Chapter Text
When Bucky wakes up, he knows right away that it’s going to be one of Those Days. The days that barely qualify as days, because he doesn’t actually bother to get out of bed.
Sometimes, Those Days are a result of his fucked-up head. A migraine so bad he can barely string together the words to tell Steve to leave him alone. Or just the complete lack of any will to get up and interact with a world that he spent seven decades trying to shatter.
Other times, it’s like today: the wings, as painful as they are ugly.
No one in the Tower has described his wings as such, not in the 12 weeks that he’s been here. His former HYDRA handlers frequently reminded him what an eyesore they were, but by now he’s well aware of how often HYDRA lied.
But… stopped clocks, and all that. On the matter of the aesthetic value of the wings that they gave him, they were correct. The wings are ugly. Hideous, in fact.
It’s the first time in his life that this fact has had any importance to him. Before, his wings’ unattractive nature was as irrelevant as the constant pain they caused him. All that mattered was that the wings worked.
And they are functional; he can—usually—fly as well as anyone who was born with wings. Which is about 12% of the population, as Steve sometimes reminds him in a kindly, misguided attempt to make him feel more at ease with the monstrosities sprouting from his back.
His dreams last night were filled with hazy memories of whatever combination of gene therapy and magic that HYDRA used to summon feathers from flesh: of being chained down on his stomach for weeks while they incrementally unfurled from his back, the feeling of bones fusing and skin splitting, the air heavy with the scent of blood and leaking wounds.
And then he wasn’t dreaming, but the burning pain stayed constant. Like his muscles tearing all over again; like if he moved, there would be a wet ripping sound, and the wings would just drop down onto the floor.
Which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
Now fully awake, he presses his face into his pillow and lets himself swear with all the words his half-fried brain can summon.
When cursing doesn’t do anything at all for the pain, he tries just biting the pillow and riding out the cramp that seizes up his rhomboids. That doesn’t help either, at least not much: the cramp abates, only to be replaced by a more generalized swath of pain. It starts at the seam where his wings split out from his back, then spreads out a foot, a foot-and-a-half up each of them. The bones and feathers further out are just dead weight.
Bucky tries to breathe. He refuses to see a physical therapist, let alone a doctor—HYDRA had him doing plenty of physical therapy when the wings first grew in, and he’s not eager to repeat the experience—but the new therapist-therapist he’s forced to see is very big on breathing as a solution to all of life’s problems.
The breathing does help him to relax some of the tensed-up muscles in his back. Unfortunately, it doesn’t actually do anything for the pain.
His right hand twitches, fingers seizing around one of his secondary coverts and plucking it loose, and then a second feather for good measure. Even that fails to offer any relief, physical or psychological, against the onslaught overtaking him.
The wings were ugly enough before he developed this particular compulsion. They arch out of his back like storm-battered sails. Even when he tries to fold them in against his spine, they still stick out at odd angles, never lying as flat as—certain other people’s wings.
And that this has led to Steve no longer leaving glasses in their dish drain is embarrassing, sure. But maybe he could handle them being a bit misshapen. Besides, he’s trying almost every night to get them to bend more, twisting around and using his hands to push them into place and hold them there for an hour or so before he falls asleep. At this rate, he thinks he’ll probably be able to fold them mostly flat in six months or so.
He can’t handle the feathers.
Some people have patterns on their wings, mesmerizing gradients of different hues arcing up from their spines. His are monochromatic, a dull, flat black. Not glossy, not like a crow or a raven. More like a garbage bag that’s been lying on the street for a week. Just a plain darkness that blended in well against the night sky, but which stands out like a fresh bruise in the unrelenting brightness of the Tower.
But it isn’t the color that makes them ugly. It’s the feathers themselves. They’re… scraggly. Ragged. On the whole, the feathers stick out haphazardly in some places, bunch together in others. On an individual level, the barbs of each feather often fail to lie down flat and smooth.
And if the feathers weren’t bad enough, the lack of feathers is actually worse.
Bald patches dot the wings like acres of scorched earth. Two weeks after he got to the Tower, he impulsively pulled a feather out after a particularly stressful nightmare.
The sudden, sharp sensation, not nearly intense enough to be called “pain,” distracted him for just a moment from the memory of electricity stripping away his self.
He had pulled out a second, and then a third. He stared blankly at them in his hand, ran his thumb over the bristles, and then let them fall to the floor.
That had been the start. Going on his third month now, it hasn’t gotten any better. When memories of all he did threaten to overwhelm him, when his body’s various aches become too much to ignore, when it just feels right, he reaches back and plucks off a feather. Maybe more than one. And when that little spark of not-pain thrums through muscle and bone…
It helps. Sometimes.
He rarely touches his wings outside of this; he flinches away even from his own hands on them. He does not want to think about why that is. Can’t remember, really. The tiny stab that come with pulling out the feathers help keep those memories at bay, and that’s how he prefers it. He is allowed to have preferences now, and so he will.
And at the moment, his preference is to remain in bed, and so he does, lying in a throbbing stew of misery until he hears Steve stirring.
Shit. He’d agreed yesterday to go on Sam and Steve’s morning run. He accompanies them once or twice a week, usually. It’s the only time he goes outside: he can only leave the Tower under strict supervision, while Steve’s lawyers work out a way to make sure he avoids the prison time he most definitely deserves.
But going outside means that people will look at him and Sam side-by-side. And it’s bad enough when the other residents of the Tower—namely Steve, since everyone else has thankfully been giving him a wide berth—see him and Sam in the same room.
Under almost any other circumstances, he probably wouldn’t much care about how ugly his wings are. It’s been less than a year since he almost killed Steve aboard the helicarrier; the concept of “caring” still isn’t one he’s fully comfortable with, especially when it comes to something as meaningless as how other people perceive his physical appearance.
It’s a matter of comparison, is the problem.
His hair is ugly too. It alternates between being too greasy, during the periods when he can barely bring himself to get out of bed, let alone shower; or dull and dry, during the times when he’s showering daily with the 2-in-1 “Wig ‘n Wings” grocery store shampoo that Steve buys.
But none of the other men living in the Tower have long hair. So the fact that his is ugly matters less, because there’s nothing to compare it to.
No, the problem is Sam.
Sam.
Sam Wilson.
Sam fucking Wilson and his stupid gorgeous wings.
His stupid gorgeous wings that he was born with, instead of having them forced out of his back like an invasive plant sprouting from the earth. His stupid gorgeous wings that are patterned similar to the kestrel from which he draws his name: a rich, golden brown nearest to his spine, spilling into a darker gray for his secondaries, and finally an elegant jet black for his primaries. His stupid gorgeous wings that fold in tight along his spine when not in use, and rise from his back in a graceful arc when spread out, not even a bump to mark the place where Bucky snapped the radius and ulna of his right wing before throwing him off a building.
Bucky is grateful for that, at least: that Stark had some sort of experimental nano-technology to ensure that the bone healed cleanly and easily, and that Sam was able to get back up in the air without a problem. He hates Sam’s stupid gorgeous wings, but even though breaking one man’s wing is relatively low on the list of horrors he’s committed, he would still never be able to forgive himself if he was the one to steal flight from the Falcon.
He apologized to Sam early on for that, the same day that Sam and Steve finally caught up to him, watching the smoking ruins of a HYDRA base and too tired to run anymore. There’s a dreamy quality to the memory of it all, though it only happened about 12 weeks ago.
He remembers that the sky was flat and gray. He’d thought about flying away as Sam and Steve had approached him, walking up with the sort of slow wariness used when approaching feral and possibly rabid cats.
But his wings had ached especially bad that day, and though he had known he could fly, he knew equally that he couldn’t out-fly Sam Wilson and his stupid gorgeous wings—which were tensed as he made his way to Bucky, ready to take after him if he fled.
But he hadn’t fled, and soon he was in the car, stuffed uncomfortably in the backseat, while Sam and his perfectly-folded wings somehow fit in the front next to Steve. And Bucky had stared at the wings, trying to find a sign of the two bones he’d broken in half, and seeing nothing. They were so flawless, he almost wondered if he had imagined the sound the bones had made beneath his hands, the way that Sam had screamed when he kicked him in the chest and sent him falling through the air.
Then Sam had caught his eye in the dashboard mirror. “Please tell me you’re not fantasizing about snapping me in half like a chicken wing. One time was enough.”
“Sam—” Steve started, sounding stressed.
“I’m not.” Bucky had licked his lips and said the next two words carefully. It was the first time he could remember saying them to another person. “I’m sorry. For breaking your wing. And kicking you off a building.”
Sam had held his gaze for a moment, and then he nodded. “I appreciate it.”
Bucky had nodded back, and then the car lapsed into an uncomfortable silence for the entire ride back to Sam and Steve’s hotel room.
That was months ago, now. But even then, Bucky had recognized how beautiful Sam’s wings were, and how their beauty made the ugliness of his own all the more obvious.
And it is very and constantly obvious, because Sam is around all the time. Bucky has a sneaking suspicion that he’s going out with Steve, which is… fine. It’s fine.
It’s fine, except for the fact that Steve is extremely disinclined to actually go outside of the apartment. Not when it means leaving Bucky behind.
And so usually Sam is here, in their apartment. Providing a constant, side-by-side comparison for anyone looking to see just how perfect his wings are, how inadequate Bucky’s.
And so for that reason—along with the sneaking sense of guilt he sometimes gets for preventing Steve from spending more time alone with Sam, even though it isn’t like he asked Steve to be constantly hovering around him—he minimizes the runs that he goes on.
He was supposed to go out today. If he was still with HYDRA, they would force him to get up. They would make him go and execute whatever cruelty they’d planned, no matter how the pain made reflexive tears well up in his eyes and threaten to smear the goggles he wore, no matter if the exertion would make him collapse in a heap of immobile agony as soon as he was on the transport back to the base.
He remembers that well. There are other things he doesn’t remember from his time with HYDRA; areas his mind has blocked off, which only appear in unsettled, vague dreams of hands on him and—
But he is not with HYDRA. He isn’t. He is lying on his stomach, on a bed, and it feels like someone is shoving hot metal pokers in the spots where his wings split from his skin, but he is not with HYDRA, and Steve will not force him to do anything he doesn’t want to do.
Steve waits patiently while Bucky tries to summon up the will to get out of bed and let him know he won’t be coming. Or at least reach over to his phone and send a text. Probably getting up would be better, though, because he also desperately has to piss.
But just as the wings are dead weight dragging down his body, the pain is an anchor weighing down his desire to do anything other than lie there limp. He doesn’t move, not until Steve knocks gently on his door.
“Buck? You coming?”
He lifts his head from the pillow. Electric pain shoots down his spine. He grits his teeth and tries to keep it from his voice when he answers.
“Sorry. Don’t think so.”
“What’s wrong?”
Shit. That’s Steve’s Concerned Voice. Which is the voice he often uses when talking to Bucky, but in the weeks he’s been in the Tower, he has come to realize that it is in fact not the same as his normal voice.
Steve tends to walk the line between not pushing Bucky to talk about all the things he doesn’t want to talk about—which is most of the past 70 years—while also being unrelenting about the care he shows. He won’t force Bucky to answer, but he will cancel his morning run if he thinks something is really wrong.
“My back’s just hurting. I’ll be fine.”
Steve knows his wings cause him pain, even though he’s never really talked about it outside of moments like this. He’s proven to be remarkably, infuriatingly good at seeing right through the stoic facade Bucky thought he had perfected.
“You want me to stay in? I don’t mind—”
“No. Go out with Sam. I’m just going to stay in bed.”
A soft thunk as Steve leans his head against the door to Bucky’s room. “Okay. You want anything before I go?”
“No. Thanks.”
It rankles sometimes, the constant concern. Steve doesn’t treat him like he’s fragile, exactly. He knows better than that, given that Bucky almost killed him on multiple occasions. But the worrying, even as he tries not to hover… it’s cloying, like a too-strong cologne (which, admittedly, is most of them; his enhanced senses make a dash of body spray smell like someone poured a bottle over their head).
And the thing is, he can’t blame Steve. Not really. Not when it’s his own fucking fault, after the incident with his first therapist—
But that was weeks ago. No use dwelling on it now, not when the call of nature is far more urgent.
He waits until he hears Steve leave, and then waits a few minutes longer to make sure that Steve doesn’t find some excuse to just bring Sam up here and stay in.
When he’s certain he has the apartment to himself, Bucky grits his teeth and pushes up against the firm mattress, forcing himself into a sitting position and swinging his legs over the side of his bed in a single smooth motion.
He wobbles on his feet for about two seconds before crashing inelegantly down onto his knees. Fuck. Thank god Steve wasn’t around to hear that. And thank god Stark’s AI isn’t allowed to monitor his bedroom. His humiliation belongs to him alone.
He closes his eyes and focuses. His bedroom is perpetually dark, but he knows the way to the bathroom, and it isn’t far. He can just barely lift his wings up from the ground, exert just enough control so that they’re not entirely dead weight as he crawls the short distance on his knees. Once inside, he manages to stand long enough to relieve himself, though he has to grip the counter so hard that he’s not surprised to see cracks spiderwebbing out across the surface by the time he’s done.
Afterwards, he decides to treat himself, and lies on his stomach on the cool bathroom tiles for a few minutes. It’s nice, not being upright. His ugly wings bunch up around him, dark shadows against the blinding white chrome, but there’s no one there to see them. He can suffer in peace.
But after a little while, the coolness of the bathroom tile starts being less of a comfort, and more of a reminder of the month he spent chained to a hard stone floor while the wings germinated from his body.
He could lie in the shower and set the water to freezing and pretend he’s about to enter the numbing peace of the cryochamber. But while that sometimes helps in the short term, overall, it usually brings more nightmares, and he doesn’t need those right now.
Once again, he forces himself onto his knees and crawls back to his bed, where he inelegantly yanks himself onto his mattress and lets his wings splay out on either side.
His body punishes him for the bathroom excursion. Cords of fire ripple out from his spine, climbing up each of the hateful wings. He bites down hard on his pillow, curling his knees up beneath him. As if there’s any position that could ease the sheer agony wrenching through his muscles.
He stays in that same position until a knock at the door makes him startle, which makes his wings shift, which makes him want to scream, except then Steve would hear. Assuming it is Steve. He didn’t even hear him come in.
Stupid. A mistake like that could get him killed.
For once, though, the universe is kind, and hasn’t sent a suspiciously polite HYDRA team to take him back in.
“Hey,” Steve says quietly. “You awake?”
“Yeah.”
He can hear Steve’s frown even before he answers. “You sound… uh. Can I come in?”
He always asks, as if Bucky would ever tell him that he’s forbidden to enter a room in his own apartment. “Sure.”
Steve opens the door, but makes no move to come in further. Bucky doesn’t lift his head. He can only imagine how bad he looks right now: gray-skinned, sweaty, circles under his eyes. Steve already has to see the wings. No need to make the image even worse.
“Buck…”
He trails off, apparently rendered speechless by whatever he sees. Bucky’s fingers twitch reflexively towards his feathers, but he shoves them under his chest and rests his weight upon them, rather than giving in to the impulse. There’s no way Steve would miss him pulling one off right now.
“Can I get you something? An ice pack? Or a heating pad?”
It’s hard to imagine that anything would help right now. But the thought of numbness does still hold a certain appeal, even now that he’s back in his bed. And he also knows that it helps Steve to feel like he’s being useful.
“Ice would be great. Thanks.”
“What about something to eat? You should try to keep your strength up.”
Eating is the last thing on his mind. “I don’t wanna get crumbs in my bed.”
Steve makes a ‘hmm’ sound. “I’ll be right back.”
He shuts the door when he leaves, but the whir of the blender still penetrates through. So it’s not all that surprising when he comes back, and Bucky hears the sound of something sloshing.
“Okay. I made you a protein smoothie. It’s in one of those thermal cups, so it should stay cold even if you don’t want to drink it right now.”
Bucky raises his head to watch as Steve sets it down on the night stand. The smell of Steve’s post-run sweat mingles with that of strawberries and peanut butter. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. I got you the ice too. Should I put it on? Or do you want me to just leave it somewhere?”
He’s not even sure he could twist around to arrange it properly right now. And anyway. Steve tries to be careful about touch. Bucky appreciates it, as much as it twists his stomach with guilt to see how careful Steve has to be with him, compared to the easy way he interacts with Sa—with the others in the Tower.
It’s his own fault, he knows. Too many times flinching away when Steve just wanted to grasp his shoulder or clap his back.
“You can put it on.”
Steve delicately lays an ice compress across Bucky’s back. His fingers never once make contact with Bucky’s skin, let alone his feathers. When it comes to the wings, Steve is more than cautious; he’s never put his hands on them except for those fights on the bridge and the helicarrier.
“I brought you a heating pad too. Just in case you end up wanting it. It’s one of the electric ones, so you just have to plug it in.”
That sounds like it requires more movement than he’s currently capable of, but it’s the thought that counts. “Thank you. Really.”
“Whatever I can do to help, I will.”
The words are almost embarrassingly earnest. Bucky presses his face even harder in the pillow. If he’s lucky, Steve will think he just fell asleep and will quietly leave, instead of staying here and offering to do even more shit that Bucky doesn’t deserve and can’t ever repay.
Unfortunately, Steve lingers after the compress has been centered on his back.
“So—Sam had mentioned yesterday that there’s a game on this afternoon—hockey, I think, or maybe basketball—and I had thought that maybe he could come over? But I could tell him not to if you aren’t feeling well—there are always going to be more games—”
“I don’t mind.”
Even if it did bother him that Sam would be in the apartment, flaunting his stupid gorgeous wings while Bucky lies in a miserable heap and contemplates cutting his off, he wouldn’t say so. There’s a lot he doesn’t know, but he does know that he wants Steve to be happy, and being around Sam accomplishes that.
“I’ll make sure we’re quiet, if you’re still in here. You need anything, even after Sam’s come over, just yell and I’ll be here, okay?”
“I know. Thanks. I think I just want to sleep for now.”
“Yell if you need anything,” Steve repeats. And then he’s shutting the door behind him, and Bucky is alone with his ugliness.
He gives into the compulsion and twists his fingers through his feathers, freeing a few shafts and letting them drift down to the floor. The temptation to pull off more burns like a ball of hot lead inside him.
But he stubbornly shoves both hands under his chest instead. The chill from the ice pack has begun seeping deeper into his aching muscles, soothing as it sinks through the pain. It’s a gentle cooling—the pack is made of a thick, rubbery sort of vinyl, and so the cold eases its way in. Not the sudden sear of cryofreeze overtaking him, ensuring agony in his last seconds before days or years of unconsciousness.
Bucky buries his head into the pillow and tries to focus on how it feels for the cold to slowly overtake the pain in his wings. His new therapist, in addition to being very big on breathing, has also repeatedly encouraged him to try to distract his senses when he feels like yanking out his feathers.
He’s mostly ignored her advice on that part. He always wants to pull his feathers out, to one extent or another; the only reason he still has so many left is because he’s had decades to learn that what he wants doesn’t matter. And besides, she’s technically a doctor, so her suggestions are automatically suspect. And also Steve would get suspicious it Bucky was constantly pressing ice cubes against his wings, like she suggested.
But lying in bed like this, the ice pack a little like the weighted blanket Steve keeps on the couch, except not so sweaty or smothering—well. He kind of gets what his therapist was going for. It does distract him, his senses honing in on the growing chill that spreads along the base of his wings. The feather-pulling urge dulls, like it’s being numbed alongside the fiery ache.
One other thing his therapist talks about a lot is visualizations. Picturing his anxieties exiting alongside his exhalations, while she guides him through breathing exercises. Imagining a better world than the one he lives in.
Lying in bed like this, it’s easy to envision whorls of frost forming beneath the ice pack. Spreading across his back in intricate, lacy patterns; climbing up his wings in snowy vines. Maybe even stretching out and dancing their way up the scars that gouge his left shoulder. Turning the worst parts of him—the worst parts on the outside, at least—into something beautiful.
Bucky wakes up twice. The first time, he’s just cognizant enough to appreciate the comfortable numbness of his back, the ice pack still cold even after however long he was asleep. But, though he’s grateful for the lack of pain, the chill has sunk in a bit too deep for his liking. He can feel it in his chest, his lungs. In his half-awake state, memories threaten to surface of lying in the snow at the base of a mountain, slipping in and out of consciousness for a very different reason.
He could ignore it. Close his eyes and let sleep overtake him again, however high the threat of nightmares seems.
But Steve keeps trying to get him to believe that he can, and should, do things that feel good. Eat foods that he likes, decorate his space however he wants.
Bucky mostly doesn’t believe him. Wanting things rarely turns out well; there’s always a price if someone suspects that he actually has desires. But…
Without lifting his head from the pillow, Bucky reaches out and feels around for the heating pad Steve had brought in. He finds it, then manages to plug the cord into the nearest outlet.
Careful not to dislodge the cooling pad on his back, Bucky raises himself off the bed just enough to slide the heating pad underneath him. When it’s mostly centered beneath his chest, he settles back down and thumbs the power switch to the lowest setting.
In seconds, warmth begins spreading from his collarbone to his abdomen—enough to melt his core, but not enough to bring feeling back to his back.
It feels…. enveloping, but in a safe sort of way. Like how an embrace might, if he didn’t automatically tense up the moment someone’s hands reached out towards him.
Bucky closes his eyes, buries his face deep in his pillow, breathes in and out. Lets sleep take his mind away while his body reaches a rare equilibrium between frozen and thawed.
The first thing that Bucky does upon waking the second time is to yank the heating pad out from under him, unplug it, and toss it on the floor.
It doesn’t do much good. The once-comforting warmth leached like a chemical spill into the sheets below. Now they cling, hot and sweat-soaked, to his chest. Which is also hot and sweat-soaked. Even his pillow sticks to his cheek, which just isn’t fair, since the heating pad never touched it. The scent of salt and his own body hangs heavy in the air—Christ, but he could often do without the enhanced sense of smell that the serum left him with.
He huffs and rolls his shoulder. The ice pack is still somewhat cool, but it sloshes with the movement. Ready to return to the sub-zero peace of the freezer.
With a grunt, he pushes himself up into a sitting position. The ice pack slides down to the floor with a wet thump.
Getting upright shifts his wings, of course, and naturally there’s a flare of pain as they move for the first time in hours. But after that initial cramp stops seizing up his muscles, it’s… not so bad.
Tentatively, Bucky lifts his wings up from the floor. The ever-present ache near the base pulses, but it’s easily within the bounds of “normal” for him. Even as he can feel the temperature of his back adjusting to normal, with the ice pack gone, the awful agony of before does not show its face again.
For a moment he just sits there, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. His room is always dark, velvet blackout curtains covering the windows of the far wall. He never opens them, has little use for seeing how close the sky is.
When the pain still hasn’t returned, he swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands. Might as well try to get something done while his body isn’t actively fighting him.
His gratitude for the reprieve lasts until he’s halfway to the bathroom, when a laugh—deep and sweet all at once—suddenly sounds from further out in the apartment.
Bucky freezes. Mostly. His wings raise automatically, as his mind finally reaches full wakefulness
Sam. Steve had told him earlier that Sam would be coming over. Sam, with his perfect wings. Who probably just takes it for granted that he can wake up every morning and not wonder if it would hurt less to take a knife and saw off the growths emerging from his back.
Bucky pulls his own ugly wings as close to his body as he can. He could just go back to bed. Maybe by the time he woke up again, Sam would be gone.
But Steve surely knows that he’s up by now—he would have heard the ice pack falling to the ground, if nothing else. And, Steve being Steve, he’ll probably come to look in on him soon. Remind Sam that Bucky is someone who needs to be checked up on, because he’s messed up like that, because his wings are messed up.
Bucky grits his teeth and forces himself to keep walking to the bathroom. He splashes cold water on his face and runs a comb through his hair before he finally makes himself look in the mirror.
There are lines from the pillowcase still etched in his cheeks, but his skin isn’t altogether too sallow. His hair hangs down, starting to look greasy, but mostly neat. The circles beneath his eyes are no more prominent than usual.
His wings…
He bites his tongue hard, and the jab of pain is enough to quell the temptation to reach over and tug a few more feathers out. Really, he doesn’t know what his therapist is so concerned about. The fact that there are still far more feathers than bare skin demonstrates his self-control.
There is one more barrier to contend with after he leaves the bathroom, and before he exits his bedroom: the shirt.
Shirts are a problem. They were not a problem before, because the Winter Soldier did not dress himself. And he almost never took off his shirt when he was on the run. He stole a sweatshirt to put over it, and that was that. He didn’t exactly have easy access to a laundromat, nor did he need one when his main objective was to destroy as many HYDRA bases and safehouses as he could remember.
It’s different now. Now, wearing the same shirt three days in a row is “cause for concern.” Also, now that he is no longer sleeping under a bridge, he is actually expected to care about things like “body odor.”
Bucky drinks half the smoothie that Steve had brought in preparation for the upcoming battle. When he can no longer stomach its hours-old, slimy texture, he takes a clean shirt from his closet and shoves his arms through the sleeves.
That’s the easy part.
The hard part is twisting around and buttoning up the back.
It shouldn’t be hard: he’s plenty flexible when it comes to fighting, to just letting his body do what it needs to in order to fulfill an objective.
But there’s something about reaching behind him and doing up the rows of buttons that allow for the wing slits that just… crosses the wires in his brain, or something. Maybe it messes up the neural interface of his left arm when it has to reach behind him and maneuver around two giant appendages that didn’t exist when it got shoved into its socket.
In any case, all of his grace and dexterity go out the window as he fumbles like a fool to get the stupid fucking buttons into the stupid fucking holes. His wings twitch as he brushes against them, and he gives into the urge to pluck out one, two, five of the tiny covert feathers.
Steve had suggested buying shirts and outerwear that used Velcro or magnets shortly after Bucky had arrived at the Tower. He had been preparing to go on his first-ever run with Sam and Steve, which was also the first time he’d left the Tower since being brought in. He’d been struggling to do up a windbreaker when Steve had tentatively offered the alternative.
Bucky had glared at him, and refused to dignify that with a response, and for good measure had decided to skulk back to his bedroom rather than face the outdoors with his hideous wings that day. Steve had been smart enough to not bring it up again.
Sam does not wear Velcro shirts. Sam wears soft sweaters with tiny, barely-visible buttons. Some of his shirts, Bucky thinks, don’t even have buttons. He can actually pull them over his head and just slip his wings through the openings in the back.
The last button finally pops into its place. Bucky allows himself a grim satisfaction as he smooths down the front of the shirt, refusing to think about how pathetic it is to feel like he accomplished something, when the “something” in question is incredibly easy for most people above the age of toddlers.
He draws his wings up against his back, brushes down the most obviously disheveled feathers—even manages to avoid the urge to pluck one out that rings sharp in the back of his brain—and then, finally, opens the door.
The bedrooms are offset from the rest of the apartment by a short hallway. Bucky pads down it soundlessly.
It’s not a conscious attempt to be sneaky—he just always walks like that; his body remembers the consequences of moving on less-than-silent feet, even while his mind tries to block them out.
But intentional or not, the end result is that he is unobserved as he comes into the living room, where the couch faces away from the hallway. Which means that neither Steve nor Sam bothers to move as he approaches.
Which means that Bucky gets an unfiltered look at what the two of them are like without his presence casting a shadow over them.
What they’re like is… close.
Sam sits in the corner of the couch. His right wing is folded up close to his back. His left one spans the length of the couch, but not raised so high that Bucky can’t see Steve. He’s seated on the cushion directly next to Sam, doing… something. With his hands, it looks like.
He should clear his throat. Say hello. Something to announce his presence.
He means to. But before he can, his eyes catch on Sam’s wing—the left one, the one that’s stretched out.
Except it isn’t just stretching. No, as Bucky blinks and stares, it becomes obvious that it’s… draped. Resting.
On Steve’s shoulders.
And it isn’t just sprawled out, like he initially thought. It’s curled just enough to make it clear that the position is intentional. Carefully curving, just barely wrapping Steve in a blanket of perfect mist and cedar feathers.
Without thinking, Bucky’s hand drifts up and he rips out one of his primaries.
At the soft rustle of shifting feathers, Steve starts. He cranes his head around, resting his chin on the smoky blue-gray arch of Sam’s wing.
Bucky crumples his own tattered feather in his hand, ignoring how the shaft cuts into his skin, and stuffs it in his pocket.
Steve’s face pinches slightly, the way it always does when he’s ignoring the many reminders of how fucked-up Bucky is. But his voice is almost cheery when he says, “Hey! I thought I heard you get up. How are you feeling?”
Bucky shifts, rolling his shoulders. The deep ache that swells out from his spine isn’t that much worse than usual. “Better.”
“Yeah? That’s great.” The smile that overtakes Steve’s face erases almost all the worry.
“We missed you on our run,” Sam says, turning his head to look at Bucky. “There wasn’t anything to distract Steve from how hard he was kicking my ass.”
“Bucky wouldn’t have distracted me, he would’ve helped me.”
Sam gives Steve a look, eyebrows raised and lips pressed together in a way that’s maybe supposed to be a scowl, except it’s supremely obvious that he’s trying not to grin as wide as Steve is.
“I got new shoes,” Sam explains. “And they blistered my feet straight to shit, and made me remember why flying is by far the superior way to travel. And Captain Asshole here just looped me for about 5 miles before he finally took pity on my poor, unfortunate soles.”
“I don’t see you complaining about the footrub,” Steve replies.
Bucky shelves his automatic revulsion at Sam’s comment about the best means of travel. He takes a few steps closer, and—yeah. That’s a footrub all right, Sam’s long, lean legs stretched out onto Steve’s lap. Steve’s strong, broad hands cradle his left foot, both thumbs pressed into the arch.
“There’s pizza in the kitchen,” Steve says. “We saved some for you.”
“Oh,” says Bucky, and then, “Thanks.”
He pulls himself away from the painfully domestic sight and wanders into the kitchen. He eats staring out at New York sprawling down below. The sun hangs low in the sky, though he tries not to look up at it and all that open space above the tallest buildings. He slept almost the entire day away.
Probably he should feel guilty about that. But it isn’t like there’s anything else for him to do, trapped away in the Tower until the powers that be either pardon him, or lock him away in a far less pleasant prison.
He wonders if they would take his wings, if they did jail him. They’d almost definitely take the arm; it’s like having an M4 attached to him at all times.
The wings aren’t inherently a weapon, but the Soldier was very good at making weapons out of things not originally intended as such. As much as they were a target in shootouts, he also cracked a few skulls and broke a few necks using them to slam away opponents in close-combat situations. And they made getaways a lot easier, which was probably HYDRA’s main reason for growing them, other than to prove that they could.
He doesn’t know if he would mind if the government or the UN or whoever did cut them off. He wouldn’t fight it, anyway.
Bucky watches the city, and eats, and resists the urge to comb through his wings with his pizza-greased fingers until a couple of feathers come off.
It’s like a constant itch in the back of his mind. But after decades where he wasn’t allowed to scratch himself without permission, he can ignore the desire.
When he puts his mind to it.
Sometimes.
Sam and Steve have straightened themselves out by the time Bucky plods back into the living room, hands washed clean. Though Sam’s wings still span the length of the couch, there’s now almost a complete cushion between them.
“You wanna come and watch the game?” Steve asks.
Bucky glances at the television. Hockey. He has no idea who the teams are.
The only players with wings are the goalies. The one in red has tawny brown wings, not entirely dissimilar to Sam’s. The one wearing gold and black has wings like a snowy owl’s, white and majestic with flecks of black near the edges of the underside.
As Bucky watches, a player from the black-and-gold team feints a shot, then passes the puck to his teammate, who strikes it clean into the net, sliding smoothly beneath the goalie’s golden-brown secondary feathers.
Sam groans. Bucky agrees. If his wings functioned correctly and he were assigned such a position, he would never let a goal pass beneath them. How sloppy.
“I can move over if you want to sit on the couch,” Steve offers, apparently more preoccupied with Bucky than with the embarrassment that just played out onscreen.
“No. It’s fine.”
He considers going back to his room and just lying on the bed until it becomes an appropriate time to go to sleep for the evening, but that seems unbearably lazy. And probably it would upset Steve. Though maybe not, since he has Sam to distract him.
Also, his room probably still smells like sweat. Which is considerably less pleasant than the distinct combinations of skin and sweat and cologne that characterize Sam and Steve.
Bucky folds himself and his wings into the recliner. The movement sends a twinge of pain up his back; he doesn’t let it show on his face.
The game itself is mind-numbingly boring, which isn’t entirely a bad thing: after so long in bed, he’s not sure he’s fully awake. It’s easy to just stare at the skaters and let vision go hazy as they fight for a meaningless victory.
Or, mostly hazy. It’s also very easy to watch Sam and Steve from the corner of his eye.
As the third period progresses, the two of them slowly drift closer and closer to each other. It probably isn’t intentional—he doesn’t think either of them could intentionally be so subtle.
Steve stretches, rolling his neck and shoulders, then curls back into the couch cushion, a few inches closer to Sam than before. Sam scratches an itch on his side, and the motion shifts him ever so slightly in Steve’s direction. Steve leans over to ask Sam a technical question about a penalty against the red team, and doesn’t move as far away as before once Sam has answered.
And so it goes, until by the time the buzzer sounds, the two of them are practically thigh-and-thigh again.
It’s obvious that they’re more than just friends. Transparently so.
And yet, once the game is over and Sam says that he should be heading out, he and Steve don’t… kiss goodnight, or whatever it is that couples do. They just hover near each other, and Steve asks if Sam will be able to get home okay, and Sam rolls his eyes and says that home is three floors below them. Because he’s been staying in New York, at least for now,
And Steve just laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. I’ll walk you to the elevator, okay?”
Which also isn’t saying much, given that the elevator is located in the tiny hallway right outside the actual entrance to Steve’s apartment. But the fact that it is outside their floor proper means that they’ll have privacy, which Bucky guesses is probably the point.
“It was good seeing you tonight, Buck. I think I’m gonna take a rest day tomorrow ‘cause of the blisters, but maybe you can come running with us next time? As long as you promise not to help Steve kick my ass.”
Sam smiles at him, his thick, elegant wings neatly folded behind his back. Bucky doesn’t bother smiling back; it always looks more like a grimace, and whenever he’s tried practicing in front of the mirror, it’s ended up being even more off-putting than before.
But he nods. “Sure.”
At least Sam isn’t offering to go flying with him anymore. He’d tried that a couple of times before, once Stark informed Steve that it was unlikely anyone would try to arrest him in the airspace around the Tower. Bucky had only ever responded with dead-eyed stares before walking away, unable to think of an appropriate response.
When Steve escorts Sam out into the hall, Bucky finally, finally gives in to the niggling urge that’s been eating at him for the entire hockey game and digs his nails into his left wing. He drags his hand through the feathers, relishing the sweet feeling of several pulling loose.
He stands there in the middle of the living room for a moment, basking in the stinging sensation for as long as it lasts.
Then he shoves the feathers into his pocket and heads back to his bedroom before Steve can return from whatever lip-locking goodbye he’s doubtlessly sharing with Sam. Steve has had a good day, Bucky is pretty sure. The last thing he wants is Steve’s eidetic memory taking one look at his wings and instantly noticing that the feather count has once again gone down.
Besides, he’s spent over an hour out of bed. Which means he didn’t waste the entire day, at least not worse than usual. So it doesn’t even really count as one of Those Days after all.