worry about this in the morning."

I stare at the air conditioner for a second longer before sitting on the edge of our bed again, waiting for Steve. He flicks on a lamp and fills a glass with water from the tap, swigging it down quickly. I smile at him from behind.

He turns back around, and suddenly, his face drops.

"Buck..."

"What?"

He paces slowly back over to me, and I feel myself getting concerned. His eyes are locked on my arm, and I glance down at it, wondering if something is wrong. He sits down next to me and rubs his thumb across the part where metal meets skin. It's pink and welted, but nobody has seen me like this in a long time. I pull away from his touch.

"What happened?"

I cover it up with my other hand, avoiding his gaze. I take a deep breath before responding. "I only remember a little. I wasn't completely stable when I woke up from the surgery, and even once they implanted the words into my head and everything, I just wasn't used to the metal arm. I wanted it gone so bad, and it just didn't feel right, so I guess I had clawed at it for a while, trying to get it off. I scratched myself bloody, over and over again, and it kinda healed like this." I don't want to see the look on his face. He's probably horrified or sad or both, and I can't take that right now. He's silent for a moment that I wish never happened, just letting it soak in. I shut my eyes.

"And these?" His fingertips brush over my stomach to the patchwork of whitish flesh.

"Wounds that my version of the serum never fixed. Mostly gunshots, but I got stabbed once too." He deserves to know the truth, as horrendous and twisted as it may be. It's all I can give right now.

"Do you remember what you said to me about scars once, Buck?" Steve whispers quietly, staring down at his hands. I glance at him. I don't. He understands my silence. "You said, 'behind every scar is an untold story of survival.' We were up late talking about a man we had seen come back from the war. He was blind in one eye and had burn marks all over him. He couldn't have been more than 25, and yet looked like he had been dragged through hell. I wrote those words down when I got out of the ice, because it was one of the first things I remembered about you. It was stupidly, poetically beautiful, and damn, I missed you." In the orange light, Steve's eyes started to water, and he clenched his hands into fists.

I reached up with my right hand, caressing his chin. He smiled at me, and I was on the verge of crying too. His voice was shaky, but he continued on. "It breaks my heart when you hate yourself for what you were, because that's not the Bucky I see. These scars aren't flaws, they're testaments to your strength, a tapestry of struggle and survival. And I'm so happy you made it through, because..." Steve half-sobbed, half-choked. "Because I don't know what I would do if you weren't here."

I wrapped my arms around him, burying my face in his neck. He hugged me just as tight, and it felt like a silent promise that we weren't going to lose each other again. He doesn't know that it took 20 years for Hydra to get his face out of my head, to wipe his name from my brain. 20 years of fighting back, just because he existed and I loved him. He doesn't know that I hid from him for two years, terrified of who I had become but even more scared that if I sought him out, he'd turn me away. I cling desperately to his shirt now, realizing that his words practically echo mine. I can't live without you. I can't.