To Hide A Terrible Secret

Hot Cocoa, Hummingbirds, and Something Sort of Like Healing.

Bucky quickly made himself enamored as flapping wings and the green tree leaves filled the screen. He tried to throw himself into the colorful songbirds and facts of sweet crows, tried to imagine himself flying away into a free sky with none of his heavy worries and bones as light as air. He tried not to remind himself of the lab rat he used to be, or of the torture or the abuse.

But at the end of the day, Bucky always ended up back there. He couldn’t get away from it, from himself.

Word count: ~2.1K

Content: Autistic!Bucky, protective Steve Rogers, he’s a really good friend, but I guess you could ship them in this if you want to, angst/comfort eventually, but I didn’t write the comfort only the very beginning of it 💔, I lowkey don’t even know what point in the fucking timeline I was in just imagine anything post!Civil War atp, Bucky’s special interest is birds bcs I said so

A/n: this one was lowkey difficult cos I tried not to mischaracterize Bucky while also doing that intentionally 😭 but anyways as an autistic person who oftentimes feels like their needs are annoying and embarrassing, this fic is a little bit special to me :)

Based on the last headcanon from this post

Reblogs/notes appreciated !!! Crossposted to ao3 from the same handle!

🥀

The tag on the inside of his shirt, the seams on his jeans, the slight prickle of his hair against his neck, the buzzing of every god-forsaken machine Tony had jammed into every possible nook and cranny. Bucky felt it all, heard it all. He sensed it down deep into his bones, and the years of conditioning to sense more than he was supposed to didn't help, either.

His week, overall, had been a pretty shitty one. From the rain hiding away the birds in the trees to the near-failed missions the team had gone on to the cold weather, he'd had enough.

He hated when he couldn't see the birds-- the cardinals and the Calliope Hummingbirds and the mourning doves stowed neatly into the tens of birdhouses hung outside Bucky's expansive window in his room in the Avengers' compound. 

He hated when his motor skills grew poor from exhaustion and overwhelm and his clunky metal arm didn't move where it told him to move, when his voice didn't move as fast as his brain, when it impacted his performance while he was working. He hated the way getting hit during battle and losing made him feel when for seventy-some years, he would never even dream of missing a single swing.

And the cold. Oh, how he hated the cold down to his rotten, strung out core. The cold reminded him of the cryo-freeze, the isolation, the chill against his back as he sat down to have his brain wiped, the being stuck in his worst nightmare.

The autism didn't help anything, either; only made things worse. It only made his heart break when he couldn't catalogue his dear birds, since they had been one of the only things to survive the conditioning of The Winter Soldier-- his special interest. It only made his need to be perfect heightened when those motor skills declined. It only made him feel the cold as what felt like a thousand times worse. It only made him feel so much more alone. Alone no matter how much the people around him told him he wasn't.

So, since he still hadn't worked out how to handle that, he went back to what he knew best. He put up a mask; a good one. It wasn't like he could hide the slurred speech or the running into corners sometimes, but he could hide the way it bothered him when the team laughed a little too hard on the jet, the way he had forgotten to eat for two days because Steve had forgotten to remind him, how he changed his shirt four times in the morning just to find one with an okay texture. He learned to ignore the way his brain needed quiet, the way he hated the smell of Tony's new cologne. He learned to keep his mouth shut when everyone was cracking jokes he didn't quite understand.

Sometimes, it worried him ever so slightly when it got bad. He felt like maybe he was just letting himself become The Winter Soldier again; silent, uncomplaining, numb. Steve worried, too, but he knew better than to say anything. It'd been like this for a while, even before Natasha had floated around the idea that maybe Bucky was on the spectrum, before the whole team had sort of just accepted it was the truth and kept going on without making it a big deal. Before Bucky had learned to hate those parts of himself.

Once or twice a month, sometimes even three, Bucky would start to crumble. He'd been masking and masking for so long, and he would keep up doing it until he genuinely couldn't manage it anymore. Steve had grown a sort of sense about it-- recognizing when the man would start to wince at the loud noises, stare off into space, run into the edges of countertops and pretend like it never happened, pull at the collar of his shirt like it was choking him. And Steve would be right there with him, subtly. There'd been an instance where he tried to talk to Bucky, help him relax, but had instead been on the receiving end of a meltdown where Bucky had hit him and screamed that he was okay.

Bucky had never felt more horrible, even though he didn't mean to do it all.

Steve had never felt so forgiving.

So, that Steve had slowly learned to get himself where he was then, making Bucky a simple bowl of plain grits exactly how he knew the other liked them, and leaving it on the counter when he heard him start to walk down the hall from his room.

He took one look at Bucky, tugging at his shirt's collar, and frowned.

"You're gonna have a bad day today, huh?" He said softly, pouring him a small glass of water.

Bucky took a moment, and did something he didn't often do.

He nodded; very reluctantly, but he nodded nonetheless.

"I appreciate you being honest," Steve smiled. "And I'm not mad, you're not annoying, and no you are not horrible or weird or a burden."

Bucky chuckled ever so slightly and took a bite of his food. It took him a while to work through it, the process of eating just being a bit difficult, and by the time the bowl was empty almost everyone else had woken up for a scheduled training session Tony had planned the week before. Bucky was both glad it was happening and dreading it all at the same time. He liked the problem solving exercises FRIDAY would generate for them to solve. Those were logical, predictable, perfect-able. He could knock them out in seconds. He liked proving he was worth something on the team.

So, when they finally made it to the training room, and Tony casually announced that he was reprogramming the AI for the small exercises, Bucky could have cried right then and there. The one thing he had actually planned to do all day, and the plans had changed. He took a deep breath, telling himself it was stupid to be upset over such a small thing, and ignored it. He went through the motions of the rest of the training, unfortunately getting toppled over by Peter a couple times, and ignoring everything he felt just to make it through the hour.

He felt embarrassingly exhausted, and it was only 11 AM. Bucky wished he knew how to be normal, or even just how to let himself be himself, but he couldn't. He didn't know how to stop hiding.

He wished his disability was so much more manageable than it was, then. He wished he could go back to the 40’s when he wasn’t ever too bothered by it, when he could so easily tuck everything away like a locked box under a bed-frame or deep into a full closet.

The botched experiments and decimation HYDRA had done to his brain left it permanently broken. His comprehension skills sometimes got the better of him, his focus, his calmness (did he even know what that word meant anymore)?, and no matter what had happened nothing could be worse than his disability flooding to each and every corner of his mind after being trapped behind a dam for so long.

Seventy years was a long, long time to ignore something like that.

Even after escaping the loud chatter of the team and taking half-refuge in the kitchen, Bucky felt like his chest was being pressed on so hard he couldn't breathe. The lights stabbed his eyes and every sound wiggled so far into his ears he thought his brain might burst. His shirt's texture was really starting to get to him, and it was cold in the compound today.

"Bucky?" Steve's gentle voice reminded him he was alive. "You okay?"

Bucky shrugged, a bit shaky, and shook his head no. He sat, unmoving, at the kitchen counter with a dead expression, trying to hold himself together like a bad crochet project caught on something sharp.

“You’re not alright, are you?”

”I’m fine.” Bucky said quietly, rubbing a hand across his lips and directing his attention to the tiles of the floor.

Steve’s somewhat disappointed expression melted into something sympathetic; understanding, as he started to make a cup of hot cocoa. He decided, then, that he should probably play it out as if he didn’t really know Bucky was having a hard time, even though the both of them would see right through it.

”I’m making hot cocoa, I’ll make you some, too, but you don’t have to drink it.”

He heard a small huff and took that as a yes, pouring hot milk into a cup with a small photo of a bluejay on it. He’d made a conscious decision to avoid Bucky’s cardinal mug, afraid the stark red would bother him and remind him of HYDRA’s star branding.

When he finally placed the mug in front of Bucky, the latter immediately wrapped his hands around it, probably to warm them up due to his poor temperature regulation.

”How about we watch that good bird documentary you like? The one with the hummingbirds.” Sam asked gently.

Bucky seemed to hesitate, probably winding through the labyrinth of his brain where every twist and turn told him he didn’t deserve help. However, he got up and started the slow journey to his room.

Once he’d finally made it in, he set his mug on the nightstand of his bed, and tugged off his shoes, making his way under the deep blue covers. (He never figured out what his favorite color was, so he just picked Steve’s).

Steve sat down beside him, not touching him or really looking at him too hard, and asked FRIDAY to pull up the documentary in question so Bucky didn’t have to. The large window darkened to hide the dark rainy sky behind it and lit up in the shape of a television screen, showcasing one of Tony’s more intricate technologies.

Bucky quickly made himself enamored as flapping wings and the green tree leaves filled the screen. He tried to throw himself into the colorful songbirds and facts of sweet crows, tried to imagine himself flying away into a free sky with none of his heavy worries and bones as light as air. He tried not to remind himself of the lab rat he used to be, or of the torture or the abuse.

But at the end of the day, Bucky always ended up back there. He couldn’t get away from it, from himself.

”Steve?” He whispered when he felt embarrassing tears press at his shiny blue eyes.

”Yeah?” The blond replied, already hearing it in his voice.

Bucky didn’t answer for a moment, fighting with himself, wishing for a moment that he hadn’t even said anything.

”It’s cold.” Bucky finally said, his voice failing him halfway through.

He wrapped his own arms around himself as he just couldn’t hold the tears back anymore. He didn’t look at Steve, too ashamed, and Steve didn’t look at him, either. He knew better.

”FRIDAY, turn up the heat, please.” Steve said pointedly, and folded his half of the blanket over onto Bucky as a second layer. “You stay as close or far as you want, Buck. But know I’m here, I want to help, and I’m not judging you.”

Bucky felt like he was being ripped apart between letting himself be loved and helped or sparing what little dignity he had left. He wanted his brain to slow down and also stop feeling like mush, wanted his hands to stop shaking and his heart to stop aching.

Bucky wasn’t even sure how long they sat there, in silence other than the narrator’s kind voice and the occasional songbird’s cry.

He told himself, I am not strong enough for this.

”You’re strong, Bucky. Just breathe, it’s gonna be okay.”

And that was when Bucky turned over and dumped himself into Steve’s arms.

Unraveling into a messy pile of exhaustion, Bucky let himself be held only because he felt like he couldn’t do anything else. He let Steve just run the smallest of circles onto his back and tentatively pull him a little closer, because he didn’t have the energy to pull away.

”I’m not mad at you, you’re not weak or stupid or embarrassing. You’re my friend, Bucky. Just breathe.”

and maybe, everything would be just a little bit okay.

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Haven't posted in a while so have a low effort Feliks smoking

Artmaxxing

AAAA I LATE!! D:>

ʚ fluttercord appreciation ɞ i remember this nail matching the eye color of your partner was a trend a while ago, so i did these for valentine's day! i already posted fluttershy in my instagram bc i didn't wanted to miss the date and discord wasn't ready, but i wanted to post them together here even if it's late :'> anyway happy late valentine's day for yall!! ♡

Jesse and his weird freakazoid husband or whatever

This is the type of photo he would use as his profile picture on Facebook

y’all ever think about how bucky got drafted and acted like he enlisted so steve would think he was okay. or how bucky was tortured for weeks at azzano and acted like he wasn’t so steve would think he was okay. or how bucky was cryofrozen traumatically for decades and voluntarily chose to go back under so that steve would think he was okay. or how bucky blinked back into existence days before steve left his life forever and bucky acted happy for him so steve would think he’d be okay.